专八阅读理解模拟试题1
英语专八阅读理解模拟试题附带翻译及解析
英语专八阅读理解模拟试题(附带翻译及解析)考研英语阅读理解模拟试题及解析一The majority of successful senior managers do not closely follow the classical rational model of first clarifying goals, assessing the problem, formulating options, estimating likelihoods of success, making a decision, and only then taking action to implement the decision. Rather, in their day-by-day tactical maneuvers, these senior executives rely on what is vaguely termed intuition to manage a network of interrelated problems that require them to deal with ambiguity, inconsistency, novelty, and surprise；and to integrate action into the process of thinking.Generations of writers on management have recognized that some practicing managers rely heavily on intuition. In general, however, such writers display a poor grasp of what intuition is. Some see it as the opposite of rationality; others view it as an excuse for capriciousness.Isenberg's recent research on the cognitive processes of senior managers reveals that managers' intuition is neither of these. Rather, senior managers use intuition in at least five distinct ways. First, they intuitively sense when a problem exists. Second, managers rely on intuition to perform well-learned behavior patterns rapidly. This intuition is not arbitrary or irrational, but is based on years of painstaking practice and hands-on experience that build skills. A third function of intuition is to synthesize isolated bits of data and practice into an integrated picture, often in an Aha！experience. Fourth, some managers use intuition as a check on the results of more rational analysis. Most senior executives are familiar with the formal decision analysis models and tools, and those who use such systematic methods for reaching decisions are occasionally leery of solutions suggested by these methods which run counter to their sense of the correct course of action. Finally, managers can use intuition to bypass in-depth analysis and move rapidly to engender a plausible solution. Used in this way, intuition is an almost instantaneous cognitive process in which a manager recognizes familiar patterns.One of the implications of the intuitive style of executive management is that thinking is inseparable from acting. Since managers often know what is right before they can analyze and explain it, they frequently act first and explain later. Analysis is inextricably tied to action in thinking/acting cycles, in which managers develop thoughts about their companies and organizations not by analyzing a problematic situation and then acting, but by acting and analyzing in close concert.Given the great uncertainty of many of the management issues that they face, senior managers often instigate a course of action simply to learn more about an issue. They then use the results of the action to develop a more complete understanding of the issue. One implication of thinking/acting cycles is that action is often part of defining the problem, not just ofimplementing the solution.1. According to the text, senior managers use intuition in all of the following ways EXCEPT to[A] Speed up of the creation of a solution to a problem.[B] Identify a problem.[C] Bring together disparate facts.[D] Stipulate clear goals.2. The text suggests which of the following about the writers on management mentioned in line 1, paragraph 2？[A] They have criticized managers for not following the classical rational model of decision analysis.[B] They have not based their analyses on a sufficiently large sample of actual managers.[C] They have relied in drawing their conclusions on what managers say rather than on what managers do.[D] They have misunderstood how managers use intuition in making business decisions.3. It can be inferred from the text that which of the following would most probably be one major difference in behavior between Manager X, who uses intuition to reach decisions, and Manager Y, who uses only formal decision analysis？[A] Manager X analyzes first and then acts；Manager Y does not.[B] Manager X checks possible solutions to a problem by systematic analysis；Manager Y does not.[C] Manager X takes action in order to arrive at the solution to a problem；Manager Y does not.[D] Manager Y draws on years of hands-on experience in creating a solution to a problem；Manager X does not.4. The text provides support for which of the following statements？[A] Managers who rely on intuition are more successful than those who rely on formal decision analysis.[B] Managers cannot justify their intuitive decisions.[C] Managers'' intuition works contrary to their rational and analytical skills.[D] Intuition enables managers to employ their practical experience more efficiently.5. Which of the following best describes the organization of the first paragraph of the text？[A] An assertion is made and a specific supporting example is given.[B] A conventional model is dismissed and an alternative introduced.[C] The results of recent research are introduced and summarized.[D] Two opposing points of view are presented and evaluated.答案与考点解析1. 「答案」D「考点解析」这是一道归纳推导题。
英语专业八级阅读模拟考题及答案解析
英语专业八级阅读模拟考题及答案解析英语专业八级阅读模拟考题及答案解析活着就要学习，学习不是为了活着。
以下是店铺为大家搜索整理的英语专业八级阅读模拟考题及答案解析，希望能给大家带来帮助!NCB in InterpolThe organization known to the world as Interpol has sometimesbeen described as an outfit of chisel-jawed gimlet-eyed crimefighters who put their lives in jeopardy every working hour. Lessflatteringly, Interpol has also been described as a huge filingcabinet, stuffed with clerks choking on their own statistics.As with most generalities, there is some truth in both statements. There are, certainly, some grimbattlers of crime to be found working with Interpol. There are, just as surely, those drones shufflingmountains of paper whose cheeks are sallow from indoor life. Consider the charisma of the namealone: INTERPOL, the international police force. Continents leaped in a single bound, oceanscrossed in the space of a breath, villains watched by eyes that never sleep. Surprisingly, a lot of ithappens almost that way.Four groups coordinate and direct the activities of Interpol. One of them is the National CentralBureaus, or NCBs, bodies designated by the member nations to serve as their link with Interpol.These are the front-line troops, the action people. IN the United States, the Treasury Departmentis the National Central Bureau. In the United Kingdom, it is Scotland Yard; the Questura in Italy andthe Melbourne City Police in Australia. Because police organization varies from country, the NCBswere established to act as the one special group to handle Interpol chores and unsure maximumcooperation between nations. Each NCB is usually anofficial government body with police powers ifa country has only one central police authority, that body becomes the National Centre Bureau. Ofcourse, any service appointed as an NCB is bound to its nation’s law and authority and retains itsnational title.Each NCB is connected by radio to the regional station for its geographic zone. The regionalstations are connected to the Central Station in France. The radio network is versatile. Networkstations can monitor the Central station or any regional station. Because of this messages can bebroadcast to more than one station at a time. A coding system determines the urgency of eachmessage so that those with high priority can be given precedence. Besides, other communicationtools, such as radio-teleprinters and phototelegraphy equipment. Permit rapid transfers offingerprints and photographs. Sometimes ever more advanced technology is employed. When thepolice all over the world were looking for a Canadian named George Leray, they turned to the EarlyBird Satellite. Leray had led his gang on a daring holdup of a Montreal bank and gotten away with$4 million. Scotland Yard broadcast Leray’s photo to the world by satellite. An American who sawthe picture in Florida recognized Leray as a man who was living on a yacht in Fort Lauderdaleunder an assumed name. The police were alerted and arrested Leray.1. What is the best title for this passage?[A] The Function of the Interpol. [B] The Quality of the Interpol.[C] The Organization of the Interpol. [D] The Rapid Development of the Interpol.2. The organization of this passage is[A] general to specific. [B] cause and effect.[C] comparison and contrast. [D] development.3. The sentence “stuffed with clerks choking on their own statistics” in the first paragraph is closestin meaning to[A] a lot of employees busying in their work.[B] many office workers busying with various documents.[C] crowded with office workers busying with their own collected data.[D] workers busying in their own information.4. Which is the easiest tool to communicate?[A] Satellite. [B] Radio.[C] Teleprinter. [D] Phototelegraphy.答案详解：1. C. 国际刑警组织。
专业英语八级模拟试卷及答案解析(1)
专业英语八级模拟试卷及答案解析（1）(1~16/共26题)Play00:0010:52Volume第1题The American Two-party System I. Introduction A. the oldest political【T1】______ around the world【T1】______ B. the classical example of two-party system: the American political system —the dominant parties: the Democratic and the【T2】______ parties【T2】______ —the two-party system survived all attempts to assaults C. About dozen parties that nominate【T3】______【T3】______ D. Americans inevitably become one of the two parties because —there is usually no other place to go —most Americans know where they【T4】______ in the system【T4】______ II. Two-party system is so strongly【T5】______ because【T5】______ A The way【T6】______ are conducted: the Americans elect【T6】______ —【T7】______【T7】______ —about 800,000 of other【T8】______,【T8】______ —the congressman from single-member districts B. Organization of the House of Representatives ensures that —major party can maintain its【T9】______【T9】______ —major party is likely to win III. The consequences of the system A the 【T10】______ production of majorities【T10】______ —the competition between two parties —the【T11】______ of the victory of the winning party【T11】______ B. The peaceful【T12】______【T12】______ —the party in power can be overrun by the party out of power —two-party system cannot be destroyed —the【T13】______ can survive the defeat because of 【T13】______ a)the possibility of mamtaining a【T14】______ of the opposition【T14】______ b)the attraction of the support of those opposed to the party in power C. the tendency for the major parties to be【T15】______,【T15】______ e.g. business is conducted across party lines D. The work of the government carried on despite of divided party control第2题【T1】第3题【T2】第4题【T3】第5题【T4】第6题【T5】第7题【T6】第8题【T7】第9题【T8】第10题【T9】第11题【T10】第12题【T11】第13题【T12】第14题【T13】第15题【T14】第16题【T15】下一题(17~21/共26题)Play00:0004:56Volume第17题16．A.It includes all the compensation for loss.B.It includes a certificate of posting.C.It is perfect for sending documents of minor value.D.It is usually handled by very particular couriers.第18题17．A.All kinds of parcels.B.Airway letters.C.Railway letters.D.Inland postal packets.第19题18．A.It is signed by the recipient.B.It provides the recipient confirmation of delivery.C.It is free of charge.D.It will cost less at the time of posting.第20题19．A.The compensation for loss is limited.B.It will pay for valuable items.C.The compensation process is speedy.D.The compensation is inadmissible.第21题20．A.Recorded delivery is suitable for sending valuable things.B.Recorded delivery is a service with extra security.C.The packet is signed for by the addressee and a record is kept by the post office.D.The post office delivers recorded delivery to the addressee in person.上一题下一题(22~26/共26题)Play00:0004:23Volume第22题21．A.The packet should be fastened with adhesive substance.B.The packets should be posted in the mailbox.C.The packets needn´t be posted with relevant fee.D.The packets needn´t be wrapped in a strong cover.第23题22．A.Its contents can resist easy damage.B.Registered post provides a protection against damage.C.Registered post receives no special security treatmentD.There is special security treatment for registered post.第24题23．A.Partially included.B.Already covered.C.Partially stamped.D.Already excluded.第25题24．A.Coupons enclosed in the registered letter envelopes.B.Trading stamps sold by the post office.C.Bank notes and currency notes.D.All precious articles sold by the post office.第26题25．A.Neither of them accepts any airway letters.B.They both deliver mails to the addressee in person.C.Both require that the Advice of Delivery Form be signed by the post office official.D.Recorded delivery doesn´t compensate for bank notes, but registered post does.上一题下一题(27~30/共22题)PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)Directions: In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.(1) When the Viaduct de Millau opened in the south of France in 2004, this tallest bridge in the world won worldwide compliments. German newspapers described how it "floated above the clouds" with" elegance and lightness"and"breathtaking" beauty. In France, papers praised the "immense concrete giant". Was it mere coincidence that the Germans saw beauty where the French saw heft and power? Lera Boroditsky thinks not.(2) A psychologist at Stanford University, she has long been intrigued by an age-old question whose modern form dates to 1956, when linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf asked whether the language we speak shapes the way we think and see the world. If so, then language is not merely a means of expressing thought, but a constraint on it, too. Although philosophers, anthropologists, and others have weighed in, with most concluding that language does not shape thought in any significant way, the field has been notable for a distressing lack of empiricism—as in testable hypotheses and actual data.(3) That´s where Boroditsky comes in. In a series of clever experiments guided by pointed questions, she is amassing evidence that, yes, language shapes thought. The effect is powerful enough, she says, that "the private mental lives of speakers of different languages may differ dramatically," not only when they are thinking in order to speak, "but in all manner of cognitive tasks," including basic sensory perception. "Even a small fluke of grammar"—the gender of nouns—"can have an effect on how people think about things in the world,"she says.(4) As in that bridge, in German, the noun for bridge, Briicke, is feminine. In French, pont is masculine. German speakers saw female features; French speakers, masculine ones. Similarly, Germans describe keys (Schluessel) with words such as hard, heavy, jagged, and metal, while to Spaniards keys (Ilaves) are golden, intricate, little, and lovely. Guess which language interprets key as masculine and which as feminine?(5) Language even shapes what we see. People have a better memory for colors if different shades have distinct names—not English´s light blue and dark blue, for instance, but Russian´s goluboy and sinly. Skeptics of the language-shapes-thought claim have argued that that´s a trivial finding, showing only that people remember what they saw in both a visual form and a verbal one, but not proving that they actually see the hues differently. In an ingenious experiment, however, Boroditsky and colleagues showed volunteers three color swatches and asked them which of the bottom two was the same as the top one. Native Russian speakers were faster than English speakers when the colors had distinct names, suggesting that having a name for something allows you to perceive it more sharply. Similarly, Korean uses one word for "in" when one object is in another snugly (a letter in an envelope), and a different one when an object is in something loosely (an apple in a bowl). Sure enough, Korean adults are better than English speakers at distinguishing tight fit from loose fit.(6) In Australia, the Aboriginal Kuuk Thaayorre use compass directions for every spatial cue rather than right or left, leading to locutions such as "there is an ant on your southeast leg. " The Kuuk Thaayorre are also much more skillful than English speakers at dead reckoning, even in unfamiliar surroundings or strange buildings.Their language" equips them to perform navigational feats once thought beyond human capabilities," Boroditsky wrote on Edge. org.(7) Science has only scratched the surface of how language affects thought. In Russian, verb forms indicate whether the action was completed or not—as in " she ate (and finished) the pizza. " In Turkish, verbs indicate whether the action was observed or merely rumored. Boroditsky would love to run an experiment testing whether native Russian speakers are better than others at noticing if an action is completed, and if Turks have a heightened sensitivity to fact versus hearsay. Similarly, while English says " she broke the bowl," even if it smashed accidentally (she dropped something on it, say), Spanish and Japanese describe the same event more like "the bowl broke itself. " " When we show people video of the same event," says Boroditsky, " Englishspeakers remember who was to blame even in an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers remember it less well than they do intentional actions. It raises questions about whether language affects even something as basic as how we construct our ideas of causality. "第27题In the first paragraph, the author introduces his topic by______.A.explaining a phenomenonB.justifying an assumptionC.posing a contrastD.making a comparison第28题Lera Boroditsky most probably holds the viewpoint that______.nguage expresses thoughtnguage constrains thoughtnguage determines thoughtnguage and thought interact with each other第29题Which of the following statements is TRUE about the languages mentioned in the passage?A.Both the nouns for bridge and key are feminine in German.B.The language of the Aboriginal Kuuk Thaayorre is really helpful for sailing.C.Korean has a larger vocabulary than English in describing colors.D.Whether an action is completed or not is best shown in Spanish.第30题The author uses the following ways to develop paragraphs EXCEPT______.A.cause and effectB.deduction and inductionC.explanationD.definition上一题下一题(31~34/共22题)PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)Directions: In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.(1) What would the holidays be without lots of tiny twinkling lights? Less colorful and festive—but also a lot safer.(2) From living rooms to front porches across the country, homeowners are stringing millions of lights on Christmas trees or eaves and decorating their windowsills with electric, battery-operated or traditional candles. But according to the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, too many are doing so with little regard to the hazards. Last holiday season there were about 200 Christmas tree fires in American homes, caused primarily by faulty lights and resulting in 10 deaths and more than $ 10 million in property loss, the Commission says. Another 14,000 house fires are started yearly by misplaced or mishandled flame candles, causing 170 deaths and$350 million in property loss. And about 10,000 people are treated at emergency rooms for injuries from falls, cuts or shocks while hanging lights or decorations.(3) The biggest causes of holiday fires are " candles and live trees" , said Kim Dulic, a Commission spokeswoman. The agency recommends battery-operated candles instead of real or electric, she said, along with fire-resistant artificial trees—or fresh well-watered trees.(4) A cut tree is fresh, she said, if the bottom of its trunk is sticky with resin and its needles are hard to pull and don´t break when bent. It is too dry if it sheds a shower of needles when bounced on the ground. A harvested tree should be cut about a half inch from the bottom and put in water within no more than three to six hours, said Rick Dungey, the public relations manager of the National Christmas Tree Association, in Chesterfield, Mo. " If you wait any longer, air molecules get in the trunk and they prevent the tree from siphoning water,"Mr. Dungey said, adding that people should water often and never let the water go below the cut end. Once a Christmas tree dries out, it is an accident waiting to happen, said Lorraine Carli, the communications vice president of the National Fire Protection Association, in Quincy, Mass. If ignited, it can be engulfed in seconds.(5) The most common cause is electrical—either an overused electrical system or faulty wiring. Brett Brenner, the president of the Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI), in Rosslyn, Va., said homeowners should make yearly inspections. " Cracked sockets, frayed or bare wires and loose connections can cause a serious shock or start a fire," he said. Use no more than one extension cord per socket, and string no more than three sets of lights together. Wires should not run under carpets or through windows or doors. He said outdoor outlets should be protected by a ground fault circuit interrupter—a breaker that trips with any interruption or problem with the ground wire. (An interrupter usually needs to be installed when an outlet is near or exposed to water; it generally costs less than $ 10.)(6) John Drengenberg, the consumer affairs director of Underwriters Laboratories, the testing group in Northbrook, 111., said that if lights are certified for indoors only, they must not be used outside; those certified for outdoors, however, can be used inside. No matter the kind, he said, if the bulbs are the screw-in type, there should be no more than 50 per outlet. Outdoor lights, he said, should be hung with plastic clip-on hangers, not metal nails or staples, which can pierce insulation and cause a short. And what about those who don´t take down their outdoor lights until the wisteria is in bloom in May? " You should never leave lights up all year round," Mr. Drengenberg said. "They´re not designed for year-round use. "第31题Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage as a cause of the holiday hazards?A.Accidents during decoration.B.Poor quality of bubbles.C.Careless handling of candles.D.Problematic management of lights.第32题According to the passage, what is the BEST choice of Christmas trees?A.A real tree that is soaked in water at the shop.B.A real tree whose needles don´t break when bent.C.An artificial tree with delicate craftsmanship.D.An artificial tree that won´t be engulfed immediately.第33题It can be inferred from Para. 5 that______.A.the ESFI inspects household electrical system annuallyB.electrical devices for outdoor use are not expensiveC.homeowners do not have the particular electrical knowledgeD.an overloaded electrical system or faulty wiring may lead to disasters第34题Which of the following is NOT in accordance with Mr. Drengenberg´s suggestion?A.Never use outdoor lights that are certified for indoor use.B.Put exactly 50 screw-in type bulbs to each outlet.C.Take off the outdoor lights after the Christmas season is over.D.Avoid metal nails or staples when putting on the outdoor lights.上一题下一题(35~37/共22题)PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)Directions: In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.(1) We all know that emotions originate in the brain. But we usually talk about our emotions coming from our hearts. If someone you know doesn´t give up easily, you might say, "He´s got a lot of heart. " Not every culture would agree—for instance, when Italians want to say someone has heart, they say instead,"Ha fegato" : "He has liver. "(2) But what about bad emotions? When you feel so sad or so angry that your heart "aches" , could it actually be true? Two new studies add support to the theory that, yes, what goes on in your mind can break your heart.(3) In the first study, just published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC),a team of eight researchers looking at more than 63,000 women who were participants in the ongoing Nurses´ Health Study, found that those who reported basic symptoms of depression (like feeling down and incapable of happiness) had a higher-than-normal risk of coronary heart disease. And women who were clinically depressed were more than twice as likely as other women to suffer sudden cardiac death. None of the participants had heart problems at the study´s outset, but nearly 8% had symptoms of depression.