2003年中国科学技术大学考博英语真题试卷(精选).doc

2003年中国科学技术大学考博英语真题试卷（精选）

(总分：114.00，做题时间：90分钟)

一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：5，分数：40.00)

When, in the age of automation, man searches for a worker to do the tedious, unpleasant jobs that are impossible to mechanize, he may very profitably consider the ape. If we tackled the problem of breeding for brains with as much as enthusiasm as we devote to breeding dogs of surrealistic shapes, we could eventually produce assorted models of useful primates, ranging in size from the gorilla down to the baboon, each adapted to a specific kind of work. It is not putting too much strain on the imagination to assume that geneticists could produce a super-ape, able to understand some scores of words, and capable of being trained for such jobs as picking fruit, cleaning up the litter in parks, shining shoes, collecting garbage, doing household chores, and even

baby-sitting(though I have known some babies I would not care to trust with a valuable ape). Apes could do many jobs, such as cleaning streets and the more repetitive types of agricultural work, without supervision, though they might need protection from those exceptional specimens of Homo sapiens who think it amusing to tease or bully anything they consider lower on the evolutionary ladder. For other tasks, such as delivering papers and laboring on the docks, our man-ape would have to work under human overseers; and, incidentally, I would love to see the finale of the twenty-first century version of on the Waterfront in which the honest but hairy hero will drum on his chest after-literally taking the wicked labor leader apart. Once a supply of nonhuman workers becomes available, a whole range of low IQ jobs could be thankfully relinquished by mankind, to its great mental and physical advantage. What is more, one of the problems which have plagued so many fictional Utopias would be avoided: There would be none of the degradingly subhuman Epsilons of Huxley's Brave New World to act as a permanent reproach to society, for there is a profound moral difference between breeding sub-men and super-apes, though the end products are much the same. The first would introduce a form of slavery; the second would be a biological triumph which could benefit both men and animals.（分数：8.00）

(1).In the author's opinion, the idea that geneticists could produce a super-ape is______.（分数：2.00）

A.irrational

B.plausible

C.biologically impossible

D.demonstrably true

(2).The type of job an ape could do without supervision would be one which is______.（分数：

2.00）

A.repetitive

B.mechanized

C.unusual

D.intricate

(3).A problem that has plagued some fictional Utopias is______.（分数：2.00）

A.creation of super-apes

B.the necessity of breeding super-humans

C.the necessity of breeding subhumans

D.the degradation of beasts

(4).The author of this article is______.（分数：2.00）

A.revealing his low opinion of mankind

B.poking fun at geneticists

C.expressing his doubts about the possibility of breeding a super-ape

D.presenting a reasonable theory in a humorous tone

As one works with color in a practical or experimental way, one is impressed by two apparently unrelated facts. Color as seen is a mobile changeable thing depending to a large extent on the relationship of the color to other colors seen simultaneously. It is not fixed in its relation to the direct stimulus which creates it. On the other hand, the properties of surfaces that give rise to color do not seem to change greatly under a wide variety of illumination colors, usually(but not always)looking much the same in artificial light as in daylight. Both of these effects seem to be due in large part to the mechanism of color adaptation mentioned earlier. When the eye is fixed on a colored area, there is an immediate readjustment of the sensitivity of the eye to color in and around the area viewed. This readjustment does not immediately affect the color seen but usually does affect the next area to which the gaze is shifted. The longer the time of viewing, the higher the intensity, and the larger the area, the greater the effect will be in terms of its persistence in the succeeding viewing situation. As indicated by the work of Wright and Shouted, it appears that, at least for a first approximation, full adaptation takes place over a very brief time if the adapting source is moderately bright and the eye has been in relative darkness just previously. As the stimulus is allowed to act, however, the effect becomes more persistent in the sense that it takes the eye longer to regain its sensitivity to lower intensities. The net result is that, if the eye is so exposed and then the gaze is transferred to an area of lower intensity, the loss of sensitivity produced by the first area will still be present and appear as an "afterimage" superimposed on the second. The effect not only is present over the actual area causing the "local adaptation" but also spreads with decreasing strength to adjoining areas of the eye to produce "lateral adaptation". Also, because of the persistence of the effect of the eye is shifted around from one object to another, all of which are at similar brightness or have similar colors, the adaptation will tend to become uniform over the whole eye.（分数：8.00）

