北京大学2011年博士研究生入学考试英语试题
Part One Listening Comprehension（略）
Part Two Structure and Written Expression (20%)
Directions: For each question decide which of the four choices given will most suitably complete the sentence if inserted at the place marked. Mark your choice on the ANSWER SHEET.
11. Whether the extension of consciousness is a“good thing”for human being is a question that______a wide solution.
A. admits of
B. requires of
C. needs of
D. seeks for
12. In a culture like ours, long______all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that the medium is the message.
A. accustomed to split and divided
B. accustomed to splitting and dividing
C. accustomed to split and dividing
D. accustomed to splitting and divided
13. Apple pie is______neither good nor bad;it is the way it is used that determines its value.
A. at itself
B. as itself
C. on itself
D. in itself
14. ______us earlier,______your request to the full.
A. You have contacted…we could comply with
B. Had you contacted…we could have complied with
C. You had contacted…could we have complied with
D. Have you contacted…we could comply with
15. The American Revolution had no medieval legal institutions to______or to root out, apart from monarchy.
A. discard
B. discreet
C. discord
D. disgorge
16. Living constantly in the atmosphere of slave, he became infected______the unconscious______their psychology. No one can shield himself______such an influence.
A. on…by…at
B. by…for…in
C. from…in…on
D. through…with…from
17. The effect of electric technology had at first been anxiety. Now it appears to create______.
A. bore
B. bored
C. boredom
D. bordom
18. Jazz tends to be a casual dialogue form of dance quite______in the receptive and mechanical forms of the waltz.
A. lacked
B. lacking
C. for lack of
D. lack of
19. There are too many complains about society______move too fast to keep up with the machine.
A. that have to
B. have to
C. having to
D. has to
20. The poor girl spent over half a year in the hospital but she is now______for it.
A. none the worse
B. none the better
C. never worse
D. never better
21. As the silent film______sound, so did the sound film______colour.
A. cried out for…cried out for
B. cry out for…cry out for
C. had cried out for…cried out for
D. had cried out for…cry out for
22. While his efforts were tremendous the results appeared to be very______.
A. trigger
B. meager
C. vigor
D. linger
23. Western man is himself being de-Westernized by his own speed-up,______by industrial technology.
A. as much the Africans are detribalized
B. the Africans are much being detribalized
C. as much as the Africans are being detribalized
D. as much as the Africans are a detribalized
24. We______admire his courage and self-confidence.
A. can but
B. cannot only
C. cannot but
D. can only but
25. In the 1930's, when millions of comic books were______the young with fighting and killing, nobody seemed to notice that the violence of cars in the streets was more hysterical.
A. inundating
B. imitating
C. immolating
D. insulating
26. ______you promise you will work hard,______support you to college.
A. If only…will I
B. Only…I will
C. Only if…will I
D. Only if…I will
27. It is one of the ironies of Western man that he has never felt______invention as a threat to his way of life.
A. any concern with
B. any concern about
C. any concern in
D. any concern at
28. One room schools, with all subjects being taught to all grades at the same time, simply______when better transportation permits specialized spaces and specialized teaching.
A. resolved
B. absolved
C. dissolved
D. solved
29. People are living longer and not saving enough, which means they will either have to work______longer, live______less in retirement or bailed______by the government.
A. in…for…up
B. for…on…out
C. by…in…on
D. on…for…out
30. The country's deficit that year______to a record 169.8 billion dollars.
A. soared
B. soured
C. sored
D. sourced
Part Three Cloze Test (10%)
Directions: Read the following passage carefully and choose ONE best word for each numbered blank. Mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET.
2009 was the worst year for the record labels in a decade. 31 was 2008, and before that 2007 and 2006. In fact, industry revenues have been 32 for the past 10 years. Digital sales are growing, but not as fast as traditional sales are falling.
