1、专业八级-406 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、READING COMPREHENSIO(总题数：0，分数：0.00)二、Passage 1(总题数：1，分数：20.00)Education is an important theme in youth athletics in the US. Young kids, energetic, rambunctious, cooped up in class, yearn for the relative freedom of the football field, the basketball court, the b
2、aseball diamond. They long to kick and throw things and tackle each other, and the fields of organized play offer a place in which to act out these impulses. Kids are basically encouraged, to beat each other up on the football field. Yet for all the chaos, adult guidance and supervision are never fa
3、r off, and time spent on the athletic fields is meant to be productive. Conscientious coaches seek to impart lessons in teamwork, self-sacrifice, competition, gracious winning and losing. Teachers at least want their students worn out so they“ll sit still in reading class. By the time children start
4、 competing for spots on junior high soccer teams or tennis squads, the kid gloves have come off to some extent. The athletic fields become less a place to learn about soft values like teamwork than about hard self-discipline and competition. Competitiveness, after all, is prized highly by Americans,
5、 perhaps more so than by other peoples. For a child, being cut from the hockey team or denied a spot on the swimming is a grave disappointmentand perhaps an opportunity for emotional or spiritual growth. High school basketball or football teams are places where the ethos of competition is given stil
6、l stronger emphasis. Although high school coaches still consider themselves educators, the sports they oversee are not simple extensions of the classroom. They are important social institutions, for football games bring people together. In much of the US they are events where young people and their
7、elders mingle and see how the community is evolving. For the best players, the progression from little league to junior high to high school leads to a scholarship at a big-name college and maybe, one day, a shot at the pros. College athletes are ostensibly student-athletes, an ideal that suggests a
8、balance between the intellectual rigors of the university and the physical rigors of the playing field. The reality is skewed heavily in favor of athletics. One would be hard-pressed to show that major US college sports are about education. Coaches require far too much of players“ time to be truly c
9、oncerned with anything other than performance in sport. Too often, the players they recruit seem to care little about school themselves. This was not always the case. UniversitiesPrinceton, Harvard, Rutgers, and Yalewere the birthplaces of American football and baseball; educationthe formation of “c
10、haracter“was an important part of what those coaches and players thought they were achieving. In 1913, when football was almost outlawed in the US, the game“s most prominent figures traveled to Washington and argued successfully that football was an essential part of the campus experience and that t
11、he nation would be robbed of its boldest young men, its best potential leaders, if the game were banned. The idea that competitive sports build character, a Western tradition dating from ancient Greece, has evidently fallen out of fashion in today“s US. Educators, now prone to see the kind of charac
12、ter shaped by foot-ball and basketball in a dark light, have challenged the notion that college sports produce interesting people. Yet, prominent athletes, such as boxer Muhammad Ali and basketball star Charles Barkley, deliberately distanced themselves from the earlier ideal of the athlete as a mod
13、el figure. Today“s US athlete is thus content to be an entertainer. Trying to do something socially constructive, like being a role model, will make you seem over earnest and probably hurt your street credibility. When I was a kid, my heroes played on Saturdays: they were high school players and col
14、lege athletes. Pro football games, broadcast on Sunday afternoons, were dull and uninspiring by comparison. After all, why would God schedule anything important for Sunday? You“ve got school the next day. Although I certainly couldn“t have articulated it at the time, I think I must already have sens
15、ed that throwing a ball or catching passes was a fairly pointless thing to be good at. In the grand scheme, it was a silly preparation for a job. Yet playing sports was not pointless; the point, however , was that you were learning somethinga disposition, a certain virtue, a capacity for arduous end
16、eavorthat might be of value when you later embarked upon a productive career as a doctor or a schoolteacher or a businessman. The optimism of those Saturday afternoons was contagious. I still feel that way today.（分数：20.00）(1).Pupils mainly learn _ on the athletic fields.（分数：4.00）A.soft valuesB.hard
17、valuesC.value of freedomD.value of equality(2).In high school basketball or football teams,（分数：4.00）A.hard values are less emphasized.B.the sports are separated from classrooms.C.the social function of sports is prominent.D.the coaches are less of educators.(3).Which of the following is NOT true abo
