1、考研英语（阅读）-试卷 149 及答案解析(总分：50.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：8，分数：50.00)1.Section II Reading Comprehension_2.Part B_In their idle moments, historians occasionally speculate on how the world would be different if Adolf Hitler had passed the entrance exam to the Art Academy of Vienna, where he
2、 applied twice in the early years of the 20th century. 1. On the contrary, the world is better off that a certain British statesman with a gift for inspiringrhetoric never allowed his love of painting to interfere with his career in politics. 2One can“t helpwishing that Hitler had been a better arti
3、stand being grateful that Winston Churchill wasn“t. That, anyway, is one lesson to be drawn from the PBS documentary series, whose first segment airs this week, “Chasing Churchill,“ a travelogue narrated by the late prime minister“s granddaughter Celia Sandys, of the places he visited and loved. Whe
4、ther he was headed for the gentle flower-draped hills of Provence or the stark deserts of North Africa, his habit, except during the war, was the same painting. He was especially partial to romantically rugged scenery by sunset; if the light was better at dawn, says Sandys, he would not have been aw
5、ake to see it. Churchill bonded over painting with the American general, later president, Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower“s tastes ran to plashing streams, run-down barns and birch-studded snowscapes in a style that might be called Greeting Card Pastoral. He was appropriately modest about his works, w
6、hich he described as “daubs.“ Churchill, a far more accomplished and ambitious artist, was well aware of his amateur status. 3 Politics is not a profession that ordinarily rewards creativity, which may be why so few politicians are willing to display it; it“s probably no coincidence that these three
7、 were among the most conspicuously self-assured world leaders of the 20th century. The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 interrupted plans to release a novel by Saddam Hussein with the forthright title Get Out of Here, Curse You! He had published three others, all critically acclaimed in the Iraqi p
8、ress and best sellers, presumably because they were required reading in Iraqi schools. 4 Safely out of office in 1995, former president Jimmy Carter published a book of poetry on subjects ranging from childhood reminiscence to geopolitics. The habits of a longtime politician die hard, even when he t
9、urns his hand to poetry; the slim volume bears 14 dedications spread over two pages. Poetry is, of course, the most self-revelatory of arts. 5.Hitler,too,was theonly oneof thethree who occasionally populated his drawings with human figures, usually drawn badly and tiny compared with the real estate
10、Admittedly people are harder to draw than mountains and clouds, but perhaps the choice of subject by men who ruled vast territories is no coincidence. Alone in his aerie, the great man surveys his unpopulated domain: the artist as commander in chief. A.The 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjami
11、n Disraeli wrote 18 novels, some of them fairly racy by the standards of the time. B.Unfortunately, doubt has been cast on his literary credentials in the form of allegations that the books were actually written by a committee of officials from the Ministry of Information and Culture. C.But painting
12、s, too, can reveal something about the hands that made them: Eisenhower“s blandness; Hitler“s bombastic obsession with monumental buildings such as the Vienna and Munich opera houses. D.Presumably, if he“d been allowed to pursue his dream, he would have inflicted on the world only a large number of
13、mediocre watercolors, rather than World War II and the Holocaust. E.Otherwise Britain might have gained a collection of derivative post-impressionist landscapes to clutter the antiques shops of Portobello Road, and lost the war to Nazi Germany. F.Equipped with canvas, oils and camel“s-hair brushes,
14、he parked himself behind an easel and in front of the landscape and commenced to smoke cigars, drink champagne and paint. G. But Hitler for many years regarded himself as an artist by profession. An authorized book of his watercolors referred to him in 1937 as “at once the First Fuehrer and the Firs
15、t Artist of our Reich.“（分数：10.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_American schools aren“t exactly frozen in time, but considering the pace of change in other areas of life, our public schools tend to feel like throwbacks. Kids spend much of the day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in
16、rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed. For the past five years, the national conversation on education has focused on reading scores, math tests and closing the “achievement gap“ between social classes.
17、 This is not a story about that conversation. 1. This week the conversation will burst onto the front page, when the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a high-powered, bipartisan assembly of Education Secretaries, business leaders and a former Governor releases a blueprint for r
18、ethinking American education to better prepare students to thrive in the global economy. While that report includes some controversial proposals, there is nonetheless a remarkable consensus among educators and business and policy leaders on one key conclusion: we need to bring what we teach and how
19、we teach into the 21st century. Right now we“re aiming too low. Competency in reading and math is the meager minimum.Scientific and technical skills are, likewise, utterly necessary but insufficient. 2Here“s what they are: Knowing more about the world. 3Mike Eskew,CEO of UPS, talks about needing wor
20、kers who are “global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages“not exactly strorig points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history
21、. Thinking outside the box. Jobs in the new economythe ones that won“t get outsourced or automated“put an enormous premium on creative and innovative skills, seeing patterns where other people see only chaos,“ says Marc Tucker, a lead author of the skills-commission report. That“s a problem for U.S.
