[考研类试卷]考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷161及答案与解析.doc

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1、考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 161 及答案与解析Part CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. (10 points) 0 There is a never-ending supply of business leaders telling us how we can, and must, do more. John Bernard offers breathless advice on conducting “ Busines

2、s at the Speed of Now“. Michael Port tells salesmen how to “Book Yourself Solid“. And in case you thought you might be able to grab a few moments to yourself, Keith Ferrazzi warns that you must “Never Eat Alone“.【F1】Yet when it comes to the biggest problem in the business world, the key is not too l

3、ittle but too muchtoo many distractions and interruptions, too many things done for the sake of form, and altogether too much busyness. The Dutch seem to believe that an excess of meetings is the biggest devourer of time. However, a study last year by the McKinsey Global Institute suggests that it i

4、s e-mails: it found that highly skilled office workers spend more than a quarter of each working day writing and responding to them.【F2】Which of these thorns of modern business life is worse remains open to debate, but what is clear is that office workers are on a treadmill of pointless activity. Ma

5、nagers allow meetings to drag on for hours. Workers generate e-mails because it requires little effort and no thought. An entire management industry exists to spin the treadmill ever faster.All this “doing more“ is making it harder to focus on real work.【F3】In 2012 Gloria Mark of the University of C

6、alifornia deprived 13 people in the IT business of e-mail for five days and studied them intensively to find that people without it concentrated on tasks for longer and experienced less stress.It is high time that we tried a different strategy“doing less and thinking more“. The most obvious benefici

7、aries of thinking more would be creative workersthe very people who are supposed to be at the heart of the modern economy. In the early 1990s Mihaly Csikszentmi-halyi, a psychologist, asked 275 creative types if he could interview them for a book he was writing. A third did not bother to reply at al

8、l and another third refused to take part.【F4 】Creative peoples most important resource is their timeparticularly big chunks of uninterrupted time and their biggest enemies are those who try to nibble away at it with e-mails or meetings.Managers themselves could benefit.【F5】Those at the top are best

9、employed thinking about strategy rather than operationsabout whether the company is doing the right thing rather than whether it is sticking to its plans. Bill Gates, when he was in charge of Microsoft, used to take two “think weeks“ a year when he would lock himself in an isolated cottage.Doing mor

10、e has been producing negative returns for some time now. It is time to try the far more radical strategy of doing less and thinking more.1 【F1】2 【F2】3 【F3】4 【F4】5 【F5】5 On August 15th Google bid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, a troubled American maker of mobile phones. If the purchase goes thr

11、ough, it will be Googles largest ever acquisition, almost doubling the size of its workforce.【F1 】The attraction for the Internet giant is not the handset-makers 19,000 employees nor its 11% share of Americas smartphone market, but its portfolio of 17,000 patents, with another 7,500 in the pipeline.

12、 This will bolster Googles puny arsenal of around 2,000 patents, hugely strengthening its position in current and future legal battles with its more heavily armed industry rivals.【F2】The basic idea of patents is a good one; an inventor is granted a limited monopoly(20 years, in America and elsewhere

13、)over a technology in return for disclosing the details of its workings, so that others can build upon the invention. Advanced technologies are thus made widely available, rather than remaining trade secrets, spurring further innovationIn recent years, however, the patent system has been stifling in

14、novation rather than encouraging it. A study in 2008 found that American public companies total profits from patents in 1999 were about $4 billionbut that the associated litigation costs were $14 billion.【F3】 Such costs are behind the Motorola bid; Google, previously skeptical about patents, is caug

15、ht up in a tangle of lawsuits relating to smartphones and wants Motorolas huge portfolio to strengthen its negotiating position.What has gone wrong? The prizing of patent quantity rather than quality is one cause for concern. A second is the rise in dubious patents, particularly in the fields of sof

16、tware and business methods, which should never have been awarded.【F4 】This leads to the third; the growing problem of “patent trolls“, or firms that treat patents as lottery tickets and file expensive, time-consuming lawsuits against companies that have supposedly infringed them.Fortunately, patent-

