全国2011年1月自学考试英语阅读（二）真题

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I. Reading Comprehension (50 points, 2 points for each)

Directions: In this part of the test, there are five passages. Following each passage, there arefive questions with four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose tile best answer and thenwrite the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet.

Passage One

Young girls and women need to be protected from inducements to smoke. Tobacco is a multinational, multi-billion dollar industry. It is also an industry under threat; one quarter of its customers, in the long-term, have been killed by using its product and smoking is declining in many industrialized countries. To maintain profits, tobacco companies need to ensure that at least 2.7 million new smokers, usually young people, start smoking every year. Women have been clearly identified as a key target group for tobacco advertising in both the industrialized and developing worlds. Billions of US dollars each year are spent on promoting this lethal product specifically to women.

This strategy has been highlighted by several tobacco journals which have carried articles on 'targeting the female smokers' and suggesting that retailers should “look to the ladies”. Among 20 US magazines that received the most cigarette advertising revenue in 1985, eight were women's magazines. In the same year, a study on the cigarette advertising policies of 53 British women's magazines showed that 64 percent of the magazines accepted cigarette advertising, which represented an average of seven percent of total advertising revenue.

Research in industrialized countries has shown the subtle method used to encourage girls to smoke. The impact of such method is likely to be even greater in developing countries, where young people are generally less knowledgeable about smoking hazards and may be more attracted by glamorous, affluent, desirable images of the female smoker. This is why World Health Organization (WHO), together with other national and international health agencies, has repeatedly called for national legislation banning all forms of tobacco promotion, and for an appropriate 'high price' policy which would slow down the “enthusiasm” of young women for tobacco consumption.

Young girls and women have a right to be informed about the damage that smoking can do to their health. They also need to acquire skills to resist pressure to start smoking or to give it up. Several countries have developed integrated school health education programs which have successfully reduced girls' smoking rates, but this education should not be restricted to what happens in school. There are many other examples of effective cessation programs in the workplace and primary health centers. Unfortunately, many women do not have the opportunity to be involved in such programs, and programs have generally been less successful with women than with men.

In order for women to become, and remain, non-smokers they need support. Environments need to be created which enable them to break free of this health damaging behavior, to make the healthy choices the best choices.

Questions 1-5 are based on Passage One.

1. In paragraph one, why does the author say that the tobacco industry is under threat?

A. There are fewer smokers in the industrialized world.

B. The government is exerting stricter regulations.

C. Anti-smoking campaigns are on the rise.

D. It is constantly being sued.

2. According to the passage, in order to guarantee profit, the tobacco industry needs to ______.

A. use their advertising money more wisely

B. enrich its varieties to attract people of all ages

C. counteract the influence of anti-smoking campaigns

D. get millions more people to take up smoking every year

3. “This strategy” in paragraph two refers to ______.

A. producing cigarettes appealing to women

B. promoting tobacco specially to women

C. inviting celebrities to endorse cigarettes

D. advertising mainly in best-selling women's magazines

4. What can we learn about young people in developing countries?

A. They can hardly afford cigarettes.

B. They read many cigarette advertisements.

C. They seldom smoke imported cigarettes.

D. They are less informed of smoking hazards.

5. Which of the following is true of the cessation programs mentioned in paragraph four?

A. They have reached their goals sooner than planned.

B. They have operated more successfully on campus.

C. They have produced better results with male smokers.

D. They have gained greater popularity in developing countries.

Passage Two

Any discussion of English conversation, like any English conversation, must begin with The Weather. And in this spirit of observing traditional protocol, I shall quote Dr Johnson's famous comment that 'When two English meet, their first talk is of the weather', and point out that this observation is as accurate now as it was over two hundred years ago.

This, however, is the point at which most commentators either stop, or try, and fail, to come up with a convincing explanation for the English “obsession” with the weather. They fail because their premise is mistaken: they assume that our conversations about the weather are conversations about the weather. In other words, they assume that we talk about the weather because we have a keen interest in the subject. Most of them then try to figure out what it is about the English weather that is so fascinating.

Bill Bryson, for example, concludes that the English weather is not at all fascinating, and presumably that our obsession with it is therefore inexplicable: “To an outsider, the most striking thing about the English weather is that there is not very much of it. All those phenomena that elsewhere give nature an edge of excitement, unpredictability and danger - tornados, monsoons, hailstorms – are almost wholly unknown in the British Isles.”

