1、专业八级-572 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、PART LISTENING COM(总题数：0，分数：0.00)二、SECTION A(总题数：1，分数：15.00)The Popularity of English. Present status of English A. English as a native/first language B. English as a lingua franca: a language for communication among people whose 1 are different C. Number of peo
2、ple speaking English as a first or a second language: 320-380 million native speakers 250- 2 million speakers of English as a second language . Reasons for the popular use of English A. 3 reasons the 4 brought the language to America; British 5 brought the language to Australia; English was used as
3、a means of control in 6 B. Economic reasons spread of 7 language of communication in the international business community C. 8 in international travel use of English in 9 signs in airports language of 10 language of 11 D. Information exchange use of English in the 12 world language of 13 or journal
4、articles E. Popular culture pop music on 14 films from the USA . Questions to think about A. status of English in the future B. 15 of distinct varieties of English （分数：15.00）填空项 1:_三、SECTION B(总题数：1，分数：10.00)（分数：10.00）A.How to select universities in the UK.B.Living in the UK for students.C.Living in
5、 the UK for immigrants.D.How to find jobs in the UK.A.The university students“ own choice.B.The location of the university.C.The type of courses students take.D.The teaching facilities of the university.A.It“s convenient for them to go to classes.B.It is much safer to live on campus.C.They can save
6、money in that way.D.They can make more friends.A.To go out together with classmates.B.To set aside transportation fee.C.To get along with neighbors.D.To get permission from the university.A.To bring some warm clothes from home.B.To buy clothes in the local supermarkets.C.To donate their clothes to p
7、oor people.D.To sell their clothes in the flea market.A.The food is lack of variety.B.Too much sugar is used in cooking.C.Few spices are used in cooking.D.There“s a lack of vegetables in their diet.A.The food is rather boring and uninteresting.B.The food without spices is very excellent.C.Local pubs
8、 often serve the cheapest food.D.Coffee shops are much more common in the UK.A.London.B.Manchester.C.Birmingham.D.Southwest of England.A.It is the first choice of many female students.B.It attracts millions of travelers every year.C.t is the origin of British culture.D.It is a quiet and beautiful pl
9、ace.A.Guide books.B.Internet.C.The British Council.D.The university accommodation office.四、PART READING COMPR(总题数：1，分数：22.00)SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS In this section there are several passages. followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are fo
10、ur suggested answer marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO. PASSAGE ONE With a presidential campaign, health care and the gun control debate in the news these days, one can“t help getting sucked into the flame wars that are In
11、ternet comment threads. But psychologists say this addictive form of vitriolic back and forth should be avoidedor simply censored by online media outletsbecause it actually damages society and mental health. These days, online comments “are extraordinarily aggressive, without resolving anything,“ sa
12、id Art Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. “At the end of it you can“t possibly feel like anybody heard you. Having a strong emotional experience that doesn“t resolve itself in any healthy way can“t be a good thing.“ If it“s so unsatisfying and unhealthy, why do
13、we do it? A perfect storm of factors come together to engender the rudeness and aggression seen in the comments“ sections of Web pages, Markman said. First, commenters are often virtually anonymous, and thus, unaccountable for their rudeness. Second, they are at a distance from the target of their a
14、ngerbe it the article they“re commenting on or another comment on that articleand people tend to antagonize distant abstractions more easily than living, breathing interlocutors. Third, it“s easier to be nasty in writing than in speech, hence the now somewhat outmoded practice of leaving angry notes
15、 (back when people used paper), Markman said. And because comment-section discourses don“t happen in real time, commenters can write lengthy monologues, which tend to entrench them in their extreme viewpoint. “When you“re having a conversation in person, who actually gets to deliver a monologue exce
16、pt people in the movies? Even if you get angry, people are talking back and forth and so eventually you have to calm down and listen so you can have a conversation,“ Markman told Life“s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Chiming in on comment threads may even give one a feeling of accom
17、plishment, albeit a false one. “There is so much going on in our lives that it is hard to find time to get out and physically help a cause, which makes “ armchair activism “ an enticing proposition,“ a blogger at Daily Kos opined in a July 23 article. And finally, Edward Wasserman, Knight Professor