(4) The researchers theorize that depression might have some direct physiological impact on the heart—like causing it to work harder in the face of stress. The study also found that the more depressed women were, the more likely they were to smoke cigarettes or have high blood pressure and diabetes—not exactly heart-healthy conditions. Or it may be that the antidepressants prescribed to treat those with mood problems were associated with heart ailments; in the study, sudden cardiac death was linked more strongly with antidepressant use than with women´s symptoms of depression.(5) The antidepressant theory is just that—a theory. It could be that the antidepressant takers in the study were simply the most depressed. But if the theory is substantiated by further research, it would add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that antidepressants carry a high risk (particularly for teenagers) when weighed against the drugs´still uncertain benefits. Scientists have already shown that antidepressants are a bad idea for those about to undergo coronary artery bypass surgery.(6) No one is sure exacdy how depression hurts me heart, and one plausible explanation is that the train runs in the opposite direction—a damaged heart and its consequent stress on the bodymight activate, somehow, genes or other physiological changes that contribute to depression.(7) But another new paper, also published in the JACC, lends credit to the idea that it is our moods that work on our hearts and not the other way around. In this paper, researchers from University College London reviewed the findings of 39 previously published articles and found that men who are angry and hostile are significantly more likely to have a cardiac event man those who aren´t. That may sound unsurprising—we all know that anger can stress your heart. But it´s important to note the difference between aggression and just being aggressive. Previous studies have found that so-called type A´s—those who are driven, competitive and obsessed with deadlines—are not more likely to experience heart disease. In other words, your type A co-workers who are annoyingly ambitious and dutiful are no more likely to have a heart attack than you are. Rather, it´s the seething, angry types with underlying hostility who are the ticking time bombs. Anger, it turns out, is physiologically toxic.(8) The authors of the second paper offer the standard theories about how an angry emotion translates to a physical heart attack: angry people have a harder time sleeping; they take prescribed drugs less often; they eat worse, exercise less, smoke more and are fatter. These things add up: compared with the good-humored, those who were angry and hostile—but had no signs of heart problems at the outset—ended up with a 19% higher risk of developing coronary heart disease, according to the University College London paper.(9) The two studies reify gender stereotypes; women get their hearts broken through sadness; men "break" their hearts (via heart attack) through anger. But both studies suggest that men and women have a common interest in understanding that some causes of cardiac disease—poor diet or lack of exercise or bad sleep habits—may have a precipitating cause themselves. Whether male or female, letting yourself get overwhelmed by emotion can damage not only your mind but also that crucial organ, the heart.第35题The relationship between the first study and the second study is that______.A.each presents one side of the pictureB.each presents a different issueC.the second generalizes the firstD.the second proves the first第36题Which of the following has been proven both practically and theoretically?A.Depression has some direct physiological impact on the heart.B.Antidepressants are closely related to heart disease.C.Antidepressants´ disadvantages outweigh their advantages.D.Anger and hostility may contribute to a heart attack.第37题Which of the following expressions is used literally, NOT metaphorically?A.He´s got a lot of heart. (Para. 1)B... .break your heart. (Para. 2)C....the train runs in the opposite direction... (Para.6)D....who are the ticking time bombs. (Para. 7)上一题下一题(38~40/共22题)PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)Directions: In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.(1) A far cry from the pirates and princesses of today, costumes during Halloween´s precursor centuries ago included animal skins and heads, drag getups, and even mechanical horse heads, historians say.(2) Records of the precursor to Halloween—the Celtic new year celebration of Samhain—are extremely threadbare, said Ken Nilsen, professor of Celtic studies at Canada´s St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. "We don´t have actual records telling us what it was like in ancient times, so our knowledge is based principally on folk customs that continued until recent centuries,"Nilsen told National Geographic News.(3) Samhain, however, is known to date back at least 2,000 years, based on analysis of a Celtic bronze calendar discovered in the 1890s in Coligny, France, in what was then called Gaul. The festival marked the end of the Celtic year, when the harvest was gathered and animals were rounded up. It´s said the hides of cattle and other livestock slaughtered at this time were ritually worn during festivities that likely hark back to even earlier pagan beliefs.(4) Ancient Roman writers recorded that tribes in what is now Germany and France held riotous ceremonies where they donned the heads and skins of wild mammals to connect with animal spirits. The custom of wearing animal hides at bonfire-lighted Celtic feast ceremonies survived until recent times, Nilsen notes. " This was certainly done at Martinmas (the November 11 Christian feast of St. Martin) in Ireland and Scotland, which, in the old calendar, would be Halloween,"he said. "There might have been an excess of livestock, so it would make sense to slaughter an animal,"Nilsen said.(5) Samhain night was also a celebration of the dead—the one time the spirits were believed to walk among the living. Again, the earliest rituals aren´t known in detail, but in recent centuries families put out food and even set extra table places for their ancestors at Samhain. It was also a night when people dressed to create mischief and confusion, according to Bettina Arnold of the Center for Celtic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "The spirits of the dead were impersonated by young men dressed with masked, veiled or blackened faces," Arnold wrote in an essay titled Halloween Customs in the Celtic World. These disguises were intended both to protect revelers from any malevolent spirits and to fool households they visited. In Scotland and elsewhere, revelers masquerading as the dead would go around demanding food offerings—a forerunner to today´s trick-or-treating. Nilsen of St. Francis Xavier University added: "People put on costumes which frequently included blackened faces and so on, representing spooks, demons, or whatever. "(6) According to the University of Wisconsin´s Arnold, on Samhain the boundary between the living and the dead was obliterated—as was the boundary between the sexes. Male youths would dress up as girls and vice versa, she wrote. In Wales, for example, groups of mischievous young men in Halloween drag were referred to as hags. In parts of Ireland, a man dressed as a white horse known as Lair Bhan—an ancient Celtic fertility symbol—led noisy processions at Samhain.(7) Many Samhain ensembles were incomplete without the appropriate accessories; lanterns made with hollowed-out turnips and candles. Later transplanted to North America with Irish immigrants, the tradition would be replicated in the fatter form of the pumpkin, a fruit native tothe New World.第38题The knowledge about the ancient Halloween comes from the following EXCEPT______.A.historians´ introductionB.factual and detailed recordsC.today´s Halloween customsD.books written by ancient Roman writers第39题Which of the following statements about Samhain is TRUE?A.It is the forerunner of today´s Halloween.B.It was the celebration of the new year 2,000 years ago.C.It was celebrated first in Coligny, France.D.It is an occasion of family gatherings.第40题On Samhain the boundary between the living and the dead was obliterated by______.A.the dead walking among the livingB.the living masquerading as the deadC.boys dressing up as girlsD.men disguising as white horses上一题下一题(15/22)PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)Directions: In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.第41题PASSAGE ONE上一题下一题(16/22)PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)Directions: In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.第42题PASSAGE TWO上一题下一题(43~45/共22题)PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)Directions: In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.PASSAGE THREE第43题What does "He´s got a lot of heart. " mean according to the author?第44题What does the author aim to indicate by citing the two new studies?第45题What are the factors that may lead to a physical heart attack? (Please list no more than 3 factors.) 上一题下一题(46~48/共22题)PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)Directions: In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.PASSAGE FOUR第46题What did people do at Martinmas according to the passage?第47题Which word is used metaphorically in Para. 6?第48题What´s the origin of pumpkin lantern according to the passage?上一题下一题(49~58/共10题)PART III LANGUAGE USAGELanguage is fantastically complex. Its built-in means ofcombining and recombining(nesting)of its various levels have【M1】______suggested to many leading linguists that language istheoretically infinite though not practical so in everyday usage.【M2】______It almost sounds too complex to be able to detect any significantleveling out of language any more than one could detect byobservation that the sun is burning itself out.As far as I am conscious no linguist seriously purports that【M3】______the restructuring process of language overrides the streamliningprocess resulted in a qualitative positive development of【M4】______language. If we decide that language did originally develop,possibly evolving animal communication, we can only do【M5】______so by assuming evolution to be a universally valid principle This type【M6】______of a priori reasoning was the basic fallacy of pre-NineteenthCentury "speculative grammar" which was pre-scientific in modern【M7】______sense of the word.However, the observable data neither indicate that such a【M8】______period of pre-historic development even existed, nor they【M9】______suggest a cause of the subsequent state of equilibrium or processof simplification that would have to have come into operation atsome time after such a pre-historic development. NoamChomsky, one of the most prominent linguists of the twentiethcentury, has indicated that human language and animalcommunication are not even comparative entities, they are so【M10】______different.第49题【M1】第50题【M2】。
2023年专八英语阅读考试模拟题带答案解析
2023年专八英语阅读考试模拟题带答案解析2023年专八英语阅读考试模拟题带答案解析1.The black and white stripes of the zebra are most useful form ___________[A]hunters.[B]nocturnal predators[C]lions and tigers.[C]insectivorous Vertrbrata2.Aggressive resemblance occurs when ___________[A]a predaceous attitude is assumed.[B]special resemblance is utilized.[C]an animal relies on speed.3.Special resemblance differs from general resemblance in that the animal relies on ___________[A]its ability to frighten its adversary.[B]speed.[C]its ability to assume an attitude.[D]mistaken identify4.The title below that best expresses the ides of this passage is ___________[A]Cryptic coloration for Protection.[B]How Animals Survive.[C]The uses of Mimicry in Nature.[D]Resemblances of Animals.5.Of the following which is the least mon?[A]protective resemblance.[B]General resemblance.[C]Aggressive resemblance.[D]Special resemblance.Vocabulary1. cryptic 隐藏的，保护的cryptic coloring 保护色，隐藏色2. predaceous 食肉的，捕食其他动物的。
英语专八模拟题_套一(包含答案)
英语专八模拟题_阅读专项练习题一，选择题Passage One(1) At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer's premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on it—took everything but a deed of it—took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk—cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat? —better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, wood-lot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.(2) My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms—the refusal was all I wanted—but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife—every man has such a wife—changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that / had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes, "I am monarch of all I survey. My right there is none to dispute. "(3)I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.(4) The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders—I never heard what compensation he received for that—and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said.(5) All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale—I have always cultivated a garden—was, that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, as long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.(6) Old Cato, whose "De Re Rustica" is my "Cultivator," says—and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage—" When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good. " I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last.1.It can be inferred from Para. 1 that________.2.The author’s attitude indicated in the second paragraph is that________.3.Which of the following statements contains a metaphor?4.According to Para. 5 and Para. 6, what is the author’s attitude towards getting a farm?5.Which of the following statements does the author NOT advocate in the passage? Passage Two(1) Procrastination comes in many disguises. We might resolve to tackle a task, but find endless reasons to defer it. We might prioritize things we can readily tick off our to-do list—answering emails, say—while leaving the big, complex stuff untouched for another day. We can look and feel busy, while artfully avoiding the tasks that really matter. And when we look at those rolling, long-untouched items at the bottom of our to-do list, we can't help but feel a little disappointed in ourselves.(2) The problem is our brains are programmed to procrastinate. In general, we all tend to struggle with tasks that promise future upside in return for efforts we take now. That's because it's easier for our brains to process concrete rather than abstract things, and the immediate hassle is very tangible compared with those unknowable, uncertain future benefits. So the short-term effort easily dominates the long-term upside in our minds—an example of something that behavioral scientists call present bias.(3) How can you become less myopic about your elusive tasks? It's all about rebalancing the cost-benefit analysis: make the benefits of action feel bigger, and the costs of action feel smaller. The reward for doing a pestering task needs to feel larger than the immediate pain of tackling it.(4) To make the benefits of action feel bigger and more real:(5) Visualize how great it will be to get it done. Researchers have discovered that people are more likely to save for their future retirement if they're shown digitally aged photographs of themselves. Why? Because it makes their future self feel more real—making the future benefits of saving also feel more weighty. When we apply a lo-fi version of this technique to any task we've been avoiding, by taking a moment to paint ourselves a vivid mental picture of the benefits of getting it done, it can sometimes be just enough to get us unstuck. So if there's a call you're avoiding or an email you're putting off, give your brain a helping hand by imagining the virtuous sense of satisfaction you'll have once it's done—and perhaps also the look of relief on someone's face as they get from you what they needed.(6) Pre-commit, publicly. Telling people that we're going to get something done can powerfully amplify the appeal of actually taking action, because our brain's reward system is so highly responsive to our social standing. Research has found that it mattersgreatly to us whether we're respected by others—even by strangers. Most of us don't want to look foolish or lazy to other people. So by daring to say "I'll send you the report by the end of the day" we add social benefits to following through on our promise—which can be just enough to nudge us to bite the bullet.(7) Confront the downside of inaction. Research has found that we're strangely averse to properly evaluating the status quo. While we might weigh the pros and cons of doing something new, we far less often consider the pros and cons of not doing that thing. Known as omission bias, this often leads us to ignore some obvious benefits of getting stuff done. Suppose you're repeatedly putting off the preparation you need to do for an upcoming meeting. You're tempted by more exciting tasks, so you tell yourself you can do it tomorrow (or the day after). But force yourself to think about the downside of putting it off, and you realize that tomorrow will be too late to get hold of the input you really need from colleagues. If you get moving now, you have half a chance of reaching them in time—so finally, your gears creak into action.(8) To make the costs of action feel smaller :(9) Identify the first step. Sometimes we're just daunted by the task we're avoiding. We might have "learnt French" on our to-do list, but who can slot that into the average afternoon? The trick here is to break down big, amorphous tasks into baby steps that you don't feel as effortful. Even better: identify the very smallest first step, something that's so easy that even your present-biased brain can see that the benefits outweigh the costs of effort. So instead of "learn French" you might decide to "email Nicole to ask advice on learning French. " Achieve that small goal, and you'll feel more motivated to take the next small step than if you'd continued to beat yourself up about your lack of language skills.(10) Tie the first step to a treat. We can make the cost of effort feel even smaller if we link that small step to something we're actually looking forward to doing. In other words, tie the task that we're avoiding to something that we're not avoiding. For example, you might allow yourself to read lowbrow magazines or books when you're at the gym, because the guilty pleasure helps dilute your brain's perception of the short-term "cost" of exercising. Likewise, you might muster the self-discipline to complete a slippery task if you promise yourself you'll do it in a nice cafe with a favorite drink in hand.(11) Remove the hidden blockage. Sometimes we find ourselves returning to a task repeatedly, still unwilling to take the first step. We hear a little voice in our head saying, "Yeah, good idea, but...no. " At this point, we need to ask that voice some questions, to figure out what's really making it unappealing to take action. This doesn't necessarily require psychotherapy. Patiently ask yourself a few "why" questions—"why does it feel tough to do this?" and "why's that?"—and the blockage can surface quite quickly. Often, the issue is that a perfectly noble competingcommitment is undermining your motivation. For example, suppose you were finding it hard to stick to an early morning goal-setting routine. A few "whys" might highlight that the challenge stems from your equally strong desire to eat breakfast with your family. Once you've made that conflict more explicit, it's far more likely you'll find a way to overcome it—perhaps by setting your daily goals the night before, or on your commute into work.(12) So the next time you find yourself mystified by your inability to get important tasks done, be kind to yourself. Recognize that your brain needs help if it's going to be less short-sighted. Try taking at least one step to make the benefits of action loom larger, and one to make the costs of action feel smaller. Your languishing to-do list will thank you.6.According to Para. 1, which of the following behavior belongs to procrastination?7.What does the word "upside" in Para. 2 mean?8.It can NOT be inferred from the passage that________.9.Which rhetorical device is used in "...nudge us to bite the bullet" in Para.6?Passage Three(1) You do not need to play in a band to be part of the burgeoning "gig economy. " Nearly everyone has skills or assets they can exploit in their spare time to boost their income—or save money by using one of a new wave of technology-driven services.(2) The market for everything from renting out a spare room or parking space for cash to selling hobby crafts or skills over the Internet is expanding rapidly. Now worth ￡500 million a year, it is expected to grow to ￡9 billion by 2025. Here is how you can participate.PROFIT FROM PROPERTY(3) If you have a spare room in your home, a drive that sits empty or even a garden shed with space not crammed with debris, then there are opportunities to make these dead spaces earn money by finding people who need a room or storage.(4) You can find lodgers through an online marketplace such as gumtree or other online services such as Weroom, mondaytofriday, SpareRoom and EasyRoommate. For those who do not fancy a full-time lodger, then there is the holidaymaker market—with Airbnb and Wimdu among the main options for renting out a room part-time.(5) Homes can also be rented out for film and photography shoots, earning owners between ￡700 and ￡3,000 a day. Location agencies include Shootfactory,Lavish Locations and Amazing Space. Growing demand for space from companies wanting to organize meetings or bonding sessions with fellow workers, who perhaps normally work from home, is another potential gig.(6) A property can prove a valuable asset when offsetting the cost of a holiday. By swapping with other homeowners you can get a free holiday almost anywhere in the world—or earn rental for a home while away. Among the best known of the home-swapping websites are Home Base Holidays, HomeLink, homeforexchange, HomeExchange and Love Home Swap.(7) To rent out your home instead of swapping, consider onefinestay, which does all the hard graft—from preparing your property to rent with toiletries and bed linen, to cleaning once the guests have gone.(8) It is possible to make even the smallest spaces earn their keep by renting outa loft, cupboard, cellar or garden shed to someone needing to store items.(9) Garages and driveways can also be great money-spinners if rented out to drivers wanting an affordable and convenient place to park. According to parking website JustPark, it is possible to earn ￡800 a year on average for a driveway, although in-demand spots near railway stations or music and sports venues can generate ￡3,000 a year.CASH IN ON CARS(10) The average cost of driving a car in London works out at ￡20 an hour, according to car sharing network Zipcar. Its sums take into account the fact a car tends to sit on a drive (or road) for 96 per cent of its lifetime and includes unavoidable bills such as road tax, maintenance, depreciation and insurance.(11) Drivers only actually use their vehicles for 182 hours a year. By giving up car ownership altogether and joining a service such as Zipcar, you can pay as you go, paying ￡5 to ￡10 an hour (plus a membership fee of ￡6 a month or ￡59. 50 a year). You have to be disciplined though, as bringing a motor back late incurs a ￡35 fee.(12) If you prefer to be an owner but want to cut costs, think about hiring out your car to a service such as RideLink. Similar in concept to Zipcar, its fleet is made up of vehicles belonging to thousands of car owners. The difference is that owners set their own prices and renters can often find better value deals than from mainstream hire firms. Car sharing is another boom area where drivers cut journey costs by offering passengers lifts in return for a payment towards fuel costs.(13) Because drivers do not make a profit on such arrangements, it should not impact on motor cover—but check with your insurer first. Mat Gazely knows a thing or two about the gig economy, working for Zopa, one of the biggest players in the peer-to-peer lending market. Such lending allows individuals with spare cash to lend itdirectly to other people at rates far more attractive than they would receive by depositing cash in a bank or building society savings account.TIME IS MONEY(14) Those who have some free time can use their bike to generate extra income. In London, for example, restaurant delivery service Deliveroo employs scores of cyclists and scooter owners to pick up orders from outlets that do not offer their own takeaway service. The pay is ￡6 an hour plus ￡1 per delivery. New arrival, London-based Pedals, also recruits cyclists for delivery jobs posted online that they can pick to fit in with their normal journeys.