Maybe that's because illegal downloads are so easy. People have been 33 intellectual property for centuries, but it used to be a time-consuming way to generate markedly 34 copies. These days, high-quality copies are 35 . According to the Pew Internet project, people use file-sharing software more often than they do iTunes and other legal shops.
I'd like to believe, as many of my friends seem to, that this practice won't do much harm. But even as I've heard over the past decade that things weren't 36 bad, that the music industry was moving to a new, better business model, each year's numbers have been worse. Maybe it's time to admit that we may never find a way to 37 consumers who want free entertainment with creators who want to get paid.
38 on this problem, the computational neuroscientist Anders Sandberg recently noted that although we have strong instinctive feelings about ownership, intellectual property doesn't always 39 that framework. The harm done by individual acts of piracy is too small and too abstract.“The nature of intellectual property,”he wrote,“makes it hard to maintain the social and empathic 40 that keep(s) us from taking each other's things.”
31. A.As
B. Same
C. Thus
D. So
32. A.stagnating
B. declining
C. increasing
D. stultifying
33. A.taking
B. robbing
C. stealing
D. pirating
34. A.upgraded
B. inferior
C. ineffective
D. preferable
35. A.numerous
B. ubiquitous
C. accessible
D. effortless
36. A.so
B. this
C. that
D. much
37. A.satisfy
B. help
C. reconcile
D. equate
38. A.Based
B. Capitalizing
C. Reflecting
D. Drawing
39. A.match up with B.fill in
C. fit into
D. set up
40. A.constraints
B. consciousness
C. norm
D. etiquette
Part Four Reading Comprehension (20%)
Directions: Each of the following four passages is followed by some questions or unfinished statement. For each question or unfinished statement, four answers are given. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question. Mark your choices on the ANSWER SHEET.
Passage One
Cancer has always been with us, but not always in the same way. Its care and management have differed over time, of course, but so, too, have its identity, visibility, and meanings. Pick up the thread of history at its most distant end and you have cancer the crab—so named either because of the ramifying venous processes spreading out from a tumor or because its pain is like the pinch of a crab's claw. Premodern cancer is a lump, a swelling that sometimes breaks through the skin in ulcerations producing foul-smelling discharges. The ancient Egyptians knew about many tumors that had a bad outcome, and the Greeks made a distinction between benign tumors (oncos) and malignant ones (carcinos). In the second century A.D., Galen reckoned that the cause was systemic, an excess of melancholy or black bile, one of the body's four “humors,” brought on by bad diet and environmental circumstances. Ancient medical practitioners sometimes cut tumors out, but the prognosis was known to be grim. Describing tumors of the breast, an Egyptian papyrus from about 1600 B.C. concluded:“There is no treatment.”
The experience of cancer has always been terrible, but, until modern times, its mark on the culture has been light. In the past, fear coagulated around other ways of dying: infectious and epidemic diseases (plague, smallpox, cholera, typhus, typhoid fever);“apoplexies”(what we now call strokes and heart attacks); and, most notably in the nineteenth century, “consumption” (tuberculosis). The agonizing manner of cancer death was dreaded, but that fear was not centrally situated in the public mind—as it now is. This is one reason that the medical historian Roy Porter wrote that cancer is“the modern disease par excellence,”and that Mukherjee calls it“the quintessential product of modernity.”
At one time, it was thought that cancer was a“disease of civilization,”belonging to much the same causal domain as“neurasthenia”and diabetes, the former a nervous weakness believed to be brought about by the stress of modern life and the latter a condition produced by bad diet and indolence. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some physicians attributed cancer—notably of the breast and the ovaries—to psychological and behavioral causes. William Buchan's wildly popular eighteenth-century text “Domestic Medicine” judged that cancers might be caused by “excessive fear, grief, religious melancholy.”In the nineteenth century, reference was repeatedly made to a“cancer personality,”and, in some versions, specifically to sexual repression. As Susan Sontag observed, cancer was considered shameful, not to be mentioned, even obscene. Among the Romantics and the Victorians, suffering and dying from tuberculosis might be considered a badge of refinement;cancer death was nothing of the sort.“It seems unimaginable,”Sontag wrote,“to aestheticism”cancer.
