2009年武漢大學考博英語真題

Part I Reading Comprehension (2' x20 = 40 points)

Directions: In this part of the test, there will be 5 passages for you to read. Each passage is followed by 4 questions or unfinished statements, and each question or unfinished statement is followed by four choices marked A, B, C and D. You are to decide on the best choice by blackening the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET.

Passage One

“There is a senseless notion that children grow up and leave home when they’re 18,and the truth is far from that,” says sociologist Larry Bumpass of the University of Wisconsin. Today,unexpected numbers of young adults are living with their parents. “There is a major shift in the middle class,” declared sociologist Allan Schnaiberg of Northwestern University whose son,19,moved back in after an absence of eight months.

Analysts cite a variety of reasons for this return to the nest. The marriage age is rising, a condition that makes home and its pleasantness particularly attractive to young people. A high divorce rate and a declining remarriage rate are sending economically pressed and emotionally hurt survivors back to parental shelters. For some, the expense of an away-from-home college education has become so excessively great that many students now attend local schools. Even after graduation, young people find their wings clipped by skyrocketing housing costs.

Living at home,says Knighton,a school teacher, continues to give her security and moral support. Her mother agreed, “It’s ridiculous for the kids to pay all that money for rent. It makes sense for kids to stay at home.” But sharing the family home requires adjustments for all. There are the hassles over bathrooms, telephones and privacy. Some families,however,manage the delicate balancing act. But for others,it proves too difficult. Michelle DelTurco, 24, has been home three times and left three times. “What I considered a social drink, my dad considered an alcohol problem,” she explains. “He never liked anyone I dated, so I either had to hide away or meet them at friends’ houses.”

Just how long should adult children live with their parents before moving on? Most psychologists feel lengthy homecomings are a mistake. Children, struggling to establish separate identities,can end up with “a sense of inadequacy, defeat and failure.” And aging parents, who should be enjoying some financial and personal freedom, find themselves stuck with responsibilities. Many agree that brief visits, however, can work beneficially.

1.According to the author,there was once a trend in the U. S.            .

A.for young adults to leave their parents and live independently

B.for middle class young adults to stay with their parents

C.for married young adults to move back home after a lengthy absence

D.for young adults to get jobs nearby in order to live with their parents

2.Which of the following does not account for young adults returning to the nest?

A.Young adults find housing costs too high.

B.Young adults are psychologically and intellectually immature.

C.Young adults seek parental comfort and moral support.

D.Quite a number of young adults attend local schools.

3.One of the disadvantages for young adults returning to stay with their parents is that            .

A.there will inevitably be inconveniences in everyday life

B.most parents find it difficult to keep a bigger family going

C.the young adults tend to be overprotected by their parents

D.public opinion is against young adults staying with their parents

4.According to the passage,what is the best for both parents and children?

A.They should adjust themselves to sharing the family expenses.

B.Children should leave their parents when they are grown up.

C.Adult children should visit their parents from time to time.

D.Parents should support their adult children when they are in trouble.

Passage Two

In a perfectly free and open market economy, the type of employer—government or private—should have little or no impact on the earnings differentials between women and men. However, if there is discrimination against one sex,it is unlikely that the degree of discrimination by government and private employers will be the same. Differences in the degree of discrimination would result in earnings differentials associated with the type of employer. Given the nature of government and private employers, it seems most likely that discrimination by private employers would be greater. Thus,one would expect that,if women are being discriminated against, government employment would have a positive effect on women’s earnings as compared with their earnings from private employment. The results of a study by Fuchs support this assumption. Fuchs’ results suggest that the earnings of women in an industry composed entirely of government employees would be 14. 6 percent greater than the earnings of women in an industry composed exclusively of private employees,other things being equal.

In addition, both Fuchs and Sanborn have suggested that the effect of discrimination by consumers on the earnings of self-employed women may be greater than the effect of either government or private employer discrimination on the earnings of women employees. To test this hypothesis,Brown selected a large sample of white male and female workers from the 1970 census and divided them into three categories: private employees, government employees, and self-employed. ( Black workers were excluded from the sample to avoid picking up earnings differentials that were the result of racial disparities. ) Brown’s research design was controlled for education, labor-force participation, mobility,motivation, and age in order to eliminate these factors as explanation of the study’s results. Brown’s results suggest that men and women are not treated the same by employers and consumers. For men, self-employment is the highest earnings category, with private employment next, and government lowest. For women, this order is reversed.

One can infer from Brown’s results that consumers discriminate against self-employed women. In addition, self-employed women may have more difficulty than men in getting good employees and may encounter discrimination from suppliers and from financial institutions.