Jeremy Paxman takes offence at Bryson's dismissive comments and argues that the English weather is intrinsically fascinating:

Bryson misses the point. The interest is less in the phenomena

themselves, but in uncertainty… one of the few things you can say about

England with absolute certainty is that it has a lot of weather. It may not

include tropical cyclones but life at the edge of an ocean and the edge of

a continent means you can never be entirely sure what you're going to get.

My research has convinced me that both Bryson and Paxman are missing the point, which is that our conversations about the weather are not really about the weather at all: English weather-speak is a form of code, evolved to help us overcome our natural reserve and actually talk to each other. Everyone knows, for example, that “Nice day, isn't it?”, “Ooh, isn't it cold?”; and other variations on the theme are not requests for meteorological data: they are ritual greetings or conversation-starters. In other words, English weather-speak is a form of “grooming talk” - the human equivalent of what is known as “social grooming” among our primate cousins, where they spend hours grooming each other's fur, even when they are perfectly clean, as a means of social bonding.

Questions 6-10 are based on Passage Two.

6. According to the author, most commentators' explanations for the English love for weather talk are ______.

A. misleading                    B. incorrect

C. absurd                          D. biased

7. As is stated in the passage, most commentators try to find out ______.

A. why the English weather is so unique

B. whether the English enjoy their weather

C. why the English are keen on the topic of weather

D. whether the English really talk about weather when they do so

8. In Bill Bryson's opinion, the English obsession with their weather is ______.

A. interesting                      B. unjustified

C. exaggerated                     D. understandable

9. Disapproving of Bill Bryson's opinion, Jeremy Paxman argues that ______.

A. the English talk about their weather because it is unpredictable

B. the English don't talk about weather as often as the outsiders think

C. the English weather can be as exciting as anywhere else's

D. the English weather talk is merely a form of small talk

10. According to the author, English weather-speak is similar to primates' social grooming in that they are both ______.

A. ways of greeting

B. means of social bonding

C. fascinating topics for anthropologists

D. inexplicable phenomena to outsiders

Passage Three

Add CO2 to the atmosphere, and the climate will get warmer - that much is well established. But climate change and carbon aren't in a one-to-one relationship. If they were, climate modeling would be a cinch. How much the globe will warm if we put a certain amount of CO2 into the air depends on the sensitivity of the climate. How vulnerable is the polar sea ice; how rapidly might the Amazon dry up; how fast could the Greenland ice cap disintegrate? That’s why models like those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change spit out a range of predictions for future warming, rather than a single neat number.

One of the biggest questions in climate sensitivity has been the role of low-level cloud cover. Low-altitude clouds reflect some of the sun's radiation back into the atmosphere, cooling the earth. It's not yet known whether global warming will dissipate clouds, which would effectively speed up the process of climate change, or increase cloud cover, which would slow it down.

But a new study published in the July 24 issue of Science is clearing the haze. A group of researchers from the University of Miami studied cloud data of the northeast Pacific Ocean over the past 50 years and combined that with climate models. They found that low-level clouds tend to dissipate as the ocean warms - which means a warmer world could well have less cloud cover. “That would create positive feedback, a reinforcing cycle that continues to warm the climate,” says Amy Clement, the leading author of the Science study.

The data showed that as the Pacific Ocean has warmed over the past several decades - part of the gradual process of global warming-low-level cloud cover has lessened. That might be due to the fact that as the earth's surface warms, the atmosphere becomes more unstable and draws up water vapor from low altitudes to form deep clouds high in the sky. (Those types of high - altitude clouds don’t have the same cooling effect.) The Science study also found that as the oceans warmed, the trade winds - the easterly surface winds that blow near the equator - weakened, which further dissipated the low clouds. The question now is whether this process will continue in the future, as the world keeps warming.

Questions 11-15 are based on Passage Three.

11. We can learn from paragraph one that climate models ______.

A. can only give a broad picture instead of detailed data

B. become easier to establish with current technology

C. leave much for improvement in terms of accuracy

D. fail to predict some climate changes

12. What is true of low-level cloud cover according to the passage?

A. It is rather sensitive to temperature changes.

B. It has a cooling effect on the earth surface.

C. It functions more effectively in warmer areas.

D. It is more often than not neglected in climate modeling.

13. The word “haze” in paragraph three is closest in meaning to ______.

A. mist                          B. puzzle

C. solution                       D. misunderstanding

14. “Positive feedback” in paragraph three refers to ______.

