1、考研英语（阅读）-试卷 139 及答案解析(总分：40.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：7，分数：40.00)1.Section II Reading Comprehension_2.Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D._In theory, a government bailout should provide a short-term“ infusion o
2、f cash to give a struggling company the chance to right itself. But in its aggressive dealings with U.S. automakers, most recently General Motors, the Obama administration is coming dangerously close to engaging in financial engineering that ignores basic principles of fairness and economic realitie
3、s toachieve political goals. It is now clear that there is no real difference between the government and GM. For all intents and purposes, the government, which is set to assume a 50 percent equity stake in the company, is GM, and it has been calling the shots in negotiations with creditors. While t
4、he Obama administration has been playing hardball with bondholders, it has been more than happy to play nice with the United Auto Workers (UAW). How else to explain why a retiree health-care fund controlled by the UAW is going to get a 39 percent equity stake in GM for its remaining $10 billion in c
5、laims while bondholders are being pressured to take a 10 percent stake for their $27 billion? It“s highly unlikely that the auto industry professionals at GM would have reached such a deal if the government had not been watching themor providing the money needed to keep the factory doors open. GM is
6、 widely expected to file for bankruptcy before the end of this month. If this were a typical bankruptcy, the company would be allowed by law to tear up its UAW collective bargaining agreement and negotiate for drastically reduced wages and benefits. Surely, the government won“t let that happen. Stil
7、l, the threat of a contract abolition probably played a role in the union“s agreement to cost-cutting measures last week. It“s never easy for unions to make concessions, but the sting of handing back money is being softened by the government“s desire to give the union a huge ownership stake in GM. T
8、he administration argues that it could not risk alienating the union for fear of triggering a strike that could permanently cripple GM. It also assumes that it had to agree to protect suppliers and fund warranties in order to preserve jobs and reassure potential buyers that their cars would be servi
9、ced. These are legitimate concerns. But it“s too bad that the Obama administration has not thought more deeply about how its bullying of bondholders could convince future investors that the last thing they want to do is put money into any company that the government hasor couldbecome involved in.（分数
10、：10.00）(1).In its dealings with U.S. automakers, the Obama administration has（分数：2.00）A.been hard on shareholders and auto industry labor force.B.helped struggling automakers to right themselves with a short-term cash-infusion.C.narrowly avoided ignorance of basic principles of fairness and economic
11、 realities.D.successfully saved the automaker-giants while striving for political goals.(2).The statement “call the shots“ (Line 3, Paragraph 2) is closest in meaning to（分数：2.00）A.implement strategies.B.have the final say.C.seek compromises.D.make concessions.(3).If it had not been watched by the go
12、vernment, GM would probably have（分数：2.00）A.imposed no pressure on bondholders to take the 10% equity stake.B.cut the percentage of equity stake controlled by the UAW.C.torn up its UAW collective bargaining agreement in an illegal way.D.launched staff-downsizing and reduced workers“ wages and benefit
13、s.(4).It can be inferred from Paragraph 3 that the UAW gives top priority to（分数：2.00）A.taking its ownership stake in GM.B.enlarging the retiree health-care fund.C.raising workers“ wages and benefits.D.validating the contract with GM.(5).To which of the following statements would the author most like
14、ly agree?（分数：2.00）A.The UAW should be fully satisfied in order to avoid a strike.B.The administration has given more than enough sympathy to the workers.C.The unfair treatment can make future investors lose trust in the government.D.Legitimate concerns are only tools of the government to achieve pol
15、itical goals.Biographies can be wearisome contrivances, often too long and too detailed for their own good. Biographers make the mistake of spending too much time worshipping their subjects. Think of the authoritative three-volume life of Robert Frost by Lawrence Thompson, for example, and how the b
