1、专业八级-613 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 In last week“s Tribune, there was an interesting letter from Mr. J. Stewart Cook, in which he suggested that the best way of avoiding the danger of a“ scientific hierarchy“ would be to see to it that ever
3、y member of the general public was, as far as possible, scientifically educated. At the same time, scientists should be brought out of their isolation and encouraged to take a greater part in politics and administration. As a general statement, I think most of us would agree with this, but I notice
4、that, as usual, Mr. Cook does not define science, and merely implies in passing that it means certain exact sciences whose experiments can be made under laboratory conditions. Thus, adult education tends “to neglect scientific studies in favor of literary, economic and social subjects“, economics an
5、d sociology not being regarded as branches of science, apparently. This point is of great importance. For the word science is at present used in at least two meanings, but the whole question of scientific education is obscured by the current tendency to dodge from one meaning to the other. Science i
6、s generally taken as meaning either (a) the exact sciences, such as chemistry, physics, etc., or (b) a method of thought which obtains verifiable results by reasoning logically from observed fact. If you ask any scientist, or indeed almost any educated person,“ What is science?“ you are likely to ge
7、t an answer approximating to (b). In everyday life, however, both in speaking and in writing, when people say“ science“ they mean (a). Science means something that happens in a laboratory: test-tubes, balances, Bunsen burners, microscopes. A biologist, an astronomer, perhaps a psychologist or a math
8、ematician, is described as a “man of science“: no one would think of applying this term to a statesman, a poet, a journalist or even a philosopher. And those who tell us that the young must be scientifically educated mean, almost invariably, that they should be taught more about radioactivity, or th
9、e stars, or the physiology of their own bodies, rather than that they should be taught to think more exactly. This confusion of meaning, which is partly deliberate, has in it a great danger. Implied in the demand for more scientific education is the claim that if one has been scientifically trained
10、one“s approach to all subjects will be more intelligent than if one had had no such training. A scientist“s political opinions, it is assumed, his opinions on sociological questions, on morals, on philosophy, perhaps even on the arts, will be more valuable than those of a layman. But a“ scientist“,
11、as we have just seen, means in practice a specialist in one of the exact sciences. It follows that a chemist or physicist, as such, is politically more intelligent than a poet or a lawyer. And, in fact, there are already millions of people who do believe this. But is it really true that a “scientist
12、“, in this narrower sense, is any likelier than other people to approach non-scientific problems in an objective way? There is not much reason for thinking so. Take one simple testthe ability to withstand nationalism. It is often loosely said that “Science is international“, but in practice the scie
13、ntific workers of all countries line up behind their own governments with fewer scruples than are felt by the writers and the artists. The German scientific community, as a whole, made no resistance to Hitler. There were plenty of gifted men to do the necessary research on such things as synthetic o
14、il, jet planes, rocket projectiles and the atomic bomb. On the other hand, what happened to German literature when the Nazis came to power? I believe no exhaustive lists have been published, but I imagine that the number of German scientistsJew apartwho voluntarily exiled themselves or were persecut
15、ed by the regime was much smaller than the number of writers and journalists. More sinister than this, a number of German scientists swallowed the monstrosity of “racial science“. But does this mean that the general public should not be more scientifically educated? On the contrary! All it means is
16、that scientific education for the masses will do little good, and probably a lot of harm, if it simply boils down to more physics, more chemistry, more biology, etc. to the detriment of literature and history. Its probable effect on the average human being would be to narrow the range of his thought
17、s and make him more than ever contemptuous of such knowledge as he did not possess; and his political reactions would probably be somewhat less intelligent than those of an illiterate peasant who retained a few historical memories and a fairly sound aesthetic sense. Clearly, scientific education oug
