2008下学期专业英语阅读

2008年高考英语阅读理解精选5篇

2008年高考英语阅读理解精选5篇（附详解）NO.01Some people make you feel comfortable when they are around. You spend an hour with them and feel as if you have known them half your life. These people have somethi ng in common. And once we know what it is, we can try to do it ourselves.How is it done? Here are several skills that good talkers have. If you follow the skil ls, they‟ll help you put people at their ease, and make friends with them quickly.First of all, good talkers ask questions. Almost anyone, no matter how shy he is, wil l answer a question. One well-known businesswoman says, “At business lunches, I always ask people what they did that morning. It‟s a common question, but it will get thi ngs go ing.” From there you can move on to other matters—sometimes to really personal questio ns. And how he answers will let you know how far you can go.Second, once good talkers have asked questions, they listen to the answers. This poin t seems clear, but it isn‟t. Your questions should have a point and help to tell what sortof person you are talking to. And to find out, you really have to listen carefully and atte ntively.Real listening at least means some things. First it means not to change the subject of conversation. If someone sticks to one topic, you can take it as a fact that he‟s really in terested in it. Real listening also means not just listening to words, but to tones of voice. If the voice sounds dull, then, it‟s time for you to change the sub ject.Finally, good talkers know well how to deal with the occasion of parting. If you‟re s aying good-bye, you may give him a firm handshake and say, “I‟ve really enjoyed meetin g you.” If you want to see that person again, don‟t keep it a secret. Let peopl e know wh at you feel, and they may walk away feeling as if they‟ve known you half their life.1.Asking questions might be a quite good and suitable way _______.A.for you to make more and more new friendsB.to begin your business talksC.to get the conversation going smoothlyD.for you to make a deep and lasting impression on others2.After having asked somebody a question, it‟ll be polite of you to _______.A.make clear what kind of person he isB.listen to his reply attentivelyC.wait quietly and patiently for his answerD.go on asking him more questions3.Generally speaking, good talkers are persons who _______.A.are good at making any topic interestingB.never talk too much or too littleC.always speak in a gentle wayD.know how and when they should change the topic of the talk4.If you really take delight in meeting someone again, _______.A.you may take him as your lifelong trustworthy friendB.it seems necessary for you to let him know itC.it‟s proper for you to give him a second handshakeD.it‟ll be helpful for you to have further understanding of him【答案与解析】文章主要教我们一些说话的技巧。

2008考研英语阅读理解真题解析第一篇女性压力Women Under Stress

CONTENTS2008 Text 1While still catching-up to men in some spheres of modern life, women appear to be way ahead in at least one undesirable category. “Women are particularly susceptible to developing depression and anxiety disorders in response to stress compared to men,” according to Dr. Yehuda, chief psychiatrist at New York’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital.在现代生活中女性就算是在某些领域可以追赶上男性，但至少在一个方面是领先的，尽管是她们不太想要的。

纽约的退伍军管理医院精神科首席医生Yehuda博士说道，和男性相比，女性面对压力时，更容易受到影响，导致抑郁和紧张。

sphere [sfiə] n. 球,球面,球体,天体,地球仪,范围vt. 包围,使成球体,放入球内【例】Many countries have difficulties in the economic sphere. 许多国家在经济方面遇到了困难。

category['kætigəri] n. 种类,类项;【例】These Categories recognize different levels of competition. 这些类别可被用来分辨出比赛里不同的等级。

susceptible[sə'septəbl] a. 易受影响的,易感动的,容许…的【例】This agreement is not susceptible to alteration. 这一协议不容更改。

2008年英语专业八级真题及答案解析

TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (2008)--GRADE EIGHT--PART I LISTENING COMPREHENSION (35 MIN)SECTION A MINI-LECTUREIn this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture. When the lecture is over, you will be given two minutes to check your notes, and another ten minutes to complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE. Use the blank sheet for note-taking.Complete the gap-filling task. Some of the gaps below may require a maximum of THREE words. Make sure the word(s) you fill in is (are) both grammatically & semantically acceptable. You may refer to your notes.The Popularity of EnglishⅠ. Present status of EnglishA. English as a native/first languageB. English as a lingua franca: a language for communicationamong people whose (1) are different (1) ______C. Number of people speaking English as a first or a second language:— 320—380 million native speakers— 250—(2) million speakers of English as a second (2) ______LanguageⅡ. Reasons for the popular use of EnglishA. (3) reasons (3) ______— the Pilgrim Fathers brought the language to America;— British settlers brought the language to Australia;— English was used as a means of control in (4) (4) ______B. Economic reasons— spread of (5) (5) ______— language of communication in the international business communityC. (6) in international travel (6) ______— use of English in travel and tourism— signs in airports— language of announcement— language of (7) (7) ______D. Information exchange— use of English in the academic world— language of (8) or journal articles (8) ______E. Popular culture— pop music on (9) (9) ______— films from the USAⅢ. Questions to think aboutA. Status of English in the futureB. (10) of distinct varieties of English (10) ______SECTION B CONVERSATIONIn this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each question on your coloured answer sheet.Questions 1 to 5 are bused on a conversation. At the end of the conversation you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions. Now listen to the conversation.1. Mary doesn't seem to favour the idea of a new airport because[A] the existing airports are to be wasted. [B] more people will be encouraged to travel.[C] more oil will be consumed. [D] more airplanes will be purchased.2. Which of the following is NOT mentioned by Mary as a potential disadvantage?[A] More people in the area. [B] Noise and motorways.[C] Waste of land. [D] Unnecessary travel.3. Freddy has cited the following advantages for a new airport EXCEPT[A] more job opportunities. [B] vitality to the local economy.[C] road construction. [D] presence of aircrew in the area.4. Mary thinks that people don't need to do much travel nowadays as a result of[A] less emphasis on personal contact. [B] advances in modern telecommunications.[C] recent changes in people's concepts. [D] more potential damage to the area.5. We learn from the conversation that Freddy is ______ Mary's ideas.[A] strongly in favour of [B] mildly in favour of[C] strongly against [D] mildly againstSECTION C NEWS BROADCASTIn this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each question on your coloured answer sheet.Question 6 is bused on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the question. Now listen to the news.6. What is the main idea of the news item?[A] A new government was formed after Sunday's elections.[B] The new government intends to change the welfare system.[C] The Social Democratic Party founded the welfare system.[D] The Social Democratic Party was responsible for high unemployment.Questions 7 and 8 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the two questions. Now listen to the news.7. The tapes of the Apollo 11 mission were first stored in[A] a U. S. government archives warehouse.[B] a NASA ground tracking station.[C] the Goddard Space Flight Centre.[D] none of the above places.8. What does the news item say about Richard Nafzger?[A] He is assigned the task to look for the tapes.[B] He believes that the tapes are probably lost.[C] He works in a NASA ground receiving site.[D] He had asked for the tapes in the 1970s.Questions 9 and 10 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the two questions. Now listen to the news.9. The example in the news item is cited mainly to show[A] that doctors are sometimes professionally incompetent.[B] that in cases like that hospitals have to pay huge compensations.[C] that language barriers might lower the quality of treatment.[D] that language barriers can result in fatal consequences.10. According to Dr. Flores, hospitals and clinics[A] have seen the need for hiring trained interpreters.[B] have realized the problems of language barriers.[C] have begun training their staff to be bilinguals.[D] have taken steps to provide accurate diagnosis.PART ⅡREADING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your coloured answer sheet.TEXT AAt the age of 16, Lee Hyuk Joon's life is a living hell. The South Korean 10th grader gets up at 6 in the morning to go to school, and studies most of the day until returning home at 6 p. m. After dinner, it's time to hit the books again—at one of Seoul's many so-called cram schools. Lee gets back home at 1 in the morning, sleeps less than five hours, then repeats the routine—five days a week. It's a grueling schedule, but Lee worries that it may not be good enough to get him into a top university. Some of his classmates study even harder.South Korea's education system has long been highly competitive. But for Lee and the other 700,000 high-school sophomores in the country, high-school studies have gotten even more intense. That's because South Korea has conceived a new college-entrance system, which will be implemented in 2008. This year's 10th graders will be the first group evaluated by the new admissions standard, which places more emphasis on grades in the three years of high school and less on nationwide SA T-style and other selection tests, which have traditionally determined which students go to the elite colleges.The change was made mostly to reduce what the government says is a growing education gap in the country: wealthy students go to the best colleges and get the best jobs, keeping the children of poorer families on the social margins. The aim is to reduce the importance of costly tutors and cram schools, partly to help students enjoy a more normal high-school life. But the new system has had the opposite effect. Before, students didn't worry too much about their grade-point averages; the big challenge was beating the standardized tests as high-school seniors. Now students are competing against one another over a three-year period, and every midterm and final test is crucial. Fretful parents are relying even more heavily on tutors and cram schools to help their children succeed.Parents and kids have sent thousands of angry online letters to the Education Ministry complaining that the new admissions standard is setting students against each other. "One can succeed only when others fail," as one parent said.Education experts say that South Korea's public secondary-school system is foundering, while private education is thriving. According to critics, the country's high schools are almost uniformly mediocre—the result of an egalitarian government education policy. With the number of elite schools strictly controlled by the government, even the brightest students typically have to settle for ordinary schools in their neighbourhoods, where the curriculum is centred on average students. To make up for the mediocrity, zealous parents send their kids to the expensive cram schools.Students in affluent southern Seoul neighbourhoods complain that the new system will hurt them the most. Nearly all Korean high schools will be weighted equally in the college-entrance process, and relatively weak students in provincial schools, who may not score well on standardized tests, often compile good grade-point averages.Some universities, particularly prestigious ones, openly complain that they cannot select the best students under the new system because it eliminates differences among high schools. They've asked for more discretion in picking students by giving more weight to such screening tools as essay writing or interviews.President Roh Moo Hyun doesn't like how some colleges are trying to circumvent the new system. He recently criticized "greedy" universities that focus more on finding the best students than trying to "nurture good students". But amid the crossfire between the government and universities, the country's 10th graders are feeling the stress. On online protest sites, some are calling themselves a "cursed generation" and "mice in a lab experiment". It all seems a touch melodramatic, but that's the South Korean school system.11. According to the passage, the new college-entrance system is designed to[A] require students to sit for more college-entrance tests.[B] reduce the weight of college-entrance tests.[C] select students on their high school grades only.[D] reduce the number of prospective college applicants.12. What seems to be the effect of introducing the new system?[A] The system has given equal opportunities to students.[B] The system has reduced the number of cram schools.[C] The system has intensified competition among schools.[D] The system has increased students' study load.13. According to critics, the popularity of private education is mainly the result of[A] the government's egalitarian policy. [B] insufficient number of schools.[C] curriculums of average quality. [D] low cost of private education.14. According to the passage, there seems to be disagreement over the adoption of the new system between the following groups EXCEPT[A] between universities and the government.[B] between school experts and the government.[C] between parents and schools.[D] between parents and the government.15. Which of the following adjectives best describes the author's treatment of the topic?[A] Objective. [B] Positive. [C] Negative. [D] Biased.TEXT BWilfred Emmanuel-Jones was a teenager before he saw his first cow in his first field. Born in Jamaica, the 47-year-old grew up in inner-city Birmingham before making a career as a television producer and launching his own marketing agency. But deep down he always nurtured every true Englishman's dream of a rustic life, a dream that his entrepreneurial wealth has allowed him to satisfy. These days he's the owner of a thriving 12-hectare farm in deepest Devon with cattle, sheep and pigs. His latest business venture: pushing his brand of Black Farmer gourmet sausages and barbecue sauces. "My background may be very urban," says Emmanuel-Jones. "But it has given me a good idea of what other urbanites want."And of how to sell it. Emmanuel-Jones joins a herd of wealthy fugitives from city life who are bringing a new commercial know-how to British farming. Britain's burgeoning farmers' markets—numbers have doubled to at least 500 in the last five years—swarm with specialty cheesemakers, beekeepers or organic smallholders who are redeploying the business skills they learned in the city. "Everyone in the rural community has to come to terms with the fact that things have changed." Says Emmanuel-Jones. "Y ou can produce the best food in the world, but if you don't know how to market it, you are wasting your time. We are helping the traditionalists to move on."The emergence of the new class of superpeasants reflects some old yearnings. If the British were the first nation to industrialize, they were also the first to head back to the land. "There is this romantic image of the countryside that is particularly English," says Alun Howkins of the University of Sussex, who reckons the population of rural England has been rising since 1911. Migration into rural areas is now running at about 100,000 a year, and the hunger for a taste of the rural life has kept land prices buoyant even as agricultural incomes tumble. About 40 percent of all farmland is now sold to "lifestyle buyers" rather than the dwindling number of traditional farmers, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.What's new about the latest returnees is their affluence and zeal for the business of producing quality foods, if only at a micro-level. A healthy economy and surging London house prices have helped to ease the escape of the would-be rustics. The media recognize and feed the fantasy. One of the big TV hits of recent years, the "River Cottage" series, chronicled the attempts of a London chef to run his own Dorset farm.Naturally, the newcomers can't hope to match their City salaries, but many are happy to trade any loss of income for the extra job satisfaction. Who cares if there's no six-figure annual bonus when the land offers other incalculable compensations?Besides, the specialist producers can at least depend on a burgeoning market for their products. Today's eco-aware generation loves to seek out authentic ingredients. "People like me may be making a difference in a small way," Jan McCourt, a onetime investment banker now running his own 40-hectare spread in the English Midlands stocked with rare breeds.Optimists see signs of far-reaching change: Britain isn't catching up with mainland Europe; it's leading the way. "Unlike most other countries, where artisanal food production is being eroded, here it is being recovered," says food writer Matthew Fort. "It may be the mark of the next stage of civilization that we rediscover the desirability of being a peasant." And not an investment banker.16. Which of the following details of Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones is INCORRECT?[A] He was born and brought up in Birmingham.[B] He used to work in the television industry.[C] He is wealthy, adventurous and aspiring.[D] He is now selling his own quality foods.17. Most importantly, people like Wilfred have brought to traditional British farming[A] knowledge of farming. [B] knowledge of brand names.[C] knowledge of lifestyle. [D] knowledge of marketing.18. Which of the following does NOT contribute to the emergence of a new class of farmers?[A] Strong desire for country life. [B] Longing for greater wealth.[C] Influence of TV productions. [D] Enthusiasm for quality food business.19. What is seen as their additional source of new income?[A] Modern tendency to buy natural foods. [B] Increase in the value of land property.[C] Raising and selling rare live stock. [D] Publicity as a result of media coverage.20. The sentence in the last paragraph "... Britain isn't catching up with mainland Europe; it's leading the way" implies that[A] Britain has taken a different path to boost economy.[B] more authentic foods are being produced in Britain.[C] the British are heading back to the countryside.[D] the Europeans are showing great interest in country life.TEXT CIn Barcelona the Catalonians call them castells, but these aren't stereotypical castles in Spain. These castles are made up of human beings, not stone. The people who perform this agile feat of acrobatics are called castellers, and to see their towers take shape is to observe a marvel of human cooperation.First the castellers form what looks like a gigantic rugby scrummage. They are the foundation blocks of the castle. Behind them, other people press together, forming outward-radiating ramparts of inward-pushing muscle: flying buttresses for the castle. Then sturdy but lighter castetlers scramble over the backs of those at the bottom and stand, barefoot, on their shoulders—then still others, each time adding a higher "story".These human towers can rise higher than small apartment buildings: nine "stories", 35 feet into the air. Then, just when it seems this tower of humanity can't defy gravity any longer, a little kid emerges from the crowd and climbs straight up to the top. Arms extended, the child grins while waving to the cheering crowd far below.Dressed in their traditional costumes, the castellers seem to epitomize an easier time, before Barcelona became a world metropolis and the Mediterranean's most dynamic city. But when you observe them up close, in their street clothes, at practice, you see there's nothing easy about what the castellers do—and that they are not merely reenacting an ancient ritual.None of the castellers can give a logical answer as to why they love doing this. But Victor Luna, 16, touches me on the shoulder and says in English: "We do it because it's beautiful. We do it because we are Catalan."Barcelona's mother tongue is Catalan, and to understand Barcelona, you must understand two words of Catalan: seny and rauxa. Seny pretty much translates as common sense, or the ability to make money, arrange things, and get things done. Rauxa is reminiscent of our words "raucous" and "ruckus".What makes the castellers revealing of the city is that they embody rauxa and seny. The idea of a human castle is rauxa—it defies common sense—but to watch one going up is to see seny in action. Success is based on everyone working together to achieve a shared goal.The success of Carlos Tusquets bank, Fibanc, shows seny at work in everyday life. The bank started as a family concern and now employs hundreds. Tusquets said it exemplifies how the economy in Barcelona is different.Entrepreneurial seny demonstrates why Barcelona and Catalonia—the ancient region of which Barcelona is the capital—are distinct from the rest of Spain yet essential to Spain's emergence, after centuries of repression, as a prosperous, democratic European country. Catalonia, with Barcelona as its dynamo, has turned into an economic powerhouse. Making up 6 percent of Spain's territory, with a sixth of its people, it accounts for nearly a quarter of Spain's production—everything from textiles to computers—even though the rest of Spain has been enjoying its own economic miracle.Hand in hand with seny goes rauxa, and there's no better place to see rauxa in action than on the Ramblas, the venerable, tree-shaded boulevard that, in gentle stages, leads you from the centre of Barcelona down to the port. There are two narrow lanes each way for cars and motorbikes, but it's the wide centre walkway that makes the Ramblas a front-row seat for Barcelona's longest running theatrical event. Plastic armchairs are set out on the sidewalk. Sit in one of them, and an attendant will come and charge you a small fee. Performance artists throng the Ramblas—stilt walkers, witches caked in charcoal dust, Elvis impersonators. But the real stars are the old women and happily playing children, millionaires on motorbikes, and pimps and women who, upon closer inspection, prove not to be.Aficionados (Fans) of Barcelona love to compare notes: "Last night there was a man standing on the balcony of his hotel room," Mariana Bertagnolli, an Italian photographer, told me, "The balcony was on the second floor. He was naked, and he was talking into a cell phone."There you have it, Barcelona's essence. The man is naked (rauxa), but he is talking into a cell phone (seny).21. From the description in the passage, we learn that[A] all Catalonians can perform castells.[B] castells require performers to stand on each other.[C] people perform castells in different formations,[D] in castells people have to push and pull each other.22. According to the passage, the implication of the performance is that[A] the Catalonians are insensible and noisy people.[B] the Catalonians Show more sense than is expected.[C] the Catalonians display paradoxical characteristics.[D] the Catalonians think highly of team work.23. The passage cites the following examples EXCEPT ______ to show seny at work.[A] development of a bank [B] dynamic role in economy[C] contribution to national economy [D] comparison with other regions24. In the last but two paragraph, the Ramblas is described as "a front-row seat for Barcelona's longest running theatrical event". What does it mean?[A] On the Ramblas people can see a greater variety of performances.[B] The Ramblas provides many front seats for the performances.[C] The Ramblas is preferred as an important venue for the events.[D] Theatrical performers like to perform on the Ramblas.25. What is the main impression of the scenes on the Ramblas?[A] It is bizarre and outlandish. [B] It is of average quality.[C] It is conventional and quiet. [D] It is of professional standard.TEXT DThe law firm Patrick worked for before he died filed for bankruptcy protection a year after his funeral. After his death, the firm's letterhead properly included him: Patrick S. Lanigan, 1954-1992. He was listed up in the right-hand corner, just above the paralegals. Then the rumors got started and wouldn't stop. Before long, everyone believed he had taken the money and disappeared. After three months, no one on the Gulf Coast believed that he was dead. His name came off the letterhead as the debts piled up.The remaining partners in the law firm were still together, attached unwillingly at the hip by the bondage of mortgages and the bank notes, back when they were rolling and on the verge of serious wealth. They had been joint defendants in several unwinnable lawsuits; thus the bankruptcy. Since Patrick's departure, they had tried every possible way to divorce one another, but nothing would work. Two were raging alcoholics who drank at the office behind locked doors, but never together. The other two were in recovery, still teetering on the brink of sobriety.He took their money. Their millions. Money they had already spent long before it arrived, as only lawyers can do. Money for their richly renovated office building in downtown Biloxi. Money for new homes, yachts, condos in the Caribbean. The money was on the way, approved, the papers signed, orders entered; they could see it, almost touch it when their dead partner—Patrick—snatched it at the last possible second.He was dead. They buried him on February 11,1992. They had consoled the widow and put his rotten name on their handsome letterhead. Y et six weeks later, he somehow stole their money.They had brawled over who was to blame. Charles Bogan, the firm's senior partner and its iron hand, had insisted the money be wired from its source into a new account offshore, and this made sense after some discussion. It was ninety million bucks, a third of which the firm would keep, and it would be impossible to hide that kind of money in Biloxi, population fifty thousand. Someone at the bank would talk. Soon everyone would know. All four vowed secrecy, even as they made plans to display as much of their new wealth as possible. There had even been talk of a firm jet, a six-seater.So Bogan took his share of the blame. At forty-nine, he was the oldest of the four, and, at the moment, the most stable. He was also responsible for hiring Patrick nine years earlier, and for this he had received no small amount of grief.Doug V itrano, the litigator, had made the fateful decision to recommend Patrick as the fifth partner. The other three had agreed, and when Patrick Lanigan was added to the firm name, he had access to virtually every file in the office. Bogan, Rapley, V itrano, Havarac, and Lanigan, Attorneys and Counselors-at-Law. A large ad in the yellow pages claimed "Specialists in Offshore Injuries." Specialists or not, like most firms they would take almost anything if the fees were lucrative, Lots of secretaries, and paralegals. Big overhead, and the strongest political connections on the Coast.They were all in their mid-to late forties, Havarac had been raised by his father on a shrimp boat. His hands were still proudly calloused, and he dreamed of choking Patrick until his neck snapped. Rapley was severely depressed and seldom left his home, where he wrote briefs in a dark office in the attic.26. What happened to the four remaining lawyers after Patrick's disappearance?[A] They all wanted to divorce their wives. [B] They were all heavily involved in debts.[C] They were all recovering from drinking. [D] They had bought new homes, yachts, etc,27. Which of the following statements contains a metaphor?[A] His name came off the letterhead as the debts piled up.[B] ... they could see it, almost touch it when their dead partner...[C] ... attached unwillingly at the hip by the bondage of mortgages...[D] ... and for this he had received no small amount of grief.28. According to the passage, what is the main cause of Patrick stealing the money?[A] Patrick was made a partner of the firm.[B] The partners agreed to have the money transferred.[C] Patrick had access to all the files in the firm.[D] Bogan decided to hire Patrick nine years earlier.29. The lawyers were described as being all the following EXCEPT[A] greedy. [B] extravagant. [C] quarrelsome. [D] bad-tempered.30. Which of the following implies a contrast?[A] ..., and it would be impossible to hide that kind of money in Biloxi, population fifty thousand.[B] They had been joint defendants in several unwinnable lawsuits; thus the bankruptcy.[C] There had even been talk of a firm jet, a six-seater.[D] His name came off the letterhead as the debts piled up.PART ⅢGENERAL KNOWLEDGE (10 MIN)There are ten multiple-choice questions in this section. Choose the best answer to each question. Mark your answers on your coloured answer sheet.31. The largest city in Canada is[A] V ancouver. [B] Montreal. [C] Toronto. [D] Ottawa.32. According to the United States Constitution, the legislative power is invested in[A] the Federal Government. [B] the Supreme Court,[C] the Cabinet. [D] the Congress.33. Which of the following is the oldest sport in the United States?[A] Baseball. [B] Tennis. [C] Basketball. [D] American football,34. The head of the executive branch in New Zealand is[A] the President. [B] the Governor-General.[C] the British monarch. [D] the Prime Minister.35. The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories told by a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, is an important poetic work by[A] William Langland. [B] Geoffrey Chaucer.[C] William Shakespeare. [D] Alfred Tennyson.36. Who wrote The American?[A] Herman Melville. [B] Nathaniel Hawthorne.[C] Henry James. [D] Theodore Dreiser.37. All of the following are well-known female writers in 20th-century Britain EXCEPT[A] George Eliot. [B] Iris Jean Murdoch.[C] Doris Lessing. [D] Muriel Spark.38. Which of the following is NOT a design feature of human language?[A] Arbitrariness. [B] Displacement.[C] Duality. [D] Diachronicity.39. What type of sentence is "Mark likes fiction, but Tim is interested in poetry."?[A] A simple sentence. [B] A coordinate sentence.[C] A complex sentence. [D] None of the above.40. The phenomenon that words having different meanings have the same form is called[A] hyponymy. [B] synonymy.。