17、reform act is about to be passed in America, but it has been so watered down that it will fail to make much difference. Three much bolder reforms are needed.First, patents in fields where innovation moves fast and is relatively cheaplike computing should have shorter terms than those in areas where

18、it is slower and more expensivelike pharmaceuticals.【F5】The divergent interests of patent-holders in different industries have held up reform, but there is no reason why they should not be treated differently; such distinctions are made in other areas of intellectual-property law. Second, the bar fo

19、r obtaining a patent, particularly for software or business methods, should be much higher(as it is in other countries), and the process of re-evaluating bad patents should be more open and efficient. Finally, there should be greater disclosure requirements of the ownership of patent portfolios, and

20、 patent cases should be heard by specialized courts(as happens in other areas of law), rather than nonexpert juries in advantageous jurisdictions in Texas. That would make life harder for trolls. These fixes would help Americas patent system encourage innovation rather than litigation.6 【F1】7 【F2】8

21、【F3】9 【F4】10 【F5】10 【F1】 Italy may be facing economic depression, but for Siggi, a textile firm near Vicenza in the north-east of the country, 2009 offers the promise of unprecedented growth. Siggi is the biggest producer of grembiuli, or school smocks. Once universal in Italian primary schools, the

22、y were becoming as outdated as ink-wells. But in July the education minister, Mariastella Gelmini, backed the reintroduction of grembiuli to combat brand- and class-consciousness among schoolchildren. Siggis output this year has almost sold out and its chairman, Gino Marta, says that “next year coul

23、d see an out-and-out boom. “The decision on whether pupils should wear the grembiule has been left to head teachers.【F2 】It does not figure in either of the two education bills that have been introduced by Ms Gelmini. But it has become a symbol of her efforts to shake up Italian education. Her criti

24、cs argue that these are a vain attempt to turn back the clock; her supporters see them as a necessary first step to a more equitable, efficient system.【F3】On October 30th the opposition she has aroused will reach its peak by a one-day teachers strike. The unions main complaint is a program of cuts a

25、imed at saving almost 8 billion($11 billion). It includes the loss by natural wastage of 87,000 teachers jobs over the three academic years to 2012 and the return to a system in which just one teacher is allotted to each year of elementary school.【F4】If this is all the reforms do, they could prove a

26、s disastrous as union and opposition leaders predict(international studies find primary schools are the only part of Italys education that does well). But it is also planned that 30% of the money saved will be reinvested in schools. Ms Gelminis supporters hope that she will use it to redress the cri

27、ppling imbalances in education, which is one of Italys biggest structural economic weaknesses.One problem is “lots of badly paid teachers“, says Roger Abravanel, author of a recent book on meritocracy. “ The number of teachers per 100 students is one of the highest in the OECD.“ Education, particula

28、rly in the south, has often been used by politicians for patronage and job creation.【F5】This may explain why, despite studying for longer and in smaller classes, Italian secondary pupils do badly in international comparisons. “The north is around the OECD average, but the south is on a par with Urug

29、uay and Thailand,“ says Mr Abravanel. Giacomo Vaciago, an economics professor at the Catholic University of Milan, says that “although for the time being the debate is about cuts, the big problem is quality, which is random. “Presenting the latest reforms alongside Ms Gelmini, Italys prime minister,

30、 Silvio Berlusconi, promised that, by 2012, the best teachers would be getting a 7,000 bonus. But Mr Vaciago is unconvinced by the plans. “The present government is making cuts and hoping that the quality comes through as a result. There is no obvious guarantee it will,“ he comments.11 【F1】12 【F2】13

31、 【F3】14 【F4】15 【F5】15 Does Wall Street owe the people of America an apology? That was Senator Sherrod Browns suggestion to Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson during a Senate hearing last week.【F1】lf so, the humbled titans of finance will be in good company; institutional apologies have mushroomed in past

32、 years. British Christians, for example, have expressed public contrition for slavery and have even considered apologizing for skepticism about evolution. Nicolaus Mills, an American commentator, calls the fashion for saying sorry a “global culture of apology“. That may be an overstatement; public k

