英语：2000年考研英语真题 3（精校版）
2010-07-23 14:12阅读：
Directions:
Each of the passages below is
followed by some questions. For each question there are four
answers marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. Read the passages carefully
and choose the best answer to each of the questions. Then mark your
answer on ANSWER SHEET 1 by blackening the corresponding letter in
the brackets with a pencil. (40 points)
Text 1
A history of long and
effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly
handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States
entered just such a glowing period after
the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger
than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies
of scale. Its scientists were the world’s best, its workers the
most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the
dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had
destroyed.
It was inevitable that this
primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just
as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the
mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their
fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries,
such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of
foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television
maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South
Korea’s LG Electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles
were sweeping into the domestic market. America’s machine-tool
industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the
making of semiconductors, which America had invented and which sat
at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next
casualty.
All of this caused a crisis of
confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They
began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and
that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well.
The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of
America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings
were filled with warnings about the growing competition from
overseas.
How things have changed! In
1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth
while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this
solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning
of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride.
“American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet,
has learnt to be more quick-witted,” according to Richard Cavanagh,
executive dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “It makes
me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are
improving their productivity,” says Stephen Moore of the Cato
Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC. And William Sahlman of
the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on
this period as “a golden age of business management in the United
States.”
51.
The U.S. achieved its predominance after World War
II because ________.
[A] it had made painstaking
efforts towards this goal
[B] its domestic market was
eight times larger than before
[C] the war had destroyed the
economies of most potential
competitors（C）
[D] the unparalleled size of
its workforce had given an impetus to its economy
52.
The loss of U.S. predominance in the world economy
in the 1980s is manifested in the fact that the American
________.
[A] TV industry had withdrawn
to its domestic market
[B] semiconductor industry had
been taken over by foreign enterprises
[C] machine-tool industry had
collapsed after suicidal
actions（D）
[D] auto industry had lost part
of its domestic market
53.
What can be inferred from the passage?
[A] It is human nature to shift
between self-doubt and blind pried.
[B] Intense competition may
contribute to economic progress.
[C] The revival of the economy
depends on international
cooperation.（B）
[D] A long history of success
may pave the way for further development.
54.
The author seems to believe the revival of the U.S.
economy in the 1990s can be attributed to the
________.
[A] turning of the business
cycle
[B] restructuring of
industry
[C] improved business
management（A）
[D] success in
education
Text 2
Being a man has always been
dangerous. There are about 105 males born for every 100 females,
but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and
among 70-year-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the
great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, boy babies
survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first
time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when
they are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for
natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of
a baby (particularly a boy baby) surviving depended on its weight.
A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost certain death. Today
it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due
to genes, one more agent of evolution has gone.
There is another way to commit
evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. Few
people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious
communities, very few women have 15 children. Nowadays the number
of births, like the age of death, has become average. Most of us
have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences
between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take
advantage of it have diminished. India shows what is happening. The
country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for
the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today --
everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring --
means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in
upper-middle-class India compared to the tribes.
For us, this means that
evolution is over; the biological Utopia has arrived. Strangely, it
has involved little physical change. No other species fills so many
places in nature. But in the pass 100,000 years -- even the pass
100 years -- our lives have been transformed but our bodies have
not. We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us.
Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution: they
“look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at
something wholly beyond his comprehension.” No doubt we will
remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its
ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from
Utopia we were, they will look just like us.
55.
What used to be the danger in being a man according
to the first paragraph?
[A] A lack of
mates.
[B] A fierce
competition.
[C] A lower survival
rate.（C）
[D] A defective
gene.
56.
What does the example of India
illustrate?
[A] Wealthy people tend to have
fewer children than poor people.
[B] Natural selection hardly
works among the rich and the poor.
[C] The middle class population
is 80% smaller than that of the
tribes.（B）
[D] India is one of the
countries with a very high birth rate.
57.
The author argues that our bodies have stopped
evolving because ________.
[A] life has been improved by
technological advance
[B] the number of female babies
has been declining
[C] our species has reached the
highest stage of evolution（A）
[D] the difference between
wealth and poverty is disappearing
58.
Which of the following would be the best title for
the passage?
[A] Sex Ration Changes in Human
Evolution
[B] Ways of Continuing Man’s
Evolution
[C] The Evolutionary Future of
Nature（D）
[D] Human Evolution Going
Nowhere
Text 3
When a new movement in art
attains a certain fashion, it is advisable to find out what its
advocates are aiming at, for, however farfetched and unreasonable
their principles may seem today, it is possible that in years to
come they may be regarded as normal. With regard to Futurist
poetry, however, the case is rather difficult, for whatever
Futurist poetry may be -- even admitting that the theory on which
it is based may be right -- it can hardly be classed as
Literature.
This, in brief, is what the
Futurist says: for a century, past conditions of life have been
conditionally speeding up, till now we live in a world of noise and
violence and speed. Consequently, our feelings, thoughts and
emotions have undergone a corresponding change. This speeding up of
life, says the Futurist, requires a new form of expression. We must
speed up our literature too, if we want to interpret modern stress.