Brown’s results are clearly consistent with Fuchs' argument that discrimination by consumers has a greater impact on the earnings of women than does discrimination by either government or private employers. Also,the fact that women do better work for government than for private employers implies that private employers are discriminating against women. The results do not prove that government does not discriminate against women. They do, however, demonstrate that if government is discriminating against women,its discriminating is not having as much effect on women’s earnings as is discrimination in the private sector.

5.The passage mentions all of the following as difficulties that self-employed women may encounter except            .

A.discrimination from consumers and suppliers

B.discrimination from financial institutions

C.problems in obtaining good employees

D.problems in obtaining government assistance

6.Which of the following conclusions would the author be most likely to agree with about discrimination against women by private employers and by government employers?

A.Both private employers and government employers discriminate with equal effects on women’s earnings.

B.Both private employers and government employers discriminate, but the discrimination by private employers has a greater effect on women’s earnings.

C.Both private employers and government employers discriminate,but the discrimination by government employers has a greater effect on women’s earnings.

D.Private employers discriminate: it is possible that government employers discriminate.

7.A study of the practices of financial institutions that revealed no discrimination against self-employed women would tend to contradict            .

A.some tentative results of Fuchs’ study

B.some explicit results of Brown’s study

C.a suggestion made by the author

D.Fuchs hypothesis

8.According to Brown's study, women’s earning categories occur in orders, from the highest earnings to the lowest earnings.

A.government employment, self-employment, private employment

B.government employment, private employment, self-employment

C.private employment, self-employment, government employment

D.private employment,government employment, self-employment

Passage Three

In America’s fiercely adversarial legal system, a good lawyer is essential. Ask O. J. Simpson. In a landmark case 35 years ago,Gideon v. Wainwright, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that indigent defendants must be provided with a lawyer at state expense because there could be no fair trial in a serious criminal case without one. “This seems to us to be an obvious truth,” wrote Justice Hugo Black in his opinion. At the time,the decision was hailed as a triumph for justice, an example of America’s commitment to the ideal of equality before the law.

This is the image most Americans still have of their criminal-justice system—the fairest in the world, in which any defendant, no matter how, gets a smart lawyer who,too often, manages to get the culprit off on a technicality. Nothing could be further from the truth. About 80% of people accused of a felony have to depend on a publicly-provided lawyer; but over the past two decades the eagerness of politicians to look harsh on crime,their reluctance to pay for public defenders, and a series of Supreme Court judgments restricting the grounds for appeal have made a mockery of Gideon. Today many indigent defendants, including those facing long terms of imprisonment or even death,are treated to a “meet’em and plead’em” defense—a brief consultation in which a harried or incompetent lawyer encourages them to plead guilty or, if that fails,struggle through a short trial in which the defense is massively outgunned by a more experienced, better-paid and better-prepared prosecutor.

“We have a wealth-based system of justice,” says Stephen Bright, the director of the Southern Center for Human Right. “For the wealthy, it’s gold-plated. For the average poor person, it’s like being herded to the slaughterhouse. In many places the adversarial system barely exists for the poor.”

Many lawyers,of course,have made heroic efforts for particular defendants for little or no pay,but the charity of lawyers can be relied on to handle only a tiny fraction of cases. As spending on police,prosecutors and prisons has steadily climbed in the past decade,increasing the number of people charged and imprisoned, spending on indigent defense has not kept pace, overwhelming an already hard-pressed system.

9.The word “indigent” most probably means            .

A.wealthy B. criminal C. poverty-stricken D. innocent

10.It can be inferred from the passage that O. J. Simpson was probably              .

A.a person who was found not guilty because he hired a very good lawyer

B.a person who won his case because he was provided with a lawyer at state expense

C.A person who was denied a lawyer and thus lost his case in the court

D.a brilliant lawyer who won numerous cases for the average poor people

11.What is the author’s view of America’s adversarial legal system?

A.It is the embodiment of the ideal of equality before the law.

B.It is the fairest criminal-justice system in the world.

C.As it is,it benefits the rich but works against the poor.

D.It is unfair by nature and should be overhauled.

12.Which of the following statements is true?

A.Lawyers who provide defense for the poor often work heroically for little or no pay at all.

B.As crime rate increases,American politicians have become more tolerant towards crime than before.

C.In America, if a person refuses to accept the judgment of a lower court, he can always appeal to the Supreme Court.

D.Government-provided lawyers tend to go through the formalities of defense and prove to be no match for the prosecutors

Passage Four

No reference book,perhaps no book of any kind except the Bible,is so widely used as “the dictionary”. Even houses that have few books or none at all possess at least one dictionary; most business offices have dictionaries,and most typists keep a copy on their desks; at one time or another most girls and boys are required by their teachers to obtain and use a dictionary.

