2003-2014考研真题-简书(2003-2013)

gong2022 9月 11, 2023 73 0

**2014真题
directions:
　　read the following text. choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark a,b,c or d on the answer sheet.(10 points)
　　as many people hit middle age, they often start to notice that their memory and mental clarity are not what they used to be. we suddenly can’t remember 1 we put the keys just a moment ago, or an old acquaintance’s name, or the name of an old band we used to love. as the brain 2, we refer to these occurrences as “senior moments.” 3 seemingly innocent, this loss of mental focus can potentially have a (n) 4 impact on our professional, social, and personal 5.
　　neuroscientists, experts who study the nervous system, are increasingly showing that there’s actually a lot that can be done. it 6 out that the brain needs exercise in much the same way our muscles do, and the right mental 7 can significantly improve our basic cognitive 8. thinking is essentially a 9 of making connections in the brain. to a certain extent, our ability to 10 in making the connections that drive intelligence is inherited. 11, because these connections are made through effort and practice, scientists believe that intelligence can expand and fluctuate 12 mental effort.
　　now, a new web-based company has taken it a step 13 and developed the first “brain training program” designed to actually help people improve and regain their mental 14.
　　the web-based program 15 you to systematically improve your memory and attention skills. the program keeps 16 of your progress and provides detailed feedback 17 your performance and improvement. most importantly, it ___18___modifies and enhances the games you play to 19 on the strengths you are developing—much like a(n) ___20___exercise routine requires you to increase resistance and vary your muscle use.
　　1. [a]where [b]when [c]that [d]why
　　2. [a]improves [b]fades [c]recovers [d]collapses
　　3. [a]if [b]unless [c]once [d]while
　　4. [a]uneven [b]limited [c]damaging [d]obscure
　　5. [a]wellbeing [b]environment [c]relationship [d]outlook
　　6. [a]turns [b]finds [c]points [d]figures
　　7. [a]roundabouts [b]responses [c]workouts [d]associations
　　8. [a]genre [b]functions [c]circumstances [d]criterion
　　9. [a]channel [b]condition [c]sequence [d]process
　　10. [a]persist [b]believe [c]excel [d]feature
　　11. [a] therefore [b] moreover [c] otherwise [d] however
　　12. [a]according to [b]regardless of [c]apart from [d]instead of
　　13. [a]back [b]further [c]aside [d]around
　　14. [a]sharpness [b]stability [c]framework [d]flexibility
　　15. [a]forces [b]reminds [c]hurries [d]allows
　　16. [a]hold [b]track [c]order [d]pace
　　17. [a]to [b]with [c]for [d]on
　　18. [a]irregularly [b]habitually [c]constantly [d]unusually
　　19. [a]carry [b]put [c]build [d]take

directions:
read the following text. choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark a, b, c or d on answer sheet 1. (10 points)
read the following text. choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark a, b, c or d on answer sheet 1. (10 points)
the ethical judgments of the supreme court justices have become an important issue recently. the court cannot 1 its legitimacy as guardian of the rule of law 2 justices behave like politicians. yet, in several instances, justices acted in ways that 3 the court’s reputation for being independent and impartial.
justice antonin scalia, for example, appeared at political events. that kind of activity makes it less likely that the court’s decisions will be 4 as impartial judgments. part of the problem is that the justices are not _5_by an ethics code. at the very least, the court should make itself _6_to the code of conduct that _7_to the rest of the federal judiciary.
this and other similar cases _8_the question of whether there is still a _9_between the court and politics.
the framers of the constitution envisioned law _10_having authority apart from politics. they gave justices permanent positions _11_they would be free to 12 those in power and have no need to 13 political support. our legal system was designed to set law apart from politics precisely because they are so closely 14.
constitutional law is political because it results from choices rooted in fundamental social 15 like liberty and property. when the court deals with social policy decisions, the law it 16 is inescapably political-which is why decisions split along ideological lines are so easily 17 as unjust.
the justices must 18 doubts about the court’s legitimacy by making themselves 19 to the code of conduct. that would make rulings more likely to be seen as separate from politics and, 20, convincing as law.

section ii reading comprehension

part a
directions:
read the following four texts. answer the questions below each text by choosing a, b, c or d. mark your answers on answer sheet 1. (40 points)
text 1
come on –everybody’s doing it. that whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what most of us think of when we hear the words peer pressure. it usually leads to no good-drinking, drugs and casual sex. but in her new book join the club, tina rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in which organizations and officials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their lives and possibly the word.
rosenberg, the recipient of a pulitzer prize, offers a host of example of the social cure in action: in south carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called rage against the haze sets out to make cigarettes uncool. in south africa, an hiv-prevention initiative known as lovelife recruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers.
the idea seems promising，and rosenberg is a perceptive observer. her critique of the lameness of many pubic-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to mobilize peer pressure for healthy habits, and they demonstrate a seriously flawed understanding of psychology.” dare to be different, please don’t smoke!” pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers-teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in. rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure.
but on the general effectiveness of the social cure, rosenberg is less persuasive. join the club is filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biological factors that make peer pressure so powerful. the most glaring flaw of the social cure as it’s presented here is that it doesn’t work very well for very long. rage against the haze failed once state funding was cut. evidence that the lovelife program produces lasting changes is limited and mixed.
there’s no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. an emerging body of research shows that positive health habits-as well as negative ones-spread through networks of friends via social communication. this is a subtle form of peer pressure: we unconsciously imitate the behavior we see every day.
far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. it’s like the teacher who breaks up the troublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. the tactic never really works. and that’s the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the real world, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.

rosenberg holds that public advocates should
[a] recruit professional advertisers
[b] learn from advertisers’ experience
[c] stay away from commercial advertisers
[d] recognize the limitations of advertisements

in the author’s view, rosenberg’s book fails to
[a] adequately probe social and biological factors
[b] effectively evade the flaws of the social cure
[c] illustrate the functions of state funding
[d]produce a long-lasting social effect

paragraph 5shows that our imitation of behaviors
[a] is harmful to our networks of friends
[b] will mislead behavioral studies
[c] occurs without our realizing it
[d] can produce negative health habits

the author suggests in the last paragraph that the effect of peer pressure is
[a] harmful
[b] desirable
[c] profound
[d] questionable

text 2
a deal is a deal-except, apparently ,when entergy is involved. the company, a major energy supplier in new england, provoked justified outrage in vermont last week when it announced it was reneging on a longstanding commitment to abide by the strict nuclear regulations.
instead, the company has done precisely what it had long promised it would not challenge the constitutionality of vermont’s rules in the federal court, as part of a desperate effort to keep its vermont yankee nuclear power plant running. it’s a stunning move.
the conflict has been surfacing since 2002, when the corporation bought vermont’s only nuclear power plant, an aging reactor in vernon. as a condition of receiving state approval for the sale, the company agreed to seek permission from state regulators to operate past 2012. in 2006, the state went a step further, requiring that any extension of the plant’s license be subject to vermont legislature’s approval. then, too, the company went along.
either entergy never really intended to live by those commitments, or it simply didn’t foresee what would happen next. a string of accidents, including the partial collapse of a cooling tower in 207 and the discovery of an underground pipe system leakage, raised serious questions about both vermont yankee’s safety and entergy’s management– especially after the company made misleading statements about the pipe. enraged by entergy’s behavior, the vermont senate voted 26 to 4 last year against allowing an extension.
now the company is suddenly claiming that the 2002 agreement is invalid because of the 2006 legislation, and that only the federal government has regulatory power over nuclear issues. the legal issues in the case are obscure: whereas the supreme court has ruled that states do have some regulatory authority over nuclear power, legal scholars say that vermont case will offer a precedent-setting test of how far those powers extend. certainly, there are valid concerns about the patchwork regulations that could result if every state sets its own rules. but had entergy kept its word, that debate would be beside the point.
the company seems to have concluded that its reputation in vermont is already so damaged that it has noting left to lose by going to war with the state. but there should be consequences. permission to run a nuclear plant is a poblic trust. entergy runs 11 other reactors in the united states, including pilgrim nuclear station in plymouth. pledging to run pilgrim safely, the company has applied for federal permission to keep it open for another 20 years. but as the nuclear regulatory commission (nrc) reviews the company’s application, it should keep it mind what promises from entergy are worth.

