1、专业八级-498 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、READING COMPREHENSIO(总题数：8，分数：100.00)We“ve spent more than 60 years dissecting Willy Loman, the character artfully sketched by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman. Willy is, perhaps, America“s consummate loser. But if you can bear with me for one moment, imagin
2、e he lived in current times, not amid the postwar prosperity of 1949. Sure, his career was ebbing, but Willy kept a job for 38 years, he owned his househe had just made the last mortgage paymentand had a wife and two children. Today he“d be a survivor. Has our view of failure softened since Willy Lo
3、man“s day? In a country with a high level of unemployment, and where promotions, bonuses, and retirement savings seem like relics, failure is something many of us are wrestling with right now. But if we begin to accept that success is not a simple, upward career route, this economic crisis may not j
4、ust reduce the stigma of being sacked but transform the way we think of failing. Shocking as it sounds, failure can be a good thing. It“s true, recessions can wreck self-esteem. In a nation built on success and a gloriously entrepreneurial spirit, the prospect of failure can make people fearfuland s
5、hamefuleven when it is not their fault. “There is a crash in every generation,“ wrote Arthur Miller in 2005, just before he died, “sufficient to mark us with a kind of congenital fear of failure.“ Miller was commenting on a wonderful book by historian Scott Sandage called Born Losers: A History of F
6、ailure in America. Sandage believes Willy Loman was a success. But the message of the play, he says, is that “if you are not continuing upwards, if you level off, you have to give up. You might as well not live.“ In his book, Sandage argues that America“s ideas about failure were formed between 1819
7、 and 1893, as busts followed a series of speculative booms. Before then, failure was not associated with individual identity. It just happened to you. Bankruptcy was thought to come from overreachliving excessivelynot from lack of ambition. By the end of the 19th century, says Sandage, failure had g
8、one from being a professional misfortune to “a name for a deficient self, an identity in the red.“ Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed this in his journal in 1842: “Nobody fails who ought not to fail. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune.“ By the middle of the last century, at
9、 the time Willy Loman was hawking his wares, Americans could not face “the possibility of defeat in one“s personal life or one“s work without being morally destroyed,“ according to sociologist David Riesman. This foolish, dangerous idea is under assault right now. Should financial success really be
10、a moral imperative? Why do we think that an ordinary kind of life is of lesser worth? Studies have found that our most potent emotional experiences come from relationships, not careers. Those who work in palliative care (临终关怀) report that, on their deathbeds, most people don“t regret not having clam
11、bered a rung higher, but having worked too hard, and having lost touch with friends. And history shows it is only when the economy is in the mud that Americans feel free to do what they want to do. As the author J. K. Rowling said so concisely in her 2008 address to Harvard graduates, failure can me
12、an a “stripping away of the inessential.“ When she was an impoverished single mother, she started to write her magical tales: “I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.“ This doesn“t m
13、ean it is an uplifting experience to be unemployed, of course. But it may mean we ease up on some of the judgment that springs from the false idea that a person without a job has not just hit bad luck or a poor economybut is a failure. It may also mean we can accept plateaus, understand that a life
14、has troughs we can climb out of, and that a long view is the wisest one. A recession is a great reminder that all of us need to learn.（分数：9.00）(1).According to Sandage, in the beginning people attributed one“s bankruptcy to _.（分数：3.00）A.his moral deficiencyB.his lack of ambitionC.his flawed personal
15、ityD.his excessive pursuit(2).The quote from J.K. Rowling “failure can mean a stripping away of the inessential“ (Paragraph Five) implies that _.（分数：3.00）A.only when trapped in life, can one know the benefits of failureB.those who survive a failure have nothing to fearC.failure can help us to focus
16、on the real meaningful thingsD.failure is an indispensable experience on the road to success(3).In the passage, the author holds the following opinions EXCEPT _.（分数：3.00）A.we shouldn“t regard failure as an utter shameB.failure is an inspiring and uplifting experienceC.career success doesn“t necessar