18、ut college sports?（分数：4.00）A.The best players may end up getting a scholarship at a famous college.B.College athletes have always cared little about school themselves.C.College sports are more in favor of athletics than education.D.The formation of “character“ used to be the goal of coaches and play
19、ers.(4).The author“s attitude towards the notion of “athletes as entertainers“ is（分数：4.00）A.positive.B.neutral.C.negative.D.impossible to tell.(5).The best title for this passage is（分数：4.00）A.Education System in the US.B.Development of Athletics in the US.C.US Education in Youth Athletics.D.Developm
20、ent of Education in the US.三、Passage 2(总题数：1，分数：20.00)Oscar Wilde“s definition of a cynic was someone who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. His epigram applies to the way we talk about education nowadays, focusing on what it can do for the economy. That is indeed important, but
21、it does not capture the real value of education. It is almost as if people are afraid of saying education is a good thing in itself. That comes from a loss of confidence in the importance of transmitting a body of knowledge, a culture, ways of thinking, from one generation to the next. It is a cruci
22、al obligation we have to the next generation and we are failing to discharge it. The latest example of this loss of confidence in education is the rifles of the departments created by splitting the Department for Education in two. We have the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills and we
23、have the Department for Children, Schools and Families. The key word that is missing in those two lists is education. It is almost as if the government has lost confidence in the value of education, as distinct from other worthwhile aims such as helping families or raising our levels of innovation.
24、For the government, science is no longer about evidence and reason, it is a lever for increasing productivity. Foreign languages are not a means of appreciating the culture of another people; they are a means of improving trade. Yet people do not become teachers because they aspire to raising the ra
25、te of growth; they wish to pass on a love of their subjects. There is a paradox here. If we see education as a way of imparting a body of knowledge, we will do better at the functionalist side of education as well. Like happiness, it can be achieved only as a byproduct of something else. Real educat
26、ion means real subjects with a history, shape and rigour, together with the intellectual curiosity to challenge and renew them. Our body of knowledge must be rooted in a tradition, but must also be open to questioning. Indeed, what we know changes all the timewhen Einstein was at Oxford in the 1930s
27、, he set a physics paper with the same questions for two years running. When his colleagues challenged him, he replied that although the questions were the same, the answers were different. That is part of the excitement of intellectual endeavour. Of course, skills matter too. But often they are bes
28、t mastered through learning stuff. Look at what has gone wrong with history. We expect school-children to compare different primary sources and learn the analytical tools of the historian, but we will not allow them the sheer excitement of learning what happens next in a narrative history of our own
29、 country. Several subjects now face the vicious spiral of not enough people emerging from university who have studied the subject to provide the teachers to keep it going in schools. We cannot just solve this problem by passing a law or setting yet another target. We need a smarter policy than this
30、that understands the role of a proud profession in living up to its own standards, and the power of choice by parents and students. There are problems with the national curriculum but even more important is the intricate relationship between the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the examin
31、ing boards. This is the source of the dumbing down and predictability of exams.（分数：20.00）(1).Oscar Wilde“s definition of a cynic applies to the way we talk about today“s education because（分数：4.00）A.the public fail to value education for itself.B.the expenses of modem education is too high.C.the defi
32、nitions of two objects are the same.D.the economic development depends on education.(2).Which of the following adjectives best describes the author“s attitude towards modem education?（分数：4.00）A.Objective.B.Positive.C.Negative.D.Biased.(3).The author draws an analogy between（分数：4.00）A.education and h
33、appiness.B.productivity and happiness.C.functionalism and productivity.D.knowledge and productivity.(4).Einstein“s story is cited as an example to support the following statements EXCEPT（分数：4.00）A.human beings have never given up exploring unknown areas.B.the ability of critical thinking is essentia