41. According to the passage, the ancient Egyptians______.
A. called cancer the crab
B. were able to distinguish benign tumors and malignant ones
C. found out the cause of cancer
D. knew about a lot of malignant tumors
42. Which of the following statements about the cancers of the past is best supported by the passage?
A. Ancient people did not live long enough to become prone to cancer.
B. In the past, people did not fear cancer.
C. Cancer death might be considered a badge of refinement.
D. Some physicians believed that one's own behavioral mode could lead to cancer.
43. Which of the following is the reason for cancer to be called“the modern disease”?
A. Modern cancer care is very effective.
B. There is a lot more cancer now.
C. People understand cancer in radically new ways now.
D. There is a sharp increase in mortality in modern cancer world.
44. “Neurasthenia”and diabetes are mentioned because______.
A. they are as fatal as cancer
B. they were considered to be“disease of civilization”
C. people dread them very much
D. they are brought by the high pressure of modern life
45. As suggested by the passage, with which of the following statements would the author most likely agree?
A. The care and management of cancer have development over time.
B. The cultural significance of cancer shifts in different times.
C. Cancer's identity has never changed.
D. Cancer is the price paid for modern life.
Passage Two
If you happened to be watching NBC on the first Sunday morning in August last summer, you would have seen something curious. There, on the set of Meet the Press, the host, David Gregory, was interviewing a guest who made a forceful case that the U.S. economy had become “very distorted.”In the wake of the recession, this guest explained, high-income individuals, large banks, and major corporations had experienced a “significant recovery”; the rest of the economy, by contrast—including small businesses and “a very significant amount of the labor force”—was stuck and still struggling. What we were seeing, he argued, was not a single economy at all, but rather“fundamentally two separate types of economy,”increasingly distinct and divergent.
This diagnosis, though alarming, was hardly unique: drawing attention to the divide between the wealthy and everyone else has long been standard fare on the left. (The idea of“two Americas”was a central theme of John Edwards's 2004 and 2008 presidential runs.) What made the argument striking in this instance was that it was being offered by none other than the former five-term Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan: iconic libertarian, preeminent defender of the free market, and (at least until recently) the nation's foremost devotee of Ayn Rand. When the high priest of capitalism himself is declaring the growth in economic inequality a national crisis, something has gone very, very wrong.
This widening gap between the rich and non-rich has been evident for years. In a 2005 report to investors, for instance, three analysts at Citigroup advised that“the World is dividing into two blocs—the Plutonomy and the rest”:
In a plutonomy there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or “the UK consumer”, or indeed“the Russian consumer”. There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.
Before the recession, it was relatively easy to ignore this concentration of wealth among an elite few. The wondrous inventions of the modern economy—Google, Amazon, the iPhone broadly improved the lives of middle-class consumers, even as they made a tiny subset of entrepreneurs hugely wealthy. And the less-wondrous inventions—particularly the explosion of subprime credit—helped mask the rise of income inequality for many of those whose earnings were stagnant.
But the financial crisis and its long, dismal aftermath have changed all that. A multibillion-dollar bailout and Wall Street's swift, subsequent reinstatement of gargantuan bonuses have inspired a narrative of parasitic bankers and other elites rigging the game for their own benefit. And this, in turn, has led to wider-and not unreasonable-fears that we are living in not merely a plutonomy, but a plutocracy, in which the rich display outsize political influence, narrowly self-interested motives, and a casual indifference to anyone outside their own rarefied economic bubble.