A. predictable climate patterns relating to calculable cloud volume

B. the thickening cloud cover, cooling down the earth surface

C. the reinforcing effect of cooler cloud temperature on regional climate

D. a warmer climate resulting in less cloud cover, which in turn warms the climate

15. The lessening of low-level cloud cover over the Pacific Ocean may be caused by ______.

A. more trade winds in this region

B. the climate change around the equator

C. less water vapor at low altitude

D. the unstable air pressure over the ocean

Passage Four

On a hot summer's day many years ago, I was on my way to pick up two items at the supermarket. I was then a frequent visitor to it because there never seemed to be enough money for a whole week's food-shopping at once.

My wife, after a tragic battle with cancer, had died just a few months earlier. There was no insurance -just many expenses and a mountain of bills. I held a part-time job, which barely generated enough money to feed my two young children. Things were really bad.

And so, with a heavy heart and four dollars in my pocket, I was on my way to the supermarket to purchase a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. The children were hungry and I had to get them something to eat. As I came to a red traffic light, I noticed on my right a young couple and a child on the grass next to the road. The noonday sun beat down on them without mercy.

The man held up a sign which read, “Will Work for Food.” The woman stood next to him, staring at the cars stopped at the red light. The child sat on the grass holding a one-armed doll. I noticed all this before the light changed to green.

I wanted so desperately to give them a few dollars, but if I did that, there wouldn’t be enough left to buy the food for my kids. Four dollars will only go so far. As the light changed, I took one last glance at them and sped off feeling both guilty and sad.

As I kept driving, I couldn't get the picture of them out of my mind. The sad, haunting eyes of the young couple stayed with me for about a mile. I could take it no longer. I felt their pain and had to do something about it. I turned around and drove back to where I had last seen them.

I pulled up close to them and handed the man two of my four dollars. There were tears in his eyes as he thanked me. I smiled and drove on to the supermarket. Perhaps both milk and bread would be on sale, I thought. And what if I only got milk alone, or just the bread? Well, it would have to do.

Questions 16-20 are based on Passage Four.

16. What can we learn from the passage?

A. The author went to the supermarket once a week.

B. The author went to the supermarket several times a week.

C. The author knew that milk and bread are the kids' favorite food.

D. The author would buy a whole week's food every time he went shopping.

17. Why did the young man stand under the burning sun at noon?

A. He wanted to stop the cars for food.

B. He wanted to beg for money.

C. He wanted to find an odd job.

D. He wanted to take a ride.

18. The “one-armed doll” in paragraph four is most probably meant to indicate that ______.

A. the child had a loving and caring heart

B. the doll had accompanied the child for years

C. the child was violent and mean to the doll

D. the family was too poor to afford a presentable toy

19. Why did the author decide to give the couple two dollars?

A. He just couldn't ignore their pains and sufferings.

B. He knew they would thank him for being so kind.

C. He believed they needed the money as much as he did.

D. He learned that both milk and bread were on sale that day.

20. Which of the following can best describe the author?

A. He was poor but sympathetic.       B. He was jobless and penniless.

C. He was mean and merciless.        D. He was down but not out.

Passage Five

Modern humans emerged some 250,000 years ago, yet agriculture is a fairly recent invention, only about 10,000 years old. Many crop plants are rather new additions to our diet: broccoli (a flowering mutant of kale) is thought to be only 500 years old. Most innovation is far more recent still. Although Austrian monk Gregor Mendel's pea plant experiments quietly laid the basic foundations of genetics in the mid-19th century, his work was rediscovered and applied to crop breeding only at the beginning of the 20th century.

Further advances have steadily accumulated. The 1940s saw the identification of DNA as genetic material and the adoption, by commercial breeders, of genetic modification - typically by applying chemicals or radiation to DNA to try to make plants with advantageous characteristics. The modifications ultimately led to the green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, during which time global wheat yields tripled. The 1980s and 1990s saw the commercial adoption of agricultural biotechnology, which has allowed breeders to introduce specific genes into crops from the same or different species. In 2004 the first plant genome was fully sequenced, and since then the number of plant gene sequences in GenBank, the public repository for gene sequence information, has been doubling every two years. Our knowledge is increasing exponentially, as it has been in other fields such as semiconductors and cellular telephony.