34、l for the students.C.challenges are invisible motivation of scientific development.D.skill-training is the most important part in education.(5).The best title for this passage might be（分数：4.00）A.The Value of EducationB.How to Solve the Educational ProblemsC.Education and Economic DevelopmentD.Govern
35、ment and Education四、Passage 3(总题数：1，分数：20.00)One of the unresolvedand rather bitterdisputes in evolutionary biology is between the creeps and the jerks. The creeps (so dubbed by the jerks) think that evolutionary change is gradual. The jerks (so dubbed by the creeps) think it happens in sudden jumps
36、 that are separated by long periods of stasis. Probably, both are true. Work done a couple of years ago by Mark Pagel of Reading University, in England, suggests that about a fifth of evolutionary change happens jerkily at around the time new species form. The rest creeps in gradually over the mille
37、nnia. Species, however, are not the only things that evolve. Languages do too. And in the current edition of Science, Dr. Pagel and his colleagues publish evidence that they do so in a way which looks intriguingly similar to what happens in species. There was already some historical evidence for thi
38、s. The English of Geoffrey Chaucer (born in the 14th century), for example, is incomprehensible to modern laymen, whereas that of William Shakespeare (born in the 16th) is not only comprehensible but held by some to be a model. Dr. Pagel, however, wanted to examine the question systematically and to
39、 include languages with no literary history in his analysis. To do so he looked at three well-studied parts of the linguistic family tree: the Bantu languages of Africa, the Indo-European group from Eurasia and the Austronesians of the Pacific. In all three cases it is pretty clear how the branches
40、connect up, even if it is not always obvious when particular splits occurred. Dr. Pagel did not, however, need to know that. He only needed to know the shape of the tree. That was because his hypothesis was that if linguistic evolution is jerky, the jerks will happen at the points where languages sp
41、litthe equivalent of species splits in biological evolution. The way to test that is to track back along the branches leading from each existing language, and count the number of splits on each path before you get to the common ancestor of all. His hypothesis turned out to be correct. Languages are
42、formed not, it seems, by a gradual drifting apart of two groups who no longer talk to each other, but by violent rupture. Around a third of the vocabulary differences between modern Bantu speakers arose this way, around a fifth of the differences between speakers of Indo-European languages, and arou
43、nd a tenth of the Austronesians. That compares with around a fifth for biological species. All this suggests that the formation of both languages and species is an active process. For species, adaptations to novel environments and the need to avoid crossbreeding with those on the other side of the s
44、plit are both plausible hypotheses. For languages, the explanation may be a cultural rather than biological need to distinguish populations. As Noah Webster, the compiler of the first American dictionary, put it: “as an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in langua
45、ge as well as government.“ In other words, if you don“t speak proper, you aren“t one of us.（分数：20.00）(1).The first three paragraphs seem to imply that languages evolve（分数：4.00）A.“jerkily“.B.“creepily“.C.both “jerkily“ and “creepily“.D.neither “jerkily“ nor “creepily“.(2).The role of the fourth parag
46、raph in the development of the topic is（分数：4.00）A.to compare the English of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare.B.to show that language also evolve by drawing on an example.C.to offer evidence to the previous paragraph and introduce the next ones.D.to provide a contrast to the previous paragrap
47、h and introduce the next ones.(3).The goal of Dr. Pagel“s study was to（分数：4.00）A.examine the languages with no literary history.B.study language evolution systematically.C.sketch the shape of the linguistic family tree.D.find out the ancestor of all languages studied.(4).What do we learn about Dr. P
48、agel and his study, according to the passage?（分数：4.00）A.He studied languages without literary history.B.Three understudied languages were involved in his study.C.He only knew the shape of the linguistic family tree.D.The hypothesis of the study was overthrown.(5).According to the passage, the format
49、ion of languages is for the（分数：4.00）A.adaptation to the new environments.B.need to avoid crossbreeding.C.biological need to distinguish populations.D.cultural need to distinguish populations.五、Passage 4(总题数：1，分数：20.00)When school starts each year, the most important question on the minds of parents and children is, who will my teacher be? The concern is well founded. Researchers have discovered that school“s deepest influence on learning depends on the quality of the teacher. Students lucky enough to have teachers who know their content and how to teach it well achieve more. An