46. According to the passage, the U.S. economy______.
A. fares quite well
B. has completely recovered from the economic recession
C. has its own problems
D. is lagging behind other industrial economies
47. Which of the following statements about today's super-elite would the passage support?
A. Today's plutocrats are the hereditary elite.
B. Today's super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves.
C. They are the deserving winners of a tough economic competition.
D. They are worried about the social and political consequences of rising income inequality.
48. What can be said of modern technological innovations?
A. They have lifted many people into the middle class.
B. They have narrowed the gap between the rich and the non-rich.
C. They have led to a rise of income inequality.
D. They have benefited the general public.
49. The author seems to suggest that the financial crisis and its aftermath______.
A. have compromised the rich with the non-rich
B. have enriched the plutocratic elite
C. have put Americans on the alert for too much power the rich possess
D. have enlarged the gap between the rich and non-rich
50. The primary purpose of the passage is to______.
A. present the financial imbalance in the U.S.
B. display sympathy for the working class
C. criticize the super-elite of the Unite States
D. appreciate the merits of the super rich in the U.S.
Passage Three
Charles Darwin's“On the Origin of Species”is credited with sparking evolution's revolution in scientific thought, but many observers had pondered evolution before him. It was understanding the idea's significance and selling it to the public that made Darwin great, according to the Arnold Arboretum's new director.
William Friedman, the Arnold Professor of Organism and Evolutionary Biology who took over as arboretum director Jan.1, has studied Darwin's writings as well as those of his predecessors and contemporaries. While Darwin is widely credited as the father of evolution, Friedman said the“historical sketch” that Darwin attached to later printings of his masterpiece was intended to mollify those who demanded credit for their own earlier ideas.
The historical sketch grew with each subsequent printing, Friedman told an audience Monday (Jan.10), until, by the 6th edition, 34 authors were mentioned in it. Scholars now believe that somewhere between 50 and 60 authors had beaten Darwin in their writings about evolution. Included was Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, a physician who irritated clergymen with his insistence that life arose from lower forms, specifically mollusks.
Friedman's talk, “A Darwinian Look at Darwin's Evolutionist Ancestors,” took place at the arboretum's Hunnewell Building and was the first in a new Director's Lecture Series.
Though others had clearly pondered evolution before Darwin, he wasn't without originality. Friedman said that Darwin's thinking on natural selection as the mechanism of evolution was shared by few, most prominently Alfred Wallace, whose writing on the subject after years in the field spurred Darwin's writing of “On the Origin of Species.” Although the book runs more than 400 pages, Friedman said it was never the book on evolution and natural selection that Darwin intended. In 1856, three years before the book was published, he began work on a detailed tome on natural selection that wouldn't see publication until 1975.
The seminal event in creating “On the Origin of Species” occurred in 1858, when Wallace wrote Darwin detailing Wallace's ideas of evolution by natural selection. The arrival of Wallace's ideas galvanized Darwin into writing“On the Origin of Species”as an “abstract”of the ideas he was painstakingly laying out in the larger work.
This was a lucky break for Darwin, because it forced him to write his ideas in plain language, which led to a book that was not only revolutionary, despite those who'd tread similar ground before, but that was also very readable.
Though others thought about evolution before Darwin, scientific discovery requires more than just an idea. In addition to the concept, discovery requires the understanding of the significance of the idea, something some of the earlier authors clearly did not have-such as the arborist who buried his thoughts on natural selection in the appendix of a book on naval timber. Lastly, scientific discovery demands the ability to convince others of the correctness of an idea. Darwin, through“On the Origin of Species,”was the only thinker of the time who had all three of those traits, Friedman said.
“Darwin had the ability to convince others of the correctness of the idea,”Friedman said, adding that even Wallace, whose claim to new thinking on evolution and natural selection was stronger than all the others, paid homage to Darwin by titling his 1889 book on the subject,“Darwinism.”
