全国硕士研究生入学考试英语试题及答案1998年(2)

Part 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 the ANSWER SHEET I by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets. (40 points)
Passage 1
        Few creations of big technology capture the imagination like giant dams. Perhaps it is humankind's long suffering at the mercy of flood and drought that makes the ideal of forcing the waters to do our bidding so fascination. But to be fascinated is also, sometimes, to be blind. Several giant dam projects threaten to do more harm than good.
        The lesson from dams is that big is not always beautiful. It doesn't help that building a big, powerful dam has become a symbol of achievement for nations and people striving to assert themselves. Egypt's leadership in the Arab world was cemented by the Aswan High Dam. Turkey's bid for First World status includes the giant Ataturk Dam.
        But big dams tend not to work as intended. The Aswan Dam, for example stopped the Nile flooding but deprived Egypt of the fertile silt that floods left - all in return for a giant reservoir of disease which is now so full of silt that it barely generates electricity.
        And yet, the myth of controlling the waters persists. This week, in the heart of civilized Europe, Slovaks and Hungarians stopped just short of sending in the troops in their contention over a dam on the Danube. The huge complex will probably have all the usual problems of big dams. But Slovakia is bidding for independence from the Czechs, and now needs a dam to prove itself.
        Meanwhile, in India, the World Bank has given the go ahead to the even more wrong headed Narmada Dam. And the bank has done this even though its advisors say the dam will cause hardship for the powerless and environmental destruction. The benefits are for the powerful, but they are far from guaranteed.
        Proper, scientific study of the impacts of dams and of the cost and benefits of controlling water can help to resolve these conflicts. Hydroelectric power and flood control and irrigation are possible without building monster dams. But when you are dealing with myths, it is hard to be either proper, or scientific. It is time that the world learned the lessons of Aswan. You don't need a dam to be saved.

The third sentence of paragraph 1 implies that _____ .
A)people would be happy if they shut their eyes to reality
B)the blind could be happier than the sighted
C) over?excited people tend to neglect vital things.
D)fascination makes people lose their eyesight

In paragraph 5, “the powerless” probably refers to _____ .
A)areas short of electricity
B)dams without power stations
C)poor counrtries around India
D)common people in the Narmada Dam area

What is the myth concerning giant dams?
A)They bring in more fertile soil.
B)They help defend the country.
C)They strengthen international ties.
D)They have univeral control of the waters.

What the author tries to suggest may best be interpreted as _____ .
A)“It's no use crying over spilt milk”
B)“More haste, less speed”
C) “Look before you leap”
D)“He who laughs last laughs best”
Passage 2
        Well, no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain? Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revival. What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for real.
        The official statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump manufacturing and services together, productivity has grown on average by 1.2% since 1987. That is somewhat faster than the average during the previous decade. And since 1991, productivity has increased by about 2% a year, which is more than twice the 1978 87 average. The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle, and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend. There is, as Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary, says, a “disjunction” between the mass of business anecdote that points to a leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the statistics.
        Some of this can be easily explanied. New ways of organizing the workplace all that re engineering and downsizing - are only one contribution to the overalll productivity of an economy, which is driven by many other factors such as joint investment in equipment and machinery, new technology, and investment in education and training. Moreover, most of the changes that companies make are intended to keep them profitable, and this need not always mean increasing productivity:switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as much.
        Two other explanations are more speculative. First, some of the business restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done. Second, even if it was well done, it may have spread much less widely than people suppose.
        Leonard Schlesinger, a Harvard academic and former chief executive of Au Bong Pain, a rapidly growing chain of bakery cafes, says that much “re engineering” has been crude. In many cases, he believes, the loss of revenue has been greater than the reductions in cost. His colleague, Michael Beer, says that far too many companies have applied re engineering in a mechanistic fashion, chopping out costs without giving sufficent thought to long term profitability. BBDO's Al Rosenshine is blunter. He dismisses a lot of the work of re engineering consultants as mere rubbish - “the worst sort of ambulance cashing.”

According to the author, the American economic situation is _____ .
A)not as good as it seems
B)at its turning point
C)much better than it seems
D)near to complete recovery

The official statistics on productivity growth _____ .
A)exclude the usual rebound in a business cycle
B)fall short of businessmen's anticipation
C)meet the expectation of business people
D)fail to reflect the true state of economy

The author raises the question “what about pain without gain?” because _____ .
A)he questions the truth of “no gain without pain”
B)he does not think the productivity revolution works
C)he wonders if the official statistics are misleading
D)he has conclusive evidence for the revival of businesses

Which of the following statements is NOT mentioned in the passage?
A)Radical reforms are essential for the increase of productivity.
B)New ways of organizing workplaces may help to increase productivity.
C)The reduction of costs is not a sure way to gain long term profitability.
D)The consultants are a bunch of good for nothigns.
Passage 3
        Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of Gallileo's 17th century trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William Blake's harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The schism between sceience and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century.
        Until recently, the seientific community was so powerful that it could affort to ignore its critics - but no longer. As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked “antiscience” in several books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R.Gross, a biologist at the University of Verginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon?Haunted World, by Car Sagan of Cornell University.
        Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as “The Flight from Science and Reason,” held in New York City in 1995, and “Science in the Age of (Mis)information,”which assembled last June near Buffalo.
        Antiscience clearly means different things to different people. Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and other academics who have questioned science's objectivity. Sagan is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview.
        A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the antiscience tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.
        Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, those manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pretechnological utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are antiscience, as an essay in US News & World Report last May seemed to suggest.
        The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer and other consequences of industrial growth.
        Indeed, some observers fear that the antiscience epithet is in danger of becoming meaningless. “The term 'antiscience' can lump together too many, quite different things,” notes Harvard University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti Science. “They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those who regard themselves as more enlightened. ”
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全国硕士研究生入学考试英语试题及答案1998年(2)