华北电力大学考博英语阅读真题及其精解

考博英语（阅读理解）历年真题试卷汇编7(题后含答案及解析) 题型有： 3. Reading ComprehensionReading ComprehensionWe have known for a long time that the organization of any particular society is influenced by the definition of the sexes and the distinction drawn between them. But we have realized only recently that the identity of each sex is not so easy to pin down, and that definitions evolve in accordance with different types of culture known to us, that is, scientific discoveries and ideological revolutions. Our nature is not considered as immutable, either socially or biologically. As we approach the beginning of the 21st century, the substantial progress made in biology and genetics is radically challenging the roles, responsibilities and specific characteristics attributed to each sex, and yet, scarcely twenty years ago, these were thought to be “ beyond dispute”. We can safely say, with a few minor exceptions, that the definition of the sexes and their respective functions remained unchanged in the West from the beginning of the 19th century to the 1960s. The role distinction, raised in some cases to the status of uncompromising dualism on a strongly hierarchical model, lasted throughout this period, appealing for its justification to nature, religion and customs alleged to have existed since the dawn of time. The woman bore children and took care of the home. The man set out to conquer the world and was responsible for the survival of his family, by satisfying their needs in peacetime and going to war when necessary. The entire world order rested on the divergence of the sexes. Any overlapping or confusion between the roles was seen as a threat to the time-honored order of things. It was felt to be against nature, a deviation from the norm. Sex roles were determined according to the “place” appropriate to each. Women’s place was, first and foremost, in the home. The outside world, i.e. workshops, factories and business firms, belonged to men. This sex-based division of the world(private and public)gave rise to a strict dichotomy between the attitudes, which conferred on each is special identity. The woman, sequestered at home, “cared, nurtured and conserved. “ To do this, she had no need to be daring, ambitious, tough or competitive. The man, on the other hand, competing with his fellow men, was caught up every day in the struggle for survival, and hence developed those characteristics which were thought natural in a man. Today, many women go out to work, and their reasons for doing so have changed considerably. Besides the traditional financial incentives, we find ambition and personal fulfillment motivating those in the most favorable circumstances, and the wish to have a social life and to get out of their domestic isolation influencing others. Above all, for all women, work is invariably connected with the desire for independence.1．It is only in recent years that we have recognized that______.A．there is almost no clue to the identity of both sexesB．the role distinction between different sexes is conspicuousC．the different definitions of sexes bears on the development of cultureD．the progress of civilization greatly influences the role definitions of sexes正确答案：D解析：细节题。

考博英语（阅读理解）练习试卷24(题后含答案及解析) 题型有：1. Reading ComprehensionReading ComprehensionRoger Rosenblatt’s book Black Fiction, in attempting to apply literary rather than sociopolitical criteria to its subject, successfully alters the approach taken by most previous studies. As Rosenblatt notes, criticism of Black writing has often served as a pretext for expounding on Black history. Addison Gayle’s recent work, for example, judges the value of Black fiction by overtly political standards, rating each work according to the notions of Black identity which it propounds. Although fiction assuredly springs from political circumstances, its authors react to those circumstances in ways other than ideological, and talking about novels and stories primarily as instruments of ideology circumvents much of the fictional enterprise. Rosenblatt’s literary analysis discloses affinities and connections among works of Black fiction which solely political studies have overlooked or ignored. Writing acceptable criticism of Black fiction, however, presupposes giving satisfactory answers to a number of questions. First of all, is there a sufficient reason other than the racial identity of the author? Second, how does Black fiction make itself distinct from other modern fiction with which it is largely contemporaneous? Rosenblatt shows that Black fiction constitutes a distinct body of writing that has an identifiable, coherent literary tradition. Looking at novels written by Blacks over the last eight years, he discovers recurring concerns and designs independent of chronology. These structures are thematic, and they spring, not surprisingly, from the central fact that the Black characters in these novels exist in a predominantly white culture, whether they try to conform to that culture or rebel against it. Black Fiction does leave some aesthetic questions open, Rosenblatt s thematic analyses permits considerable objectivity; he even explicitly states that it is not his intention to judge the merit of the various works yet his reluctance seems misplaced, especially since an attempt to appraise might have led to interesting results. For instance, some of the novels appear to be structurally diffuse. Is this a defect, or are the authors working out of, or trying to forge, a different kind of aesthetic? In addition, the style of some Black novels, like Jean Toomer’s Cane, verges on expressionism or surrealism; does this technique provide a counterpoint to the prevalent theme that portrays the late against which black heroes are pitted, a theme usually conveyed by more naturalistic modes of expression? In spite of such omissions, what Rosenblatt does include in his discussion makes for an astute and worthwhile study. Black Fiction surveys a wide variety of novels, bringing to our attention in the process some fascinating and little-known works like James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Its argument is tightly constructed, and is forthright, lucid style exemplifies levelheaded and penetrating criticism. (444 words)1．The author of the passage objects to the Black fiction made by Addison Gayle because itA．emphasizes purely literary aspects of such fictionB．misinterprets the ideological content of such fictionC．overlooks the notions of Black identity contained in such fictionD．substitutes sociopolitical criteria for literary criteria in evaluating such fiction正确答案：D解析：文章第一段已清楚地表明，Addison Gayle最近出的书用的是社会政治标准来评价黑人小说，是不对的。

考博英语-50(总分76, 做题时间90分钟)Part Ⅰ Reading ComprehensionDirections: There are 4 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some question or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C, D, You should decide on the best choice and mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets.From the health point of view we are living in a marvelous age. We are immunized from birth against many of the most dangerous disease. A large number of once fatal illness can now be found for the most stubborn remaining disease. The expectation of life Ms increased enormously. But though the possibility of living a long and happy life is greater than ever before, every day we witness the incredible slaughter of them, women and children on the roads Man versus the motor-car! It is a never-ending battle which man is losing Thousand of people the world over are killed or horribly killed each year and we are quietly sitting back and letting it happen. It has been rightly said that when a man is sitting behind a steering wheel, his car becomes the extension of his personality. There is no doubt that the motorcar often brings out a man's very worst qualities. People who are normally quiet and pleasant may become unrecognizable when they are behind steering wheel. They swear, they are ill-mannered and aggressive, willful as two-year-olds and utterly selfish. All their hidden frustrations, disappointments and jealousies seem to be brought to the surface by the act of driving.The surprising thing is that the society smiles so gently on the motorist and seems to forgive his convenience. Cities are allowed to become almost uninhabitable because of heavy traffic; towns are made ugly by huge car parks; the countryside is desecrated by road networks;, and the mass annual slaughter becomes nothing mere than a statistic, to be conveniently forgotten It is high time a world code were created to reduce this senseless waste of human life. With regard to driving, the laws of some countries are notoriously lax and even the strictest are not strict enough. A code which wasuniversally accepted could only have a dramatically beneficial effect on the accident rate. Here are a few examples of some of the things that might be done. The driving test should be standardized and made for more difficult than it is; all the drivers should be made to take a test every three YEARS or so; the age at which young people are allowed to drive any vehicle should be raised to at least 21; all vehicles should be put through strict annual tests for safety. Eventhe smallest amount of alcohol in the blood can impair a person's driving ability. Present drinking and driving laws (where theyexist ) should be made much stricter. Maximum and minimum speedlimits should be imposed on all roads. Governments should lay down safety specifications for manufacturers, as has been done in the USA. All advertising stressing power and performance should be banned. These measures may sound inordinately harsh. But surely nothing should be considered as too severe ff it results in reducing the annual ton of human life. After all, the world is for human beings not for motorcars.1.The passage supplies information for answering which of the following questions?SSS_SINGLE_SELA Why are projections of the effects of changes in water vapor levels on the climate so inaccurate?Babsorbs What are the steps in the process that takes place as CO2long-wavelength radiation?C How might our understanding of the greenhouse effect be improved if the burning of fossil fuels were decreased?DWhat might cause a series of regular increases and decreases in the amount of COin the atmosphere?2该问题分值: 1答案:D依据第三自然段和第四自然段第一句话。

考博英语（阅读理解）历年真题试卷汇编5(题后含答案及解析) 题型有： 3. Reading ComprehensionReading ComprehensionFor 150 years scientists have tried to determine the solar constant, the amount of solar constant energy that reaches the Earth. Yet, even in the most cloud-free regions of the planet, the solar constant cannot be measured precisely. Gas molecules and dust particles in the atmosphere absorb and scatter sunlight and prevent some wavelengths of the light from ever reaching the ground. With the advent of satellites, however, scientists have finally been able to measure the Sun’s output without being impeded by the Earth’s atmosphere. Solar Max, a satellite from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA), has been measuring the Sun’s output since February 1980. Although a malfunction in the satellite’s control system limited its observation for a few years, the satellite was repaired in orbit by astronauts from the space-shuttle in 1984. Max’s observations indicate that the solar constant is not really constant after all. The satellite’s instruments have detected frequent, small variations in the Sun’s energy output, generally amounting to no more than 0. 05 percent of the Sun’s mean energy output and lasting from a few days to a few weeks. Scientists believe these fluctuations coincide with the appearance and disappearance of large groups of sunspots on the Sun’s disk. Sunspots are relatively dark regions on the Sun’s surface that have strong magnetic fields and a temperature about 2, 000 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the rest of the Sun’s surface. Particularly large fluctuations in the solar constant have coincided with sightings of large sunspot groups. In 1980, for example, Solar Max’s instruments registered 0. 3 percent drop in the solar energy reaching the Earth. At that time a sunspot group covered about 0. 6 percent of the solar disk, an area 20 times larger than the Earth’s surface. Long-term variations in the solar constant are more difficult to determine. Although Solar Max’s data have indicated a slow and steady decline in the Sun’s output, some scientists have thought that the satellite’s aging detectors might have become less sensitive over the years, thus falsely indicating a drop in the solar constant. This possibility was dismissed, however, by comparing Solar Max’s observations with data from a similar instrument operating on NASA’s Nimbus 7 weather satellite since 1978.1．Why is it not possible to measure the solar constant accurately without a satellite?A．the Earth is too far from the Sun.B．Some areas on Earth receive more solar energy than others.C．There is not enough sunlight during the day.D．the Earth’s atmosphere interferes with the sunlight.正确答案：D解析：细节题。

