1、专业英语八级真题2018年及答案解析 (总分：99.92，做题时间：90分钟)一、PART LISTENING COM(总题数：0，分数：0.00)二、SECTION A MINI-LECTU(总题数：1，分数：15.00)Language and HumanityLanguage is powerful and it can help us do or get things as we wish. Language as a born trait Language has evolved only in 1 . Comparison between chimpanzees and human
2、 beings: - Chimpanzees - use of tools: once seen as a sign of 2 - inability to 3 - tendency to 4 - Human beings - able to improve and build on 5 - able to 6 ideas Language and social learning Problem of social learning: 7 - Cause: - stealing others ideas by 8 - Solution: - 9 developed to share ideas
3、 Results - 10 made available to every individual - language as social technology to enhance 11 Language and the modern world Existence of many different languages has led to - separation of cooperative groups - 12 - knowledge protection - slow flow of ideas and tendency toward 13 Globalization needs
4、 14 . 15 hinder cooperation. Solution: one world with one language （分数：15.00）三、SECTION B INTERVIEW(总题数：2，分数：10.00)Now, listen to Part One of the interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on Part One of the interview. （分数：5.00）A.Announcement of results.B.Lack of a time schedule.C.Slowness in ballots coun
5、ting.D.Direction of the electoral events.A.Other voices within Afghanistan wanted so.B.The date had been set previously.C.All the ballots had been counted.D.The UN advised them to do so.A.To calm the voters.B.To speed up the process.C.To stick to the election rules.D.To stop complaints from the lose
6、r.A.Unacceptable.B.Unreasonable.C.Insensible.D.Ill considered.A.Supportive.B.AmbivalentC.Opposed.D.Neutral.Now, listen to Part Two of the interview. Questions 6 to 10 are based on Part Two of the interview. （分数：5.00）A.Ensure the government includes all parties.B.Discuss who is going to be the winner
7、.C.Supervise the counting of votes.D.Seek support from important sectors.A.36% -24%.B.46% -34%.C.56% -44%.D.66% -54%.A.Both candidates.B.Electoral institutions.C.The United Nations.D.Not specified.A.It was unheard of.B.It was on a small scale.C.It was insignificant.D.It occurred elsewhere.A.Problems
8、 in the electoral process.B.Formation of a new government.C.Premature announcement of results.D.Democracy in Afghanistan.四、PART READING COMPR(总题数：1，分数：30.00)SECTION A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS In this section there are three passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple
9、choice question, there are four suggested answers 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 (1) Britains best export, I was told by the head of the Department of Immigration in Canberra, is people. Close on 100,000 p
10、eople have applied for assisted passages in the first five months of that year, and half of these are eventually expected to migrate to Australia. (2) The Australians are delighted. They are keenly aware that without a strong flow of immigrants into the workforce the development of the Australian ec
11、onomy is unlikely to proceed at the ambitious pace currently envisaged. The new mineral discoveries promise a splendid future, and the injection of huge amounts of American and British capital should help to ensure that they are properly exploited, but with unemployment in Australia down to less tha
12、n 1.3 per cent, the government is understandably anxious to attract more skilled labor. (3) Australia is roughly the same size as the continental United States, but has only twelve million inhabitants. Migration has accounted for half the population increase in the last four years, and has contribut
13、ed greatly to the countrys impressive economic development. Britain has always been the principal sourceninety per cent of Australians are of British descent, and Britain has provided one million migrants since the Second World War. (4) Australia has also given great attention to recruiting people e
14、lsewhere. Australians decided they had an excellent potential source of applicants among the so-called guest workers who have crossed their own frontiers to work in other parts of Europe. There were estimated to be more than four million of them, and a large number were offered subsidized passages a
15、nd guaranteed jobs in Australia. Italy has for some years been the second biggest source of migrants, and the Australians have also managed to attract a large number of Greeks and Germans. (5) One drawback with them, so far as the Australians are concerned, is that integration tends to be more diffi
16、cult. Unlike the British, continental migrants have to struggle with an unfamiliar language and new customs. Many naturally gravitate towards the Italian or Greek communities which have grown up in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne. These colonies have their own newspapers, their own shops, and th
