1、专业八级-608 及答案解析(总分：100.10，做题时间：90 分钟)一、READING COMPREHENSIO(总题数：2，分数：100.00)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 four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose t
2、he one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO. Passage One As you sat across the Thanksgiving table basking in the warmth of family and the aroma of chestnut stuffing, most likely you did not remember the vicious comment your Aunt Jennifer made about you a few ye
3、ars back. You didn“t dwell on Uncle Julio“s unkind reference to your drinking last Christmas or what cousin Duwan said about your girlfriend during that dreadful vacation at the shore. At family holidays, we tend to embrace our relatives even after months or years of not having seen one another, reg
4、ardless of the quarrels we have had in the past. We may chalk up our generous forgiveness to the festive spirit of the holiday, but the real reason has nothing to do with Thanksgiving; it is because of how we humans rememberand forget. Cognitive experts tell us that forgetting is fundamental to how
5、we make sense of the world. Forgetting helps us survive, by making sure we don“t dwell in the past. In the digital age, that mechanism of our humanity is under threat. We all hate when we can“t remember something. We think of it as a bug of the human mind. We don“t realize that by discarding most of
6、 the avalanche of details that our senses are bombarded with every day, as well as past wounds, our brain helps us focus on the important things; it lets us see the forest rather than just the trees. We may learn from cur failures, but thankfully we also easily forget them. Human memories are not fi
7、xed; they are reconstructed. We remember more easily what we remember often. More important, we tend to forget memories that don“t fit into our current world vision; our brains discard them as no longer important. That way, we forgive one another (and ourselves) for past transgressions. Thus our mem
8、ories of most past experiences wither. Forgetting misdeeds that we deem no longer relevant is a powerful mechanism; and the best part of it is that it“s built into us. But it also means that operation is thwarted in a world of comprehensive memory, a world in which we are constantly reminded of our
9、past. Our ever-improving digital tools record billions of Facebook messages and more than 300 million tweets every daynot to mention our private e-mail accounts, with their photos and videos. Logging our lives is becoming the norm, and having a comprehensive digital memory at our disposal is the def
10、ault. Many people are concerned about what this does to privacy. I am worried about Thanksgivingthe warmth and joy that may be lost when we keep being reminded of every mistake, every quarrel, every disagreement. With comprehensive digital memories all around us, forgetting one another“s offenses be
11、comes more difficult; through our digital tools we“ll be alerted to all we thought we had forgotten. This will make it harder for us to forgive. In one of his short stories, author Jorge Luis Borges describes a young man who after an accident can no longer forget. He can remember perfectly all the b
12、ooks he has read, but he has been unable to learn anything from them, because learning involves the distilling of abstract thought from detailed memories, after which the latter fade away. Thus it, too, necessitates forgetting. In future Thanksgivings, our data glasses might identify family members
13、through facial recognition, and within a split second, display old e-mails and images, tweets and posts, reminding us in excruciating detail of their (and our) past shortcomings. Some say that we“ll adapt by disregarding these digital memories. But it is naive to think that if so directly reminded o
14、f earlier quarrels, we“ll be able to put the revived memory aside. Our brain is trained to remember events we thought we had forgotten when given an external stimulus. Automatically disregarding revived memories is as hard as deliberately forgetting thingswe can“t do it. We need to appreciate and pr
15、eserve forgetting as a feature of humanity. To do so may require us to adapt our digital tools. Unlike our brains, they can easily be rewired. With the help of the companies that design our online tools, we could let tweets and Facebook comments expire over time. We could choose the photos in our di
16、gital libraries we want to remember, and the e-mails we hold dear, as we let the rest slowly disappear, giving us a renewed and much-needed chance to forget. This would preserve in the digital age our ability to grow, to learn and to forgive. And it would give us a better shot at having a rancor-fre
17、e family holiday. That alone would be worth it. (此文选自 The Washington Post)Passage Two As a Floridian who“s weathered his share of hurricanes, I can more than sympathize with my northeastern countrymen as they begin the lousy task of cleaning up after Sandy. But there“s one commonality that stands ou