Our challenge is to increase agricultural yields while decreasing the use of fertilizer, water, fossil fuels and other negative environmental inputs. Embracing human ingenuity and innovation seems the most likely path. Plants did not evolve to serve humans, and their sets of genes are incomplete for our purposes. The integral role of modifying genes is obvious to all breeders, though sometimes painfully absent from the public's understanding of how modern agriculture succeeds. All breeding techniques, from before Mendel's time until today, exploit modifications to plant DNA. These modifications can take the form of mistakes or mutations that occur during natural cell division in the wild; the natural but random movement of DNA sequences from one part of a plant's genome to another; or the more precise insertion of known gene sequences using biotechnology. In all these cases, plant genes are moved within or across species, creating novel combinations. Hybrid genetics - the combination of different versions of the same gene – has resulted in spectacular yield increases. Largely as the consequence of using hybrid seed varieties, corn yields in the U.S. have increased more than 500 percent in the past 70 years.

Questions 21-25 are based on Passage Five.

21. Which statement is correct according to paragraph one?

A. Broccoli was first bred by Mendel.

B. Broccoli wasn’t considered edible until 500 years ago.

C. Mendel's work was considered most important in the history of genetics.

D. Mendel’s study found its major application some 100 years ago.

22. What was cited as a result of the green revolution?

A. Sharp rise in worldwide wheat production.

B. Extensive use of organic fertilizer.

C. Large-scale adoption of genetic modification.

D. Commercial success of genetically modified seeds.

23. Which statement is true of GenBank according to the passage?

A. The number of gene sequences has doubled since its foundation.

B. The commercial breeders are its main sponsors.

C. It is a genetic sequence database.

D. It was founded in 2004.

24. It can be learned from the passage that the significance of genetic modification is ______.

A. questioned by some critics         B. poorly conveyed to the public

C. appreciated by all breeders          D. fully understood only by scientists

25. The word “novel” in paragraph three is closest in meaning to ______.

A. artificial                      B. various

C. hybrid                         D. new

II. Vocabulary (10 points, 1 point for each)

Directions: Scan the following passage and find the words which have roughly the samemeanings as those given below. The number in the brackets after each word definition refersto the number of paragraph in which the target word is. Write the word you choose on theAnswer Sheet.

The number of violent teens has grown in recent years, even as the population of teenagers has contracted. But the teen population has bottomed out and is now on the upswing. If current rates of offending remain unchanged, the number of teens who commit murder and other serious violent crimes shall increase, if only because of the demographic turnaround in the population at risk. However, given the worsening conditions in which children are being raised, given the breakdown of all our institutions as well as of our cultural norms, given our wholesale disinvestment in youth, our nation faces the grim prospect of a future wave of juvenile violence that may make the coming years look like “the good old days”.

The hopeful news is that there is still time to stem the tide - to prevent the next wave of youth crime. But we must act now - by reinvesting in schools, recreation, job training, support for families, and mentoring. We must act now while this baby-boomerang generation is still young and impressionable, and will be impressed with what a teacher, a preacher, or some other authority figures has to say. If we wait until these children reach their teenage years and the next crime wave is upon us, it may be too late to do much about it.

The challenge for the future, therefore, is how best to deal with youth violence. Unfortunately, we are obsessed with quick and easy solutions that will not work, such as the wholesale transfer of juveniles to the jurisdiction of the adult court, parental responsibility laws, midnight curfews, the V-chip, boot camps, three strikes, even caning and capital punishment, at the expense of long-term and difficult solutions that will work, such as providing young children with strong, positive role models, quality schools, and recreation programs.

26. reduced in size  (Para. 1)

27. increase    (Para. 1)

28. the failure of a system   (Para. 1)

29. unpleasant and depressing   (Para. 1)

30. prevent something from spreading or developing   (Para. 2)

31. easily influenced   (Para. 2)

32. act or operate effectively   (Para. 3)

33. regulation requiring a person to be home at a certain prescribed time  (Para. 3)

34. involving the loss of life   (Para. 3)

35. activity people do for pleasure  (Para. 3)

III. Summarization (20 points, 2 points for each)

Directions: In this part of the test, there are ten paragraphs. Each of the paragraphs isfollowed by an incomplete phrase or sentence which summarizes the main idea of theparagraph. Spell out the missing letters of the word on your Answer Sheet.

Paragraph One

Desertification, drought, and despair - that's what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear. Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent. The Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall.

36. Sahara desert turns g        thanks to more rain.

Paragraph Two

Happiness research suggests that neither very good events nor very bad events seem to change people's happiness much in the long term. Most people, it seems, revert back to some kind of baseline happiness level within a couple of years of even the most devastating events, like the death of a spouse or loss of limbs. 

37. For the majority, there seems to be a b       for happiness level.

Paragraph Three

Daylight saving time began in the United States during World War I, primarily to save fuel by reducing the need to use artificial lighting. Although some states and communities observed daylight saving time between the wars, it was not observed nationally again until World War II.