by entering into the 2002 agreement, entergy intended to
[a] obtain protection from vermont regulators.
[b] seek favor from the federal legislature.
[c] acquire an extension of its business license .
[d] get permission to purchase a power plant.

according to paragraph 4, entergy seems to have problems with its
[a] managerial practices.
[b] technical innovativeness.
[c] financial goals.
[d] business vision

in the author’s view, the vermont case will test
[a] entergy’s capacity to fulfill all its promises.
[b] the mature of states’ patchwork regulations.
[c] the federal authority over nuclear issues .
[d] the limits of states’ power over nuclear issues.

it can be inferred from the last paragraph that
[a] entergy’s business elsewhere might be affected.
[b] the authority of the nrc will be defied.
[c] entergy will withdraw its plymouth application.
[d] vermont’s reputation might be damaged.

text 3
in the idealized version of how science is done, facts about the world are waiting to be observed and collected by objective researchers who use the scientific method to carry out their work. but in the everyday practice of science, discovery frequently follows an ambiguous and complicated route. we aim to be objective, but we cannot escape the context of our unique life experience. prior knowledge and interest influence what we experience, what we think our experiences mean, and the subsequent actions we take. opportunities for misinterpretation, error, and self-deception abound.
consequently, discovery claims should be thought of as protoscience. similar to newly staked mining claims, they are full of potential. but it takes collective scrutiny and acceptance to transform a discovery claim into a mature discovery. this is the credibility process, through which the individual researcher’s me, here, now becomes the community’s anyone, anywhere, anytime. objective knowledge is the goal, not the starting point.
once a discovery claim becomes public, the discoverer receives intellectual credit. but, unlike with mining claims, the community takes control of what happens next. within the complex social structure of the scientific community, researchers make discoveries; editors and reviewers act as gatekeepers by controlling the publication process; other scientists use the new finding to suit their own purposes; and finally, the public (including other scientists) receives the new discovery and possibly accompanying technology. as a discovery claim works it through the community, the interaction and confrontation between shared and competing beliefs about the science and the technology involved transforms an individual’s discovery claim into the community’s credible discovery.
two paradoxes exist throughout this credibility process. first, scientific work tends to focus on some aspect of prevailing knowledge that is viewed as incomplete or incorrect. little reward accompanies duplication and confirmation of what is already known and believed. the goal is new-search, not re-search. not surprisingly, newly published discovery claims and credible discoveries that appear to be important and convincing will always be open to challenge and potential modification or refutation by future researchers. second, novelty itself frequently provokes disbelief. nobel laureate and physiologist albert azent-gyorgyi once described discovery as “seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” but thinking what nobody else has thought and telling others what they have missed may not change their views. sometimes years are required for truly novel discovery claims to be accepted and appreciated.
in the end, credibility “happens” to a discovery claim – a process that corresponds to what philosopher annette baier has described as the commons of the mind. “we reason together, challenge, revise, and complete each other’s reasoning and each other’s conceptions of reason.”

it can be inferred from paragraph 2 that credibility process requires
[a] strict inspection.
[b]shared efforts.
[c] individual wisdom.
[d]persistent innovation.

33.paragraph 3 shows that a discovery claim becomes credible after it
[a] has attracted the attention of the general public.
[b]has been examined by the scientific community.
[c] has received recognition from editors and reviewers.
[d]has been frequently quoted by peer scientists.

35.which of the following would be the best title of the test?
[a] novelty as an engine of scientific development.
[b]collective scrutiny in scientific discovery.
[c] evolution of credibility in doing science.
[d]challenge to credibility at the gate to science.

text 4
if the trade unionist jimmy hoffa were alive today, he would probably represent civil servant. when hoffa’s teamsters were in their prime in 1960, only one in ten american government workers belonged to a union; now 36% do. in 2009 the number of unionists in america’s public sector passed that of their fellow members in the private sector. in britain, more than half of public-sector workers but only about 15% of private-sector ones are unionized.
there are three reasons for the public-sector unions’ thriving. first, they can shut things down without suffering much in the way of consequences. second, they are mostly bright and well-educated. a quarter of america’s public-sector workers have a university degree. third, they now dominate left-of-centre politics. some of their ties go back a long way. britain’s labor party, as its name implies, has long been associated with trade unionism. its current leader, ed miliband, owes his position to votes from public-sector unions.
at the state level their influence can be even more fearsome. mark baldassare of the public policy institute of california points out that much of the state’s budget is patrolled by unions. the teachers’ unions keep an eye on schools, the ccpoa on prisons and a variety of labor groups on health care.
in many rich countries average wages in the state sector are higher than in the private one. but the real gains come in benefits and work practices. politicians have repeatedly “backloaded” public-sector pay deals, keeping the pay increases modest but adding to holidays and especially pensions that are already generous.
reform has been vigorously opposed, perhaps most egregiously in education, where charter schools, academies and merit pay all faced drawn-out battles. even though there is plenty of evidence that the quality of the teachers is the most important variable, teachers’ unions have fought against getting rid of bad ones and promoting good ones.
as the cost to everyone else has become clearer, politicians have begun to clamp down. in wisconsin the unions have rallied thousands of supporters against scott walker, the hardline republican governor. but many within the public sector suffer under the current system, too.
john donahue at harvard’s kennedy school points out that the norms of culture in western civil services suit those who want to stay put but is bad for high achievers. the only american public-sector workers who earn well above $250,000 a year are university sports coaches and the president of the united states. bankers’ fat pay packets have attracted much criticism, but a public-sector system that does not reward high achievers may be a much bigger problem for america.

which of the following is true of paragraph 2?
[a] public-sector unions are prudent in taking actions.
[b] education is required for public-sector union membership.
[c] labor party has long been fighting against public-sector unions.
[d]public-sector unions seldom get in trouble for their actions.

it can be learned from paragraph 4 that the income in the state sector is
[a] illegally secured.
[b] indirectly augmented.
[c] excessively increased.
[d]fairly adjusted.

the example of the unions in wisconsin shows that unions
[a]often run against the current political system.
[b]can change people’s political attitudes.
[c]may be a barrier to public-sector reforms.
[d]are dominant in the government.

john donahue’s attitude towards the public-sector system is one of
[a]disapproval.
[b]appreciation.
[c]tolerance.
[d]indifference.