2008英语专业八级阅读真题及答案

2008英语专业八级真题及答案PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your coloured answer sheetTEXT AAt the age of 16, Lee Hyuk Joon's life is a living hell. The South Korean 10th grader gets up at 6 in the morning to go to school, and studies most of the day until returning home at 6 p.m. After dinner, it's time to hit the books again—at one of Seoul's many so-called cram schools. Lee gets back home at 1 in the morning, sleeps less than five hours, then repeats the routine—five days a week. It's a grueling schedule, but Lee worries that it may not be good enough to get him into a top university. Some of his classmates study even harder.South Korea's education system has long been highly competitive. But for Lee and the other 700,000 high-school sophomores in the country, high-school studies have gotten even more intense. That's because South Korea has conceived a new college-entrance system, which will be implemented in 2008. This year's 10th graders will be the first group evaluated by the new admissions standard, which places more emphasis on grades in the three years of high school and less on nationwide SAT-style and other selection tests, which have traditionally determined which students go to the elite colleges.The change was made mostly to reduce what the government says is a growing education gap in the country: wealthy students go to the best colleges and get the best jobs, keeping the children of poorer families on the social margins. The aim is to reduce the importance of costly tutors and cram schools, partly to help students enjoy a more normal high-school life. But the new system has had the opposite effect. Before, students didn't worry too much about their grade-point averages; the big challenge was beating the standardized tests as high-school seniors. Now students are competing against one another over a three-year period, and every midterm and final test is crucial. Fretful parents are relying even more heavily on tutors and cram schools to help their children succeed.Parents and kids have sent thousands of angry online letters to the Education Ministry complaining that the new admissions standard is setting students against each other. "One can succeed only when others fail,” as one parent said.Education experts say that South Korea's public secondary-school system is foundering, while private education is thriving. According to critics, the country's high schools are almost uniformly mediocre—the result of an egalitarian government education policy. With the number of elite schools strictly controlled by the government, even the brightest students typically have to settle for ordinary schools in their neighbourhoods, where the curriculum is centred on average students. To make up for the mediocrity, zealous parents send their kids to the expensive cram schools.Students in affluent southern Seoul neighbourhoods complain that the new system will hurt them the most. Nearly all Korean high schools will be weighted equally in the college-entrance process, and relatively weak students in provincial schools, who may not score well on standardized tests, often compile good grade-point averages. Some universities, particularly prestigious ones, openly complain that they cannot select the best students under the new system because it eliminates differences among high schools. They've asked for more discretion in picking students by giving more weight to such screening tools as essay writing or interviews.President Roh Moo Hyun doesn't like how some colleges are trying to circumvent the new system. He recently criticized "greedy" universities that focus more on finding the best students than faying to "nurture good students". But amid the crossfire between the government and universities, the country's 10th graders are feeling the stress. On online protest sites, some are calling themselves a “cursed generation” and “mice in a lab experiment”. It all seems a touch me lodramatic, but that's the South Korean school system.11. According to the passage, the new college-entrance system is designed toA. require students to sit for more college-entrance tests.B. reduce the weight of college-entrance tests.C. select students on their high school grades only.D. reduce the number of prospective college applicants.12. What seems to be the effect of introducing the new system?A. The system has given equal opportunities to students.B. The system has reduced the number of cram schools.C. The system has intensified competition among schools.D. The system has increased students' study load.13. According to critics, the popularity of private education is mainly the result ofA. the government's egalitarian policy.B. insufficient number of schools:C. curriculums of average quality.D. low cost of private education.14. According to the passage, there seems to be disagreement over the adoption of the new system between the following groups EXCEPTA. between universities and the government.B. between school experts and the government.C. between parents and schools.D. between parents and the government.15. Which of the following adjectives best describes the author's treatment of the topic?A. Objective.B. Positive.C. Negative.D. Biased.TEXT BWilfred Emmanuel-Jones was a teenager before he saw his first cow in his first field. Born in Jamaica, the 47-year-old grew up in inner-city Birmingham before making a career as a television producer and launching his own marketing agency. But deep down he always nurtured every true Englishman's dream of a rustic life, a dream that his entrepreneurial wealth has allowed him to satisfy. These days he's the owner of a thriving 12-hectare farm in deepest Devon with cattle, sheep and pigs. His latest business venture: pushing his brand of Black Fanner gourmet sausages and barbecue sauces. “My background may be very urban,” says Emmanuel-Jones. “But it has given me a good idea of what other urbanites want.”And of how to sell it. Emmanuel-Jones joins a herd of wealthy fugitives from city life who are bringing a new commercial know-how to British farming. Britain's burgeoning farmers' markets -numbers have doubled to at least 500 in the last five years—swarm with specialty cheesemakers, beekeepers or organic smallholders who are redeploying the business skills they learned in the city. "Everyone in the rural community has to come to terms with the fact that things have changed." Says Emmanuel-Jones. "You can produce the best food in the world, but if you don't know how to market it, you are wasting your time. We are helping the traditionalists to move on."The emergence of the new class of superpeasants reflects some old yearnings. If the British were the first nation to industrialize, they were also the first to head back to the land. "There is this romantic image of the countryside that is particularly English," says Alun Howkins of the University of Sussex, who reckons the population of rural England has been rising since 1911. Migration into rural areas is now running at about 100,000 a year, and the hunger for a taste of the rural life has kept land prices buoyant even as agricultural incomes tumble. About 40 percent of all farmland is now sold to "lifestyle buyers" rather than the dwindling number of traditional farmers, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.What's new about the latest returnees is their affluence and zeal for the business of producing quality foods, if only at a micro-level. A healthy economy and surging London house prices have helped to ease the escape of the would-be rustics. The media recognize and feed the fantasy. One of the big TV hits of recent years, the "River Cottage" series, chronicled the attempts of a London chef to run his own Dorset farm.Naturally, the newcomers can't hope to match their City salaries, but many are happy to trade any loss of income for the extra job satisfaction. Who cares if there's no six-figure annual bonus when the land offers other incalculable compensations?Besides, the specialist producers can at least depend on a burgeoning market for their products. Today's eco-aware generation loves to seek out authentic ingredients. "People like me may be making a difference in a small way," Jan McCourt, a onetime investment banker now running his own 40-hectare spread in the English Midlands stocked with rare breeds.Optimists see signs of far-reaching change: Britain isn't catching up with mainland Europe; it's leading the way. “Unlike most other countries, where art isanal food production is being eroded, here it is being recovered," says food writer Matthew Fort. “It may be the mark of the next stage of civilization that we rediscover the desirability of being a peasant.” And not an investment banker.16. Which of the following details of Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones is INCORRECT?A. He was born and brought up in Birmingham.B. He used to work in the television industry.C. He is wealthy, adventurous and aspiring.D. He is now selling his own quality foods.17. Most importantly, people like Wilfred have brought to traditional British farmingA. knowledge of farming.B. knowledge of brand names.C. knowledge of lifestyle.D. knowledge of marketing,18. Which of the following does NOT contribute to the emergence of a new class of farmers?A. Strong desire for country life.B. Longing for greater wealth,C. Influence of TV productions.D. Enthusiasm for quality food business.19. What is seen as their additional source of new income?A. Modern tendency to buy natural foods.B. Increase in the value of land property.C. Raising and selling rare live stock. VD. Publicity as a result of media coverage.20. The sentence in the last paragraph “...Britain isn't catching up with mainland Europe; it's leading the way" implies thatA. Britain has taken a different path to boost economy.B. more authentic foods are being produced in Britain.C. the British are heading back to the countryside.D. the Europeans are showing great interest in country life.TEXT CIn Barcelona the Catalonians call them castells, but these aren't stereotypical castles in Spain. These castles are made up of human beings, not stone. The people who perform this agile feat of acrobatics are called castellers, and to see their towers take shape is to observe a marvel of human cooperation.First the castellers form what looks like a gigantic rugby scrummage. They are the foundation blocks of the castle. Behind them, other people press together, forming outward-radiating ramparts of inward-pushing muscle: flying buttresses for the castle. Then sturdy but lighter castellers scramble over the backs of those at the bottom and stand, barefoot, on their shoulders—then still others, each time adding a higher "story".These human towers can rise higher than small apar tment buildings: nine “stories”, 35 feet into the air. Then, just When it seems this tower of humanity can't defy gravity any longer, a little kid emerges from the crowd and climbs straight up to the top. Arms extended, the child grins while waving to the cheering crowd far below. Dressed in their traditional costumes, the castellers seem to epitomize an easier time, before Barcelona became a world metropolis arid the Mediterranean's most dynamic city. But when you observe-them tip close, in their street clothes, at practice, you see there's nothing easy about what the castellers do - and that they are not merely reenacting an ancient ritual.None of the castellers can-give a logical answer as to why they love doing this. But Victor Luna, 16, touches me on the shoulder and says in English: "We do it because it's beautiful. We do it because we are Catalan."Barcelona’s mother tongue is Catalan, and to understand Barcelona, you must understand two words of Catalan: seny and rauxa. Seny pretty much translates as common sense, or the ability to make money, arrange things, and get things done. Rauxa is reminiscent of our words “raucous” and “ruckus”.What makes the castellers revealing of the city is that they embody rauxa and seny. The idea of a human castle is rauxa—it defies common sense—but to watch one going up is to see seny in action. Success is based on everyone working together to achieve a shared goal.The success of Carlos Tusquets' bank, Fibanc, shows seny at work in everyday life. The bank started as a family concern and now employs hundreds. Tusquets said it exemplifies how the economy in Barcelona is different.Entrepreneurial seny demonstrates why Barcelona and Catalonia—the ancient region of which Barcelona is the capital—are distinct from the rest of Spain yet essential to Spain's emergence, after centuries of repression, as a prosperous, democratic European country. Catalonia, with Barcelona as its dynamo, has turned into an economic powerhouse. Making up 6 percent of Spain’s territory, with a sixth of its people, it accounts for nearly a quarter of Spain's production—everything fromtextiles to computers—even though the rest of Spain has been enjoying its own economic miracle.Hand in hand with seny goes rauxa, and there's no better place to see rauxa in action than on the Ramblas, the venerable, tree-shaded boulevard that, in gentle stages, leads you from the centre of Barcelona down to the port. There are two narrow lanes each way for cars and motorbikes, but it’s the wide centre walkway that makes the Ramblas a front-row seat for Barcelona's longest running theatrical event. Plastic armchairs are set out on the sidewalk. Sit in one of them, and an attendant will come and charge you a small fee. Performance artists throng the Ramblas—stilt walkers, witches caked in charcoal dust, Elvis impersonators. But the real stars are the old women and happily playing children, millionaires on motorbikes, and pimps and women who, upon closer inspection, prove not to be.Aficionados (Fans) of Barcelona love to co mpare notes: “Last night there was a man standing on the balcony of his hotel room,” Mariana Bertagnolli, an Italian photographer, told me. "The balcony was on the second floor. He was naked, and he was talking into a cell phone."There you have it, Barcelona's essence. The man is naked (rauxa), but he is talking into a cell phone (seny).21. From the description in the passage, we learn thatA. all Catalonians can perform castells.B. castells require performers to stand on each other.C. people perform castells in different formations.D. in castells people have to push and pull each other.22. According to the passage, the4mplication of the performance is thatA. the Catalonians are insensible and noisy people.B. the Catalonians show more sense than is expected.C. the Catalonians display paradoxical characteristics.D. the Catalonians think highly of team work.23. The passage cites the following examples EXCEPT __________ to show seny at work.A. development of a bankB. dynamic role in economyC. contribution to national economyD. comparison with other regions24. In the last but two paragraph, the Ramblas is described as “a front-row seat for Barcelona’s longest running theatrical event”. What does it mean?A. On the Ramblas people can see a greater variety of performances.B. The Ramblas provides many front seats for the performances.C. The Ramblas is preferred as an important venue for the events.D. Theatrical performers like to perform on the Ramblas.25. What is the main impression of the scenes on the Ramblas?A. It is bizarre and Outlandish.B. It is of average quality.C. It is conventional and quiet.D. It is of professional standard.TEXT DThe law firm Patrick worked for before he died filed for bankruptcy protection a year after his funeral. After his death, the firm's letterhead properly included him: Patrick S. Lanigan, 1954-1992. He was listed up in the right-hand corner, just above the paralegals. Then the rumors got started and wouldn't stop. Before long, everyone believed he had taken the money and disappeared. After three months, no one on the Gulf Coast believed that he was dead. His name came off the letterhead as the debts piled up.The remaining partners in the law firm were still together, attached unwillingly at the hip by the bondage of mortgages and the bank notes, back when they were rolling and on the verge of serious wealth. They had been joint defendants in several unwinnable lawsuits; thus the bankruptcy. Since Patrick's departure, they had tried every possible way to divorce one another, but nothing would work. Two were raging alcoholics who drank at the office behind locked doors, but nevertogether. The other two were in recovery, still teetering on the brink of sobriety.He took their money. Their millions. Money they had already spent long before it arrived, as only lawyers can do. Money for their richly renovated office building in downtown Biloxi. Money for new homes, yachts, condos in the Caribbean. The money was on the way, approved, the papers signed, orders entered; they could see it, almost touch it when their dead partner—Patrick—snatched it at the last possible second.He was dead. They buried him on February 11, 1992. They had consoled the widow and put his rotten name on their handsome letterhead. Yet six weeks later, he somehow stole their money.They had brawled over who was to blame. Charles Bogan, the firm's senior partner and its iron hand, had insisted the money be wired from its source into a new account offshore, and this made sense after some discussion. It was ninety million bucks, a third of which the firm would keep, and it would be impossible to hide that kind of money in Biloxi, population fifty thousand. Someone at the bank would talk. Soon everyone would know. All four vowed secrecy, even as they made plans to display as much of their new wealth as possible. There had even been talk of a firm jet, a six-seater.So Bogan took his share of the blame. At forty-nine, he was the oldest of the four, and, at the moment, the most stable. He was also responsible for hiring Patrick nine years earlier, and for this he had received no small amount of grief.Doug Vitrano, the litigator, had made the fateful decision to recommend Patrick as the fifth partner. The other three had agreed, and when Patrick Lanigan was added to the firm name, he had access to virtually every file in the office. Bogan, Rapley, Vitrano, Havarac, and Lanigan, Attorneys and Counselors-at-Law. A large ad in the yellow pages claimed "Specialists in Offshore Injuries." Specialists or not, like most firms they would take almost anything if the fees were lucrative. Lots of secretaries and paralegals. Big overhead, and the strongest political connections on the Coast.They were all in their mid- to late forties. Havarac had been raised by his father on a shrimp boat. His hands were still proudly calloused, and he dreamed of choking Patrick until his neck snapped. Rapley was severely depressed and seldom left his home, where he wrote briefs in a dark office in the attic.26. What happened to the four remaining lawyers after Patrick's disappearance?A. They all wanted to divorce their wives.B. They were all heavily involved in debts.C. They were all recovering from drinking.D. They had bought new homes, yachts, etc.27. Which of the following statements contains a metaphor?A. His name came off the letterhead as the debts piled up.B. …they could see it, almost touch it when their dead partner...C. …, attached unwillingly at the hip by the bondage of mortgages...D. …, and for this he had received no small amount of grief.28. According to the passage, what is the main cause of Patrick stealing the money?A. Patrick was made a partner of the firm.B. The partners agreed to have the money transferred.C. Patrick had access to all the files in the firm.D. Bogan decided to hire Patrick nine years earlier.29. The lawyers were described as being all the following EXCEPTA. greedy.B. extravagantC. quarrelsome.D. bad-tempered.30. Which of the following implies a contrast?A. …, and it would be impossible to hide that kind of money in Biloxi, population fifty thousand.B. They had been joint defendants in several unwinnable lawsuits; thus the bankruptcy.C. There had even been talk of a firm jet, a six-seater.D. His name came off the letterhead as the debts piled up.2008年英语专业八级Mini-lecture：(沪友今心提供)1. native language2. 3503. Historical4. India5. commerce6. Boom7. sea travel communication8. conference9. many radios 10. split阅读：(沪友落落提供)阅读一共四篇：韩国的新教育制度引起多方不满；第二篇是讲西班牙人的一些性格；第三篇是英国人热衷自己饲养出售畜牧产品；最后一篇是一个小说节选，四个律师被死去的合伙人骗得破产。