Admittedly, the dictionary is often used merely to determine the correct spelling of words? or to find out the accepted pronunciation, and such a use is perhaps not the most important from an intellectual point of view. Dictionaries may,however, have social importance,for it is often a matter of some concern to the person using the dictionary for such purposes that he should not suggest to others,by misspelling a word in a letter, or mispronouncing it in conversation, that he is not “well-bred”,and has not been well educated.

Yet,despite this familiarity with dictionary, the average person is likely to have many wrong ideas about it, and little idea of how to use it profitably, or interpret it rightly. For example,it is often believed that the mere presence^of a word in a dictionary is evidence that it is acceptable in good writing. Though most dictionaries have a system of marking words as obsolete, or in use only as slang,many people,more especially if their use of a particular word has been challenged,are likely to conclude, i￡ they find it in a dictionary,that it is accepted as being used by writers of established reputation. This would certainly have been true of dictionaries a hundred years or so ago. For a long time after they were first firmly established in the eighteenth century, their aim was to include only what was used by the best writers,and all else was suppressed,and the compiler frequently claimed that this dictionary contained “l(fā)ow” words. Apparently this aspect of the dictionary achieved such importance in the mind of the average person that most people today were unaware of the great change that has taken place in the compilation of present-day dictionaries.

Similarly, the ordinary man invariably supposes that one dictionary is as good and authoritative as another, and,moreover, believes that “the dictionary” has absolute authority, and quotes it to clinch arguments. Although this is an advantage,in that the dictionary presents a definition the basic meaning of which can’t be altered by the speaker, yet it could be accepted only if all dictionaries agreed on the particular point in question. But ultimately the authority of the dictionary rests only on the authority of the man who compiled it,and,however careful he may be,a dictionary-maker is fallible: reputable dictionaries may disagree in their judgments, and indeed different sections of the same dictionary may differ.

13.Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?

A.The Bible is the most widely used reference book.

B.The dictionary is the most widely used reference book.

C.The dictionary is actually the more widely used book than the Bible.

D.The Bible is used as widely as the dictionary.

14.By “the great change” in present-day dictionaries,the author implies that            .

A.dictionaries seem to have many wrong ideas in them for the average persons

B.many average persons do not know how to use the dictionaries profitably

C.words appearing in a present-day dictionary may not be acceptable in good writing

D.dictionaries have different systems of marking the words they contain

15.Many people do not realize that            .

A.it is not easy for dictionary-makers to compile a dictionary

B.dictionaries have achieved such importance today

C.a dictionary today may contain “l(fā)ow” words

D.words in a dictionary may be out of date or used only as slang

16.When can one quote from dictionaries to settle his arguments decisively?

A.When he looks up in a dictionary that has absolute authority.

B.When the basic meaning of a word found in one dictionary is confirmed in other ones.

C.When a dictionary presents a definition that the basic meaning of which cannot be altered by the speakers.

D.When the compiler of the dictionary is a reputable person.

Passage Five

In these times,when our form of government is being criticized by people of many different beliefs, it is important that we understand the principles on which our society was founded. Too often these principles are disregarded by the very people who are most vociferous in defending the country against criticism. Basic to our democracy is a belief that truth can only be arrived at through a free interchange of ideas. Freedom of speech is one of our most cherished values. Nevertheless,with a total disregard of the principles of democratic fair play,the average citizen is apt to hurl rash accusations in an attempt to silence anyone who may not agree with him. Too many citizens understand democracy only as a slogan and have no real concept that democracy in practice means we must tolerate the expression of unpopular ideas.

Our list of deadly sins should be revised to include the misrepresentation of principles to gratify one’s personal spite or vanity, the betrayal of great causes by making them the cloak for personal advancement,and the debasement of high ideals by using them as a pretext for the calumniation of honorable men.

The common good should not be made a political football,for the only thing that binds men is a common trust, the thing that unites them is a cause they share. That cause must be something greater than mere personal promotion. The cause for which men live and fight cannot appeal to their pocketbook alone,but must also appeal to their hearts.

Let us take a lesson from those revolutionaries who promise impoverished people not only land but also a vision. It is true that their policies often contradict the promises they made, but they first win their way by proclaiming a vision which inspires people. Lenin himself, the supreme technician of policy,knew he could not achieve his ends simply by playing up discontents,master as he was at that game. He knew he could not win the people over merely by stirring up hatreds or appealing to self-interest. The people must feel the throb of a greater cause, glimpse a vision of a better world.

