1、考研英语(二)-23 (1)及答案解析(总分:100.00,做题时间:90 分钟)一、Section Use of Eng(总题数:1,分数:10.00)The Pew Foundation discovered in a recent 1 that tensions over inequality in wealth now 2 tensions over race and immigration. But income inequality isn“t really the problem. A new upper class is the problem. And their wealt
2、h isn“t what sets them 3 or creates so much 4 toward them. Let“s take a guycall him Hankwho built a successful auto-repair business and 5 it to 30 locations, and now his 6 in the business is worth $100 million. He went to a second-tier state university, or maybe he didn“t complete college at all. He
3、 grew up in a working-class or middle-class home and married a woman who didn“t complete college, either. He now lives in a neighborhood with other rich people, but they“re mostly other people who got rich the same way he did. He has a lot of money, but he doesn“t have power or influence over nation
4、al culture, politics or economy, 7 does he even have any particular influence over the culture, politics or economy of the city where he lives. He“s just rich. The new upper class is different. It consists of the people who run the country. By “the people who run the country,“ I mean a small 8 of pe
5、oplewell under 100,000, by a 9 definitionwho are 10 for the films and television shows you watch, the news you see and read, the success (or failure) of the nation“s leading corporations and financial institutions and the jurisprudence, legislation and regulations produced by government. What makes
6、the new upper class new is that its members not only have power and influence but also increasingly 11 a common culture that 12 them from the rest of the country. Fifty years ago, the people who rose to the most influential positions overwhelmingly had Hank“s kind of 13 , thoroughly 14 in the Americ
7、an mainstream. They have 15 tastes and preferences and seek out enclaves of others who share them. Their culture 16 little with the lifestyle or the popular culture of the rest of the nation; in fact, members of the new upper class increasingly 17 that mainstream lifestyle and culture. If this divid
8、e continues to widen, it will completely destroy 18 has made America“s national civic culture 19 : a fluid, 20 society where people from different backgrounds live side by side and come together for the common good.(分数:10.00)A.tollB.dollC.pollD.rollA.outweighsB.outnumbersC.outpacesD.outgrowsA.asideB
9、.apartC.aboutD.aboardA.hysteriaB.hospitalityC.hostilityD.hardshipA.amplifiedB.magnifiedC.stretchedD.expandedA.interestB.bondC.stakeD.bonusA.eitherB.norC.neitherD.noneA.setB.fractionC.partD.portionA.vigorousB.rigorousC.outrageousD.conspicuousA.chargingB.responsibleC.obligingD.presidingA.confessB.conc
10、edeC.embraceD.despiseA.diffuseB.dismissC.distractD.distinguishA.resourceB.sourceC.originD.baseA.groundedB.immersedC.submergedD.absorbedA.evidentB.distinctiveC.apparentD.obviousA.interferesB.incorporatesC.interactsD.instillsA.look down uponB.look out forC.look forward toD.lookup toA.thatB.allC.whatD.
11、thoseA.excessiveB.exclusiveC.exceptionalD.eccentricA.mobileB.motiveC.modemD.multiply二、Section Reading Co(总题数:0,分数:0.00)三、Part A(总题数:0,分数:0.00)四、Text 1(总题数:1,分数:10.00)In the 1960s pop was a young person“s business. But today age is no barrier to success. The Rolling Stones are still touring in their
12、60s. Bob Dylan“s songwriting skills have survived intact. Sir Paul McCartney warbles on. It is time to do for enterprise what such ageing rockers have done for pop music: explode the myth that it is a monopoly of the young. This idea has been powerfully reinforced by the latest tech boom: Facebook,
13、Google and Groupon were all founded by people in their 20s or teens. Mark Zuckerberg, aged 27, will soon be able to count his years on earth in billions of dollars. Research suggests that age may in fact be an advantage for entrepreneurs. Vivek Wadhwa of Singularity University in California studied
14、more than 500 American high-tech and engineering companies with more than $1m in sales. He discovered that the average age of the founders of successful American technology businesses is 39. There were twice as many successful founders over 50 as under 25, and twice as many over 60 as under 20. Expe
15、rience continues to count for a great deal, in business as in other walks of lifeor, to borrow a phrase from P.J. O“Rourke, age and guile can still beat “youth, innocence and a bad haircut“. It is one thing to invent a clever new product but quite another to hire employees or build a sales machine.