(1).This selection is primarily concerned with______.（分数：2.00）

A.the eye's adaptation to color

B.the properties of colored surfaces

C.the color of colors

D.the effect of changes in color intensity

(2).Whether a colored object would, on two viewings separated in time, appear to the viewer as similar or different in color would depend mostly on______.（分数：2.00）

A.the color mechanism of the eye in use at the time of each viewing

B.whether the object was seen in artificial or natural light

C.what kind of viewing had immediately preceded each of the viewings

D.the individual's power of lateral adaptation

(3).If a person's eye has been looking at an object in bright sunlight for some time, and then shifts to an object not well lit, we can expect______.（分数：2.00）

A.a time lag in the focusing ability of the eye

B.some inability to see colors of the latter-named objects until loss of sensitivity has been regained

C.the immediate loss of the "afterimage" of the first object

D.the adaptation in the central area of the eye but little adaptation in the lateral areas to the new intensity level

(4).The present selection has apparently been preceded by some explanation of______.（分数：

2.00）

A.some experiments with color pigments

B.the nature of color

C.the color properties of various surfaces

D.the mechanism of the eye's adaptation to color

The Greek's lofty attitude toward scientific research—and the scientists' contempt of utility —was a long time dying. For a millennium after Archimedes, this separation of mechanics from geometry inhibited fundamental technological progress and in some areas repressed it altogether. But there was a still greater obstacle to change until the very end of the middle ages: the organization of society. The social system of fixed class relationships that prevailed through the Middle Ages(and in some areas much longer)itself hampered improvement. Under this system, the laboring masses, in exchange for the bare necessities of life, did all the productive work, while the privileged few —priests, nobles, and kings —concerned themselves only with ownership and maintenance of their own position. In the interest of their privileges they did achieve considerable progress in defense, in war making, in government, in trade, in the arts of leisure, and in the extraction of labor from their dependents, but they had no familiarity with the process of production. On the other hand, the laborers, who were familiar with manufacturing techniques, had no incentive to improve or increase production to the advantage of their masters. Thus, with one class possessing the requisite knowledge and experience, but lacking incentive and leisure, and the other class lacking the knowledge and experience, there was no means by which technical progress could be achieved. The whole ancient world was built upon this relationship — a relationship as sterile as it was inhuman. The availability of slaves nullified the need for more efficient machinery. In many of the commonplace fields of human endeavor, actual stagnation prevailed for thousands of years. Not all the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome could develop the windmill or contrive so simple an instrument as the wheelbarrow—products of the tenth and thirteenth centuries respectively. For about twenty-five centuries, two-thirds of the power of the horse was lost because he wasn't shod, and much of the strength of the ox was wasted because his harness wasn't modified to fit his shoulders. For more than rive thousand years, sailors were confined to rivers and coasts by a primitive steering mechanism which required remarkably little alteration(in the thirteenth century)to become a rudder. With any ingenuity at all, the ancient plough could have been put on wheels and the ploughshare shaped to bite and turn the sod instead of merely scratching it — but the ingenuity wasn't forthcoming. And the villager of the Middle Ages, like the men who first had fire, had a smoke hole in the center of the straw and reed thatched roof of his' one-room dwelling(which he shared with his animals), while the medieval charcoal burner(like his Stone Age ancestor)made himself a hut of small branches.（分数：8.00）

(1).Lack of technological progress in the ancient and medieval worlds was primarily due to the absence of______.（分数：2.00）

A.natural resources

B.inventive ability

C.people's desire for the "better things of life"