This vision is particularly necessary to win the loyalties of the young. We certainly will not inspire them if we make our case on the ground that capitalistic planning is more efficient than socialistic planning. Efficient for what? And for whom? The planners are sometimes efficient enough in seeking their own gain at the expense of the common good. No,we must seek stronger and higher grounds if we are to convince even ourselves that ours is the best way.

That is why it is deplorable that in this country we are so complacent about our heritage. We do not appreciate the strength and vitality of the thing that united us. So we carry little conviction when we are challenged to defend our way of life.

17.The author’s attitude toward the basic tenets of democracy is apparently one of            .

A.objective interest B. hostile antagonism

C. hesitant acceptance D. enthusiastic approval

18.The author implies that impoverished people often consider the promise of revolutionaries to be            .

A. false and treacherous B. credible and inspiring

C. ambiguous and confusing D. superficial and irrelevant

19.According to the author, which of the following most strongly unites men?

A.Self-interest.

B.The pressure of economic necessity.

C.Discontent with a common oppressor.

D.The shared ideal of making a better world.

20.The author’s primary purpose in the passage is to            .

A.praise the propaganda methods of other nations

B.encourage the spread of democracy to underdeveloped lands

C.urge greater devotion to the ideals of democracy

D.criticize those who put self-interest ahead of the interests of their country

Part II English-Chinese Translation (5' x4 =20 points)

Directions:Read the following passage, and then translate the underlined parts numbered from (1) to(4) , from English into Chinese. Please write your answer on the ANSWER SHEET.

21.The man whose life is centered around producing, selling and consuming commodities transforms himself into a commodity. He becomes increasingly attracted to that which is man-made and mechanical,rather than to that which is natural and organic. Many men today are more interested in sports cars than in women; or they experience women as a car which one can cause to race by pushing the right button. 22. Altogether they expect happiness is a matter of finding the right button,not the result of a productive,rich life,a life which requires making an effort and taking risks. In their search for the button,some go to the psychoanalyst,some go to church and some read “self-help” books. But while it is impossible to find the button for happiness, the majority are satisfied with pushing the buttons of cameras, radios,television sets,and watching science fiction becoming reality.

One of the strangest aspects of their approach to life is the widespread lack of concern about the danger of total destruction by nuclear weapons? a possibility people are consciously aware of. 23. The explanation, I believe, is that they are so frightened of the possibility of their personal failure and humiliation that their anxiety about personal matters prevent them from feeling anxiety about the possibility that everybody and everything may be destroyed. Perhaps total destruction is even more attractive than total insecurity and never-ending personal anxiety.

Am I suggesting that modern man is doomed and that we should return to the pre-?industrial mode of production or to nineteenth century “free enterprise” capitalism? Certainly not. 24. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and the full development of his potentialities—those of love and of reason一are the aims of all social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end,and should be prevented from ruling man.

Part II Chinese-English Translation (20 points)

Directions:Translate the following paragraph from Chinese into English. Please write your answer on the ANSWER SHEET.

科學是關(guān)于自然的知識總體, 它代表了人類的共同努力、洞察力、研究成果和智慧?？茖W并不是什么新東西, 在有文字記載的歷史以前, 當人們最初發(fā)現(xiàn)了在他們周圍反復出現(xiàn)的各種關(guān)系時, 就有了科學的開端。通過對這些關(guān)系的仔細觀察, 人們開始了解自然, 而由于自然的可靠性, 人們還發(fā)現(xiàn)他們能夠做出預測, 從而在某種程度上控制他們周圍的環(huán)境。

科學家是一群努力洞悉自然, 在表面雜亂無序中尋求規(guī)律的人。他們具有一種特殊的思考與分析能力, 具有無限的耐心進行觀察和收集數(shù)據(jù)。但是, 并不能把一切科學發(fā)現(xiàn)都歸因于能力和耐心, 科學發(fā)現(xiàn)常常與創(chuàng)造性的想象力緊密相關(guān)。的確, 想象力的飛躍往往是通向發(fā)現(xiàn)的第一步。另外, 科學家也以其誠實而著稱。他們非常重視誠實, 主要是因為誠實對他們至關(guān)重要。他們提出的每一個理論都要受到進一步的檢驗。每一個錯誤或謊言必將被發(fā)現(xiàn), 因此, 如果發(fā)現(xiàn)了與他們的想法相矛盾的證據(jù), 科學家不是隱瞞證據(jù), 而是修改甚至放棄他們的想法。這樣他們積累了極其大量的知識, 這些知識幫助我們更好地了解自己及周圍的世界。

Part IV Short Essay Writing (20 points)

Directions: Suppose you’ve read in an essay that states: “The computer is playing an increasingly important role in education so that some scholars get the idea that there will be no need for schools someday....” Write an article entitled Will Computers Replace Schools? You should write no less than 200 words.

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