2010年湖北博士研究生入學英語考試真題解析

1、2010年湖北省博士研究生入學考試英語聯(lián)考試題Part I Reading Comprehension (40%)Directions: There are 5 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice and mark your answe

2、r on the ANSWER SHEET by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets.Questions 1 to 4 are based on the following passage:For most of us, work is the central, dominating factor of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for work, traveling to and from work. What w

3、e do there largely determines our standard of living and to a considerable extent the status we are accorded by our fellow citizens as well. It is sometimes said that because leisure has become more important, the indignities and injustices of work can be pushed into a corner; that because more work

4、 is pretty intolerable, the people who do it should compensate for its boredom; frustrations and humiliations by concentrating their hopes on the other parts of their lives. I reject that as a counsel pf despair. For the foreseeable future the material and psychological rewards which work can provid

5、e, and the conditions in which work is done, will continue to play a vital part in determining the satisfaction that life can offer. Yet only a small minority ean control the pace at which they work or the conditions in which their work is done; only for a small minority does work offer scope for cr

6、eativity, imagination, or initiative.Inequality at work and in work is still one of the cruelest and most glaring forms of inequality in our society. We can not hope to solve the more obvious problems of industrial life, many of which arise directly or indirectly from the inequality at work. Still l

7、ess can we hope to create a decent and humane society.The most glaring inequality is that between managers and the rest. For most managers, work is an opportunity and a challenge. Their jobs engage their interest and allow them to develop their abilities. They are able to exercise responsibility; th

8、ey have a considerable degree of control over their own and the others working lives. Most important of all, they have the opportunity to initiate. By contrast, for most manual workers, work is a boring, monotonous, even painful experience. They spend all their working lives in conditions which woul

9、d be regarded as intolerable for themselves by those who take the decisions which let such conditions continue. The majority have little control over their work; it provides them with no opportunity for personal development. Often production is so designed that workers are simply part of the technol

10、ogy. In offices, many jobs are so routine that workers justifiably feel themselves to be mere cogs in the bureaucratic machine. As a direct consequence of their work experience, many workers feel alienated from their work and their firm, whether it is in public or in private ownership.1. According t

11、o the author, its true about work that .A. ones happy life largely depends on whether his work is rewardingB. concentrating on your work is a counsel when you are in despairC. people should try to avoid the intolerable unfairness of workD. dignity becomes more and more important than work2. What adv

12、antage do managers have over the other workers?A. They can control other peoples lives.B. They can make their own decisions.C. They can work at whatever interests them.D. They can get time off to attend courses.3. Working conditions generally remain bad because .A. the workers lose their interests t

13、o change themB. few people can decide what to do about themC. office workers want to protect their positionsD. managers do not want to change them4. What frustrates the workers in a modern society?A. Their work interferes with their private lives.B. They are incapable of doing their work properly.C.

14、 They feel they are just a small and subordinate part of it.D. Their lives are complicated due to technological advances.Questions 5 to 8 are based on the following passage:The uniqueness of the Japanese character is the result of two seemingly contradictory forces: the strength of traditions and th

15、e selective receptivity to foreign achievements and inventions. As early 1860s there were counter movement to the traditional orientation. One of the famous spokesmen of Japans “Enlightenment” claimed “the Confucian civilization of the East seems to me to lack two things possessed by Western civiliz

16、ation: science in the material sphere and a sense of independence in the spiritual sphere.” Another break of relative liberalism followed World War I, when the democratic idealism of President Woodrow Wilson had an important impact on Japanese intellectuals and especially students; but more importan

17、t was the Leninist ideology of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Again, in the early 1930s, nationalism and militarism became dominant.Following the end of World War II, substantial changes were undertaken in Japan to liberate the individual from authoritarian restrains. The new democratic value system

18、 was accepted by many teachers, students, intellectuals, and old liberals, but it was not immediately embraced by the society as a whole. Japanese traditions were dominated by group values, and notions of personal freedom and individual rights were unfamiliar.Today, democratic processes are clearly

19、evident in the widespread participation of the Japanese people in social and political life. School textbooks emphasize equality over hierarchy and rationalism over tradition; but in practice these values are often misinterpreted and distorted, particularly by the youth who translate the individuali

20、stic and humanistic goals of democracy into egoistic and materialistic ones.Most Japanese people have consciously rejected Confucianism, but leftovers of the old order remain. An important feature of relationships in many institutions, including political parties and universities is, the oyabun-kobu

