上海市高级口译第一阶段笔试分类模拟高级阅读(一)及答案解析.doc

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1、上海市高级口译第一阶段笔试分类模拟高级阅读(一)及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、SECTION 1 READING TE(总题数：4，分数：50.00)“They treat us like mules,“ the guy installing my washer tells me, his eyes narrowing as he wipes his hands, I had just complimented him and his partner on the speed and assurance of their work. He explains that

2、 it“s rare that customers speak to him this way. I know what he“s talking about. My mother was a waitress all her life, in coffee shops and fast-paced chain restaurants. It was hard work, but she liked it, liked “being among the public“, as she would say. But that work had its sting, toothe customer

3、 who would treat her like a servant or, her biggest complaint, like she was not that bright. There“s a lesson here for this political season: the subtle and not-so-subtle insults that blue-collar and service workers endure as part of their working lives. And those insults often have to do with intel

4、ligence. We like to think of the United States as a classless society. The belief in economic mobility is central to the American Dream, and we pride ourselves on our spirit of egalitarianism. But we also have a troubling streak of aristocratic bias in our national temperament, and one way it manife

5、sts itself is in the assumptions we make about people who work with their hands. Working people sense this bias and react to it when they vote. The common political wisdom is that hot-button social issues have driven blue-collar voters rightward. But there are other cultural dynamics at play as well

6、. And Democrats can be as oblivious to these dynamics as Republicansthough the Grand Old Party did appeal to them in St. Paul. Let“s go back to those two men installing my washer and dryer. They do a lot of heavy lifting quicklymine was the first of 15 deliveriesand efficiently, to avoid injury. Bet

7、ween them there is ongoing communication, verbal and nonverbal, to coordinate the lift, negotiate the tight fit, move in rhythm with each other. And all the while, they are weighing options, making decisions and solving problemsas when my new dryer didn“t match up with the gas outlet. Think about wh

8、at a good waitress has to do in the busy restaurant: remember orders and monitor them, attend to a dynamic, quickly changing environment, prioritize tasks and manage the flow of work, make decisions on the fly. There“s the carpenter using a number of mathematical conceptssymmetry, proportion, congru

9、ence, the properties of anglesand visualizing these concepts while building a cabinet, a flight of stairs, or a pitched roof. The hairstylist“s practice is a mix of technique, knowledge about the biology of hair, aesthetic judgment, and communication skill. The mechanic, electrician, and plumber are

10、 troubleshooters and problem solvers. Even the routinized factory floor calls for working smarts. When has any of this made its way into our political speeches? From either party. Even on Labor Day. Last week, the GOP masterfully invoked some old cultural suspicions: country folk versus city and eas

11、t-coast versus heartland education. But these are symbolic populist gestures, not the stuff of true engagement. Judgments about intelligence carry great weight in our society, and we have a tendency to make sweeping assessments of people“s intelligence based on the kind of work they do. Political tr

12、ibutes to labor over the next two months will render the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps. But few will also celebrate the thought bright behind the eye, or offer an image that links hand and brain. It would be fitting in a country with an egalitarian vision of itself to have a truer,

13、 richer sense of all that is involved in the wide range of work that surrounds and sustains us. Those politicians who can communicate that sense will tap a deep reserve of neglected feeling. And those who can honor and use work in explaining and personalizing their policies will find a welcome recep

14、tion.（分数：12.50）(1).To illustrate the intelligence of the working class, the author cites the examples of all of the following EXCEPT _.（分数：2.50）A.hairstylist and waitressB.carpenter and mechanicC.electrician and plumberD.street cleaner and shop assistant(2).In the sentence “we pride ourselves on our

15、 spirit of egalitarianism“ (para. 3), the word “egalitarianism“ can be replaced by _.（分数：2.50）A.individualismB.enlightenmentC.equalityD.liberalism(3).We can conclude from the passage that _.（分数：2.50）A.in America, judgments about people“s intelligence are often based on the kind of work they doB.the

16、subtle and not-so-subtle insults towards blue-collars are a daily phenomenon in AmericaC.the United States is a classless societyD.the old cultural suspicions of country folk versus city and east-coast versus heartland education show the Republican“s true engagement(4).One of the major groups of tar