18、in Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University, noted another cause of the vitriol: bad examples set by the media. “Unfortunately, mainstream media have made a fortune teaching people the wrong ways to talk to each other, offering up Jerry Springer, Crossfire, Bill O“Reilly. People understand
19、ably conclude rage is the political vernacular, that this is how public ideas are talked about,“ Wasserman wrote in an article on his university“s website. “It isn“t.“ Communication, the scholars say, is really about taking someone else“s perspective, understanding it, and responding. “Tone of voice
20、 and gesture can have a large influence on your ability to understand what someone is saying,“ Markman said. “The further away from face-to-face, real-time dialogue you get, the harder it is to communicate.“ In his opinion, media outlets should cut down on the anger and hatred that have become the n
21、orm in reader exchanges. “It“s valuable to allow all sides of an argument to be heard. But it“s not valuable for there to be personal attacks, or to have messages with an extremely angry tone. Even someone who is making a legitimate point but with an angry tone is hurting the nature of the argument,
22、 because they are promoting people to respond in kind,“ he said. “If on a website comments are left up that are making personal attacks in the nastiest way, you“re sending the message that this is acceptable human behavior.“ For their part, people should seek out actual human beings to converse with
23、, Markman saidand we should make a point of including a few people in our social circles who think differently from us. “You“ll develop a healthy respect for people whose opinions differ from your own,“ he said. Working out solutions to the kinds of hard problems that tend to garner the most comment
24、s online requires lengthy discussion and compromise. “The back-and-forth negotiation that goes on in having a conversation with someone you don“t agree with is a skill,“ Markman said. And this skill is languishing, both among members of the public and our leaders. PASSAGE TWO Human beings are bad at
25、 making rational decisions and finding happiness. But these hiccups make for good reading, as is clear from the explosion of books on the subject. Joining the fray is “The Consuming Instinct“ by Gad Saad, which considers human behaviour through a lens of biology and natural selection. He offers reas
26、surance that some of man“s odder impulses, from high-stakes gambling to bungee-jumping or wearing stiletto heels, are rooted in evolutionary necessity. “Much of what we do as consumers is ultimately related to sex,“ Mr Saad writes. Men are programmed to hunt for young, attractive and fertile women (
27、and as many as possible), whereas women tend to seek out a lone, socially powerful Mr Rightthe better to raise a family with. This creates different approaches, with women investing in their looks and men in their status. For women, long hair functions as a sign of health and youth, and cosmetics mi
28、mic cues of sexual arousal. As for high-heels, they hoist the derrire and make the gait more feminine and physically attractive. Men who aren“t tall, dark and handsome can compensate by wearing high-status clothing (no woman, it is said, can resist a man in surgical scrubs) or driving a fancy car. S
29、tudies show that men driving a Porsche experience rising testosterone levels, as it is an act of sexual signalling. Ideals of sexiness are universal, contrary to arguments that media images are to blame. Most advertisements feature people with perfectly symmetrical faces, as this is a sign of phenot
30、ypic qualityor good genes. A deep male voice is inherently attractive, as it indicates greater exposure to pubertal testosterone and is linked to reproductive fitness. Even in cultures without access to mass media, the optimum waist-to-hip ratio for women is around 0.7, which corresponds most closel
31、y to an hourglass shape, and is linked to fertility. In addition, women often send subtle (and subconscious) come-hither cues at the most fertile time of the month. Mr Saad has delivered a light round-up of the latest studies in evolutionary behavioural science. But he does not limit his observation
32、s to sex-specific characteristics. He also includes notes on how people handle food, family, friendship and social hierarchies. Gift-giving between friends, for example, strengthens non-kin bonds as people choose friends who can reciprocate. And an adaptation called the “variety effect“ makes it nea
33、rly impossible to not overeat at a buffet, as a wider choice of dishes leads to a higher calorie intakein order to maximise nutrient sources and minimise the toxins from a single food source. Parents tend to be more protective of their daughters than their sons because the familial costs of pregnanc
