1、专业英语八级真题2010年及答案解析 (总分：129.00，做题时间：120分钟)一、PART I LISTENING COM(总题数：1，分数：10.00)二、SECTION B INTERVIEW(总题数：1，分数：5.00)Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions. Now listen to the interview. （分数：5.0
2、0）(1). According to Dr Johnson, diversity means （分数：1.00）A.merging of different cultural identities.B.more emphasis on homogeneity.C.embracing of more ethnic differences.D.acceptance of more branches of Christianity.(2).According to the interview, which of the following statements in CORRECT? （分数：1.
3、00）A.Some places are more diverse than others.B.Towns are less diverse than large cities.C.Diversity can be seen everywhere.D.American is a truly diverse country.(3).According to Dr Johnson, which place will witness a radical change in its racial makeup by 2025? （分数：1.00）A.MaineB.SelinsgroveC.Philad
4、elphiaD.California(4).During the interview Dr Johnson indicates that （分数：1.00）A.greater racial diversity exists among younger populations.B.both older and younger populations are racially diverse.C.age diversity could lead to pension problems.D.older populations are more racially diverse.(5).Accordi
5、ng to the interview, religious diversity （分数：1.00）A.was most evident between 1990 and 2000.B.exists among Muslim immigrants.C.is restricted to certain places in the US.D.is spreading to more parts of the country.三、SECTION C NEWS BROAD(总题数：3，分数：5.00)2.Question 6 is based on the following news. At the
6、 end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the question. Now listen to the news. What is the main idea of the news item? （分数：1.00）A.Sony developed a computer chip for cell phones.B.Japan will market its wallet phone abroad.C.The wallet phone is one of the wireless innovations.D.Re
7、ader devices are available at stores and stations.Question 7 and 8 is based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news. （分数：2.00）(1).Which of the following is mentioned as the governments measure to control inflati
8、on? （分数：1.00）A.Foreign investment.B.Donor support.C.Price control.D.Bank prediction.(2).According to Kingdom Bank, what is the current inflation rate in Zimbabwe? （分数：1.00）A.20 million percent.B.2.2 million percent.C.11.2 million percent.D.Over 11.2 million percent.Question 9 and 10 are based on the
9、 following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the question. Now listen to the news. （分数：2.00）(1).Which of the following is CORRECT? （分数：1.00）A.A big fire erupted on the Nile River.B.Helicopters were used to evacuate people.C.Five people were taken to hospital f
10、or burns.D.A big fire took place on two floors.(2).The likely cause of the big fire is （分数：1.00）A.electrical short-cut.B.lack of fire-satefy measures.C.terrorism.D.not known.四、PART II READING COMP(总题数：4，分数：40.00)TEXT A Still, the image of any city has a half-life of many years. (So does its name, of
11、ficially changed in 2001 from Calcutta to Kolkata, which is closer to what the word sounds like in Bengali. Conversing in English, I never heard anyone call the city anything but Calcutta.) To Westerners, the conveyance most identified with Kolkata is not its modern subwaya facility whose spacious s
12、tations have art on the walls and cricket matches on television monitorsbut the hand-pulled rickshaw. Stories and films celebrate a primitive-looking cart with high wooden wheels, pulled by someone who looks close to needing the succor of Mother Teresa. For years the government has been talking abou
13、t eliminating hand-pulled rickshaws on what it calls humanitarian groundsprincipally on the ground that, as the mayor of Kolkata has often said, it is offensive to see “one man sweating and straining to pull another man.” But these days politicians also lament the impact of 6,000 hand-pulled ricksha
14、ws on a modern citys traffic and, particularly, on its image. “Westerners try to associate beggars and these rickshaws with the Calcutta landscape, but this is not what Calcutta stands for,” the chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, said in a press conference in 2006. “Our city sta
15、nds for prosperity and development.” The chief ministerthe equivalent of a state governorwent on to announce that hand-pulled rickshaws soon would be banned from the streets of Kolkata. Rickshaws are not there to haul around tourists. (Actually, I saw almost no tourists in Kolkata, apart from the yo
16、ung backpackers on Sudder Street, in what used to be a red-light district and is now said to be the single place in the city where the services a rickshaw puller offers may include providing female company to a gentleman for the evening.) Its the people in the lanes who most regularly use rickshawsn
17、ot the poor but people who are just a notch above the poor. They are people who tend to travel short distances, through lanes that are sometimes inaccessible to even the most daring taxi driver. An older woman with marketing to do, for instance, can arrive in a rickshaw, have the rickshaw puller wai