17、geted readers of the author should be _.（分数：2.50）A.blue-collar American workersB.middle-class American businessmenC.American politiciansD.American company leaders(5).Which of the following summarizes the main idea of the passage?（分数：2.50）A.The Democratic Party and the Republican Party should stop sy

18、mbolic populist gestures.B.Political tributes should mind the subtle bias against the intelligence of the working class.C.The ruling party should acknowledge the working smarts of blue-collars.D.The whole American society should change the attitude towards the blue-collar workers.To most people the

19、human face is a compelling object fraught with meaning. But for autistic children, who can“t get a read on other people“s emotions, eye contact is terrifying. When they do look at faces, they tend to stare at the mouth. Fortunately, researchers now think that technology can help overcome the barrier

20、 that isolates these kinds. Software that enables robots to respond to a child“s feelings a little bitbut not too muchcan help train him or her to interact more freely with people. “The beauty of a robot or software is that it“s not human,“ and therefore not as intimidating, says Stephen Porges, an

21、autism expert at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Computer-generated faces are already having an impact in the classroom. Psychologist Dominic Massaro at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has created Baldi, a lively computer character, as a stand-in for human teachers. For three years,

22、 Baldi and his female counterpart, Baldette, have been giving autistic kids in the Bay School in Santa Cruz lessons in vocabulary and in understanding facial expressions. The character has been so successful that he“s spawned imitatorsBaldini in Italian, Baldir in Arabic and Bao in Chinese. Porges t

23、hinks that the real role of cartoon personas is not so much to teach patients as to calm them. Autistic kids live in a state of hyperalertness, as if they were constantly suffering stage fright. If technology can put them at ease, Porges argues, social skills will develop naturally. In a recent stud

24、y, Porges exposed 20 autistic people, ranging from 10 to 21 years old, to engineered speech and music. He removed low frequency sounds, which the body tends to interpret as indicating danger, and exaggerated vocal intonations, much as people dramatize emotions when speaking to infants. After 45 minu

25、tes, all but one of the subjects began looking at the eyes of a person on a video screen just as a normal viewer would. The improvement persisted at least a week, but had faded after six months. Porges is now developing headphones that reduce low frequencies. He also hopes to test whether ongoing ex

26、posure to the engineered sounds can lead to long-term improvement. Other technology may be effective for less severely autistic children. Whereas normal babies learn from caretakers to mirror emotionssmile at a smile, frown at a frownautistic children often lack this basic skill. Cognitive scientist

27、s Javier Movellan and Marian Stewart Bartlett at the University of California, San Diego, have built a robot that can “read“ faces. They hope that playing with the robot and watching it interact with others will inspire autistic children to return the smiles of humans. Commercial emotion-reading sof

28、tware about to hit the market could be a boon for some high functioning autistic and Asperger“s patients in dealing with social situations. Affective Media, a firm near Edinburgh, Scotland, has created a prototype phone that “hears“ the emotion in voice messages and conveys it explicitly to the owne

29、r. A person checking messages would hear something like this: “You have two bored calls, one surprised call, and one angry call.“ “Three years ago this was science fiction,“ says Christian Jones, co-founder of Affective Media. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have built a sim

30、ilar voicemail system, called Emotive Alert, that evaluates a caller“s intonation, speed and volume. It identifies whether a call sounds urgent, informal or formal, and whether the speaker was happy or sad. Emotion-reading software might improve the way we all interact with machines. Computers at ca

31、ll centers may soon be able to alert employees to an irate caller who might need special handling. Scientists at Affective Media, Stanford and Toyota are developing a system for cars that responds to cues in the driver“s voice and face, perhaps turning on appropriate music if a driver seems sad. It“

32、s another barrier emotionally adept software might help overcome.（分数：12.50）(1).When autism expert Stephen Porges says “The beauty of a robot or software is that it“s not human“ (para. 1), he implies that _.（分数：2.50）A.the beauty of a robot or software is quite apparentB.a robot or software has its un

33、ique beauty in shapeC.a robot or software can never function as a humanD.unlike a robot or software, humans can be rather threatening(2).According to the passage, which of the following is NOT characteristic of autistic children?（分数：2.50）A.They have difficulty in understanding the facial expressions