2008下学期专业英语阅读答案

Part one:1）This is too large a signal for the transistor to handle.2）Used properly, this book is of great help to readers.3) They are not clear how it is that the formula can be used.4) The definition of an electric current as a flow of charge(s) is familiar to us all.5) This book discusses both practical design method and theoretical problems withemphasis on the basic concept.6) This done, electrons possess more energy, thus/thereby increasing the brightness ofthe light spot.7) What are called the three elements of a force play an important role in our study ofmechanics.8) This device has the advantages over those available of small size, light weight andsimple structure.9) A comparison between magnetic tapes and discs has been made.10) One of the most noteworthy achievements at that time was the realization thatlight consists of electromagnetic waves.11) All that one needs to solve the equation for the unknown is a computer.12) These equations are called differential equations, and their study forms one of themost challenging braches in mathematics.13) For a transistor to function normally, it is necessary to apply proper voltages to itselectrodes.14) It makes no difference which letter we use to represent the independent variable.15) The hotter the body (is), the more energy it will radiate, a fact that is of great importance in engineering.Part two:1．A detailed analysis of the ability of the components to carry loads is made.2. This material is very difficult to machine.3. After being processed, these data are sent to the database server immediately.4. This is the largest aircraft which has ever been manufactured in China.5. This professor plays an active role in research on and the application of theObject/Relation Mapping Framework.6. Tin does not have as high a melting point as lead does.7. The conductivity of copper is higher than that of iron.8. By observing the effect of a new drug on patients, we can see its curative effect.9. Only when these signal are sent to the same layer, can the process mentioned aboveoccur.10. This is due to the existence of a capacitance across the PN junction.(This is due to the fact that there exists a capacitance across the PN junction.)11. Sound travels less fast than light does.12. Direct current flows always in one direction.13. People will get used to this color as time goes on.(People will get used to this color with time going on.)14. Usually we can not see earth’s shadow, because there is nothing for it to fall on.15. Work equals force multiplied by distance.(Work is equal to force multiplied by distance.)Part three:Translation:1）地球物理学家Raymond说到，新兴卫星技术的应用能够推动地震科学，使其具有更好的预测力。

2008考研英语真题阅读A型四篇(背诵用)

Text 1While still catching-up to men in some spheres of modern life, women appear to be way ahead in at least one undesirable category. Women are particularly susceptible to developing depression and anxiety disorders in response to stress compared to men, according to Dr. Yehuda, chief psychiatrist at New York's Veteran's Administration Hospital.Studies of both animals and humans have shown that sex hormones somehow affects the stress response, causing females under stress to produce more of the trigger chemicals than do males under the same conditions. In several of the studies, when stressed-out female rats had their ovaries （the female reproductive organs）removed, their chemical responses became equal to those of the males.Adding to a woman's increased dose of stress chemicals, are her increased opportunities for stress. It's not necessarily that women don't cope as well. It's just that they have so much more to cope with, says Dr. Yehuda. Their capacity for tolerating stress may even be greater than men's, she observes, It's just that they're dealing with so many more things that they become worn out from it more visibly and sooner.Dr. Yehuda notes another difference between the sexes. I think that the kinds of things that women are exposed to tend to be in more of a chronic or repeated nature. Men go to war and are exposed to combat stress. Men are exposed to more acts of random physical violence. The kinds of interpersonal violence that women are exposed to tend to be in domestic situations, by, unfortunately, parents or other family numbers, and they tend not to be one-shot deals. The wear-and-tear that comes from these longer relationships can be quite devastating.Adeline Alvarez married at 18 and gave birth to a son, but wad determined to finish college. I struggled a lot to get the college degree. I was living in so much frustration that that was my escape, to go to school, and get ahead and do better. Later her marriage ended and she became a single mother. It's the hardest thing to take care of a teenager, have a job, pay the rent, pay the car payment, and pay the debt. I lived from paycheck to paycheck.Not everyone experiences the kinds of severe chronic stresses Alvarez describes. But most women today are coping with a lot of obligations, with few breaks, and feeling the strain. Alvarez's experience demonstrates the importance of finding ways to diffuse stress before it threatens your health and your ability to function.Text 2It used to be so straightforward. A team of researchers working together in the laboratory would submit the results of their research to a journal. A journal editor would then remove the authors names and affiliations from the paper and send it to their peers for review. Depending on the comments received, the editor would accept the paper for publication or decline it. Copyright rested with the journal publisher, and researchers seeking knowledge of the results would have to subscribe to the journal.No longer. The Internet and pressure from funding agencies, who are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from government-funded research by restricting access to it- is making access to scientific results a reality. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development （OECD）has just issued a report describing the far-reaching consequences of this. The report, by John Houghton of Victoria University in Australia and Graham Vickery of the OECD, makes heavy reading for publishers who have, so far, made handsome profits. But it goes further than that. It signals a change in what has, until now, been a key element of scientificendeavor.The value of knowledge and the return on the public investment in research depends, in part, upon wide distribution and ready access. It is big business. In America, the core scientific publishing market is estimated at between $7 billion and $11 billion. The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers says that there are more than 2,000 publishers worldwide specializing in these subjects. They publish more than 1.2 million articles each year in some 16,000 journals.This is now changing. According to the OECD report, some 75% of scholarly journals are now online. Entirely new business models are emerging; three main institutional subscribers pay for access to a collection of online journal titles through site-licensing agreements. There is open-access publishing, typically supported by asking the author （or his employer）to pay for the paper to be published. Finally, there are open-access archives, where organizations such as universities or international laboratories support institutional repositories. Other models exist that are hybrids of these three, such as delayed open-access, where journals allow only subscribers to read a paper for the first six months, before making it freely available to everyone who wishes to see it. All this could change the traditional form of the peer-review process, at least for the publication of papers.Text 3In the early 1960s Wilt Chamberlain was one of only three players in the National Basketball Association （NBA）listed at over seven feet. If he had played last season, however, he would have been one of 42. The bodies playing major professional sports have changed dramatically over the years, and managers have been more than willing to adjust team uniforms to fit the growing numbers of bigger, longer frames.The trend in sports, though, may be obscuring an unrecognized reality: Americans have generally stopped growing. Though typically about two inches taller now than 140 years ago, today's people- especially those born to families who have lived in the U.S. for many generations- apparently reached their limit in the early 1960s. And they aren’t likely t o get any taller. In the general population today, at this genetic, environmental level, we've pretty much gone as far as we can go, says anthropologist William Cameron Chumlea of Wright State University. In the case of NBA players, their increase in height appears to result from the increasingly common practice of recruiting players from all over the world.Growth, which rarely continues beyond the age of 20, demands calories and nutrients–notably, protein–to feed expanding tissues. At the start of the 20th century, under-nutrition and childhood infections got in the way. But as diet and health improved, children and adolescents have, on average, increased in height by about an inch and a half every 20 years, a pattern known as the secular trend in height. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, average height- 5′9〞for men, 5′4〞for women- hasn't really changed since 1960.Genetically speaking, there are advantages to avoiding substantial height. During childbirth, larger babies have more difficulty passing through the birth canal. Moreover, even though humans have been upright for millions of years, our feet and back continue to struggle with bipedal posture and cannot easily withstand repeated strain imposed by oversize limbs. There are some real constraints that are set by the genetic architecture of the individual organism, says anthropologist William Leonard of Northwestern University.Genetic maximums can change, but don't expect this to happen soon. Claire C. Gordon, senior anthropologist at the Army Research Center in Natick, Mass, ensures that 90 percent of the uniforms and workstations fit recruits without alteration. She says that, unlike those for basketball, the length of military uniforms has not changed for some time. And if you need to predict human height in the near future to design a piece of equipment, Gordon says that by and large, you could use today’s data and feel fairly confident.Text 4In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a dentist to transplant nine teeth into his jaw –having extracted them from the mouths of his slaves.That’s a far different image from the cherry-tree-chopping George most people remember from their history books. But recently, many historians have begun to focus on the roles slavery played in the lives of the founding generation. They have been spurred in part by DNA evidence made available in 1998, which almost certainly proved Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one child with his slave Sally Hemings. And only over the past 30 years have scholars examined history from the bottom up. Works of several historians reveal the moral compromises made by the nation’s early leaders and the fragile nature of the country’s infancy. More significantly, they argue that many of the Founding Fathers knew slavery was wrong – and yet most did little to fight it.More than anything, the historians say, the founders were hampered by the culture of their time. While Washington and Jefferson privately expressed distaste for slavery, they also understood that it was part of the political and economic bedrock of the country they helped to create.For one thing, the South could not afford to part with its slaves. Ownin g slaves was “like having a large bank account,” says Wiencek, author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. The southern states would not have signed the Constitution without protections for the “peculiar institution,” including a clause that counted a slave as three fifths of a man for purposes of congressional representation.And the statesmen’s political lives depended on slavery. The three-fifths formula handed Jefferson his narrow victory in the presidential election of 1800 by inflating the votes of the southern states in the Electoral College. Once in office, Jefferson extended slavery with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803; the new land was carved into 13 states, including three slave states.Still, Jefferson freed Hemings’s children – though not Hemings herself or his approximately 150 other slaves. Washington, who had begun to believe that all men were created equal after observing the bravery of the black soldiers during the Revolutionary War, overcame the strong opposition of his relatives to grant his slaves their freedom in his will. Only a decade earlier, such an act would have required legislative approval in Virginia.。

英语专业2007-08学年第二学期普通语言学试卷和答案

英语专业2007-2008学年第二学期普通语言学考试试卷1. Choose ALL the correct ones from A, B, C, or D. There may be as many as three correct choices. (30 points, 2 points each)1) “It is wrong to split an infinitive.” This is an example of _____ rules.A. prescriptiveB. descriptiveC. transformationalD. functional2) The distinction between competence and performance was put forward by _____.A. Leonard BloomfieldB. Ferdinand de SaussureC. Noam ChomskyD. M. A. K. Halliday3) Which of the following is the correct description of [t]?A. Voiceless alveolar stop.B. Voiceless alveolar fricative.C. Voiced alveolar stop.D. Voiced alveolar fricative.4) Which of the following is a voiced labiodental fricative?A. [s]B. [z]C. [v]D. [f]5) Which of the following are “derivational suffixes”?A. -sB. -ionC. -ingD. -ify6) Which of the following are “content words”?A. Nouns.B. Verbs.C. Determiners.D. Prepositions.7) Which of the following is the correct bracketing of the phrase structure in the sentence “The boy is crying”?A. [[The] [boy] [is] [crying]]B. [[The] [boy]] [[is] [crying]]C. [[The boy] is [crying]]D. [[The] [boy] [is]] [crying]8) Which of the following sentences contain a participial phrase?A. The best thing would be to leave early.B. Having finished their work, they came to our aid.C. It’s great for a man to be free.D. To my surprise, she started looking for jobs.9) Which of the following terms are related to Cognitive Linguistics?A. Word recognition.B. Language acquisition.C. Construal operations.D. Categorization.10) Which of the following are NOT true of the “women register”?A. Women use more “fancy” color terms.B. Women use stronger swearing words.C. Women use more intensifiers.D. Women use more direct expressions.11) Which of the following forms of writing are more likely to use foregrounding?A.Diary.Poetry. B.Novels.Papers. D.C.Research12) Which of the following include a metaphor?A. His eyes came out of his head like a prawn’s.B. The hallway was zebra-striped with darkness and moonlight.C. The thought was a fire in him.D. The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.13) Which of the following are writings of stream of consciousness?A. Pride and PrejudiceB. To the Lighthouse.C. As I Lay Dying.D. Jane Eyre.14) Which of the following book titles contain “alliteration”?A. Vowels and Consonants.B. Gone with the Wind.C. Sex and the City.D. The Wonder of Words.15) “_____” is often understood as a language system between the target languageand the learner’s native language.A. Input HypothesisB. Sapir-Whorf HypothesisAnalysisContrastiveC.Interlanguage D.2. Decide whether the following statements are True (T) or False (F). (10 points,1 point each)1) Duality refers to the property of having two levels of structures，such that units ofthe primary level are composed of elements of the secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of organization.2) Articulatory Phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds.3) The adjective is an open class of words.4) The “parts of speech” in traditional grammar is often referred to as “word class”today.5) “Hot” and “cold” are converse antonyms.6) The holophrastic stage is the mature phase of language acquisition.7) Men use stronger curse words than women.8) The Relevance Theory was suggested by H. P. Grice.9) Stream of consciousness was used in the writings of William Faulkner.10) Machine translation can be used for restricted technical purposes, such as theweather report.3. Briefly explain the following terms. (20 points, 5 points each)1) lateral2) back-formation3) cognition4) foregrounding4. Answer TWO of the following questions. (40 points, 20 points each)1) Use examples to illustrate the concept of “recursiveness”.2) Describe the three categories of conceptual metaphors.3) In recent years, numerous new words have entered the daily life of Chinese people,e.g. 上网，海选. Give a list of (about 10) such words, discuss the context of theirusage, and provide a feasible explanation of their booming.2007-08学年第二学期普通语言学试卷参考答案和评分标准I. 多选题。

2008 考研英语阅读真题Text 2(英语二)

2008 Text 2（英语⼆）⽆纸化图书馆It used to be so straightforward.A team of researchers working together in the laboratory would submit the results of their research to a journal.A would then remove the authors' names and afﬁliations from the paper and send it to their peers for review.Depending on the comments received, the editor would accept the paper for publication or decline it.Copyright rested with the journal publisher, and researchers seeking knowledge of the results would have to subscribe to the journal.No longer.The Internet — and pressure from funding agencies, who are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from government-funded research by restricting access to it — is making free access to scientiﬁc results a reality.The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development () has just issued a report describing the far-reaching consequences of this.The report, by John Houghton of in Australia and Graham Vickery of the OECD, makes heavy reading for publishers who have, so far, made 原本⼀切都很简单。