考博英语（阅读理解）-试卷78(总分：40.00，做题时间：90分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：4，分数：40.00)In a society where all aspects of our lives are dictated by scientific advances in technology, science is the essence of our existence. Without the vast advances made by chemists, physicists, biologists, geologists and other diligent scientists, our standards of living would decline, our flourishing wealthy nation might come to an economic depression, and our people would suffer from diseases that could not be cured. As a society we ignorantly take advantage of the amenities provided by science, yet our lives would be altered interminably without them. Health care, one of the aspects of our society that separates us from our archaic ancestors, is founded exclusively on scientific discoveries and advances. Without the vaccines created by doctors, diseases such as polio, measles, hepatitis, and the flu would pose a threat to our citizens, for although some of these diseases may not be deadly, their side effects can be a vast detriment to an individual affected with the disease. In addition, science has developed perhaps the most awe-inspiring vital invention in the history of the world, the computer. Without the presence of this machine our world could exist, but the conveniences brought into life by the computer are unparalleled. Despite the greatness of present-day innovators and scientists and their revelations, it is requisite to examine the amenities of science that our culture so blatantly disregards. For instance, the light bulb, electricity, the telephone, running water, and the automobile are present-day staples of our society, however, they were not present until scientists discovered them. Because of the contribution of scientists, our world is ever metamorphosing, and this metamorphosis economically and personally comprises our society, whether our society is cognizant of this or not.（分数：10.00）(1).In the first paragraph the author implies that we______.（分数：2.00）A.would not survive without scienceB.take the amenities of science for grantedC.could have raised the standards of living with scienceD.would be free of disease because of scientific with advances(2).The author uses health care and vaccines to illustrate______.（分数：2.00）A.how science has been developedB.what science means to societyC.what the nature of science isD.how disease affects society(3).Nothing, according to the author, can match the invention of the computer in terms of______.（分数：2.00）A.powerB.noveltyC.benefitsplexity(4).The author seems to be unhappy about______.（分数：2.00）A.people's ignorance of their cultureB.people's ignoring the amenities of scienceC.people's making no contributions to societyD.people's misunderstanding of scientific advance(5).The author's tone in the passage is______.（分数：2.00）A.criticalB.cognizantC.appreciativeD.paradoxicalDrinking wastewater? The idea may sound distasteful, but new federally funded research says more Americans are doing so —whether they know or not —and this reuse will be increasingly necessary as the U. S. population expands. Treated wastewater poses no greater health risks than existing water supplies and, in some cases, may be even safer to drink, according to a report released by the National Research Council, " We believe water reuse is an option to deal with growing water scarcity, especially in coastal areas," says Jorg Drowes, an engineering professor at the Colorado School of Mines. "This can be done reliably without putting the public at risk," he says, citing technological advances. He says it's a waste not to reuse the nation's wastewater, because almost all of it is treated before discharge. This water includes storm runoff(径流)as well as used water from homes, businesses and factories. In many places, the report says, the public does not realize it's drinking water that was treated after being discharged as wastewater somewhere upstream. For example, wastewater discharged into the Trinity River from Dallas/Fort Worth flows south into Lake Livingston, the source for Houston's drinking water. Despite the growing importance of this reuse, the report says there's been no systemic analysis of its extent nationwide since a 1980 study by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency(EPA). Alan Roberson of the American Water Works Association says wastewater reuse is common, so the council's report is important but not surprising. Roberson expects this recycling will continue to increase, especially for irrigation and industrial needs. He says it will take longer to establish potable(适于饮用的)uses because of public nervousness about drinking wastewater, however treated. "We have to do something to address water scarcity," says Olga Naidenko, a senior scientist at the non-profit Environmental Working Group. " Less than 10% of potable water is used for drinking, cooking, showering or dishwashing. We flush it down the toilet, literally. " Technologies exist to safely treat the water, she says, although some are expensive. The report says water reuse projects tend to cost more than most water conservation options but less than seawater desalination(脱盐)and other supply alternatives. It calls on the EPA to develop rules that set safe national standards.（分数：10.00）(1).Which of the following statements would Jorg Drewes agree to?（分数：2.00）A.Water reuse may eventually put the public at risk.B.Water reuse is preferable to wasting water.C.Water reuse is far from a solution to water shortage.D.Water reuse is possible only after greater tech advances.(2).Lake Livingston is mentioned to show that the public______.（分数：2.00）A.Accepts the fact of drinking wastewater calmlyB.Is concerned about the safety of the drinking waterC.Does not believe that wastewater is safe to drinkD.Is not aware of the nature of their drinking water(3).According to Alan Roberson, ______.（分数：2.00）A.It is not safe to drink wastewaterB.The report has surprised the publicC.the report helps build up public confidenceD.The public has yet to accept drinking wastewater(4).Olga Naidenko's remarks emphasize______.（分数：2.00）A.The recent progressB.The existing problemsC.The new perspectiveD.The potential risks(5).What does the report suggest to the EPA?（分数：2.00）A.Weighing different water conservation options.B.Exploring new technologies to treat wastewater.C.Setting up national standards for water reuse.D.Monitoring water supplies at a national level.Rain is not what it used to be. A new study reveals that much of the precipitation in Europe contains such high levels of dissolved pesticides that it could be illegal to supply it as drinking water. Studies in Switzerland have found that rain is laced with toxic levels of atrazine, alachlor and other commonly used crop sprays. "Drinking water standards are regularly exceeded in rain," says Stephan Muller, a chemist at the Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology in Dubendorf. The chemicals appear to have evaporated from fields and become part of the clouds. Both the European Union and Switzerland have set a limit of 100 nanograms for any particular pesticide in a liter of drinking water. But, especially in the first minutes of a heavy storm, rain can contain much more than that. In a study to be published by Muller and his colleague Thomas Bucheli in Analytical Chemistry this summer, one sample of rainwater contained almost 4000 nanograms per liter of 2, 4-dinitrophenol, a widely used pesticide. Previously, the authors had shown that in rain samples taken from 41 storms, nine contained more than 100 nanograms of atrazine per liter, one of them around 900 nanograms. In the latest study, the highest concentrations of pesticides turned up in the first rain after a long dry spell, particularly when local fields had recently been sprayed. Until now, scientists had assumed that the pesticides only infiltrated groundwater directly from fields. Muller warns that the growing practice of using rainwater that falls onto roofs to recharge under — ground water may be adding to the danger. This water often contains dissolved herbicides that had been added to roofing materials, such as bitumen sheets, to prevent vegetation growing. He suggests that the first flush of rain should be diverted into sewers to minimize the pollution of drinking water, which is not usually treated to remove these herbicides and pesticides.（分数：10.00）(1).According to the Swedish scientists, the pesticides in rain______.（分数：2.00）A.exceed those in crop spraysB.can be traced back to crop spraysC.are not as toxic as they used to beD.are nothing but atrazine and alachlor(2).Muller and Bucheli found that 2, 4-dinitrophenol______.（分数：2.00）A.is widely used in agricultureB.exceeded atrazine in the rain samplesC.can be measured in the units of nanogramsD.was far in excess of limit in drinking water(3).Scientists used to hypothesize that______.（分数：2.00）A.groundwater was safe for drinking waterB.herbicides and pesticides were harmlessC.pesticides contaminated groundwater exclusivelyD.rain would minimize the pollution of drinking water(4).Muller warns us not ____ .（分数：2.00）A.to tap groundwater for drinking waterB.to use such roofing materials as bitumen sheetsC.to let the first flush of rain recharge underground waterD.to divert the first flush of rain into sewers without removing its herbicides and pesticides(5).Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?（分数：2.00）A.Drinking WaterB.Rainwater and Underground WaterC.Agriculture and PesticidesD.Falling PesticidesAlthough speech and writing are the special means of communicating of humans, the interchange also takes place in many other ways. A person may relay his or her feelings, thoughts, and reactions through body positioning, body contact, body odors, eye contact, responsive actions, habits, attitudes, interests, state of health, dress and grooming, choice of life-style, and use of talents — in fact, through everything the individual says or does. In turn, every person is constantly receiving multitudes of external and internal messages through his or her five senses and personal biorhythm system. An individual screens, selects, regulates, and controls specific aspects of this information through a process of mental choices. Some of these choices are automatic; some are subconscious because of habit, block, or lack of development; and some are made by a conscious process. The degree to which a person is able to communicate depends upon the extent of his or her conscious awareness, priority of need, and control of this process. The person with a behavior disorder is shut off from the communicative flow that normally exists among humans. His or her mind is confused, and he or she may feel unable to express personal thoughts, needs, and emotions, and unable to make himself or herself understood. Sometimes the person may feel that he or she is communicating clearly but that others cannot or will not understand. Because the person is thus isolated in internal problems, he or she is interested only in these problems and cannot focus attention on the messages of others. The person often projects fears and fantasies onto others, so that no matter what the real content is of the messages that others relay, the messages received are threatening ones. The causes of such communicative shutoffs are blocks in the neural pathways of the person's processing of information. Sometimes a block is physical, as in deafness, mental retardation, brain tumor, or hardening of the cerebral arteries. However, the most common causes of blocks are injuries to a person's emotional system. Emotional blocks occur to some degree in all human beings. They usually occur in childhood before good communicative skills are learned, and they are connected to individual symbolism. Unless such a block is removed shortly after happening, it can have profound and complicating effects that will distort emotional and mental growth and arrest the development potential of the individual. Even though a child with blocks will appear to grow and to seem mature in some ways, he or she will show the evidence of emotional blocking in efforts to communicate.（分数：10.00）(1).The concluding phrase of the first paragraph implies that human communication______.（分数：2.00）A.is characterized by two features, form and meaningB.is mainly conducted through speech and writingC.is of two functions, stimulation and responseD.takes two forms, verbal and nonverbal(2).In the second paragraph the author is mainly concerned with______.（分数：2.00）municative abilityB.external and internal messagesrmation and mental processingD.conscious and subconscious awareness(3).Shut off from the communicative flow, the person with a behavior disorder______.（分数：2.00）A.is unable to focus attention on internal problemsB.is isolated in internal problemsC.relays threatening messagesD.all of the above(4).Which of the following is universal according to the passage?（分数：2.00）A.Neural blocks.B.Physical blocks.C.Cerebral blocks.D.Emotional blocks.(5).The passage ends with______.（分数：2.00）A.the contributing factors to emotional and mental disorderB.the importance of acquiring good communicative skillsC.the significance of eliminating early emotional blocksD.the warning of emotional blocks common in childhood。

