1、考研英语-234 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、BSection Use o(总题数：1，分数：10.00)The Californian coastline north and south of Silicon Valley is a trend-setting sort of place. Increasingly, the home interiors of the well-heeled there tend toward one of two U(1) /U. Houses areU (2) /Ulight flooded, sparse and vagu
2、ely Asian inU (3) /U, with perhaps a Zen fountain in one corner, a Yoga area in another. Or they resemble electronic control rooms with all sorts ofU (4) /U, computers, routers, antennae, screens and remote controls. Occasionally, both elements areU (5) /U. “She“ may have the living room andpublic a
3、reas, U(6) /U“he“ is banished with his toys up or down the stairs.Currently, the gadget lovers have powerful allies. Many of the largest companies in the consumer-electronics, computer, telecoms and internet industries have made a strategic decision toU (7) /Uvisions of a “digital home“, “eHome“, or
4、 “connected home“. Doubting thatU (8) /Ufrom corporate customers will everU (9) /Uto the boom levels of the late 1990s, Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Verizon, Comcast, Hewlett-Packard, Apple and others see the consumerU (10) /Utheir best chance for growth and will be throwing a bewilderingU (11) /Uof home
5、 “solutions“ atU (12) /Uin the coming months and years.To understand what theU (13) /Uultimately have inU (14) /Uit is best to visit theU (15) /U homes that most have built on their campuses or at trade shows.U (16) /Ucosy and often intimidating, these feature flat screens almost everywhere,U (17) /
6、Uelectronic picture frames in the bedroom from the large TV-substitute in the living room. EveryU (18) /Uhas a microchip and can beU (19) /Uto, typed into or clicked onto. Everything isU (20) /Uto a central computer through wireless links.（分数：10.00）A.extremesB.spheresC.hazardsD.loopholesA.norB.eithe
7、rC.alsoD.neitherA.questB.exhaustivenessC.characterD.chaosA.equipmentB.devicesC.facilitiesD.gadgetsA.detrimentalB.imaginativeC.presentD.illusiveA.thoughB.whileC.becauseD.as ifA.laudB.quenchC.dampenD.hawkA.complaintB.feedbackC.demandD.censorshipA.recoverB.fosterC.cementD.formulateA.beneathB.againstC.t
8、hroughoutD.asA.arrayB.lookoutC.ideologyD.conversionA.theirsB.themC.hisD.himA.retailersB.vendorsC.conspiratorD.designersA.notionB.conceptC.illusionD.mindA.farraginousB.invitingC.mockD.notoriousA.UltimatelyB.TypicallyC.FortunatelyD.RarelyA.byB.toC.withinD.such asA.objectB.obligationC.objectionD.obstru
9、ctionA.toldB.saidC.talkedD.claimedA.connectedB.designatedC.derivedD.input二、BSection Readi(总题数：4，分数：40.00)BText 1/BMenorca or Majorca? It is that time of the year again. The brochures are piling up in travel agents while newspapers and magazines bulge with advice about where to go. But the traditiona
10、l packaged holiday, a British innovation that provided many timid natives with their first experience of warm sand, is not what it was. Indeed, the industry is anxiously awaiting a High Court ruling to find out exactly what it now is.Two things have changed the way Britons research and book their ho
11、lidays: low-cost airlines and the internet. Instead of buying a ready made package consisting of a flight, hotel, car hire and assorted entertainment from a tour operators brochure, it is now easy to put together a trip using an online travel agent like Expedia or Travelocity, which last July bought
12、 Lastminute. com for 577m (1 billion), or from the proliferating websites of airlines, hotels and car-rental firms.This has led some to sound the death knell for high street travel agents and tour operators. There have been upheavals and closures, but the traditional firms are starting to fight back
13、, in part by moving more of their business online. First Choice Holidays, for instance, saw its pre tax profit rise by 16% to 114m ( 196m) in the year to the end of October. Although the overall number of holidays booked has fallen, the company is concentrating on more valuable long-haul and adventu
14、re trips. First Choice now sells more than half its trips directly, either via the internet, over the telephone or from its own travel shops. It wants that to reach 75% within a few years.Other tour operators are showing similar hustle. MyTravel managed to cut its loss by almost half in 2005. Thomas
15、 Cook and Thomson Holidays, now both German owned, are also bullish about the coming holiday season. Highstreet travel agents are having a tougher time, though, not least because many leading tour operations have cut the commissions they pay.Some high-street travel agents are also learning to live w
16、ith the internet, helping people book complicated trips that they have researched online, providing advice and tacking on other services: This is seen as a growth area. But if an agent puts together separate flights and hotel accommodation, is that a package, too?The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) s