34、 of others.B.They are often unable to maintain eye contact with others.C.They always live in a state of over-alertness.D.They feel at ease only when interacting with computer teachers.(3).Stephen Porges concluded from his investigation that _.（分数：2.50）A.social skills will develop naturally in autist

35、ic kids when they are at easeB.the development of social skills is an agonizing processC.social skills will be acquired naturally as autistic kids grow upD.the use of cartoon personas can eliminate stage fright in autistic kids(4).By saying “Three years ago this was science fiction“, (para. 5) Chris

36、tian Jones means that the phone that “hears“ the emotion in human voice _.（分数：2.50）A.first appeared in science fiction at that timeB.could have been invented three years agoC.was considered simply impossible three years agoD.could not be imagined by humanity three years ago(5).According to the last

37、two paragraphs, emotion-reading software _.（分数：2.50）A.will be used to teach people how to interact with machinesB.can be the major means to cure autistic patientsC.can be most proficient and useful at call centersD.will probably be used to help reduce traffic accidentsQuick quiz: Who has a more vitr

38、iolic relationship with the U.S.? The French or the British. If you guessed the French, consider this: Paris newspaper polls show that 72 percent of the French hold a favorable impression of the United States. Yet U.K. polls over the past decade show a lower percentage of the British have a favorabl

39、e impression of the United States. Britain“s highbrow newspaper, The Guardian , sets the U.K.“s intellectual tone. On any given day you can easily read a handful of stories sniping at the U.S. and things American. The BBC“s Radio 4, which is a domestic news and talk radio station, regularly laments

40、Britain“s social warts and follows them up with something that has become the national mantra, “Well, at least we“re not as bad as the Americans.“ This isn“t a new trend: British abhorrence of America antedates George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. On 9/11 as the second plane was slamming into th

41、e World Trade Center towers my wife was on the phone with an English friend of many years. In the background she heard her friend“s teenage son shout in front of the TV, “Yeah! The Americans are finally getting theirs.“ The animosity may be unfathomable to those raised to think of Britain as “the mo

42、ther country“ for whom we fought two world wars and with whom we won the cold war. So what“s it all about? I often asked that during the years I lived in London. One of the best answers came from an Englishwoman with whom I shared a table for coffee. She said, “It“s because we used to be big and imp

43、ortant and we aren“t any more. Now it“s America that“s big and important and we can never forgive you for that.“ A detestation of things American has become as dependable as the tides on the Thames rising and falling four times a day. It feeds a flagging British sense of national self-importance. A

44、new book documenting the virulence of more than 30 years of corrosive British animosity reveals how deeply rooted it has become in the U.K.“s national psyche. “T here is no reasoning with people who have come to believe America is now a “police state“ and the USA is a “disgrace across most of the wo

45、rld“,“ writes Carol Gould, an American expatriate novelist and journalist, in her book Don“t Tread on Me. A brief experience shortly after George W. Bush“s invasion of Iraq illustrates that. An American I know was speaking on the street in London one morning. Upon hearing his accent, a British man y

46、elled, “Take your tanks and bombers and go back to America.“ Then the British thug punched him repeatedly. No wonder other American friends of mine took to telling locals they were from Canada. The local police recommended prosecution. But upon learning the victim was an American, crown prosecutors

47、dropped the case even though the perpetrator had a history of assaulting foreigners. The examples of this bitterness continue: I recall my wife and I having coffee with a member of our church. The woman, who worked at Buckingham Palace, launched a conversation with, “Have you heard the latest dumb A

48、merican joke?“ which incidentally turned out to be a racial slur against blacks. It“s common to hear Brits routinely dismiss Americans as racists (even with an African-American president), religious nuts, global polluters, warmongers, cultural philistines, and as intellectual Untermenschen. The Unit

49、ed Kingdom“s counterintelligence and security agency has identified some 5,000 Muslim extremists in the U.K. but not even they are denounced with the venom directed at Americans. A British office manager at CNN once informed me that any English high school diploma was equal to an American university degree. This predilection for seeing evil in all things American defies intellect and reason. By themselves, these instances might be able to be brushed off, but combined they amount to British bigotry. Oscar Wilde once wrote, “The English mind