18、ht to mean the implanting of a rational, skeptical, experimental habit of mind. It ought to mean acquiring a methoda method that can be used on any problem that one meetsand not simply piling up a lot of facts. Put it in those words, and the apologist of scientific education will usually agree. Pres
19、s him further, ask him to particularize, and somehow it always turns out that scientific education means more attention to the exact sciences, in other wordsmore facts. The idea that science means a way of looking at the world, and not simply a body of knowledge, is in practice strongly resisted. I
20、think sheer professional jealousy is part of the reason for this. (此文选自 The Collected Essags, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell ) Passage Two As I write, a gentle, much needed rain is falling this morning. It has been a dry spring here in Vermont. So dry in fact, that the Spring Peepers were
21、late enough in coming that many thought that these amazing little frogs would fail to bless us with their song this year. But they came, and I can“t fault them for being tardy. In almost any seasonal wetland in the state these frogs can be heard. They are a sign of spring, and of rebirth and renewal
22、. It is late June and the mountain snow has left the higher slopes of the mountains. Folks have planted their gardens, even though there is still the threat of frost. Yes, it is almost July, yet in the evenings here, the thermometer can still sometimes dip into the low-thirties this time of year. My
23、 family planted our garden during the last weekend of May, and frost came twice since then, luckily not a killing frost. But others were not so lucky. There is a very ambitious gardener in the village that lost most of his non-hardy plants this year. There is a saw in this state: “if you don“t like
24、the weather, wait five minutes.“ This spring has demonstrated the validity of this old saying. Twice this spring it has been warm enough in the day that my family went swimming, but there was frost on the ground the next morning. I enjoy the juxtaposition of the vagaries of the climate and the stead
25、y rhythms of life here. Folks have been tending to the chores of spring for generations, knowing full well that they really can“t depend upon the hand that nature will deal them. Planting a garden in Vermont amounts to an act of faith. Will our sweat and toil be rewarded by abundance enough to share
26、 with our friends and extended families, or will a killing frost render these efforts exercises in futility? And I have planted more than a garden this year. My family was recently faced with a tough decision, do we leave this place and the people whom we have come to know and love, or do we stay an
27、d make a commitment? Well, we have decided that this is where we will make our stand. Along with our little garden, this year we have planted ourselves. And this is no less an act of faith than the one mentioned above. Will my family be blessed with that which is needed to grow and flourish. We have
28、 no way of knowing this.but we do have faith. The rain has stopped and the sun is shining. Strong winds have blown the cloud cover away. It is a beautiful day. Vermont gardening. There is another saying among farmers here: “there is no better fertilizer than a farmer“s footprints.“ To me this means
29、that which is planted must be revisited often. The garden must be nurtured and tended. It must be cared for with love. it seems to me that this applies to our lives as well. Hopes and dreams and aspirations must be revisited often lest we lose sight of the things that are really important to us. Com
30、mitments must be tended to as carefully as any garden plot. But as with gardening, there are no guarantees. But there is faith, and today is a beautiful day. (此文选自 Time)Passage Three After thirty years of married happiness, he could still remind himself that Victoria was endowed with every charm exc
31、ept the thrilling touch of human frailty. Though her perfection discouraged pleasures, especially the pleasures of love, he had learned in time to feel the pride of a husband in her natural frigidity. For he still clung, amid the decay of moral platitudes, to the discredited ideal of chivalry. In hi
32、s youth the world was suffused with the after-glow of the long Victorian age, and a graceful feminine style had softened the manners, if not the natures, of men. At the end of that interesting epoch, when womanhood was exalted from a biological fact into a miraculous power, Virginius Littlepage, the
33、 younger son of an old and affluent family, had married Victoria Brooke, the grand-daughter of a tobacco planter, who had made a satisfactory fortune by forsaking his plantation and converting tobacco into cigarettes. While Virginius had been trained by stern tradition to respect every woman who had
34、 not stooped to folly, the virtue peculiar to her sex was among the least of his reasons for admiring Victoria. She was not only modest, which was usual in the nineties, but she was beautiful, which is unusual in any decade. In the beginning of their acquaintance he had gone even further and ascribe