考博英语（阅读理解）-试卷79(总分：40.00，做题时间：90分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：4，分数：40.00)Eating is related to emotional as well as physiologic needs. Sucking, which is the infant's means of gaining both food and emotional security, conditions the association of eating with well-being or with deprivation. If the child is breast-fed and has supportive body contact as well as good milk intake, if the child is allowed to suck for as long as he or she desires, and if both the child and mother enjoy the nursing experience and share their enjoyment, the child is more likely to thrive both physically and emotionally. On the other hand, if the mother is nervous and resents the child or cuts him or her off from the milk supply before either the child's hunger or sucking need is satisfied, or handles the child hostilely during the feeding, or props the baby with a bottle rather than holding the child, the child may develop physically but will begin to show signs of emotional disturbance at an early age. If, in addition, the infant is further abused by parental indifference or intolerance, he or she will carry scars of such emotional deprivation throughout life. Eating habits are also conditioned by family and other psychosocial environments. If an individual's family eats large quantities of food, then he or she is inclined to eat large amounts. If an individual's family eats mainly vegetables, then he or she will be inclined to like vegetables. If mealtime is a happy and significant event, then the person will tend to think of eating in those terms. And if a family eats quickly, without caring what is being eaten and while fighting at the dinner table, then the person will most likely adopt the same eating pattern and be adversely affected by it. This conditioning to food can remain unchanged through a lifetime unless the individual is awakened to the fact of conditioning and to the possible need for altering his or her eating patterns in order to improve nutritional intake. Conditioning spills over into and is often reinforced by religious beliefs and other customs so that, for example, a Jew, whose religion forbids the eating of pork, might have guilt feelings if he or she ate pork. An older Roman Catholic might be conditioned to feel guilty if he or she eats meat on Friday, traditionallya fish day.（分数：10.00）(1).A well-breast-fed child______.（分数：2.00）A.tends to associate foods with emotionsB.is physiologically and emotionally satisfiedC.cannot have physiologic and emotional problemsD.is more likely to have his or her needs satisfied in the future(2).While sucking, the baby is actually______.（分数：2.00）A.conscious of the impact of breast-feedingB.interacting with his or her motherC.creating a nursing environmentD.impossible to be abused(3).A bottle-fed child______.（分数：2.00）A.can be healthy physiologically, but not emotionallyB.cannot avoid physiologic abuse throughout lifeC.is deprived of emotional needsD.is rid of physiological needs(4).From the list of eating habits, we learn that______.（分数：2.00）A.everyone follows his or her eating pattern to deathB.one's eating pattern varies with his or her personalityC.there is no such things as psychosocial environmentsD.everybody is born into a conditioned eating environment(5).A Jew or an older Roman Catholic______.（分数：2.00）A.takes a eating habit as a religious beliefB.is conditioned to feel guilty of eating pork in his or her familyC.cannot have a nutritional eating habit conditioned by religious beliefsD.observes a eating pattern conditioned by his or her psychosocial environmentThe popular idea that classical music can improve your maths is falling from favor. New experiments have failed to support the widely publicized finding that Mozart's music promotes mathematical thinking. Researchers reported six years ago that listening to Mozart brings about short-term improvements in spatial-temporal reasoning, the type of thinking used in maths. Gordon Shaw of the University of California at Irvine and Frances Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh had asked students to perform spatial tasks such as imagining how a piece of paper would look if it were folded and cut in a certain pattern. Some of the students then listened to a Mozart sonata and took the test again. The performance of the Mozart group improved. Shaw found. He reasoned that listening to Mozart increases the number of connections between neurons. But Kenneth Steele of Appalachian State University in North Carolina learnt that other studies failed to find this effect. He decided to repeat one of Shaw's experiments to see for himself. Steele divided 125 students into three groups and tested their abilities to work out how paper would look if cut and folded. One group listened to Mozart another listened to a piece by Philip Glass and the third did not listen to anything. Then the students took the test again. No group showed any statistically significant improvement in their abilities. Steele concludes that the Mozart effect doesn't exist. "It's about as unproven and as unsupported as you can get," he says. Shaw however defends his study. One reason he gives is that people who perform poorly in the initial test get the greatest boost from Mozart but Steele didn't separate his students into groups based on ability. "We're still at the stage where it needs to be examined," Shaw says. "I suspect that the more we understand the neurobiology, the more we'll be able to design tests that give a robust effect. "（分数：10.00）(1).It has been recently found out that______.（分数：2.00）A.Mozart had an aptitude of music because of his mathematical thinkingB.classical music cannot be expected to improve one's mathC.the effects of music on health are widely recognizedD.music favors one's mathematical thinking(2).Which of the following pairs, according to the widely publicized finding, is connected?（分数：2.00）A.Paper cutting and spatial thinking.B.The nature of a task and the type of thinking.C.Classical music and mathematical performance.D.Mathematical thinking and spatial-temporal reasoning.(3).In Shaw's test, the students would most probably______.（分数：2.00）A.draw the image of the cut paperB.improve their mathematical thinkingC.have the idea about classical music confirmedD.increase the number of neurons in their brains(4).From Steele's experiment we can say that______.（分数：2.00）A.his hypothesis did not get proven and supportedB.it was much more complicated than Shaw'sC.the results were statistically significantD.Shaw's results were not repeatable(5).Shaw is critical of______.（分数：2.00）A.Steele's results presented at a wrong stageB.Steele's wrong selection of the testeesC.Steele's ignorance of neurobiologyD.Steel's test designFourteen-year-old Sean MeCallum lay in a hospital bed waiting for a new heart. Without it, Sean would die. Sean's case is not unusual. Everyday many people die because there just aren't enough human organs to go around. Now scientists say they can alter the genetic make-up of certain animals so that their organs may be acceptable to humans. With this gene-altering technique to overcome our immune rejection to foreign organs, scientists hope to use pig hearts for transplants by the year 2008. That prospect, however, has stirred up strong opposition among animal right activists. They protest that the whole idea of using animal is cruel and unjust. Some scientists also fear such transplants may transmit unknown diseases to humans. Others believe transplanting animal organs into humans is unnecessary. Millions of dollars spent on breeding pigs for their organs could be better spent on health education programs. They believe seventy-five percent of the heart disease cases that had lead to a need for organ transplant are preventable. The key is to convince people to eat healthfully, and not to smoke or drink alcohol. Scientists could also use research funds to improve artificial organs. Still others believe that though new inventions and prevention programs may help, spending money to encourage more people to donate their organs is an even better idea. If enough people were educated about organ donations, everyone who needed an organ could be taken off the waiting list in a year.（分数：10.00）(1).What is the problem the passage begins with?（分数：2.00）A.A high mortality rate of immune rejection.B.A malpractice in heart transplantation.C.An unusual case of organ transplant.D.A shortage of human organs.(2).Not only is the gene-altering technique a technical issue, according to the passage, but also it______.（分数：2.00）A.introduces an issue of inhumanityB.raises the issue of justice in medicineC.presents a significant threat to the human natureD.pushes the practice of organ transplant to the limits(3).Doubtful of the necessity of using animal organs, some scientists______.（分数：2.00）A.are to narrow the scope of organ transplantsB.switch to the development of artificial organse up with alternatives to the current problemD.set out to purchase better ways of treating heart disease(4).It can be inferred from the concluding paragraph of the passage that______.（分数：2.00）A.the gene-altering technique will help those waiting for organ transplantsB.the present supply of human organs still has potential to be exploredC.people prefer the use of animal organs for medical purposesD.the gene-altering technique leaves much to be desired(5).The information the passage carries is______.（分数：2.00）A.enlighteningB.unbelievableC.imaginativeD.factualHere is a great irony of 21st century global health: while many hundreds of millions of people lack adequate food as a result of economic inequities, political corruption, or warfare, many hundreds of millions more are overweight to the point of increased risk of diet-related chronic diseases. Obesity is a worldwide phenomenon, affecting children as well as adults and forcingall but the poorest countries to divert scarce resources away from food security to take care of people with preventable heart disease and diabetes. To reverse the obesity epidemic, we must address the fundamental cause. Overweight comes from consuming more food energy than is expended in activity. The cause of this imbalance also is ironically improved prosperity. People use extra income to eat more and be less physically active. Market economies encourage this. They turn people with expendable income into consumers of aggressively marketed foods that are high in energy but low in nutritional value, and of cars, television sets, and computers that promote sedentary behavior. Gaining weight is good business. Food is particularly big business because everyone eats. Moreover, food is so overproduced that many countries especially the rich ones, have far more than they need —another irony. In the United States, to take an extreme example, most adults — of all ages, incomes, educational levels, and census categories — are overweight. The U. S. food supply provides 3800 kilocalories per person per day, nearly twice as much as required by many adults. Overabundant food forces companies to compete for sales through advertising, health claims, new products, larger portions, and campaigns directed towards children. Food marketing promotes weight gain. Indeed, it is difficult to think of any major industry that might benefit if people eat less food; certainly not the agriculture, food product, grocery, restaurant, diet, or drug industries. All flourish when people eat more, and all employ armies of lobbyists to discourage governments from doing anything to inhibit overeating.（分数：10.00）(1).The great irony of 21st century global public health refers to______.（分数：2.00）A.the cause of obesity and its counteractive measuresB.the insufficient and superfluous consumption of foodC.the scarce natural resource and the negligence of food security.D.the consumption of food and the increased risk of diet-related diseases(2).To address the fundamental cause of the obesity epidemic, according to the passage, is______.（分数：2.00）A.to improve political and economic managementB.to cope with the energy imbalance issueC.to combat diet-related chronic diseasesD.to increase investment in global health(3).As we can learn from the passage, the second irony refers to______.（分数：2.00）A.affluence and obesityB.food energy and nutritional valueC.food business and economic prosperityD.diseases of civilization and pathology of inactivity(4).As a result of the third irony, people______.（分数：2.00）A.consume 3800 kilocalories on a daily basisplain about food overproductionC.have to raise their food expensesD.are driven towards weight gain(5).Which of the following can be excluded as we can understand based on the passage?（分数：2.00）A.The economic dimension.B.The political dimension.C.The humane dimension.D.The dietary dimension.。

考博英语（阅读理解）历年真题试卷汇编3(题后含答案及解析)题型有：1. On top of that, U. S. anti-terrorism laws cut off food aid because Al-Shabaab, listed as a terrorist group, was taking some of it. Though the United Nations has declared the famine over, that was based on statistical measures, such as the number of people dying each day and the number of children who are malnourished. Though the official famine may be over, both U. N. officials and Monday’s speakers said the crisis continues for the people of Somalia. Almost a third of the population remains dependent on humanitarian assistance, crops growing from recent rains will take months to reach maturity, and herds of cows, goats, and other animals were greatly reduced during the crisis. Michael Delaney, director of humanitarian response for Oxfam America, warned that the world will have another chance to get its response fight, because the warning signs are pointing to an impending famine in Africa’s Sahel, the arid, continent-spanning transition zone just below the Sahara Desert.6．The current Somali famine is different from the 1991 -1992 one in that______.A．it received less international aidB．worst effects came more slowlyC．it caught more attention from the worldD．it lasted longer despite help from the UN正确答案：B解析：细节题。

考博英语阅读训练及全文翻译（一）Overseas students shun UK and US universitiesThe market share of international students enjoyed by British and US universities has dropped sharply as Australia，Japan and New Zealand become increasingly popular destinations，according to an international comparison of education systems published yesterday.The latest edition of Education at a Glance，an annual audit published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development，showed that although foreign students continue to be attracted to the two countries because of the English language teaching and perceived quality of education，in relative terms their position is weakening.The Paris-based organisation reported that US market share fell 2 per cent from 2002-3，while the UK suffered the fastest decline among OECD members，falling from 16.2 per cent in 1998 to 13.5 percent in 2003.The most recent year used by the report is 2003 so the percentages did not include a 21.3 per cent fall in the number of Chinese students accepted for university courses in Britain this year. Britain is increasingly reliant on the higher fees paid by students from outside the European Union to help sustain its universities for domestic students.The overall number of students studying outside their own countries stood at 2.1m in 2003，an 8.3 percent annual average increase since 1998.According to the report the international complexion of US campuses has changed strikingly since September 11 2001. The country''s universities have seen decreases of 10-37 per cent in students from the Gulf states，northern Africa and some south-east Asian countries.The report also concluded that despite continued，if uneven，growth in the number of graduates churned out by the rich world''s universities，the monetary value of a degree showed no sign of having been tarnished.Andreas Schleicher，head of the Indicators and Analysis Division of the OECD''s Directorate of Education，said there was no evidence of inflation of the labour-market value of qualifications and that graduates could expect to continue to earn considerably more than those without a degree.Assessing the performance of the world''s schools，Mr Schleicher said Asia was soaring while Europe remained level and South America had slipped into relative decline.一、全文翻译英美大学留学生人数骤跌据昨天公布的一项国际教育体系比较研究称，英美大学的留学生市场份额急剧下降，而澳大利亚、日本和新西兰日益成为受欢迎的留学目的地。