16、iographer passed, over the many years of its making, from hero worship to intense dislike of thepoet he shadowed for almost a quarter of a century. Yes, too long and intense an acquaintance can lead to sourness. As the bicentenary of Charles Darwin“s birth on February 12th approaches, it is good to
17、welcome a biography which is relatively small, but in no way superficial or meager. Ruth Padel has achieved this feat by writing her great-great-grandfather“s life in a sequence of often quite short poems. Through her verses she seeks to capture the “voice“ of Darwin. Ms Padel embeds many of Darwin“
18、s own wordsfrom his books or his lettersin her poems, and the results tend to give the sense of being jointly authored. Sometimes she shapes entire pieces of quotation into her own poetic passages. If this seems to be a bit of sly plagiarism, it doesn“t feel like it. It feels more like a skillful ac
19、t of collaboration between the living and the dead, one melding easily with the other. Why does this book work so well? How does it manage to say so much in so few words? Ms Padel seems to have caught the essence of the man“s .character, as if in a butterfly net. She enters into his cast of mind, br
20、inging across his hyper-sensitivity, his sense of fragility, his lifelong boldness, and the poems are a sequence of snapshotsoften small, intermittent and delicately imagisticof particularly crucial incidents in his life; of moments of intellectual illumination. It is not easy to describe a whole li
21、fe in relatively few words. You need to find some way of filling in the background. Ms Padel has overcome this problem by having paragraphs of notes run, in a single column, beside the texts of the poems so that they can be read side by side. And why are poems a good way of iUuminating a life such a
22、s Darwin“s? The best lyric poems think of Keats or Shelley, for exampleare moments of sudden insight. And Darwin, throughout, was in the grip of something very similar: a terrible, destabilizing sense of wonder. He sensed hints of the marvelous everywhere he looked. All the sadder thenand this is so
23、mething that Ms Padel does not explainthat, later in life, the man who carried with him on the Beagle Channel a copy of Milton“s “Paradise Lost“ found that he could no longer enjoy poetry.（分数：10.00）(1).According to the author, biographies can become boring because they are too（分数：2.00）A.short.B.deta
24、iled.C.authoritative.D.superficial.(2).The example of Lawrence Thompson is to show that（分数：2.00）A.it“s most likely that acquaintances dislike each other in the long run.B.biographers have to show all the goodness of their subjects.C.over-worshipping the subject might cause emotional changes of biogr
25、aphers.D.other biographers may criticize the author for showing too much worshipping.(3).Charles Darwin“s biography by Ruth Padel（分数：2.00）A.quoted many of Ruth“s books and letters.B.used Darwin“s own poetic passages.C.plagiarized the entire pieces of other biographies.D.feels like a joint work by th
26、e author and the subject.(4).Darwin“s biography by Ms Padel turns out to be a great success because Ms Padel（分数：2.00）A.has made an insightful comment on Darwin“s particular nature.B.tries to introduce everything crucial in a detailed and clear way.C.is able to provide comprehensive background knowle
27、dge of the man.D.uses a new way of offering ideas and notes to the readers.(5).Which of the following is true according to the last two paragraphs?（分数：2.00）A.Biographies have to be written in the form of poems with notes.B.It“s generally advisable to describe people“s life in fewer words.C.Poem is t
28、he best way of depicting the wonderful life of Darwin.D.Darwin“s life is filled with moments of sudden insights, as poems suggest.3.Part CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese._Life is unfair, as even the Bible acknowledges. We can“t al
29、l hit a baseball like DiMaggio or sing like the Beatles. But how much do we understand about those who can? Not enough, says Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success.【F1】 We attribute the Beatles“ fabulous success to their amazing musical talents,whereas Gladwell has a diffe
30、rent explanationasadetenninant of success, talent is overrated, compared with, among other things, luck. Outliers opens with a typically Gladwellian puzzle: why are so many professional hockey players born early in the year?【F2】 It turns out that Canadian Youth Leagues group players by age, based on