2008 英语专4阅读真题

PART III CLOZE [15 MIN]Decide which of the choices given below would best complete the passage if inserted in theeorresponding blanks. Mark the best choice for each blank on your answer sheet.Salt, shells or metals are still used as money in out-of-the-way parts of the world today.Salt may seem rather a strange (31)____ to use as money, (32)_____ in countries where the food of the people is mainly vegetable, it is often an (33)_____ necessity. Cakes of salt, stamped to show their (34)____, were used as money in some countries until recent (35)_____, and cakes of salt (36)____ buy goods in Borneo and parts of Africa.Sea shells (37)_____ as money at some time(38)____ another over the greater part of the Old World. These were (39)___ mainly from the beaches of the Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean, and were traded to India and China. In Africa, shells were traded right across the (40)___ from East to West.Metal, valued by weight, (41)____ coins in many parts of the world. Iron, in lumps, bars or rings, is still used in many countries(42)_____ paper money. It can either be exchanged(43)____ goods, or made into tools, weapons, or ornaments. The early money of China, apart from shells, was of bronze, (44)_____ in flat, round pieces with a hole in the middle, called "cash". The (45)_____ of these are between three thousand and four thousand years old - older than the earliest coins of the eastern Mediterranean.Nowadays, coins and notes have (46)____ nearly all the more picturesque (47)____ of money, and (48)____ in one or two of the more remote countries people still keep it for future use on ceremonial (49)____ such as weddings and funerals, examples of (50)____ money will soon be found only in museums.(31) A. object B. article C. substance D. category(32) A. but B. and C. so D. even(33) A. abstract B. advantageous C. abundant D. absolute(34) A. weight B. value C. role D. size(35) A. times B. events C. situations D. conditions(36) A. even B. also C. still D. never(37) A. had been used B. are used C. would be used D. would have been used(38) A. and B. but C. yet D. or(39) A. collected B. produced C. grown D. raised(40) A. city B. district C. communib D. continent(41) A. processed B. produced C. preceded D. proceeded(42) A. in spite of B. instead of C. along with D. in line with(43) A. against B. as C. in D. for(44) A. often B. seldom C. really D. much(45) A. earlier B.earliest C.better D.best(46) A. replaced B. reproduced C. reflected D. recovered(47) A. sizes B. shapes C. formats D. forms(48) A. while B. although C. because D. if(49) A. events B. gatherings C. occasions D. assemblies(50) A. original B. primitive C. historical D. crudePART IV GRAMMAR & VOCABULARY [15 MIN]There are thirty sentences in this section. Beneath each sentence there are four words or phrase marked A, B, C and D. Choose one word orphrasethat best completes the sentence. Mark your answers on your answer sheet.51. Our association, which has consistently pressed for greater employment opportunities for tN disabled, will publish ____ proposals in the near future.A. theirB. ourC. hisD. its52. Had Judy been more careful on the maths exam, she ____ much better results now.A. would be gettingB. could have gotC. must getD. would get53. Nine is to three _____ three is to one.A. whenB. thatC. whichD. what54. Men differ from animals ____ they can think and speak.A. for whichB. for thatC. in thatD. in which55. ____ he wanted to go out with his friends at the weekend, he had to stay behind to finish his assignment.A. Much thoughB. Much asC. As muchD. Though much56. I enjoyed myself so much ____ I visited my friends in Paris last year.A. whenB. whichC. thatD. where57. Which of the following is INCORRECT?A. All his lectures were boring. C. Her few friends are all fond of dancing.B. Half his money was gone. D. He invited many his friends to the party.58. When you have finished with that book, don't forget to put it back on my desk, _____?A. do youB. don't youC. will youD. won't you59. What does "He wisely refused to spend his money" mean?A. It was wise of him to refuse to spend his money.B. He refused to spend his money in a wise manner.C. He was short of money and didn't want to buy anything.D. He refused, in a wise manner, to spend his money.60. They stood chatting together as easily and naturally as ____.A. it could beB. could beC. it wasD. was61. The following are all correct responses to "Who told the news to the teacher?" EXCEPTA. Jim did this.B. Jim did so.C. Jim did that.D. Jim did.62. Quality is ____ counts most.A. whichB. thatC. whatD. where63. In his plays Shakespeare _____ his characters live through their language.A. would makeB. had madeC. madeD. makes64. The square itself is five hundred yards wide, five times ____ the size of St. Peter's in Rome.A. /B. that ofC. which isD. of65. Which of the following sentences expresses "probability"?A. You must leave immediately.B. You must be feeling rather tired.C. You must be here by eight o'clock.D. You must complete the reading assignment on time.66. When he first started in university, he really felt at _____ with his major --- economics.A. shoreB. bankC. oceanD. sea67. On the road motorists should be aware of cyclists and be ____ towards them.A. considerableB. consideringC. considerateD. considered68. Sally was a bit shy, but the teacher found her quite ____ discussing a recent film with others.A. at homeB. at mostC. at houseD. at bean69. The company has capitalized _____ the error of judgment made by its business competitor.A. inB. overC. withD. on70. Tim has failed three courses this semester, so he will have to _____ them next semester.A. remakeB. repeatC. reapplyD. revise71. Keep this reference book; it may come in _____ one day.A. handyB. usefulC. convenientD. helpful72. The questions that the speaker raised were well ____ the average adult.A. pastB. onC. beyondD. through73. Teachers in this school were encouraged to use drama as a(n) _____ of learning.A. designB. instrumentC. agencyD. tool74. First, we need to find out what his scheme is, and then act _____.A. sensitivelyB. imaginativelyC. efficientlyD. accordingly75. At first Jim was not quite clear what he was going to do after university, but now he seems _____ on becoming a computer programmer.A. fitB. setC. disposedD. decided76. When invited to talk about his achievements+ he refused to blow his own _____ anddeclined to speak at the meeting.A. trumpetB. whistleC. bugleD. flute77. In spite of the treatment, the pain in his leg grew inA. gravityB. extentC. intensityD. amount78. Bus services between Town Centre and Newton Housing Estate will be _____ until themotorway is repaired.A. discontinuedB. suspendedC. haltedD. ceased79. The moon, being much nearer to the Earth than the Sun, is the ____ cause of the tides.A. principalB. basicC. initialD. elementary80. Teddy came to my ____ with a cheque of $200 to pay my room rate, after I phoned himthat my wallet had been stolen.A. attendanceB. assistanceC. rescueD. safetyPART V READING COMPREHENSION [25 MIN]In this section there are four passages followed by questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer. Mark your answers on your answer sheet.TEXT AWhen the sun is up in Amsterdam, the largest city in the Netherlands sits quietly on theAmstel River. You can rent a bicycle, visit the Van Gogh or Anne Frank museum, or take a watertaxi.But when the sun goes down, the partying begins. In the big clubs and in coffee shops,tourists gather to hang out, talk politics and smoke.Several areas of the city clearly show the two worlds that rule Amsterdam. And they're allwithin a short cab ride of each other.For example, Dam Square attracts daytime sightseers to its festivals, open markets, concertsand other events. Several beautiful and very popular hotels can be found there. And there is theRoyal Palace and the Magna Plaza shopping mall.But as evening descends on Dam Square so do the party-seekers. Hip pop or funk musicbegins blaring from Club Paradiso and Club Melkweg. These are two of the most popular clubs inEurope. So if you come, be ready to dance. The clubs don't shut down until 4 am.And while you are there, check out the various inexpensive ways to tour the city. Don'tworry about getting lost. Although Dutch is the official language, most people in Amsterdamspeak English and are happy to help you with directions.And you'll notice that half the people in the streets are on bicycles. They rent for US$17 to $20 for a whole day.Amsterdam also has a good canal system. From anywhere between U852 and $9.50, you canuse the canal bus or a water taxi to cruise the "Venice of the North".You can take in the picturesque canal house architecture: The rows of neat, narrow four-story dwellings of brownstone with large windows are wellworth seeing. Many of them are severalcenturies old.You might also want to jump out of the canal bus at the Museum Quarter and start walking.Masterpieces by Dutch artists such as Rembrandt, Bruegel, Van Gogh and others are on display atthe Van Gogh Museum, Rembrandt House and others.The city has an appreciation of its historic past. One place to visit is the Anne Frank House in Nine Streets. It was there that the young Jewish girl wrote her famous diary during World War II. Visitors can view Anne's original diary and climb behind the bookcase to the room where she and her family hid from the Nazis for two years.81. At the beginning of the passage, the author indicates thatA. Amsterdam is generally known as a quiet city.B. parties go on all day long in Amsterdam,C. Amsterdam presents two different pictures.D. Amsterdam attracts many daytime visitors.82. Which tourist attraction is cited for elaboration in Paragraphs Four and Five?A. Royal Palace.B. Dam Square.C. Club Paradiso.D. Magna Plaza.83. According to the passage, the local people have all the following characteristics EXCEPTA. they are party goers.B. they show hospitality.C. they can speak English.D. they are fond of cycling.84. Which of the following adjectives can best describe Amsterdam as a tourist city?A. Modern.B. Delightful.C. Quiet.D. Historic.TEXT BIn an article some Chinese scholars are described as being "tantalized by the mysteriousdragon bone hieroglyphics." Tantalized is one of many English words that have their origins inmyths and legends of the past (in this case, Greek and Roman ones). The meaning of the verbtantalize is a very particular one: "to promise or show something desirable to a person and thentake it away; to tease by arousing hope." Many (but not all) English dictionaries give you a brief indication of a word's origins in brackets before or after the explanation of the meaning. For tantalize the following explanation is given: [> Tantalus]. This means that you should look up the name Tantalus to find out the word's origins, and if you do, you will find out that in Greek mythology, Tantalus was a king who was punished in the lower world with eternal hunger andthirst; he was put up to his chin in water that always moved away when he tried to drink it andwith fruit on branches above him placed just a little bit out of his reach. Can you see why hisname was changed into a verb meaning "to tease or torment by arousing desire"?Another example is the word siren, familiar to us as the mechanical device that makes suchan alarming sound when police cars, ambulances, or fire engines approach. This word also has itsorigins in Greek mythology. The traveler Odysseus (Ulysses to the Romans) made his men plugtheir ears so that they wouldn't hear the dangerous voices of the sirens, creatures who were halfbird and half woman and who lured sailors to their deaths on sharp rocks. So the word came to beassociated both with a loud sound and with danger!When someone speaks of a "jovial mood" or a "herculean effort," he or she is using wordswith origins in mythology. Look these words up to find their meaning and relationship to myths.Many common words, such as the names for the days of the week and the months of the year,also come from mythology. Wednesday derives from the ancient Norse king of the gods, Woden,and Thursday was originally Thor's day, in honour of Thor, the god of thunder. As a matter of fact, all the planets, except the one we live on, bear names that come from Roman mythology,including the planet that is farthest away from the sun and for that reason was called after theRoman god of the dead. This god has also given his name to one of the chemical elements.Several other elements have names that come from mythology, too.It seems that myths and legends live on in the English language.85. The purpose of the first sentence in Paragraph One is ____.A. to describe the work of some Chinese scholars.B. to arouse readers' interest in hieroglyphics.C. to lead readers onto the main theme.D. to link the preceding part to the present one.86. We learn from the passage, all English dictionaries include _____.A. legends.B. mythology.C. word origins.D. word definitions.87. The example of tantalize is to show _____.A. how the word came into existence.B. how Tantalus was punished in the lower world.C. how all English dictionaries show word origins.D. how the meaning of the word changed over the years.88. According to the passage, which of the following does NOT have origins in myths orlegends?A. Jovial.B. Wednesday.C. Earth.D. March.89. Which of the following can best serve as the title of the passage?A. Greek and Roman Mythology in Language.B. Mythological Origins of English Words.C. Historical Changes in Word Meanings.D. Mythology and Common Words.TEXT CMy heart sank when the man at the immigration counter gestured to the back room. l'm anAmerican born and raised, and this was Miami, where I live, but they weren't quite ready to letme in yet."Please wait in here, Ms Abujaber," the immigration officer said. My husband, with his veryAmerican last name, accompanied me. He was getting used to this. The same thing had happenedrecently in Canada when I'd flown to Montreal to speak at a book event. That time they held mefor 45 minutes. Today we were returning from a literary festival in Jamaica, and I was startled that I was being sent "in back" once again.The officer behind the counter called me up and said, "Miss, your name looks like the nameof someone who's on our wanted list. We're going to have to check you out with Washington.""How long will it take?""Hard to say ... a few minutes," he said. "We'll call you when we're ready for you."After an hour, Washington still hadn't decided anything about me. "Isn't this computerized?"I asked at the counter. "Can't you just look me up?"Just a few more minutes, they assured me.After an hour and a half, I pulled my cell phone out to call the friends I was supposed to meet that evening. An officer rushed over. "No phones!" he said. "For all we know you could be calling a terrorist cell and giving them information.""I'm just a university professor," I said. My voice came out in a squeak."Of course you are. And we take people like you out of here in leg irons every day."I put my phone away.My husband and 1 were getting hungry and tired. Whole families had been brought into thewaiting room, and the place was packed with excitable children, exhausted parents, even a flightattendant.I wanted to scream, to jump on a chair and shout: "I'm an American citizen; a novelist; lprobably teach English literature to your children." Or would that all be counted against me?After two hours in detention, I was approached by one of the officers. "You're free to go," he said. No explanation or apologies. For a moment, neither of us moved, we were still in shock.Then we leaped to our feet."Oh, one more thing." He handed me a tattered photocopy with an address on it. "If youweren't happy with your treatment, you can write to this agency.""Will they respond?" I asked."I don't know --- I don't know of anyone who's ever written to them before." Then he added,"By the way, this will probably keep happening each time you travel internationally.""What can I do to keep it from happening again?"He smiled the empty smile we'd seen all day. "Absolutely nothing."After telling several friends about our ordeal, probably the most frequent advice I've heard in response is to change my name. Twenty years ago, my own graduate school writing professor advised me to write under a pen name so that publishers wouldn't stick me in what he called "the ethnic ghetto" --- a separate, secondary shelf in the bookstore. But a name is an integral part of anyone's personal and professional identity -just like the town you're born in and the place where you're raised.Like my father, I'll keep the name, but my airport experience has given me a whole newperspective on what diversity and tolerance are supposed to mean. I had no idea that being anAmerican would ever be this hard.90. The author was held at the airport because _____.A. she and her husband returned from Jamaica.B. her name was similar to a terrorist's.C. she had been held in Montreal.D. she had spoken at a book event.91. She was not allowed to call her friends because _____.A. her identity hadn't been confirmed yet.B. she had been held for only one hour and a half.C. there were other families in the waiting room.D. she couldn't use her own cell phone.92. We learn from the passage that the author would _____ to prevent similar experiencefrom happening again.A. write to the agencyB. change her nameC. avoid traveling abroadD. do nothing93. Her experiences indicate that there still exists _____ in the US.A. hatredB. discriminationC. toleranceD. diversity94. The author sounds in the last paragraph.A. impatientB. bitterC. worriedD. ironicTEXT DPublic speaking fills most people with dread. Humiliation is the greatest fear; self-exposure and failing to appeal to the audience come a close second. Women hate it most, since girls are pressurized from an early age to be concerned with appearances of all kinds.Most people have plenty of insecurities, and this seems like a situation that will bring them out. If you were under pressure to be perfect, you are terrified of falling in the most public of ways.While extroverts will feel less fear before the ordeal, it does not mean they will necessarily do it better. Some very shy people manage to shine. When I met the British comedian Julian Clary, he was shy and cautious, yet his TV performances are perfect.In fact, personality is not the best predictor of who does it well. Regardless of what you are like in real life, the key seems to be to act yourself. Actual acting, as in performing the scripted lines of a character other than yourself, does not do the job. While politicians may limit damage by having carefully rehearsed, written scripts to speak from, there is always a hidden awareness among the audience that the words might not be true.Likewise, the incredibly perfect speeches of many American academics are far from natural.You may end up buying their book on the way out, but soon afterwards, it is much like fast food,and you get a nameless sense that you've been cheated.Although, as Earl Spencer proved at his sister Princess Diana's funeral, it is possible both to prepare every word and to act naturally. A script rarely works and it is used to help most speakers.But, being yourself doesn't work either. If you spoke as if you were in your own kitchen, itwould be too authentic, too unaware of the need to communicate with an audience.I remember going to see British psychiatrist R. D. Laing speak in public. He behaved like aseriously odd person, talking off the top of his head. Although he was talking about madness andhe wrote on mental illness, he seemed to be exhibiting rather than explaining it.The best psychological place from which to speak is an unselfconscious self-consciousness,providing the illusion of being natural. Studies suggest that this state of "flow", as psychologists call it, is very satisfying.95. Women hate public speaking most mainly because of _____.A. their upbringing very early on.B. their inability to appeal to the audience.C. their sense of greater public pressure.D. their sense of greater humiliation.96. "this" in Paragraph Two refers toA. insecurity.B. sense of failure.C. public speaking.D. pressure.97. Which of the following is NOT the author's viewpoint?A. Acting like performers spoils the message in a speech.B. Perfection of scripts is necessary in making good impressions.C. Acting naturally means less dependence on the prepared script.D. There should be a balance between actual acting and acting naturally.98. What is the author's view on personality?A. Personality is the key to success in public speaking.B. Extroverts are better public speakers.C. Introverts have to learn harder to be good speakers.D. Factors other than personality ensure better performance.99. The author implies that while speaking R. D. Laing _____.A. was both too casual and authentic.B. was acting like a performer.C. was keeping a good balance.D. was aware of his audience.100. In the last paragraph the author recommends that ____.A. you forget about your nervousness.B. you feel natural and speak naturally.C. you may feel nervous, but appear naturally.D. you may imagine yourself to be natural.答案：PART III CLOZE31-35 CADBA 36-40 CADAD 41-45 CBDAB 46-50 ADBCBPART IV GRAMMAR & VOCABULARY51-55 DBDCB 56-60 CDCDB 61-65 ACDAB 66-70 DCADBPassage A81. At the beginning of the passage, the author indicate thatA. Amsterdam is generally known as a quiet city.B. parties go on all day long in AmsterdamC. Amesterdam presents 2 different pictures.D. Amesterdam affects many daytime visitors.(网络常见的答案是C，解释也合情合理，"When the sun is up, the largest city in the Netherlands sits quietly on the Amstel River. You can rent a bicycle, visit the Van Gogh or Anne Frank museum, or take a water taxi. But when the sun goes down, the partying begins. In the big clubs and in coffee shops, tourists gather to hang out, talk politics and smoke"，本人选了A，因为当时以为它的so-called "beginning" 只是第一段)82. Which tourist attraction is ?A. Royal PalaceB. Dam SquareC. Club ParaliseD. magna Plaza（这道题目应该争议不大，选B，谈Dam Square具有两重娱乐性）83. According to the passage, the local ppl have all the following characteristics EXCEPTA. they're party goersB. they show hospitalityC. they can speak EnglishD. they are fond of cycling(常见答案是A，本人也是选这个，但还是有些争议，Although Dutch is the official language, most people in Amsterdam speak English and are happy to help you with directions. And you'll notice that half the people in the streets are on bicycles，稍微理解一下，个人认为这道题目应该就是这个答案)84. Which of the following adjectives can best describe Amsterdam as a tourist city?A. modernB. delightfulC. quietD. historic(OK，the biggest problem comes!这道题争议最大，网络答案无非是两个，B和D，本人选的是D，但细想一下，D还是不够概括吧，并且某位大哥胸有成竹地说，这篇文章的原题目就是Delightful Amsterdam)Part B85. The purpose of the first sentence in P1 isA. to describe the work of some Chinese scholarsB. to arouse readers' interest in hieroghypicsC. to lead readers onto the main themeD. to link the preceding part to the present one(这道题目应该比较简单，本人选C，和群众大多相同，争议不大)86. We learn from the passage, all English dictionaries includeA. legendsB. mythologyC. word originD. word definitions（同样简单题，或者说常识题，选D）87. The example of is to showA. how the word came into existenceB. how Tantalus was punished in the lower worldC. how all English dictionaries show word originsD. how the meaning of the word changed over the years（我选了D，但应该是错了，答案应该是A，我忘了这个例子到底是怎样叙述的，不过细想一下，应该是自己错了，不大应该，属于简单题来的）88. According to the passage, which of the following dose NOT have origins in myths or legends?A. JovialB. WednesdayC. EarthD. March（选C，记得比较清楚，它谈来除了地球之外，其他星球和星期月份都有自己的神话起源）89. Which of the following best serve as the title of the passageA. Greek and Roman Mythology in LanguageB. Mythological Origins of English WordsC. Historical Chages in Word MeaningsD. Mythology and Common Words(选B，属于概括题，粗略读懂文章应该就是明白，争议不大)Part C90. The author was held in the airport becauseA. she and her husband returned for JamaicaB. her name was similar to a terrorist'sc. she had been held in MentrealD. she had spoke at a book event("Miss, your name looks like the name of someone who's on our wanted list."选B，争议不会很大吧)91. She was not allowed to call her friends becauseA. her identity hadn't been confirmed yetB. she had been held for only one hour and a halfC. there were other families in the waiting roomD. she couldn't use her own cell phone（选A，其实A也没有在文章正面说明，只是其他三个太假了点，"For all we know you could be calling a terrorist cell and giving them information."）92. We learn from the passage that the author would ___ to prevent similar experience from happening againA. write to the agencyB. change her nameC. avoid travelling abroadD. do nothing（简单题，选D。

2008英语专业八级考试完整答案

2008英语专业八级考试完整答案听力部分1. native language2. 3503. Historical4. India5. commerce6. Boom7. sea travel communication8. conference9. many radios 10. splitSection B: 1-5 B C A C D Section C: 6-10 D A B C B阅读部分11-15. C B D A C 16-20. B D C D B21-25. C A D D B 26-30. C A D B C人文知识31 选C加拿大最大的城市是TORONTO32 选D立法权是国会THE33 选A 棒球一切都始于棒球美国的体育文化脱胎于棒球,一直以来,棒球就一直是文人们的最爱。

作为最古老的美式运动,棒球的形态一直保存完整,历史学家们视之为宝物34 新西兰的最高长官是B governor general 总督35选B THE CANTERBURY TALES 是GEORFFERY CHAUCER 写的36 选C THE AMERICAN 是谁写的Henrry James37 选A 不是20世纪英国女作家那题选A 其他都是20世纪著名的女性作家乔治.艾略特(George Eliot)原名玛丽·安·埃文斯Mary Ann Evans，1819年11月22日-1880年12月22日，英国小说家，与狄更斯和萨克雷齐名。

其主要作品有《弗洛斯河上的磨坊》The Mill on the Floss，《米德尔马契》等。

38 选D 历时性(diachronicity) 这个不是语言学的特性39选B 并列句but连接的两个分句40选D homonymy指的是语汇中一对对或是一组组的单词，虽然意思不同，但是发音相同，或拼写相同，又或者是发音和拼写都相同。

这些一对对一组组的单词我们称之为homonym(同形同音异义词、同形异义词、同音异义词)。

专业英语教案、讲义

专业英语阅读教案土木建筑工程学院主讲：杜佳2007——2008学年度第二学期第一章CHAPTER FOUR: GARDEN CITY VS. URBAN VILLAGE&NEW URBANISMARTICLE: Garden City一：首先向同学们大略介绍田园城市理论的背景，创始人及其理论主要内容，对现代城市规划的深远意义，使学生对要面临的英文阅读材料有一个大致的背景认识和了解二：对文章正文进行正式阅读，将其拆分为段落进行讲授，该过程中，注意与学生的互动，在每一小段落首先进行词汇学习，让学生自己先阅读，老师再进行讲解和翻译。