华北电力大学考博英语模拟真题及其解析Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced byscience,but their form and function,their dimensions andappearance,were determined bytechnologists,artisans,designers,inventors,and engineers—usingnonscientific modes of thought.Many features and qualities of theobjects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced tounambiguous verbal descriptions;they are dealt with in the mind bya visual,nonverbal process.In the development of Western Geng duoyuan xiao wan zheng kao bo ying yu zhen ti ji qi jie xi qing lian xiquan guo mian fei zi xun dian hua:si ling ling liu liu ba liu jiuqi ba,huo jia zi xun qq:qi qi er liu qi ba wu san qi technology,ithas been nonverbal thinking,by and large,that has fixed the outlinesand filled in the details of our material surroundings.Pyramids,cathedrals,and rockets exist not because of geometry orthermodynamics,but because they were first a picture in the minds ofthose who built them.The creative shaping process of a technologist''s mind can be seenin nearly every artifact that exists.For example,in designing adiesel engine,a technologist might impress individual ways ofnonverbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitivesense of rightness and fitness.What would be the shape of thecombustion chamber？Where should be valves be placed？Should ithave a long or short piston？Such questions have a range of answersthat are supplied by experience,by physical requirements,bylimitations of available space,and not least by a sense of form.Some decisions such as wall thickness and pin diameter,may depend on scientific calculations,but the nonscientific component of design remains primary.Design courses,then,should be an essential element in engineering curricula.Nonverbal thinking,a central mechanism in engineering design,involves perceptions,the stock-in-trade of the artist,not the scientist.Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail hard thinking，nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development of cognitive processes and inferior to verbal or mathematical thought.But it is paradoxical that when the staff of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric views of industrial processes for its historical record of American engineering,the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students,but rather students attending architectural schools.If courses in design,which in a strongly analytical engineering curriculum provide the background required for practicalproblem-solving,are not provided,we can expect to encounter silly but costly errors occurring in advanced engineering systems.For example,early models of high-speed railroad cars loaded with sophisticated controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because a fan sucked snow into the electrical system.Absurd random failures that plague automatic control systems are not merely trivialaberrations;they are a reflection of the chaos that results when design is assumed to be primarily a problem in mathematics.1.In the text,the author is primarily concerned with[A]identifying the kinds of thinking that are used by technologists.[B]stressing the importance of nonverbal thinking in engineering design.[C]proposing a new role for nonscientific thinking in the development of technology.[D]contrasting the goals of engineers with those of technologists.2.It can be inferred that the author thinks engineering curricula are[A]strengthened when they include courses in design.[B]weakened by the substitution of physical science courses for courses designed to develop mathematical skills.[C]strong because nonverbal thinking is still emphasized by most of the courses.[D]strong despite the errors that graduates of such curricula have made in the development of automatic control systems.3.Which of the following statements best illustrates the main point of the first two paragraphs of the text？[A]When a machine like a rotary engine malfunctions,it is the technologist who is best equipped to repair it.[B]Each component of an automobile—for example,the engine or the fuel tank—has a shape that has been scientifically determined to be best suited to that component''s function.[C]A telephone is a complex instrument designed by technologists using only nonverbal thought.[D]The distinctive features of a suspension bridge reflect its designer''s conceptualization as well as the physical requirements of its site.4.Which of the following statements would best serve as an introduction to the text？[A]The assumption that the knowledge incorporated in technological developments must be derived from science ignores the many nonscientific decisions made by technologists.[B]Analytical thought is no longer a vital component in the success of technological development.[C]As knowledge of technology has increased,the tendency has been to lose sight of the important role played by scientific thought in making decisions about form,arrangement,and texture.[D]A movement in engineering colleges toward a technician''s degree reflects a demand for graduates who have the nonverbal reasoning ability that was once common among engineers.5.The author calls the predicament faced by the Historic American Engineering Record paradoxical(line6,paragraph3)most probably because[A]the publication needed drawings that its own staff could not make.[B]architectural schools offered but did not require engineering design courses for their students.[C]college students were qualified to make the drawings while practicing engineers were not.[D]engineering students were not trained to make the type of drawings needed to record the development of their own discipline.[考点解析]1.「答案」B「考点解析」这是一道中心主旨题。

考博英语试题及答案一、阅读理解（共20分）阅读下面的短文，然后回答1-5题。

In recent years, the number of people who commute to work by bicycle has increased significantly. This trend can be attributed to several factors, including concerns about environmental pollution, the rising cost of fuel, and the desire for a healthier lifestyle. As a result, many cities have invested in bicycle lanes and other infrastructure to support this mode of transportation.1. What is the main reason for the increase in bicycle commuting?A. Environmental concernsB. High fuel costsC. Health benefitsD. All of the above2. What has been the response of cities to this trend?A. They have ignored it.B. They have invested in bicycle infrastructure.C. They have discouraged it.D. They have not taken any action.3. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT a reason for the increase in bicycle commuting?A. Traffic congestionB. Environmental pollutionC. Rising cost of fuelD. Desire for a healthier lifestyle4. What does the passage suggest about the future of bicycle commuting?A. It will continue to increase.B. It will decrease.C. It will remain stable.D. It is uncertain.5. What type of infrastructure have cities invested in to support bicycle commuting?A. Public transportationB. Bicycle lanesC. Parking lotsD. Highways二、词汇与语法（共30分）Choose the correct word or phrase to fill in the blanks in the following sentences.6. The company has decided to ________ its operations to new markets.A. expandB. contractC. maintainD. abandon7. Despite the heavy rain, the marathon was still held as________.A. plannedB. planningC. to planD. was planning8. The new policy will come into ________ on January 1st.A. effectB. affectC. impactD. influence9. The professor's lecture was so ________ that I couldn't follow it.A. complicatedB. complexC. complicatedlyD. complexly10. She ________ the book to the library yesterday.A. returnedB. borrowedC. lentD. kept三、翻译（共20分）Translate the following sentence into English.11. 随着科技的发展，远程工作变得越来越普遍。

考博英语（阅读理解）历年真题试卷汇编1(题后含答案及解析) 题型有： 3. Reading ComprehensionReading ComprehensionIn the same way that a child must be able to move his arms and legs before he can learn to walk, the child must physiologically be capable of producing and experiencing particular emotions before these emotions can be modified through learning. Psychologists have found that there are two basic processes by which learning takes place. One kind of learning is called “classical conditioning”. This occurs when one event or stimulus is consistently paired with, or followed by, a reward or punishment. It is through classical conditioning that a child learns to associate his mother’s face and voice with happiness and love, for he learns that this person provides food and comfort. Negative emotions are learned in a similar fashion. The second kind of learning is called “ operant conditioning. “ This occurs when an individual learns to do things that produce rewards in his environment and learns not to do things that produce punishments. For example, if a mother always attends to her baby when he cries and cuddles him until he is quiet, she may teach him that if he cries he will get attention from mother. Thus, the baby will learn to increase his crying in order to have his mother more. Every day, we grow and have new experiences. We constantly learn by reading, watching television, interacting with some people, and so forth. This learning affects our emotions. Why is it that we learn to like some people and dislike others? If a person is nice to us, cares about us, we learn to associate this person with positive feelings, such as joy, happiness, and friendliness. On the other hand, if a person is mean to us, does not care about us, and even deliberately does things to harm us, we learn to associate this person with negative feelings, such as unhappiness, discomfort, and anger.1．The author’s main purpose in writing the passage is to______.A．teach children how to learn to produce and experience certain emotionB．give the general reader an account of two basic kinds of learningC．give parents some advice on how to modify their children’s emotions through learningD．discuss with psychologist how positive and negative feelings are produced正确答案：B解析：写作目的题。

考博英语（阅读理解）历年真题试卷汇编2(题后含答案及解析) 题型有： 3. Reading ComprehensionReading ComprehensionIn 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their two year old was told that since the child had made no real economic contribution to the family, there was no liability for damages. In contrast, less than a century later, in 1979, the parents of a three year old sued in New York for accidental-death damages and won an award of $ 750, 000. The transformation in social values implicit in just a posing these two incidents is the subject of Viviana Zelizer’s excellent book, Pricing the Priceless Child. During the nineteenth century, she argues, the concept of the “useful” child who contributed to the family economy gave way gradually to the present-day notion of the “useless” child who, though producing no income for, and indeed extremely costly to, its parents, is yet considered emotionally “priceless”. Well established among segments of the middle and upper classes by the mid-1800’s, this new view of childhood spread through-out society in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as reformers introduced child-labor regulations and compulsory education laws predicated in part on the assumption that a child’s emotional value made child labor taboo. For Zelizer the origins of this transformation were many and complex. The gradual erosion of children’s productive value in a maturing industrial economy, the decline in birth and death rates, especially in child mortality, and the development of the companionate family(a family in which members were united by explicit bonds of love rather than duty)were all factors critical in changing the assessment of children’s worth. Yet “expulsion of children from the ‘cash nexus’, ... although clearly shaped by profound changes in the economic, occupational, and family structures,” Zelizer maintains. “Was also part of a cultural process ‘of sacralization’of children’s lives. “Protecting children from the crass business world became enormously important for late-nineteenth-century middle-class Americans, she suggests; this sacralization was a way of resisting what they perceived as the relentless corruption of human values by the marketplace. In stressing the cultural determinants of a child’s worth. Zelizer takes issue with practitioners of the new “sociological economics”, who have analyzed such traditionally sociological topics as crime, marriage, education, and health solely in terms of their economic determinants. Allowing only a small role for cultural forces in the form of individual “preferences”, these sociologists tend to view all human behavior as directed primarily by the principle of maximizing economic gain. Zelizer is highly critical of this approach, and emphasizes instead the opposite phenomenon: the power of social values to transform price. As children became more valuable in emotional terms, she argues, their “exchange”or “surrender”value on the market, that is, the conversion of their intangible worth into cash terms, became much greater.1．It can be inferred from the passage that accidental death damage awards in America during the nineteenth century tended to be based principally on the______.A．earnings of the person at time of deathB．wealth of the party causing the deathC．degree of culpability of the party causing the deathD．amount of money that had been spent on the person killed正确答案：A解析：本题是推理题。