D.proper social organization

(2).During the Middle Ages, productivity of labor______.（分数：2.00）

A.was a primary concern of society

B.was hampered by class relationships

C.began to improve over levels reached by the Greeks

D.was in a period of technical progress

(3).We may infer that a change in class relationships after the close of the Middle Ages produced greater productivity because______.（分数：2.00）

A.freemen had incentive to produce more

B.masters had greater incentive to work their workers harder

C.slaves never starved, no matter what they produced

D.productivity could go in only one direction

(4).In supporting his contentions about the ancient world, the author relies mainly on illustrations drawn from______.（分数：2.00）

A.examples of the separation of mechanics and geometry

B.case studies of lack of social communication between classes

C.technology

D.his concern with the plight of the laboring classes

The evolution of sex ratios has produced, in most plants and animals with separate sexes, approximately equal numbers of males and females. Why should this be so? Two main kinds of answers have been offered. One is couched in terms of advantage to population. It is argued that the sex ratio will evolve so as to maximize the number of meetings between individuals of the opposite sex. This is essentially a "group selection" argument. The other, and in my view correct, type of answer was first put forward by Fisher in 1930. This "genetic" argument starts from the assumption that genes can influence the relative numbers of male and female offspring produced by an individual carrying the genes. That sex ratio will be favored which maximizes the number of descendants an individual will have and hence the number of gene copies transmitted. Suppose that the population consisted mostly of females, then an individual who produced sons only would have more grandchildren. In contrast, if the population consisted mostly of males, it would pay to have daughters. If, however, the population consisted of equal numbers of males and females, sons and daughters would be equally valuable. Thus a one-to-one sex ratio is the only stable ratio; it is an "evolutionarily stable strategy". Although Fisher wrote before the mathematical theory of games had been developed, his theory incorporates the essential feature of a game that the best strategy to adopt depends on what others are doing. Since Fisher's time, it has been realized that genes can sometimes influence the chromosome or gamete in which they find themselves so that the gamete will be more likely to participate in fertilization. If such a gene occurs on a sex-determining(X or Y)chromo-some, then highly aberrant sex ratios can occur. But more immediately relevant to game theory are the sex ratios in certain parasitic wasp species that have a large excess of females. In these species, fertilized eggs develop into females and unfertilized eggs into males. A female stores sperm and can determine the sex of each egg she lays by fertilizing it or leaving it unfertilized. By Fisher's argument, it should still pay a female to produce equal numbers of sons and daughters. Hamilton, noting that the eggs develop within their host —the larva of another insect — and that the newly emerged adult wasps mate immediately and disperse, offered a remarkably cogent analysis. Since only one female usually eggs in a given larva, it would pay her to produce one male only, because this one could fertilize all his sisters on emergence. Like Fisher, Hamilton looked for an evolutionarily stable strategy, but he went a step further in recognizing that he was looking strategy.（分数：8.00）

(1).The author suggests that the work of Fisher and Hamilton was similar in that both scientists______.（分数：2.00）

A.conducted their research at approximately the same time

B.sought to manipulate the sex ratios of some of the animals they studied

C.sought an explanation of why certain sex ratios exist and remain stable

D.studied reproduction in the same animal species

(2).It can be inferred from the passage that the author considers Fisher's work to be______.（分数：2.00）

A.definitive and thorough

B.inaccurate but popular, compared with Hamilton's work

C.accurate, but trivial compared with Hamilton's work

D.admirable, but not as up-to-date as Hamilton's work

(3).According to the passage, successful game strategy depends on______.（分数：2.00）

A.the ability to adjust one's behavior in light of the behavior of others

B.the degree of stability one can create in one's immediate environment

C.the accuracy with which one can predict future events

D.the success one achieves in conserving and storing one's resources

(4).It can be inferred from the passage that the mathematical theory of games has been______.（分数：2.00）

A.developed by scientists with an interest in genetics

https://www.360docs.net/doc/6e14408403.html,eful in explaining some biological phenomena