21、n or parent-child relation. The corresponding loyalty of the individual to his patron reinforces his allegiance to the group to which they both belong. A willingness to cooperate with other members of the group and to support without qualification the interests of the group in all its external relat

22、ions is still a widely respected virtue. The oyabun-kobun creates ladders of mobility which an individual can ascend, rising as far as abilities permit, so long as he maintains successful personal ties with a superior in the vertical channel, the latter requirement usually taking precedence over a n

23、eed for exceptional competence. As a consequence, there is little horizontal relationship between people with the same profession.5. The spokesman of Japans “Enlightenment” thought that .A. the traditional culture should be replaced by western modernizationB. Japanese ought to forsake the Confucian

24、civilization of the EastC. the Confucian civilization in Japan should be dominantD. Japan should introduce western civilization6. Which of the following statements about Japans culture is true?A. Substantial change in democratic process have taken place during World War II.B. Nowadays the traditiona

25、l Confucianism is a necessary part of the society in Japan.C. Today the Confucianism outweighs the democratic value system in universities of Japan.D. The democratic idea was not accepted by the society after World War II.7. The relationship of oyabun-kobun can be one between .A. a shop owner and a

26、customerB. a CEO and an employeeC. a politician and an opponentD. a judge and a lawyer8. In the last paragraph, the author implies that .A. respect for authority plays a more important role in promotionB. western values have overwhelmed traditional Japanese attitudesC. colleagues are more closely re

27、lated to each other than beforeD. most Japanese workers are members of a single party Questions 9 to 12 are based on the following passage:Before a big exam, a sound nights sleep will do you more good than poring over textbooks. That, at least, is the folk wisdom. And science, in the form of behavio

28、ral psychology, supports that wisdom. But such behavioral studies cannot distinguish between two competing theories of why sleep is good for memory. One says that sleep is when permanent memories form. The other says that they are actually formed during the day, but then “edited” at night, to flush

29、away what is superfluous.To tell the difference, it is necessary to look into the brain of a sleeping person, and that is hard. But after a decade of painstaking work, a team led by Pierre Maquet at Liege University in Belgium has managed to do it. The particular stage of sleep in which the Belgian

30、group is interested is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when brain and body are active, heart rate and blood pressure increase, the eyes move back and forth behind the eyelids as if watching a movie, and brainwave traces resemble those of wakefulness. It is during this period of sleep that people are

31、 most likely to relive events of the previous day in dreams.Dr. Maquet used an electronic device called PET to study the brains of people as they practiced a task during the day, and as they slept during the following night. The task required them to press a button as fast as possible, in response t

32、o a light coming on in one of six positions. As they learnt how to do this, their response times got faster. What they did not know was that the appearance of the lights sometimes followed a patternwhat is referred to as an “artificial grammar”. Yet the reductions in response time showed that they l

33、earnt faster when the pattern was present than when there was not.What is more, those with more to learn (i. e. , the “grammar”, as well as the mechanical task of pushing the button) have more active brains. The “editing” theory would not predict that, since the number of irrelevant stimuli would be

34、 the same in each case. And to eliminate any doubts that the experimental subjects were learning as opposed to unlearning, their response times when they woke up were even quicker than when they went to sleep.The team, therefore, concluded that the nerve connections involved in memory are reinforced

35、 through reactivation during REM sleep, particularly if the brain detects an inherent structure in the material being learnt. So now, on the eve of that crucial test, maths students can sleep soundly in the knowledge that what they will remember the next day are the basic rules of algebra and not th

36、e incoherent talk from the radio next door.9. The phrase “poring over” in the first sentence of the passage may be best interpreted as .A. looking interestingly atB. learning without hesitationC. studying with close attentionD. memorizing with a fast pace10. The reason why sleep is good for the memo

37、ry .A. is to be clarified by behavioral psychologyB. is rooted in its function of relaxing the brainC. lies in its contribution to the formation of lasting memoriesD. stems from its compiling memories and ridding things unwanted11. The experimenters found that their subjects .A. learned quickly how

38、to respond to the light stimuliB. picked up the “artificial grammar” during their REM sleepC. pushed the button faster in the absence of the light patternD. increased their response time as they learnt the “artificial grammar”12. The Belgian group reached the conclusion that .A. the brain works more

39、 efficiently by knowing a set pattern of thingsB. the second theory failed to caver all the brain responses during sleepC. REM sleep reactivates connections between the nerves and the memoryD. its beyond doubt that the subjects were learning in contrast to unlearning Questions 13 to 16 are based on