攻读博士学位考博英语阅读理解习题资料Unit OnePassage 1The physical distribution of products has two primary aspects: transportation and storage. Both aspects are highly developed and specialized phases of marketing. The costs of both trans-porting and storing are built into the prices of products. Transportation can be by truck, rail-way, ship, or barge. For some items, such as exotic plants and flowers, or when rapid delivery is essential, air freight may be used.Storage, or warehousing, is a necessary function because production and consumption of goods rarely match: items generally are not sold as quickly as they are made. Inventories build up, both in warehouses and at retail establishments, before the foods are sold. The transporta-tion function is involved in bringing goods to a warehouse and taking them from it to retail stores.Storage performs the service of stabilizing market price. If, for example, no agricultural product could be stored, all food would have to be put on the market immediately. This would, of course, create a glut and lower prices drastically. There would be an immediate benefit to consumers, but in the long run they would suffer. Farmers, because of low prices, would be forced off the land, and the amount of food produced would decrease. This, in turn, would raise consumer prices.Warehouses for storage are of several types. Private warehouses are owned by manufactur-ers. Public warehouses, in spite of their name, are privately owned facilities, but they are in-dependent of manufacturer ownership. General-merchandise warehouses store a great variety of products. Cold-storage warehouses store perishable goods, especially food products. Grain ele-vators are a kind of warehouse used to keep wheat and other grains from spoiling. A bonded warehouse is one that stores foods, frequently imported, on which taxes must be paid before they are sold. Cigarettes and alcoholic beverages are common examples.The distribution center is a more recently developed kind of warehouse. Many large com- panics have several manufacturing plants, sometimes located outside the country. Each plant does not make every company product but specializes in one or more of them. The distribution center allows a manufacturer to bring together all product lines in one place. Its purpose is to minimize storage and to ease the flow of goods from manufacturers to retailers rather than build up extensive inventories. It reduces costs by speeding up product turnover. Very large corporations will have several distribution centers regionally or internationally based1. The main subject of this passage is______.A) transportation and storage B) storage of productsC) distribution center D) two main aspects of product distribution2. Warehousing is important in that _A) inventories build up before the goods are soldB) the prices will go downC) more goods are produced than can be consumedD) the food has to be put on the market immediately3. How many types of warehouses for storage are discussed in the passage?A) 3. B) 4. C) 6. D) 7.4. Where might one find meat and milk?A) Grain elevator. B) Cold-storage warehouse.C) Private warehouse. D) Bonded warehouse.5. What is NOT true of a distribution center?A) It is a relatively new type of warehouse.B) Product is replaced more quickly and costs are down.C) Some distribution centers are not built in the sane country as the factoryD) It builds up extensive inventories to minimize storage.Passage 2How much pain do animals feel? This is a question which has caused endless controversy. Opponents of big game shooting, for example, arouse our pity by describing tile agonies of a badly-wounded beast that has crawled into a comer to die. In countries where the fox, the hare and the deer are hunted, animal-lovers paint harrowing pictures of the pursued animal suffering not only the physical distress of the chase but the mental anguish of anticipated death.The usual answer to these criticisms is that animals do not suffer in the same way, or to the same extent, as we de. Man was created with a delicate nervous system and has never lost his acute sensitiveness to pain; animals, on the other hand, had less sensitive systems to begin with and in the course of millions of years, have developed a capacity of ignoring injuries and disorders which human beings would find intolerable. For example, a dog will continue to play with a ball even after a serious injury to his foot; he may be unable to run without limping, but he will go on trying long after a human child would have had to stop because of the pain. We are told, moreover, that even when animals appear to us to be suffering acutely, this is not so; what seems to us to be agonized contortions caused by pain are in fact no more than muscular contractions over which they have no control.These arguments are unsatisfactory because something about which we know a great deal is being compared with something we can only conjecture. We know what we feel; we have no means of knowing what animals feet. Some creatures with a less delicate nervous system than ours may be incapable of feeling pain to the same extent as we do: that as far as we are entitled to do, the most humane attitude, surely, is to assume that no animals are entirely exempt from physical pain and that we ought, therefore, wherever possible, to avoid causing suffering even to the least of them.6. Animal-lovers assume that animals, being hunted, would suffer from ____.A) a great deal of agony both in body and in spiritB) mental distress once they are woundedC) only body pains without feeling sadD) crawling into the comer to die7. Supporters of game shooting may argue that animals ______.A) cannot control their muscular contractionsB) have developed a capacity of feeling no painC) are not as acutely sensitive as human beings to injuriesD) can endure all kinds of disorders8. The author feels sure that _____.A) animals don't show suffering to usB) dogs are more endurable than human childrenC) we cannot know what animals feelD) comparing animals with human beings is not appropriate9. What is the author's opinion about animal hunting?A) We should feel the same as the hunted animals do.B) We should protect and save all the animals.C) We shouldn't cause suffering to them.D) We should take care of them if we can.10. This passage seems to ____.A) argue for something B) explain somethingC) tell a story D) describe an objectPassage 3In science, a theory is a reasonable explanation of observed events that are related. A the-ory often involves an imaginary model that helps scientists picture the way an observed event could be produced. A good example of this is found in the kinetic molecular theory, in which gases are pictured as being made up of many small particles that are in constant motion.A useful theory, in addition to explaining past observations, helps to predict events that have not as yet been observed. After a theory has been publicized, scientists design experi-merits to test the theory. If observations confirm the scientists' predictions, the theory is sup-ported. If observations do not confirm the predictions, the scientists must search further. There may be a fault in the experiment, or the theory may have to be revised or rejected.Science involves imagination and creative thinking as well as collecting information and performing experiments. Facts by themselves are not science. As the mathematician Jules Henri Poincare said: "Science is built with facts just as a house is built with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called science any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house."Most scientists start an investigation by finding out what other scientists have learnedabout a particular problem. After known facts have been gathered, the scientist comes to the part of the investigation that requires considerable imagination. Possible solutions to the problem areformulated. These possible solutions are called hypotheses.In a way, any hypothesis is a leap into the unknown. It extends the scientist's thinking beyond the known facts. The scientist plans experiments, performs calculations, and makes ob-servations to test hypotheses. For without hypotheses, further investigation lacks purpose and direction. When hypotheses are confirmed, they are incorporated into theories.11. The word "this" in the 3rd sentence in paragraph 1 refers to ______.A) a good example B) an imaginary modelC) the kinetic molecular theory D) an observed event12. Bricks are mentioned in the 3rd paragraph to indicate how ____.A) mathematicians approach scienceB) building a house is like performing experimentsC) science is more than a collection of factsD) scientific experiments have led to improved technology13. In the last paragraph, the author refers to a hypothesis as "a leap into the unknown" in or- der to show that hypotheses ______.A) are sometimes ill-conceived B) can lead to dangerous resultsC) go beyond available facts D) require effort to formulate14. What is a major function of hypotheses as implied in the last paragraph7A) Sifting through known facts.B) Communicating a scientist's thoughts to others.C) Providing direction for scientific research.D) Linking together different theories.15. Which of the following statements is supported by the passage?A) Theories are simply imaginary models of past events.B) It is better to revise a hypothesis than to reject it.C) A scientist's most difficult task is testing hypotheses.D) A good scientist needs to be creative.B) Education systems need to be radically reformed.C) Going to school is only part of how people become educated.D) Education involves many years of professional training.20. The passage is organized by ___A) listing and discussing several educational problemsB) contrasting the meanings of two related conceptsC) narrating a story about excellent teachersD) giving examples of different kinds of schoolsPassage 5The phrase "civil disobedience" is usually attributed to the nineteenth-century American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Although the concept is unquestionably much older (its rootslie in ancient Greek philosophy), the designation is nonetheless telling: people tend to credit Thoreau, an American, with the idea because civil disobedience, is a hallmark of American eth- ics and politics. The clash between the dictates of individual conscience on one hand, and the imperatives of civil law on the other, forms much of this country's history. Examples range from the incidents leading up to the Revolution through the many social protests of the 1960'S.What constitutes an act of civil disobedience? First, an act of civil disobedience requires a formal legal structure that is enforced by the government. Second, it requires as its target a specific law or policy, rather than the entire legal system. This is true even if the protester's ul- timate goal is to alter radically the legal system; an act of civil disobedience must be directed against one concrete example of that system's inequities. The American civil rights movement, for example, first targeted discrimination on public transportation, then used its victories as a springboard to address other injustices. Third, the act must be done publicly, because the ef- fectiveness of such a protest depends on its ability to mobilize public sentiment against the protest's target. Finally, those protesting must understand the penalties their acts entail--us-ually jailing--and be willing to accept those penalties. This last requirement strengthens the act's effect on public opinion, since it serves to underscore the injustice of the protest's target.21. The word "telling" in the 2nd sentence in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to _____.A) inappropriate B) revealing C) insignificant D) challenging22. In the passage, the author mentions that the civil rights movement _______.A) focused its early efforts on public transportationB) did not always practice civil disobedienceC) started in nineteenth centuryD) used the Revolution of 1776 as its model23. According to the passage, for which of the following reasons should civil protests be donepublicly?A) To alter the legal system in radical way.B) To uphold the imperatives of civil law.C) To stimulate public support for a cause.D) To announce the success of a previous act of civil disobedience.24. The author suggests that when protesters go to jail _______.A) it helps convince the public to support their causeB) they usually do so unwillinglyC) it is because their protest has not gone according to planD) they are always released almost immediately25. In the 2nd paragraph, the author ________.A) argues that civil disobedience is unnecessaryB) provides an extensive history of civil disobedienceC) presents several differing viewpoints on civil disobedienceD) defines the concept of civil disobediencePassage 6In taking up a new life across the Atlantic, the early European settlers of the United States did not abandon the diversions with which their ancestors had traditionally relieved the tedium of life. Neither the harshness of existence on the new continent nor the scattered population nor the disapproval of the clergy discouraged the majority from the pursuit of pleasure.City and country dwellers, of course, conducted this pursuit in different ways. Farm dwellers in their isolation not only found it harder to locate companions in play but also, thanks to the unending demands and pressures of their work, felt it necessary to combine fun with purpose. No other set of colonists took so seriously an expression of the period, "Leisure is time for doing something useful." In the countryside farmers therefore relieved the burden of the daily routine with such double-purpose relaxations as hunting, fishing, and trapping. When a neighbor needed help, families rallied from miles around to assist in building a house or barn, husking corn, shearing sheep, or chopping wood. Food, drink, and celebration after the group workprovided relaxation and soothed weary muscles.The most eagerly anticipated social events were the rural parties. Hundreds of men, women, and children attended from far and near. The men bought or traded farm animals and acquired needed merchandise while the women displayed food prepared in their kitchens, and everyone, including the youngsters, watched or participated in a variety of competitive sports, with prizes awarded to the winners. These events typically included horse races, wrestling matches, and foot races, as well as some nonathletic events such as whistling competitions. No other occasions did so much to relieve the isolation of farm existence.With the open countryside everywhere at hand, city dwellers naturally shared in some ofthe rural diversions. Favored recreations included fishing, hunting, skating, and swimming. But city dwellers also developed other pleasures, which only compact communities made possible.26. What is the passage mainly about?A) Methods of fanning used by early settlers of the United States.B) Hardships faced by the early settlers of the United States.C) Methods of buying, selling, and trading used by early settlers of the United States.D) Ways in which early settlers of the United States relaxed.27. What can be inferred about the diversions of the early settlers of the United States?A) They followed a pattern Begun in Europe.B) They were enjoyed more frequently than in Europe.C) The clergy organized them.D) Only the wealthy participated in them.28. Which of the following can be said about the country dwellers' altitude toward "the pursuitof pleasure" ?A) They felt that it should help keep their minds on their work.B) They felt that it was not necessary.C) They felt that it should be productive.D) They felt that it should not involve eating and drinking.29. What is meant by the phrase "double-purpose" in the 4th sentence in paragraph 2?A) Very frequent. B) Useful and enjoyable.C) Extremely necessary. D) Positive and negative.30. What will the author probably discuss in the paragraph following this passage?A) The rural diversions enjoyed by both urban and rural people.B) Leisure activities of city dwellers.C) Building methods of the early settlers in rural areas.D) Changes in lifestyles of settlers as they moved to the cities.Passage 7For me, scientific knowledge is divided into mathematical sciences, natural sciences or sciences dealing with the natural world (physical and biological sciences), and sciences dealing with mankind (psychology, sociology, all the sciences of cultural achievements, every kind of historical knowledge). Apart from these sciences is philosophy, about which we will talk later. In the first place, all this is pure or theoretical knowledge that is intrinsic and consubstautial to man. What distinguishes man from animal is that he knows and needs to know. If man did not know that the world existed, and that the world was of a certain kind, that he was in the world and that he himself was of a certain kind, he wouldn't be a man. The technical aspects or applications of knowledge are equally necessary for man and are of the greatest importance, because they also contribute to defining him as man and permit him to pursue a life increasingly more truly human.But even while enjoying the results of technical progress, he must defend the primacy and autonomy of pure knowledge. Knowledge sought directly for its practical applications will have immediate and foreseeable success, but not the kind of important result whose revolutionary scope is in large part unforeseen, except by the imagination of the Utopians. Let me recall a we N-known example. If the Greek mathematicians had not applied themselves to the investigation of conic sections zealously and without the least suspicion that it might someday be useful, it would not have been possible centuries later to navigate far from shore. The first men to study the nature of electricity could not imagine that their experiments, carried on because of mere intellectual curiosity, would eventually lead to modern electricaltechnology, without which we can scarcely conceive of contemporary life. Pure knowledge is valuable for its own sake, be-cause the human spirit cannot resign itself to ignorance. But, in addition, the foundation for practical results would not have been reached if this knowledge had not been sought disinterestedly.31. The most important advances made by mankind come from __.A) technical applications B) apparently useless informationC) the natural sciences D) philosophy32. The word "Utopians" in the 2nd sentence in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to __.A) idealists B) Greek mathematiciansC) scientists D) true human33. In the paragraph the follows this passage, we may expect the author to discuss __.A) the value of technical research B) the value of pure researchC) philosophy D) unforeseen discoveries34. The word "resign" in the 6th sentence in the 2nd paragraph is closest in meaning toA) dismiss B) quit C) remark D) submit35. The title that best expresses the ideas of this passage is __.A) "Technical Progress"B) "A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing"C) "Man's Distinguishing Characteristics"D) "The Function of Theoretical Knowledge as Compared to Its Practical Applications"Passage 8In most of the human civilization of which we have any proper records, youth has drawn oneither art or life for models, planning to emulate the heroes depicted in epics on the shadow play screen or the stage, or those known human beings, fathers or grandfathers, chiefs or craftsmen, whose every characteristic can be studied and imitated. As recently as 1910, this was the prevailing condition in the United States. If he came from a nonliterate background, the recent immigrant learned to speak, move, and think like an American by using his eyes and ears on the labor line and in the homes of more acculturated cousins, by watching school children, or by absorbing the standards of the teacher, the foreman, the clerk who served him in the store. For the literate and the literate children of the nouliterate, there was art--the story of the frustrated artist in the prairie town, of the second generation battling with the limitations of the first. And at a simpler level, there were the Western and Hollywood fairy tales which pointed a moral but did not, as a rule, teach table manners.With the development of the countermovement against Hollywood, with the efflorescence (全盛)of photography, with Time-Life-Fortune types of reporting and the dead-pan New Yorker manner of describing the life of an old-clothes dealer in a forgotten street or of presenting the "accurate", "checked" details of the lives of people whose eminence gave at least a sort of license to attack them, with the passion for "human documents" inDepression days--a necessary substitute for proletarian art among middle class writers who knew nothing about proletarians, and middleclass readers who needed the shock of verisimilitude(真实)--a new era in American life was ushered in, the era in which young people imitated neither life nor art nor fairy tale, but instead were presented with models drawn from life with minimal but crucial distortions. Doctored life histories, posed carelessness, "candid" shots of people in their own homes which took hours to arrange, pictures shot from real life to scripts written months before supplementedby national polls and surveys which assured the reader that this bobby soxer (少女)did indeed represent a national norm or a growing trend--replaced the older models.36. This article is based on the idea that ________.A) people today no longer follow modelsB) People attach little importance to whoever they followC) people generally pattern their lives after modelsD) People no longer respect heroes37. Stories of the second generation battling against the limitations of the first were often re- sponsible for ______.A) inspiring literate immigrantsB) frustrating educated immigrantsC) preventing the assimilation of immigrantsD) instilling into immigrants an antagonistic attitude toward their forebears38. The countermovement against Hollywood was a movement ______A) toward realism B) toward fantasyC) against the teaching of morals D) away from realism39. The author attributes the change in attitudes since 1910 to ____A) a logical evolution of ideas B) widespread moral decayC) the influence of the press D) a philosophy of plenty40. The word "distortions" at the end of the 2nd sentence in paragraph 2 is closest in meaningto ______.A) presentations B) misinterpretationsC) influences D) limitationsPassage 9The conflict between good and evil is a common theme running through the great literatureand drama of the world, from the time of the ancient Greeks to all the present. The principle that conflict is the heart of dramatic action when illustrated by concrete examples, almost always turns up some aspect of the struggle between good and evil.The idea that there is neither good nor evil--in any absolute moral or religious sense—is widespread in our times. There are various relativistic and behavioristic standards of ethics. If these standards even admit the distinction between good and evil, it is as a relative matter andnot as whirlwind of choices that lies at the center of living. In any such state of mind, conflict can at best, be only a petty matter, lacking true universality. The acts of the evildoer and of the virtuous man alike become dramatically neutralized. Imagine the reduced effect of Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazoc, had Dostoevsky thought that good and evil, as portrayed in those books, were wholly relative, and if he had had no conviction about them.You can't have a vital literature if you ignore or shun evil. What you get then is the world of Pollyanna, goody-goody in place of the good. Cry, The Beloved Country is a great and dramatic novel because Alan Paton, in addition to being a skilled workman, sees with clear eyes both good and evil, differentiates them, pitches them into conflict with each other, and takes sides. He sees that the native boy Absalom Kumalo, who has murdered, cannot be judged justly without taking into account the environment that has had part in shaping him. But Paton sees, too, that Absalom the individual, not society the abstraction, committed the act and is responsible for it. Mr. Paton understands mercy. He knows that this precious thing is not evoked by sentimental impulse, but by a searching examination of the realities of human action. Mercy follows a judgment; it does not precede it.One of the novels by the talented Paul Bowles, Let It Come Down, is full of motion, full of sensational depravities, and is a crashing bore. The book recognizes no evil, and is coldly indifferent to the moral behavior of its characters. It is a long shrug. Such a view of life is non- dramatic and negates the vital essence of drama.41. In our age, according to the author, a standpoint often taken in the area of ethics is the _____.A) relativistic view of morals B) greater concern with religionC) emphasis on evil D) greater concern with universals42. The author believes that in great literature, as in life, good and evil are ____A) relative B) unimportantC) constantly in conflict D) dramatically neutralized43. When the author uses the expression "it is a long shrug" in referring to Bowles's book, heis commenting on the ___A) length of the novelB) indifference to the moral behavior of the charactersC) monotony of the storyD) sensational depravities of the book44. In the opinion of the author, Cry, The Beloved Country is a great and dramatic novel be-cause of Paton's ____.A) insight into human behaviorB) behavioristic beliefsC) treatment of good and evil as abstractionsD) willingness to make moral judgments45. The word "shun" in the 1st sentence in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.A) shut B) attend C) show D) avoidPassage 10African-American filmmakers should be in an enviable position, for since the early 1990sthere has been a steady wave of low budget black films which have turned a solid profit due toa very strong response in the African-American community and a larger crossover audience thananticipated. Any rational business manager would now identify this sector as a prime candidatefor expansion, but if the films have done so well with limited production and marketing costs,why have they not received full scale support7Many analysts feel the business is engulfed in a miasma of self-serving and self-fulfilling myths based on the unspoken assumption that Mfrican-American films can never be vehicles of prestige, glamour, or celebrity. The relationship players have convinced themselves that black films can do only a limited domestic business under any circumstance and have virtually no for- eign box office potential. As executives who now control the film industry grew up in those de- cades when there were few black images on the screen and those that did exist were produced by film-makers with limited knowledge of the black community, it is little wonder that they avoid ideological issues, and seek to continue making films that they are comfortable with by avoiding they negative imagery of films they would prefer to eschew entirely.Also to blame for this deleterious phenomenon are legions of desperate and Machiavellian African-American film producers, directors, and writers who would transform The Birth of A Nation into a black musical as long as it would provide them with gainful studio employment. These filmmakers not only perpetuate negative stereotypes in their films, but they also season them with a sprinkling of African-American authenticity. This situation would be onerous enough, given the economic exploitation of the community involved; unfortunately these films also validate the pathologies they depict. The constant projection of the black community as a kind of urban Wild Kingdom, the glamorization of tragic situations, and the celebration of innercity drug dealers and gangsters has a programming effect on black youth. The power of music infilm is a particularly seductive and propagandistic force which in the recent crop of African- American films has rarely been used in a positive social manner.What flows from this combination of factors is a policy of market exploitation rather than market development, evidenced by the fact that any number of films may open to 1,500 screensin one week, only to totally disappear in less than a month. This restricted body of film。