16、And even when it comes to breakthrough ideas, age may still be an asset. Benjamin Jones of Northwestern University“s Kellogg School of Management and Bruce Weinberg of Ohio State University examined the careers of Nobel Prizewinners in chemistry, physics and medicine. They found that the average age
17、 at which these stars made their greatest innovations is now higher than it was a century ago. This is not to say that the rise of young entrepreneurs like Mr. Zuckerberg is insignificant. The barriers that once discouraged enterprise among the young are collapsing. Social networks make it easier to
18、 build contacts. Knowledge-intensive industries require relatively little capital. But the fact that barriers are collapsing for the young does not mean that they are being erected for greybeards. The point is that the creation of fast-growing businesses is now open to everybody regardless of age. T
19、he evidence that older people are if anything becoming more enterprising should help to calm two of the biggest worries that hang over the West. One is that the greying of the population will inevitably produce economic sluggishness. The second is that older people will face hard times as companies
20、shed older workers in the name of efficiency and welfare states cut back on their pensions.(分数:10.00)(1).The author introduces his topic by _.(分数:2.00)A.posing a contrastB.justifying an assumptionC.explaining a phenomenonD.making a comparison(2).Vivek Wadhwa“s research found that _.(分数:2.00)A.the ag
21、ed were more likely to start a business than the youngB.it“s hard for a business man to thrive before he is 40 years oldC.the young start-up entrepreneurs are more likely to fail than their old counterpartsD.the older the entrepreneur is, the more likely he is going to succeed in business(3).The Nob
22、el Prize winners are mentioned to illustrate that _.(分数:2.00)A.age is actually an advantage for technological entrepreneurshipB.experience is one of the prerequisites for innovative ideasC.the age of scientists winning Nobel Prize is older than it was a century agoD.age can be an impetus rather than
23、 resistance to creative ideas(4).The author shows _ the success achieved by young entrepreneurs like Mr. Zuckerberg.(分数:2.00)A.appreciation forB.contempt forC.prejudice againstD.indifference to(5).The purpose for the author to write this article seems to _.(分数:2.00)A.encourage the old people to enri
24、ch their later lifeB.attract more venture capitals for the projects schemed by the oldC.reverse a culture obsessed with youth while neglecting the oldD.ease the widespread concern over aging process in Western countries五、Text 2(总题数:1,分数:10.00)Governments typically use two tools to encourage citizens
25、 to engage in civic behavior like paying their taxes, driving safely or recycling their garbage: exhortation and fines. These efforts are often ineffective. As every successful parent learns, one way to encourage good behavior, from room-cleaning to tooth-brushing, is to make it fun. Not surprisingl
26、y, the same principle applies to adults. In this spirit, the Swedish division of Volkswagen has sponsored an initiative they call The Fun Theory. Their first project is to get people to use a set of stairs rather than the escalator that ran alongside it. By transforming the stairs into a piano-style
27、 keyboard such that walking on the steps produced notes, they made using the stairs fun, and they found that stair use increased by 66 percent. The musical stairs idea is more amusing than practical, so The Fun Theory sponsored a contest to generate other ideas. The winning entry suggested offering
28、both positive and negative reinforcement to encourage safe driving. Specifically, a camera would measure the speed of passing cars. Speeders would be issued fines but some of the fine revenues would be distributed via lottery to drivers who were observed obeying the speed limit. A short test of the
29、idea offered promising results. This example illustrates an important behavioral point: many people love lotteries. In using lotteries to motivate it is important to get the details right. Participants are likely to find a lottery more enticing if they find out that they would have won. The Dutch go
30、vernment uses this principle very effectively. One of its state lotteries is based on postal codes. If your postal code is announced as the winner, you know that you would have won had you only bought a ticket. The idea is to play on people“s feelings of regret. Lotteries are just one way to provide
31、 positive reinforcement. Their power comes from the fact that the chance of winning the prize is overvalued. Of course you can simply pay people for doing the right thing, but if the payment is small, it could well backfire. (If the total non-speeding-prize money had been divided up evenly among all
32、 those who drove within speed limit, I estimate that the price paid would have been about 25 cents per driver. Would anyone bother for that?) An alternative to lotteries is a frequent-flyer-type reward program, where the points can be redeemed for something fun. A free goodie can be a better inducem
33、ent than cash since it offers that rarest of commodities, a guilt-free pleasure. This sort of reward system has been successfully used in England to encourage recycling. In the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead outside of London, citizens could sign up for a rewards program in which they earne
34、d points depending on the weight of the material they recycled. The points were good for discounts at merchants in the area. Recycling increased by 35 percent. The moral here is simple. If governments want to encourage good citizenship, they should try making the desired behavior more fun.(分数:10.00)
35、(1).The word exhortation in the first paragraph is closest in meaning to _.(分数:2.00)A.persuadingB.arrestingC.suingD.rewarding(2).The Fun Theory helped to encourage safe driving by _.(分数:2.00)A.heavily fining traffic rule violatorsB.rewarding those who observe traffic rulesC.channeling part of traffi
36、c fines into incentive lotteriesD.setting up a digital supervision system(3).Dutch government bases one of their lotteries on postal codes in order to _.(分数:2.00)A.make the lottery drawing more funB.increases the chances of lottery winningC.motivate people“s initiative to be involvedD.arouse a sense
37、 of regret over misconduct(4).Compared with lottery, smallprizes for every good conduct as an incentive to encourage good citizenship may work _.(分数:2.00)A.more fairlyB.less efficientlyC.more justifiablyD.less feasibly(5).Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?(分数:2.00)A.