过程中，一方面注重强化学生对英语词汇的学习语法语句的掌握，另一方面注重专业知识的学习、理解和掌握。

原文：In 1898, social reformer（改革家，改革运动者）Ebenezer Howard promulgated （发布、公布、传播） a scheme（安排、计划） to build new towns rather than（胜于）add population to the already（已经） large cities, called the garden city plan.译文：（本段讲述了田园城市的背景）在1898年，社会改革运动者埃比尼泽霍华德发布了一个建设新镇的计划，（这个计划）胜于在已经巨大的城市再增加人口，这个计划被称作田园城市计划。

原文：Garden cities were to be small, thoroughly（完全的） planned towns, each（各自、每个） encircled （环绕、包围）by an inalienable（不能剥夺的） rural（乡下的、田园的） estate（不动产、财产） and interconnected（使互相连接） by a rapid transit（高速交通） system of electric（电气的） railways（铁路）.译文：（本段讲述了田园城市的构想）田园城市是小型的，完全根据计划的城镇，它们各自被永久的农业带（田地）给包围起来，电气铁路的高速交通系统将它们彼此间联系起来。

2008考研英语阅读理解真题解析第一篇女性压力WomenUnderStress

CONTENTS 2008 Text 1 While still catching-up to men in some spheres of modern life, women appear to be way at least one undesirable category. “Women are particularly susceptible to developing ahead in a tdepression and anxiety disorders in response to stress compared to men,” according to Dr. Yehuda, chief psychiatrist at New York’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital.在现代生活中女性就算是在某些领域可以追赶上男性，但至少在一个方面是领先的，尽管是她们不太想要的。

纽约的退伍军管理医院精神科首席医生Yehuda博士说道，和男性相比，女性面对压力时，更容易受到影响，导致抑郁和紧张。

sphere[sfiə] n. 球,球面,球体,天体,地球仪,范围vt. 包围,使成球体,放入球内【例】Many countries have difficulties in the economic sphere. 许多国家在经济方面遇到了困难。

困难。

category['kætigəri] n. 种类,类项;这些类别可被用来分辨出【例】These Categories recognize different levels of competition. 这些类别可被用来分辨出比赛里不同的等级。

比赛里不同的等级。

susceptible[sə'septəbl] a. 易受影响的,易感动的,容许…的这一协议不容更改。

【例】This agreement is not susceptible to alteration. 这一协议不容更改。

2008年职称英语真题之理工类A级阅读理解3

第三篇 Why Humans Walk on Two Legs A team of scientists that studied chimpanzees (⿊猩猩) trained to use treadmills (跑步机) has gathered new evidence suggesting that our earliest apelike ancestors started walking on two legs because it required less energy than getting around on all fours. Michael sockol , researcher of UC Davis, worked for two years to find an animal trainer willing to coax (劝诱) adult chimps to walk on two legs and to walk on all fours. The five chimps also wore face masks used to help the researchers measure oxygen consumption. While the chimps worked out, the scientists collected data that allowed them to calculate which method of locomotion (移动) used less energy and why. The team gathered the same information for four adult humans walking on a treadmill. The researchers found that human walking used about 75 percent less energy and burned 75 percent fewer calories than quadrupedal and bipedal walking in chimpanzees. They also found that for some but not all of the chimps, walking on two legs was no more costly than on all fours. "We were prepared to find that all of the chimps used more energy walking on two legs-but that finding wouldn't have been as interesting, Sockol said. "what we found was much more telling. For three chimps, bipedalism was more expensive, but for the other two chimps, this wasn't the case. One spent about the same energy walking on two legs as on all fours The other used less energy walking upright。

2008年高考英语模拟阅读理解五篇...

2008年高考英语模拟阅读理解五篇...2008年高考英语模拟阅读理解五篇AAmerica is growing older. Fifty years ago, only 4 out of every 100 people in the United States were 65 or older. T oday, 10 out of every 100 Americans are over 65. The aging of the population will affect American society in many ways —education, medicine, and business. Quietly, the aging of America has made us a very different society — one in which people have a quite different idea of what kind of behavior is suitable at various ages.A person’s age no longer tells you anything about his/ her social position, marriage or health. There’s no longer a particular year in which one goes to school or goes to work or gets married or starts a family. The social clock that kept us on time and told us when to go to school, get a job, or stop working isn’t as strong as it used to be. It doesn’t surprise us to hear of a 29-year-old university president or a 35-year-old grandmother, or a 70-year-old man who has become a father for the first time. Public ideas are changing.Many people say, “I am much younger than my mother or my father was at my age.” No one says “Act your age” any more. We’ve stopped looking with surprise at older people who act in outhful ways.1. It can be learned from the text that the aging of the population in America ________.A. has made people feel youngerB. has changed people’s social positionC. has changed people’s understanding of ageD. has slowed down the country’s soc ial development2. The underlined word “one” refers to ________.A. a societyB. AmericaC. a placeD. population3. “Act your age” means people should ________.A. be active when they are oldB. do the right thing at the right ageC. show respect to their parents young or oldD. take more physical exercises suitable to their age4. If a’ 25-year-old man becomes general manager of a big firm, the writer of the text would most probably consider it _________.A. normalB. wonderfulC. unbelievableD. unreasonableBBill Javis took over our village’s news-agency at a time of life when most of us only wanted to relax. He just thought he would like something but not too much to do, and the news-agency was ready-made. The business produced little enough for him, but Bill was a man who only wanted the simplicity and order and regularity of the job. He had been a long-serving sailor, and all his life had done everything by the clock.Every day he opened his shop at 6:00 a. m. to catch the early trade; the papers arrived on his doorstep before that. Many of Bill’s customers were city workers, and the shop was convenientfor the station. Business was tailing off by 10 o’clock, so at eleven sharp Bill closed for lunch. It was hard luck on anybody who wanted a paper or magazine in the afternoon, for most likely Bill would be down on the river bank, fishing, and his neatest competitor was five kilometers away. Sometimes in the afternoon-, the evening paper landed on the das oorway, and at 4 o’ clock Bill reopened his shop. The evening rush lasted till seven, and it was worthwhile.He lived in a flat above the ship, alone. Except in the very bad weather, you always knew where to find him in the afternoon, as I have said. Once, on a sunny afternoon, I walked home along the river bank from a shopping trip to the village. By my watch it was three minutes past four, so I was astonished to see Bill sitting there on his little chair with a line in the, water. He had no luck, I could, see, but he was making no effort to move. “What’s wrong, Bill?” I called out from the path.For answer, he put a hand in his jacket and took out a big, golden object. For a moment I had no idea what it could be, and then it suddenly went off with a noise like a fire engine. Stopping the bell, Bill held the thing up and called back, "Ten to four, you see, and this is dead right. "I had never known anyone carrying a brass alarm clock round with him before.5. Bill Javis became a news-agent when ________.A. he need the money.B. he decided to take things easyC. he was quite an old manD. he gave up clock-repairing6. Bill opened the shop so early in the day because ________.A. he liked to do as much as possible before he went to workB. the shop had to be open when the morning papers cameC. he was never sure of timeD. it was then that he did a lot of business7. On that sunny afternoon, the writer was surprised when he saw Bill because ________.A. he thought it was late for Bill to be still fishingB. he thought Bill was ill, since he was not moving at allC. Bill had not caught anything, and that seemed strangeD. Bill stayed in his flat8. From the information given in the passage, who or what do you think was wrong?A. The bell was; it must have gone off at the wrong time.B. Bill was; he had dropped off to sleep.C. The writer’s watch was fast.D. Bill’s clock was wrong; it was old.CThe Western has been the favorite type for American adventure story since the nineteenth century. While the American West was being settled, newspapers and "dime novels" could depend on stories of the frontier settlements and tell tales about living in the untamed wilderness to sell. The public back East was eager to read about the West, even if the stories wee American West was being settled, newspare more fiction than fact. In 1902, Owen Wister published his novel The Virginian, which was one of the first novels to treat the Western as a serious literary form; the novel still sold well and had inspired several movies and a television series. In 1905, Bertha H. Bower and Zane Grey published their first novels, and the popular Western novels had continued to flourish from that day on, with current novels by Luke Short, Max Brand, and Louis L’ Amour carrying on the tradition.The first Western movie appeared even earlier than these serious Western novels. Before the turn of the century, an associate of Edison’s had filmed Cripple Creek Barroom Scene, a few seconds of film showing the inside of a saloon, to help publicize the inven tion of the movie camera. In 1903 the Edison’ company filmed the first "full-length" Western — The Great Train Robbery. The film lasts less than fifteen minutes, but a story is told its entirety. In the movie, bandits (强盗) rob a train and its passengers, killing the engineer, and find themselves tracked down by a posse. Audiences loved the movie. Some theaters were actually opened for the single purpose of showing The Great Train Robbery and only later realized that they could do equally well showing other movies. The film was so successful that other companies, and finally even the Edison company itself, began producing copies and other versions of The Great Train Robbery. Ironically, in" an era when the West was still very real —-Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma were all territories rather than states in 1903 — The Great Train Robbery was filmed in New Jersey.9. The purpose of this passage is to________.A. discuss the making of the movie The Great Train RobberyB. discuss the early Western novelsC. discuss the art of movie makingD. trace the development of the Western as an American adventure story tradition10. We can conclude from this passage that________.A. people lost interest in the West after 1903B. Owen Wister was an ex-cowboyC. New Jersey was still "untamed wilderness" in 1903D. films were fairly uncommon at the time The Great TrainRobbery was made11. The passage suggests that________.A. Edison’s invention of the movie camera happened;by accidentB. movie houses didn’t make much-money in the early daysC. Easterners were fascinated by the " wild West"D. The Great Train Robbery was poorly received by the public because it lacked a plot12. As used in this passage, the word “literary” means________.A. humorousB. financialC. appropriate to literatureD. amateurDThere are various reasons why cancers appear to be on the increase. For one thing, though their sufferers are to be found in all age groups, cancers are particularly likely to attack persons in their middle and advanced years. Naturally, since people live longer these years, there are more cancer sufferers than before. Again, with better methods of diagnosis (诊断), doctors can more easily recognize cancerous growths that would formerly have passed unnoticed or that would have been wrongly diagnosed. It is also believed that certain habits and conditions of modem living, including heavy smoking and the pollution of the air, may leave people living in more cancer-causing conditions than before.We all look forward to the day when a simple medical test can find cancer while it is still small. Researchers around the world are working on such a test. Most of their work deals with theexamination of the blood.Researchers in Boston have found something in the blood of cancer patINDEients that does not appear in healthy persons. The test showed which persons had cancer and which did not. It was correct more than 90 percent of the time.The researchers believe the test may be able to show cancer very clearly in its development. Cancers discovered early usually can be treated successfully.The test examines very small bits of fat in the blood called lipids (脂质). Cancers seem to change lipids although doctors do not know why. The test showed differences between the lipids of the persons with cancer and the lipids of those without cancer.The researchers say the new test could be a step to develop a simple way to check patients for cancer before the disease shows on an X-ray.13. Who will fail cancer from the study of the researchers?A. The young.B. The middle age and the older.C. The man.D. The woman.14. The underlined words "such a test" refer to________.A. the test that shows which persons have cancer and which don’t .B. the test that may be able to show cancer very early in its development,.C. a simple medical test that cannot find cancer when it is -smallD. a new test that could be a step to develop a difficult way15. Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?A. Cancers have much to do with something in patients’blood.B. People living in better conditions are most likely to be attacked by cancer.C.X-raying is the best way to determined whether a person has cancer or not.D. Cancers have nothing to do with a person’s habits and living conditions.16. What would be the best title for the passage?A. A simple way to cancerB. Cancers can be curedC. How to find cancerD. Early discovery of cancerEWhat does it mean to say that we live in a world of persuasion? It means that we live among competing interests. Your roommate’s need to study for an exam may take priority (优先) over pizza. Your instructor may have good reasons not to change your grade. And the object of your romantic/interest may have other choices.In such a world, persuasion is the art of getting others to give fair and favorable consideration to our points of view. When we persuade, we want to influence how others believe and behave. We may not always prevail — other points of view may be more persuasive, depending on the listener, the situation, and the merit of the case.But when we practice the art of persuasion, we try to ensure that our position receives the attention it deserves.Some people, however, object to the very idea of persuasion. They may regard it as an unwelcome interruption into their lives. Just the opposite, we believe that persuasion is unavoidable —to live is to persuade. Persuasion may be ethical (合乎道义的) or unethical,selfless or selfish, inspiring or degrading. Persuaders may enlighten our mind or prey on our vulnerability. Ethical persuasion, however, calls on sound reasoning and is sensitive to the feelings and needs of listeners. Such persuasion can help us apply the wisdom of the past to the decisions we now must make. Therefore, the most basic part of education is learning to resist the one kind of persuasion and to encourage and practice the other. Beyond its personal importance to us, persuasion is necessary to society. The right to persuade and be persuaded is the bedrock of -indent-count:the American political system, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the constitution (美国宪法).17. According to the passage, persuasion means ________.A. changin g others’ points of viewB. exercising power over other peopleC. getting other people to consider your point of viewD. getting people to agree with you and do what you want18. The underlined word in the second paragraph “prevail” means________.A. winB. failC. speakD. listen19. The passage states that some people object to persuasion because they think it is ________.A. a danger to societyB. difficult to do wellC. unwelcome behaviorD.never successful20. The passage mainly discusses ________.A. how people persuadeB. why people persuadeC. that persuasion is both good and badD. that persuasion is important and it is all around us答案简析(A)主要讲述美国社会老龄化这一事实以及这一变化对人们的行为、思想等各方面都产生了极大的影响，其中第一、二段的最后一句话尤为重要。

2008英语二第三篇阅读原文

2008英语二第三篇阅读原文While still catching-up to men in some spheres of modern life, women appear to be way ahead in at least one undesirable category. "Women are particularly susceptible to developing depression and anxiety disorders in response tot stress compared to men," according to Dr. Yehuda, chief psychiatrist at New York's Veteran's Administration Hospital.Studies of both animals and humans have shown that sex hormones somehow affect the stress response, causing females under stress to produce more of the trigger chemicals than do males under the same conditions. In several of the studies, when stressed-out female rats had their ovaries (the female reproductive organs) removed, their chemical responses became equal to those of the males.Adding to a woman's increased dose of stress chemicals, are her increased “opportunities for stress."It's not necessarily that women don't cope as well. It's just that they have so much more to cope with," says Dr. Yehuda. "Their capacity for tolerating stress may even be greater than men's," she observes, "it's just that they're dealing with so many more things that they become worn out from it more visibly and sooner.”Dr. Yehuda notes another difference between the sexes. Ithink that the kinds of things that women are exposed to tend to be in more of a chronic or repeated nature. Men go to war and are exposed to combat stress. Men are exposed to more acts of random physical violence. The kinds of interpersonal violence that women are exposed to tend to be in domestic situations, by, unfortunately, parents or other family members, and they tend not to be one-shot deals. The wear-and-tear that comes from these longer relationships can be quite devastating."Adeline Alvarez married at 18 and gave birth to a son, but was determined to finish college. I struggled a lot to get the college degree. I was living in so much frustration that that was my escape,to go to school, and get ahead and do better." Later, her marriage ended and she became a single mother. "It's the hardest thing to take care of a teenager, have a job, pay the rent, pay the car payment, and pay the debt. I lived from paycheck to paycheck."Not everyone experiences the kinds of severe chronic stresses Alvarez describes. But most women today are coping with a lot of obligations, with few breaks, and feeling the strain. Alvarez's experience demonstrates the importance of finding ways to diffuse stress before it threatens your healthand your ability to function.。

2008年下半年SSS(126篇)