(15) An alternative is community delivery service Nimber. It connects people wanting items delivered with so-called "bringers"—those who can carry a package while on the move. This means you can earn cash, negotiated online with the sender, by delivering, for example, on a daily commute to work.(16) Over-18s with a mobile phone and handyman skills can consider TaskRabbit,a peer-to-peer website that puts odd-jobbers in touch with those who need tasks done. Once a request for a task is posted, hourly rates are listed for the "taskers" considered most qualified for your job and the buyer chooses.(17) For those with professional skills, such as web design, legal or marketing nous, there is People Per Hour. The website advertises a variety of freelance roles—with job-seekers negotiating directly with the buyer. Those who have an artistic bent and enjoy making things can expand beyond craft fairs by using Etsy, an online marketplace for all things handmade.(18) The instant gratification provided by the gig sector is allowing thousands of participants to convert time into money—but it can be tricky for those whose gig experience takes off to know their responsibilities in terms of financial management, insurance and tax.(19) One key area to watch when joining the gig economy is insurance, especially when renting out areas of your home and property. Brian Brown, at insurance analyst Defaqto, says: "It is likely many kinds of claim will not be paid if an insurer didn't know about a change in circumstance. "(20) " For instance, if you allow someone to use your drive your insurer might exclude certain things, such as damage to fencing or from the leaking of fuel from their vehicle on to your drive. " He also says renting out rooms through Airbnb will most likely mean that any theft or accidental damage claim will be excluded.(21) Humphrey Bowles, of Belong Safe—a provider of insurance with its eyes set on the gig sector—says: "The solutions so far sit with a homesharing website's ' guarantees. ' Many hosts may believe they have insurance when they sign upbecause of the guarantees mentioned and use of phrases such as ‘ peace of mind.’ But in the terms and conditions for Airbnb, for example, it includes wording such as ' Airbnb strongly encourages you to purchase separate insurance that will cover you and your property for losses caused by guests' and ' the entire risk...remains with you.'"(22) Belong Safe, Bowles believes, can alleviate such concerns, allowing hosts to buy cover by the day, when a guest is staying, and covers all risks. Underwritten by insurer Hiscox, it costs from 78 pence a day outside London and up to ￡4 a day in London. One drawback is that the excess is a hefty ￡1,000.(23) Mortgage lenders may also get a bit twitchy with homeowners if they find out they have been letting a room without telling them. In theory, they can call in the loan. David Hollingworth, mortgage broker at London and Country in Bath, says: " With lodgers, a lender will want to receive a ' consent,' so the lodger understands they have no rights if the property is repossessed. "(24) With short-term lets such as Airbnb, it is more of a grey area. He says: "This is something most lenders haven't caught up with yet. Homeowners will find some will be more amenable than others. "10. What does "gig economy" in Para. 1 mean?11. Which of the following is NOT suggested by the author if you have a spare room?12. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT according to the passage?13Which category of writing does the passage belong to?14What is the role of the 18th paragraph in the development of the passage?二，简答题Passage One15. What does the word "cream" in Para. 3 refer to?16. What does the author truly want to get from living in a farm?Passage Two17. According to the author, what is the reason for procrastination?18. What does the author mean by saying "Tie the first step to a treat. " in Para. 10?19. What is the author’s suggestion in the last paragraph? Passage Three20. What should people joining the gig economy keep an eye on?21. What is the main idea of the last seven paragraphs?22. Whom do you think this passage is addressed to?答案：1. 推理判断题。
专八英语考试阅读题训练
专八英语考试阅读题训练2022年专八英语考试阅读题训练有教养的头脑的第一个标志就是善于提问。
以下是店铺为大家搜索整理的2022年专八英语考试阅读题训练，希望能给大家带来帮助! 专八英语考试阅读题训练1The Relationship between Brain Process with Mental ExperienceBy 1950, the results of attempts to relate brain processesto mental experience appeared rather discouraging. Suchvariations in size, shape, chemistry, conduction speed, excitationthreshold, and the like as had been demonstrated in nerve cellsremained negligible in significance for any possible correlationwith the manifold dimensions of mental experience.Near the turn of the century, it had been suggested by Hering that different modes of sensation,such as pain, taste and color, might be correlated with the discharge of specific kinds of nervousenergy, However, subsequently developed methods of recording and analyzing nerve potentialsfailed to reveal any such qualitative diversity. It was possible to demonstrate by other methodsrefined structural differences among neuron types; however, proof was lacking that the quality ofthe impulse or its conduction was influenced by these differences, which seemed instead toinfluence the developmental patterning of the neural circuits. Although qualitative variance amongnerve rigidly disproved, the doctrine was generally abandoned in favor of the opposing view,namely, that nerve impulses are essentially homogeneous in quality and are transmitted as“common currency” throughout the nervous system. According to this theory, it is not the qualityof the sensory nerve impulses thatdetermines the diverse conscious sensations they produce,but, rather, the different areas of the brain into which they discharge, and there is some evidencefor this view. In one experiment, when an electric stimulus was applied to a given sensory field ofthe cerebral cortex of a conscious human subject, it produced a sensation of the appropriatemodality for that particular locus, that is, a visual sensation from the visual cortex, an auditorysensation from the auditory cortex, and so on. Other experiments revealed slight variations in thesize, number, arrangement, and interconnection of the nerve cells, but as for as psychoneuralcorrelations were concerned, the obvious similarities of these sensory fields to each other seemedmuch more remarkable than any of the minute differences.However, cortical as diverse as those of red, black, green and white, or touch, cold, warmth,movement, pain, posture and pressure apparently may arise through activation of the samecortical areas. What seemed to remain was some kind of differential patterning effects in the brainexcitation: it is the difference in the central distribution of impulses that counts. In short, Braintheory suggested a correlation between mental experience and the activity of relativelyhomogenous nerve-cell units conducting essentially homogeneous impulses throughhomogeneous cerebral tissue. To match the multiple dimensions of mental experiencepsychologists could only point to a limitless variation in the spatiotemporal patterning of nerveimpulses.1. Up until 1950, efforts to establish that brain processes and mental experience are related wouldmost likely have been met with[A] vexation [B] irritability [C] discouragement [D] neutrality2. The author mentions “common currency” primarily in order to emphasize the[A] lack of differentiation among nerve impulses in human beings.[B] similarities in the views of the scientists.[C] similarity of sensations of human beings.[D] continuous passage of nerve impulses through the nervous system.3. Which of the following theories is reinforced by the depiction of the experiment in lines 16—19?[A] Cognitive experience manifested by sensory nerve impulses are influenced by the area of thebrain stimulated.[B] Qualitative diversity in nerve potentials can now be studied more accurately.[C] Sensory stimuli are heterogeneous and are greatly influenced by the nerve sensors theyproduce.[D] Differentiation in neural modalities influences the length of nerve transmissions.4. It can be inferred from the passage that which of the following exhibit the LEAST qualitativevariation?[A] Nerve cells. [B] Nerve impulses.[C] Cortical areas. [C] Spatial patterns of nerve impulses.答案详解：1. C. 令人失望。
英语专业八级模拟试题(阅读练习)
英语专业八级模拟试题(阅读练习)A magazines design is more than decoration,more than simple packaging.It expresses the magazines very character.The Atlantic Monthly has long attempted to provide a design environment in which two disparate traditions --literary and journalistic -- can co-exist in pleasurable dignity. The redesign that we introduce with this issue -- the work of our art director, Judy Garlan -- represents, we think, a notable enhancement of that environment. Garlan explains some of what was in her mind as she began to create the new design:" I saw this as an opportunity to bring the look closer to matching the elegance and power of the writing which the magazine is known for. The overall design has to be able to encompass a great diversity of styles and subjects -- urgent pieces of reporting, serious essays, lighter pieces,lifestyle-oriented pieces,short stories,poetry. We dont want lighter pieces to seem too heavy, and we dont want heavier pieces to seem too pretty. We also use a broad range of art and photography, and the design has to work well with that, too. At the same time, the magazine needs to have a consistent feel,needs to underscore the sense that everything in it is part of one Atlantic world. The primary typefaces Garlan chose for this task are Times Roman, for a more readable body type, and Bauer Bodoni,for a more stylish and flexible display type(article titles, large initials, and so on). Other aspects of the new design are structural. The articles in the front of the magazine, which once flowed into one another, now stand on their own, to gain prominence. The Travel column, now featured in every issue, has been moved from the back to the front. As noted in this space last month, the word "Monthly" rejoins "The Atlantic" on the cover, after a decade-long absence. Judy Garlan came to the Atlantic in 1981 after having served as the art director of several other magazines.During her tenure here the Atlantic has won more than 300 awards for visual excellence.from the Society of illustrators,the American Institute of Graphic Arts,the Art Directors Club,Communication Arts, and elsewhere.Garlan was in various ways assisted in the redesign by the entire art-department staff: Robin Gilmore, Barnes, Betsy Urrico, Gillian Kahn,and Lisa Manning.The artist Nicholas Gaetano contributed as well: he redrew our colophon (the figure of Neptune that appears on the contents page)and created the symbols that will appear regularly on this page (a rendition of our building), on the Puzzler page, above the opening of letters, and on the masthead. Gaetano,whose work manages to combine stylish clarity and breezy strength, is the cover artist for this issue.11. Part of the new design is to be concerned with the following EXCEPT______A) variation in the typefaces.B) reorganization of articles in the front.C) creation of the travel column.D) reinstatement of its former name.12. According to the passage, the new design work involves ______A) other artists as well.B) other writers as well.C) only the cover artist.D) only the art director.13. This article aims to ______A) emphasize the importance of a magazine's design.B) introduce the magazine's art director.C) persuade the reader to subscribe to the magazine.D) inform the reader of its new design and features.TEXT BThis rather puts the 1,068 in Missing Persons in the shade. When Dr Nicholls wrote to the Spectator in 1989 asking for names of people whom readers had looked up in the DNB and had been disappointed not to find, she says that she received some 100,000 suggestions. (Well, she had written to "other quality newspapers" too. ) As soon as her committee had whittled the numbers down,the professional problems of an editor began. Contributors didnt file copy on time ; some who did sent too many: 50,000 words instead of 500 is a record, according Dr Nicholls. There remains the dinner-party game of whos out. That is a game that the reviewers have played and will continue to play. Criminals were my initial worry.After all,the original edition of the DNB boasted:Malefactors whose crimes excite a permanent interest have received hardly less attention than benefactors.Mr.John Gross clearly had similar anxieties, for he complains that,while the murderer Christie is in, Crippen is out. One might say in reply that the injustice of the hanging of Evans instead of Christie was a force in the repeal of capital punishment in Britain, as Ludovie Kennedy (the author of Christie entry in Missing Persons) notes.But then Crippen was reputed as the first murderer to be caught by telegraphy (he had tried to escaped by ship to America). It is surprising to find Max Miller excluded when really not very memorable names get in. There has been a conscious effort to put in artists and architects from the Middle Ages.About their lives not much is always known. Of Hugo of Bury St. Edmunds, a 12th-century illuminator whose dates of birth and death are not recorded, his biographer comments:" Whether or not Hugo was a wall-painter, the records f his activities as carver and manuscript painter attest to his versatility". Then there had to be more women, too (12 per cent, against the original DBNs 3), such as Roy Strongs subject, the Tudor painter Levina Teerlinc, of whom he remarks:" her most characteristic feature is ahead attached to a too small, spindly body. Her technique remained awkward, thin and often cursory". Doesnt seem to qualify her as a memorable artist. Yet it may be better than the record of the original DNB, which included lives of people who never existed (such as Merlin) and even managed to give thanks to J. W. Clerke as a contributor, though , as a later edition admits in a shamefaced footnote, "except for the entry in the List of Contributors there is no trace of J. W. Clerke".14. The writer suggests that there is no sense in buying the latest volume ______A) because it is not worth the price.B) because it has fewer entries than before.C) unless one has all the volumes in his collection.D) unless an expanded DNB will come out shortly.15. On the issue of who should be included in the DNB, the writer seems to suggest that ______A) the editors had clear rules to follow.B) there were too many criminals in the entries.C)the editors clearly favoured benefactors.D) the editors were irrational in their choices.16. Crippen was absent from the DNB ______A) because he escaped to the U.S.B)because death sentence had been abolished.C) for reasons not clarified.D) because of the editors' mistake.17. The author quoted a few entries in the last paragraph to ______A) illustrate some features of the DNB.B) give emphasis to his argument.C) impress the reader with its content.D) highlight the people in the Middle Ages.18. Throughout the passage, the writer's tone towards the DNB was______A)complimentary.B) supportive.C) sarcastic.D) bitter.。
专八阅读理解模拟考试试题
专八阅读理解模拟试题（6）Joy and sadness are experienced by people in all cultures around the world, but how can we tell when other people are happy or despondent? It turns out that the expression of many emotions may be universal. Smiling is apparently a universal sign of friendliness and approval. Baring the teeth in a hostile way, asnoted by Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century, may be a universe sign of anger. As the originator of the theory of evolution, Darwin believed that the universal recognition of facial expressions would have survival value. For example, facial expressions could signal the approach of enemies (or friends) in the absence of language.Most investigators concur that certain facial expressions suggest the same emotions in a people. Moreover, people in diverse cultures recognize the emotions manifested by the facial expressions. In classic research Paul Ekman took photographs of people exhibiting the emotions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness. He then asked people around the world to indicate what emotions were being depicted in them. Those queried ranged from European college students to members of the Fore, a tribe that dwells in the New Guinea highlands. All groups including the Fore, who had almost no contact with Western culture, agreed on the portrayed emotions. The Fore also displayed familiar facial expressions when asked how they would respond if they were the characters in stories that called for basic emotional responses. Ekman and his colleagues morerecently obtained similar results in a study of ten cultures in which participants were permitted to report that multiple emotions were shown by facial expressions. The participants generally agreed on which two emotions were being shown and which emotion was more intense.Psychological researchers generally recognize that facial expressions reflect emotional states. Infact, various emotional states give rise to certain patterns of electrical activity in the facial muscles and in the brain. The facial-feedback hypothesis argues, however, that the causal relationship between emotions and facial expressions can also work in the opposite direction. According to this hypothesis, signals from the facial muscles ("feedback") are sent back to emotion centers of the brain, and so a person's facial expression can influence that person's emotional state.ConsiderDarwin's words: "The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it. On the otherhand, the repression, as far as possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions." Can smiling giverise to feelings of good will, for example, and frowning to anger?Psychological research has given rise to some interesting findings concerning the facial-feedback hypothesis. Causing participants in experiments to smile, for example, leads them to report morepositive feelings and to rate cartoons (humorous drawings of people or situations) as being morehumorous. When they are caused to frown, they rate cartoons as being more aggressive.What are the possible links between facial expressions and emotion? One link is arousal, which is the level of activity or preparedness for activity in an organism. Intense contraction of facial muscles,such as those used in signifying fear, heightens arousal. Self-perception of heightened arousal then leads to heightened emotional activity. Other links may involve changes in brain temperature and the release of neurotransmitters (substances that transmit nerve impulses.) The contraction of facial muscles both influences the internal emotional state and reflects it. Ekman has found that theso-called Duchenne smile, which is characterized by "crow's feet" wrinkles around the eyes and asubtle drop in the eye cover fold so that the skin above the eye moves down slightly toward theeyeball, can lead to pleasant feelings.Ekman's observation may be relevant to the British expression "keep a stiff upper lip" as are commendation for handling stress. It might be that a "stiff" lip suppresses emotional response-as long as the lip is not quivering with fear or tension. But when the emotion that leads to stiffening the lip is more intense, and involves strong muscle tension, facial feedback may heighten emotional response.1. The word despondent in the passage is closest in meaning toA curiousB unhappyC thoughtfulD uncertain2. The author mentions "Baring the teeth in a hostile way" in order toA differentiate one possible meaning of a particular facial expression from other meanings of itB upport Darwin's theory of evolutionC provide an example of a facial expression whose meaning is widely understoodD contrast a facial expression that is easily understood with other facial expressions3. The word concur in the passage is closest in meaning toA estimateB agreeC expectD understand4. According to paragraph 2, which of the following was true of the Fore people ofNew Guinea?A They did not want to be shown photographs.B They were famous for their story-telling skills.C They knew very little about Western culture.D They did not encourage the expression of emotions.5. According to the passage, what did Darwin believe would happen to human emotions that werenot expressed?A They would become less intense.B They would last longer than usual.C They would cause problems later.D They would become more negative.