17、ays it is and the agent should hold an Air Travel Organisers- Licence, which provides financial guarantees to repatriate people and provide refunds. The scheme dates from the early 1970s, when some large British travel firms went bust, stranding customers on the Costas. Although such failures are le
18、ss common these days, the CAA had to help out some 30,000 people last year. The Association of British Travel Agents went to the High Court in November to argue such bookings are not traditional packages and so do not require agents to acquire the costly licences. While the court decides, millions o
19、f Britons will happily click away buying online holidays, unaware of the difference.（分数：10.00）(1).Based on the first paragraph, the best title of the text could be _.（分数：2.00）A.An annual holidayB.A High Court rulingC.A new packageD.A British innovation(2).According to the text, the shift in the meth
20、od of holiday booking in UK is associated with _.（分数：2.00）A.the popularity of electronicsB.the costly licencesC.car rental firmsD.the traditional ideology(3).According to the text, which of the following is true?（分数：2.00）A.To put together a trip using a traditional travel agent is not hard at presen
21、t.B.To sound the death knell for tour operator is unacceptable and inhumane.C.Some high-street travel agents defy the model of surviving with the internet.D.Traditional tour firms grapple with the internet.(4).The word “hustle“ in the topic sentence of the fourth paragraph most probably denotes _.（分
22、数：2.00）A.demandB.hostilityC.saleD.prejudice(5).According to the first and last paragraphs, which of the following is still in suspense?（分数：2.00）A.A legal definition,B.A congestion charge.C.Financial guarantee.D.An adventure trip.BText 2/BThey may not be the richest, but Africans remain the worlds st
23、aunchest optimists. An annual survey by Gallup International, a research outfit, shows that, when asked whether this year will be better than last, Africa once again comes out on top. Out of 52 000 people interviewed all over the world, under half believe that things are looking up. But in Africa th
24、e proportion is close to 60% almost twice as much as in Europe.Africans have some reasons to be cheerful. The continents economy has been doing fairly well with South Africa, the economic powerhouse, growing steadily over the past few years. Some of Africas long-running conflicts, such as the war be
25、tween the north and south in Sudan and the civil war in Congo, have ended. Africa even has its first elected female head of state, in Liberia.Yet there is no shortage of downers too. Most of Africa remains dirt poor. Crises in places like Cote d Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe are far from solved.
26、 And the democratic credentials of Ethiopia and Uganda, once the darlings of western donors, have taken a bad knock. AIDS killed over gm Africans in 2005, and will kill more this year.So is it all just a case of irrational exuberance? Meril James of Gallup argues that there is, in fact, usually very
27、 little relation between the surveys optimism rankings and reality. Africans, this year led by Nigerians, are consistently the most upbeat, whether their lot gets better or not. On the other hand, Greece-hardly the worst place on earth-tops the gloom and doom chart, followed closely by Portugal and
28、France.Ms James speculates that religion may have a lot to do with it. Nine out of ten Africans are religious, the highest proportion in the world. But cynics argue that most Africans believe that 2006 will be golden because things have been so bad that it is hard to imagine how they could possibly
29、get worse. This may help explain why places that have suffered recent misfortunes, such as Kosovo and Afghanistan, rank among the top five optimists. Moussaka for thought for those depressed Greeks.（分数：10.00）(1).The statistics are employed in the first paragraph so as to indicate sort of _.（分数：2.00）
30、A.disparityB.numbnessC.conformityD.stagnation(2).It can be inferred from the four paragraph of the text that African optimism is _.（分数：2.00）A.detrimentalB.fragileC.transientD.constant(3).The conclusion made by Ms James, according to the text, is _.（分数：2.00）A.tentativeB.immutableC.impeccableD.moderat
31、e(4).The tone of the author in discussing African status can be defined as being _.（分数：2.00）A.radicalB.impartialC.hesitantD.self-centered(5).France is mentioned in the text with the aim to _.（分数：2.00）A.contrast Nigerians and FrenchB.defend Meril James- remarksC.attach importance to the gloom-and-doo
32、m chartD.refute Ms James concept of religionBText 3/B“This is a really exciting time- a new era is starting,“ says Peter Bazalgette, the chief creative officer of Endemol, the television company behind “Big Brother“ and other popular shows. He is referring to the upsurge of interest in mobile televi
33、sion, a nascent industry at the intersection of telecoms and media which offers new opportunities to device makers, content producers and mobile-network operators. And he is far from alone in his enthusiasm.Already, many mobile operators offer a selection of television channels or individual shows,