part b
directions:
in the following text, some sentences have been removed. for questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list a-g to fit into each of the numbered blanks. there are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. mark your answers on answer sheet1.（10 points）
think of those fleeting moments when you look out of an aeroplane window and realise that you are flying, higher than a bird. now think of your laptop, thinner than a brown-paper envelope, or your cellphone in the palm of your hand. take a moment or two to wonder at those marvels. you are the lucky inheritor of a dream come true.
the second half of the 20th century saw a collection of geniuses, warriors, entrepreneurs and visionaries labour to create a fabulous machine that could function as a typewriter and printing press, studio and theatre, paintbrush and gallery, piano and radio, the mail as well as the mail carrier. (41)
the networked computer is an amazing device, the first media machine that serves as the mode of production, means of distribution, site of reception, and place of praise and critique. the computer is the 21st century’s culture machine.
but for all the reasons there are to celebrate the computer, we must also tread with caution. (42)i call it a secret war for two reasons. first, most people do not realise that there are strong commercial agendas at work to keep them in passive consumption mode. second, the majority of people who use networked computers to upload are not even aware of the significance of what they are doing.
all animals download, but only a few upload. beavers build dams and birds make nests. yet for the most part, the animal kingdom moves through the world downloading. humans are unique in their capacity to not only make tools but then turn around and use them to create superfluous material goods – paintings, sculpture and architecture – and superfluous experiences – music, literature, religion and philosophy. (43)
for all the possibilities of our new culture machines, most people are still stuck in download mode. even after the advent of widespread social media, a pyramid of production remains, with a small number of people uploading material, a slightly larger group commenting on or modifying that content, and a huge percentage remaining content to just consume. (44)
television is a one-way tap flowing into our homes. the hardest task that television asks of anyone is to turn the power off after he has turned it on.
(45)
what counts as meaningful uploading? my definition revolves around the concept of “stickiness” – creations and experiences to which others adhere.

[a] of course, it is precisely these superfluous things that define human culture and ultimately what it is to be human. downloading and consuming culture requires great skills, but failing to move beyond downloading is to strip oneself of a defining constituent of humanity.
[b] applications like tumblr.com, which allow users to combine pictures, words and other media in creative ways and then share them, have the potential to add stickiness by amusing, entertaining and enlightening others.
[c] not only did they develop such a device but by the turn of the millennium they had also managed to embed it in a worldwide system accessed by billions of people every day.
[d] this is because the networked computer has sparked a secret war between downloading and uploading – between passive consumption and active creation – whose outcome will shape our collective future in ways we can only begin to imagine.
[e] the challenge the computer mounts to television thus bears little similarity to one format being replaced by another in the manner of record players being replaced by cd players.
[f] one reason for the persistence of this pyramid of production is that for the past half-century, much of the world’s media culture has been defined by a single medium – television – and television is defined by downloading.
[g]the networked computer offers the first chance in 50 years to reverse the flow, to encourage thoughtful downloading and, even more importantly, meaningful uploading.

part c
directions:
read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into chinese. your translation should be written clearly on answer sheet 2. (10 points)
since the days of aristotle, a search for universal principles has characterized the scientific enterprise. in some ways, this quest for commonalities defines science. newton’s laws of motion and darwinian evolution each bind a host of different phenomena into a single explicatory frame work.
(46)in physics, one approach takes this impulse for unification to its extreme, and seeks a theory of everything—a single generative equation for all we see.it is becoming less clear, however, that such a theory would be a simplification, given the dimensions and universes that it might entail, nonetheless, unification of sorts remains a major goal.
this tendency in the natural sciences has long been evident in the social sciences too. (47)here, darwinism seems to offer justification for it all humans share common origins it seems reasonable to suppose that cultural diversity could also be traced to more constrained beginnings. just as the bewildering variety of human courtship rituals might all be considered forms of sexual selection, perhaps the world’s languages, music, social and religious customs and even history are governed by universal features. (48)to filter out what is unique from what is shared might enable us to understand how complex cultural behavior arose and what guides it in evolutionary or cognitive terms.
that, at least, is the hope. but a comparative study of linguistic traits published online today supplies a reality check. russell gray at the university of auckland and his colleagues consider the evolution of grammars in the light of two previous attempts to find universality in language.
the most famous of these efforts was initiated by noam chomsky, who suggested that humans are born with an innate language—acquisition capacity that dictates a universal grammar. a few generative rules are then sufficient to unfold the entire fundamental structure of a language, which is why children can learn it so quickly.
(49)the second, by joshua greenberg, takes a more empirical approach to universality identifying traits (particularly in word order) shared by many language which are considered to represent biases that result from cognitive constraints
gray and his colleagues have put them to the test by examining four family trees that between them represent more than 2,000 languages.(50)chomsky’s grammar should show patterns of language change that are independent of the family tree or the pathway tracked through it. whereas greenbergian universality predicts strong co-dependencies between particular types of word-order relations. neither of these patterns is borne out by the analysis, suggesting that the structures of the languages are lire age-specific and not governed by universals

section iii writing

part a

 extend your welcome and

 provide some suggestions for their campus life here.

you should write about 100 words on answer sheet2.do not sign your name at the end of the letter. use “li ming” instead.
do not write the address(10 points)

part b

directions: write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following drawing. in your essay you should

give your comments.
your should write neatly on answer sheet 2. (20 points)

2010年全国硕士研究生入学统一考试英语试题
section i use of english
directions:
in 1924 america’s national research council sent two engineers to supervise a series of industrial experiments at a large telephone-parts factory called the hawthorne plant near chicago. it hoped they would learn how stop-floor lighting workers’ productivity. instead, the studies ended giving their name to the “hawthorne effect”, the extremely influential idea that the very to being experimented upon changed subjects’ behavior.
the idea arose because of the behavior of the women in the hawthorne plant. according to of the experiments, their hourly output rose when lighting was increased, but also when it was dimmed. it did not what was done in the experiment; something was changed, productivity rose. a(n) that they were being experimented upon seemed to be to alter workers’ behavior itself.
after several decades, the same data were to econometric the analysis. hawthorne experiments has another surprise store the descriptions on record, no systematic was found that levels of productivity were related to changes in lighting.
it turns out that peculiar way of conducting the experiments may be have let to interpretation of what happed. , lighting was always changed on a sunday. when work started again on monday, output rose compared with the previous saturday and 17 to rise for the next couple of days. , a comparison with data for weeks when there was no experimentation showed that output always went up on monday, workers to be diligent for the first few days of the week in any case, before a plateau and then slackening off. this suggests that the alleged “hawthorne effect” is hard to pin down.

directions:
read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into chinese. your translation should be written clearly on answer sheet 2. (10 points)
the study of law has been recognized for centuries as a basic intellectual discipline in european universities. however, only in recent years has it become a feature of undergraduate programs in canadian universities. (46) traditionally, legal learning has been viewed in such institutions as the special preserve of lawyers, rather than a necessary part of the intellectual equipment of an educated person. happily, the older and more continental view of legal education is establishing itself in a number of canadian universities and some have even begun to offer undergraduate degrees in law.
if the study of law is beginning to establish itself as part and parcel of a general education, its aims and methods should appeal directly to journalism educators. law is a discipline which encourages responsible judgment. on the one hand, it provides opportunities to analyze such ideas as justice, democracy and freedom. (47) on the other, it links these concepts to everyday realities in a manner which is parallel to the links journalists forge on a daily basis as they cover and comment on the news. for example, notions of evidence and fact, of basic rights and public interest are at work in the process of journalistic judgment and production just as in courts of law. sharpening judgment by absorbing and reflecting on law is a desirable component of a journalist’s intellectual preparation for his or her career.
(48) but the idea that the journalist must understand the law more profoundly than an ordinary citizen rests on an understanding of the established conventions and special responsibilities of the news media. politics or, more broadly, the functioning of the state, is a major subject for journalists. the better informed they are about the way the state works, the better their reporting will be. (49) in fact, it is difficult to see how journalists who do not have a clear grasp of the basic features of the canadian constitution can do a competent job on political stories.
furthermore, the legal system and the events which occur within it are primary subjects for journalists. while the quality of legal journalism varies greatly, there is an undue reliance amongst many journalists on interpretations supplied to them by lawyers. (50) while comment and reaction from lawyers may enhance stories, it is preferable for journalists to rely on their own notions of significance and make their own judgments. these can only come from a well-grounded understanding of the legal system.
section iii writing

part a

directions:

write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following drawing. in your essay, you should