参考答案（反白可见）：B C B C A专八阅读理解模拟试题（5）Students of United States history, seeking to identify the circumstances that encouraged the emergence of feminist movements, have thoroughly investigated the mid-nineteenth-centuryAmerican economic and social conditions that affected the status of women. These historians, however, have analyzed less fully the development of specifically feminist ideas and activities during the same period. Furthermore, the ideological origins of feminism in the United States have been obscured because, even when historians did take into account those feminist ideas and activities occurring within the United States, they failed to recognize that feminism was then a truly international movement actually centered in Europe. American feminist activists who have been described as "solitary" and "individual theorists" were in reality connected to a movement -utopian socialism--which was already popularizing feminist ideas in Europe during the two decades that culminated inthe first women's rights conference held at Seneca Falls. New York, in 1848. Thus, a complete understanding of the origins and development of nineteenth-century feminism in the United Statesrequires that the geographical focus be widened to include Europe and that the detailed study already made of social conditions be expanded to include the ideological development of feminism.The earliest and most popular of the utopian socialists were the Saint-Simonians. The specifically feminist part of Saint-Simonianism has, however, been less studied than the group's contribution toearly socialism. This is regrettable on two counts. By 1832 feminism was the central concern ofSaint-Simonianism and entirely absorbed its adherents' energy; hence, by ignoring its feminism. European historians have misunderstood Saint-Simonianism. Moreover, since many feminist ideascan be traced to Saint-Simonianism, European historians' appreciation of later feminism in Franceand the United States remained limited.Saint-Simon's followers, many of whom were women, based their feminism on an interpretation ofhis project to reorganize the globe by replacing brute force with the rule of spiritual powers. Thenew world order would be ruled together by a male, to represent reflection, and a female, to represent sentiment. This complementarity reflects the fact that, while the Saint-Simonians did not reject the belief that there were innate differences between men and women, they nevertheless foresaw an equally important social and political role for both sexes in their Utopia.Only a few Saint-Simonians opposed a definition of sexual equality based on gender distinction. This minority believed that individuals of both sexes were born similar in capacity and character, and they ascribed male-female differences to socialization and education. The envisioned result of both currents of thought, however, was that women would enter public life in the new age and that sexual equality would reward men as well as women with an improved way of life.1.It can be inferred that the author considers those historians who describe early feminists in the United States as "solitary" to beA insufficiently familiar with the international origins of nineteenth-century American feminist thoughtB overly concerned with the regional diversity of feminist ideas in the period before 1848C not focused narrowly enough in their geo-graphical scopeD insufficiently aware of the ideological consequences of the Seneca Falls conference2.According to the passage, which of the following is true of the Seneca Falls conference on women's rights?A It was primarily a product of nineteenth-century Saint-Simonian feminist thought.B It was the work of American activists who were independent of feminists abroad.C It was the culminating achievement of the Utopian socialist movement.D It was a manifestation of an international movement for social change and feminism3.The author's attitude toward most European historians who have studied the Saint-Simonians is primarily one ofA approval of the specific focus of their researchB disapproval of their lack of attention to the issue that absorbed most of theSaint-Simonians'energy after 1832C approval of their general focus on social conditionsD disapproval of their lack of attention to links between the Saint-Simonians and their American counterparts4. It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes that study of Saint-Simonianism is necessary for historians of American feminism because such studyA would clarify the ideological origins of those feminist ideas that influenced American feminismB would increase understanding of a movement that deeply influenced the Utopian socialism ofearly American feministsC would focus attention on the most important aspect of Saint-Simonian thought before 1832D promises to offer insight into a movement that was a direct outgrowth of the Seneca Falls conference of 18485. According to the passage, which of the following would be the most accurate description of the society envisioned by most Saint-Simonians?A A society in which women were highly regarded for their extensive educationB A society in which the two genders played complementary roles and had equal statusC A society in which women did not enter public lifeD A social order in which a body of men and women would rule together on the basis of their spiritual power参考答案A DB A B专八阅读理解模拟试题（4）Stratford-on-Avon, as we all know, has only one industry-William Shakespeare-but there are two distinctly separate and increasingly hostile branches. There is the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), which presents superb productions of the plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre on the Avon. And there are the townsfolk who largely live off the tourists who come, not to see the plays, but to look at Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, Shakespeare’s birthplace and the other sights.The worthy residents of Stratford doubt that the theatre adds a penny to their revenue. They frankly dislike the RSC’s actors, them with their long hair and beards and sandals and noisiness. It’s all deliciously ironic when you consider that Shakespeare, who earns their living, was himself anactor (with a beard) and did his share of noise - making.The tourist streams are not entirely separate. The sightseers who come by bus- and often take in Warwick Castle and Blenheim Palace on the side –don’t usually see the plays, and some of them are even surprised to find a theatre in Stratford. However, the playgoers do manage a little sight -seeing along with their play going. It is the playgoers, the RSC contends, who bring in much of thetown’s revenue because they spend the night (some of them four or five nights) pouring cash into the hotels and restaurants. The sightseers can take in everything and get out of town by nightfall.The townsfolk don’t see it this way and local c ouncil does not contribute directly to the subsidy ofthe Royal Shakespeare Company. Stratford cries poor traditionally. Nevertheless every hotel in town seems to be adding a new wing or cocktail lounge. Hilton is building its own hotel there, which you may be sure will be decorated with Hamlet Hamburger Bars, the Lear Lounge, the Banquo Banqueting Room, and so forth, and will be very expensive.Anyway, the townsfolk can’t understand why the Royal Shakespeare Company needs a subsidy. (The theatre has broken attendance records for three years in a row. Last year its 1,431 seats were 94 per cent occupied all year long and this year they’ll do better.) The reason, of course, is that costs have rocketed and ticket prices have stayed low.It would be a shame to raise prices too much because it would drive away the young people who are Stratford’s most attractive clientele. They come entirely for the plays, not the sights. They all seem to look alike (though they come from all over) –lean, pointed, dedicated faces, wearing jeansand sandals, eating their buns and bedding down for the night on the flagstones outside thetheatre to buy the 20 seats and 80 standing-room tickets held for the sleepers and sold to them when the box office opens at 10:30 a.m.1. From the first two paragraphs , we learn thatA. the townsfolk deny the RSC ’ s contribution to the town’s revenueB. the actors of the RSC imitate Shakespeare on and off stageC. the two branches of the RSC are not on good termsD. the townsfolk earn little from tourism2. It can be inferred from Paragraph 3 thatA. the sightseers cannot visit the Castle and the Palace separatelyB. the playgoers spend more money than the sightseersC. the sightseers do more shopping than the playgoersD. the playgoers go to no other places in town than the theater3. By saying “Stratford cries poor traditionally” (Line 2-3, Paragraph 4), the author implies thatA. Stratford cannot afford the expansion projectsB. Stratford has long been in financial difficultiesC. the town is not really short of moneyD. the townsfolk used to be poorly paid4. According to the townsfolk, the RSC deserves no subsidy becauseA. ticket prices can be raised to cover the spendingB. the company is financially ill-managedC. the behavior of the actors is not socially acceptableD. the theatre attendance is on the rise5. From the text we can conclude that the authorA. is supportive of both sidesB. favors the townsfolk’s viewC. takes a detached attitudeD. is sympathetic to the RSC.参考答案A B C D D专八阅读理解模拟试题（3）He was an old man with a white beard and huge nose and hands. Long before the time during which we will know him, he was a doctor and drove a jaded white horse from house to house through the streets of Winesburg. Later he married a girl who had money. She had been left a large fertile farm when her father died. The girl was quiet, tall, and dark, and to many people sheseemed very beautiful. Everyone in Winesburg wondered why she married the doctor. Within a year after the marriage she died.The knuckles of the doctor's hands were extraordinarily large. When the hands were closed they looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as large as walnuts fastened together by steel rods.He smoked a cob pipe and after his wife's death sat all day in his empty office close by a window that was covered with cobwebs. He never opened the window. Once on a hot day in August he tried but found it stuck fast and after that he forgot all about it.Winesburg had forgotten the old man, but in Doctor Reefy there were the seeds of something very fine. Alone in his musty office in the Heffner Block above the Paris Dry Goods Company's store, he worked ceaselessly, building up something that he himself destroyed. Little pyramids of truth he erected and after erecting knocked them down again that he might have the truths to erect other pyramids.Doctor Reefy was a tall man who had worn one suit of clothes for ten years. It was frayed at the sleeves and little holes had appeared at the knees and elbows. In the office he wore also a linen duster with huge pockets into which he continually stuffed scraps of paper. After some weeks the scraps of paper became little hard round balls, and when the pockets were filled he dumped themout upon the floor. For ten years he had but one friend, another old man named John Spaniard who owned a tree nursery. Sometimes, in a playful mood, old Doctor Reefy took from his pockets a handful of the paper balls and threw them at the nursery man. "'That is to confound you, you blithering old sentimentalist," he cried, shaking with laughter.The story of Doctor Reefy and his courtship of the tall dark girl who became his wife and left her money to him is a very curious story. It is delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg. In the fall one walks in the orchards and the ground is hard with frostunder foot. The apples have been taken from the trees by the pickers. They have been put inbarrels and shipped to the cities where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture, and people. On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers haverejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy’ s hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all of its sweetness.One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship on a summer afternoon. He was forty-fivethen and already he had begun the practice of filling his pockets with the scraps of paper thatbecame hard balls and were thrown away. The habit had been formed as he sat in his buggy behind the jaded grey horse and went slowly along country roads. On the papers were written thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings of thoughts.One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made the thoughts. Out of many of them heformed a truth that arose gigantic in his mind. The truth clouded the world. It became terrible and then faded away and the little thoughts began again.The tall dark girl came to see Doctor Reefy because she was in the family way and hadbecome frightened. She was in that condition because of a series of circumstances also curious.The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of land that had come down to her had seta train of suitors on her heels. For two years she saw suitors almost every evening. Except twothey were all alike. They talked to her of passion and there was a strained eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when they looked at her. The two who were different were much unlikeeach other. One of them, a slender young man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When he was with her he was never off the subject. Theother, ablack-haired boy with large ears, said nothing at all but always managed to get her into the darkness, where he began to kiss her.For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry the jeweler's son. For hours she sat in silence listening as he talked to her and then she began to be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she began to think there was a lust greater than in all the others. At times it seemed to her that as he talked he was holding her body in his hands. She imagined him turning it slowly about inthe white hands and staring at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her body and that his jaws were dripping. She had the dream three times, then she became in the family way to theone who said nothing at all but who in the moment of his passion actually did bite her shoulder sothat for days the marks of his teeth showed.After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor Reefy it seemed to her that she never wanted to leavehim again. She went into his office one morning and without her saying anything he seemed to know what had happened to her.In the office of the doctor there was a woman, the wife of the man who kept the bookstore in Winesburg. Like all old-fashioned country practitioners, Doctor Reefy pulled teeth, and the woman who waited held a handkerchief to her teeth and groaned. Her husband was with her and when the tooth was taken out they both screamed and blood ran down on the woman's white dress.The tall dark girl did not pay any attention. When the woman and the man had gone the doctor smiled. "I will take you driving into the country with me," he said.For several weeks the tall dark girl and the doctor were together almost every day. The condition that had brought her to him passed in an illness, but she was like one who has discovered the sweetness of the twisted apples, she could not get her mind fixed again upon theround perfect fruit that is eaten in the city apartments. In the fall after the beginning of her acquaintanceship with him she married Doctor Reefy and in the following spring she died. During the winter he read to her all of the odds and ends of thoughts he had scribbled on the bits of paper. After he had read them he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to become round hard balls.1.According to the story Doctor Reefy’s life seems very ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿.A. eccentricB. normalC. enjoyableD. optimistic2.The story tells us that the tall dark girl was in the family way. The phrase “in the family way”means＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿.A. troubledB. PregnantC. twistedD. cheated3.Doctor Reef lives a ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿life.A. happyB. miserableC. easy-goingD. reckless4. The tall dark girl’s marriage to Doctor Reef proves to be a ＿＿＿＿＿one.A. transientB. understandableC. perfectD. funny5. Doctor Reef’s paper balls probably symbolize his ＿＿＿＿＿＿.A. eagerness to shut himself away from societyB. suppressed desire to communicate with peopleC. optimism about lifeD. cynical attitude towards life参考答案A B B A B专八阅读理解模拟试题（2）As many as one thousand years ago in the Southwest, the Hopi and Zuni Indians of North America were building with adobe－sun baked brick plastered with mud. Their homes looked remarkably like modern apartment houses. Some were four stories high and contained quarters for perhaps a thousand people, along with store rooms for grain and other goods. These buildings were usually put up against cliffs, both to make construction easier and for defense against enemies. They were really villages in themselves, as later Spanish explorers must have realized since they called them "pueblos", which is Spanish for town.The people of the pueblos raised what are called "the three sisters" - corn, beans, and squash. They made excellent pottery and wove marvelous baskets, some so fine that they could hold water. The Southwest has always been a dry country, where water is scarce. The Hopi and Zuni brought water from streams to their fields and gardens through irrigation ditches. Water was so important that it played a major role in their religion. They developed elaborate ceremonies and religious rituals to bring rain.The way of life of less settled groups was simpler and more strongly influenced by nature. Small tribes such as the Shoshone and Ute wandered the dry and mountainous lands between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. They gathered seeds and hunted small animals such as small rabbits and snakes. In the Far North the ancestors of today’s Inuit hunted seals, walruses, and the great whales. They lived right on the frozen seas in shelters called igloos built of blocks of packed snow. When summer came, they fished for salmon and hunted the lordly caribou.The Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Sioux tribes, known as the Plains Indians, lived on the grasslands between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River. They hunted bison, commonly called the buffalo. Its meat was the chief food of these tribes, and its hide was used to make their clothing and covering of their tents and tipis.1. What does the passage mainly discuss?A. The architecture of early American Indian buildings.B. The movement of American Indians across North America.C. Ceremonies and rituals of American Indians.D. The way of life of American Indian tribes in early North America.2. It can be inferred from the passage that the dwellings of the Hopi and Zuni were______.A. very smallB. highly advancedC. difficult to defendD. quickly constructed答案详解1. D) 根据阅读短文可知，作者主要描述了北美地区不同印第安部落的不同的生活方式。
专八模拟试题及答案
专八模拟试题及答案一、听力理解1. 短对话理解听下面一段对话，回答以下问题：- 问题一：What is the man's major?答案：The man's major is Computer Science.- 问题二：Why does the woman suggest going to the library?答案：The woman suggests going to the library because it is quiet and conducive to studying.2. 长对话理解听下面一段较长的对话，回答以下问题：- 问题一：What is the main topic of the conversation?答案：The main topic of the conversation is about the upcoming job interview.- 问题二：What advice does the man give to the woman?答案：The man advises the woman to dress professionally and to arrive early for the interview.二、阅读理解1. 阅读理解A阅读下面的短文，回答以下问题：- 问题一：What is the author's opinion on the importance of a balanced diet?答案：The author believes that a balanced diet is crucial for maintaining good health.- 问题二：According to the passage, what are the benefits of eating vegetables?答案：Eating vegetables provides essential nutrients and helps prevent certain diseases.2. 阅读理解B阅读下面的短文，回答以下问题：- 问题一：What is the main purpose of the text?答案：The main purpose of the text is to discuss the impact of technology on education.- 问题二：How does the author view the role of technology in classrooms?答案：The author views the role of technology in classrooms as a tool that can enhance learning experiences.三、完形填空阅读下面的短文，从所给的选项中选出最佳选项填空：- 空格一：The company has been __________ for its innovative products.选项：A) recognized B) criticized C) ignored D) forgotten 答案：A) recognized- 空格二：Despite the challenges, she remained __________ throughout the project.选项：A) optimistic B) indifferent C) skeptical D) pessimistic答案：A) optimistic四、翻译将下列句子从中文翻译成英文：- 句子一：随着经济的发展，人们对生活质量的要求越来越高。
专八阅读理解模拟考试试题
专八阅读理解模拟考试试题集团标准化工作小组 #Q8QGGQT-GX8G08Q8-GNQGJ8-MHHGN#专八阅读理解模拟试题（6）Joy and sadness are experienced by people in all cultures around the world, but how can we tell when other people are happy or despondent It turns out that the expression of many emotions may be universal. Smiling is apparently a universal sign of friendliness and approval. Baring the teeth in a hostile way, asnoted by Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century, maybe a universe sign of anger. As the originator of the theory of evolution, Darwin believed that the universal recognition of facial expressions would have survival value. For example, facial expressions could signal the approach of enemies (or friends) in the absence of language.Most investigators concur that certain facial expressions suggest the same emotions in a people. Moreover, people in diverse cultures recognize the emotions manifested by the facial expressions. In classic research Paul Ekman took photographs of people exhibiting the emotions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness. He then asked people around the world to indicate what emotions were being depicted in them. Those queried ranged from European college students to members of the Fore, a tribe that dwells in the New Guinea highlands. All groups including the Fore, who had almost no contact with Western culture, agreed on the portrayed emotions. The Fore also displayed familiar facial expressions when asked how they would respond if they were the characters in stories that calledfor basic emotional responses. Ekman and his colleagues morerecently obtained similar results in a study of ten cultures in which participants were permitted to report that multiple emotions were shown by facial expressions. The participants generally agreed on which two emotions were being shown and which emotion was more intense.Psychological researchers generally recognize that facial expressions reflect emotional states. Infact, various emotional states give rise to certain patterns of electrical activity in the facial muscles and in the brain. The facial-feedback hypothesis argues, however, that the causal relationshipbetween emotions and facial expressions can also work in the opposite direction. According to this hypothesis, signals from the facial muscles ("feedback") are sent back to emotion centers of the brain, and so a person's facial expression can influence that person's emotional state.ConsiderDarwin's words: "The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it. On the otherhand, the repression, as far as possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions." Can smiling giverise to feelings of good will, for example, and frowning to angerPsychological research has given rise to some interesting findings concerning the facial-feedback hypothesis. Causing participants in experiments to smile, for example, leads them to report morepositive feelings and to rate cartoons (humorous drawings of people or situations) as being morehumorous. When they are caused to frown, they rate cartoons as being more aggressive.What are the possible links between facial expressions and emotion One link is arousal, which is the level of activity or preparedness for activity in an organism. Intense contraction of facial muscles,such as those used in signifying fear, heightens arousal. Self-perception of heightened arousal then leads to heightened emotional activity. Other links may involve changes in brain temperature and the release of neurotransmitters (substances that transmit nerve impulses.) The contraction of facial muscles both influences the internal emotional state and reflects it. Ekman has found that theso-called Duchenne smile, which is characterized by "crow's feet" wrinkles around the eyes and asubtle drop in the eye cover fold so that the skin above the eye moves down slightly toward theeyeball, can lead to pleasant feelings.Ekman's observation may be relevant to the British expression "keep a stiff upper lip" as are commendation for handling stress. It might be that a "stiff" lip suppresses emotional response-as long as the lip is not quivering with fear or tension. But when the emotion that leads to stiffening the lip ismore intense, and involves strong muscle tension, facial feedback may heighten emotional response.1. The word despondent in the passage is closest in meaning toA curiousB unhappyC thoughtfulD uncertain2. The author mentions "Baring the teeth in a hostile way" in order toA differentiate one possible meaning of a particular facial expression from other meanings of itB upport Darwin's theory of evolutionC provide an example of a facial expression whose meaning is widely understoodD contrast a facial expression that is easily understood with other facial expressions3. The word concur in the passage is closest in meaning toA estimateB agreeC expectD understand4. According to paragraph 2, which of the following was true of the Fore people ofNew Guinea？A They did not want to be shown photographs.B They were famous for their story-telling skills.C They knew very little about Western culture.D They did not encourage the expression of emotions.5. According to the passage, what did Darwin believe would happen to human emotions that werenot expressed？A They would become less intense.B They would last longer than usual.C They would cause problems later.D They would become more negative.