18、t for me as a parent . Just as “Frankenstorm“ struck days before Halloween, so did Hurricane Wilma wreck South Florida seven years ago this week. My kids were teens then (remember Harry Potter costumes?) and I have a piece of advice now for the parents of trick-or-treaters from Virginia to Maine: Do
19、n“t cancel Halloween, as I“m seeing so many towns up there announcing they“ll do. Postpone it. Delay it. But as soon as you can, have it. That might sound like fairly trivial counsel given the deadly havoc the Northeast is dealing with at this moment. But that grim situationand the impact I“ve perso
20、nally seen it have on childrenis precisely the reason I“m offering it. During times like this, one crucial thing kids need is a reassuring sign or two of normalcy. What“s more, if you“re going to have a hurricane hit you during a holiday, Halloween is the best when it comes to children: For all its
21、lighthearted revelry of costumes and candy, this delightfully gothic autumn festival also manages to teach kids something about confronting life“s darker side. Wilma tore across Florida a week before Halloween in 2005, on Oct. 24, littering the peninsula“s southern half with uprooted trees, exploded
22、 rooftops and glass shards from high-rise condominium windows. Almost 40 people were killed; more than 3 million of us were without power for weeks, and the damage topped $20 billion. I remember interviewing a group of shell-shocked elementary school kids who“d been having a “hurricane sleepover“ in
23、 a Miami Beach high-rise when the Category 2 winds destroyed the apartment and almost blew them into Biscayne Bay. Many people considered shutting Halloween down amid that mess. Still, when I looked up long enough from my own aggravating cleanup work, or from my deadline stories about the disaster,
24、I could see the dispiriting effect that the prospect of ditching Halloween was having on my children, then aged 10 and 8. It wasn“t just that they were losing out on the fun. Halloween by then had also become a comforting part of their children“s almanac. Not having it would have left a hole that on
25、ly compounded the hurricane trauma they were trying to absorb all around them. I might not have been so tuned in to their funk had I not covered Miami“s Elian Gonzalez debacle five years earlier. The one thing the child psychiatrists I interviewed then kept telling me was that Elin, like any kid tha
26、t age, needed structure returned to his life, especially after the horrifying experience of watching his mother drown in the Atlantic Ocean. I remembered that wisdom after Wilma, and it made me and a number of other parents in our community resolve to forge ahead with a proper Halloween. Not just th
27、e trick-or-treating but a party afterward with ghost stories, bobbing for apples and limbo dancing. Observing Oct. 31, damn the mess, helped the kids forget Oct. 24 for a while, and I“d be willing to bet they remember it as one of their best Halloweens. And maybe, in retrospect, one of the more mean
28、ingful. Halloween doesn“t just help kids forget their cares; it invites them to face their fears. I“ve never understood parents who boycott Halloween because they believe it introduces children to the occult or even Satan worship. As far as I“m concerned, it does just the opposite. Halloween doesn“t
29、 embrace deathit mocks it. (I would also remind conservative Christians that while it“s a secular holiday today, “Halloween“ traditionally means “All Hallows“ Eve,“ the night before All Saints Day on the Roman Catholic calendar.) In that sense it“s a Jot like Mexico“s Day of the Dead, which unfolds
30、every Nov. 2 in all its skeletons-and-marigolds splendor. I call the Day of the Dead the Mexican Halloween because it serves much the same harvest-season purpose: to make us less scared of death by letting us party with it for a moment. That kind of positive ritual comes in handy when children are t
31、rying to make sense of tragedy. When I look at the 2005 Halloween photos of our neighborhood kids today, I see more than youngsters laughing at their fantasy frights. I also sense children who might be coping a bit better with the real mayhem they“d just witnessed. So in spite of this week“s catastr
32、ophe, let the kids put on a Frankenstein costume-because it might help them put away their nightmares of Frankenstorm. (此文选自 Time)Passage Three Frank Lloyd Wright is best known as a revolutionary American architect. A hallmark of his work is sensitivity to the natural environmentFallingwater, the ho
33、use he built over a waterfall, is a prime example. But Mr. Wright had a second career as a collector of and dealer in Japanese block prints, continuing this business until his death in 1959 at the age of 91. At times, he made more money selling prints than he did from architecture. A small but insig
34、htful exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, comprising prints, architectural drawings from Mr. Wright“s studio and archival objects, highlights the Japan“s deep influence on his work. Mr. Wright was first captivated by Japanese art in 1893, when he saw Japan“s pavilions at the sprawling world