33、owtows are still rare compared with the manifold wrongs of the past. The bigger question is what, if anything, they mean.Apologies for past wrongs by present-day institutions are trickier still. Jonathan Sumption, a London lawyer and historian, calls them “a vulgar anachronism“in effect, he says, “a

34、 rebuke to the past for not being more like the present“.【F2 】Trading apologies and forgiveness on behalf of dead people sounds unauthenticespecially when the issue is centuries old(such as Viking rape and pillage in Ireland, which Denmarks culture minister Brian Mikkelson mourned in 2007). Collecti

35、ve guilt is an odd idea even in the present. Yet at a minimum, owning up to what happened in the past, and learning lessons from it, should benefit everyone.【F3】Successful apologies are usually a tactic of international or national politics, particularly when a new leader wants to distance himself f

36、rom past mistakes. Italy has just apologized to Libya and paid reparations for colonialism(in exchange for energy deals and co-operation on migration). Americas ex-president Bill Clinton and Britains former prime minister, Tony Blair, were skilled in the theatre of public contrition on issues such a

37、s slavery. South Africas president F. W. de Klerk apologized for apartheid in 1992; Nelson Mandela then apologized for atrocities committed by the African National Congress. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission recorded individuals suffering and gave perpetrators a chance to confess and say sorry.S

38、o what makes a public apology successful? Melissa Nobles, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in apologology, says that they can give official backing to a particular view of history, help contain political grievances peacefully and encourage public-spi

39、ritedness among alienated parts of the population.But apologies dont come free.【F4】They raise the annoyed question of compensating; not just money, but the promise of different legal treatment, including the right to sue for compensation. Canada has recompensed indigenous children removed from their

40、 homes; so has the state government of Tasmania. America and Canada have compensated ethnic Japanese citizens interned during the second world war.Still, fear of the legal consequences of saying sorry may be overblown.【F5 】Mr. Rudds apology explicitly stated that it would have no legal import; a lan

41、dmark court case confirmed that previous apologies by Australian states were protected by parliamentary privilege. Americas apology for slavery was a cashless one.16 【F1】17 【F2】18 【F3】19 【F4】20 【F5】20 【F1】 Imagine every student has a tireless personal tutor, an artificially intelligent companion tha

42、t magically knows everything, knows the student, and helps her learn what she needs to know. “You guys sound like youre from the future,“ Jose Ferreira, the CEO of the education technology startup Knewton, says. “Thats the most common reaction we get from others in the industry. “When I first met Fe

43、rreira four years ago, this kind of talk sounded like typical Silicon Valley bluster from another scruffy, boyish founder of a technology startup.【F2】Today, several million data points generated daily by each of 1 million students from elementary school through college, using Knewtons “adaptive lear

44、ning“ technology to study math, reading, and other fundamentals.【F3】Adaptive learning is an increasingly popular slogan denoting educational software that adapts its presentation of material from moment to moment based on the users input. Adaptive learning uses computers as interactive teaching devi

45、ces, and computers adapts the presentation of educational material according to students learning needs, as indicated by their responses to questions and tasks.【F4】Adaptive learning has been partially driven by a realization that tailored learning cannot be achieved on the traditional, non-adaptive

46、approaches and its systems endeavor to transform the learner from passive receptor of information to positive collaborator in the educational process. Its being hailed as a “revolution“ by both venture capitalists and big, established education companies.Starting this fall, Knewtons technology will

47、be available to the vast majority of the nations colleges and universities through new partnerships with three major textbook publishers: Pearson, MacMillan, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The companys ultimate goal? A learning profile for every studenta sort of anonymous permanent record that trave

48、ls from school years through college and onto employment.“Theres going to be one company in the world that does this,“ Jose Ferreira talks, “I think its going to be us because were so far ahead now. “【F5】In an age of swelling class sizes, teacher layoffs, and students with a vast array of special ne

49、eds and learning styles, some reformers hail these software systems as a savior that could make learning more customized and effective and teaching more efficient. Adaptive learning will help each user find the exact right piece of content needed, in the exact right format, at the exact right time, based on previous patterns of use.Heres what Ferreira thinks this software-powered learning can do. “ Right now about 22 percent of the people in the world graduate high school or the equivalent. Thats pitiful. In one generation we coul