34、which are “streamed“ across their third-generation (3G) networks. In South Korea, television is also sent to mobile phones via satellite and terrestrial broadcast networks, which is far more efficient than sending video across mobile networks; similar broadcasts will begin in Japan in April. In Euro
35、pe, the Italian arm of 3, a mobile operator, recently acquired Canale 7, a television channel, with a view to launching mobile-TV broadcasts in Italy in the second half of 2006. Similar mobile-TV networks will also be built in Finland and America, and are being tested in many other countries.Meanwhi
36、le, Apple Computer, which launched a video-capable version of its iPod portable music-player in October, is striking deals with television networks to expand the range of shows that can be purchased for viewing on the device, including “Lost“, “Desperate Housewives“ and “Law Order“. TiVo, maker of t
37、he pioneering personal video recorder (PVR), says it plans to enable subscribers to download recorded shows on to iPods and other portable devices for viewing on the move. And mobile TV was one of the big trends at the worlds largest technology fair, the Consumer Electronics Show, which took place i
38、n Las Vegas this week.Despite all this activity, however, the prospects for mobile TV are unclear. For a start, nobody really knows if consumers will pay for it, though surveys suggest they like the idea. Informa, a consultancy, says there will be 125m mobile-TV users by 2010. But many other mobile
39、technologies inspired high hopes and then failed to live up to expectations. And even if people do want TV on the move, there is further uncertainty in three areas: technology, business models and the content itself.（分数：10.00）(1).The word “nascent“ in the first paragraph of the text most probably me
40、ans _.（分数：2.00）A.distinctiveB.statutoryC.naiveD.emerging(2).Paragraph 2 is written to _.（分数：2.00）A.indicate the test of mobile-TV networksB.illustrate the widespread interests in mobile TVC.stress the selection o television channelsD.assess the third-generation(3G) networks(3).According to the text,
41、 substantial work in mobile-TV networks has been conducted in _.（分数：2.00）A.an oriental nationB.USAC.an European nationD.Japan(4).The word “device“ in the first sentence o the third paragraph denotes _.（分数：2.00）A.a satellite and terrestrial broadcastB.a video-capable version of Apple iPod portable mu
42、sic-playerC.an individual show which is “streamed“ across a 3G networkD.a pioneer personal video recorder(5).It can be inferred from the last paragraph of the text that _.（分数：2.00）A.mobile TV is coming-but how the market will develop is still unclearB.consumers favor mobile TV if they need not pay f
43、or itC.few mobile technologies failed to live up to expectationsD.the three uncertainties reerred to at the end of the text are hopefully overcome in no timeBText 4/BThe last-minute victory of the Texas Longhorns in this years Rose Bowl-Americas college football championship-was the kind of thing th
44、at stays with fans forever. Just as well, because many had paid vast sums to see the game. Rose Bowl tickets officially sold for175 each. On the internet, resellers were hawking them for as much as 3,000 a pop. “Nobody knows how to control this,“ observed Mitch Dorger, the tournaments chief executiv
45、e.Re-selling tickets for a profit, known less politely as scalping in America or touting in Britain, is booming. In America alone, the “secondary market“ for tickets to sought-after events is worth over 10 billion, reckons Jeffrey Fluhr, the boss of StubHub, an online ticket market. Scalping used to
46、 be about burly men lurking outside stadiums with fistfuls of tickets. Cries of “Tickets here, tickets here“ still ring out before kick off. But the internet has created a larger and more efficient market. Some internet-based ticket agencies, such as tickco, com and dynamiteticketz, com act as tradi
47、tional scalpers, buying up tickets and selling them on for a substantial mark-up. But others like StubHub have a new business mode bring together buyers and sellers, and then take a cut. For each transaction, StubHub takes a juicy 25%.Despite its substantial commissionfar higher than those charged b
48、y other online intermediaries including eBay or CraigslistStubHub is flourishing. The firm was set up in 2000 and this years Rose Bowl was its biggest event ever. The Super Bowl in early February will bring another nice haul, as have U2 and Rolling Stones concerts. Unlike eBay, which is the largest online trader in tickets, StubHub guarantees each transaction, so buyers need not worry about fraud. The companys revenues, now around 200m, are tripling annually (despite its start in the dotcom bust). And there is plenty more room to grow. Mr. Fluhr notes that the market remains “highly fr