2006年全国硕士研究生入学统一考试英语试题

section i use of english

directions:
read the following text. choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark [a], [b], [c] or [d] on answer sheet 1. (10 points)
the homeless make up a growing percentage of america’s population. homelessness has reached such proportions that local governments can’t possibly . to help homeless people independence, the federal government must support job training programs, the minimum wage, and fund more low-cost housing.
everyone agrees on the number of americans who are homeless. estimates anywhere from 600,000 to 3 million. the figure may vary, analysts do agree on another matter: that the number of the homeless is . one of the federal government’s studies that the number of the homeless will reach nearly 19 million by the end of this decade.
finding ways to this growing homeless population has become increasingly difficult. when homeless individuals manage to find a that will give them three meals a day and a place to sleep at night, a good number still spend the bulk of each day the street. part of the problem is that many homeless adults are addicted to alcohol or drugs. and a significant number of the homeless have serious mental disorders. many others, not addicted or mentally ill, simply lack the everyday skills needed to turn their lives . boston globe reporter chris reidy notes that the situation will improve only when there are programs that address the many needs of the homeless. edward zlotkowski, director of community service at bentley college in massachusetts, it, “there has to be of programs. what’s needed is a package deal.”

part a

directions:
read the following four texts. answer the questions below each text by choosing [a], [b], [c], or [d]. mark your answers on answer sheet 1. (40 points)
text 1
in spite of “endless talk of difference,” american society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people. there is “the democratizing uniformity of dress and discourse, and the casualness and absence of deference” characteristic of popular culture. people are absorbed into “a culture of consumption” launched by the 19th-century department stores that offered “vast arrays of goods in an elegant atmosphere. instead of intimate shops catering to a knowledgeable elite,” these were stores “anyone could enter, regardless of class or background. this turned shopping into a public and democratic act.” the mass media, advertising and sports are other forces for homogenization.
immigrants are quickly fitting into this common culture, which may not be altogether elevating but is hardly poisonous. writing for the national immigration forum, gregory rodriguez reports that today’s immigration is neither at unprecedented levels nor resistant to assimilation. in 1998 immigrants were 9.8 percent of population; in 1900, 13.6 percent. in the 10 years prior to 1990, 3.1 immigrants arrived for every 1,000 residents; in the 10 years prior to 1890, 9.2 for every 1,000. now, consider three indices of assimilation — language, home ownership and intermarriage.
the 1990 census revealed that “a majority of immigrants from each of the fifteen most common countries of origin spoke english ‘well’ or ‘very well’ after ten years of residence.” the children of immigrants tend to be bilingual and proficient in english. “by the third generation, the original language is lost in the majority of immigrant families.” hence the description of america as a “graveyard” for languages. by 1996 foreign-born immigrants who had arrived before 1970 had a home ownership rate of 75.6 percent, higher than the 69.8 percent rate among native-born americans.
foreign-born asians and hispanics “have higher rates of intermarriage than do u.s.-born whites and blacks.” by the third generation, one third of hispanic women are married to non-hispanics, and 41 percent of asian-american women are married to non-asians.
rodriguez notes that children in remote villages around the world are fans of superstars like arnold schwarzenegger and garth brooks, yet “some americans fear that immigrants living within the united states remain somehow immune to the nation’s assimilative power.”
are there divisive issues and pockets of seething anger in america? indeed. it is big enough to have a bit of everything. but particularly when viewed against america’s turbulent past, today’s social indices hardly suggest a dark and deteriorating social environment.

2005年全国硕士研究生入学统一考试英语试题

section i use of english

directions:
read the following text. choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark [a], [b], [c] or [d] on answer sheet 1 (10 points)
the human nose is an underrated tool. humans are often thought to be insensitive smellers compared with animals, this is largely because, animals, we stand upright. this means that our noses are to perceiving those smells which float through the air, the majority of smells which stick to surfaces. in fact, , we are extremely sensitive to smells, we do not generally realize it. our noses are capable of human smells even when these are to far below one part in one million.
strangely, some people find that they can smell one type of flower but not another, others are sensitive to the smells of both flowers. this may be because some people do not have the genes necessary to generate smell receptors in the nose. these receptors are the cells which sense smells and send to the brain. however, it has been found that even people insensitive to a certain smell can suddenly become sensitive to it when to it often enough.
the explanation for insensitivity to smell seems to be that the brain finds it to keep all smell receptors working all the time but can new receptors if necessary. this may explain why we are not usually sensitive to our own smells—we simply do not need to be. we are not of the usual smell of our own house, but we new smells when we visit someone else’s. the brain finds it best to keep smell receptors for unfamiliar and emergency signals the smell of smoke, which might indicate the danger of fire.

part a

directions:
read the following four texts. answer the questions below each text by choosing [a], [b], [c] or d. mark your answers on answer sheet 1 (40 points)
text 1

everybody loves a fat pay rise. yet pleasure at your own can vanish if you learn that a colleague has been given a bigger one. indeed, if he has a reputation for slacking, you might even be outraged. such behaviour is regarded as “all too human,” with the underlying assumption that other animals would not be capable of this finely developed sense of grievance. but a study by sarah brosnan and frans de waal of emory university in atlanta, georgia, which has just been published in nature, suggests that it is all too m, as well.
the researchers studied the behaviour of female brown capuchin ms. they look cute. they are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they share their food readily. above all, like their female human counterparts, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of “goods and services” than males.
such characteristics make them perfect candidates for dr. brosnan’s and dr. de waal’s study. the researchers spent two years teaching their ms to exchange tokens for food. normally, the ms were happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for slices of cucumber. however, when two ms were placed in separate but adjoining chambers, so that each could observe what the other was getting in return for its rock, their behaviour became markedly different.
in the world of capuchins, grapes are luxury goods (and much preferable to cucumbers). so when one m was handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was reluctant to hand hers over for a mere piece of cucumber. and if one received a grape without having to provide her token in exchange at all, the other either tossed her own token at the researcher or out of the chamber, or refused to accept the slice of cucumber. indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other chamber (without an actual m to eat it) was enough to induce resentment in a female capuchin.
the researchers suggest that capuchin ms, like humans, are guided by social emotions. in the wild, they are a co-operative, group-living species. such co-operation is likely to be stable only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. feelings of righteous indignation, it seems, are not the preserve of people alone. refusing a lesser reward completely makes these feelings abundantly clear to other members of the group. however, whether such a sense of fairness evolved independently in capuchins and humans, or whether it stems from the common ancestor that the species had 35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.