17、ily mean a perfect lifeD.life is naturally a process of ups and downsDesertification, drought, and despairthat“s what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear. Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Afr
18、icans in the driest parts of the continent. Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall. If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities. This desert-shrinking tre
19、nd is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush plain some 12,000 years ago. The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches
20、some 2,400 miles. Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences. The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan. The transition may be occurring because
21、hotter air has more capacity to hold moisture, which in turn creates more rain, said Martin Claussen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, who was not involved in the new study. “The water-holding capacity of the air is the main driving force,“ Claussen said. While satelli
22、te images can“t distinguish temporary plants like grasses that come and go with the rains, ground surveys suggest recent vegetation change is firmly rooted. In the eastern Sahara area of southwestern Egypt and northern Sudan, new trees are flourishing, according to Stefan Kr pelin, a climate scienti
23、st at the University of Cologne“s Africa Research Unit in Germany. “Shrubs are coming up and growing into big shrubs. This is completely different from having a bit more tiny grass,“ said Kr pelin, who has studied the region for two decades. In 2008 Kr pelinnot involved in the new satellite research
24、visited Western Sahara, a disputed territory controlled by Morocco. “The nomads there told me there was never as much rainfall as in the past few years,“ Kr （分数：9.00）(1).Global warming is supposed to have the following impacts on Africa EXCEPT _.（分数：3.00）A.water deficiencyB.hopelessnessC.desertifica
25、tionD.more green area(2).What is the role of the 7th and 8th paragraphs in the development of the topic?（分数：3.00）A.To make a transition to a new topic.B.To work as a hook to the following paragraphs.C.To provide a contrast to the preceding paragraphs.D.To offer supporting evidence to the preceding p
26、aragraphs.(3).The sentence “.North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modelers.“ in the last paragraph suggests that _.（分数：3.00）A.half of the area will follow a wetter trend, while half a drier trendB.the scientists in North Africa hold different opinions in climate mod
27、elsC.it is not easy to predict how the climate change influences the districtD.there are different climate models to be built in North AfricaSometimes, medical science makes breakthroughs that almost no-one sees coming. Other times, it just seems to catch up with what ordinary people have known intu
28、itively for generations. Though the latest finding from the University of New South Wales falls into the second category, that doesn“t diminish its significance. Having pored over thousands of pages of data, researchers are now all but convinced that by exercising their brains people can substantial
29、ly reduce their risk of dementia (痴呆). Scientists have conducted several hundred studies of the theory that brain reservethe effect of formal education and mentally challenging work and leisure pursuitsmay, through some mechanism not fully understood, protect people against dementia. Aware that the
30、studies had tossed up contradictory results, University of N.S.W. neuroscientist Michael Valenzuela and colleague Perminder Sachdev last year conducted the first systematic review of research on brain reserve. Having integrated data from 22 studies of possible links between people“s behavior and the
31、ir subsequent brain health, the pair bring down their verdict in a paper about to be published in British journal Psychological Medicine. In short, they say, people with high brain reserve have almost half as much risk of developing dementia as those with low brain reserve. In one sense the brain ap
32、pears to be no different from the muscles of the body, says Valenzuela: “It“s a case of use it or lose it.“ Prevention is crucial with dementia, as medicines do no more than alleviate the symptoms for the 200,000 sufferers in Australia and New Zealand. The most common type of dementia, Alzheimer“s D
33、isease, is characterized by the spread of sticky plaques (斑块) and clumps of tangled fiber that disrupt communication between brain cells. Gradually robbing people of their memory, personality and eventually all cognitive function, it typically kills within 5 to 10 years. While most experts presume t
34、hat aerobic exercise protects people from dementia by maintaining good blood flow to the brain, how mental exercise could help is still a puzzle. “There are a lot of theories,“ says Valenzuela, “but it“s very difficult to pinpoint a single neurobiological characteristic that distinguishes people wit