22、 schools. 4. Becoming smarter about new sources of information. In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what“s coming at them and distinguish between what“s reliable and what isn“t. 5. Developing good people skills. EQ, or emotional intelligence, is
23、 as important as IQ for success in today“s workplace. “Most innovations today involve large teams of people,“ says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. “We have to emphasize communication skills, the ability to work in teams and with people from different cultures.“ A.Kids are global citizen
24、s now, whether they know it or not, and they need to behave that way. B.“It“s important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it,“ says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate an
25、d education leaders focused on upgrading American education. C.Today“s economy demands not only a high-evel competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills. D.This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about educati
26、on, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get “left behind“ but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can“t think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good
27、information from bad or speak a language other than English. E. Can our public schools, originally designed to educate workers for agrarian life and industrial-age factories, make the necessary shifts? F.But without waiting for such a revolution, enterprising administrators around the country have b
28、egun to update their schools, often with ideas and support from local businesses. G. Kids also must learn to think across disciplines, since that“s where most new breakthroughs are made. It“s interdisciplinary combinationsdesign and technology, mathematics and art“that produce YouTube and Google,“ s
29、ays Thomas Friedman, the best-selling author of The World Is Flat.（分数：10.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_5.Part CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese._It is a familiar scene these days: employees taking newly laid-off coworkers o
30、ut for a comfort drink. But which side deserves sympathy more, the jobless or the still employed?【F1】 Researchers at the University of Cambridge heard data suggesting it“s the latter compared with people who are straight-up laid off, those who keep their job but are under a constant threat of losing
31、 it suffer agreater decline in mental well-being. 【F2】 Brendan Burchell, a Cambridge sociologist who presented his analysis based on various surveys conducted across Europe argues that policymakers and employers should prepare for the consequence from the stress and anxiety that the existing workfor
32、ce is currently suffering. Burchell“s study wasn“t designed to offer direct explanations of the data, but there are established psychological patterns that may suggest them. For example, psychologists have documented an “impact bias in affective forecasting,“ which is the tendency for people to over
33、estimate how strongly they will react to emotional events. Also pertinent is the theorybacked by so-called positive psychologiststhat human beings have an inherited base level of happiness that fluctuates only during periods of change.【F3】 Evolutionary psychologists support this theory by arguing th
34、at human beings feel more stress during times of insecurity because they sense an immediate but hard-to-discern threatthe modern-day equivalent of an unseen predator roaring in the trees. It“s better to get the bad news and start doing something about it rather than languish in silence. When the unc
35、ertainty is prolonged, people stay in a sustained “fight or flight“ response, which leads to damaging stress. But not every employee in insecure industries has such a gloomy view, Burchell says. Entrepreneurs seem to thrive. In general, women fare better too.【F4】 While reporting higher levels of anx
36、iety than men when directly questioned, women scored lower in stress, even when they had a job they felt insecure about losing. As Burchell explains, “For women, most studies show that any jobit doesn“t matter whether it is secure or insecuregives psychological improvement over unemployment.“ Burche
37、ll hypothesizes that the difference in men is that they tend to feel pressure not only to be employed, but also to be the primary breadwinner, and that more of a man“s self-worth depends on his job. So what kind of advice can Burchell offer to those lucky millions across the globe who are still empl
38、oyed but are worried about losing their job?【F5】 After examining in detail the surveys in search of the key to an even mental health, Burchell came up with, “Nothing. Certainly some individuals cope better, but we don“t know why.“ （分数：10.00）(1).【F1】（分数：2.00）_(2).【F2】（分数：2.00）_(3).【F3】（分数：2.00）_(4).【
39、F4】（分数：2.00）_(5).【F5】（分数：2.00）_Genius is said to have two forms. There are ordinary geniuses, whose achievements one can imagine others might have emulated, so long as they worked extremely hard and had a dollop of luck.【F1】 Then there are extraordinary geniuses whose insights are so astonishing and
40、 run so counter to received wisdom that it is hard to imagine anyone else devising them. Einsteinwas one such genius. Paul Dirac was another. He was quite probably the best British theoretical physicist since Isaac Newton. Dirac became one of the fathers of quantum mechanics at the age of 23.【F2】 Th
41、e theory, which was developed in the 1920s and 1930s, makes seemingly bizarre statements, including the fundamental truth that it is impossible to know everything about the world. But while his colleagues struggled with the philosophical implications of their equations, Dirac thought words were unre
42、liable and saw merit only in mathematics. For him, equations were beautiful. Dirac was notoriously reticent. He barely spoke and his silences were legendary. He was unwilling to collaborate with others.【F3】 He was emotionally withdrawn and showed a lack of social sensitivity, and to many of his coll
43、eagues, he appeared uninterested in anything other than mathematics; therefore, they were astonished when he married. Yet he was far more than a calculating machine, as Graham Farmelo“s biography shows. Dirac was a devotee of comic strips and he enjoyed Mickey Mouse films. Mr. Farmelo“s sympathetic
44、portrait sketches Dirac“s unhappy family background. His parents appear to have loathed one another, and his elder brother committed suicide. Dirac blamed his father for the death. Certainly, some aspects of his father“s behavior warrant criticism. After Dirac won two scholarships to Cambridge, it a
45、ppeared that he would lose his place for want of 5. Dirac“s father gave his son the money and made him understand that he had launched the boy“s career. Later Dirac learnt the truth.【F4】 After his father died in 1936, it emerged that he had not given Dirac the essential 5, although he could have don
46、e so, having saved more than 7,500, some 15 times his annual salary. The crucial fiver had come from the local education authority. Dirac went on to win the Nobel Prize in physics in 1933 for his discovery of antimatter.【F5】 of the small group of young men who developed quantum mechanics and revolutionized physics almost a century ago, Paul Diraca strange man in a strange worldtruly stands out. （分数：10.00）(1).【F1】（分数：2.00）_(2).【F2】（分数：2.00）_