20080701This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I am Cynthia Graber. This'll just take a minute.Imagine tweezers so fine that you could reach right into a cell and manipulate individual molecules. MIT researchers have created such a tweezer, using beams of light. The tweezer is so precise it‘s been used to determine how strong the chemical bonds are between two protein molecules in a cell. The research was published in the June 30th edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It builds on work published last fall, when the same scientists demonstrated that so-called optical tweezers could pick up and move cells on a microchip. Scientists wanted to investigate protein bonds to get a better understanding of the forces that give cells structure and the ability to move around. They used the light-beam tweezer to pin one type of protein in place. Another beam tugged at a second protein, which eventually broke completely away from the first. By knowing the energy necessary to break the bond, the scientists were in fact measuring the strength of that bond. Researchers say the tweezers can be applied to hundreds of other protein interactions that make up the cell‘s architectural skeleton, potentially teasing out secrets of how cells work.Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Cynthia Graber.20080702This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I am Karen Hopkin. This'll just take a minute.Methane is a greenhouse gas that traps heat even better than carbon dioxide. It comes from a variety of sources, including fossil fuel production and even farming. Cows give off methane, you know, after they eat. Even the surface waters of the ocean contain substantial amounts of this gas. But where marine methane comes from was a mystery. Until now. Scientists collected seawater off the coast of Hawaii. And they found that bacteria that live in these waters scarf up certain phosphorous-containing chemicals, and then release methane as a byproduct. The results appear online in the journal Nature Geoscience. What‘s surprising is that scientists had previously thought that methane is only produced by bacteria that live in places where there is no oxygen, think of the smell you associate with a swamp or with the muck at the bottom of a murky pond. This marine methane could contribute to global warming by adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. What‘s worse, the hotter it is, the more stressed these seafaring bacteria get, and the more methane they‘re likely to put out. Which was certainly not the kind of feedback that atmospheric scientists were hoping to get.Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American's 60-Second-Science. I'm Karen Hopkin.20080703This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I am Cynthia Graber. This'll just take a minute.It took 13 years and countless hours of research to unravel the human genome. Now neuroscientists want to do their field‘s version. A small group of researchers is advancing the emerging field of what they call ―connectomics.‖ As genomics moved from individual genes to the entire genome, so connectomics wants to take us from individual neurons in our brain to the connections and wiring in the entire nervous system network. That involves nerve cells, the axons that stretch out like wires, the synapses that transmit information. It‘s a daunting task—you have about a hundred billion neurons in your brain. Connectomics wouldn‘t be possible without computer processing and imaging. This allows researchers to look at a maze of axons in a sample and determine just which axon is connected to which neuron. It‘s as complicated as it sounds. Jeff Lichtman is a Harvard scientist whose lab is at the forefront of this effort. He says detailing the connections in a single human brain wou ld require data storage equivalent to Google‘s entire collection. But the effort‘s underway. Lichtman says Connectomics could teach us how the brain processes information, and how we develop and learn. Which, he says, is what makes us human.Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Cynthia Graber.20080707This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I am Karen Hopkin. This'll just take a minute.Y ou‘ve probably heard of the whole six degrees of separation thing. It predic ts that, on average, you‘re no more than six links away from any other person on the planet. Like your roommate runs into a woman whose brother is a writer for Desperate Housewives. Which means you‘re only six invites away from having lunch with Marcia Cro ss‘s nannies. The concept stems from the fact that people have social networks, and those networks tend to intersect. But the importance of this ―small world‖ phenomenon extends beyond whose email address you have on your Blackberry. Now scientists think they can take advantage of these networks to design more efficient vaccination programs. According to an international team of physicists, the most effective way to protect a population from disease is to immunize people who have the largest networks. If you can keep the most highly connected people from infecting their friends, neighbors, co-workers, you can halt an epidemic. And you may only have to vaccinate half the number of people you would normally. The findings will appear in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters. The biggest problem with such a program, people are bound to feel left out when they‘re told that they don‘t need a shot.Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin.20080708This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I am Cynthia Graber. This'll just take a minute.Whales and dolphins were molded by evolution to glide through water. We‘vebeen trying to create streamlined designs ourselves for structures such as wind turbine blades. Now researchers are examining the flippers, fins and tails of our water-dwelling cousins to learn how to improve engineering designs. Doctor Frank Fish—yes, that‘s really his name, from West Chester University in Pennsylvania presented this research July 8 at the Society for Experimental Biology‘s annual meeting in Marseille. Here‘s one example of the way Doctor Fish‘s research is being applied. Whale flippers have a bumpy edge. This makes little sense to engineers. They‘ve designed structures like wings and b lades that ensure a steady air flow. But it turns out the unsteady flow over this more complex shape increases lift and reduces drag much better than any previous manmade design. It has to do with something called vortices. These are small tornado-shaped w ater formations in an animal‘s wake. The bumps on a whale‘s flipper help form vortices that generate more lift, more smoothly. Engineers are using this insight to design an entirely new wind turbine blade so that we can generate power from wind as efficiently as whales and dolphins fly through the water.Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science, and I'm Cynthia Graber.20080709This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata. Got a minute?Doctors prescribe Ritalin to hyperactive kids to calm them down and increase their attention span. And college kids have taken to using Ritalin to concentrate when they hit the books. But it hasn't been clear how the drug boosts focus. Now a paper in the journal Biological Psychiatry suggests how it might work. Neuronscientists dosed rats with Ritalin and had them perform the kind of working memory task ADHD patients have trouble with. At the same time, they measured neural activity with tiny-electrodes implanted in the rats' brains. At low doses Ritalin primarily affected the prefrontal cortex, jacking up its sensitivity to signals coming in from the hippocampus. And here is how the drugs seemed to help with attention, it strengthened choruses of neurons firing together and put a damper on scattered uncoordinated activity. But at high doses the profrontal cortex tuned out and Ritalin's effects were similar to those of other stimulants. The rats lost their cognitive edge and they became hyperactive, sniffing and licking repetitively. So Ritalin shows you can indeed have too much of a good thing to the point of distraction.Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I am Christopher Intagliata.20080710This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Adam Hinterthuer. Got a minute?After a bad day at the office, we‘re more likely to flip on a nature channel than find a flower-filled meadow or sunny beach to lower our stress. But if you can‘t head outdoors, you might want to at least have a look. A report in June‘s journal ofEnviromental Psychology says televised nature is no match for a good old window. In the study University of Washington researchers had students perform a series of challenging mental tests. They hooked each student up to a heart monitor to record higher heart rates caused by the stress of completing the assignments. Some students worked in an office with a view of the university's tree-filled grounds, while others watched a live camera feed of the exact same view on a plasma screen TV. Both groups stole glances a similar number of times. But window gazing students looked longer and were quicker to lower their stressed-out heart rates. In the time of obesity and nature deficit disorders, the researchers say, it's important to remember that your TV may be a window on the world, but it's no substitute for the real deal.Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Adam Hinterthuer.20080711This is Scientific American‘s 60-Second Science. I‘m Karen Hopk in. This will just take a minute.Dear diary: today I ate 3 carrot sticks while I fantasized about eating carrot cake. Alright, alright, I ate 3 pieces of carrot cake, and never once considered an actual carrot. How am I ever gonna lose that last 10 pounds? Well, new research shows that keeping a diary, a food diary, can help. According to a study published in the August issue of the Annals of Preventative Medicine, people who write down everything they eat each day lose twice as much as those who don‘t. N early 1,700 people participated in the study. They were asked to follow a heart-healthy diet full of fruits and veggies and low-fat or non-fat dairy. They attended weekly group sessions and were told to engage in moderate exercise for half an hour a day. After 6 months, nearly 2/3 of the participants had lost at least 9 pounds. But the real surprise came from the food logs: those who simply kept track of what they consumed lost twice as much as those who failed to fess up. So next time you‘re tempted by the clarion call of the carrot cake, stop to consider how that would look in your diary, not to mention on your hips.Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American‘s 60-Second Science, I‘m Karen Hopkin.20080714This is Scientific American‘s 60-Second Scie nce. I‘m Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute.On the June 30th podcast, you heard some bad singing. Clearly a lot of people think they can sing, just look at the enormous crowds that show up to audition for American Idol. But how many people can actually stay in key? (Sing, sing a song. Make it simple to last your whole life long...) Scientists think they have an answer, which they presented at the conference on acoustics in Paris on July 2nd. In the first part of the study, the researchers stopped people at random in a Montreal park and asked them to sing Quebec‘s anthem. In that park, turns out 40 out of 42 people sounded as good as the pros. That percentage is surprisingly high. Which makes the two people who couldn‘t sing especially interesting. why couldn‘t they carry a tune?(Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you) The researchers repeated the experiment, this time asking people to sing Jingle Bells. They then tested the bad singers‘ ability to listen to some music and identify the sour n otes. They found that the off-pitch crooners fall into two classes. Those who simply can not hear that they‘re hitting the wrong notes. And those who can tell, but keep singing anyway.Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I am Karen Hopkin.20080715This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata. Got a minute?In the insect world, bright reds, oranges and yellows can be a warning: Eat me at your own risk, pal. Because colorful bugs can be toxic, they often get their chemical protection from nibbling poisonous plants. But these poisons can have a flip side for us. Some fight cancer or tropical parasites that cause diseases like malaria. The idea that colorful bugs can tip us off to disease-fightin g plants isn‘t new. But researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute just backed it up with science, in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. They chose ten plant species that kill parasites and cancer in lab tests, and ten species that look similar but do nothing. Then they headed into the Panamanian jungle to survey hundreds of these plants for beetles and caterpillars. Turns out, they found colorful bugs on almost all the toxic plants but less than half of the harmless plant s. And black, brown and gray bugs didn‘t have a preference, they ate indiscriminately. So modernday shamans scouring the jungle for cancer-fighting drugs might just cut down on search time by keeping an eye out for brightly colored bugs.Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.20080716This is Scientific American‘s 60-Second Science. I‘m Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute.In 2005 two scientists won a Nobel Prize for discovering that a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori causes most stomach ulcers. One of them even chugged a glassful of the bugs to prove the point. But before you wash your mouth out with antibiotics, consider this: a new study from New Y ork University suggests that Helicobacter might also protect you from asthma. The scientists analyzed data from more than 7,000 participants in a national health and nutrition survey. They found that children between the ages of three and 13 are less than half as likely to have asthma if they carry H. pylori. They also had half the incidence of hay fever and other allergies. The results appear online in the July 15th issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases. A hundred years ago, nearly everyone was infected with H. pylori. But the use of antibiotics has beaten back the bug. At the same time, asthma has been on the rise. It could be that encountering Helicobacter as a kid teaches the immune system how to react, and not overreact as in asthma to future allergens. Still, you might hold off onordering that Helicobacter cocktail until more research is done.Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I am Karen Hopkin.20080717This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute?Our Milky Way galaxy produces only about 10 new stars annually. But a galaxy far, far away is experiencing a major baby boom. It‘s pumping out up to 4,000 new stars a year, and should become a massive elliptical galaxy. The discovery was announced in the July 10th issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. The Baby Boom galaxy stood out because of its extreme brightness, a function of all its youthful stars. That star-making actually happened 12.3 billion years ago—that‘s how long it took for the light to reach us. And the universe was virtually a baby itself, only about 1.4 billion years old, when the Baby Boom galaxy activity happened. Astronomers don‘t know if this is an exceptional case or if most massive elliptical galaxies actually formed so early in the universe‘s histo ry.The discovery also challenges the accepted model for galaxy formation, which has most galaxies slowly bulking up by absorbing pieces of other galaxies, rather than growing internally. Looks like the new finding will be keeping astronomers busy into old age.Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Steve Mirsky.20080722This is Scientific American‘s 60-Second Science, I‘m Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute.Not too long ago, scientists had to hoof it to the library to review the literature. And they had to flip through a card catalog to find that dusty old volume with the article they wanted. Not so today—the internet‘s made things a lot easier. But maybe it‘s a bit too easy. That‘s what one sociologist writes in the latest issue of Science. He analyzed a database of 34 million scholarly articles and their citations, spanning six decades of research. The conclusion? He says articles from the online age actually cite fewer studies, from a shrinking pool of journals. And the same popular studies are mentioned over and over. It‘s a bit counterintuitive, considering the internet‘s made more articles available than ever before. So what‘s going on? First, internet searches are really precise. Scientists might miss tangential stuff they would have encountered browsing through a print journal. And the author says the internet leads scientists to the most popular, talked-about research—which could overshadow the lone dissenter. But perhaps the joy that scientists find in arguing with each other can be counted on to keep the enterprise from turning into an echo chamber.Thanks for the minute for Scientific American‘s 60-Second Science, I‘m Cynthia Graber.20080723This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a few minutes? Today we have a special edition featuring a brief interview with Sciam editor, Steve Ashley.Steve Ashley, a lot of people are very concerned about oil right now, but out there, in the distance there is this looming water issue. And I mean that in both senses, we have the looming August issue of Scientific American, and we also have a big water package on the web, tell us about that.That‘s right, Steve. We have been working on the coming water crisis and covering in many different ways. Basically, water, which everyone takes for granted, is becoming more and more rare, fresh water, especially, water that you can drink, potable water. And as the population grows, and people demand more water as their incomes increase. It looks like we are goanna have a dearth of water, and it's gonna get worse and worse for the next couple of decades. Looks like we have to spend a lot of money to secure enough water that we can supply for all the people in the world.Now on the face of it, it seems more a policy issue than a science issue, so how does the science informed the policy?Well, the science is fairy well-known, but it comes down to applying it and applying it quickly. Basically the technology that's necessary is been developed over the years, but people have not been using it. And…Are we talking about recovering or desalination? What are we talking about?We are talking about a whole raft of steps that need to be taken. Basically, our author for the article that we wrote for the magazine, Peter Rogger, suggests six steps, we'll say. What it comes down to is couple of things that you just wouldn't think of. First of all, we spend tremendous amount of water irrigating crops. And just getting the water to the fields, you'll lose a tremendous amount. So anything you can do to save that water will have a tremendous effect because it turns out that the biggest single use of water, fresh water, is crop irrigation. Secondly, one of the other problems is that, it's sort of a social not to technological issue as much but a social issue. Water is basically free in most countries. If you do not pay for a resources, you do not save it.A third issue is basically a sort of an odd concept, is something of an accounting issue, actually it's called virtual water. That is the water content of the products that we buy, basically the water for the crops that we grow or the water was used in factories to make a product. And if instead of sending water to a dry, arid place, you send them the products that contain this "virtual water" and what that does is that it means they can get along without using their own water for creating these products, so that is another issue that could help greatly. For example, the Middle East Jordan, Israel, those countries. They all take their water from the Jordan River, and by shipping Jordan virtual water in terms of products. They do not have to extract so much water from the river, so that's another big issue. A fourth step that Peter Rogger suggests is to adopt what they call "low water sanitation". We use a tremendous amount of water just to get human wastes out of the home. Basically by collecting faeces and the urines, separating them and then recycling for farm fertilization. One can save tremendous amounts of water and help the agriculture at the same time.And a lot of people, I mean this's a minor point in the whole thing, but I think it's gonna have to be a cultural adaptation to the idea of not flushing the toilet every time you use it.Well you know you heard if it's yellow. It's mellow.I don't know. Hates celera.We won't get into that.Right, but that is a practice that can cut your flushes by maybe 80%.Tremendous savings. And it just goes down the drain.Literally. Literally speaking. So what is on the website right now that is part of the overall water package that people can access just sitting right at the computer.Well, basically we have the article. We have the graphics from the article from very interesting maps that show what, potentially, will happen with climate change as incomes increase. We have a slide show of photos, interesting photos that basically depict some of the problems with the dearth of water, the water crisis and some of the solutions, some of which I've mentioned already. We have a list of... well we have a quiz, which is kind of fun, what you know about saving water and turns out I didn't know too much about saving water and I find it fairly eye-opening. So I think our readers and web people will actually find it of interest. We have a list of ways to save water and it basically comes down to paying attention. Y ou know little things like turning off the water as you're washing the dishes in between each dish saves a tremendous amount of water.When you are shaving, between the strokes you do not have to have the water run.When you are shaving, I mean you know, and you know although it sounds a little idealistic. Every little step that made by a huge group of people will actually have an impact on the big problem.And over the next couple of decades, this is really going to become a major worldwide issue.First the people in the desert areas will find it happening to them. People in Las V egas, for example, are gonna to find it's gonna get more and more difficult. They gonna have to like not water their lawns, they're gonna have water restrictions on washing their cars, things with that nature. Then depending on how climate change works as the, for example, India and China grow, you know, in terms of their income, they're gonna be demanding tremendous amounts of water right now under both those places the water tables are dropping. So they are gonna have huge restrictions in for those giant population who knows how that's gonna work out. Basically, almost everyone is gonna be faced with this at one point or another.For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Steve Mirsky.20080724This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I‘m Karen Hopkin. It‘ll just take a minute.When you think about an ecosystem, you usually think of the big animals that live there. The Serengeti‘s ruled by lions. And estuaries are populated by fishes, birds,snails and maybe the occasional otter. But there‘s more to an ecosystem than meets the eye. Because a team of scientists from the US and Mexico has found that parasites constitute a sizeable chunk of the biomass of an ecosystem. The scientists catalogued and weighed all of the plants, animals and parasitic species living in three river estuaries. They found that in terms of sheer bulk, parasites represent about three percent of the biomass of these ecosystems. Pound for pound, one parasite—the trematode fluke that infects a certain snail—outweighs all of the estuaries‘ birds, which are the ecosystem‘s top predators. The results appear in the July 24 issue of Nature. That means that creatures you can‘t see might be even more important to the health of an ecosystem, and to its balance of power, than the ones you can see. For example, in these estuaries, snails that are infected with trematodes outnumber those that are fluke-free. Now that‘s what you call a controlling interest.Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I‘m Karen Hopkin.20080725This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Cynthia Graber. This'll just take a minute.Remember when Barbie whined that ―math is hard.‖ Maybe you got annoyed at hearing a popular female doll say that to little girls. Or maybe you also had a nagging suspicion that, in fact, boys are better at math. Well, the latest research is in, and the answer is a resounding no: boys are not more math savvy. The finding appears in the July 25 issue of the journal Science. Janet Hyde at the University of Wisconsin-Madison led the study. The group dug through piles of information from seven million students tested through the No Child Left Behind program across ten states. Researchers had detailed personal info on the test takers. Researchers checked out math tests in different grades. They took the average. No difference. Some critics have said that the difference only shows up among the highest levels of math skills. So the team checked out the most gifted children. Again, no difference. From any angle, girls measured up to boys. Still, there‘s a lack of women in the highest levels of professio nal math, engineering and physics. Some have said that‘s because of an innate difference in math ability. But the new research shows that that explanation just doesn‘t add up.Thanks for the minute for Scientific American 60-Second Science. I‘m Cynthia Graber.20080728Podcast is sponsored from the people of American Chemistry who provide the plastics, medicines and innovations that make life modern. Learn more at .This is Scientific American's 60-Second Psych. I'm Christine Nicholson, got a minute?Actor Heath Ledger's untimely death on January 22, 2008, shocked us—and we are eerily reminded of it as we watch him twitch and quiver as the fey Joker in thecurrent Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Perhaps Ledger's death, due to an accidental prescription overdose, hit the world as tragic because most of us can imagine ourselves falling prey to a similar accident. A study in July 28th issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine examines nearly 200,000 U.S. deaths due to medication errors from 1983 to 2004. The researchers specifically compared medicinal mix-ups at home versus those in a clinical setting. Apparently, home deaths due to taking meds with alcohol and/or street drugs shot up more than 3,000 percent in those two decades. Whereas, fatal errors out of home, and unrelated to any additional alcohol, only rose five percent. Accidental errors at home that didn't include any alcohol or street drugs rose pretty substantially too, more than 560 percent. Y ou know, to be sure, people may be taking more prescriptive meds than they did in the 1980s and they are increasingly taken those meds at home. So is this hazard an acceptable by-product of the convenience of modern life? Or is it a problem that may worsen as more meds become available to homebound patients?Thanks for the minute, for Scientific American's 60-Second Psych. I'm Christine Nicholson.60-Second Psych is sponsored by WorthPublishers, the leading educational publisher in psychology. Visit them at .20080729Podcast is sponsored from the people of American Chemistry, who provide the plastics, medicines, and innovations that make life modern. Learn more at .This is Scientific American‘s 60-Second Science, I‘m Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute.There are plenty of tales of animals finding some alcohol and getting tipsy. But those stories usually involve manmade beer or wine. There‘s been no evidence of animals seeking out naturally fermented fruit in the wild—until now. Researchers stumbled upon the first example of animals looking for a drink in the Malaysian rainforest. The scientists noticed a yeasty smell wafting from a local palm. They saw a frothy substance, like the head on a mug of beer. It turns out the palm‘s nectar has as much alcohol as some beer does. Then scientists followed two tiny mammals –the pentailed treeshrew slow loris. The critters dip into the nectar several times nightly. They regularly guzzle the equivalent of about nine drinks a night—though they don‘t disp lay what we‘d consider drunken behavior. And they act as the plant‘s pollinator. The research appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The pentailed treeshrew is a living version of an ancient mammal, a kind of relic of the mammals from which both shrews and primates – and eventually humans – branched off. So this discovery could lend some weight to the hypothesis that our love of the hard stuff has a deep evolutionary history. I‘ll toast to that.Thanks for the minute, for Scientifi c American‘s 60-Second Science, I‘m Cynthia Graber.20080730。