do you remember all those years when scientists argued that smoking would kill us but the doubters insisted that we didn’t know for sure? that the evidence was inconclusive, the science uncertain? that the antismoking lobby was out to destroy our way of life and the government should stay out of the way? lots of americans bought that nonsense, and over three decades, some 10 million smokers went to early graves.
there are upsetting parallels today, as scientists in one wave after another try to awaken us to the growing threat of global warming. the latest was a panel from the national academy of sciences, enlisted by the white house, to tell us that the earth’s atmosphere is definitely warming and that the problem is largely man-made. the clear message is that we should get moving to protect ourselves. the president of the national academy, bruce alberts, added this key point in the preface to the panel’s report: “science never has all the answers. but science does provide us with the best available guide to the future, and it is critical that our nation and the world base important policies on the best judgments that science can provide concerning the future consequences of present actions.”
just as on smoking, voices now come from many quarters insisting that the science about global warming is incomplete, that it’s ok to keep pouring fumes into the air until we know for sure. this is a dangerous game: by the time 100 percent of the evidence is in, it may be too late. with the risks obvious and growing, a prudent people would take out an insurance policy now.
fortunately, the white house is starting to pay attention. but it’s obvious that a majority of the president’s advisers still don’t take global warming seriously. instead of a plan of action, they continue to press for more research — a classic case of “paralysis by analysis.”
to serve as responsible stewards of the planet, we must press forward on deeper atmospheric and oceanic research. but research alone is inadequate. if the administration won’t take the legislative initiative, congress should help to begin fashioning conservation measures. a bill by democratic senator robert byrd of west virginia, which would offer financial incentives for private industry, is a promising start. many see that the country is getting ready to build lots of new power plants to meet our energy needs. if we are ever going to protect the atmosphere, it is crucial that those new plants be environmentally sound.

of all the components of a good night’s sleep, dreams seem to be least within our control. in dreams, a window opens into a world where logic is suspended and dead people speak. a century ago, freud formulated his revolutionary theory that dreams were the disguised shadows of our unconscious desires and fears; by the late 1970s, neurologists had switched to thinking of them as just “mental noise” — the random byproducts of the neural-repair work that goes on during sleep. now researchers suspect that dreams are part of the mind’s emotional thermostat, regulating moods while the brain is “off-line.” and one leading authority says that these intensely powerful mental events can be not only harnessed but actually brought under conscious control, to help us sleep and feel better, “it’s your dream,” says rosalind cartwright, chair of psychology at chicago’s medical center. “if you don’t like it, change it.”
evidence from brain imaging supports this view. the brain is as active during rem (rapid eye movement) sleep — when most vivid dreams occur — as it is when fully awake, says dr, eric nofzinger at the university of pittsburgh. but not all parts of the brain are equally involved; the limbic system (the “emotional brain”) is especially active, while the prefrontal cortex (the center of intellect and reasoning) is relatively quiet. “we wake up from dreams happy or depressed, and those feelings can stay with us all day.” says stanford sleep researcher dr. william dement.
the link between dreams and emotions shows up among the patients in cartwright’s clinic. most people seem to have more bad dreams early in the night, progressing toward happier ones before awakening, suggesting that they are working through negative feelings generated during the day. because our conscious mind is occupied with daily life we don’t always think about the emotional significance of the day’s events — until, it appears, we begin to dream.
and this process need not be left to the unconscious. cartwright believes one can exercise conscious control over recurring bad dreams. as soon as you awaken, identify what is upsetting about the dream. visualize how you would like it to end instead; the next time it occurs, try to wake up just enough to control its course. with much practice people can learn to, literally, do it in their sleep.
at the end of the day, there’s probably little reason to pay attention to our dreams at all unless they keep us from sleeping or “we wake up in a panic,” cartwright says. terrorism, economic uncertainties and general feelings of insecurity have increased people’s anxiety. those suffering from persistent nightmares should seek help from a therapist. for the rest of us, the brain has its ways of working through bad feelings. sleep — or rather dream — on it and you’ll feel better in the morning.

americans no longer expect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the english language with skill and gift. nor do they aspire to such command themselves. in his latest book, doing our own thing: the degradation of language and music and why we should, like, care, john mcwhorter, a linguist and controversialist of mixed liberal and conservative views, sees the triumph of 1960s counter-culture as responsible for the decline of formal english.
blaming the permissive 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yet another criticism against the decline in education. mr. mcwhorter’s academic speciality is language history and change, and he sees the gradual disappearance of “whom,” for example, to be natural and no more regrettable than the loss of the case-endings of old english.
but the cult of the authentic and the personal, “doing our own thing,” has spelt the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music. while even the modestly educated sought an elevated tone when they put pen to paper before the 1960s, even the most well regarded writing since then has sought to capture spoken english on the page. equally, in poetry, the highly personal, performative genre is the only form that could claim real liveliness. in both oral and written english, talking is triumphing over speaking, spontaneity over craft.
illustrated with an entertaining array of examples from both high and low culture, the trend that mr. mcwhorter documents is unmistakable. but it is less clear, to take the question of his subtitle, why we should, like, care. as a linguist, he acknowledges that all varieties of human language, including non-standard ones like black english, can be powerfully expressive — there exists no language or dialect in the world that cannot convey complex ideas. he is not arguing, as many do, that we can no longer think straight because we do not talk proper.
russians have a deep love for their own language and carry large chunks of memorized poetry in their heads, while italian politicians tend to elaborate speech that would seem old-fashioned to most english-speakers. mr. mcwhorter acknowledges that formal language is not strictly necessary, and proposes no radical education reforms — he is really grieving over the loss of something beautiful more than useful. we now take our english “on paper plates instead of china.” a shame, perhaps, but probably an inevitable one.

directions:
in the following text, some sentences have been removed. for questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list a-g to fit into each of the numbered blanks. there are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. mark your answers on answer sheet 1. (10 points)
canada’s premiers (the leaders of provincial governments), if they have any breath left after complaining about ottawa at their late july annual meeting, might spare a moment to do something, together, to reduce health-care costs.
they’re all groaning about soaring health budgets, the fastest-growing component of which are pharmaceutical costs.

what to do? both the romanow commission and the kirby committee on health care — to say nothing of reports from other experts — recommended the creation of a national drug agency. instead of each province having its own list of approved drugs, bureaucracy, procedures and limited bargaining power, all would pool resources, work with ottawa, and create a national institution.

but “national” doesn’t have to mean that. “national” could mean interprovincial — provinces combining efforts to create one body.
either way, one benefit of a “national” organization would be to negotiate better prices, if possible, with drug manufacturers. instead of having one province — or a series of hospitals within a province — negotiate a price for a given drug on the provincial list, the national agency would negotiate on behalf of all provinces.
rather than, say, quebec, negotiating on behalf of seven million people, the national agency would negotiate on behalf of 31 million people. basic economics suggests the greater the potential consumers, the higher the likelihood of a better price.

a small step has been taken in the direction of a national agency with the creation of the canadian co-ordinating office for health technology assessment, funded by ottawa and the provinces. under it, a common drug review recommends to provincial lists which new drugs should be included. predictably, and regrettably, quebec refused to join.
a few premiers are suspicious of any federal-provincial deal-making. they (particularly quebec and alberta) just want ottawa to fork over additional billions with few, if any, strings attached. that’s one reason why the idea of a national list hasn’t gone anywhere, while drug costs keep rising fast.

premiers love to quote mr. romanow’s report selectively, especially the parts about more federal money. perhaps they should read what he had to say about drugs: “a national drug agency would provide governments more influence on pharmaceutical companies in order to constrain the ever-increasing cost of drugs.”