Passage 1The physical distribution of products has two primary aspects: transportation and storage. Both aspects are highly developed and specialized phases of marketing. The costs of both trans-porting and storing are built into the prices of products. Transportation can be by truck, rail-way, ship, or barge. For some items, such as exotic plants and flowers, or when rapid delivery is essential, air freight may be used.Storage, or warehousing, is a necessary function because production and consumption of goods rarely match: items generally are not sold as quickly as they are made. Inventories build up, both in warehouses and at retail establishments, before the foods are sold. The transporta-tion function is involved in bringing goods to a warehouse and taking them from it to retail stores.Storage performs the service of stabilizing market price. If, for example, no agricultural product could be stored, all food would have to be put on the market immediately. This would, of course, create a glut and lower prices drastically. There would be an immediate benefit to consumers, but in the long run they would suffer. Farmers, because of low prices, would be forced off the land, and the amount of food produced would decrease. This, in turn, would raise consumer prices.Warehouses for storage are of several types. Private warehouses are owned by manufactur-ers. Public warehouses, in spite of their name, are privately owned facilities, but they are in-dependent of manufacturer ownership. General-merchandise warehouses store a great variety of products. Cold-storage warehouses store perishable goods, especially food products. Grain ele-vators are a kind of warehouse used to keep wheat and other grains from spoiling. A bonded warehouse is one that stores foods, frequently imported, on which taxes must be paid before they are sold. Cigarettes and alcoholic beverages are common examples.The distribution center is a more recently developed kind of warehouse. Many large com- panics have several manufacturing plants, sometimes located outside the country. Each plant does not make every company product but specializes in one or more of them. The distribution center allows a manufacturer to bring together all product lines in one place. Its purpose is to minimize storage and to ease the flow of goods from manufacturers to retailers rather than build up extensive inventories. It reduces costs by speeding up product turnover. Very large corporations will have several distribution centers regionally or internationally based1. The main subject of this passage is______.A) transportation and storage B) storage of productsC) distribution center D) two main aspects of product distribution2. Warehousing is important in that _A) inventories build up before the goods are soldB) the prices will go downC) more goods are produced than can be consumedD) the food has to be put on the market immediately3. How many types of warehouses for storage are discussed in the passage?A) 3. B) 4. C) 6. D) 7.4. Where might one find meat and milk?A) Grain elevator. B) Cold-storage warehouse.C) Private warehouse. D) Bonded warehouse.5. What is NOT true of a distribution center?A) It is a relatively new type of warehouse.B) Product is replaced more quickly and costs are down.C) Some distribution centers are not built in the sane country as the factoryD) It builds up extensive inventories to minimize storage.Passage 2How much pain do animals feel? This is a question which has caused endless controversy. Opponents of big game shooting, for example, arouse our pity by describing tile agonies of a badly-wounded beast that has crawled into a comer to die. In countries where the fox, the hare and the deer are hunted, animal-lovers paint harrowing pictures of the pursued animal suffering not only the physical distress of the chase but the mental anguish of anticipated death.The usual answer to these criticisms is that animals do not suffer in the same way, or to the same extent, as we de. Man was created with a delicate nervous system and has never lost his acute sensitiveness to pain; animals, on the other hand, had less sensitive systems to begin with and in the course of millions of years, have developed a capacity of ignoring injuries and disorders which human beings would find intolerable. For example, a dog will continue to play with a ball even after a serious injury to his foot; he may be unable to run without limping, but he will go on trying long after a human child would have had to stop because of the pain. We are told, moreover, that even when animals appear to us to be suffering acutely, this is not so; what seems to us to be agonized contortions caused by pain are in fact no more than muscular contractions over which they have no control.These arguments are unsatisfactory because something about which we know a great deal is being compared with something we can only conjecture. We know what we feel; we have no means of knowing what animals feet. Some creatures with a less delicate nervous system than ours may be incapable of feeling pain to the same extent as we do: that as far as we are entitled to do, the most humane attitude, surely, is to assume that no animals are entirely exempt from physical pain and that we ought, therefore, wherever possible, to avoid causing suffering even to the least of them.6. Animal-lovers assume that animals, being hunted, would suffer from ____.A) a great deal of agony both in body and in spiritB) mental distress once they are woundedC) only body pains without feeling sadD) crawling into the comer to die7. Supporters of game shooting may argue that animals ______.A) cannot control their muscular contractionsB) have developed a capacity of feeling no painC) are not as acutely sensitive as human beings to injuriesD) can endure all kinds of disorders8. The author feels sure that _____.A) animals don't show suffering to usB) dogs are more endurable than human childrenC) we cannot know what animals feelD) comparing animals with human beings is not appropriate9. What is the author's opinion about animal hunting?A) We should feel the same as the hunted animals do.B) We should protect and save all the animals.C) We shouldn't cause suffering to them.D) We should take care of them if we can.10. This passage seems to ____.A) argue for something B) explain somethingC) tell a story D) describe an objectPassage 3In science, a theory is a reasonable explanation of observed events that are related. A the-ory often involves an imaginary model that helps scientists picture the way an observed event could be produced. Agood example of this is found in the kinetic molecular theory, in which gases are pictured as being made up of many small particles that are in constant motion.A useful theory, in addition to explaining past observations, helps to predict events that have not as yet been observed. After a theory has been publicized, scientists design experi-merits to test the theory. If observations confirm the scientists' predictions, the theory is sup-ported. If observations do not confirm the predictions, the scientists must search further. There may be a fault in the experiment, or the theory may have to be revised or rejected.Science involves imagination and creative thinking as well as collecting information and performing experiments. Facts by themselves are not science. As the mathematician Jules Henri Poincare said: "Science is built with facts just as a house is built with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called science any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house."Most scientists start an investigation by finding out what other scientists have learned about a particular problem. After known facts have been gathered, the scientist comes to the part of the investigation that requires considerable imagination. Possible solutions to the problem areformulated. These possible solutions are called hypotheses.In a way, any hypothesis is a leap into the unknown. It extends the scientist's thinking beyond the known facts. The scientist plans experiments, performs calculations, and makes ob-servations to test hypotheses. For without hypotheses, further investigation lacks purpose and direction. When hypotheses are confirmed, they are incorporated into theories.11. The word "this" in the 3rd sentence in paragraph 1 refers to ______.A) a good example B) an imaginary modelC) the kinetic molecular theory D) an observed event12. Bricks are mentioned in the 3rd paragraph to indicate how ____.A) mathematicians approach scienceB) building a house is like performing experimentsC) science is more than a collection of factsD) scientific experiments have led to improved technology13. In the last paragraph, the author refers to a hypothesis as "a leap into the unknown" in or- der to show that hypotheses ______.A) are sometimes ill-conceived B) can lead to dangerous resultsC) go beyond available facts D) require effort to formulate14. What is a major function of hypotheses as implied in the last paragraph7A) Sifting through known facts.B) Communicating a scientist's thoughts to others.C) Providing direction for scientific research.D) Linking together different theories.15. Which of the following statements is supported by the passage?A) Theories are simply imaginary models of past events.B) It is better to revise a hypothesis than to reject it.C) A scientist's most difficult task is testing hypotheses.D) A good scientist needs to be creative.B) Education systems need to be radically reformed.C) Going to school is only part of how people become educated.D) Education involves many years of professional training.20. The passage is organized by ___A) listing and discussing several educational problemsB) contrasting the meanings of two related conceptsC) narrating a story about excellent teachersD) giving examples of different kinds of schoolsPassage 5The phrase "civil disobedience" is usually attributed to the nineteenth-century American philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Although the concept is unquestionably much older (its rootslie in ancient Greek philosophy), the designation is nonetheless telling: people tend to credit Thoreau, an American, with the idea because civil disobedience, is a hallmark of American eth- ics and politics. The clash between the dictates of individual conscience on one hand, and the imperatives of civil law on the other, forms much of this country's history. Examples range from the incidents leading up to the Revolution through the many social protests of the 1960'S.What constitutes an act of civil disobedience? First, an act of civil disobedience requires a formal legal structure that is enforced by the government. Second, it requires as its target a specific law or policy, rather than the entire legal system. This is true even if the protester's ul- timate goal is to alter radically the legal system; an act of civil disobedience must be directed against one concrete example of that system's inequities. The American civil rights movement, for example, first targeted discrimination on public transportation, then used its victories as a springboard to address other injustices. Third, the act must be done publicly, because the ef- fectiveness of such a protest depends on its ability to mobilize public sentiment against the protest's target. Finally, those protesting must understand the penalties their acts entail--us-ually jailing--and be willing to accept those penalties. This last requirement strengthens the act's effect on public opinion, since it serves to underscore the injustice of the protest's target.21. The word "telling" in the 2nd sentence in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to _____.A) inappropriate B) revealing C) insignificant D) challenging22. In the passage, the author mentions that the civil rights movement _______.A) focused its early efforts on public transportationB) did not always practice civil disobedienceC) started in nineteenth centuryD) used the Revolution of 1776 as its model23. According to the passage, for which of the following reasons should civil protests be donepublicly?A) To alter the legal system in radical way.B) To uphold the imperatives of civil law.C) To stimulate public support for a cause.D) To announce the success of a previous act of civil disobedience24. The author suggests that when protesters go to jail _______.A) it helps convince the public to support their causeB) they usually do so unwillinglyC) it is because their protest has not gone according to planD) they are always released almost immediately25. In the 2nd paragraph, the author ________.A) argues that civil disobedience is unnecessaryB) provides an extensive history of civil disobedienceC) presents several differing viewpoints on civil disobedienceD) defines the concept of civil disobediencePassage 6In taking up a new life across the Atlantic, the early European settlers of the United States did not abandon the diversions with which their ancestors had traditionally relieved the tedium of life. Neither the harshness of existence on the new continent nor the scattered population nor the disapproval of the clergy discouraged the majority from the pursuit of pleasure.City and country dwellers, of course, conducted this pursuit in different ways. Farm dwellers in their isolation not only found it harder to locate companions in play but also, thanks to the unending demands and pressures of their work, felt it necessary to combine fun with purpose. No other set of colonists took so seriously an expression of the period, "Leisure is time for doing something useful." In the countryside farmers therefore relieved the burden of the daily routine with such double-purpose relaxations as hunting, fishing, and trapping. When a neighbor needed help, families rallied from miles around to assist in building a house or barn, husking corn, shearing sheep, or chopping wood. Food, drink, and celebration after the group workprovided relaxation and soothed weary muscles.The most eagerly anticipated social events were the rural parties. Hundreds of men, women, and children attended from far and near. The men bought or traded farm animals and acquired needed merchandise while the women displayed food prepared in their kitchens, and everyone, including the youngsters, watched or participated in a variety of competitive sports, with prizes awarded to the winners. These events typically included horse races, wrestling matches, and foot races, as well as some nonathletic events such as whistling competitions. No other occasions did so much to relieve the isolation of farm existence.With the open countryside everywhere at hand, city dwellers naturally shared in some ofthe rural diversions. Favored recreations included fishing, hunting, skating, and swimming. But city dwellers also developed other pleasures, which only compact communities made possible.26. What is the passage mainly about?A) Methods of fanning used by early settlers of the United States.B) Hardships faced by the early settlers of the United States.C) Methods of buying, selling, and trading used by early settlers of the United States.D) Ways in which early settlers of the United States relaxed.27. What can be inferred about the diversions of the early settlers of the United States?A) They followed a pattern Begun in Europe.B) They were enjoyed more frequently than in Europe.C) The clergy organized them.D) Only the wealthy participated in them.28. Which of the following can be said about the country dwellers' altitude toward "the pursuitof pleasure" ?A) They felt that it should help keep their minds on their work.B) They felt that it was not necessary.C) They felt that it should be productive.D) They felt that it should not involve eating and drinking.29. What is meant by the phrase "double-purpose" in the 4th sentence in paragraph 2?A) Very frequent. B) Useful and enjoyable.C) Extremely necessary. D) Positive and negative.转贴于：考试大_考博30. What will the author probably discuss in the paragraph following this passage?A) The rural diversions enjoyed by both urban and rural people.B) Leisure activities of city dwellers.C) Building methods of the early settlers in rural areas.D) Changes in lifestyles of settlers as they moved to the cities.Passage 7For me, scientific knowledge is divided into mathematical sciences, natural sciences or sciences dealing with the natural world (physical and biological sciences), and sciences dealing with mankind (psychology, sociology, all the sciences of cultural achievements, every kind of historical knowledge). Apart from these sciences is philosophy, about which we will talk later. In the first place, all this is pure or theoretical knowledge that is intrinsic and consubstautial to man. What distinguishes man from animal is that he knows and needs to know. If man did not know that the world existed, and that the world was of a certain kind, that he was in the world and that he himself was of a certain kind, he wouldn't be a man. The technical aspects or applications of knowledge are equally necessary for man and are of the greatest importance, because they also contribute to defining him as man and permit him to pursue a life increasingly more truly human.But even while enjoying the results of technical progress, he must defend the primacy and autonomy of pure knowledge. Knowledge sought directly for its practical applications will have immediate and foreseeable success, but not the kind of important result whose revolutionary scope is in large part unforeseen, except by the imagination of the Utopians. Let me recall a we N-known example. If the Greek mathematicians had not applied themselves to the investigation of conic sections zealously and without the least suspicion that it might someday be useful, it would not have been possible centuries later to navigate far from shore. The first men to study the nature of electricity could not imagine that their experiments, carried on because of mere intellectual curiosity, would eventually lead to modern electrical technology, without which we can scarcely conceive of contemporary life. Pure knowledge is valuable for its own sake, be-cause the human spirit cannot resign itself to ignorance. But, in addition, the foundation for practical results would not have been reached if this knowledge had not been sought disinterestedly.31. The most important advances made by mankind come from __.A) technical applications B) apparently useless informationC) the natural sciences D) philosophy32. The word "Utopians" in the 2nd sentence in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to __.A) idealists B) Greek mathematiciansC) scientists D) true human33. In the paragraph the follows this passage, we may expect the author to discuss __.A) the value of technical research B) the value of pure researchC) philosophy D) unforeseen discoveries34. The word "resign" in the 6th sentence in the 2nd paragraph is closest in meaning toA) dismiss B) quit C) remark D) submit35. The title that best expresses the ideas of this passage is __.A) "Technical Progress"B) "A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing"C) "Man's Distinguishing Characteristics"D) "The Function of Theoretical Knowledge as Compared to Its Practical Applications"Passage 8In most of the human civilization of which we have any proper records, youth has drawn oneither art or life for models, planning to emulate the heroes depicted in epics on the shadow play screen or the stage, or those known human beings, fathers or grandfathers, chiefs or craftsmen, whose every characteristic can be studied and imitated. As recently as 1910, this was the prevailing condition in the United States. If he came from a nonliterate background, the recent immigrant learned to speak, move, and think like an American by using his eyes and ears on the labor line and in the homes of more acculturated cousins, by watching school children, or by absorbing the standards of the teacher, the foreman, the clerk who served him in the store. For the literate and the literate children of the nouliterate, there was art--the story of the frustrated artist in the prairie town, of the second generation battling with the limitations of the first. And at a simpler level, there were the Western and Hollywood fairy tales which pointed a moral but did not, as a rule, teach table manners.With the development of the countermovement against Hollywood, with the efflorescence (全盛)of photography, withTime-Life-Fortune types of reporting and the dead-pan New Yorker manner of describing the life of an old-clothes dealer in a forgotten street or of presenting the "accurate", "checked" details of the lives of people whose eminence gave at least a sort of license to attack them, with the passion for "human documents" in Depression days--a necessary substitute for proletarian art among middle class writers who knew nothing about proletarians, and middleclass readers who needed the shock of verisimilitude(真实)--a new era in American life was ushered in, the era in which young people imitated neither life nor art nor fairy tale, but instead were presented with models drawn from life with minimal but crucial distortions. Doctored life histories, posed carelessness, "candid" shots of people in their own homes which took hours to arrange, pictures shot from real life to scripts written months before supplementedby national polls and surveys which assured the reader that this bobby soxer (少女)did indeed represent a national norm or a growing trend--replaced the older models.36. This article is based on the idea that ________.A) people today no longer follow modelsB) People attach little importance to whoever they followC) people generally pattern their lives after modelsD) People no longer respect heroes37. Stories of the second generation battling against the limitations of the first were often re- sponsible for ______.A) inspiring literate immigrantsB) frustrating educated immigrantsC) preventing the assimilation of immigrantsD) instilling into immigrants an antagonistic attitude toward their forebears38. The countermovement against Hollywood was a movement ______A) toward realism B) toward fantasyC) against the teaching of morals D) away from realism39. The author attributes the change in attitudes since 1910 to ____A) a logical evolution of ideas B) widespread moral decayC) the influence of the press D) a philosophy of plenty40. The word "distortions" at the end of the 2nd sentence in paragraph 2 is closest in meaningto ______.A) presentations B) misinterpretationsC) influences D) limitationsPassage 9The conflict between good and evil is a common theme running through the great literatureand drama of the world, from the time of the ancient Greeks to all the present. The principle that conflict is the heart of dramatic action when illustrated by concrete examples, almost always turns up some aspect of the struggle between good and evil.The idea that there is neither good nor evil--in any absolute moral or religious sense—is widespread in our times. There are various relativistic and behavioristic standards of ethics. If these standards even admit the distinction between good and evil, it is as a relative matter and not as whirlwind of choices that lies at the center of living. In any such state of mind, conflict can at best, be only a petty matter, lacking true universality. The acts of the evildoer and of the virtuous man alike become dramatically neutralized. Imagine the reduced effect of Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazoc, had Dostoevsky thought that good and evil, as portrayed in those books, were wholly relative, and if he had had no conviction about them. You can't have a vital literature if you ignore or shun evil. What you get then is the world of Pollyanna, goody-goody in place of the good. Cry, The Beloved Country is a great and dramatic novel because Alan Paton, in addition to being a skilled workman, sees with clear eyes both good and evil, differentiates them, pitches them into conflict with each other, and takes sides. He sees that the native boy Absalom Kumalo, who has murdered, cannot be judged justly without taking into account the environment that has had part in shaping him. But Paton sees, too, that Absalom the individual, not society the abstraction, committed the act and is responsible for it. Mr. Paton understands mercy. He knows that this precious thing is not evoked by sentimental impulse, but by a searching examination of the realities of human action. Mercy follows a judgment; it does not precede it.One of the novels by the talented Paul Bowles, Let It Come Down, is full of motion, full of sensational depravities, and is a crashing bore. The book recognizes no evil, and is coldly indifferent to the moral behavior of its characters. It is a long shrug. Such a view of life is non- dramatic and negates the vital essence of drama.41. In our age, according to the author, a standpoint often taken in the area of ethics is the _____.A) relativistic view of morals B) greater concern with religionC) emphasis on evil D) greater concern with universals42. The author believes that in great literature, as in life, good and evil are ____A) relative B) unimportantC) constantly in conflict D) dramatically neutralized43. When the author uses the expression "it is a long shrug" in referring to Bowles's book, heis commenting on the ___A) length of the novelB) indifference to the moral behavior of the charactersC) monotony of the storyD) sensational depravities of the book44. In the opinion of the author, Cry, The Beloved Country is a great and dramatic novel be-cause of Paton's ____.A) insight into human behaviorB) behavioristic beliefsC) treatment of good and evil as abstractionsD) willingness to make moral judgments45. The word "shun" in the 1st sentence in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.A) shut B) attend C) show D) avoidPassage 10African-American filmmakers should be in an enviable position, for since the early 1990sthere has been a steady wave of low budget black films which have turned a solid profit due toa very strong response in the African-American community and a larger crossover audience thananticipated. Any rational business manager would now identify this sector as a prime candidatefor expansion, but if the films have done so well with limited production and marketing costs,why have they not received full scale support7Many analysts feel the business is engulfed in a miasma of self-serving and self-fulfilling myths based on the unspoken assumption that Mfrican-American films can never be vehicles of prestige, glamour, or celebrity. The relationship players have convinced themselves that black films can do only a limited domestic business under any circumstance and have virtually no for- eign box office potential. As executives who now control the film industry grew up in those de- cades when there were few black images on the screen and those that did exist were produced by film-makers with limited knowledge of the black community, it is little wonder that they avoid ideological issues, and seek to continue making films that they are comfortable with by avoiding they negative imagery of films they would prefer to eschew entirely.Also to blame for this deleterious phenomenon are legions of desperate and MachiavellianAfrican-American film producers, directors, and writers who would transform The Birth of A Nation into a black musical as long as it would provide them with gainful studio employment. These filmmakers not only perpetuate negative stereotypes in their films, but they also season them with a sprinkling of African-American authenticity. This situation would be onerous enough, given the economic exploitation of the community involved; unfortunately these films also validate the pathologies they depict. The constant projection of the black community as a kind of urban Wild Kingdom, the glamorization of tragic situations, and the celebration of innercity drug dealers and gangsters has a programming effect on black youth. The power of music infilm is a particularly seductive and propagandistic force which in the recent crop of African-American films has rarely been used in a positive social manner.What flows from this combination of factors is a policy of market exploitation rather than market development, evidenced by the fact that any number of films may open to 1,500 screensin one week, only to totally disappear in less than a month. This restricted body of film products erodes the genre's long-term viability, particularly with the more fickle non-African-American-can audiences and foreign audiences. Furthermore, when African-American actors begin to emerge as stars, their projects are usually designed to be "more" than a black film, such that any success that follows is therefore perceived not as a reflection of the viability of African-American filmmaking but as the broader pursuit of celebrity.46. According to the passage, all wise managers think that ___A) the industry of black film would increase in the futureB) the industry of black film would decrease in the futureC) the industry of black film would not receive full scale supportD) the industry of black film is bound to win full scale support47. It is suggested by the analysts that ___A) black films can be very successfulB) black films can win prestige, glamour, or celebrityC) black films are mysteriousD) black films can never be the road to prestige。