参考答案（反白可见）：B C B C A专八阅读理解模拟试题（5）Students of United States history, seeking to identify the circumstances that encouraged the emergence of feminist movements, have thoroughly investigated the mid-nineteenth-century American economic and social conditions that affected the status of women. These historians, however, have analyzed less fully the development of specifically feminist ideas and activities during the same period. Furthermore, the ideological origins of feminism in the United States have been obscured because, even when historians did take into account those feminist ideas and activities occurring within the United States, they failed to recognize that feminism was then a truly international movement actually centered in Europe. American feminist activists who have been described as "solitary" and "individualtheorists" were in reality connected to a movement -utopian socialism--which was already popularizing feminist ideas in Europe during the two decades that culminated inthe first women's rights conference held at Seneca Falls. New York, in 1848. Thus, a complete understanding of the origins and development of nineteenth-century feminism in the United Statesrequires that the geographical focus be widened to include Europe and that the detailed study already made of social conditions be expanded to include the ideological development of feminism.The earliest and most popular of the utopian socialists were the Saint-Simonians. The specifically feminist part of Saint-Simonianism has, however, been less studied than the group's contribution toearly socialism. This is regrettable on two counts. By 1832 feminism was the central concern ofSaint-Simonianism and entirely absorbed its adherents' energy; hence, by ignoring its feminism. European historians have misunderstood Saint-Simonianism. Moreover, since many feminist ideascan be traced to Saint-Simonianism, European historians' appreciation of later feminism in Franceand the United States remained limited.Saint-Simon's followers, many of whom were women, based their feminism on an interpretation ofhis project to reorganize the globe by replacing brute force with the rule of spiritual powers. Thenew world order would be ruled together by a male, to represent reflection, and a female, to represent sentiment. This complementarity reflects the fact that, while the Saint-Simonians did not reject the belief that there were innate differences between men and women, they nevertheless foresaw an equally important social and political role for both sexes in their Utopia.Only a few Saint-Simonians opposed a definition of sexual equality based on gender distinction. This minority believed that individuals of both sexes were born similar in capacity and character, and they ascribed male-female differences to socialization and education. The envisioned result of both currents of thought, however, was that women would enter public life inthe new age and that sexual equality would reward men as well as women with an improved way of life.can be inferred that the author considers those historians who describe early feminists in the United?States as "solitary" to beA insufficiently familiar with the international origins of nineteenth-century American feminist thoughtB overly concerned with the regional diversity of feminist ideas in the period before 1848C not focused narrowly enough in their geo-graphical scopeD insufficiently aware of the ideological consequences of the Seneca Falls conferenceto the passage, which of the following is true of the Seneca Falls conference on women's rights？A It was primarily a product of nineteenth-century Saint-Simonian feminist thought.B It was the work of American activists who were independent of feminists abroad.C It was the culminating achievement of the Utopian socialist movement.D It was a manifestation of an international movement for social change and feminismauthor's attitude toward most European historians who have studied the Saint-Simonians is primarily one ofA approval of the specific focus of their researchB disapproval of their lack of attention to the issue that absorbed most of the Saint-Simonians'energy after 1832C approval of their general focus on social conditionsD disapproval of their lack of attention to links between the Saint-Simonians and their American counterparts4. It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes that study of Saint-Simonianism is necessary for historians of American feminism because such studyA would clarify the ideological origins of those feminist ideas that influenced American feminismB would increase understanding of a movement that deeply influenced the Utopian socialism ofearly American feministsC would focus attention on the most important aspect of Saint-Simonian thought before 1832D promises to offer insight into a movement that was a direct outgrowth of the Seneca Falls conference of 18485. According to the passage, which of the following would be the most accurate description of the society envisioned by most Saint-Simonians？A A society in which women were highly regarded for their extensive educationB A society in which the two genders played complementary roles and had equal statusC A society in which women did not enter public lifeD A social order in which a body of men and women would rule together on the basis of their spiritual power参考答案A DB A B专八阅读理解模拟试题（4）Stratford-on-Avon, as we all know, has only one industry-William Shakespeare-but there are two distinctly separate and increasingly hostile branches. There is the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), which presents superb productions of the plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre on the Avon. And there are the townsfolk who largely live off the tourists who come, not to see the plays, but to look at Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, Shakespeare’s birthplace and the other sights.The worthy residents of Stratford doubt that the theatre adds a penny to their revenue. They frankly dislike the RSC’s actors, them with their long hair and beards and sandals and noisiness. It’s all deliciously ironic when you consider that Shakespeare, who earns their living, was himself anactor (with a beard) and did his share of noise - making.The tourist streams are not entirely separate. The sightseers who come by bus- and often take in Warwick Castle and Blenheim Palace on the side –don’t usually see the plays, and some of th em are even surprised to find a theatre in Stratford. However, the playgoers do manage a little sight -seeing along with their play going. It is the playgoers, the RSC contends, who bring in much of the town’s revenue because they spend the night (some of them four or five nights) pouring cash into the hotels and restaurants. The sightseers can take in everything and get out of town by nightfall.The townsfolk don’t see it this way and local council does not contribute directly to the subsidy ofthe Royal Shakespeare Company. Stratford cries poor traditionally. Nevertheless every hotel in town seems to be adding a new wing or cocktail lounge. Hilton is building its own hotel there, which you may be sure will be decorated with Hamlet Hamburger Bars, the Lear Lounge, the Banquo Banqueting Room, and so forth, and will be very expensive.Anyway, the townsfolk can’t understand why the Royal Shakespeare Company needs a subsidy. (The theatre has broken attendance records for three years in a row. Last year its 1,431 seats were 94 per cent occupied all year long and this year they’ll do better.) The reason, of course, is that costs have rocketed and ticket prices have stayed low.It would be a shame to raise prices too much because it would drive away the young people who are Stratford’s most attractive clientele. They come entirely for the plays, not the sights. They all seem to look alike (though they come from all over) –lean, pointed, dedicated faces, wearing jeansand sandals, eating their buns and bedding down for the night on the flagstones outside thetheatre to buy the 20 seats and 80 standing-room tickets held for the sleepers and sold to them when the box office opens at 10:30 .1. From the first two paragraphs , we learn thatA. the townsfolk deny the RSC ’ s contribution to the town’s revenueB. the actors of the RSC imitate Shakespeare on and off stageC. the two branches of the RSC are not on good termsD. the townsfolk earn little from tourism2. It can be inferred from Paragraph 3 thatA. the sightseers cannot visit the Castle and the Palace separatelyB. the playgoers spend more money than the sightseersC. the sightseers do more shopping than the playgoersD. the playgoers go to no other places in town than the theater3. By saying “Stratford cries poor traditionally” (Line 2-3, Paragraph 4), the author implies thatA. Stratford cannot afford the expansion projectsB. Stratford has long been in financial difficultiesC. the town is not really short of moneyD. the townsfolk used to be poorly paid4. According to the townsfolk, the RSC deserves no subsidy becauseA. ticket prices can be raised to cover the spendingB. the company is financially ill-managedC. the behavior of the actors is not socially acceptableD. the theatre attendance is on the rise5. From the text we can conclude that the authorA. is supportive of both sidesB. favors the townsfolk’s viewC. takes a detached attitudeD. is sympathetic to the RSC.参考答案A B C D D专八阅读理解模拟试题（3）He was an old man with a white beard and huge nose and hands. Long before the time during which we will know him, he was a doctor and drove a jaded white horse from house to house through the streets of Winesburg. Later he married a girl who had money. She had been left a large fertile farm when her father died. The girl was quiet, tall, and dark, and to manypeople she seemed very beautiful. Everyone in Winesburg wondered why she married the doctor. Within a year after the marriage she died.The knuckles of the doctor's hands were extraordinarily large. When the hands were closed they looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as large as walnuts fastened together by steel smoked a cob pipe and after his wife's death sat all day in his empty office close by a window that was covered with cobwebs. He never opened the window. Once on a hot day in August he tried but found it stuck fast and after that he forgot all about it.Winesburg had forgotten the old man, but in Doctor Reefy there were the seeds of something very fine. Alone in his musty office in the Heffner Block above the Paris Dry Goods Company's store, he worked ceaselessly, building up something that he himself destroyed. Little pyramids of truthhe erected and after erecting knocked them down again that he might have the truths to erect other pyramids.Doctor Reefy was a tall man who had worn one suit of clothes for ten years. It was frayed at the sleeves and little holes had appeared at the knees and elbows. In the office he wore also a linen duster with huge pockets into which he continually stuffed scraps of paper. After some weeks the scraps of paper became little hard round balls, and when the pockets were filledhe dumped themout upon the floor. For ten years he had but one friend, another old man named John Spaniard who owned a tree nursery. Sometimes, in a playful mood, old Doctor Reefy took from his pockets a handful of the paper balls and threw them at the nursery man. "'That is to confound you, you blithering old sentimentalist," he cried, shaking with laughter.The story of Doctor Reefy and his courtship of the tall dark girl who became his wife and left her money to him is a very curious story. It is delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg. In the fall one walks in the orchards and the ground is hardwith frostunder foot. The apples have been taken from the trees by thepickers. They have been put inbarrels and shipped to the cities where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture, and people. On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers haverejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy’ s hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all of its runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship on a summer afternoon. He was forty-fivethen and already he had begun the practice of filling his pockets with the scraps of paper thatbecame hard balls and were thrown away. The habit had been formed as he sat in his buggy behind the jaded grey horse and went slowly along country roads. On the papers were written thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings of thoughts.One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made the thoughts. Out of many of them heformed a truth that arose gigantic in his mind. The truth clouded the world. It became terrible and then faded away and the little thoughts began again.The tall dark girl came to see Doctor Reefy because she was in the family way and hadbecome frightened. She was in that condition because of a series of circumstances also curious.The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of land that had come down to her had seta train of suitors on her heels. For two years she saw suitors almost every evening. Except twothey were all alike. They talked to her of passion and there was a strained eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when they looked at her. The two who were different were much unlikeeach other. One of them, a slender young man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When he was with her he was never off the subject. Theother, ablack-haired boy with large ears, said nothing at all but always managed to get her into the darkness, where he began to kiss her.For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry the jeweler's son. For hours she sat in silence listening as he talked to her and then she began to be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she began to think there was a lust greater than in all the others. At times it seemed to her that as he talked he was holding her body in his hands. She imagined him turning it slowly about inthe white hands and staring at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her body and that his jaws were dripping. She had the dream three times, then she became in the family way to theone who said nothing at all but who in the moment of his passion actually did bite her shoulder sothat for days the marks of his teeth showed.After the tall dark girl came to know Doctor Reefy it seemed to her that she never wanted to leavehim again. She went into his office one morning and without her saying anything he seemed to know what had happened to her.In the office of the doctor there was a woman, the wife of the man who kept the bookstore in Winesburg. Like all old-fashioned country practitioners, Doctor Reefy pulled teeth, and the woman who waited held a handkerchief to her teeth and groaned. Her husband was with her and when the tooth was taken out they both screamed and blood ran down on the woman's white tall dark girl did not pay any attention. When the woman and the man had gone the doctor smiled. "I will take you driving into the country with me," he said.For several weeks the tall dark girl and the doctor were together almost every day. The condition that had brought her to him passed in an illness, but she was like one who has discovered the sweetness of the twisted apples, she could not get her mind fixed again upon theround perfect fruit that is eaten in the city apartments. In the fall after the beginning of her acquaintanceship with him she married Doctor Reefy and in the following spring she died. During the winter he read to her all of the odds and endsof thoughts he had scribbled on the bits of paper. After he had read them he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to become round hard balls.to the story Doctor Reefy’s life seems very ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿.A. eccentricB. normalC. enjoyableD. optimisticstory tells us that the tall dark girl was in the family way. The phrase “in the family way”means＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿.A. troubledB. PregnantC. twistedD. cheatedReef lives a ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿ life.A. happyB. miserableC. easy-goingD. reckless4. The tall dark girl’s marriage to Doctor Reef proves to be a ＿＿＿＿＿ one.A. transientB. understandableC. perfectD. funny5. Doctor Reef’s paper balls probably symbolize hi s ＿＿＿＿＿＿.A. eagerness to shut himself away from societyB. suppressed desire to communicate with peopleC. optimism about lifeD. cynical attitude towards life参考答案A B B A B专八阅读理解模拟试题（2）As many as one thousand years ago in the Southwest, the Hopi and Zuni Indians of North America were building with adobe－sun baked brickplastered with mud. Their homes looked remarkably like modern apartment houses. Some were four stories high and contained quarters for perhaps a thousand people, along with store rooms for grain and other goods. These buildings were usually put up against cliffs, both to make construction easier and for defense against enemies. They were really villages in themselves, as later Spanish explorers must have realized since they called them "pueblos", which is Spanish for town.The people of the pueblos raised what are called "the three sisters" - corn, beans, and squash. They made excellent pottery and wove marvelous baskets, some so fine that they could hold water. The Southwest has always been a dry country, where water is scarce. The Hopi and Zuni brought water from streams to their fields and gardens through irrigation ditches. Water was so important that it played a major role in their religion. They developed elaborate ceremonies and religious rituals to bring rain.The way of life of less settled groups was simpler and more strongly influenced by nature. Small tribes such as the Shoshone and Ute wandered the dry and mountainous lands between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. They gathered seeds and hunted small animals such as small rabbits and snakes. In the Far North the ancestors of today’s Inuit hunted seals, walruses, and the great whales. They lived right on the frozen seas in shelters called igloos built of blocks of packed snow. When summer came, they fished for salmon and hunted the lordly caribou.The Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Sioux tribes, known as the Plains Indians, lived on the grasslands between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River. They hunted bison, commonly called the buffalo. Its meat was the chief food of these tribes, and its hide was used to make their clothing and covering of their tents and tipis.1. What does the passage mainly discuss？A. The architecture of early American Indian buildings.B. The movement of American Indians across North America.C. Ceremonies and rituals of American Indians.D. The way of life of American Indian tribes in early North America.2. It can be inferred from the passage that the dwellings of the Hopi and Zuni were______.A. very smallB. highly advancedC. difficult to defendD. quickly constructed答案详解1. D) 根据阅读短文可知，作者主要描述了北美地区不同印第安部落的不同的生活方式。
专业英语八级阅读理解专项强化真题试卷1(题后含答案及解析)
专业英语八级阅读理解专项强化真题试卷1(题后含答案及解析) 题型有：1.(1)Some of the advantages of bilingualism include better performance at tasks involving “ executive function”(which involves the brain’s ability to plan and prioritize), better defense against dementia in old age and—the obvious—the ability to speak a second language. One purported advantage was not mentioned, though. Many multilinguals report different personalities, or even different worldviews, when they speak their different languages. (2)It’s an exciting notion, the idea that one’s very self could be broadened by the mastery of two or more languages. In obvious ways(exposure to new friends, literature and so forth)the self really is broadened. Yet it is different to claim—as many people do—to have a different personality when using a different language. A former Economist colleague, for example, reported being ruder in Hebrew than in English. So what is going on here? (3)Benjamin Lee Whorf, an American linguist who died in 1941, held that each language encodes a worldview that significantly influences its speakers. Often called “Whorfianism”, this idea has its sceptics, but there are still good reasons to believe language shapes thought. (4)This influence is not necessarily linked to the vocabulary or grammar of a second language. Significantly, most people are not symmetrically bilingual. Many have learned one language at home from parents, and another later in life, usually at school. So bilinguals usually have different strengths and weaknesses in their different languages—and they are not always best in their first language. For example, when tested in a foreign language, people are less likely to fall into a cognitive trap(answering a test question with an obvious-seeming but wrong answer)than when tested in their native language. In part this is because working in a second language slows down the thinking. No wonder people feel different when speaking them. And no wonder they feel looser, more spontaneous, perhaps more assertive or funnier or blunter, in the language they were reared in from childhood.(5)What of “crib” bilinguals, raised in two languages? Even they do not usually have perfectly symmetrical competence in their two languages. But even for a speaker whose two languages are very nearly the same in ability, there is another big reason that person will feel different in the two languages. This is because there is an important distinction between bilingualism and biculturalism. (6)Many bilinguals are not bicultural. But some are. And of those bicultural bilinguals, we should be little surprised that they feel different in their two languages. Experiments in psychology have shown the power of “priming”—small unnoticed factors that can affect behavior in big ways. Asking people to tell a happy story, for example, will put them in a better mood. The choice between two languages is a huge prime. Speaking Spanish rather than English, for a bilingual and bicultural Puerto Rican in New York, might conjure feelings of family and home. Switching to English might prime the same person to think of school and work. (7)So there are two very good reasons(asymmetricalability, and priming)that make people feel different speaking their different languages. We are still left with a third kind of argument, though. An economist recently interviewed here at Prospero, Athanasia Chalari, said for example that: Greeks are very loud and they interrupt each other very often. The reason for that is the Greek grammar and syntax. When Greeks talk they begin their sentences with verbs and the form of the verb includes a lot of information so you already know what they are talking about after the first word and can interrupt more easily. (8)Is there something intrinsic to the Greek language that encourages Greeks to interrupt? People seem to enjoy telling tales about their languages’ inherent properties, and how they influence their speakers. A group of French intellectual worthies once proposed, rather self-flatteringly, that French be the sole legal language of the EU, because of its supposedly unmatchable rigor and precision. Some Germans believe that frequently putting the verb at the end of a sentence makes the language especially logical. But language myths are not always self-flattering: many speakers think their languages are unusually illogical or difficult—witness the plethora of books along the lines of “ Only in English do you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway: English must be the craziest language in the world!”We also see some unsurprising overlap with national stereotypes and self-stereotypes: French, rigorous: German, logical: English, playful. Of course. (9)In this case, Ms Chalari, a scholar, at least proposed a specific and plausible line of causation from grammar to personality: in Greek, the verb comes first, and it carries a lot of information, hence easy interrupting. The problem is that many unrelated languages all around the world put the verb at the beginning of sentences. Many languages all around the world are heavily inflected, encoding lots of information in verbs. It would be a striking finding if all of these unrelated languages had speakers more prone to interrupting each other. Welsh, for example, is also both verb-first and about as heavily inflected as Greek, but the Welsh are not known as pushy conversationalists.1．According to the author, which of the following advantages of bilingualism is commonly accepted?A．Personality improvement.B．Better task performance.C．Change of worldviews.D．Avoidance of old-age disease.正确答案：B解析：细节理解题。
英语专八模拟题3_阅读专项练习(包含答案解析)
英语专八（阅读）模拟试卷选择题(本题共14题，每题1.0分，共14分。