so when the premiers gather in niagara falls to assemble their usual complaint list, they should also get cracking about something in their jurisdiction that would help their budgets and patients.
[a] quebec’s resistance to a national agency is provincialist ideology. one of the first advocates for a national list was a researcher at laval university. quebec’s drug insurance fund has seen its costs skyrocket with annual increases from 14.3 per cent to 26.8 per cent!
[b] or they could read mr. kirby’s report: “the substantial buying power of such an agency would strengthen the public prescription-drug insurance plans to negotiate the lowest possible purchase prices from drug companies.”
[c] what does “national” mean? roy romanow and senator michael kirby recommended a federal-provincial body much like the recently created national health council.
[d] the problem is simple and stark: health-care costs have been, are, and will continue to increase faster than government revenues.
[e] according to the canadian institute for health information, prescription drug costs have risen since 1997 at twice the rate of overall health-care spending. part of the increase comes from drugs being used to replace other kinds of treatments. part of it arises from new drugs costing more than older kinds. part of it is higher prices.
[f] so, if the provinces want to run the health-care show, they should prove they can run it, starting with an interprovincial health list that would end duplication, save administrative costs, prevent one province from being played off against another, and bargain for better drug prices.
[g] of course, the pharmaceutical companies will scream. they like divided buyers; they can lobby better that way. they can use the threat of removing jobs from one province to another. they can hope that, if one province includes a drug on its list, the pressure will cause others to include it on theirs. they wouldn’t like a national agency, but self-interest would lead them to deal with it.
part c

directions:
read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into chinese. your translation should be written clearly on answer sheet 2. (10 points)
it is not easy to talk about the role of the mass media in this overwhelmingly significant phase in european history. history and news become confused, and one’s impressions tend to be a mixture of skepticism and optimism. 46) television is one of the means by which these feelings are created and conveyed — and perhaps never before has it served so much to connect different peoples and nations as in the recent events in europe. the europe that is now forming cannot be anything other than its peoples, their cultures and national identities. with this in mind we can begin to analyze the european television scene. 47) in europe, as elsewhere, multi-media groups have been increasingly successful: groups which bring together television, radio, newspapers, magazines and publishing houses that work in relation to one another. one italian example would be the berlusconi group, while abroad maxwell and murdoch come to mind.
clearly, only the biggest and most flexible television companies are going to be able to compete in such a rich and hotly-contested market. 48) this alone demonstrates that the television business is not an easy world to survive in, a fact underlined by statistics that show that out of eighty european television networks, no less than 50% took a loss in 1989.
moreover, the integration of the european community will oblige television companies to cooperate more closely in terms of both production and distribution.

part a

directions:
write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following drawing. in your essay, you should first describe the drawing, then interpret its meaning, and give your comment on it.
you should write neatly on answer sheet 2. (20 points)

2004
section ii use of english

directions:
read the following text. choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark [a], [b], [c] or [d] on answer sheet 1. (10 points)
many theories concerning the causes of juvenile delinquency (crimes committed by young people) focus either on the individual or on society as the major contributing influence. theories on the individual suggest that children engage in criminal behavior they were not sufficiently penalized for previous misdeeds or that they have learned criminal behavior through with others. theories focusing on the role of society suggest that children commit crimes in to their failure to rise above their socioeconomic status, as a rejection of middle-class values.
most theories of juvenile delinquency have focused on children from disadvantaged families, the fact that children from wealthy homes also commit crimes. the latter may commit crimes lack of adequate parental control. all theories, however, are tentative and are to criticism.
changes in the social structure may indirectly juvenile crime rates. for example, changes in the economy that to fewer job opportunities for youth and rising unemployment make gainful employment increasingly difficult to obtain. the resulting discontent may in lead more youths into criminal behavior.
families have also changes these years. more families consist of one-parent households or two working parents; , children are likely to have less supervision at home was common in the traditional family . this lack of parental supervision is thought to be an influence on juvenile crime rates. other causes of offensive acts include frustration or failure in school, the increased of drugs and alcohol, and the growing of child abuse and child neglect. all these conditions tend to increase the probability of a child committing a criminal act, a direct causal relationship has not yet been established.

part a

directions:
read the following four texts. answer the questions below each text by choosing [a], [b], [c] or [d] mark your answers on answer sheet 1. (40 points)
text 1

hunting for a job late last year, lawyer gant redmon stumbled across careerbuilder, a job database on the internet. he searched it with no success but was attracted by the site’s “personal search agent.” it’s an interactive feature that lets visitors key in job criteria such as location, title, and salary, then e-mails them when a matching position is posted in the database. redmon chose the keywords legal, intellectual property, and washington, d.c. three weeks later, he got his first notification of an opening. “i struck gold,” says redmon, who e-mailed his resume to the employer and won a position as in-house counsel for a company.
with thousands of career-related sites on the internet, finding promising openings can be time-consuming and inefficient. search agents reduce the need for repeated visits to the databases. but although a search agent worked for redmon, career experts see drawbacks. narrowing your criteria, for example, may work against you: “every time you answer a question you eliminate a possibility.” says one expert.
for any job search, you should start with a narrow concept — what you think you want to do — then broaden it. “none of these programs do that,” says another expert. “there’s no career counseling implicit in all of this.” instead, the best strategy is to use the agent as a kind of tip service to keep abreast of jobs in a particular database; when you get e-mail, consider it a reminder to check the database again. “i would not rely on agents for finding everything that is added to a database that might interest me,” says the author of a job-searching guide.
some sites design their agents to tempt job hunters to return. when careersite’s agent sends out messages to those who have signed up for its service, for example, it includes only three potential jobs — those it considers the best matches. there may be more matches in the database; job hunters will have to visit the site again to find them — and they do. “on the day after we send our messages, we see a sharp increase in our traffic,” says seth peets, vice president of marketing for careersite.
even those who aren’t hunting for jobs may find search agents worthwhile. some use them to keep a close watch on the demand for their line of work or gather information on compensation to arm themselves when negotiating for a raise. although happily employed, redmon maintains his agent at careerbuilder. “you always keep your eyes open,” he says. working with a personal search agent means having another set of eyes looking out for you.

over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or made illegal. but one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. this, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet.
it has long been known that a taxi firm called aaaa cars has a big advantage over zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phone directories. less well known is the advantage that adam abbott has in life over zo? zysman. english names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of the alphabet. yet a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between a and k.
thus the american president and vice-president have surnames starting with b and c respectively; and 26 of george bush’s predecessors (including his father) had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the g7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged (berlusconi, blair, bush, chirac, chrétien and koizumi). the world’s three top central bankers (greenspan, duisenberg and hayami) are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses japanese characters. as are the world’s five richest men (gates, buffett, allen, ellison and albrecht).
can this merely be coincidence? one theory, dreamt up in all the spare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets in early. at the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupils alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. so short-sighted zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked the improving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. at the time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly.
the humiliation continues. at university graduation ceremonies, the abcs proudly get their awards first; by the time they reach the zysmans most people are literally having a zzz. shortlists for job interviews, election ballot papers, lists of conference speakers and attendees: all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their recipients lose interest as they plough through them.