考博英语（阅读理解）练习试卷6(题后含答案及解析) 题型有：1. Reading ComprehensionReading ComprehensionAn American literary critic, humorous journalist, essayist, whose comic skepticism about human progress, expressed with penetrating style, is a continuing resource for all lovers of extravagant language. Mencken wrote—according to some estimations—3 000 newspaper columns. During the 15-year period following World War I , Mencken set the standard for satire in his day, and his essays are still widely read. Mencken was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied at the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute(1892—1896), continued to study literature with a private tutor, and worked in his father’s cigar factory(f896—1899). From 1899, when his father died, Mencken was a reporter or editor for several Baltimore papers, among them Baltimore Morning Herald. He later joined the staff of the Baltimore Sun , for which he worked throughout most of his life. From 1916 to 1918 he worked as a war correspondent in Germany and in Russia. Mencken gained a reputation in the trade as a boy wonder, for he was industrious and fertile and learned all there was to learn about a newspaper in a few years. He advanced with alarming rapidity, becoming city editor and two years later managing editor of the Herald, In 1906 when the Herald ceased to exist, Mencken went to the Sunpaper.s as Sunday editor, became an editorial writer, and in 1911 started his column, the Free Lance, in the Evening Sun. He began another series of weekly articles in 1919 and was associated with the Sunpapers, except for one short break, until 1948. At sixty-two Mencken had spent forty-three years as a newspaperman, forty as a writer of books, twenty-five as a reviewer, and twenty as a magazine editor. “I edited both newspapers and magazines, some of them successes and some ol them not, and got a close, confidential view of the manner in which opinion is formulated on this earth. . . Like any other man I have had my disasters and my miseries, and like any other author I have suffered from recurrent depressions and despairs, but taking one year with another I have had a fine time of it in this vale of sorrow, and no call to envy any man. “Mencken suffered a cerebral thrGmbosis(脑血栓) in 1948, from which he never fully recovered, and died on January 29, 1956. (349 words)1．What does the passage mainly discuss?A．Mencken’s life and career.B．Mencken’s literary style.C．Mencken’s reputation in America.D．Mencken’s self-evaluation.正确答案：A解析：B、C和D内容比较具体，不宜作为主题。