Passage One(1) On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city's walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.(2) New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader, and the merchant. It carries on its lapel the unexpungeable odor of the long past, so that no matter where you sit in New York you feel the vibrations of great times and tall deeds, of queer people and events and undertakings. I am sitting at the moment in a stifling hotel room in 90-degree heat, halfway down an air shaft, in midtown. No air moves in or out of the room, yet I am curiously affected by emanations from the immediate surroundings. I am twenty-two blocks from where Rudolph Valentino lay in state, eight blocks from where Nathan Hale was executed, five blocks from the publisher's office where Ernest Hemingway hit Max Eastman on the nose, four miles from where Walt Whitman sat sweating out editorials for the Brooklyn Eagle, thirty-four blocks from the street "Willa Cather lived in when she came to New York to write books about Nebraska, one block from where Marceline used to clown on the boards of the Hippodrome, thirty-six blocks from the spot where the historian Joe Gould kicked a radio to pieces in full view of the public, thirteen blocks from where Harry Thaw shot Stanford White, five blocks from where I used to usher at the Metropolitan Opera and only 112 blocks from the spot where Clarence Day the elder was washed of his sins in the Church of the Epiphany (I could continue this list indefinitely) ; and for that matter I am probably occupying the very room that any number of exalted and somewise memorable characters sat in, some of them on hot, breathless afternoons, lonely and private and full of their own sense of emanations from without.(3) New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute. Since I have been sitting in this miasmic air shaft, a good many rather splashy events have occurred in town. Aman shot and killed his wife in a fit of jealousy. It caused no stir outside his block and got only small mention in the papers. I did not attend. Since my arrival, the greatest air show ever staged in all the world took place in town. I didn't attend and neither did most of the eight million other inhabitants, although they say there was quite a crowd.1 didn't even hear any planes except a couple of westbound commercial airliners that habitually use this air shaft to fly over. The biggest oceangoing ships on the North Atlantic arrived and departed. I didn't notice them and neither did most other New Yorkers. I am told this is the greatest seaport in the world, with 650 miles of waterfront, and ships calling here from many exotic lands, but the only boat I've happened to notice since my arrival was a small sloop tacking out of the East River night before last on the ebb tide when I was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. I heard the Queen Mary blow one midnight, though, and the sound carried the whole history of departure and longing and loss.(4) I mention these events merely to show that New York is peculiarly constructed to absorb almost anything that comes along (whether a thousand-foot liner out of the East or a twenty-thousand-man convention out of the West) without inflicting the event on its inhabitants; so that every event is, in a sense, optional, and the inhabitant is in the happy position of being able to choose his spectacle and so conserve his soul. In most metropolises, small and large, the choice is often not with the individual at all. He is thrown to the Lions. The Lions are overwhelming; the event is unavoidable. (5) Although New York often imparts a feeling of great forlornness or forsakenness, it seldom seems dead or unresourceful; and you always feel that either by shifting your location ten blocks or by reducing your fortune by five dollars you can experience rejuvenation. Many people who have no real independence of spirit depend on the city's tremendous variety and sources of excitement for spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale. In the country there are a few chances of sudden rejuvenation—a shift in weather, perhaps, or something arriving in the mail. But in New York the chances are endless. I think that although many persons are here from some excess of spirit ( which caused them to break away from their small town) , some, too, are here from a deficiency of spirit, who find in New York a protection, or an easy substitution.Answer the following questions:1. According to Para. 1, the author seems to believe that________.2. What figure of speech is used in the fifth sentence of Para. 2?3. Which of the following can BEST describe the main idea of Para. 4?4. What can be inferred from Para. 5?5. Which of the following sentences can summarize the author’s main opinion?Passage Two(1) As a child, I loved Charlie Chaplin films. I would put on my father's shoes and wander about with a trampish gait. Luckily, I never boiled and ate the shoes—I would not see Chaplin do that (in The Gold Rush ) for a few years yet. I am from the last generation that found it quite normal to watch silent films on television. There was nothing arcane or archaic about it. It was an everyday part of BBC 2 programming.(2) As I grew older, my love of Laurel and Hardy remained, but Chaplin went out of favour. The received wisdom that he was overly sentimental meant that it became unfashionable to like him. Keaton was the one to revere; he was considered a more serious clown, with a stone face of existential angst and boasting a collaboration with Samuel Beckett.(3) Why it might be necessary to make a choice between Keaton and Chaplin I have no idea—there is time enough to celebrate both. But I find a surprising number of people who say : " I never really got Chaplin. " Each time I return to Chaplin, I find it harder to understand how anyone can dismiss him. He wrote, produced, directed, starred in and composed the music for a series of powerful, funny, philosophical and moving films. Even the first cinematic outing of the tramp, Kid Auto Races at Venice, can make me laugh 100 years on, as Chaplin repeatedly gets in the way of the news cameras and racing cars with such brazen cheek.(4) Or there is the ludicrous image of Chaplin becoming a wooden hedgehog as he hurls 11 chairs on his back in Behind the Screen, as fresh as any visual comedy being made now.(5) Though the bread-roll dance from The Gold Rush has been so often imitated that it may seem to have lost some of its wonder, watch the sequence again and you will see how intricate something of seeming simplicity is. Johnny Depp spoke of having to imitate it in Benny and Joon and said it took days to get everything just right. It is so much more than it at first seems.(6) That is what makes Chaplin live on—the depth of thought behind each seemingly simple routine. It is never just falling over with a bang, it is acrobatics with aplomb, it is the grace of the chaos. As his biographer Richard Schickel noted, with Chaplin, all that seems solid melts into something else.(7) For those who ask, "But is Chaplin really still funny?" I can promise you that a new generation of children do laugh at Chaplin attempting a tightrope walk while distracted by monkeys in The Circus. There may be many banana-skin routines, but I am pretty sure Chaplin was the first to attempt the banana skin on the tightrope. (8) The Rink is my earliest memory of watching Chaplin. Here he is, a waiter, his faceshowing no servile deference as he works out a bill based on the remnants of food spattered over the diner, the furious and luxuriantly eyebrowed Eric Campbell, before pocketing an unoffered tip. He is lovable, rebellious, coquettish, both worldly and otherworldly. As for the roller-rink routine in that film, I would watch Dancing on Ice if only it were that good.(9) Eric Campbell was also the monstrous street-fighting adversary in Easy Street. Unable to floor him, or even move him with fisticuffs, Chaplin eventually overcomes him by pulling his head into the lamp of a street light and gassing him. Woody Allen declared that Easy Street would be funny in a thousand years from now. The potency of the ridiculousness has made it last nearly a century already.(10) Neil Brand, a fine pianist who frequently accompanies silent film performances, acknowledges that today's audiences have to overcome the mores and attitudes of a bygone age, but says that once that is done, we can still empathize with Chaplin as he responds to overwhelming forces.(11) City Lights, Chaplin's most revered film and highest on the American Film Institute's 100 greatest films list, opens on a scene of accidental rebellion. The grand unveiling of an epic statue is ruined when the drape comes off to reveal the tramp asleep in the arms of the granite god. As the US national anthem plays, the tramp attempts to stand to attention while dangling by the butt of his trousers from the sword of a carved figure.(12) There is set piece after set piece and, though my twenty something self probably sneered at the innocent love story of tramp and blind girl, the fortysomething me is more romantic and easily moved by this tale of a tramp who will do anything for the love of a woman. It also has the best joke with an elephant in any movie I can think of.(13) As for The Great Dictator, amid the drama, social commentary and vivid portrayal of the rising oppression of the Jewish people in Germany, there are moments of superb broad comedy. Adenoid Hynkel, a petty, preposterous dictator with delusions of monstrous grandeur, is ripe for having his pretensions punctured.(14) The scenes of desperation as he attempts to show that he is a great dictator to rival Napaloni, played with oomph and chutzpah by Jack Oakie, continue to make me laugh. And it contains undoubtedly my favourite choking-on-hot-mustard scene. There are few greater joys than seeing those of high status fall flat on their face.(15) And then there is Limelight. The music hall may be long dead, but Limelight still conveys what it is to be a clown, the desperation and fear of losing your audience, what it is to age and rail against age and loss.(16) If you want to sample his magnificence with a brief scene, just look at the delicacy with which he plays drunk in Limelight, the subtlety with which he conveys an inebriate attempting to find the keyhole in a door. If that doesn't work for you, then watch him dressed as a chicken in The Gold Rush or with his face manically covered in soup by a malfunctioning machine that is meant to be a sign of a bright new future in Modern Times.(17) There is beauty, humour and humanity to be found here. Chaplin was and is, a cinematic clown genius.Answer the following questions:6. Which of the following can NOT be inferred from the first three paragraphs?7. According to the author, which of the following is NOT the charm of Chaplin’s movies?8. Which of the following statements about Chaplin’s movies is INCORRECT?9. What rhetorical device is used in the last sentence of Para. 3?10. What could be the most appropriate title for this passage?Passage Three(1) The more responsibility you take on at work and in life, the more often you face gray-area problems. These are situations where usually you have done a lot of hard work, on your own and often with other people, to understand a problem or a situation. You've assembled all the data, information, and expert advice you can reasonably get. You've analyzed everything carefully. But critical facts are still missing, and people you know and trust disagree about what to do. And, in your own mind, you keep going back and forth about what is really going on and about the right next steps. These problems come in all shapes and sizes. What they all have in common, whether they are major or minor, is how we experience them. But how do we resolve them?(2) Gray areas are particularly risky today because of the seductive power of analytical technique. Many of the hard problems now facing managers and companies require sophisticated techniques for analyzing vast amounts of information. It is tempting to think that if you can just get the right information and use the right analytics, you can make the right decision. It can also be tempting to hide out from tough decisions or disguise the exercise of power by telling other people that the numbers tell the whole story and there is no choice about what to think or do. But serious problems are usually gray. By themselves, tools and techniques won't give you answers. You have to use your judgment and make hard choices.(3) These choices often come with serious emotional and psychological risks. When you face really hard decisions, there is no way to escape the personal responsibility of choosing, committing, acting, and living with the consequences. An MBA student presciently described this challenge by saying, "I don't want to be a businessman claiming to be a decent human being. I want to be a decent human being claiming to be a businessman. "(4) So how do you deal with these choices and risks if you are facing a hard gray-area decision and don't want to bypass your basic human obligations? The challenge is to see yourself as "the other" , as one of the outsiders or victims, and not as the insider, the decision maker, the dominant party. And the harder challenge is to grasp and feel the experience of the other in a way that vividly highlights your core obligations as a human being.(5) A practical way to do this is to spend a few moments trying to answer a very old question. It was articulated by Hillel the Elder, the ancient Hebrew philosopher and theologian. He spoke with a man who was willing to convert to Judaism but only on one condition; that Hillel explain the entire Torah to him during the time that he could stand on one foot. Hillel met the challenge easily. He simply said, "That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and study it. "(6) The striking word here is "hateful. " Hillel is asking us to pay attention to what we would really care about, deeply and urgently, if we were in another person's situation. In practice, this means finding ways to ask yourself and others what you would be thinking and feeling if you were among the people hit hardest by the decision you might make. Try to imagine how you would react if your parents or children or some other loved ones were in this vulnerable position.(7) The familiar version of Hillel's guidance is the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. " In the West, most people view this precept as a teaching of Christian religion, which relegates it to occasional sermons in certain houses of worship. But that view misses the full force of the question Hillel wants us to ask. The Golden Rule isn't simply a precept of Christianity. Versions of it appear in almost every major religion. Some philosophers have argued that the Golden Rule is part of the foundation of important moral theories. And it is easy to hear it echoed in everyday, practical moral guidance, such as the Native American recommendation to "walk a mile in the other person's shoes. "(8) Dismissing the Golden Rule as Sunday sermonizing, rather than seeing it as an almost universal humanist insight, is a serious mistake. The moral imagination is basically a secular version of it. And Hillel's version—which asks what we would find hateful—has a sharp edge. This question has endured for two millennia because it prods our dormant moral imaginations. It pushes us to think imaginatively and sympathetically about the experiences of others as a way of understanding what our core human obligations require in a particular situation.(9) Asking the question is valuable, but awakening your moral imagination on your own is hard. This is another reason why process—working with and through others in the right ways—is so important. That's why it is particularly valuable for managers and teams working on gray-area problems to find ways to escape their organizational bubbles and hear directly from people whose livelihoods and lives will be affected by their decision or from people who can represent their experience in direct, concrete, forceful ways. Unless you find a way to do this, you may unwittingly buy into Joseph Stalin's observation that "a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic," and harden yourself to individual hardships and tragedies by focusing on statistical aggregates.(10) Another approach is to ask someone to play the role of the outsider and victim and to do so as vividly and persuasively as they can, so everyone else hears at least some version of the urgent, basic needs of the people a gray-area decision will affect. This approach is sometimes described as making sure there is a "barbarian" at every meeting—someone who will speak awkward truths clearly and urgently.(11) All these tactics are ways of working hard to awaken your moral imagination. They remind us, in effect: Don't think your position in society or in an organizationexempts you from basic human duties. Don't get trapped in your own interests, experiences, judgments, and ways of seeing the world. Do everything you can to escape from your egocentric prison. Try hard, on your own and with others, to imagine how you would feel and what you would really want and need if you were actually that person.Answer the following questions:11. What do "gray-area problems" mean according to the first two paragraphs?12. Which of the following can NOT be implied from Hillel’s story and the Golden Rule?13. Which of the following phrases is NOT used metaphorically?14. Which type of people do you think this passage is addressed to?简答题(本题共8题，每题1.0分，共8分。
英语专八新题型阅读模拟训练附详细答案解析(一)
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM OF CISISUMODEL TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS （1）-GRADE EIGHT-PART II READING COMPREHENSION[45 MIN]SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONSIn this section there are four passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO.PASSAGE ONEFrom the Chrysler Corporation to the Central Intelligence Agency, cultural diversity programs are flourishing in American organizations today. Firms can no longer safely assume that every employee walking in the door has similar beliefs or expectations. Whereas North American white males may believe in challenging authority, Asians tend to respect and defer to it. In Hispanic cultures, people often bring music, food, and family members to work, a custom that . businesses have traditionally not allowed. A job applicant who won't make eye contact during an interview may be rejected for being unapproachable, when according to her culture, she was just being polite.As a larger number of women, minorities, and immigrants enter the . work force, the workplace is growing more diverse. It is estimated that by 2008 women will make up about 48 percent of the . work force, and African Americans and Hispanics will each account for about 11 percent; by the year 2050, minorities will make up over 50 percent of the American population.Cultural diversity refers to the differences among people in a work force due to race, ethnicity, and gender. Increasing cultural diversity is forcing managers to learn to supervise and motivate people with a broader range of values systems. According to a recent survey by the American Management Association, half of all . employers have established some kind of formal initiative to promote and manage cultural diversity. Although demographics isn't the only reason for the growth of theseprograms, it is a compelling one. An increasing number of organizations have come to believe that diversity, like quality and customer service, is a competitive edge. A more diverse work force provides a wider range of ideas and perspectives and fosters creativity and innovation. Avenues for encouraging diversity include recruiting at historically black colleges and universities, training and development, mentoring, and revamped promotion review policies. To get out the message about their commitment to diversity, many organizations establish diversity councils made up of employees, managers and executives.Although many Fortune 500 companies are making diversity part of their strategic planning process, some programs stand out from the crowd.At Texas Instruments, strategies for enhancing diversity include an aggressive recruiting plan, diversity training, mentoring, and an incentive compensation program that rewards managers for fostering diversity. Each business unit has a diversity manager who implements these strategies and works closely with the company's Diversity Network. The network provides a forum of employees to share ideas, solicit support, and build coalitions.Convinced that strengthening diversity is a business imperative, Du Pont has established several programs to achieve that goal. In addition to training workshops and mentoring, Du Pont has established over 100 multicultural networks through which employees share work and life experiences and strive to help women and minorities reach higher levels of leadership and responsibility within the organization. Over half of Du Pont's new hires for professional and managerial positions are minorities and women.Disney World's director of diversity wants theme park guests to see themselves reflected in the diversity of Disney's employees. Working to attract diverse employees, Disney hopes to convince them that the organization understands, respects, and values who they are. By holding a variety of diversity celebrations every year—including Dr. Martin Luther King's Birthday, Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Disability Awareness Month, and Native American Heritage Month—Disney opens the door to this kind of understanding.What do we learn from strong, successful diversity program such as these, as well as similar programs at Microsoft, Xerox, Procter & Gamble and Digital Equipment Corporation First, they can go a long way toward eliminating prejudice in the workplace and removing barriers to advancement. Second, to be more than just the latest corporate buzzword, diversity programs require commitment from the top and a culture that supports an inclusive environment.of the following is NOT mentioned as cultural diversity in the passageA. Asian people tend to show submissiveness to their seniors.B. Spanish-speaking people enjoy gathering with their family members.C. African people try to avoid eye contact to show their respect.D. Americans might be innovators defying the experts in some fields.a company to be successful in business, it should do all of the following EXCEPT to_________A. set up a division to supervise its employees.B. provide its clients with good services.C. guarantee the products it has produced.D. take in employees with different cultural background.can be inferred from the last paragraph that diversity programs____________A. have been put into practice by dozens of big corporations.B. may provide the minorities with more chances.C. make no demand of managers.D. have an effect on employees' motivation.PASSAGE TWOMany thoughtful parents want to shield their children from feelings of guilt or shame in much the same way that they want to spare them from fear. Guilt and shame as methods of discipline are to be eschewed along with raised hands and leather straps. Fear, guilt and shame as methods of moral instruction are seen as failures in decent parenting. Parents want their children to be happy and how can you feel happy when you arefeeling guilty, fearful or ashamed If we were really convinced that using fear, guilt or shame as methods of discipline worked, though, we might be more ready to use them as techniques. But we aren't convinced that this is the case. We won't have more socially responsible people if fear, guilt and shame are part of their disciplinary diet as children. Instead, we will simply have unhappy people. Responsible behavior has nothing to do with the traditional methods of raising moral children.This doesn't mean that guilt isn't an important feeling. It is. Guilt helps keep people on the right moral track. But guilt is a derivative emotion, one that follows from having violated an internalized moral standard. This is far different than making someone feel guilty in order to create the standard in the first instance.My wife once edited a magazine about hunger. A view held by many associated with the sponsoring organization claimed: You can't get people to give money to starving children by making them feel guilty. So the magazine didn't show pictures of starving children, children with doleful eyes. Instead, there were photos of women in the fields, portraits of peasant farmers and pictures of political organizers. But the publishers weren't completely right about believing that guilt-inducing pictures don't lead to moral action. In fact, it was the graphic pictures of starving children in Somalia that called the world's attention to the dire situationthere. The power of television is that it does bring images of others' tragedies directly into our home. No rational analysis can do the same. When we are moved to pity, we should also be moved to action.If we don't do anything, then we feel guilty. We become part of the problem we see and feel guilty for letting bad things happen to people. How can I, good person that I am, let this continue What have pricked the conscience here are guilty feelings.Guilty feelings arise when we have violated a moral norm that we accept as valid. A person who feels guilty, notes philosopher Herbert Morris, is one who has internalized norms and, as such, is committed to avoiding wrong. The mere fact that the