2008英语专业八级阅读真题及答案

2008英语专业八级真题及答案PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your coloured answer sheetTEXT AAt the age of 16, Lee Hyuk Joon's life is a living hell. The South Korean 10th grader gets up at 6 in the morning to go to school, and studies most of the day until returning home at 6 p.m. After dinner, it's time to hit the books again—at one of Seoul's many so-called cram schools. Lee gets back home at 1 in the morning, sleeps less than five hours, then repeats the routine—five days a week. It's a grueling schedule, but Lee worries that it may not be good enough to get him into a top university. Some of his classmates study even harder.South Korea's education system has long been highly competitive. But for Lee and the other 700,000 high-school sophomores in the country, high-school studies have gotten even more intense. That's because South Korea has conceived a new college-entrance system, which will be implemented in 2008. This year's 10th graders will be the first group evaluated by the new admissions standard, which places more emphasis on grades in the three years of high school and less on nationwide SAT-style and other selection tests, which have traditionally determined which students go to the elite colleges.The change was made mostly to reduce what the government says is a growing education gap in the country: wealthy students go to the best colleges and get the best jobs, keeping the children of poorer families on the social margins. The aim is to reduce the importance of costly tutors and cram schools, partly to help students enjoy a more normal high-school life. But the new system has had the opposite effect. Before, students didn't worry too much about their grade-point averages; the big challenge was beating the standardized tests as high-school seniors. Now students are competing against one another over a three-year period, and every midterm and final test is crucial. Fretful parents are relying even more heavily on tutors and cram schools to help their children succeed.Parents and kids have sent thousands of angry online letters to the Education Ministry complaining that the new admissions standard is setting students against each other. "One can succeed only when others fail,” as one parent said.Education experts say that South Korea's public secondary-school system is foundering, while private education is thriving. According to critics, the country's high schools are almost uniformly mediocre—the result of an egalitarian government education policy. With the number of elite schools strictly controlled by the government, even the brightest students typically have to settle for ordinary schools in their neighbourhoods, where the curriculum is centred on average students. To make up for the mediocrity, zealous parents send their kids to the expensive cram schools.Students in affluent southern Seoul neighbourhoods complain that the new system will hurt them the most. Nearly all Korean high schools will be weighted equally in the college-entrance process, and relatively weak students in provincial schools, who may not score well on standardized tests, often compile good grade-point averages. Some universities, particularly prestigious ones, openly complain that they cannot select the best students under the new system because it eliminates differences among high schools. They've asked for more discretion in picking students by giving more weight to such screening tools as essay writing or interviews.President Roh Moo Hyun doesn't like how some colleges are trying to circumvent the new system. He recently criticized "greedy" universities that focus more on finding the best students than faying to "nurture good students". But amid the crossfire between the government and universities, the country's 10th graders are feeling the stress. On online protest sites, some are calling themselves a “cursed generation” and “mice in a lab experiment”. It all seems a touch me lodramatic, but that's the South Korean school system.11. According to the passage, the new college-entrance system is designed toA. require students to sit for more college-entrance tests.B. reduce the weight of college-entrance tests.C. select students on their high school grades only.D. reduce the number of prospective college applicants.12. What seems to be the effect of introducing the new system?A. The system has given equal opportunities to students.B. The system has reduced the number of cram schools.C. The system has intensified competition among schools.D. The system has increased students' study load.13. According to critics, the popularity of private education is mainly the result ofA. the government's egalitarian policy.B. insufficient number of schools:C. curriculums of average quality.D. low cost of private education.14. According to the passage, there seems to be disagreement over the adoption of the new system between the following groups EXCEPTA. between universities and the government.B. between school experts and the government.C. between parents and schools.D. between parents and the government.15. Which of the following adjectives best describes the author's treatment of the topic?A. Objective.B. Positive.C. Negative.D. Biased.TEXT BWilfred Emmanuel-Jones was a teenager before he saw his first cow in his first field. Born in Jamaica, the 47-year-old grew up in inner-city Birmingham before making a career as a television producer and launching his own marketing agency. But deep down he always nurtured every true Englishman's dream of a rustic life, a dream that his entrepreneurial wealth has allowed him to satisfy. These days he's the owner of a thriving 12-hectare farm in deepest Devon with cattle, sheep and pigs. His latest business venture: pushing his brand of Black Fanner gourmet sausages and barbecue sauces. “My background may be very urban,” says Emmanuel-Jones. “But it has given me a good idea of what other urbanites want.”And of how to sell it. Emmanuel-Jones joins a herd of wealthy fugitives from city life who are bringing a new commercial know-how to British farming. Britain's burgeoning farmers' markets -numbers have doubled to at least 500 in the last five years—swarm with specialty cheesemakers, beekeepers or organic smallholders who are redeploying the business skills they learned in the city. "Everyone in the rural community has to come to terms with the fact that things have changed." Says Emmanuel-Jones. "You can produce the best food in the world, but if you don't know how to market it, you are wasting your time. We are helping the traditionalists to move on."The emergence of the new class of superpeasants reflects some old yearnings. If the British were the first nation to industrialize, they were also the first to head back to the land. "There is this romantic image of the countryside that is particularly English," says Alun Howkins of the University of Sussex, who reckons the population of rural England has been rising since 1911. Migration into rural areas is now running at about 100,000 a year, and the hunger for a taste of the rural life has kept land prices buoyant even as agricultural incomes tumble. About 40 percent of all farmland is now sold to "lifestyle buyers" rather than the dwindling number of traditional farmers, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.What's new about the latest returnees is their affluence and zeal for the business of producing quality foods, if only at a micro-level. A healthy economy and surging London house prices have helped to ease the escape of the would-be rustics. The media recognize and feed the fantasy. One of the big TV hits of recent years, the "River Cottage" series, chronicled the attempts of a London chef to run his own Dorset farm.Naturally, the newcomers can't hope to match their City salaries, but many are happy to trade any loss of income for the extra job satisfaction. Who cares if there's no six-figure annual bonus when the land offers other incalculable compensations?Besides, the specialist producers can at least depend on a burgeoning market for their products. Today's eco-aware generation loves to seek out authentic ingredients. "People like me may be making a difference in a small way," Jan McCourt, a onetime investment banker now running his own 40-hectare spread in the English Midlands stocked with rare breeds.Optimists see signs of far-reaching change: Britain isn't catching up with mainland Europe; it's leading the way. “Unlike most other countries, where art isanal food production is being eroded, here it is being recovered," says food writer Matthew Fort. “It may be the mark of the next stage of civilization that we rediscover the desirability of being a peasant.” And not an investment banker.16. Which of the following details of Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones is INCORRECT?A. He was born and brought up in Birmingham.B. He used to work in the television industry.C. He is wealthy, adventurous and aspiring.D. He is now selling his own quality foods.17. Most importantly, people like Wilfred have brought to traditional British farmingA. knowledge of farming.B. knowledge of brand names.C. knowledge of lifestyle.D. knowledge of marketing,18. Which of the following does NOT contribute to the emergence of a new class of farmers?A. Strong desire for country life.B. Longing for greater wealth,C. Influence of TV productions.D. Enthusiasm for quality food business.19. What is seen as their additional source of new income?A. Modern tendency to buy natural foods.B. Increase in the value of land property.C. Raising and selling rare live stock. VD. Publicity as a result of media coverage.20. The sentence in the last paragraph “...Britain isn't catching up with mainland Europe; it's leading the way" implies thatA. Britain has taken a different path to boost economy.B. more authentic foods are being produced in Britain.C. the British are heading back to the countryside.D. the Europeans are showing great interest in country life.TEXT CIn Barcelona the Catalonians call them castells, but these aren't stereotypical castles in Spain. These castles are made up of human beings, not stone. The people who perform this agile feat of acrobatics are called castellers, and to see their towers take shape is to observe a marvel of human cooperation.First the castellers form what looks like a gigantic rugby scrummage. They are the foundation blocks of the castle. Behind them, other people press together, forming outward-radiating ramparts of inward-pushing muscle: flying buttresses for the castle. Then sturdy but lighter castellers scramble over the backs of those at the bottom and stand, barefoot, on their shoulders—then still others, each time adding a higher "story".These human towers can rise higher than small apar tment buildings: nine “stories”, 35 feet into the air. Then, just When it seems this tower of humanity can't defy gravity any longer, a little kid emerges from the crowd and climbs straight up to the top. Arms extended, the child grins while waving to the cheering crowd far below. Dressed in their traditional costumes, the castellers seem to epitomize an easier time, before Barcelona became a world metropolis arid the Mediterranean's most dynamic city. But when you observe-them tip close, in their street clothes, at practice, you see there's nothing easy about what the castellers do - and that they are not merely reenacting an ancient ritual.None of the castellers can-give a logical answer as to why they love doing this. But Victor Luna, 16, touches me on the shoulder and says in English: "We do it because it's beautiful. We do it because we are Catalan."Barcelona’s mother tongue is Catalan, and to understand Barcelona, you must understand two words of Catalan: seny and rauxa. Seny pretty much translates as common sense, or the ability to make money, arrange things, and get things done. Rauxa is reminiscent of our words “raucous” and “ruckus”.What makes the castellers revealing of the city is that they embody rauxa and seny. The idea of a human castle is rauxa—it defies common sense—but to watch one going up is to see seny in action. Success is based on everyone working together to achieve a shared goal.The success of Carlos Tusquets' bank, Fibanc, shows seny at work in everyday life. The bank started as a family concern and now employs hundreds. Tusquets said it exemplifies how the economy in Barcelona is different.Entrepreneurial seny demonstrates why Barcelona and Catalonia—the ancient region of which Barcelona is the capital—are distinct from the rest of Spain yet essential to Spain's emergence, after centuries of repression, as a prosperous, democratic European country. Catalonia, with Barcelona as its dynamo, has turned into an economic powerhouse. Making up 6 percent of Spain’s territory, with a sixth of its people, it accounts for nearly a quarter of Spain's production—everything fromtextiles to computers—even though the rest of Spain has been enjoying its own economic miracle.Hand in hand with seny goes rauxa, and there's no better place to see rauxa in action than on the Ramblas, the venerable, tree-shaded boulevard that, in gentle stages, leads you from the centre of Barcelona down to the port. There are two narrow lanes each way for cars and motorbikes, but it’s the wide centre walkway that makes the Ramblas a front-row seat for Barcelona's longest running theatrical event. Plastic armchairs are set out on the sidewalk. Sit in one of them, and an attendant will come and charge you a small fee. Performance artists throng the Ramblas—stilt walkers, witches caked in charcoal dust, Elvis impersonators. But the real stars are the old women and happily playing children, millionaires on motorbikes, and pimps and women who, upon closer inspection, prove not to be.Aficionados (Fans) of Barcelona love to co mpare notes: “Last night there was a man standing on the balcony of his hotel room,” Mariana Bertagnolli, an Italian photographer, told me. "The balcony was on the second floor. He was naked, and he was talking into a cell phone."There you have it, Barcelona's essence. The man is naked (rauxa), but he is talking into a cell phone (seny).21. From the description in the passage, we learn thatA. all Catalonians can perform castells.B. castells require performers to stand on each other.C. people perform castells in different formations.D. in castells people have to push and pull each other.22. According to the passage, the4mplication of the performance is thatA. the Catalonians are insensible and noisy people.B. the Catalonians show more sense than is expected.C. the Catalonians display paradoxical characteristics.D. the Catalonians think highly of team work.23. The passage cites the following examples EXCEPT __________ to show seny at work.A. development of a bankB. dynamic role in economyC. contribution to national economyD. comparison with other regions24. In the last but two paragraph, the Ramblas is described as “a front-row seat for Barcelona’s longest running theatrical event”. What does it mean?A. On the Ramblas people can see a greater variety of performances.B. The Ramblas provides many front seats for the performances.C. The Ramblas is preferred as an important venue for the events.D. Theatrical performers like to perform on the Ramblas.25. What is the main impression of the scenes on the Ramblas?A. It is bizarre and Outlandish.B. It is of average quality.C. It is conventional and quiet.D. It is of professional standard.TEXT DThe law firm Patrick worked for before he died filed for bankruptcy protection a year after his funeral. After his death, the firm's letterhead properly included him: Patrick S. Lanigan, 1954-1992. He was listed up in the right-hand corner, just above the paralegals. Then the rumors got started and wouldn't stop. Before long, everyone believed he had taken the money and disappeared. After three months, no one on the Gulf Coast believed that he was dead. His name came off the letterhead as the debts piled up.The remaining partners in the law firm were still together, attached unwillingly at the hip by the bondage of mortgages and the bank notes, back when they were rolling and on the verge of serious wealth. They had been joint defendants in several unwinnable lawsuits; thus the bankruptcy. Since Patrick's departure, they had tried every possible way to divorce one another, but nothing would work. Two were raging alcoholics who drank at the office behind locked doors, but nevertogether. The other two were in recovery, still teetering on the brink of sobriety.He took their money. Their millions. Money they had already spent long before it arrived, as only lawyers can do. Money for their richly renovated office building in downtown Biloxi. Money for new homes, yachts, condos in the Caribbean. The money was on the way, approved, the papers signed, orders entered; they could see it, almost touch it when their dead partner—Patrick—snatched it at the last possible second.He was dead. They buried him on February 11, 1992. They had consoled the widow and put his rotten name on their handsome letterhead. Yet six weeks later, he somehow stole their money.They had brawled over who was to blame. Charles Bogan, the firm's senior partner and its iron hand, had insisted the money be wired from its source into a new account offshore, and this made sense after some discussion. It was ninety million bucks, a third of which the firm would keep, and it would be impossible to hide that kind of money in Biloxi, population fifty thousand. Someone at the bank would talk. Soon everyone would know. All four vowed secrecy, even as they made plans to display as much of their new wealth as possible. There had even been talk of a firm jet, a six-seater.So Bogan took his share of the blame. At forty-nine, he was the oldest of the four, and, at the moment, the most stable. He was also responsible for hiring Patrick nine years earlier, and for this he had received no small amount of grief.Doug Vitrano, the litigator, had made the fateful decision to recommend Patrick as the fifth partner. The other three had agreed, and when Patrick Lanigan was added to the firm name, he had access to virtually every file in the office. Bogan, Rapley, Vitrano, Havarac, and Lanigan, Attorneys and Counselors-at-Law. A large ad in the yellow pages claimed "Specialists in Offshore Injuries." Specialists or not, like most firms they would take almost anything if the fees were lucrative. Lots of secretaries and paralegals. Big overhead, and the strongest political connections on the Coast.They were all in their mid- to late forties. Havarac had been raised by his father on a shrimp boat. His hands were still proudly calloused, and he dreamed of choking Patrick until his neck snapped. Rapley was severely depressed and seldom left his home, where he wrote briefs in a dark office in the attic.26. What happened to the four remaining lawyers after Patrick's disappearance?A. They all wanted to divorce their wives.B. They were all heavily involved in debts.C. They were all recovering from drinking.D. They had bought new homes, yachts, etc.27. Which of the following statements contains a metaphor?A. His name came off the letterhead as the debts piled up.B. …they could see it, almost touch it when their dead partner...C. …, attached unwillingly at the hip by the bondage of mortgages...D. …, and for this he had received no small amount of grief.28. According to the passage, what is the main cause of Patrick stealing the money?A. Patrick was made a partner of the firm.B. The partners agreed to have the money transferred.C. Patrick had access to all the files in the firm.D. Bogan decided to hire Patrick nine years earlier.29. The lawyers were described as being all the following EXCEPTA. greedy.B. extravagantC. quarrelsome.D. bad-tempered.30. Which of the following implies a contrast?A. …, and it would be impossible to hide that kind of money in Biloxi, population fifty thousand.B. They had been joint defendants in several unwinnable lawsuits; thus the bankruptcy.C. There had even been talk of a firm jet, a six-seater.D. His name came off the letterhead as the debts piled up.2008年英语专业八级Mini-lecture：(沪友今心提供)1. native language2. 3503. Historical4. India5. commerce6. Boom7. sea travel communication8. conference9. many radios 10. split阅读：(沪友落落提供)阅读一共四篇：韩国的新教育制度引起多方不满；第二篇是讲西班牙人的一些性格；第三篇是英国人热衷自己饲养出售畜牧产品；最后一篇是一个小说节选，四个律师被死去的合伙人骗得破产。

08年高考英语复习题阅读理解篇(含答案与解析)(1)

08年高考英语复习题阅读理解篇(含答案与解析)(1)英语in the past 10 years, america’s national basketball association (nba) has grown increasingly dependent on the rest of the world to supply players.when michael jordan and larry bird won gold in barcelona in 1992, the americans were praised for teaching the world how to play basketball. this season, however, 20 percent of nba rosters (花名册) will be filled by non-americans. nba commissioner david stern happily embraces the trend. on a visit to paris in october, stern outlined his vision for the future, which is likely to see europe hosting nba games by 2010.the nba is now planning to take china by storm.“our experience in china has been that it is going to be explosive in its growth,”said stern. the strategy in china is tv. “we’ve made 14 deals in china with local and national networks on cable and satellite.” the success chinese centre yao ming has paved the way for the nba marketing blitz in china. the nba, which is broadcasted in more than 200 countriesin 42 languages, will put that to the test in october 2004 when the houston rockets play two pre-season games against the sacramento kings in beijing market to compensate for tough times on home soil.“it doesn’t matter where the players come from, all the nba teams now know that they have to scout (寻找)internationally,” said terry lyons, the nba’s vice-president of international public relations. “it has increased the level of competition here.”as frenchman tony parker and argentine emanuel ginobili showed in winning championship rings with the san antonio spurs last season, many people can earn the respect of their america peers. others, such as houston rockets’ chinese centre yao ming— draft pick in 2002—and the detroit pistons’ 18-year-old serb darko milicic—number two overall in this year’s draft—are icons(偶像) in waiting. it is the ultimate (根本的) revolution—the rest of the world teaching the us how to play basketball.1. according to the report, .a. michael jordan is still playing a very important role in nbab. the part played by the foreign players in nba will be greatc. yao ming is to play two pre-season games in nbad. european countries will host the 2004 nba games2. the underlined phrase “take china by storm”has the meaning of .a. nba intends to make china its “marketing center”b. nba is planning to set up some training centers in china.c. there’ll be a big storm when nba comes to a china to play against the sacramento kingsd. the nba’s live basketball games will be broadcasted on all the tvs in china.3. what seems to be the biggest change that is happening to nba?a. nba is expecting more foreign players to join the nba league.b. china’s rapid development in sports affects nba.c. yao ming has taken the place of jordan.d. the nba will stop teaching the world how to play basketball.4. when the writer talked of “home soil”, he wasreferring to .a. farms in the statesb. native americansc. the nba training centerd. the usa5. which of the following can be used as the best title for the passage?a. the non-american basketball playersb. nba is to coming to chinac. the foreign ties that bind the nbad. nba is making big progress答案与解析：1．b 根据第2段20 percent of nba rosters (花名册) will be filled by non-americans. 和文章后半部分terry 说的话it has increased the level of competition here.可判断出外国球员将在nba 起到举足轻重的作用。