18、t until she comes back from various stalls to load her purchases, and then be taken home. People in the lanes use rickshaws as a 24-hour ambulance service. Proprietors of cafs or corner stores send rickshaws to collect their supplies. (One morning I saw a rickshaw puller take on a load of live chick
19、enstied in pairs by the feet so they could be draped over the shafts and the folded back canopy and even the axle. By the time he trotted off, he was carrying about a hundred upside-down chickens.) The rickshaw pullers told me their steadiest customers are schoolchildren. Middle-class families contr
20、act with a puller to take a child to school and pick him up; the puller essentially becomes a family retainer. From June to September Kolkata can get torrential rains, and its drainage system doesnt need torrential rain to begin backing up. Residents who favor a touch of hyperbole say that in Kolkat
21、a “if a stray cat pees, theres a flood.” During my stay it once rained for about 48 hours. Entire neighborhoods couldnt be reached by motorized vehicles, and the newspapers showed pictures of rickshaws being pulled through water that was up to the pullers waists. When its raining, the normal custome
22、r base for rickshaw pullers expands greatly, as does the price of a journey. A writer in Kolkata told me, “When it rains, even the governor takes rickshaws.” While I was in Kolkata, a magazine called India Today published its annual ranking of Indian states, according to such measurements as prosper
23、ity and infrastructure. Among Indias 20 largest states, Bihar finished dead last, as it has for four of the past five years. Bihar, a couple hundred miles north of Kolkata, is where the vast majority of rickshaw pullers come from. Once in Kolkata, they sleep on the street or in their rickshaws or in
24、 a deraa combination garage and repair shop and dormitory managed by someone called a sardar. For sleeping privileges in a dera, pullers pay 100 rupees (about $2.50) a month, which sounds like a pretty good deal until youve visited a dera. They gross between 100 and 150 rupees a day, out of which th
25、ey have to pay 20 rupees for the use of the rickshaw and an occasional 75 or more for a payoff if a policeman stops them for, say, crossing a street where rickshaws are prohibited. A 2003 study found that rickshaw pullers are near the bottom of Kolkata occupations in income, doing better than only t
26、he ragpickers and the beggars. For someone without land or education, that still beats trying to make a living in Bihar. There are people in Kolkata, particularly educated and politically aware people, who will not ride in a rickshaw, because they are offended by the idea of being pulled by another
27、human being or because they consider it not the sort of thing people of their station do or because they regard the hand-pulled rickshaw as a relic of colonialism. Ironically, some of those people are not enthusiastic about banning rickshaws. The editor of the editorial pages of Kolkatas TelegraphRu
28、drangshu Mukherjee, a former academic who still writes history bookstold me, for instance, that he sees humanitarian considerations as coming down on the side of keeping hand-pulled rickshaws on the road. “I refuse to be carried by another human being myself,” he said, “but I question whether we hav
29、e the right to take away their livelihood.” Rickshaw supporters point out that when it comes to demeaning occupations, rickshaw pullers are hardly unique in Kolkata. When I asked one rickshaw puller if he thought the governments plan to rid the city of rickshaws was based on a genuine interest in hi
30、s welfare, he smiled, with a quick shake of his heada gesture I interpreted to mean, “If you are so naive as to ask such a question, I will answer it, but it is not worth wasting words on.” Some rickshaw pullers I met were resigned to the imminent end of their livelihood and pin their hopes on being
31、 offered something in its place. As migrant workers, they dont have the political clout enjoyed by, say, Kolkatas sidewalk hawkers, who, after supposedly being scaled back at the beginning of the modernization drive, still clog the sidewalks, selling absolutely everythingor, as I found during the 48
32、 hours of rain, absolutely everything but umbrellas. “The government was the government of the poor people,” one sardar told me. “Now they shake hands with the capitalists and try to get rid of poor people.” But others in Kolkata believe that rickshaws will simply be confined more strictly to certai
33、n neighborhoods, out of the view of World Bank traffic consultants and California investment delegationsor that they will be allowed to die out naturally as theyre supplanted by more modern conveyances. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, after all, is not the first high West Bengal official to say that ricksh