51. According to William Friedman, Darwin's“On the Origin of Species”is great in that______.
A. it was the most studied by later scientists
B. it had significant ideas about evolution
C. it was the first to talk about evolution
D. it was well received by the public
52. Friedman believes that Darwin attached a“historical sketch”to later printings of his book in an attempt to______.
A. credit the ideas about evolution before his
B. claim himself as the father of evolution
C. introduce his grandfather to the reader
D. summarize his predecessors' work
53. In Friedman's view, Darwin's originality lies in______.
A. his thinking on natural selection as the mechanism of evolution
B. his sharing ideas about evolution with his contemporaries
C. the way he wrote“On the Origin of Species”
D. the way he lectured on the ideas of evolution
54. We have learned that at first Darwin intended to write his idea in______.
A. a much larger book
B. a 400-page book
C. scientific terms
D. plain language
55. Scientific discovery requires all the following Expect______.
A. coming up with a new idea
B. understanding the significance of the idea
C. making claims to the idea by writing books
D. convincing others of the correctness of the ides
Passage Four
Many adults may think they are getting enough shut-eye, but in a major sleep study almost 80 percent of respondents admitted to not getting their prescribed amount of nightly rest. So, what exactly is the right amount of sleep? Research shows that adults need an average of seven to nine hours of sleep a night for optimal functionality. Read on to see just how much of an impact moderate sleep deprivation can have on your mind and body.
By getting less than six hours of sleep a night, you could be putting yourself at risk of high blood pressure. When you sleep, your heart gets a break and is able to slow down for a significant period of time. But cutting back on sleep means your heart has to work overtime without its allotted break. In constantly doing so, your body must accommodate to its new conditions and elevate your overall daily blood pressure. And the heart isn't the only organ that is overtaxed by a lack of sleeps. The less sleep you get, the less time the brain has to regulate stress hormones, and over time, sleep deprivation could permanently hinder the brain's ability to regulate these hormones, leading to elevated blood pressure.
We all hang around in bed during our bouts of illness. But did you know that skipping out on the bed rest can increase your risk of getting sick? Prolonged sleep deprivation has long been associated with diminished immune functions, but researchers have also found a direct correlation between“modest”sleep deprivation—less than six hours—and reduced immune response. So try to toughen up your immune system by getting at least seven hours of sleep a night, and maintaining a healthy diet. You'll be glad you got that extra hour of sleep the next time that bug comes around and leaves everyone else bedridden with a fever for three days.
During deep REM sleep, your muscles (except those in the eyes) are essentially immobilized in order to keep you from acting out on your dreams. Unfortunately, this effort your body makes to keep you safe while dreaming can sometimes backfire, resulting in sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain is aroused from its REM cycle, but the body remains in its immobilizing state. This can be quite a frightening sensation because, while your mind is slowly regaining consciousness, it has no control over your body, leaving some with a feeling of powerlessness, fear and panic. Most people experience this eerie phenomena at least once in their lives, but those who are sleep deprived are more likely to have panicked episodes of sleep paralysis that are usually accompanied by hallucinations, as well.
For a second, imagine all of your memories are erased;every birthday, summer vacation, even what you did yesterday afternoon is completely lost, because you have no recollection of them. It's a chilling thought, but that is what a life without sleep would be like. Sleep is essential to the cognitive functions of the brain, and without it, our ability to consolidate memories, learn daily tasks, and make decisions is impaired by a large degree. Research has revealed that REM sleep, or dream-sleep, helps solidify the“fragile”memories the brain creates throughout the day to that they can be easily organized and stored in the mind's long-term cache.
56. According to the passage, what is the meaning of“sleep deprivation”?
A. To sleep for an average period of time.
B. To sleep deeply without dreaming.
C. To sleep less than needed.
D. To sleep modestly.
57. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to Para. 3?