35、h high brain reserve from those with low brain reserve. I think that“s been part of the problem: we“ve been looking for a magic bullet.“ Instead, Valenzuela assumes that mental activity alters the central nervous system in different ways at various levels. Research on mice, he says, shows that a hig
36、hly stimulating environment increases both the production of new brain and nerve cells and the density of blood vessels around them. A few years ago, Valenzuela headed a project in which a group of elderly Sydney residents had their brains analyzed before and after five weeks of memory training. Inv
37、estigators found that the exercises induced biochemical changes that were the opposite of what occurs when Alzheimer“s takes hold. That finding still excites Valenzuela because it suggests that even those people who“ve had their minds in low gear for most of their lives can compensate with a late bu
38、rst of effort. “It seems you can make up for whatever education or job history you may have,“ he says. “You“re not locked into some dementia destiny.“ But there“s much we still don“t know about the relationship between brain reserve and dementia. No one can yet say for sure whether an elderly person
39、“s disinclination to mental exercise is a cause or a symptom of the disease. There“s also uncertainty about whether high brain reserve helps prevent Alzheimer“s plaques and tangles from forming, or whether it minimizes their impact or both. It“s possible that high brain reserve fosters unusually stu
40、rdy neurons (神经细胞) that allow the brain to carry on as usual despite the presence of plaques. Autopsies of Alzheimer“s sufferers confirm no neat correlation between the extent of plaques and tangling and the severity of symptoms. “After almost 100 years of research,“ says Valenzuela, “we still don“t
41、 understand the fundamental link between the neurobiological changes and the expression of disease.“（分数：9.00）(1).According to the passage, the implication of the research conducted by Valenzuela and Sachdev is that _.（分数：3.00）A.the more we use our brains, the less chances we get dementiaB.mental act
42、ivity alters the central nervous system in different waysC.people with large brain reserve are more likely to suffer dementiaD.brain reserve comes from education, challenging work and pastime(2).Which of the following is NOT one of the symptoms of Alzheimer“s Disease?（分数：3.00）A.Slow reaction.B.Memor
43、y decline.C.Collapse of mobility.D.Individuality disorder.(3).From the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true?（分数：3.00）A.Aerobic exercise is an approach to protect people from dementia.B.Dementia is still an incurable disease nowadays.C.Elderly people get dementia because of little m
44、ental exercise.D.Mental exercise would be beneficial to avoiding dementia.Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths and healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one, or a full education from a half-empty one are contained in that word. Whatever ups and downs the
45、 term “liberal“ suffers in the political vocabulary, it soars above all controversy in the educational world. In the blackest pits of education the squirming victim has only to ask, “What“s the liberal about this?“ to shame his persecutors. In times past a liberal education set off a free man from a
46、 slave or a gentleman from laborers and artisans. It now distinguishes whatever nourishes the mind and spirit from the training which is merely professional or practical or from the trivialities which are no training at all. Such an education involves a combination of knowledge, skills and standards
47、. So far as knowledge is concerned, the record is ambiguous. It is sufficiently confused for the fact-filled freak who excels in quiz shows to have passed himself off in some company as an educated man. More respectable is the notion that there are some things which every educated man ought to know;
48、 but many highly educated men would cheerfully admit to a vast ignorance, and the framers of curriculums have differed greatly in the knowledge they prescribe. If there have been times when all students at school or college studied the same things, as if it were obvious that without exposure to a co
49、mmon body of knowledge they would not be educated at all, there have been other times when specialization ran so wild that it might almost seem as if educated men had abandoned the thought of ever talking to each other once their education was completed. If knowledge is one of our marks, we can hardly be dogmatic about the kind or the amount. A single fertile field tilled with care and imagination can probably develop all the instincts of an educated man. However, if the framer of a curriculum wants to minimize his risks, he can invoke an ancient doctr