全国08年7月自学考试《英语阅读(一)》试题

全国08年7月自学考试《英语阅读（一）》试题全国2008年7月高等教育自学考试英语阅读（一）试题00595I. Careful Reading. (40 points, 2 points for each)Directions: Read the following passages carefully. Decide on the best answers and write the corresponding letters on your Answer Sheet.Passage OneQuestions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.Although no one is certain why migration occurs, there are several theories. One theory is based upon the premise that prehistoric birds of the Northern Hemisphere were forced south during the Ice Age, when glaciers covered large parts of Europe, Asia, and North America. As the glaciers melted, the birds came back to their homelands, spent the summer, and then went south again as the ice advanced in winter. In time, the migration became a habit, and now, although the glaciers have disappeared, the habit continues.Another theory proposes that the ancestral home of all modern birds was the tropics. When the region became overpopulated, many species were crowded north. During the summer, there was plenty of food, but during the winter, scarcity forced them to return to the tropics.A more recent theory, known as photoperiodism, suggests a relationship between increasing daylight and the stimulation, of certain glands in the birds’bodies that may prepare them for migration. One scientist has been able to cause midwinter migrations by exposing birds to artificial periods of daylight. He has concluded that changes occur in the bodies of birds due to seasonal changes in the length of daylight.1. According to one theory, when the glaciers disappeared, birds_______.A. stopped migratingB. continued migratingC. began migrating againD. migrated south and stayed there2. The author states that birds left the tropics because_______.A. there was not enough food there in the winterB. there were too many birdsC. there were too many glaciersD. there was too much daylight3. Why did one scientist expose birds to artificial daylight?A. Because he wanted to test the relationship between daylight and changes in the season.B. Because he wanted to test the relationship between migration and temperature.C. Because he wanted to test the relationship between daylight and migration.D. Because he wanted to test the relationship between daylight and a disease of the glands common to birds.4. According to the theory of photoperiodism, _______.A. birds should migrate in the middle of the winterB. increasing daylight increases the distance of migrationC. seasonal changes in the length of days do not affect migrationD. longer days cause changes in the bodies of birds5. This passage supports the belief that _______.A. exact reasons for migration are not knownB. birds migrate because of changes in temperatureC. the ancestral home of all birds was the tropicsD. glaciers caused birds to migratePassage TwoQuestions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage.When Christopher Columbus landed in the New World, the North American continent was an area of astonishing ethnic and cultural diversity. North of the Rio Grande, which now marks the border between the United States and Mexico, has a population of over 12 million people representing approximately 400 distinct cultures, 500 languages, and a remarkable variety of political and religious institutions and physical and ethnic types, Compared to the Europeans, the Indian peoples were extraordinarily heterogeneous, and they often viewed the Europeans as just another tribe.These varied tribal cultures were as diversified as the land the Indians inhabited. In the high plains of the Dakotas, the Mandan developed a peaceful communal society centered around agriculture. Only a few hundred miles away, however, in northwestern Montana, the Blackfeet turned from agriculture and began to use horses, which had been introduced by the Spaniards. As skilled riders, they became hunters and fighters and developed a fierce and aggressive culture centered around the buffalo. In the eastern woodlands surrounding the Great Lakes, the Potawatomis were expert fishermen, canoe builders, and hunters. In the Northeast, the six Iroquois nations were among the most politically sophisticated people in the world, forming the famed Iroquois Confederation, which included the Senecas and the Mohawks. This confederation, with its system of checks and balances, provided a model for the United States Constitution.6. About how many different cultures existed among the fifteenth-century North American Indians?A. 400.B. 500.C. 600.D. 1200.7. The Mandan tribes could best be classified as ________.A. huntersB. canoe buildersC. farmersD. fishermen8. Before the introduction of horses, the Blackfeet tribes were________.A. peaceful farmersB. aggressive huntersC. fierce warriorsD. skillful sailors9. It can be inferred from the passage that the life-styles of the various American Indian tribes were influenced most by________.A. contact with other tribesB. environmental resourcesC. contact with EuropeansD. governmental organization10. According to the passage, how was the organization of the Iroquois Confederation a forerunner of the United States Constitution?A. It was a union of smaller units.B. It had a representative governmentC. Its form of government had a sophisticated way of selecting judges.D. Its power was regulated by a system of checks and balances.Passage ThreeQuestions 11 to 15 are based on the following passage.Unfortunately, most of the science fiction films of the 1970s were not much influenced by 2001:A Space Odyssey. Skillfully directed by Stanley Kubrick, 2001, which appeared in 1968, set new standards for science fiction films. During the next decade, every one of the dozens of science fiction movies released was compared to 2001, and all but a few were found sadly lacking.Admittedly, Kubrick had one of the largest budgets ever for a film of this kind, but, in my opinion, much of the movie’s power and appeal was achieved through relatively inexpensive means. For example, the musical score, which was adapted in large part from well-known classical compositions, was reinforced by the use of almost kaleidoscopic visual effects, especially during the space travel sequences. Spectacular camera work was edited to correspond precisely to the ebb and flow of the music.After 2001, the dominant theme of science fiction films shifted from the adventures of space travel to the problems created on earth by man’s mismanagement of the natural environment and the abuse of technology by a totalitarian state. Overpopulation and the accompanying shortages of food prompt the state to impose extraordinary controls on its citizens. No fewer than twenty-nine films were made around this theme in the years between 1970 and 1977, including Survivors and Chronicles.In the opinion of this reviewer, until Star Wars was released in 1977, science fiction films were reduced to shallow symbolism disguising to a greater or lesser degree a series of repetitive plots. But Star Wars was different. It offered us a return to imaginative voyages in space and confrontation with intelligent life on other planets. Unlike the other science fiction films of the decade, Star Wars presented technology as having solved rather than aggravated ecological problems. The special effects created to simulate space vehicles hurtling through the blackness of the universe were reminiscent of the artistic standards set by 2001.11. In the author’s opinion, most of the science fiction films released in the 1970s were _______.A. better than 2001:A Space OdysseyB. not as good as 2001: A Space OdysseyC. almost the same as Star WarsD. better than Star Wars12. The theme of the majority of science fiction films made between 1970 and 1977 was _______.A. space travelB. life on other planetsC. ecological problems on earthD. wars between the earth and other planets13. The author believes that the best science fiction movie made in the 1970s was _______.A. 2001: A Space OdysseyB. SurvivorsC. ChroniclesD. Star Wars14. In the author’s opinion, why was 2001 successful?A. Because its budget was large.B. Because its camera work and musical score were blended artistically.C. Because its plot was repetitive.D. Because its symbolism was very good.15. What does the author most object to in the science fiction movies of the 1970s?A. He objects to their camera work.B. He does not like their music.C. He believes that their stories are too much alike.D. He criticizes their special effects.Passage FourQuestions 16 to 20 are based on the following passage.As the South was beginning to find itself after the American Civil War, the North, too, focused its interest on the lands below the Mason-Dixon Line. Northerners swarmed over the South: journalists, agents of prospective investors, speculators with plans for railroads, writers anxious to expose themselves to a new environment.One of these was Constance Fenimore Woolson, a young woman from New Hampshire, a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, who, like many Northerners, was drawn to the unhappy South by affection, compassion, admiration, or the charm of the life there. With her singular gift of minute observation and a talent for analysis, her imagination lingered over the relics of the ancient South, the quaintly emblazoned tablets and colonial tombs, the wrecked old mansions that stood near by, perhaps in ruined rice lands, amid desolated fields and broken dikes. Such was the dwelling on the Georgia sea island that sidled and leaned in Jupiter Lights with one of its roofless wings falling into the cellar. After St. Augustine, Charleston especially attracted Miss Woolson, crumbling as it was but aristocratic still.In a later novel, Horace Chase, one of the best of all her books, she anticipated Thomas Wolfe in describing Asheville, in which the young capitalist from the North who falls in love with the Southern girl sees the “Lone Star” of future mountain resorts.Miss Woolson was a highly conscious writer, careful, skillful, subtle, with a sensitive, clairvoyant feeling for human nature, with the gift of discriminating observation that characterized Howells and Henry James, two famous realistic writers. She was surely best in her stories of the South, fascinated as she was by its splendor and carelessness, its tropical plants, flowers , odors and birds, and the pathos and beauty of the old order as she saw it in decay.16. Which of the following is the best title for the passage?A. The Rebuilding of the South.B. Literature after the Civil War.C. Thomas Wolfe’s Influence on Woolson.D. Constance Fenimore Woolson and Her works.17. _______are NOT mentioned in the passage as the kind of people who went to the South after the Civil War.A. Railroad buildersB. Newspaper writersC. Northern politiciansD. Investment agents18. According to the passage, Constance Fenimore Woolson was originally from_______.A. St. AugustineB. GeorgiaC. CharlestonD. New Hampshire19. The word “drawn” in the first sentence of the second paragraph is closest in meaning to _______A. attractedB. sketchedC. tracedD. hauled20. The author mentions Howells and James to _______.A. explain why Woolson chose writing as a careerB. suggest that Woolson was the object of discriminationC. compare Woolson to some of her fellow writersD. question modern opinion of Woolson’s abilitiesII. Speed Reading. (10 points, 1 point for each)Directions: Skim or scan the following passages. Decide on the best answers and write the corresponding letters on your Answer Sheet.Passage FiveQuestions 21-25 are based on the following passage.The first books were quite different from the books of today. They were made of baked clay tablets. Some of these tablets that have been found were used in Mesopotamia about fifty-five hundred years ago. The people of that time used symbols to represent their language. When the clay was soft, the symbols were written in the clay. After the tablets were baked, the clay hardened and the messages were permanently preserved. Most of the tablets that have been found are business records, such as deeds to certain lands in the area.The Egyptians found a material that was more convenient to write on than clay. They used the bark of the papyrus, a grassy plant that grows wild in the Nile Valley. They pasted layers of this bark together to make long sheets—sometimes over 100 feet long. A wooden roller was attached to each end of the sheet so that a small portion could be read, and then the papyrus could be rolled up a little to reveal a new portion of writing. Because this method was employed, the Egyptian writing was done in columns, reading from top to bottom.For centuries, this type of book was used in Greece, Egypt, China and Rome. The Romans made roll books of vellum, a soft parchment made from the skins of young animals such as lambs, kids or calves. About 300 A.D. a new type of book was developed: three or four sheets of vellum were folded and sewn together. Then the ends were cut so that the pages could be turned.The Chinese began printing books during the Middle Ages, long before the Europeans. Their printing type was made of baked clay and their books were made of paper—another Chinese invention. The Chinese books looked very much like our modern books. However, the Chinese had little or no contact with Europe at that time, so it is not clear whether the Europeans learned about printing from the Chinese.The first known inventor of printing in Europe was Johannes Gutenberg of Germany. The first book printed in his workshop was a Latin Bible. A few copies of this first book still exist. They are now over 500 years old. The Gutenberg Bible was printed on a hand press with type made of lead. Most of the copies were printed on paper, but a few were printed on vellum. The books are about 12 inches wide and 16.5 inches long.21. The oldest books found were made of _______ .A. clayB. woodC. stoneD. papyrus22. The oldest books known were found in _______ .A. EuropeB. AfricaC. MesopotamiaD. China23. The first printed books were made by the _______ .A. ChineseB. EgyptiansC. GermansD. French24. The Romans made a new kind of book out of _______ .A. bull skinsB. the bark of certain treesC. papyrusD. vellum25. The Gutenberg Bible was about _______ .A. 1.5 feet wideB. 16 inches wideC. 12 inches wideD. 7 inches widePassage SixQuestions 26-30 are based on the following passage.Sequoyah was born about 1770 in the village of Taskigi. He was a Cherokee Indian, and, along with his entire tribe, he was illiterate. As a result of a hunting accident that left him partially crippled, he enjoyed more leisure time than other tribesmen. Then he began to ponder the idea that the Indian people might also come t o possess the secret of the “talking leaf”. Alone in the woods, he spent hours playing with pieces of wood or making odd little marks on one stone with another. Neither his wife nor his friends offered him any encouragement, and many ridiculed him. However, Sequoyah was obsessed with his dream of developing an alphabet for the Cherokee language.At first, Sequoyah tried to give every word a separate character, but eventually he realized the futility of such an approach and settled on assigning one character to each sound. What he achieved twelve years later was a syllabary of eighty-six characters representing all of the sounds of Cherokee. In combination, they produced a written language of remarkable simplicity and effectiveness. It was so simple, in fact, that it could be learned in a few days. Within a matter of months, a population that had been entirely illiterate became almost entirely literate.As a tribute to this great Indian educator, the tallest trees in North America, the Sierra Redwoods, were given the name Sequoyahs.26. From this passage, we know that Sequoyah was _______ .A. a very tall personB. a Taskigi IndianC. a married manD. easily discouraged27. Sequoyah had more free time than the other tribesmen did because he was _______ .A. developing an alphabetB. a hunterC. a very old manD. crippled28. Sequoyah spent so much time in the woods because _______ .A. he did not have any friendsB. he liked to playC. he was experimenting with a system of an alphabetD. he was hunting for food29. The Cherokee alphabet _______ .A. had a separate character for each wordB. had a separate character for each soundC. was very complicated to learnD. was not accepted by the tribe30. How long did it take Sequoyah to develop his alphabet?A. A few days.B. Several months.C. Twelve years.D. All of his life.III. Discourse Cloze. (10 points, 1 point for each)Directions: The following passage is taken from the textbook. Read the passage and fill in thenumbered spaces (there are more suggested answers than necessary). Write the letters of your answers on the Answer Sheet.American society is much more informal than that of many other countries and, in some ways, is characterized by less social distinction. The American mixture of pride in achievement and sense of “I’m just as good as anybody else.” along with lack of importance placed on personal dignity, is difficult for a foreigner to understand. (31) ________, and they grumble loudly about inconveniences or nor getting a “fair deal.” Yet they do not make a point of their personal honor.(32) ______, John Whyte in American Words and Ways gives the following account.A… professor was once sent a bill for hospital services which he had never enjoyed. The bill was accompanied by a strong letter demanding payment. (33) _____, but the professor, thoroughly aroused by this reflection on his character and financial integrity, wrote a vigorous letter of reply (which an American might also have done). But in this letter of reply he demanded that the creditor write him a formal letter of apology for this reflection on his honor. Since no publicity could possibly have been given to the mistake, for mistake it was, most Americans in that situation, after getting the matter off their chest (or without doing that) would have let the matter rest.An example of the same thing may be that although Americans like to talk about their accomplishments, it is their custom to show certain modesty in reply to compliments. (34) _____, which, incidentally, is a very polite thing to do in America, the American turns it aside. If someone should say, “Congratulations upon being elected president of the club,” an American i s expected to reply, “Well, I hope I can do a good job,” or something of the sort. Or if someone says, “That’s a pretty blue necktie you are wearing,” an American is likely to say, “I’m glad you like it,” or “Thank you. My wife gave it to me for my birthday.” The response to a compliment seldom conveys the idea, “I, too ,think I’m pretty good.”(35) ______. Students do not rise when a teacher enters the room. One does not always address a person by his title, such as “Professor” or “Doctor” (“Doctor” is always used, however, for a doctor of medicine). The respectful “sir” is not always used in the northern and western parts of the country.Clothing in America, as in every place in the world, to a certain degree reflects a person’s social position and income, or, at least among the young , his attitudes toward society or toward himself. (36) ________. A bank president may wear overalls to paint his house and is not ashamed of either the job or the clothing, and a common laborer may wear a rented tuxedo at his daughter’s wedding.Yet in spite of all the informality, (37) _______. For example, one is likely to use somewhat more formal language when talking to superiors. While the informal “Hello” is an acceptable greeting from employee to employer, the e mployee is more apt to say, “Hello, Mr. Ferguson,” whereas the employer may reply, “Hello, Jim.” Southerners make a point of saying “Yes, sir,” or “Yes, ma’am,” or “No, sir,” or “No, ma’am,” when talking to an older person or a person in position of author ity. (38) _______, “Yes ,Mr. Weston” or “No, Mrs. Baker” is somewhat more common in a similar situation in the North or West.(39) ______. Though people wear hats less now than in the past, women still occasionally wear hats in church and at public social functions (except those that are in the evening).(40) ______. He opens the door for her and lets her precede him through it. He walks on the side of the walk nearest the street. He takes her arm when crossing a street or descending a stairway. A younger person also shows respect for an older one in much the same fashion, byhelping the older person in things requiring physical exertion or involving possible accident.(From American Social Relations)A. It was obvious that a mistake in names had been madeB. Likewise, there are fewer social conventions that show social differences in AmericaC. The American is quite ready to admit certain weaknessesD. Americans in general do not like to be considered inferiorE. Yet no person is restricted to a certain uniform or manner of dress because of his occupations or class in societyF. Although this is a good form all over the United StatesG. In America there are still customs by which a man may show respect for a womanH. Although Americans are quite informalI. America is not completely without customs that show consciousness of social distinctionJ. When someone praises an American upon his achievement or upon his personal appearance K. Certain other forms of politeness are observed on social occasionsL. As an illustration of the difference between European and American reflection in this respectIV. Word Formations. (10 points, 1 point for each)Directions: Complete each of the following sentences with the proper form of the word in the brackets. Write your answers on the Answer sheet.41. (Europe) Most ______tourists are looking for a sunny beach to lie down.42. (permit) Finally, the old woman was given ______ to adopt Pierre as her son.43. (wealth) John Hancock was a ______ man who helped the patriots in the American Revolution.44. (satisfy) The first experiments were not very ______ because the cloth became sticky in hot weather and cracked in cold weather.45. (able) The Great lakes are all connected by canals, ______ ships to go from the Atlantic Ocean and the St. Lawrence River to Lake Superior.46. (long) The earth is much cooler than the sun, and the wave _____ of the earth’s radiations is much longer than that of sunrays.47. (lonely) Space explorers will have to face such great ______ when they travel far beyond the sun.48. (distant) This is done by changing the _______ between the lens and the film inside the camera.49. (sick) Doctors of that time knew very little about causes of ______ or ways of preventing it.50. (comfort) Mary is very shy. So when she is with strangers she feels _______.V. Gap Filling. (10 points, 1 point for each)Directions: The following passage is taken from the textbook. Fill in the numbered gaps with the correct form of the words or phrases in the box (there are more words than necessary).Write your answers on the Answer Sheet.Louis was from a small town (51) ______ Coupvray, near Paris—he was born on January 4 in1809. Louis became blind (52) ______ accident, when he was 3 years old. Deep in his Dad’s harness workshop, Louis tried to be like his Dad, but it went very wrong; he grabbed an awl,asharp tool for making holes, and the tool slid and hurt his eye. The wound got infected, and the(53) ____ spread, and soon, Louis was blind in both eyes.All of a sudden, Louis needed a new way to learn. He stayed at his old school for two (54) _____ years, but he couldn’t learn everything just by listening. Things were looking up when Louis got a scholarship to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris, when he was 10. But even there, most of the teachers just talked at the students. The library had 14 huge books with raised letters that were very hard to read. Louis was (55) ______.Then in 1821, a former soldier named Charles Barbier visited the school. Barbier (56) ______ his invention called “night writing,” a code of 12 raised dots that let soldiers share top-secret information on the battlefield without (57) ______ having to speak. Unfortunately, the code was too hard for the soldiers, but not for 12-year-old Louis!Louis trimmed Barbier’s 12 dots into 6, ironed out the system by the time he was 15, then published the first-ever braille book in 1829. But did he stop there? No way! In 1837, he added symbols for math and music. But since the public was skeptical, blind students had to study braille on their own. Even at the Royal Institution, where Louis taught after he graduated, braille wasn’t (58) ______ until after his death. Braille began to spread worldwide in 1868, when a group of British men, now (59) ______ as the Royal National Institute for the Blind, took up the cause.Now practically every country in the world uses braille. Braille books have double-sided pages, which (60) ______ a lot of space. Braille signs help blind people get around in public spaces. And, most important, blind people can communicate independently, without needing print.(From Louis Braille)VI. Short Answer Questions. (10 points, 5 points for each)Directions: The following 2 questions are based on Passage Four in this test paper. Read the passage carefully again and answer the questions briefly by referring back to Passage Four.Write your answers on the Answer Sheet.61. According to the passage, what’s the focus of Constance Fenimore Woolson’s imagination?62. According to the passage, what kind of writer is Constance Fenimore Woolson?VII. Translation. (10 points, 2 points for each)Directions: The following excerpt is taken from the textbook. Read the paragraph carefully andtranslate into Chinese each of the numbered and underlined parts. Write your translations on the Answer Sheet.Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. Both men and women, nine times out often, are firmly convinced of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant evidence on both sides. (63) If you are a man, you can point out that most poets and men of science are male; if you are a women, you can retort that so are most criminals. The question is inherently insoluble, but self-esteem conceals this from most people. (64) We are all, whatever part of world we come from, persuaded that our own nation is superior to all others. (65) Seeing that each nation has its characteristic merits and demerits, we adjust our standard of values so as to make out that the merits possessed by our nation are the really important ones, while its demeritsare comparatively trivial. (66) Here, again, the rational man will admit that the question is one to which there is no demonstrably right answer. (67) It is more difficult to deal with the self-esteem of man as man, because we cannot argue out the matter with some nonhuman mind. The only way I know of dealing with this general human conceit is to remind ourselves that man is a brief episode in the life of a small planet in a little corner of the universe, and that for aught we know, other parts of the cosmos may contain beings as superior to ourselves as we are to jellyfish.(From How to Avoid the Foolish Opinions)。