北师大02-08考博Summary真题及部分答案总结

（2007）

Read the following passage carefully and write a summary of it in English in about 150 words.

Meaning and Characteristics of the Italian Renaissance

The word (过于具体) Renaissance means “rebirth.” (与下文重复) A number of people who lived in (过于具体) Italy between 1350 and 1550 believed that they had witnessed (过于具体) a rebirth of antiquity or Greco-Roman civilization, marking a new age. To them, the thousand or so years between the end of the Roman Empire and their own era was a middle period (hence the “Middle Ages”), characterized by darkness because of its lack of classic culture (铺垫). Historians of the nineteenth century later used similar terminology to describe this period in Italy. (铺垫) The Swiss historian and art critic Jacob Burckhardt created the modern concept of the Renaissance in his celebrated Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy published in 1860 (举例) . He portrayed Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as the birthplace of the modern world (the Italians were “the firstborn among the sons of modern Europe”) (与前文重复) and saw the revival of antiquity, “the perfecting of the individual,” and secularism as its distinguishing features. Burckhardt exaggerated the individuality and secularism of the Renaissance and failed to recognize the depths of its religious sentiment（详细陈述或让步）; nevertheless, he established the framework for all modern interpretations of the Renaissance（与主题不直接相联）. Although contemporary scholars do not believe that the Renaissance represents a sudden or dramatic cultural break with the Middle Ages, as Burckhardt argued—there was, after all, much continuity in economic, political, and social life between the two periods（让步）—the Renaissance can still be viewed as a distinct period of European history that manifested itself first in Italy and then spread to the rest of Europe.

Renaissance Italy was largely an urban society. As a result of its commercial preeminence and political evolution, northern Italy by the mid-fourteenth century was mostly a land of independent cities that dominated the country districts around them. These city-states became the centers of Italian political, economic, and social life. Within this new urban society, （铺垫，或属于次要原因）a secular spirit emerged as increasing wealth created new possibilities for the enjoyment of worldly things.

Above all, the Renaissance was an age of recovery from the “calamitous fourteenth century.” Italy and Europe began a slow process of recuperation from the effects of the Black Death, political disorder, and economic recession（详细陈述或举例论证）. This recovery was accompanied by a rebirth of the culture of classical antiquity. Increasingly aware of their own historical past, Italian intellectuals became intensely interested in the Greco-Roman culture of the ancient Mediterranean world. This new revival of classical antiquity (the Middle Ages had in fact preserved much of ancient Latin culture) affected activities as diverse as politics and art and led to new attempts to reconcile the pagan philosophy of the Greco-Roman world with Christian thought, as well as new ways of viewing human beings.（后果延伸）

A revived emphasis on individual ability became characteristic of the Italian Renaissance. As the fifteenth-century Florentine architect Leon Battista Alberti expressed it: “Man can do all things if they will.”（举例）A high regard for human dignity and worth and a realization of individual potentiality created a new social ideal of the well-rounded personality or universal person who was capable of achievements in many areas of life.（后果延伸）

These general features of the Italian Renaissance were not characteristic of all Italians but were primarily the preserve of the wealthy upper classes, who constituted a small percentage of the total population（详细陈述）. The achievements of the Italian Renaissance were the product of an elite, rather than a mass, movement.（与上文重复）Nevertheless, indirectly it did have some impact on ordinary people, especially in the cities, where so many of the intellectual and artistic accomplishments of the period were most visible. （详细陈述或属于不重要修饰语

（2006）

（2005）

Read the following passage carefully and then write a summary of it in English in about 150 words

A tool is an implement or device used directly upon a piece of material to shape it into a desired form. The date of the earliest tools is extremely remote. Tools found in northern Kenya in 1969 have been estimated to be about 2600000 years old, and their state of development suggests that even older tools remain to be discovered.

The present array of tools has as common ancestors the sharpened stones that were the keys to early human survival. Rudely fractured stones, first found and later “made” by hunters who needed a general-purpose tool, were a “knife” of sorts that could also be used to hack, to pound, and to grub. In the course of a vast interval of time, a variety of

single-purpose tools came into being. With the twin developments of agriculture and animal domestication, roughly 10000 years ago. The many demands of a settled way of life led to a higher degree of tool specialization; the identities of the ax, adz, chisel, and saw were clearly established more than 4000 years ago.