35、d intellect to her; but a few months of marriage had shown this to be merely one of the many delusions created by perfect features and noble expression. Everything about her had been smooth and definite, even the tones of her voice and the way her light brown hair, which she wore a Pompadour, was ro
36、lled stiffly back from her forehead and coiled in a burnished rope on the top of her head. A serious young man, ambitious to attain a place in the world more brilliant than the secluded seat of his ancestors, he had been impressed at their first meeting by the compactness and precision of Victoria“s
37、 orderly mind. For in that earnest period the minds, as well as the emotions, of lovers were orderly. It was an age when eager young men flocked to church on Sunday morning, and eloquent divines discoursed upon the Victorian poets in the middle of the week. He could afford to smile now when he recal
38、led the solemn Browning class in which he had first lost his heart. How passionately he had admired Victoria“s virginal features! How fervently he had envied her competent but caressing way with the poet! Incredible as it seemed to him now, he had fallen in love with her while she recited from the m
39、ore ponderous passages in The Ring and the Book . He had fallen in love with her then, though he had never really enjoyed Browning, and it had been a relief to him when the Unseen , in company with its illustrious poet, had at last gone out of fashion. Yet, since he was disposed to admire all the qu
40、alities he did not possess, he had never ceased to respect the firmness with which Victoria continued to deal in other forms with the Absolute. As the placid years passed, and she came to rely less upon her virginal features, it seemed to him that the ripe opinions of her youth began to shrink and f
41、latten as fruit does that has hung too long on the tree. She had never changed, he realized, since he had first known her; she had become merely riper, softer, and sweeter in nature. Her advantage rested where advantage never fails to rest, in moral fervour. To be invariably right was her single wif
42、ely failing. For his wife, he sighed, with the vague unrest of a husband whose infidelities are imaginary, was a genuinely good woman. She was as far removed from pretence as she was from the posturing virtues that flourish in the credulous world of the drama. The pity of it was that even the least
43、exacting husband should so often desire something more piquant than goodness. (此文选自 VOA ) Passage Four Whom can you trust these days? It is a question posed by David Halpern of Cambridge University, and the researchers at the Downing Street Strategy Unit who take an interest in “social capital“. At
44、intervals they go around asking people in assorted nations the question: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted?“ The results are fascinating. The conclusion that leaps from the figures and into sensational headlines is that social dislocation, religious decline, public s
45、candals, family fragmentation and the fear of crime have made us less trusting. Comparative surveys over 40 years suggest that British trustfulness has halved: in the 1950s 60 percent of us answered “yes, most people can be trusted“, in the 1980s 44 percent, today only 29 percent. Trust levels also
46、continue to fall in Ireland and the U.S.meanwhile, the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes and Dutch express tremendous confidence in one another“s probity : levels are actually rising. And the Palme d“Orr for paranoid mutual suspicion goes to the Brazilianswith less than 3 percent replying “yes“and the Turks
47、 with 6.5 percent. The French, apparently, never trusted one another and still don“t. So we become less Scandinavian and more French (or Turkish) every year. Regarding Britain, the obvious conclusions are being drawn. Mr. Halpern and others cite reasons why we appear less trustful: the demise of the
48、 job-for-life culture, rising divorce, physical mobility, higher immigration, an aggressive commercial ethic and the new isolation of mass media. “You use your wealth to free yourself of the inconvenience of other people,“ says Halpern. “You ensure you have your own house, and you don“t even have to
49、 watch TV with your family because you have five TVs.“ This is useful research, but there are a few caveats. The trouble is that you may not get a very thoughtful answer if you merely askas they did last yearwhether “generally speaking, most people can be trusted“. For the British like to think of themselves as canny, savvy, nobody“s fools. We have a powerful culture of satire and a hypercritical media which gleefully splash news of every private and public betrayal, however trivial. In our fantasy life we court paranoia, lapping up crime thrillers and spy novels. We are fascinated