35、fair in Chicago. His interest in Japan“s art and culture blossomed during several trips there starting in 1905. He opened an office in Japan in 1915 and lived there for a few years while building the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. “At last I had found one country on earth where simplicity, as nature, is s
36、upreme,“ he wrote. He returned from his first trip to Japan with hundreds of ukiyoe prints, planning to sell them in America. Mr. Wright often sold his clients art to hang on the walls he had built, explaining that they complemented his streamlined interiors. Japanese prints, especially traditional
37、bird and flower images, had easily understandable motifs. The prints were a commercial hit but Mr. Wright was also personally enthralled by them. “A Japanese artist grasps form always by reaching underneath for its geometry, never losing sight of its spiritual efficacy,“ he wrote in The Japanese Pri
38、nt , a slim, 35-page book published in 1912. “These simple coloured engravings are indeed a language whose purpose is absolute beauty.“ According to Janice Katz, associate curator of Japanese art at the Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. Wright favoured prints by Utagawa Hiroshige, a Japanese artist who
39、emphasized environment over human structures. Prints such as Mr. Hiroshige“s Goyu: Women Stopping Travellers show buildings from a wide perspective. The flattened space and naturalistic detail of prints influenced architectural drawings in Mr. Wright“s studio. For instance, a vertical scroll-like dr
40、awing called Perspective of Frank Lloyd Wright“s Thomas P. Hardy House, Racine, Wisconsin leaves most of the brown page blank except the top right corner where a house perches precariously. A flowering branch, like those in bird and flower prints, pokes into the blank space. The draft was made by Ma
41、rion Mahony Griffin, who worked for Mr. Wright. An architect in her own right, Ms Griffin later incorporated elements of Japonism in own work. Another drawing, Perspective View of Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin“s Rock Crest/Rock Glen, Mason City, Iowa , shows clouds and buildings ne
42、stled among lush foliage. It is rendered in gouache on a horizontal slice of pale green satin with two side panels that echo Japanese hand scrolls. Mr. Wright was also influential in cultivating American interest in Japanese prints. In 1906 he exhibited his collection of Hiroshige prints at the Art
43、institute. Two years later he loaned several pieces to the institute for what Ellen Roberts, associate curator of American art at the institute, reckons was the largest display of Japanese prints in America at the time. Mr. Wright designed the installation for that exhibition, including sleek furnit
44、ure and special frames reminiscent of screens. It is unfortunate then that the institute“s current show lacks pointed comparisons between Japanese design and actual Wright buildings. Still, it sheds new light on Mr. Wright“s signature works. The long horizontal lines of the Robie House in Chicago“s
45、Hyde Park reflect the flat landscape of America“s mid-westyet they also evoke Japan“s minimalist sensibility. Closeness to the earth is the stuff of expansive American prairies but also of traditional Japan. As Mr. Wright wrote in his autobiography, “Why are we so busy elaborately trying to get eart
46、h to heaven instead of seeing this simple Shinto wisdom of sensibly getting heaven decently to earth?“ (此文选自 The Economist ) Passage Four In the 1990s, Microsoft Internet Explorer battled Netscape Navigator in the great Web browser wars. In the 2000s, Google and Yahoo locked horns over Internet sear
47、ch. Today, the latest high-stakes tech conflict is between Apple“s iPhone and Google“s Android mobile operating system for supremacy in the smart phone market. Each of these clashes defined an era of Internet history. Apple vs. Android is no different. The struggle for Internet advantage is shifting
48、 to the mobile realm, and iPhone and Android have surged to the front of the pack with diametrically opposed business models. Neither of these players will be vanquished anytime soon but the company that gains the upper-hand will be best-positioned to take advantage of the massive structural shift f
49、rom desktop PCs to smart phones and tablets. Apple and Google realize how huge the stakes are in this fight. Apple“s late CEO Steve Jobs revolutionized the mobile phone market with the iPhone, and he was furious when Google launched Android, because he was convinced it ripped off features from the iPhone. Google, meanwhile, has poured millions of dollars into developing Android, and billions more bolstering its intellectual property position by buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. This “smartphone showdown“ is important because Apple and Google are advancing radically differe