We must pour out a large stream of essential words, unhampered by
stops, or qualifying adjectives, or finite verbs. Instead of
describing sounds we must make up words that imitate them; we must
use many sizes of type and different colored inks on the same page,
and shorten or lengthen words at will.
Certainly their descriptions of
battles are confused. But it is a little upsetting to read in the
explanatory notes that a certain line describes a fight between a
Turkish and a Bulgarian officer on a bridge off which they both
fall into the river -- and then to find that the line consists of
the noise of their falling and the weights of the officers: “Pluff!
Pluff! A hundred and eighty-five kilograms.”
This, though it fulfills the
laws and requirements of Futurist poetry, can hardly be classed as
Literature. All the same, no thinking man can refuse to accept
their first proposition: that a great change in our emotional life
calls for a change of expression. The whole question is really
this: have we essentially changed?
59.
This passage is mainly ________.
[A] a survey of new approaches
to art
[B] a review of Futurist
poetry
[C] about merits of the
Futurist movement（B）
[D] about laws and requirements
of literature
60.
When a novel literary idea appears, people should
try to ________.
[A] determine its
purposes
[B] ignore its
flaws
[C] follow the new
fashions（A）
[D] accept the
principles
61.
Futurists claim that we must ________.
[A] increase the production of
literature
[B] use poetry to relieve
modern stress
[C] develop new modes of
expression（C）
[D] avoid using adjectives and
verbs
62.
The author believes that Futurist poetry is
________.
[A] based on reasonable
principles
[B] new and acceptable to
ordinary people
[C] indicative of basic change
in human nature（D）
[D] more of a transient
phenomenon than literature
Text 4
Aimlessness has hardly been
typical of the postwar Japan whose productivity and social harmony
are the envy of the United States and Europe. But increasingly the
Japanese are seeing a decline of the traditional work-moral values.
Ten years ago young people were hardworking and saw their jobs as
their primary reason for being, but now Japan has largely fulfilled
its economic needs, and young people don’t know where they should
go next.
The coming of age of the
postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the male-dominated job
market have limited the opportunities of teenagers who are already
questioning the heavy personal sacrifices involved in climbing
Japan’s rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs. In a recent
survey, it was found that only 24.5 percent of Japanese students
were fully satisfied with school life, compared with 67.2 percent
of students in the United States. In addition, far more Japanese
workers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs than did their
counterparts in the 10 other countries surveyed.
While often praised by
foreigners for its emphasis on the basics, Japanese education tends
to stress test taking and mechanical learning over creativity and
self-expression. “Those things that do not show up in the test
scores -- personality, ability, courage or humanity -- are
completely ignored,” says Toshiki Kaifu, chairman of the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party’s education committee. “Frustration
against this kind of thing leads kids to drop out and run wild.”
Last year Japan experienced 2,125 incidents of school violence,
including 929 assaults on teachers. Amid the outcry, many
conservative leaders are seeking a return to the prewar emphasis on
moral education. Last year Mitsuo Setoyama, who was then education
minister, raised eyebrows when he argued that liberal reforms
introduced by the American occupation authorities after World War
II had weakened the “Japanese morality of respect for
parents.”
But that may have more to do
with Japanese life-styles. “In Japan,” says educator Yoko Muro,
“it’s never a question of whether you enjoy your job and your life,
but only how much you can endure.” With economic growth has come
centralization; fully 76 percent of Japan’s 119 million citizens
live in cities where community and the extended family have been
abandoned in favor of isolated, two generation households. Urban
Japanese have long endured lengthy commutes (travels to and from
work) and crowded living conditions, but as the old group and
family values weaken, the discomfort is beginning to tell. In the
past decade, the Japanese divorce rate, while still well below that
of the United States, has increased by more than 50 percent, and
suicides have increased by nearly one-quarter.
63.
In the Westerner’s eyes, the postwar Japan was
________.
[A] under aimless
development
[B] a positive
example
[C] a rival to the
West（B）
[D] on the decline
64.
According to the author, what may chiefly be
responsible for the moral decline of Japanese society?
[A] Women’s participation in
social activities is limited.
[B] More workers are
dissatisfied with their jobs.
[C] Excessive emphasis his been
placed on the basics.（D）
[D] The life-style has been
influenced by Western values.
65.
Which of the following is true according to the
author?
[A] Japanese education is
praised for helping the young climb the social ladder.
[B] Japanese education is
characterized by mechanical learning as well as
creativity.
[C] More stress should be
placed on the cultivation of
creativity.（C）
[D] Dropping out leads to
frustration against test taking.
66.
The change in Japanese Life-style is revealed in the
fact that ________.
[A] the young are less tolerant
of discomforts in life
[B] the divorce rate in Japan
exceeds that in the U.S.
[C] the Japanese endure more
than ever before（A）
[D] the Japanese appreciate
their present life
Section III: Reading
Comprehension (40 points)
51. [C]
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52. [D]
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53. [B]
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54. [A]
|
55. [C]
|
56. [B]
|
57. [A]
|
58. [D]
|
59. [B]
|
60. [A]
|
61. [C]
|
62. [D]
|
63. [B]
|
64. [D]
|
65. [C]
|
66. [A]
|
67. [A]
|
68. [C]
|
69. [D]
|
70. [B]
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