北京外国语大学2002年研究生考试基础英语真题答案

北京外国语大学

2002年硕士研究生入学考试

基础英语试题

I. Reading Comprehension

This section contains two passages. Read each passage and then answer the questions given at the end of the passage.

Passage One

Just before Sept. 11 changed storytelling in America forever, my Hollywood agent explained that my new novel was doomed in movieland because it lacked sufficient “explosive moments.” Given this, the fact that the Defense Department is currently consulting with Hollywood scriptwriters and producers to help U.S. generals “think outside the box” is beyond comprehension. Hollywood storytellers invented the box. They worship the box. They have spent their lives mass-producing the box.

As American movie geniuses scramble to reinvent their formula and edit out scenes that might offend post-Sept. 11 sensibilities. I feel a wonderful release. The box is dead. The tyranny of Hollywood has temporarily abated. What will fill this storytelling vacuum has yet to be seen, but my bet is that the appetite for stories that explore violence and mayhem, rather than exploiting them, will have an even broader appeal.

Although the body count is traditionally high in my genre, the best thrillers and crime novels have never been about thrills or crime. They are about the often subtle, often banal inner workings of evil, and about the many shapes of heroism－those impossible struggles of the individual challenged by forces that threaten his soul more than his body.

Certainly, some of the landscape of popular fiction is changed. Stock characters that have been so reliable in their ability to scare us silly－serial killers, stalkers, hit men, mob bosses, psychopathic cannibals－wither and turn to dust in the face of the far more potent forms of evil we have encountered.

Real-life heroes reshape standards for bravery. Who has not tested his imagination by banding together with strangers on that doomed plane, throwing together a hasty plan, then storming down the narrow aisle to tackle a group of razor-wielding thugs? Who hasn’t imagined himself pushing upward into those smoke-darkened hallways as choking civilians rush out of harm’s way, while all around us a faint rumble rises?

Thriller writers grapple with the devilish distinction between revenge and justice, and show violence and bravery in their starkest forms. Books like Huckleberry Finn, Moby-Dick and A Farewell to Arms share the gritty sensibility and brutally honest portraits of violence that distinguish the modern thriller.

Since Sept. 11, my Hollywood agent has changed her tune. Now the reason my book will never be made into a film is that the one explosive moment it did contain is a scene portraying an airliner brought down by terrorists. In a book written over a year ago, I’ve broken a brand new taboo. I get no points for prescience and want none. My barometer was twitching: that’s all I can say. I write about what scares me.

And these days everywhere I look, I see material.

1. Explain the following sentences or phrases in English, bringing out the implied meaning, if there is any：（18 points）

（1）They have spent their lives mass-producing the box.

（2）...edit out scenes that might offend post-Sept. Il sensibilities

（3）...the appetite for stories that explore violence and mayhem, rather than exploiting them, will have an even broader appeal

（4）Although the body count is traditionally high in my genre...

（5）...wither and turn to dust in the face of the far more potent forms of evil ...

（6）...my Hollywood agent has changed her tune

2. Give a brief answer to the following question: （6 points）

（1）What does the author mean by saying: “I’ve broken a brand new taboo”?

Passage Two

It’s the first week of school at the University of California, Berkeley, and Sproul Plaza, the campus’s main thoroughfare, is bustling with the usual lunchtime c rowd: protesters clanging garbage-can lids and plinking cowbells; upperclassmen blaring boomboxes; a jazz ensemble luring potential recruits with a Miles Davis standard. It’s a portrait of diversity in every way but one: skin color. A disproportionate number of the students walking around Sproul are Asian-Americans. Amy Tang, a third-year cognitive-science major, sits at a booth for the Chinese Student Association. “I came to Berkeley for the diversity,” she says, surveying the plaza. “But when I got here a nd saw all the Asians, it was really weird.”

Berkeley’s rapidly morphing student body has sparked one of the fiercest debates in higher education. The school’s Asian-American population had already been surging for years when, in 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209, a ballot initiative that banned affirmative action at all state institutions. At the time, the campus was tom by protests. And the result seemed to confirm the doomsayers’ predictions:enrollment of African-American, Hispanic and Native American students plunged at Berkeley; while the Asian-American population continued to rise. Asian-American students now make up about 45 percent of incoming freshmen, white students 30 percent, Hispanic students 9 percent and African-American only 4 percent. And the drops in under-represented minorities are even more acute at the grad schools. William Bagley, a university regent who supports affirmative action, insists that the university’s most prestigious campuses－like Berkeley－have become “reverse ghettos, with Asians and whites and a lack of color.”

What accounts for the shift? To start, the pool of eligible Asian-American applicants was already huge. Nearby San Francisco boasts the highest percentage of Asian-Americans in the continental United States. And Asian-Americans are many times more likely than other groups to graduate at the top of their high-school classes. At Cal, many Asian-American students attribute their academic success to family pressure and, in some cases, an immigrant mind-set. “There’s such a push to succeed,” says Marian Liu, a fifth-year student at Cal whose father was a Chinese