C.adopted by Hamilton in his research

D.based on animal studies conducted prior to 1930

Surprisingly enough, modern historians have rarely interested themselves in the history of the American South in the period before the South began to become self-consciously and distinctively "Southern" — the decades after 1815. Consequently, the cultural history of Britain's North American empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been written almost as if the Southern colonies had never existed. The American culture that emerged during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras has been depicted as having been simply an extension of New England Puritan culture. However, Professor Davis has recently argued that the South stood apart from the rest of American society during this early period, following its own unique pattern of cultural development. The case for Southern distinctiveness rests upon two related premises: first, that the cultural similarities among the five Southern colonies were far more impressive than the differences, and second, that what made those colonies alike also made them different from the other colonies. The first, for which Davis offers an enormous amount of evidence, can be accepted without major reservations; the second is far more problematic. What makes the second premise problematic is the use of the Puritan colonies as a basis for comparison. Quite properly, Davis decries the excessive influence ascribed by historians to the Puritans in the formation of American culture. Yet Davis inadvertently adds weight to such ascriptions by using the Puritans as the standard against which to assess the achievements and contributions of Southern colonials. Throughout, Davis focuses on the important, and undeniable, differences between the Southern and Puritan colonies in motives for and patterns of early settlement, in attitudes toward nature and Native Americans, and in the degree of receptivity to metropolitan cultural influences. However, recent scholarship has strongly suggested that those aspects of early New England culture that seem to have been most distinctly Puritan, such as the strong religious orientation and the communal impulse, were not even typical of New England as a whole, but were largely confined to the two colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Thus, what in contrast to the Puritan colonies appears to Davis to be peculiarly Southern —acquisitiveness, a strong interest in politics and the law, and a tendency to cultivate metropolitan cultural models — was not only more typically English than the cultural patterns exhibited by Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut, but also almost certainly characteristic of most other early modern British colonies from Barbados north to Rhode Island: and New Hampshire. Within the larger framework of American colonial life, then, not the Southern—but the Puritan colonies appear to have been distinctive, and even they seem to have been: rapidly assimilating to the dominant cultural patterns by the late Colonial period.（分数：8.00）

(1).The author is primarily concerned with______.（分数：2.00）

A.refuting a claim about the influence of Puritan culture on the early American South

B.refuting a thesis about the distinctiveness of the culture of the early American South

C.refuting the two premises that underlie Davis' discussion of the culture of the American

D.challenging the hypothesis that early American culture was homogeneous in nature

(2).According to the author, the depiction of American culture during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras as an extension of New England Puritan culture reflects the______.（分数：2.00）

A.fact that historians have overestimated the importance of the Puritans in the development of American culture

B.fact that early American culture was deeply influenced by the strong religious

orient-colonists

C.extent to which Massachusetts and Connecticut served as cultural models for the other American colonies

D.extent to which colonial America resisted assimilating cultural patterns that were typically English

(3).The passage suggests that by the late Colonial period the tendency to cultivate metropolitan cultural models was a cultural pattern that was______.（分数：2.00）

A.dying out as Puritan influence began to grow

B.self-consciously and distinctively Southern

C.more characteristic of the Southern colonies than of England

D.spreading to Massachusetts and Connecticut

(4).Which of the following statements could most logically follow the last sentence of the passage?（分数：2.00）

A.Thus, without the cultural diversity represented by the American South, the culture of colonial America would certainly have been homogeneous in nature.

B.Thus, the contribution of Southern colonials to American culture was certainly overshadowed by that of the Puritans.

C.Thus, convergence, not divergence, seems to have characterized the cultural development of the American colonies in the eighteenth century.

D.Thus, the culture of America during the Colonial period was far more sensitive to outside influence than historians are accustomed to acknowledge.