34、y are higher. As for concerns over paternity, fathers instinctively provide the greatest investment in children who look like them, and maternal grandmothers (the lone grandparent who has no paternal uncertainty) tend to be the most involved. Critics may complain that viewing all behaviour through a
35、 prism of natural selection is reductive. But much of the research is convincing. Less credible is Mr Saad, who has a tendency to drench his writing with pop-cultural references and enjoys using television shows to emphasise a point. He spends much of the book patiently explaining the evolutionary r
36、oots of unsavoury desires, such as infidelity and hard-core pornography, but then loses all tolerance with what he sees as the duplicitous “hope peddling“ of religion. Don“t get him started on self-help books. Mr Saad is a zealous advocate of evolutionary psychology, but readers should look elsewher
37、e for serious scholarship. PASSAGE THREE Last month the first baby-boomers turned 60. The bulky generation born between 1946 and 1964 is heading towards retirement. The looming “demographic cliff“ will see vast numbers of skilled workers dispatched from the labour force. The workforce is ageing acro
38、ss the rich world. Within the EU the number of workers aged between 50 and 64 will increase by 25% over the next two decades, while those aged 20-29 will decrease by 20%. In Japan almost 20% of the population is already over 65, the highest share in the world. And in the United States the number of
39、workers aged 55-64 will have increased by more than half in this decade, at the same time as the 35- to 44-year-olds decline by 10%. Given that most societies are geared to retirement at around 65, companies have a looming problem of knowledge management, of making sure that the boomers do not leave
40、 before they have handed over their expertise along with the office keys and their e-mail address. A survey of human-resources directors by IBM last year concluded: “When the baby-boomer generation retires, many companies will find out too late that a career“s worth of experience has walked out the
41、door, leaving insufficient talent to fill in the void.“ Some also face a shortage of expertise. In aerospace and defence, for example, as much as 40% of the workforce in some companies will be eligible to retire within the next five years. At the same time, the number of engineering graduates in dev
42、eloped countries is in steep decline. A few companies are so squeezed that they are already taking exceptional measures. Earlier this year the Los Angeles Times interviewed an enterprising Australian who was staying in Beverly Hills while he tried to persuade locals to emigrate to Toowoomba, Queensl
43、and, to work for his engineering company there. Toowoomba today; the rest of the developed world tomorrow? If you look hard enough, you can find companies that have begun to adapt the workplace to older workers. The AARP, an American association for the over-50s, produces an annual list of the best
44、employers of its members. Health-care firms invariably come near the top because they are one of the industries most in need of skilled labour. Other sectors similarly affected, says the Conference Board, include oil, gas, energy and government. Near the top of the AARP“s latest list comes Deere abo
45、ut 35% of Deere“s 46,000 employees are over 50 and a number of them are in their 70s. The tools it uses to achieve thatflexible working, telecommuting, and so forthalso coincidentally help older workers to extend their working lives. The company spends “a lot of time“ on the ergonomics of its factor
46、ies , making jobs there less tiring, which enables older workers to stay at them for longer. Likewise, for more than a decade, Toyota, arguably the world“s most advanced manufacturer, has adapted its workstations to older workers. The shortage of skilled labour available to the automotive industry h
47、as made it unusually keen to recruit older workers. BMW recently set up a factory in Leipzig that expressly set out to employ people over the age of 45. Needs must when the devil drives. Other firms are polishing their alumni networks. IBM uses its network to recruit retired people for particular pr
48、ojects. Ernst and even fewer are looking to them to fill another gap that has already appeared. Many firms in Europe and America complain that they struggle to find qualified directors for their boardsthis when the pool of retired talent from those very same firms is growing by leaps and bounds. Why
49、 are firms not working harder to keep old employees? Part of the reason is that the crunch has been beyond the horizon of most managers. Nor is hanging on to older workers the only way to cope with a falling supply of labour. The participation of developing countries in the world economy has increased the overall supplywhatever the local effect of demographics in the rich countries. A vast amount of work is being sent offshore to such places as China and India and more will go in future. Some countries, such as Australia, are relaxing the