40、the following passage:The history of modem pollution problems shows that most have resulted from negligence and ignorance. We have a shocking tendency to interfere with nature before all of the possible consequences of our actions have been studied in depth. We produce and distribute radioactive sub

41、stances, synthetic chemicals, and many of other powerful compounds before fully comprehending their effects on living organisms. Our education is dangerously incomplete.It will be argued that the purpose of science is to move into unknown territory, to explore, and to discover. It can be said that s

42、imilar risks have been taken before, and those risks are necessary to technological progress.These arguments overlook an important element. In the past, risks taken in the name of scientific progress were restricted to a small place and a brief period of time. The effects of the processes we now str

43、ive to master are neither localized nor brief. Air pollution covers vast urban areas. Ocean pollutants have been discovered in nearly every part of the world. Synthetic chemicals spread over huge stretches of forest and farmland may remain in the soil for decades. Radioactive pollutants will be foun

44、d in the biosphere for generations. The size and persistence of these problems have grown with the expanding power of modern science.One might also argue that the hazards of modern pollutants are small compared with the dangers associated with other human activity. No estimate of the actual harm don

45、e by smog, fallout, or chemical residues can obscure the reality that the risks are being taken before being fully understood.The importance of these issues lies in the failure of science to predict and control human intervention into natural processes. The true measure of danger is represented by t

46、he hazards we will encounter if we enter the new age of technology without first evaluating our responsibility to the environment.13. According to the author, the major cause of pollution is the result of .A. a strong desire to move into unknown territoryB. a lack of understanding the history of tec

47、hnologyC. designing synthetic chemicals to kill living organismsD. changing our environment without fully considering risks14. According to the passage, the risks brought about by modem science are greater than those by earlier scientific efforts because .A. the effects may be felt by more people fo

48、r a longer timeB. technology has produced more dangerous chemicalsC. science is progressing faster than ever beforeD. the modern pollutants have been localized15. In the authors opinion, the key to the settlement of the modern pollution lies in .A. the expansion of modern scienceB. the disposal of p

49、otential pollutantsC. the awareness of our responsibility D. the human interference with nature16. It can be inferred that the attitude of scientists towards pollution has been .A. naiveB. concernedC. worriedD. nonchalantQuestions 17 to 20 are based on the following passage:Crimes by children have b

50、een rising at a faster rate than the juvenile population. About half of such crimes involve the traditional offenses of the theft, breaking and entering, and vandalism, but serious, violent crimes are going up at a startling rate. The rate of armed robbery, rape, and murder by juveniles had doubled

51、in a decade. If all the needs of the adolescent could be met adequately and without delay, without violating laws, there would be no point in violation, and a minimum of internal, indirect, and direct control would suffice to secure conformity. The objection may be made that many violations are comm

52、itted for the excitement of the violation itself. However, other possibilities for excitement exist besides violating laws and regulations.No complete and generally satisfactory list of needs, either of children or adults, has been compiled. There does seem to be essential consensus on the needs for

53、 affection, and security. Although these categories do not exhaust the needs of children, they are, at least, a beginning.Only some of the childs needs, particularly those of the adolescent, can be satisfied within the family. The family does, however, also greatly affect the chances the adolescent

54、will have in satisfying his needs in the school, in his peer group, and later, in his occupation. If he is able to satisfy his needs reasonably well outside the home, in socially approved ways, there is less pressure to achieve them through delinquent behavior.As there are limitations upon what can

55、be achieved by indirect and direct control, so also are there limitations as to need satisfactions. Adolescents have wants that must be deferred, at least, such as for foreign spot cars, sexual satisfactions, and adult income and status. Likewise, not everyone can be the captain of the football team

56、, the campus queen or the winner of scholarship honors. At present, there is no way that adolescents can always be made to feel loved and secured and no assurance that there will always be something interesting to do. On the other side of the ledger, there is always some work to be done to obtain, i

57、n a legitimate manner, whatever recognition and privileges are possible.Even though complete and immediate satisfaction of needs is not ordinarily possible, families can go far toward the legitimate satisfaction of needs within the family, and they can prepare and launch the adolescent in his intera

58、ction with school, peer group, and occupation, otherwise they can fail almost totally in helping to meet needs in and outside the family through acceptable behavior.17. According to the author, juveniles commit violations because .A. they want to derive pleasure from the violation itselfB. their needs are not satisfied completely and immediatelyC. violating laws and regulations offers them greater excitementD. not enough control is exercised to make them conform to laws18. The fourth paragraph is written to illustrate that .A. the importa