二、Structure and Vocabu(总题数：20，分数：40.00)

1.From 1965 to 1978 American consumer prices increased at an average annual rate of 5.7 percent. This ominous shift was followed by consumer price gains of 13.3 percent in 1979.（分数：

2.00）

A.promising

B.overwhelming

C.threatening

D.astonishing

2.In 1982, Hitachi was indicted for stealing confidential documents from IBM. As part of a court settlement, the company paid IBM hundreds of millions of dollars.（分数：2.00）

A.condemned for

B.accused of

C.disciplined for

D.disapproved of

3.The preserved food should retain palatable appearance, flavor, and texture, as well as its original nutritional value.（分数：2.00）

A.tasty

B.stylish

C.delicate

D.notable

4.The Austrian manufacturing industry consists of a few large organizations, many of which operate under government auspices .（分数：2.00）

A.supervision

B.orientation

C.regulation

D.sponsorship

5.European conservatives, until the end of the 19th century, rejected democratic principles and institutions. Instead they opted for monarchies or for authoritarian government.（分数：2.00）

A.chose

B.constructed

C.conceived

D.conserved

6.During the 19th century, Jews in most European countries achieved some equality of status with non-Jews. Nonetheless, at times Jews were harassed by anti-Semitic groups.（分数：2.00）

A.opposed

B.exploited

C.despised

D.annoyed

7.A corps of so-called barefoot doctors are trained in hygiene , preventive medicine, acupuncture, and routine treatment of common diseases.（分数：2.00）

A.nutrition

B.sanitation

C.nursery

D.welfare

8.Brazilian music is thoroughly imbued with African themes, and illustrious composers have long found inspiration in the black musical heritage.（分数：2.00）

A.imaginative

B.sensitive

C.distinguished

D.persistent

9.The Social Security Act did not include health insurance because the commission considered that its inclusion would jeopardize the passage of the act.（分数：2.00）

A.evade

B.endanger

C.exclude

D.enhance

10.Ideally, anatomical investigation consists of a combination of descriptive and experimental approaches. Present-day anatomy involves scrutiny of the structure of organisms at many levels of observation.（分数：2.00）

A.analysis

B.recognition

C.evaluation

D.examination

11.Not until the advent of histochemistry could the anatomist see through the microscope which cells carry specific enzymes or gauge how active these enzymes are in different cells under various conditions.（分数：2.00）

A.discern

B.grasp

C.measure

D.estimate

12.The prevailing wind is the wind direction most often observed during a given time period. Wind speed is the rate at which the air moves past a stationary object.（分数：2.00）

A.motionless

B.massive

C.flexible

D.noticeable

13.Britain occupied Java during the Napoleonic Wars. Both the British and later the Dutch tried to centralize and reform Java's administration. The Dutch wavered between opening the area to individual enterprise and reverting to a monopoly system.（分数：2.00）

A.resolved

B.reckoned

C.hesitated

D.discriminated

14.Although diverse, African music has certain distinctive traits , one of which is the use of repetition as an organizing principle.（分数：2.00）

A.benefits

B.features

C.notions

D.options

15.The advertising industry has resorted to self-regulation in a serious effort to curtail not only bad taste but also misrepresentation and deception in copy and illustrations.（分数：2.00）

A.avert

B.deny

C.exclude

D.reduce

16.The chief functions of direct-mail advertising are to familiarize prospective buyers with a product, its name, its maker, and its merits and with the product's local distributors.（分数：

2.00）

A.potential

B.responsive

C.inquisitive

D.perceptive

17.Australia began to assume its modern configuration by the Eocene Epoch, some 50 million years ago, when Antarctica broke away and drifted southward.（分数：2.00）

A.status

B.sphere

C.shape

D.situation

https://www.360docs.net/doc/6e14408403.html,cation in Russia and the other new countries faces especially daunting obstacles because the struggling economies of these nations often provide insufficient funds for education.（分数：2.00）

A.stunning

B.discouraging

C.concerning

D.prevailing

19.Admiral Cervera knew he was being ordered to certain destruction but felt compelled to obey. He chose the morning of July 3 for a gallant escape attempt.（分数：2.00）