31、 a calendar year, so a player born in January will be the oldest on his team, enjoying a big difference in size and maturity. The early birds get more playing time and coaching, advantages that become self-reinforcing, spelling the difference between a National Hockey League career and a job as a hi
32、gh-school coach. Life is unfair. 【F3】 Similarly, Gladwell calculates that the best year for a software genius to be bom was 1955just old enough for the start of the personal-computer revolution in the mid-1970s. That is the year when Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were born. Obviously, not everyone born
33、that year became a billionaire; Gates and Jobs had distinctive talents, but they also had unique opportunities growing up. Almost invariably, Gladwell says, geniuses are made, not born, and it was their families, schools and societies that made them. 【F4】 As evidence Gladwell brings to bear his own
34、history, as the son of a Jamaican woman of limited means who won a scholarship to study at the University of London. Her marriage to an Englishman there began the family“s ascent into the educated elite. He maintains that his mother was the beneficiary of her own mother“s initiative and a favorable
35、environment. And so are we all. The reader should feel free to cite counterexamplesShakespeare, the son of a provincial trader in hides and grain? Einstein, dreaming away in an obscure patent office?you won“t discomfort Gladwell.【F5】 He always builds an argument out of absorbing anecdotes and eye-op
36、ening statistics, then happily moves on to his next point, leaving the reader with a faint hint of buyer“s remorse about the almost too-perfect package of ideas. No other writer today can pull this sort of thing off so well. If I hadn“t just read Gladwell“s book, I“d be jealous of his talent, instea
37、d of his luck.（分数：10.00）(1).【F1】（分数：2.00）_(2).【F2】（分数：2.00）_(3).【F3】（分数：2.00）_(4).【F4】（分数：2.00）_(5).【F5】（分数：2.00）_The Romantic Movement emphasized the creative artist rather than the natural world as the origin of beauty.【F1】 According to the Romantics, it was by encountering ideas and feelings crys
38、tallized in works of art that we could obtain the oneness with the scheme of things which the Enlightenment philosophers had looked for in the works of nature. The self-expression of theartist was endowed with the authority of revelation. Originality rather than convention became the criterion of ar
39、tistic success, and the individual transgression attained a value as great as any obedience to social norms. 【F2】 In our time this Romantic conception of the artist has been taken to such extremes that we no longer know whether art and beauty have much to do with one another. Many people conclude th
40、at art is not what it was once cracked up to be, that it is not about the beautiful, the grand and the transcendent, but that it is a skill like any other and that the greatest part of the skill is self-advertisement. Today people are a little more cynical than they were. But this is not because the
41、y have lost the interest in beauty or the need to encounter it in their daily lives. They have lost faith in art as a way of supplying that need.【F3】 This loss is a painful one, for the reason that it is difficult to return to the 18th-century love of nature in order to enjoy what was promised by ar
42、t, namely salvation from the trivial and a face-to-face encounter with the truth. Nature, too, is not what it was once cracked up to be. It has lost its former status as the open book in which we could read ourselves. 【F4】 Yet the need for beauty remains since we see this in all the areas where peop
43、le make choices concerning the way things look, or feel or sound. People may have given up on art, and they may be skeptical towards natural beauty. But they still design their own lives, searching for agreement and for a shared sense of what matters and why. This search for aesthetic order is not j
44、ust a luxury; it is essential to life in society.【F5】 It is one way in which we send out signals of humility, and show that we are not just animals hunting for our needs but civilized beings who wish to live at peace with our neighbors. That is why we adopt dress codes; it is why we are guided by ta
45、ste in our language, in our gestures and in our ways of looking at other people and inviting them into our lives.（分数：10.00）(1).【F1】（分数：2.00）_(2).【F2】（分数：2.00）_(3).【F3】（分数：2.00）_(4).【F4】（分数：2.00）_(5).【F5】（分数：2.00）_考研英语（阅读）-试卷 139 答案解析(总分：40.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：7，分数：40.00)1.Section II Reading Comprehension_解析：2.Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D._解析：In