A. When everyone else gets a fever, those with sleep deprivation will be abele to sleep longer.
B. When everyone else gets a fever, those who usually have adequate sleep will be alright.
C. Only modest sleep deprivation could weaken the immune system.
D. Prolonged sleep deprivation will not have impact on the immune system.
58. Why is there the so-called“sleep paralysis”?
A. It occurs when you are unable to wake up from dreams while you are sleeping.
B. It occurs when you brain immobilizes your body in order to keep you from dreaming.
C. Because you are usually too frightened to move your body when waking up from deep REM sleep.
D. Because your body, immobilized when dreaming, may still be unable to move even when your brain is waking up.
59. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the last paragraph?
A. Memories are part of the cognitive function of the brain.
B. Memories created during the daytime are usually fragile and impaired.
C. You are likely to lose your memories of yesterday after a night's sleep.
D. Long-term memory cannot be formed without dream-sleep.
60. What effects of sleep deprivation on human mind and body are discussed in this passage?
A. High blood pressure, a toughened immune system, sleep paralysis, and memory loss.
B. Blood pressure, immune system, sleep paralysis, and long-term memory.
C. Blood pressure, immune system, the brain and the body, and memory.
D. High blood pressure, a weakened immune system, sleep paralysis, and memory loss.
Part Five Proofreading (15%)
Directions: In the following passage, there are altogether 15 mistakes, ONE in each numbered and underlined part. You may have to change a word, add a word, or just delete a word. If you change a word, cross it out and write the correct word beside it. If you add a word, write the missing word between the words (in brackets) immediately before and after it. If you delete a word, just cross it out. Put your answer on ANSWER SHEET (2).
Examples:
e.g. (61) The meeting begun 2 hours ago.
Correction put on the ANSWER SHEET (2):(61)
began
e.g. (62) Scarcely they settled themselves in their seats in the theatre when the curtain went up.
Correction put on the ANSWER SHEET (2):(62) (Scarcely) had (they)
e.g. (63) Never will I not do it again.
Correction in the ANSWER SHEET (2):(63) not
Wal-Mart announced Thursday afternoon that it would introduce a program nationwide called (61) “Pick Up Today” that allows customers to submit orders online and pick up their items few hours later in their local store. (62) The move is not revolutionary—Sears and Nordstrom, as instance, already have similar programs.
(63) Retailers say that tying online and in-store inventory together lets them to sell more products. (64) Nordstrom recently combined its inventory so that if the online stockroom is out of a jacket, a store that has it can ship to the Web customer. (65) Encourage customers to retrieve items they have ordered online in a store increases visits to the stores, which usually increases sales. (66) Best Buy offers both store pickup and“ship to store,”where items are shipped free from a local store. Ace Hardware, J.C. Penney and Wal-Mart itself are among the others offering“ship to store”programs.
In Wal-Mart's program, (67) that is expected to be nationwide by June, customers can select from among 40,000 items online. (68) They will send a text message or e-mail alerting them when the order is ready, which usually takes about four hours.
(69)“Not only we see it as a nice convenience for customers, but we also saw it as a way to drive incremental traffic to the stores, and incremental sales,” said Steve Nave, senior vice president and general manager of Walmart.com.
(70) The program will include about 40,000 items likewise electronics, toys, home décor and sporting goods. (71) As of now, it does not include groceries, though Mr. Nave did dismiss that possibility.
(72) “We're not ready to talk today about everything that's going on in grocery,” he said.“What we've tried to do is (73) focus on those categories where customers are most likely to be willing to make the purchase after they touch it or look at it. (74) This is a convenient play, trying to figure out what are the things that are going to drive more customers into the stores.”
Wal-Mart also announced that (75) it was shortened the time customers would have to wait for ship-to-store items, to four to seven days, from seven to 10 days.
Part Six Writing (15%)
Direction: Read the following paragraph and then write a response paper of about 250 to 300 English words. Write it neatly on ANSWER SHEET (2).
In China, minimum wage becomes higher in many places. But people disagree over its benefits and drawbacks. Supporters say it increases the worker's standard of living, while opponents say it increase unemployment. What do you think?