A.daring

B.futile

C.critical

D.fruitful

20.The Second Hague Disarmament Conference of 1907 was marked more by discord than discourse,

a sign of the deteriorating world situation.（分数：2.00）

A.facilitating

B.upgrading

C.justifying

D.worsening

三、Error Identification(总题数：10，分数：20.00)

21.There is nothing in science A staling that it is good to attempt to save human lives. Saving Human lives B seems to be a C generally held value in most cultures of the world, but it is not D in some sense scientifically derived.（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 22.Theories have features that are A indicative of their truth, and the task of justification is to identify these features and B using them to guide choices C as to D which theories to believe.（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 23.The motivation of rapists is now A acknowledged to be a more complex matter B than being formerly believed; it C has come to be widely accepted that rape is not D necessarily the result of sexual desire.（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 24.The view A which elements of a culture are to be understood and judged B in terms of their relationship to C the culture as a whole led to the conclusion that the cultures themselves could not be D evaluated or graded as higher and lower, superior or inferior.（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 25.In the United States at the time of World War II, A when soldiers were screened B for military service the army defined C a minimal level of literacy as that D was normally achieved in the fifth grade.（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 26.Another factor in the display of art objects A concerns their continued preservation . Because of the sensitivity of some of the materials B used in their creation , it is necessary to control C within narrow limits the temperature, humidity, and lighting D which they are exposed.（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 27.A To be measured in terms of its members, teaching is B the world's biggest profession . Though the roles and functions of teachers C very from country to country , the variations are generally greater within a country than D they are between countries.（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 28.Recent reform efforts A have been focused on encouraging lifelong or recurrent education to meet B changing individual and social needs . Thus, not only C the number of students has increased , D but the scope of education has also expanded.（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 29.The market for A manufactured goods is B which economists call "imperfect", because each company has its own style; and all of the arts of advertisement and salesmanship are devoted C to making it D even more imperfect by attracting buyers to particular brand names.（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________ 30.Further education is officially A described as the post-secondary stage of education, B comprised all vocational and convocational C provision made for young people who have left school, D or for adults .（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________

四、Word Formation(总题数：5，分数：10.00)

31.In Yugoslavia, the late 1960s and early 1970s were marked by improved relations with other countries, regardless of their political 1.(orient)（分数：2.00）

填空项1:__________________

32.From 1948 to 1961, the proportion of American blacks earning less than $3000 a year declined from 78 to 47 percent; at the same time, blacks earning more than $10,000 increased 1 from less than 1 to 17 percent,(proportion)（分数：2.00）

填空项1:__________________

33.Like other blacks in the western hemisphere, the 1majority of African Americans were brought to North America as slaves between the 1700s and the early 1800s.(overwhelm)（分数：2.00）

填空项1:__________________

34.According to Ryle, the task of philosophy is to restate " 1misleading expressions" in forms that are logically more accurate,(system)（分数：2.00）

填空项1:__________________

35.Knowledge of microscopic anatomy was greatly expanded during the 20th century as a result of the development of microscopes that provided much greater resolution and magnification than had conventional instruments, thus revealing formerly unclear or 1detail.(visible)（分数：2.00）填空项1:__________________

五、English-Chinese Tran(总题数：1，分数：2.00)

36.The only solid pieces of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature. Indeed, I regard this as the major discovery of the past hundred years of biology. It would have amazed the brightest minds of the 18th century Enlightenment to be told by any of us how little we know and how bewildering seems the way ahead. It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of the 20th century science to the human intellect. In earlier times, we either pretended to understand how things worked or ignored the problem, or simply made up stories to fill the gaps. Now that we have begun exploring in earnest, we are getting glimpses of how huge the questions are, and how far from being answered. It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance, the worst spots and here and there the not-so-had spots.（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________

六、Writing(总题数：1，分数：2.00)

37.Write 200-250 words to comment on the topic given below. Use the proper space on the ANSWER SHEET. Topic: The More I Learn, The More Ignorant I Find Myself to Be（分数：2.00）

__________________________________________________________________________________________