38. Daylight saving time in the U. S. reduced e     consumption.

Paragraph Four

In the movie, the principal character, Leonard, can remember everything that happened before his head injury on the night his wife was attacked, but anyone he meets or anything he has done since that fateful night simply vanishes. He has lost the ability to convert short-term memory into long-term memory.

39. Leonard’s head injury has r      in his loss of long-term memory.

Paragraph Five

Well-intentioned parents have unwittingly left their kids defenseless against failure. The current generation of millennials (born between 1980 and 2001) grew up playing sports where scores and performance were downplayed because “everyone’s a winner”. And their report cards had more positive spin than an AIG press release.

40. Today's children have been poorly p     for failure.

Paragraph Six

The harp seal mom nurses her pup on 48% fat seal milk continuously for 12 days without eating. Her pup will gain an average of 2.3 kg per day during this 12-day nursing period, while mom herself will lose about 3.2 kg per day.

41. The harp seal mom's significant w      loss during nursing.

Paragraph Seven

Today roughly 17% of American kids and teens are obese, and parents cite obesity as a top concern for their children's health. Yet with so many other overweight kids in the class, it appears that parents can't recognize - or admit it to themselves - when their child is too heavy.

42. Parents may f      to realize it when their children are overweight.

Paragraph Eight

In the 1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency shut down thousands of leaky landfills, building larger ones with stricter environmental controls. Which means that if you do live near one, it's likely to be a whopper: There were 8,000 landfills in the United States in 1988, and there are fewer than 2,000 today.

43. The n      of landfills has decreased.

Paragraph Nine

The benefits of quitting smoking - reduced risk of cancer and many other health problems - are known. But for millions of smokers, the calming effect of a cigarette can be reason enough to start up again. Studies have found, however, that in reality, lighting up has the opposite effect, causing long-term stress levels to rise, not fall.

44. Smoking may well cause rather than r      stress.

Paragraph Ten

Some experts estimate that youngsters are bombarded with 10,000 food commercials each year during children's programming, and most of them aren’t promoting salads or fruit. All this marketing changes children’s taste preferences and causes them to crave - and beg for - unhealthy foods.

45. Food commercials are largely r        for children's unhealthy eating habits.

IV. Translation (20 points, 4 points for each)

Directions: In the following passage, there are five groups of underlined sentences. Read thepassage carefully and translate these sentences into Chinese. Write the Chinese version onyour Answer Sheet.

Let’s take the orthodox definition of the word bargain. It is something offered at a low and advantageous price. It is an opportunity to buy something at a lower price than it is really worth. 46. A more recent definition is: a bargain is a dirty trick to extort money from the pockets of silly and innocent people.

I have never attended a large company's board meeting in my life, but I feel certain that discussion often takes the following lines. The cost of producing a new - for example - toothpaste would make 80p the decent price for it, so we will market it at ￡1.20. 47. It is not a bad toothpaste (not specially good either, but not bad), and as people like to try new things it will sell well to start with; but the attraction of novelty soon fades, so sales will fall. When that starts to happen we will reduce the price to ￡1.15. And we will rush to buy it even though it still costs  forty-three percent more than its fair price.

Sometimes it is not 5p OFF but 1p OFF. What breathtaking impertinence to advertise 1p OFF your soap or washing powder or dog food or whatever. Even the poorest old-age pensioner ought to regard this as an insult, but he doesn’t. A bargain must not be missed. 48. To be offered a “gift” of one penny is like being invited to dinner and offered one single pea (tastily cooked), and nothing else. Even if it represented a real reduction it would be an insult. Still, people say, one has to have washing powder (or whatever) and one might as well buy it a penny cheaper.

The real danger starts when utterly unnecessary things become “bargains”. There is a huge number who just cannot resist bargains and sales. Provided they think they are getting a bargain they will buy clothes they will never wear, furniture they have no space for. Old ladies will buy roller-skates and nonsmokers will buy pipe-cleaners.

49. Quite a few people actually believe that they make money on such bargains. Some people buy in bulk because it is cheaper. At certain moments New Zealand lamb chops may be 3p cheaper if you buy half a ton of them, so people rush to buy a freezer just to find out later that it is too small to hold half a tone of New Zealand lamb.

To offer bargains is a commercial trick to make the poor poorer. When greedy fools fall for this trick, it serves them right. 50. All the same, if bargains were prohibited by law our standard of living would immediately rise by 7.39 percent.