17、eir own clubs. Their inhabitants are not Australians, but Europeans. (6) The governments avowed aim, however, is to maintain a substantially homogeneous society into which newcomers, from whatever sources, will merge themselves. By and large, therefore, Australia still prefers British migrants, and
18、tends to be rather less selective in their case than it is with others. (7) A far bigger cause of concern than the growth of national groups, however, is the increasing number of migrants who return to their countries of origin. One reason is that people nowadays tend to be more mobile, and that it
19、is easier than in the past to save the return fare, but economic conditions also have something to do with it. A slower rate of growth invariably produces discontentand if this coincides with greater prosperity in Europe, a lot of people tend to feel that perhaps they were wrong to come here after a
20、ll. (8) Several surveys have been conducted recently into the reasons why people go home. One noted that flies, dirt, and outside lavatories were on the list of complaints from British immigrants, and added that many people also complained about the crudity, bad manners, and unfriendliness of the Au
21、stralians. Another survey gave climate conditions, homesickness, and the stark appearance of the Australian countryside as the main reasons for leaving. (9) Most British migrants miss council housing, the National Health scheme, and their relatives and former neighbors. Loneliness is a big factor, e
22、specially among housewives. The men soon make new friends at work, but wives tend to find it much harder to get used to a different way of life. Many are housebound because of inadequate public transport in most outlying suburbs, and regular correspondence with their old friends at home only serves
23、to increase their discontent. One housewife was quoted recently as saying: I even find I miss the people I used to hate at home. (10) Rents are high, and there are long waiting lists for Housing Commission homes. Sickness can be an expensive business and the climate can be unexpectedly rough. The ga
24、p between Australian and British wage packets is no longer big, and people are generally expected to work harder here than they do at home. Professional men over forty often have difficulty in finding a decent job. Above all, perhaps, skilled immigrants often find a considerable reluctance to accept
25、 their qualifications. (11) According to the journal Australian Manufacturer , the attitude of many employers and fellow workers is anything but friendly. We Australians, it stated in a recent issue, are just too fond of painting the rosy picture of the big, warm-hearted Aussie. As a matter of fact,
26、 we are so busy blowing our own trumpets that we have not got time to be warm-hearted and considerate. Go down heart-break alley among some of the migrants and find out just how expansive the Aussie is to his immigrants. PASSAGE TWO (1) Some of the advantages of bilingualism include better performan
27、ce at tasks involving executive function (which involves the brains ability to plan and prioritize), better defense against dementia in old age andthe obviousthe ability to speak a second language. One purported advantage was not mentioned, though. Many multilinguals report different personalities,
28、or even different worldviews, when they speak their different languages. (2) Its an exciting notion, the idea that ones very self could be broadened by the mastery of two or more languages. In obvious ways (exposure to new friends, literature and so forth) the self really is broadened. Yet it is dif
29、ferent to claimas many people doto have a different personality when using a different language. A former Economist colleague, for example, reported being ruder in Hebrew than in English. So what is going on here? (3) Benjamin Lee Whorf, an American linguist who died in 1941, held that each language
30、 encodes a worldview that significantly influences its speakers. Often called Whorfianism, this idea has its sceptics, but there are still good reasons to believe language shapes thought. (4) This influence is not necessarily linked to the vocabulary or grammar of a second language. Significantly, m
31、ost people are not symmetrically bilingual. Many have learned one language at home from parents, and another later in life, usually at school. So bilinguals usually have different strengths and weaknesses in their different languagesand they are not always best in their first language. For example,
32、when tested in a foreign language, people are less likely to fall into a cognitive trap (answering a test question with an obvious-seeming but wrong answer) than when tested in their native language. In part this is because working in a second language slows down the thinking. No wonder people feel
33、different when speaking them. And no wonder they feel looser, more spontaneous, perhaps more assertive or funnier or blunter, in the language they were reared in from childhood. (5) What of crib bilinguals, raised in two languages? Even they do not usually have perfectly symmetrical competence in th