The common denominator of these tools is removal of material from a workpiece, usually by some form of cutting. The presence of a cutting edge is therefore characteristic of most tools. And the principal concern of toolmakers has been the pursuit and creation of improved cutting edges. Tool effectiveness was enhanced enormously by hafting---the fitting of a handle to a piece of sharp stone, which endowed the tool with better control, more energy, or both.

It is helpful to draw the distinction between hand and machine tools. Hand tools are those used by craftsmen in manual operations, such as chopping, chiseling, sawing, filing, or forging. Complementary tools, often needed as auxiliaries to the shaping tools, include such implements

as the hammer for nailing and the vise for holding. A craftsman may also use instruments that facilitate accurate measurements: the rule, divider, square, and others. Power tools---usually hand-held, motor-powered implements such as the electric drill or electric saw---perform many of the old manual operations and as such may be considered hand tools. Machine tools are analogous to hand tools in their function as shaping implements, but they require stationary mounting and mechanical drive for the working of strong materials, primarily metal, and the mass processing of precision parts.

During the evolution of tools over more than 2000000 years, using as principal materials, successively, stone, bronze, and iron, humans developed a number of particular tools. Taken together, these specialized tools form an inverted pyramid resting upon the first general-purpose tool. The nearly formless chopper. With the discovery of metals and the support of numerous inventions allowing their exploitation, the first approximations to the modern forms of the basic tools of the craftsman established themselves, with the main thrust of further development directed at improving the cutting edges.

The earliest tools were multipurpose; specialized tools were latecomers. A multipurpose tool, although able to do a number of things, does none of them as well as a tool designed or proportioned for one job and one material.

（2004）

Read the following passage carefully and then write a summary of it in English in about 120 words.

The success of failure of a company abroad depends on how effectively its employees can exercise their skills in a new location. That ability will depend on both their job-related expertise and the individual’s sensitivity and responsiveness to the new cultural environment. One of the most common factors contributing to failure in international business assignments is the erroneous assumption that if a person is successful in the home environment, he or she will be equally successful in applying technical expertise in a different culture.

Research has shown that failures in the overseas business setting most frequently result from an inability to understand and adapt to foreign ways of thinking and acting rather than from technical or professional incompetence. At home U.S. businesspeople equip themselves with vast amount of knowledge of their employees, customers, and business partners. Market research provides detailed information on values, attitudes, and buying preferences of U.S, consumers; middle-and upper-level managers are well versed in the intricacies of their

organization’s culture; and labor negotiators must be highly sensitive to what motivates those on the other side of the table. Yet when North Americans turn to the international arena, they frequently are willing to deal with customers, employees, and fellow workers with a lack of information that at home would be unimaginable.

The literature on international business is filled with examples of business miscues when U.S. corporations attempted to operate in an international context. Some are mildly amusing. Others are downright embarrassing. All of them, to one degree or another, have been costly in terns of money, reputation, or both. For example, when American firms try to market their products in other countries, they often assume that if a marketing strategy or slogan is effective in Cleveland, it will be equally effective in other parts of the world. But problems arise when cultural context changes.

Just as inattention to the cultural context can result in some costly blunders in marketing and management, it also can affect seriously the success of international business negotiations. Time, effort, reputation, and even contracts can be lost because of cultural ignorance. The world is changing faster than most of us can calculate, and if American businesspersons are to meet the challenges of an increasingly interdependent world, they will need to develop a better understanding of how cultural variables influence international business enterprises. A healthy dialogue between cultures and members of the international business community will be an important step in achieving that needed understanding.

(2003)

Read the following passage carefully and then write a summary of it in English in about 120 words.

Europe was the first of the major world regions to develop a modern economy based on commercial agriculture and industrial development. Its successful modernization can be traced to the continent’s rich endowment of economic resources, its history of innovations, the evolution of a skilled and educated labour force, and the interconnectedness of all its parts-both naturally existing and man-made—which facilitated the easy movement of massive quantities of raw materials and finished goods and the communication of ideas.