38、A good understanding of human psychology can help government in policymaking.B.Rewarding mechanism should replace punishment mechanism in public management.C.Frequent-flyer-type reward program is proposed to overcome the defects in lottery reward program.D.By making good citizenship more fun, the fu
39、n theory also makes civic behavior more utilitarian.六、Text 3(总题数:1,分数:10.00)Silicon Valley likes to think of itself as morally exceptional. When Google went public in 2004, the company“s founders penned a letter to prospective shareholders that has become the Internet industry“s version of the Magna
40、 Carta. In it, they pledged that Google was “not a conventional company“ but one focused on “making the world a better place.“ Though Silicon Valley“s newest billionaires may anoint themselves the saints of American capitalism, they“re beginning to resemble something else entirely: robber barons . L
41、ike their predecessors in railroads, steel, banking, and oil a century ago, Silicon Valley“s new entrepreneurs are harnessing technology to make the world more efficient. But along the way, that process is bringing great economic and labor dislocation, as well as an unequal share of the spoils. Take
42、 Apple“s manufacturing practices in China. By systematically outsourcing the assembly of iPhones and other gadgets to contract manufacturers like China“s Foxconn, Apple has reduced its overall cost of production and increased profit margins for shareholders. That“s neither unique nor necessarily evi
43、l. It“s a practice regularly adopted by all kinds of industries. But establishing an arm“s-length commercial relationship does not absolve a company from moral responsibility for the way its chosen partners treat workers. Labor issues at Foxconn have attracted bad press for some time. It was not unt
44、il that negative publicity on New York Times last year that Apple took more meaningful action, allowing the Fair Labor Association to conduct special audits of its suppliers“ factories in China. A bigger battle remains to be fought on the privacy front, where Silicon Valley“s misdemeanors are even m
45、ore upsetting. Pushing the boundaries of what is generally considered acceptable, even decent, when it comes to exploiting personal information is a daily sport in the online world. That“s because a tweak here or there to the privacy settings of a social network or a tiny change to the code on a mob
46、ile application can mean a world of difference in the value of information an advertiser can access about a usually unaware user. Perhaps swayed by Silicon Valley“s altruistic spin or slow to catch up with its rapid growth, Washington has, up to now, largely left the industry to regulate itself on p
47、rivacy. That“s clearly not working. Hardly a day passes without some new revelation of an Internet or mobile company stepping a byte too far into the private business of its customers. The original robber barons had decent intentions when they built railroads to connect America“s emerging cities and
48、 drilled oil wells that fueled the nation“s growth, but their empires still needed to be regulated, reined in, and in some cases broken up by vigilant watchdogs. Lofty words and ideals are fine for motivating employees and even for spurring sales, but they can also serve as cover for motives that cl
49、ash with the broader interests of consumers and society. We need more than fancy promises to ensure that the rise of the Silicon Valley engineer is good for the world.(分数:10.00)(1).In the author“s opinion, entrepreneurs in silicon valleys _.(分数:2.00)A.fail to change the world substantially like their business predecessorsB.usually fulfill moral pursuits at price of economic gainsC.hold lofty moral ideals that separate them from earlier industry tycoonsD.are not unlike from other business organizations when it comes to profit making(2).