when it comes to the slowing economy, ellen spero isn’t biting her nails just yet. but the 47-year-old manicurist isn’t cutting, filing or polishing as many nails as she’d like to, either. most of her clients spend $12 to $50 weekly, but last month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. spero blames the softening economy. “i’m a good economic indicator,” she says. “i provide a service that people can do without when they’re concerned about saving some dollars.” so spero is downscaling, shopping at middle-brow dillard’s department store near her suburban cleveland home, instead of neiman marcus. “i don’t know if other clients are going to abandon me, too.” she says.
even before alan greenspan’s admission that america’s red-hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seen signs of the slowdown themselves. from car dealerships to gap outlets, sales have been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. for retailers, who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between thanksgiving and christmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. already, experts say, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year’s pace. but don’t sound any alarms just yet. consumers seem only mildly concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy’s long-term prospects, even as they do some modest belt-tightening.
consumers say they’re not in despair because, despite the dreadful headlines, their own fortunes still feel pretty good. home prices are holding steady in most regions. in manhattan, “there’s a new gold rush happening in the $4 million to $10 million range, predominantly fed by wall street bonuses,” says broker barbara corcoran. in san francisco, prices are still rising even as frenzied overbidding quiets. “instead of 20 to 30 offers, now maybe you only get two or three,” says john tealdi, a bay area real-estate broker. and most folks still feel pretty comfortable about their ability to find and keep a job.
many folks see silver linings to this slowdown. potential home buyers would cheer for lower interest rates. employers wouldn’t mind a little fewer bubbles in the job market. many consumers seem to have been influenced by stock-market swings, which investors now view as a necessary ingredient to a sustained boom. diners might see an upside, too. getting a table at manhattan’s hot new alain ducasse restaurant used to be impossible. not anymore. for that, greenspan & co. may still be worth toasting.

americans today don’t place a very high value on intellect. our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars. even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education — not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren’t difficult to find.
“schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual,” says education writer diane ravitch. “schools could be a counterbalance.” ravitch’s latest book, left back: a century of failed school reforms, traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools, concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to the american distaste for intellectual pursuits.
but they could and should be. encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy. continuing along this path, says writer earl shorris, “we will become a second-rate country. we will have a less civil society.”
“intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege,” writes historian and professor richard hofstadter in anti-intellectualism in american life, a pulitzer-prize winning book on the roots of anti-intellectualism in us politics, religion, and education. from the beginning of our history, says hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to reject anything that smells of elitism. practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book.
ralph waldo emerson and other transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural restraints on children: “we are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for 10 or 15 years and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.” mark twain’s huckleberry finn exemplified american anti-intellectualism. its hero avoids being civilized — going to school and learning to read — so he can preserve his innate goodness.
intellect, according to hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes and imagines.
school remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. hofstadter says our country’s educational system is in the grips of people who “joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise.”

directions:
read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into chinese. your translation should be written clearly on answer sheet 2. (10 points)
the relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries. 61) the greeks assumed that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought, which took root in europe long before people realized how diverse languages could be.
only recently did linguists begin the serious study of languages that were very different from their own. two anthropologist-linguists, franz boas and edward sapir, were pioneers in describing many native languages of north and south america during the first half of the twentieth century. 62) we are obliged to them because some of these languages have since vanished, as the peoples who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost their native languages. other linguists in the earlier part of this century, however, who were less eager to deal with bizarre data from “exotic” language, were not always so grateful. 63) the newly described languages were often so strikingly different from the well studied languages of europe and southeast asia that some scholars even accused boas and sapir of fabricating their data. native american languages are indeed different, so much so in fact that navajo could be used by the us military as a code during world war ii to send secret messages.
sapir’s pupil, benjamin lee whorf, continued the study of american indian languages. 64) being interested in the relationship of language and thought, whorf developed the idea that the structure of language determines the structure of habitual thought in a society. he reasoned that because it is easier to formulate certain concepts and not others in a given language, the speakers of that language think along one track and not along another. 65) whorf came to believe in a sort of linguistic determinism which, in its strongest form, states that language imprisons the mind, and that the grammatical patterns in a language can produce far-reaching consequences for the culture of a society. later, this idea became to be known as the sapir-whorf hypothesis, but this term is somewhat inappropriate. although both sapir and whorf emphasized the diversity of languages, sapir himself never explicitly supported the notion of linguistic determinism.

directions:
study the following drawing carefully and write an essay in which you should

describe the drawing, 2) interpret its meaning, and 3) support your view with examples.
you should write about 200 words neatly on answer sheet 2. (20 points)

section iv: writing (20 points)
2003
section ii use of english

directions:
read the following text. choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark [a], [b], [c] or [d] on answer sheet 1. (10 points)
teachers need to be aware of the emotional, intellectual, and physical changes that young adults experience. and they also need to give serious to how they can best such changes. growing bodies need movement and , but not just in ways that emphasize competition. they are adjusting to their new bodies and a whole host of new intellectual and emotional challenges, teenagers are especially self-conscious and need the that comes from achieving success and knowing that their accomplishments are by others. however, the typical teenage lifestyle is already filled with so much competition that it would be to plan activities in which there are more winners than losers, , publishing newsletters with many student-written book reviews, student artwork, and sponsoring book discussion clubs. a variety of small clubs can provide opportunities for leadership, as well as for practice in successful dynamics. making friends is extremely important to teenagers, and many shy students need the of some kind of organization with a supportive adult visible in the background.
in these activities, it is important to remember that the young teens have attention spans. a variety of activities should be organized participants can remain active as long as they want and then go on to else without feeling guilty and without letting the other participants . this does not mean that adults must accept irresponsibility. , they can help students acquire a sense of commitment by for roles that are within their and their attention spans and by having clearly stated rules.

part a

directions:
read the following four texts. answer the questions below each text by choosing [a], [b], [c] or [d]. mark your answers on answer sheet 1 (40 points)
text 1

wild bill donovan would have loved the internet. the american spymaster who built the office of strategic services in the world war ii and later laid the roots for the cia was fascinated with information. donovan believed in using whatever tools came to hand in the “great game” of espionage — spying as a “profession.” these days the net, which has already re-made such everyday pastimes as buying books and sending mail, is reshaping donovan’s vocation as well.
the latest revolution isn’t simply a matter of gentlemen reading other gentlemen’s e-mail. that kind of electronic spying has been going on for decades. in the past three or four years, the world wide web has given birth to a whole industry of point-and-click spying. the spooks call it “open-source intelligence,” and as the net grows, it is becoming increasingly influential. in 1995 the cia held a contest to see who could compile the most data about burundi. the winner, by a large margin, was a tiny virginia company called open source solutions, whose clear advantage was its mastery of the electronic world.
among the firms making the biggest splash in the new world is straitford, inc., a private intelligence-analysis firm based in austin, texas. straitford makes money by selling the results of spying (covering nations from chile to russia) to corporations like energy-services firm mcdermott international. many of its predictions are available online at www.straitford.com.
straitford president george friedman says he sees the online world as a kind of mutually reinforcing tool for both information collection and distribution, a spymaster’s dream. last week his firm was busy vacuuming up data bits from the far corners of the world and predicting a crisis in ukraine. “as soon as that report runs, we’ll suddenly get 500 new internet sign-ups from ukraine,” says friedman, a former political science professor. “and we’ll hear back from some of them.” open-source spying does have its risks, of course, since it can be difficult to tell good information from bad. that’s where straitford earns its keep.
friedman relies on a lean staff in austin. several of his staff members have military-intelligence backgrounds. he sees the firm’s outsider status as the key to its success. straitford’s briefs don’t sound like the usual washington back-and-forthing, whereby agencies avoid dramatic declarations on the chance they might be wrong. straitford, says friedman, takes pride in its independent voice.