Passage9电脑中的伦理问题At PARC,we have lived with ubiquitous computing for almost ten years.Early on we confronted the question of how to do this work most ethically.We concluded that it is vitally important for everyone,scientists and consumers alike,to remain alert to the ethical issues we may face as the world becomes filled with embedded, invisible computers.Computer chips have been inserted into everyday objects since the earliest days of the microprocessor.Today,an average home might have40chips in various devices,from remote controls to alarm clocks to wristwatches.This fact has raised few new ethical issues.But as computers become more and more ubiquitous,and less visually obvious,three questions arise.Firstly,will these chips’thinking for us make us forget how to think for ourselves?Secondly,will an“information underclass”without access to these devices be created?And thirdly,will these chips invade our privacy?The goal of ubiquitous computing is to make technology invisible and,by embedding computers into everyday things,make the things themselves smarter. But will this lead to dumber people with less control over their technology? Automobiles,for example,use embedded computers for a host of functions that improve their performance and reliability.But fewer people now know enough about their car to be their own mechanic.Should this loss of a once common skill concern us?I think not.Ever since the first pre-human shaped a stone into an axe,we have been improving our technology.The invention of the axe did represent a loss of control,because some people were better at making axes than others.But the axe also made life easier,so we had more time to develop other skills,like agriculture,art and writing.As another step along this continuum of invention, ubiquitous computing won’t make people dumber;it will give them time to get smart about other things.I believe,however,that everyone should be given an equal opportunity to get smart about other things.In this regard,there is legitimate concern that the new ubiquitous computers won’t be equally available to everyone,thus driving a wedge between high-tech“haves”and“have-nots”.But it is important to realize that the prime mover behind the latest technology is not the technology itself,but an agreement—the Internet.Agreeing on low computers should talk to one another on the internet has tremendous advantages for exchanging information,decreasing the cost of technology and creating new market opportunities.If all chips are able to relate to each other,then information can be shared cheaply.This means that Internet access may eventually cost only a dollar or two.If the trend towards ever cheaper,more widespread access to information continues,there will be no information underclass.Ubiquitous computing will make our lives more convenient,but it will also allow computers to know everything about us:private actions,such as reading the newspaper,may be shared with other computers—and their owners—all over theworld.When computers know so much,who will they tell?If a computer runs your toaster,for example,it knows when you make toast, and how many slices.By correlating toast-making activity with the license plate numbers of cars parked in front of your house,a computer could determine if a guest had spent the night.But if you were a married politician,and even if you were not,you might want to keep this information secret.Democracy is based on the principle that if people have enough information, wise decisions will be made.In an age in which embedded computers will provide us with ever more information,it is vital that the ethical implications of this new technology be openly debated.With a little vigilance and planning,we can reap the benefits of this new technology without compromising our intelligence,our opportunities or our freedom.1.It can be inferred that“PARC”is a place where______.puters are manufacturedB.scientists and consumers live togetherC.there are computers embedded all aroundD.ethical issues are taught in class2.All of the following are mentioned by the author as having chips inside EXCEPT ______.A.remote controlsB.alarm clocksC.watchesD.microwave ovens3.The expression“information underclass”in paragraph2is closest in meaning to______.rmation that is below parrmation under studyC.people that provide informationD people that do not get as much information as others4.While discussing whether information will be widely available in the long run,the author centers his analysis on matters of______.A.costB.human natureC.intellectual property rightsD.mass media5.The author’s attitude toward ubiquitous computing can best be described as ______.A.cautious optimismB.unreserved approvalC.grave skepticismD.adamant opposition【答案与解析】1.C首句就指出了“PARC”全面电脑化已近十年了（lived with ubiquitous computingfor almost ten years），可见C为正确答案。

考博英语（阅读理解）练习试卷7(题后含答案及解析) 题型有：1. Reading ComprehensionReading ComprehensionWould you like to know if your body is older or younger than it should be? Dr David Wikenheiser has been studying ageing in Vancouver, Canada, for the past 10 years and has found the average person is 15 or more years older biologically than chronologically. He says: “We all know people who are 30 but look over 40, and others who are 70 yet look 50. The difference comes down to lifestyle. Some people’s bodies get rusty faster than others, and this makes them age more quickly. “Virtually every ageing process is related to the oxidative compounds or free radicals produced by our body as a reaction to pollution, ultraviolet light, stress, smoking, alcohol and pesticides. But these can be neutralised by antioxidants. After conducting more than 3 000 tests, Dr. Wikenheiser believes that, on average, you can lower your biological age by 10 years in three months with the right lifestyle changes. “You can’t alter your genetics but you can make other changes, such as eating the right food, drinking enough water to flush out toxins, exercising and managing stress,”he says. But exercising too much is just as bad as not doing enough. Walking out for more than two hours at a time every day puts too great a strain on your heart. “Multivitamin and antioxidant supplements are important even if you’re eating the right amount of fruit and vegetables. Today’s soil tends to lack essential minerals so these are no longer found in the food we eat, in large enough quantities. We should also swap (交换)bleached white table salt for natural sea salt which is much better for us. “It’s also important to eat three meals a day. Missed meals put a strain on your brain as your blood sugar level drops. Many of us are also eating the wrong fats or avoiding fat altogether, so we miss out on important nutritional oils. “You should also ask your dentist what kind of fillings you have. Amalgam fillings in your teeth are not stable and will contribute to toxic metal levels in your body.” says Dr. Wikenheiser. (351 words)1．From the first paragraph, we can see______.A．Wikenheiser is an American scientistB．Wikenheiser is a doctorC．a lot of us look older than our actual ageD．we don’t know we are 15 years older than others正确答案：C解析：第一段里有…has found the average person is 15 or more years older biologically than chronologically。