34、eir two languages. But even for a speaker whose two languages are very nearly the same in ability, there is another big reason that person will feel different in the two languages. This is because there is an important distinction between bilingualism and biculturalism. (6) Many bilinguals are not b
35、icultural. But some are. And of those bicultural bilinguals, we should be little surprised that they feel different in their two languages. Experiments in psychology have shown the power of primingsmall unnoticed factors that can affect behavior in big ways. Asking people to tell a happy story, for
36、example, will put them in a better mood. The choice between two languages is a huge prime. Speaking Spanish rather than English, for a bilingual and bicultural Puerto Rican in New York, might conjure feelings of family and home. Switching to English might prime the same person to think of school and
37、 work. (7) So there are two very good reasons (asymmetrical ability, and priming) that make people feel different speaking their different languages. We are still left with a third kind of argument, though. An economist recently interviewed here at Prospero, Athanasia Chalari, said for example that:
38、 Greeks are very loud and they interrupt each other very often. The reason for that is the Greek grammar and syntax. When Greeks talk they begin their sentences with verbs and the form of the verb includes a lot of information so you already know what they are talking about after the first word and
39、can interrupt more easily. (8) Is there something intrinsic to the Greek language that encourages Greeks to interrupt? People seem to enjoy telling tales about their languages inherent properties, and how they influence their speakers. A group of French intellectual worthies once proposed, rather se
40、lf-flatteringly, that French be the sole legal language of the EU, because of its supposedly unmatchable rigor and precision. Some Germans believe that frequently putting the verb at the end of a sentence makes the language especially logical. But language myths are not always self-flattering, many
41、speakers think their languages are unusually illogical or difficultwitness the plethora of books along the lines of Only in English do you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway, English must be the craziest language in the world! We also see some unsurprising overlap with national stereotypes an
42、d self-stereotypes: French, rigorous; German, logical; English, playful. Of course. (9) In this case, Ms Chalari, a scholar, at least proposed a specific and plausible line of causation from grammar to personality: in Greek, the verb comes first, and it carries a lot of information, hence easy inter
43、rupting. The problem is that many unrelated languages all around the world put the verb at the beginning of sentences. Many languages all around the world are heavily inflected, encoding lots of information in verbs. It would be a striking finding if all of these unrelated languages had speakers mor
44、e prone to interrupting each other. Welsh, for example, is also both verb-first and about as heavily inflected as Greek, but the Welsh are not known as pushy conversationalists. PASSAGE THREE (1) Once across the river and into the wholesale district, she glanced about her for some likely door at whi
45、ch to apply. As she contemplated the wide windows and imposing signs, she became conscious of being gazed upon and understood for what she wasa wage-seeker. She had never done this thing before and lacked courage. To avoid conspicuity and a certain indefinable shame she felt at being caught spying a
46、bout for some place where she might apply for a position, she quickened her steps and assumed an air of indifference supposedly common to one upon an errand. In this way she passed many manufacturing and wholesale houses without once glancing in. At last, after several blocks of walking, she felt th
47、at this would not do, and began to look about again, though without relaxing her pace. A little way on she saw a great door which for some reason attracted her attention. It was ornamented by a small brass sign, and seemed to be the entrance to a vast hive of six or seven floors. Perhaps, she though
48、t, they may want someone and crossed over to enter, screwing up her courage as she went. When she came within a score of feet of the desired goal, she observed a young gentleman in a grey clerk suit, fumbling his watch-chain and looking out. That he had anything to do with the concern she could not tell, but because he happened to be looking in her direction, her weakening heart misgave her and she hurried by, too overcome with shame to enter in. After several blocks of walking, in which the uproar of the streets and the novelty of the situation had time to wear awa