to paraphrase 18th-century statesman edmund burke, “all that is needed for the triumph of a misguided cause is that good people do nothing.” one such cause now seeks to end biomedical research because of the theory that animals have rights ruling out their use in research. scientists need to respond forcefully to animal rights advocates, whose arguments are confusing the public and thereby threatening advances in health knowledge and care. leaders of the animal rights movement target biomedical research because it depends on public funding, and few people understand the process of health care research. hearing allegations of cruelty to animals in research settings, many are perplexed that anyone would deliberately harm an animal.
for example, a grandmotherly woman staffing an animal rights booth at a recent street fair was distributing a brochure that encouraged readers not to use anything that comes from or is tested in animals—no meat, no fur, no medicines. asked if she opposed immunizations, she wanted to know if vaccines come from animal research. when assured that they do, she replied, “then i would have to say yes.” asked what will happen when epidemics return, she said, “don’t worry, scientists will find some way of using computers.” such well-meaning people just don’t understand.
scientists must communicate their message to the public in a compassionate, understandable way — in human terms, not in the language of molecular biology. we need to make clear the connection between animal research and a grandmother’s hip replacement, a father’s bypass operation, a baby’s vaccinations, and even a pet’s shots. to those who are unaware that animal research was needed to produce these treatments, as well as new treatments and vaccines, animal research seems wasteful at best and cruel at worst.
much can be done. scientists could “adopt” middle school classes and present their own research. they should be quick to respond to letters to the editor, lest animal rights misinformation go unchallenged and acquire a deceptive appearance of truth. research institutions could be opened to tours, to show that laboratory animals receive humane care. finally, because the ultimate stakeholders are patients, the health research community should actively recruit to its cause not only well-known personalities such as stephen cooper, who has made courageous statements about the value of animal research, but all who receive medical treatment. if good people do nothing there is a real possibility that an uninformed citizenry will extinguish the precious embers of medical progress.

in recent years, railroads have been combining with each other, merging into super systems, causing heightened concerns about monopoly. as recently as 1995, the top four railroads accounted for under 70 percent of the total ton-miles moved by rails. next year, after a series of mergers is completed, just four railroads will control well over 90 percent of all the freight moved by major rail carriers.
supporters of the new super systems argue that these mergers will allow for substantial cost reductions and better coordinated service. any threat of monopoly, they argue, is removed by fierce competition from trucks. but many shippers complain that for heavy bulk commodities traveling long distances, such as coal, chemicals, and grain, trucking is too costly and the railroads therefore have them by the throat.
the vast consolidation within the rail industry means that most shippers are served by only one rail company. railroads typically charge such “captive” shippers 20 to 30 percent more than they do when another railroad is competing for the business. shippers who feel they are being overcharged have the right to appeal to the federal government’s surface transportation board for rate relief, but the process is expensive, time-consuming, and will work only in truly extreme cases.
railroads justify rate discrimination against captive shippers on the grounds that in the long run it reduces everyone’s cost. if railroads charged all customers the same average rate, they argue, shippers who have the option of switching to trucks or other forms of transportation would do so, leaving remaining customers to shoulder the cost of keeping up the line. it’s a theory to which many economists subscribe, but in practice it often leaves railroads in the position of determining which companies will flourish and which will fail. “do we really want railroads to be the arbiters of who wins and who loses in the marketplace?” asks martin bercovici, a washington lawyer who frequently represents shipper.
many captive shippers also worry they will soon be hit with a round of huge rate increases. the railroad industry as a whole, despite its brightening fortunes, still does not earn enough to cover the cost of the capital it must invest to keep up with its surging traffic. yet railroads continue to borrow billions to acquire one another, with wall street cheering them on. consider the $10.2 billion bid by norfolk southern and csx to acquire conrail this year. conrail’s net railway operating income in 1996 was just $427 million, less than half of the carrying costs of the transaction. who’s going to pay for the rest of the bill? many captive shippers fear that they will, as norfolk southern and csx increase their grip on the market.

it is said that in england death is pressing, in canada inevitable and in california optional. small wonder. americans’ life expectancy has nearly doubled over the past century. failing hips can be replaced, clinical depression controlled, cataracts removed in a 30-minutes surgical procedure. such advances offer the aging population a quality of life that was unimaginable when i entered medicine 50 years ago. but not even a great health-care system can cure death — and our failure to confront that reality now threatens this greatness of ours.
death is normal; we are genetically programmed to disintegrate and perish, even under ideal conditions. we all understand that at some level, yet as medical consumers we treat death as a problem to be solved. shielded by third-party payers from the cost of our care, we demand everything that can possibly be done for us, even if it’s useless. the most obvious example is late-stage cancer care. physicians — frustrated by their inability to cure the disease and fearing loss of hope in the patient — too often offer aggressive treatment far beyond what is scientifically justified.
in 1950, the u.s. spent $12.7 billion on health care. in 2002, the cost will be $1,540 billion. anyone can see this trend is unsustainable. yet few seem willing to try to reverse it. some scholars conclude that a government with finite resources should simply stop paying for medical care that sustains life beyond a certain age — say 83 or so. former colorado governor richard lamm has been quoted as saying that the old and infirm “have a duty to die and get out of the way,” so that younger, healthier people can realize their potential.
i would not go that far. energetic people now routinely work through their 60s and beyond, and remain dazzlingly productive. at 78, viacom chairman sumner redstone jokingly claims to be 53. supreme court justice sandra day o’connor is in her 70s, and former surgeon general c. everett koop chairs an internet start-up in his 80s. these leaders are living proof that prevention works and that we can manage the health problems that come naturally with age. as a mere 68-year-old, i wish to age as productively as they have.
yet there are limits to what a society can spend in this pursuit. ask a physician, i know the most costly and dramatic measures may be ineffective and painful. i also know that people in japan and sweden, countries that spend far less on medical care, have achieved longer, healthier lives than we have. as a nation, we may be overfunding the quest for unlikely cures while underfunding research on humbler therapies that could improve people’s lives.

directions:
read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into chinese. your translation should be written clearly on answer sheet 2. (10 points)
human beings in all times and places think about their world and wonder at their place in it. humans are thoughtful and creative, possessed of insatiable curiosity. 61) furthermore, humans have the ability to modify the environment in which they live, thus subjecting all other life forms to their own peculiar ideas and fancies. therefore, it is important to study humans in all their richness and diversity in a calm and systematic manner, with the hope that the knowledge resulting from such studies can lead humans to a more harmonious way of living with themselves and with all other life forms on this planet earth.
“anthropology” derives from the greek words anthropos “human” and logos “the study of.” by its very name, anthropology encompasses the study of all humankind.
anthropology is one of the social sciences. 62) social science is that branch of intellectual enquiry which seeks to study humans and their endeavors in the same reasoned, orderly, systematic, and dispassioned manner that natural scientists use for the study of natural phenomena.
social science disciplines include geography, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology. each of these social sciences has a subfield or specialization which lies particularly close to anthropology.
all the social sciences focus upon the study of humanity. anthropology is a field-study oriented discipline which makes extensive use of the comparative method in analysis. 63) the emphasis on data gathered first-hand, combined with a cross-cultural perspective brought to the analysis of cultures past and present, makes this study a unique and distinctly important social science.
anthropological analyses rest heavily upon the concept of culture. sir edward tylor’s formulation of the concept of culture was one of the great intellectual achievements of 19th century science. 64) tylor defined culture as “… that complex whole which includes belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” this insight, so profound in its simplicity, opened up an entirely new way of perceiving and understanding human life. implicit within tylor’s definition is the concept that culture is learned, shared, and patterned behavior.

point out its implications in our life.
you should write about 200 words neatly on answer sheet 2. (20 points)

2003-2014考研真题-简书(2003-2013)

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