wrong is believed to have occurred, regardless of who bears responsibility for it, naturally causes distress. When we are attached to a person, injury to that person causes us pain regardless of who or what has occasioned the injury. We needn't believe that we had control over hurting (or not helping) another person in order to feel guilty.Psychologists Nico Frijda and Batja Mesquita of the University of Amsterdam find that people feel guilty about having harmed someone even when it was accidental. Nearly half the people they interviewed felt guilty for having caused unintended harm, such as hurting one's mother when leaving home to marry.Unintentional harm may lead to as strong guilty feelings as intentional harm. In other words, being careless is as much a source of guilt as intentional harm. We say, If only I had been more careful, If only I had paid more attention, If only I were a better driver. The fact that a court may not even bring charges against you in the first place may help to assuage some of the pain but it doesn't remove all the feelings of guilt.The feeling is useful in so far as it makes us more cautious, makes us better drivers or moves us to socially responsible action. The sociopath never experiences such feelings and therefore poses a danger to society; the neurotic experiences so much of it that he can't function normally in society.Feeling guilty for harm you have caused when you aren't responsible is possible because there is a more generalized readiness to accept responsibility for your actions. Guilt arises when we think we have had choices and then have made the wrong moral choice. Guilt and responsibility appear to go together. If we do harm and feel no guilty, then we don't believe we are responsible for what we've done. This means that we see ourselves as victims—of circumstances, of coercion, of ignorance and so forth.Remember that people who think of themselves as victims do so becausethey believe they have no control over events in their lives. They don't feel responsible and therefore don't feel guilty either. Several tactics can be used in disavowing responsibility: following the crowd, it is someone else's problem, it was done under coercion.None of us is perfect and that we live in an imperfect world. This means that we can't avoid hurting others. If we accept this, then we have to accept guilty feelings as a consequence of being moral people.4. Which of the following statements about guilt might the writer agree withA. Guilt is used as a method to discipline children.B. To set up a moral standard, you should feel guilty.C. Guilt is a feeling that comes with breaking some moral standard.D. The feeling of guilt often goes together with shame and fear.5. The publishers of the magazine mentioned in the third paragraph thinkA. guilt-inducing photos can bring on moral action.B. it's not sure whether guilt-inducing photos bring on moral action.C. guilt-inducing photos partially help bring on moral action.D. moral action has nothing to do with guilt-inducing photos.6. People will feel painful when a person_____ is hurt no matter what causes the injury.A. they knowB. they loveC. they hateD. they value7. The writer mentions_____ as a pair to indicate that people should have moderate feelings of guilt.A. eccentric people and fashionable peopleB. overanxious people and less sociable peopleC. sociable people and healthy peopleD. reserved people and radical people8. Which of the following is NOT an excuse some people make for denying their responsibilityA. They went with the stream.B. They were misled by others.C. They were forced to do it.D. Other people should bear the blame.PASSAGE THREEHigh, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English literature approached each other at a combinedvelocity of 1,200 miles’ hour. They were protected from the thin, cold air by the pressurized cabins of two Boeing 707s, and from the risk of collision by the prudent arrangement of the international air corridors. Although they had never met, the two men were known to each other by name. They were, in fact, in process of exchanging posts for the next six months, and in an age of more leisurely transportation the intersection of their respective routes might have been marked by some interesting human gesture: had they waved, for example, from the decks of two ocean liners crossing in mid-Atlantic, each man simultaneously focusing a telescope, by chance, on the other, with his free hand; or, more plausibly, a little mime of mutual appraisal might have been played out through the windows of two railway compartments halted side by side at the same station somewhere in Hampshire or the Mid-West, the more self-conscious party relieved to feel himself, at last, moving off, only to discover that it is the other man's train that is moving first...However, it was not to be. Since the two men were in airplanes, and one was bored and the other frightened of looking out of the window; since, in any ease, the planes were too distant from each other to be mutually visible with the naked eye, the crossing of their paths at the still point of the turning world passed unremarked by anyone other than the narrator of this duplex chronicle.“Duplex” as well as having the general meaning of two-fold applies in the jargon of electrical telegraphy to systems in which messages aresent simultaneously in opposite directions. Imagine, if you will, that each of these two professors of English Literature is connected to his native land, place of employment and domestic hearth by an infinitely elastic cord of emotions, attitudes and values: a cord which stretches and stretches almost to the point of invisibility, but never quite to breaking-point, as he hurtles through the air at 600 miles per hour. Imagine t hat when the two men alight in each other’s' territory, and go about their business and pleasure, whatever vibrations are passed back by one to his native habitat will be felt by the other, and vice versa, and thus return to the transmitter subtly modified by the response of the other party; may, indeed, return to him along the other party's cord of communication, which is, after all anchored in the place where he has just arrived.One of these differences we can take in at a glance from our privileged narrative altitude (higher than that of any jet).It is obvious, from his stiff, upright posture, and fulsome gratitude to the stewardess serving him a glass of orange juice, that Philip Swallow, flying westward, is unaccustomed to air travel; while to Morris Zapp, slouched in the seat of his eastbound aircraft, chewing a dead cigar (a hostess has made him extinguish it) and glowering at the meager portion of ice dissolving in his plastic tumbler of bourbon, the experience of long-distance air travel is tediously familiar. Philip Swallow has, in fact, flown before; but soseldom, and at such long intervals9that on each occasion he suffers the same trauma, an alternating current of fear and re-assurance that charges and relaxes his system in a persistent and exhausting rhythm.While he is on the ground, preparing for his journey, he thinks of flying with exhilaration: soaring up, up and away into the blue sky, cradled in aircraft that seem, from a distance, effortlessly at home in that element, as though sculpted from the sky itself. This confidence begins to fade a little when he arrives at the airport and winces at the shrill screaming of jet engines. In the sky the planes look very small. On the runways they look very big. Therefore, close up they should look even bigger but in fact they don't. His own plane, for instance, just outside the window of the assembly lounge, doesn't look quite big enough for all the people who are going to get into it. This impression is confirmed when he passes through the tunnel into the cabin of the aircraft, a cramped tube full of writhing limbs. But when he, and the other passengers, are seated, well-being returns. The seats are 80 remarkably comfortable that one feels quite content to stay put, but it is reassuring that the aisle is free should one wish to walk up it. There is soothing music playing. The lighting is restful. A stewardess offers him the morning paper. His baggage is safely stowed away in the plane somewhere, or if it is not, that isn't his fault, which is the main thing. Flying is, after all, the only way to travel.9. When the writer talks about two ships and two trains, in fact he is_________A. recalling his past experience.B. expressing his regret over his past time.C. imagining what might have happened in the past.D. reminding the reader that we owe our convenience to them.10. According to the passage, _____connects the two professors with their motherlands.A. a springy rope invisible feeling C. a series of eventsD. telecommunication11. The w ord “fulsome” in the third paragraph probably means_________A. polite.B. superfluous.C. insincere.D. euphemistic. PASSAGE FOUROur next task is to consider the policies and principles a ruler ought to follow in dealing with his subjects or with his friends. Since I know many people have written on this subject, I am concerned it may be thought presumptuous for me to write on it as well, especially since what I have to say, as regards this question in particular, will differ greatly from the recommendations of others. But my hope is to write a book that willbe useful, at least to those who read it intelligently, and so I thought it sensible to go straight to a discussion of how things are in real life and not waste time with a discussion of an imaginary world. For many authors have constructed imaginary republics and principalities that have never existed in practice and never could; for the gap between how people actually behave and how they ought to behave is so great that anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover he has been taught how to destroy himself, not how to preserve himself. For anyone who wants to act the part of a good man in all circumstances will bring about his own ruin, for those he has to deal with will not all be good. So it is necessary for a ruler, if he wants to hold on to Power, to learn how not to be good, and to know when it is and when it is not necessary to use this knowledge.Let us leave to one side, then all discussion of imaginary rulers and talk about practical realities. I maintain that all men, when people talk about them, and especially rulers, because they hold positions of authority, are described in terms of qualities that are inextricably linked to censure or to praise. So one man is described as generous, another as a miser; one is called open-handed, another tight-fisted; one man is cruel, another gentle; one untrustworthy9another reliable; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and violent; one sympathetic, another self-important; one promiscuous, another monogamous; one straightforward,another duplicitous; one tough, another easy-going; one serious, another cheerful; one religious, another atheistically; and so on.Now I know everyone will agree that if a ruler could have all the good qualities I have listed and none of the bad ones, then this would be an excellent state of affairs. But one cannot have all the good qualities, nor always act in a praiseworthy fashion, for we do not live in an ideal world. You have to be canny enough to avoid being thought to have those evil qualities that would make it impossible for you to retain power; as for those that are compatible with holding on to power, you should avoid them if you can; but if you cannot, then you should not worry too much if people say you have them. Above all, do not be upset if you are supposed to have those vices a ruler needs if he is going to stay securely in power, for, if you think about it, you will realize there are some ways of behaving that are supposed to be virtuous, but would lead to your downfall, and others that are supposed to be wicked，but will lead to your welfare and peace of mind.12. The word “presumptuous” in the first paragraph probably means__________A. showing dishonesty.B. showing rebellion.C. showing submission.D. showing disrespect.13. If a ruler follows other authors' suggestion, he mightA. try his best to be a good egg all the time.B. understand the importance of an authoritative statement.C. try to gain great fame and high prestige.D. know when to be kind and when to be cruel.14. In the book, the author's discussion most likely focuses onA. presenting a real world to his readers.B. describing an ideal society to his readers.C. explaining how to construct a perfect system.D.illustrating what a wise ruler should do.SECTION B SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONSIn this section there are eight short answer questions based on the passages in Section A. Answer each question in NO MORE THAN TEN WORDS in the space provided on ANSWER SHEET TWO.PASSAGE ONE15. Why does the author mention Du Pont’s diversity programs in the sixth paragraphPASSAGE TWO16. What does the word “assuage” in the seventh paragraph mean PASSAGE THREE17. Why did the two professors of English literature take their flights18. What does “the same trauma” refer to in the third paragraph19. When does Philip Swallow feel comfortablePASSAGE FOUR20. What is the generally accepted state of highest perfection for a ruler21. What does a ruler need if he wants to secure the power in his own hands22. What would be a suitable title for the passage参考答案及解析1参考答案：C细节题。
2023年专八英语阅读题模拟练习及答案
2023年专八英语阅读题模拟练习及答案2023年专八英语阅读题模拟练习及答案The increase in the margin rate from 50% to 70%was not an attempt to stem any rant speculation on the part of the publicactually the market seemedtechnically quite strong, with public participation essentially dignifiedbut rather an attempt by the Federal Reserve Board to preserve the sound underpinnings that existed in the market.Naturally, such a move had a momentarily chilling effect upon prices but if the FRB had been preoccupied with undue speculation, the increase might have been to the 80%or even 90% level.Such an increases in the margin rate is a confirmation of a strong stock market and since 19...,such increases have resulted in interim market highs over twelve months later.Obviously, there could be no guarantee that this would once again be the case, but if history is any guidelineand if business and corporate earnings were to continue on the samecoursecontinued optimism over the outlook for the stock market would seem more prudent than pessimism.1.The title that best expresses the ideas of this passage is ___________[A]A Time to Sell Stock.[B]A Strong Stock Market[C]Raising the Margin Rate[C]Price/earnings Ratio in Steel2.When investors are pessimistic what do they do?[A]They look to the FRB for help.[B]They buy steel[C]They buy automobile stocks.[D]They look for high yields.3.Why does the writer believe that speciality stocks could outperform the general market?[A]Because analysis have difficulty in deciding upon a fixed price/earnings ratio.[B]Because the activity had been limited to blue chips.[C]Because the rise was conservative.[D]Because of the FRB action.4.When investors are optimistic, what do they do?[A]They look for accelerated growth.[B]They buy speciality stocks.[C]They look for high yields.[C]They are more prudent.Vocabulary1. margin rate 保证金率，边际比率2. rant无约束力，猖獗的，蔓延的3. stem遏制4. stem from滋长，自5. underpin 加强......根底，支持6. underpinning支持物，根底(建筑物下的)7. preoccupy先占，使专心于，吸引住8. undue 过分的.，非法的，不适当的9. interim间歇;暂时的，间歇的10.guideline方针，指导道路11.underscore 在......下面划线，强调12.point up 加强，强调13.bluechip 兰筹股票14.blue-chip兰筹的15.outperform在使用上胜过16.overprice将......标价过高17.numerical ratio 数率，数字比率18.earnings收益，利润，收入20.premium佣金，酬金难句译注1.The increase in the margin rate from 50% to 70% was not an attempt to stem any rant speculation on the part of the publicactually the market seemed technically quite strong, with public participation essentially dignifiedbut rather an attempt by the Federal Reserve Board to preserve the sound underpinnings that existed in the market.[构造简析] 是not...but句型，两个破折号中间是插入成分;中插入一个带with+N+participle 短语[参考译文] 保证金率从50%增长到70%，并不是想要遏制群众方面猖獗的投机，而是联邦储藏委员会想要保持现存于股市强劲根底事实上股市由于群众非常庄严的参与在技术上看起来相当强劲。
英语专八新题型阅读模拟训练附详细答案解析(一)
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM OF CISISUMODEL TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS （1）-GRADE EIGHT-PART II READING COMPREHENSION[45 MIN]SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONSIn this section there are four passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO.PASSAGE ONEFrom the Chrysler Corporation to the Central Intelligence Agency, cultural diversity programs are flourishing in American organizations today. Firms can no longer safely assume that every employee walking in the door has similar beliefs or expectations. Whereas North American white males may believe in challenging authority, Asians tend to respect and defer to it. In Hispanic cultures, people often bring music, food, and family members to work, a custom that . businesses have traditionally not allowed. A job applicant who won't make eye contact during an interview may be rejected for being unapproachable, when according to her culture, she was just being polite.As a larger number of women, minorities, and immigrants enter the . work force, the workplace is growing more diverse. It is estimated that by 2008 women will make up about 48 percent of the . work force, and African Americans and Hispanics will each account for about 11 percent; by the year 2050, minorities will make up over 50 percent of the American population.Cultural diversity refers to the differences among people in a work force due to race, ethnicity, and gender. Increasing cultural diversity is forcing managers to learn to supervise and motivate people with a broader range of values systems. According to a recent survey by the American Management Association, half of all . employers have established some kind of formal initiative to promote and manage cultural diversity. Although demographics isn't the only reason for the growth of theseprograms, it is a compelling one. An increasing number of organizations have come to believe that diversity, like quality and customer service, is a competitive edge. A more diverse work force provides a wider range of ideas and perspectives and fosters creativity and innovation. Avenues for encouraging diversity include recruiting at historically black colleges and universities, training and development, mentoring, and revamped promotion review policies. To get out the message about their commitment to diversity, many organizations establish diversity councils made up of employees, managers and executives.Although many Fortune 500 companies are making diversity part of their strategic planning process, some programs stand out from the crowd.At Texas Instruments, strategies for enhancing diversity include an aggressive recruiting plan, diversity training, mentoring, and an incentive compensation program that rewards managers for fostering diversity. Each business unit has a diversity manager who implements these strategies and works closely with the company's Diversity Network. The network provides a forum of employees to share ideas, solicit support, and build coalitions.Convinced that strengthening diversity is a business imperative, Du Pont has established several programs to achieve that goal. In addition to training workshops and mentoring, Du Pont has established over 100 multicultural networks through which employees share work and life experiences and strive to help women and minorities reach higher levels of leadership and responsibility within the organization. Over half of Du Pont's new hires for professional and managerial positions are minorities and women.Disney World's director of diversity wants theme park guests to see themselves reflected in the diversity of Disney's employees. Working to attract diverse employees, Disney hopes to convince them that the organization understands, respects, and values who they are. By holding a variety of diversity celebrations every year—including Dr. Martin Luther King's Birthday, Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Disability Awareness Month, and Native American Heritage Month—Disney opens the door to this kind of understanding.What do we learn from strong, successful diversity program such as these, as well as similar programs at Microsoft, Xerox, Procter & Gamble and Digital Equipment Corporation First, they can go a long way toward eliminating prejudice in the workplace and removing barriers to advancement. Second, to be more than just the latest corporate buzzword, diversity programs require commitment from the top and a culture that supports an inclusive environment.of the following is NOT mentioned as cultural diversity in the passageA. Asian people tend to show submissiveness to their seniors.B. Spanish-speaking people enjoy gathering with their family members.C. African people try to avoid eye contact to show their respect.D. Americans might be innovators defying the experts in some fields.a company to be successful in business, it should do all of the following EXCEPT to_________A. set up a division to supervise its employees.B. provide its clients with good services.C. guarantee the products it has produced.D. take in employees with different cultural background.can be inferred from the last paragraph that diversity programs____________A. have been put into practice by dozens of big corporations.B. may provide the minorities with more chances.C. make no demand of managers.D. have an effect on employees' motivation.PASSAGE TWOMany thoughtful parents want to shield their children from feelings of guilt or shame in much the same way that they want to spare them from fear. Guilt and shame as methods of discipline are to be eschewed along with raised hands and leather straps. Fear, guilt and shame as methods of moral instruction are seen as failures in decent parenting. Parents want their children to be happy and how can you feel happy when you arefeeling guilty, fearful or ashamed If we were really convinced that using fear, guilt or shame as methods of discipline worked, though, we might be more ready to use them as techniques. But we aren't convinced that this is the case. We won't have more socially responsible people if fear, guilt and shame are part of their disciplinary diet as children. Instead, we will simply have unhappy people. Responsible behavior has nothing to do with the traditional methods of raising moral children.This doesn't mean that guilt isn't an important feeling. It is. Guilt helps keep people on the right moral track. But guilt is a derivative emotion, one that follows from having violated an internalized moral standard. This is far different than making someone feel guilty in order to create the standard in the first instance.My wife once edited a magazine about hunger. A view held by many associated with the sponsoring organization claimed: You can't get people to give money to starving children by making them feel guilty. So the magazine didn't show pictures of starving children, children with doleful eyes. Instead, there were photos of women in the fields, portraits of peasant farmers and pictures of political organizers. But the publishers weren't completely right about believing that guilt-inducing pictures don't lead to moral action. In fact, it was the graphic pictures of starving children in Somalia that called the world's attention to the dire situationthere. The power of television is that it does bring images of others' tragedies directly into our home. No rational analysis can do the same. When we are moved to pity, we should also be moved to action.If we don't do anything, then we feel guilty. We become part of the problem we see and feel guilty for letting bad things happen to people. How can I, good person that I am, let this continue What have pricked the conscience here are guilty feelings.Guilty feelings arise when we have violated a moral norm that we accept as valid. A person who feels guilty, notes philosopher Herbert Morris, is one who has internalized norms and, as such, is committed to avoiding wrong. The mere fact that the wrong is believed to have occurred, regardless of who bears responsibility for it, naturally causes distress. When we are attached to a person, injury to that person causes us pain regardless of who or what has occasioned the injury. We needn't believe that