34、aws would be off the streets of Kolkata in a matter of months. Similar statements have been made as far back as 1976. The ban decreed by Bhattacharjee has been delayed by a court case and by a widely held belief that some retraining or social security settlement ought to be offered to rickshaw drive
35、rs. It may also have been delayed by a quiet reluctance to give up something that has been part of the fabric of the city for more than a century. Kolkata, a resident told me, “has difficulty letting go.” One day a city official handed me a report from the municipal government laying out options for
36、 how rickshaw pullers might be rehabilitated. “Which option has been chosen?” I asked, noting that the report was dated almost exactly a year before my visit. “That hasnt been decided,” he said. “When will it be decided?” “That hasnt been decided,” he said. （分数：12.00）(1).According to the passage, ri
37、ckshaws are used in Kolkata mainly for the following EXCEPT （分数：2.00）A.taking foreign tourists around the city.B.providing transport to school children.C.carrying store supplies and purchasesD.carrying people over short distances.(2).Which of the following statements best describes the rickshaw pull
38、ers from Bihar? （分数：2.00）A.They come from a relatively poor area.B.They are provided with decent accommodation.C.Their living standards are very low in Kolkata.D.They are often caught by policemen in the streets.(3).That “For someone without land or education, that still beats trying to make a livin
39、g in Bihar” (4 paragraph) means that even so, （分数：2.00）A.the poor prefer to work and live in Bihar.B.the poor from Bihar fare better than back home.C.the poor never try to make a living in Bihar.D.the poor never seem to resent their life in Kolkata.(4).We can infer from the passage that some educate
40、d and politically aware people （分数：2.00）A.hold mixed feelings towards rickshaws.B.strongly support the ban on rickshaws.C.call for humanitarian actions fro rickshaw pullers.D.keep quiet on the issue of banning rickshaws.(5).Which of the following statements conveys the authors sense of humor? A. （分数
41、：2.00）A.“not the poor but people who are just a notch above the poor.” (2 paragraph)B.“,.which sounds like a pretty good deal until youve visited a dera.” (4 paragraph)C.Kolkata, a resident told me, “ has difficulty letting go.” (7 paragraph).D.“or, as I found during the 48 hours of rain, absolutely
42、 everything but umbrellas.” (6 paragraph)(6).The dialogue between the author and the city official at the end of the passage seems to suggest （分数：2.00）A.the uncertainty of the courts decision.B.the inefficiency of the municipal government.C.the difficulty of finding a good solution.D.the slowness in
43、 processing options.TEXT B Depending on whom you believe, the average American will, over a lifetime, wait in lines for two years (says National Public Radio) or five years (according to customer-loyalty experts). The crucial word is average, as wealthy Americans routinely avoid lines altogether. On
44、ce the most democratic of institutions, lines are rapidly becoming the exclusive province of suckers(people who still believe in and practice waiting in lines). Poor suckers, mostly. Airports resemble France before the Revolution: first-class passengers enjoy lite security lines and priority boardin
45、g, and disembark before the unwashed in coach, held at bay by a flight attendant, are allowed to foul the Jetway. At amusement parks, too, you can now buy your way out of line. This summer I haplessly watched kids use a $52 Gold Flash Pass to jump the lines at Six Flags New England, and similar syst
46、ems are in use in most major American theme parks, from Universal Orlando to Walt Disney World, where the haves get to watch the have-mores breeze past on their way to their seats. Flash Pass teaches children a valuable lesson in real-world economics: that the rich are more important than you, espec
47、ially when it comes to waiting. An NBA player once said to me, with a bemused chuckle of disbelief, that when playing in Canada-get this-we have to wait in the same customs line as everybody else. Almost every line can be breached for a price. In several U.S. cities this summer, early arrivers among
48、 the early adopters waiting to buy iPhones offered to sell their spots in the lines. On Craigslist, prospective iPhone purchasers offered to pay waiters or placeholders to wait in line for them outside Apple stores. Inevitably, some semi-populist politicians have seen the value of sort-of waiting in
49、 lines with the ordinary people. This summer Philadelphia mayor John Street waited outside an AT&T store from 3:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. before a stand-in from his office literally stood in for the mayor while he conducted official business. And billionaire New York mayor Michael Bloomberg often waits for the
