2000年全国硕士研究生入学统一考试英语一试题及解析 

Born to win

2000年全国硕士研究生入学统一考试英语试题

Section II Cloze Test

Directions:

For each numbered blank in the following passage, there are four choices marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. Choose the best one and mark your answer on ANSWER SHEET 1 by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets with a pencil. (10 points)

If a farmer wishes to succeed, he must try to keep a wide gap between his consumption and his production. He must store a large quantity of grain 大41家 consuming all his grain immediately. He can continue to support himself and his family 大42家 he produces a surplus. He must use this surplus in three ways: as seed for sowing, as an insurance 大43家 the unpredictable effects of bad weather and as a commodity which he must sell in order to 大44家 old agricultural implements and obtain chemical fertilizers to 大45家 the soil. He may also need money to construct irrigation 大46家 and improve his farm in other ways. If no surplus is available, a farmer cannot be 大47家. He must either sell some of his property or 大48家 extra funds in the form of loans. Naturally he will try to borrow money at a low 大49家 of interest, but loans of this kind are not 大50家 obtainable.

41. [A] other than 42. [A] only if 43. [A] for

[B] as well as [B] much as [B] against [B] purchase [B] mix

[C] instead of

[D] more than [D] ever since [D] towards [D] dispose [D] raise [D] channels

[C] long before [C] of

44. [A] replace 45. [A] enhance 46. [A] vessels

[C] supplement [C] feed [C] paths

[B] routes

Born to win

47. [A] self-confident 48. [A] search

[B] self-sufficient [B] save

[C] self-satisfied [D] self-restrained [C] offer [C] rate

[D] seek [D] ratio [D] frequently

49. [A] proportion 50. [A] genuinely

[B] percentage [B] obviously

[C] presumably

Section III Reading Comprehension

Directions:

Each of the passages below is followed by some questions. For each question there are four answers marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each of the questions. Then mark your answer on ANSWER SHEET 1 by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets with a pencil. (40 points)

Text 1

A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world’s best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.

It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea’s LG Electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America’s machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.

All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.

Born to win

How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. “American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted,” according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity,” says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as “a golden age of business management in the United States.”

51. The U.S. achieved its predominance after World War II because ________.

[A] it had made painstaking efforts towards this goal [B] its domestic market was eight times larger than before

[C] the war had destroyed the economies of most potential competitors [D] the unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy 52. The loss of U.S. predominance in the world economy in the 1980s is manifested

in the fact that the American ________.

[A] TV industry had withdrawn to its domestic market

[B] semiconductor industry had been taken over by foreign enterprises [C] machine-tool industry had collapsed after suicidal actions [D] auto industry had lost part of its domestic market 53. What can be inferred from the passage?

[A] It is human nature to shift between self-doubt and blind pride. [B] Intense competition may contribute to economic progress. [C] The revival of the economy depends on international cooperation. [D] A long history of success may pave the way for further development. 54. The author seems to believe the revival of the U.S. economy in the 1990s can

be attributed to the ________.

[A] turning of the business cycle [B] restructuring of industry [C] improved business management [D] success in education

Text 2

Born to win

Being a man has always been dangerous. There are about 105 males born for every 100 females, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70-year-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, boy babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when they are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of a baby (particularly a boy baby) surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost certain death. Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes, one more agent of evolution has gone.

There is another way to commit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. Few people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious communities, very few women have 15 children. Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has become average. Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminished. India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today -- everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring -- means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in upper-middle-class India compared to the tribes.

For us, this means that evolution is over; the biological Utopia has arrived. Strangely, it has involved little physical change. No other species fills so many places in nature. But in the pass 100,000 years -- even the pass 100 years -- our lives have been transformed but our bodies have not. We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us. Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution: they “look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension.” No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from Utopia we were, they will look just like us.

55. What used to be the danger in being a man according to the first paragraph?

[A] A lack of mates. [B] A fierce competition. [C] A lower survival rate. [D] A defective gene.

56. What does the example of India illustrate?

[A] Wealthy people tend to have fewer children than poor people. [B] Natural selection hardly works among the rich and the poor. [C] The middle class population is 80% smaller than that of the tribes. [D] India is one of the countries with a very high birth rate.

Born to win

57. The author argues that our bodies have stopped evolving because ________.

[A] life has been improved by technological advance [B] the number of female babies has been declining [C] our species has reached the highest stage of evolution [D] the difference between wealth and poverty is disappearing 58. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

[A] Sex Ratio Changes in Human Evolution [B] Ways of Continuing Man’s Evolution [C] The Evolutionary Future of Nature [D] Human Evolution Going Nowhere

Text 3

When a new movement in art attains a certain fashion, it is advisable to find out what its advocates are aiming at, for, however farfetched and unreasonable their principles may seem today, it is possible that in years to come they may be regarded as normal. With regard to Futurist poetry, however, the case is rather difficult, for whatever Futurist poetry may be -- even admitting that the theory on which it is based may be right -- it can hardly be classed as Literature.

This, in brief, is what the Futurist says; for a century, past conditions of life have been conditionally speeding up, till now we live in a world of noise and violence and speed. Consequently, our feelings, thoughts and emotions have undergone a corresponding change. This speeding up of life, says the Futurist, requires a new form of expression. We must speed up our literature too, if we want to interpret modern stress. We must pour out a large stream of essential words, unhampered by stops, or qualifying adjectives, or finite verbs. Instead of describing sounds we must make up words that imitate them; we must use many sizes of type and different colored inks on the same page, and shorten or lengthen words at will. Certainly their descriptions of battles are confused. But it is a little upsetting to read in the explanatory notes that a certain line describes a fight between a Turkish and a Bulgarian officer on a bridge off which they both fall into the river -- and then to find that the line consists of the noise of their falling and the weights of the officers: “Pluff! Pluff! A hundred and eighty-five kilograms.”

This, though it fulfills the laws and requirements of Futurist poetry, can hardly be classed as Literature. All the same, no thinking man can refuse to accept their first proposition: that a great change in our emotional life calls for a change of expression. The whole question is really this: have we essentially changed? 59. This passage is mainly ________.

[A] a survey of new approaches to art