we had control over hurting (or not helping) another person in order to feel guilty.Psychologists Nico Frijda and Batja Mesquita of the University of Amsterdam find that people feel guilty about having harmed someone even when it was accidental. Nearly half the people they interviewed felt guilty for having caused unintended harm, such as hurting one's mother when leaving home to marry.Unintentional harm may lead to as strong guilty feelings as intentional harm. In other words, being careless is as much a source of guilt as intentional harm. We say, If only I had been more careful, If only I had paid more attention, If only I were a better driver. The fact that a court may not even bring charges against you in the first place may help to assuage some of the pain but it doesn't remove all the feelings of guilt.The feeling is useful in so far as it makes us more cautious, makes us better drivers or moves us to socially responsible action. The sociopath never experiences such feelings and therefore poses a danger to society; the neurotic experiences so much of it that he can't function normally in society.Feeling guilty for harm you have caused when you aren't responsible is possible because there is a more generalized readiness to accept responsibility for your actions. Guilt arises when we think we have had choices and then have made the wrong moral choice. Guilt and responsibility appear to go together. If we do harm and feel no guilty, then we don't believe we are responsible for what we've done. This means that we see ourselves as victims—of circumstances, of coercion, of ignorance and so forth.Remember that people who think of themselves as victims do so becausethey believe they have no control over events in their lives. They don't feel responsible and therefore don't feel guilty either. Several tactics can be used in disavowing responsibility: following the crowd, it is someone else's problem, it was done under coercion.None of us is perfect and that we live in an imperfect world. This means that we can't avoid hurting others. If we accept this, then we have to accept guilty feelings as a consequence of being moral people.4. Which of the following statements about guilt might the writer agree withA. Guilt is used as a method to discipline children.B. To set up a moral standard, you should feel guilty.C. Guilt is a feeling that comes with breaking some moral standard.D. The feeling of guilt often goes together with shame and fear.5. The publishers of the magazine mentioned in the third paragraph thinkA. guilt-inducing photos can bring on moral action.B. it's not sure whether guilt-inducing photos bring on moral action.C. guilt-inducing photos partially help bring on moral action.D. moral action has nothing to do with guilt-inducing photos.6. People will feel painful when a person_____ is hurt no matter what causes the injury.A. they knowB. they loveC. they hateD. they value7. The writer mentions_____ as a pair to indicate that people should have moderate feelings of guilt.A. eccentric people and fashionable peopleB. overanxious people and less sociable peopleC. sociable people and healthy peopleD. reserved people and radical people8. Which of the following is NOT an excuse some people make for denying their responsibilityA. They went with the stream.B. They were misled by others.C. They were forced to do it.D. Other people should bear the blame.PASSAGE THREEHigh, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English literature approached each other at a combinedvelocity of 1,200 miles’ hour. They were protected from the thin, cold air by the pressurized cabins of two Boeing 707s, and from the risk of collision by the prudent arrangement of the international air corridors. Although they had never met, the two men were known to each other by name. They were, in fact, in process of exchanging posts for the next six months, and in an age of more leisurely transportation the intersection of their respective routes might have been marked by some interesting human gesture: had they waved, for example, from the decks of two ocean liners crossing in mid-Atlantic, each man simultaneously focusing a telescope, by chance, on the other, with his free hand; or, more plausibly, a little mime of mutual appraisal might have been played out through the windows of two railway compartments halted side by side at the same station somewhere in Hampshire or the Mid-West, the more self-conscious party relieved to feel himself, at last, moving off, only to discover that it is the other man's train that is moving first...However, it was not to be. Since the two men were in airplanes, and one was bored and the other frightened of looking out of the window; since, in any ease, the planes were too distant from each other to be mutually visible with the naked eye, the crossing of their paths at the still point of the turning world passed unremarked by anyone other than the narrator of this duplex chronicle.“Duplex” as well as having the general meaning of two-fold applies in the jargon of electrical telegraphy to systems in which messages aresent simultaneously in opposite directions. Imagine, if you will, that each of these two professors of English Literature is connected to his native land, place of employment and domestic hearth by an infinitely elastic cord of emotions, attitudes and values: a cord which stretches and stretches almost to the point of invisibility, but never quite to breaking-point, as he hurtles through the air at 600 miles per hour. Imagine t hat when the two men alight in each other’s' territory, and go about their business and pleasure, whatever vibrations are passed back by one to his native habitat will be felt by the other, and vice versa, and thus return to the transmitter subtly modified by the response of the other party; may, indeed, return to him along the other party's cord of communication, which is, after all anchored in the place where he has just arrived.One of these differences we can take in at a glance from our privileged narrative altitude (higher than that of any jet).It is obvious, from his stiff, upright posture, and fulsome gratitude to the stewardess serving him a glass of orange juice, that Philip Swallow, flying westward, is unaccustomed to air travel; while to Morris Zapp, slouched in the seat of his eastbound aircraft, chewing a dead cigar (a hostess has made him extinguish it) and glowering at the meager portion of ice dissolving in his plastic tumbler of bourbon, the experience of long-distance air travel is tediously familiar. Philip Swallow has, in fact, flown before; but soseldom, and at such long intervals9that on each occasion he suffers the same trauma, an alternating current of fear and re-assurance that charges and relaxes his system in a persistent and exhausting rhythm.While he is on the ground, preparing for his journey, he thinks of flying with exhilaration: soaring up, up and away into the blue sky, cradled in aircraft that seem, from a distance, effortlessly at home in that element, as though sculpted from the sky itself. This confidence begins to fade a little when he arrives at the airport and winces at the shrill screaming of jet engines. In the sky the planes look very small. On the runways they look very big. Therefore, close up they should look even bigger but in fact they don't. His own plane, for instance, just outside the window of the assembly lounge, doesn't look quite big enough for all the people who are going to get into it. This impression is confirmed when he passes through the tunnel into the cabin of the aircraft, a cramped tube full of writhing limbs. But when he, and the other passengers, are seated, well-being returns. The seats are 80 remarkably comfortable that one feels quite content to stay put, but it is reassuring that the aisle is free should one wish to walk up it. There is soothing music playing. The lighting is restful. A stewardess offers him the morning paper. His baggage is safely stowed away in the plane somewhere, or if it is not, that isn't his fault, which is the main thing. Flying is, after all, the only way to travel.9. When the writer talks about two ships and two trains, in fact he is_________A. recalling his past experience.B. expressing his regret over his past time.C. imagining what might have happened in the past.D. reminding the reader that we owe our convenience to them.10. According to the passage, _____connects the two professors with their motherlands.A. a springy rope invisible feeling C. a series of eventsD. telecommunication11. The w ord “fulsome” in the third paragraph probably means_________A. polite.B. superfluous.C. insincere.D. euphemistic. PASSAGE FOUROur next task is to consider the policies and principles a ruler ought to follow in dealing with his subjects or with his friends. Since I know many people have written on this subject, I am concerned it may be thought presumptuous for me to write on it as well, especially since what I have to say, as regards this question in particular, will differ greatly from the recommendations of others. But my hope is to write a book that willbe useful, at least to those who read it intelligently, and so I thought it sensible to go straight to a discussion of how things are in real life and not waste time with a discussion of an imaginary world. For many authors have constructed imaginary republics and principalities that have never existed in practice and never could; for the gap between how people actually behave and how they ought to behave is so great that anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover he has been taught how to destroy himself, not how to preserve himself. For anyone who wants to act the part of a good man in all circumstances will bring about his own ruin, for those he has to deal with will not all be good. So it is necessary for a ruler, if he wants to hold on to Power, to learn how not to be good, and to know when it is and when it is not necessary to use this knowledge.Let us leave to one side, then all discussion of imaginary rulers and talk about practical realities. I maintain that all men, when people talk about them, and especially rulers, because they hold positions of authority, are described in terms of qualities that are inextricably linked to censure or to praise. So one man is described as generous, another as a miser; one is called open-handed, another tight-fisted; one man is cruel, another gentle; one untrustworthy9another reliable; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and violent; one sympathetic, another self-important; one promiscuous, another monogamous; one straightforward,another duplicitous; one tough, another easy-going; one serious, another cheerful; one religious, another atheistically; and so on.Now I know everyone will agree that if a ruler could have all the good qualities I have listed and none of the bad ones, then this would be an excellent state of affairs. But one cannot have all the good qualities, nor always act in a praiseworthy fashion, for we do not live in an ideal world. You have to be canny enough to avoid being thought to have those evil qualities that would make it impossible for you to retain power; as for those that are compatible with holding on to power, you should avoid them if you can; but if you cannot, then you should not worry too much if people say you have them. Above all, do not be upset if you are supposed to have those vices a ruler needs if he is going to stay securely in power, for, if you think about it, you will realize there are some ways of behaving that are supposed to be virtuous, but would lead to your downfall, and others that are supposed to be wicked，but will lead to your welfare and peace of mind.12. The word “presumptuous” in the first paragraph probably means__________A. showing dishonesty.B. showing rebellion.C. showing submission.D. showing disrespect.13. If a ruler follows other authors' suggestion, he mightA. try his best to be a good egg all the time.B. understand the importance of an authoritative statement.C. try to gain great fame and high prestige.D. know when to be kind and when to be cruel.14. In the book, the author's discussion most likely focuses onA. presenting a real world to his readers.B. describing an ideal society to his readers.C. explaining how to construct a perfect system.D.illustrating what a wise ruler should do.SECTION B SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONSIn this section there are eight short answer questions based on the passages in Section A. Answer each question in NO MORE THAN TEN WORDS in the space provided on ANSWER SHEET TWO.PASSAGE ONE15. Why does the author mention Du Pont’s diversity programs in the sixth paragraphPASSAGE TWO16. What does the word “assuage” in the seventh paragraph mean PASSAGE THREE17. Why did the two professors of English literature take their flights18. What does “the same trauma” refer to in the third paragraph19. When does Philip Swallow feel comfortablePASSAGE FOUR20. What is the generally accepted state of highest perfection for a ruler21. What does a ruler need if he wants to secure the power in his own hands22. What would be a suitable title for the passage参考答案及解析1参考答案：C细节题。
英语专八复习阅读考试模拟试题带答案
英语专八复习阅读考试模拟试题带答案Most earthquakes occur within the upper 15 miles of the earth's surface. But earthquakes can and do occur at all depths to about 460 miles. Their number decreases as the depth increases. At about 460 miles one earthquake occurs only every few years. Near the surface earthquakes may run as high as 100 in a month, but the yearly average does not vary much. In comparison with the total number of earthquakes each year, the number of disastrous earthquakes is very small.The extent of the disaster in an earthquake depends on many factors. If you carefully build a toy house with an erect set, it will still stand no matter how much you shake the table. But if you build a toy house with a pack of cards, a slight shake of the table will make it fall. An earthquake in Agadir, Morocco, was not strong enough to be recorded on distant instruments, but it completely destroyed the city. Many stronger earthquakes have done comparatively little damage. If a building is well constructed and built on solid ground, it will resistan earthquake. Most deaths in earthquakes have been due to faultybuilding construction or poor building sites. A third and very serious factor is panic. When people rush out into narrow streets, more deaths will result.The United Nations has played an important part in reducing the damage done by earthquakes. It has sent a team of experts to all countries known to be affected by earthquakes. Working with local geologists and engineers, the experts have studied the nature of the ground and the type of most practical building code for the local area. If followed, these suggestions will make disastrous earthquakes almost a thing of the past.There is one type of earthquake disaster that little can be done about. This is the disaster caused by seismic sea waves, or tsunamis. (These are often called tidal waves, but the name is incorrect. They have nothing to do with tides.) In certain areas, earthquakes take place beneath the sea. These submarine earthquakes sometimes give rise to seismic sea waves. The waves are not noticeable out at sea because of their long wave length. But when they roll into harbors, they pile upinto walls of water 6 to 60 feet high. The Japanese call them "tsunamis",meaning "harbor waves", because they reach a sizable height only in harbors.Tsunamis travel fairly slowly, at speeds up to 500 miles an hour. An adequate warning system is in use to warn all shores likely to be reached by the waves. But this only enables people to leave the threatened shores for higher ground. There is no way to stop the oncoming wave.1. Which of the following CANNOT be concluded from the passage?A. The number of earthquakes is closely related to depth.B. Roughly the same number of earthquakes occur each year.C. Earthquakes are impossible at depths over 460 miles.D. Earthquakes are most likely to occur near the surfaces.2. The destruction of Agadir is an example of ______. ?A. faulty building constructionB. an earthquake's strengthC. widespread panic in earthquakesD. ineffective instruments3. The United Nations' experts are supposed to______.?A. construct strong buildingsB. put forward proposalsC. detect disastrous earthquakesD. monitor earthquakes4. The significance of the slow speed of tsunamis is that people may______.?A. notice them out at seaB. find ways to stop themC. be warned early enoughD. develop warning systems 参考答案：1~4 C A B C。
专八阅读理解模拟试题(1)2
专八阅读理解模拟试题 (1) 2[A] violence never solves anything.[B] nothing.[C] the bloodshed means nothing.[D] everything.3. It can be inferred that truly reasonable men[A] can't get a hearing.[B] are looked down upon.[C] are persecuted.[D] Have difficulty in advocating law enforcement.4. "He was none the wiser" means[A] he was not at all wise in listening.[B] He was not at all wiser than nothing before.[C] He gains nothing after listening.[D] He makes no sense of the argument.5. According the author the best way to solve race prejudice is[A] law enforcement.[B] knowledge.[C] nonviolence.[D] Mopping up the violent答案详解：1.B 暴力难以消除种族偏见。
文章一开始就提出有些国家种族偏见严重，而暴力却是公认的一种解决方法。
白人采用暴力镇压，黑人以防火、掠抢为反抗。
而双方的大人物平静地论及暴力，似乎这是一种合法的解决方案。
作者就此指出人类的进步只在于表面――衣饰等，人类的本能没有改变。
整个有记录历史的文件没有教会人类任何东西。
这是真正令人可怕的事件。
第二段论及真正有理智的懂得解决方案所在的人鼓吹法制，人们不停。
英语专业八级考试模拟阅读试题
英语专业八级考试模拟阅读试题英语专业八级考试模拟阅读试题2017我认为人生最美好的主旨和人类生活最幸福的结果，无过于学习了，以下是店铺为大家搜索整理的英语专业八级考试模拟阅读试题2017，希望能给大家带来帮助!The search for latent prints is done in a systematic andintelligent manner. Investigators develop techniques to locatetraces of fingerprints at a crime scene. The basic premise insearching for latent prints is to examine more carefully thoseareas, which would most likely be touched by persons who havebeen on the scene. The natural manner in which a person woulduse and place his hands in making an entrance or exit from abuilding or in handling any object is the key to the discovery oflatent prints.Where a forced entrance has been made, latent prints are likely to be found on any surfaceadjacent to or at that point. Any object with a smooth, non-porous surface is likely to retain latentprints if touched. Fingerprints on rough surfaces are usually of little value. If the fingermark doesnot disclose ridge detail when viewed under a reading glass, the chances are that its value inidentification is nil when photographed. Where fingermarks are found, it will be necessary for theinvestigator to compare them against the ones of persons having legitimate access to the premisesso that the traces might be eliminated as having evidentiary value if they prove to be from thesepersons. Places to search for prints on an automobile are the rear view mirror, steering wheel hub,steering column, windshield dashboard and the like.Dusting of surface may be done with a fine brush or with anatomizer. The whit powders usedare basically finely powdered white lead, talc, or chalk. Another light powder is basically Chemist’sgray. A good black powder is composed of lampblack, graphite, and powdered acacia. Dragon’sblood is good powder for white surface and can be fixed on paper by heating. In developing latentprints, the accepted method is to use the powder sparingly and brush lightly. Do not use powder ifthe fingermark is visible under oblique lighting. It can be photographed. A good policy for thenovice is to experiment with his own prints on a surface similar to the one he wishes to search inorder to determine the powder best suited to the surface. Fingerprints after dusting may be liftedby using fresh cellulose tape or commercially prepared material especially designed to lift andtransfer dusted latent fingerprints.In addition to latent prints, the investigator must not overlook the possibility of two other typesof fingerprint traces: molded impression and visible impression. Molded impressions are formed bythe pressure of the finger upon comparatively soft, pliable, or plastic surfaces producing an actualmold of the fingerprint pattern. These can be recorded by photograph without treating thesurface, is usually most effective in revealing the impressions clearly. Visible impressions are formedwhen the finger is covered with some substance which is transferred to the surface contacted.Fingers smeared with blood, grease, dirt, paint, and the like will leave a visible impression. If theseimpressions are clear and sharp, they are photographed under light without ant treatment.Ordinarily, prints of this type are blurred or smeared and do not contain enough detail foridentification by comparison. However, they can not be overlooked or brushed aside without firstbeing examined carefully.1. What is the best title for this passage?[A] Visible impressions. [B] Moulded impressions.[C] Fingerprints. [D] Latent fingerprints.2. How many fingermarks are mentioned in this passage?[A] 2. [B] 3. [C] 4. [D] 5.3. Which type of fingerprints is most likely to retain?[A] Latent fingerprints. [B] Visible impressions.[C] Moulded impressions. [D] Clear fingerprints.4. How many ways are there to develop fingerprints?[A] 2. [B] 3. [C] 4. [D]答案详解：1. C. 指印，不管哪一种。
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专八阅读理解模拟试题（1）1
专八阅读理解模拟试题（1）
In some countries where racial prejudice is acute, violence has so come to be taken for granted as a means of solving differences, that it is not even questioned. There are countries where the white man imposes his rule by brute force; there are countries where the black man protests by setting fire to cities and by looting and pillaging. Important people on both sides, who would in other respects appear to be reasonable men, get up and calmly argue in favor of violence – as if it were a legitimate solution, like any other. What is really frightening, what really
fills you with despair, is the realization that when it comes to the crunch, we have made no actual progress at all. We may wear collars and ties instead of war-paint, but our instincts remain basically unchanged. The whole of the recorded history of the human race, that tedious documentation of violence, has taught us absolutely nothing. We have still not learnt that violence never solves a problem but makes it more acute. The sheer horror, the bloodshed, the suffering mean nothing. No solution ever
comes to light the morning after when we dismally contemplate the smoking ruins and wonder what hit us.
The truly reasonable men who know where the solutions lie are finding it harder and herder to get a hearing. They are despised, mistrusted and even persecuted by their own kind because they advocate such apparently outrageous things as law enforcement. If half the energy that goes
into violent acts were put to good use, if our efforts were directed at cleaning up the slums and ghettos, at improving living-standards and providing education and employment for all, we would have gone a long way to arriving at a solution. Our strength is sapped by having to mop up the mess that violence leaves in its wake. In a well-directed effort, it would not be impossible to fulfill the ideals of a stable social programme. The benefits that can be derived from constructive solutions are everywhere apparent in the world around us. Genuine and lasting solutions are always possible, providing we work within the framework of the law.
Before we can even begin to contemplate peaceful co-
existence between the races, we must appreciate each
other's problems. And to do this, we must learn about them: it is a simple exercise in communication, in exchanging information. "Talk, talk, talk," the advocates of violence say, "all you ever do is talk, and we are none the wiser." It's rather like the story of the famous barrister who painstakingly explained his case to the judge. After listening to a lengthy argument the judge complained that after all this talk, he was none the wiser. "Possible, my lord," the barrister replied, "none the wiser, but surely far better informed." Knowledge is the necessary prerequisite to wisdom: the knowledge that violence creates the evils it pretends to solve.
1. What is the best title for this passage?
[A] Advocating Violence.
[B] Violence Can Do Nothing to Diminish Race Prejudice.
[C] Important People on Both Sides See Violence As a Legitimate Solution.
[D] The Instincts of Human Race Are Thirsty for Violence。