Europe’s economic modernization began with a marked improvement in agriculture output in the 17th century, particularly in England. The traditional method of cultivation involved periodically allowing land to remain fallow; this gave way to continuous cropping on fields that were fertilized with nature from animals raised as food for rapidly expanding urban markets. Greater wealth was accumulated by landowners at the same time that fewer farmhands were needed to work the land. The accumulated capital and abundant cheap labour created by this revolution in agriculture fueled the development of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.

The revolution vegan in northern England in the 1730s with the development of water-driven machinery to spin and weave wool and cotton. By mid-century James Watt had developed a practical steam engine that emancipated machinery from sites adjacent to waterfalls and rapids. Britain had been practically deforested by this time, and the incessant demand for

more fuel to run the engines led to the exploitation of coal as a major industry. Industries were built on the coalfields to minimize the cost of transporting coal over long distances. The increasingly surplus rural population flocked to the new manufacturing areas. Canals and other improvements in the transportation infrastructure were made in these regions, which made them attractive to other industries that were not necessarily dependent on coal and thus prompted development in adjacent regions.

Industrialization outside of England began in the mid-19th century in Belgium and northeastern France and spread to Germany, the Netherlands, southern Scandinavia, and other areas in conjunction with the construction of railways. By the 1870s the governments of the European nations had recognized the vital importance of factory production and had taken steps to encourage local development through subsidies and tariff protection against foreign competition. Large areas, however, remained virtually untouched by modern industrial development, including most of the Iberian Peninsula, southern Italy, and a broad belt of eastern Europe extending from the Balkans on the south to Finland and northern Scandinavia.

During the 20the century Europe has experienced periods of considerable economic growth and prosperity, and industrial development has proliferated much more widely throughout the continent; but continued economic development in Europe has been handicapped to a large degree by its multinational character—which has spawned economic rivalries among states and two devastating world wars-as well as by the exhaustion of many of its resources and by increased economic competition from overseas. Governmental protectionism, which has tended to restrict the potential market for a product to a single country, has deprived many industrial concerns of the efficiencies of large-scale production serving a mass market (such as is found in the United States). In addition, enterprise efficiency has suffered from government support and from a lack of competition within a national market area. Within individual countries there have been growing tensions between regions that have prospered and those that have not. This “core-periphery” problem has been particularly acute in situations where the contrasting regions are inhabited by different ethnic groups.

（2002）

Read the following passage carefully and then write a summary of it in English in about 120 words.

Developments in 19th century Europe are bounded by two great events. The French Revolution broke out in 1789, and its effects reverberated throughout much of Europe for many decades. World War I began in 1914. Its inception resulted from many trends in European society, culture, and diplomacy during the late 19th century. In between these boundaries---the one opening a new set of trends, the other bringing long-standing tensions to a head---much of modern Europe was defined.

Europe during this 125-year span was both united and deeply divided. A number of basic cultural trends, including new literary styles and the spread of science, ran through the entire continent. European states were increasingly locked in diplomatic interaction, culminating in continentwide alliance system after 1871. At the same time, this was the century of growing nationalism, in which individual states jealously protected their identities and indeed established more rigorous border controls than ever before. Finally, the European continent was to an extent divided between two zones of differential development. Changes such as the Industrial

Revolution and political liberalization spread first and fastest in western Europe---Britain, France, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, and, to an extent, Germany and Italy. Eastern and southern Europe, more rural at the outset of the period, changed more slowly and in somewhat different ways.

Europe witnessed important common patterns and increasing interconnections, but these developments must be assessed in terms of nation-state divisions and, even more, of larger regional differences. Some trends, including the ongoing impact of the French Revolution, ran through virtually the entire 19th century. Other characteristics, however, had a shorter life span.

Some historians prefer to divide 19th century history into relatively small chunks. Thus 1789-1815 is defined by the French Revolution and Napoleon; 1815-48 forms a period of reaction and adjustment; 1848-71 is dominated by a new round of revolution and the unifications of the German and Italian nations; and 1871-1914, an age of imperialism, is shaped by new kinds of political debate and the pressures that culminated in war. Overriding these important markers, however, a simpler division can also be useful. Between 1789 and 1849 Europe dealt with the forces of political revolution and the first impact of the Industrial Revolution. Between 1849 and 1914 a fuller industrial society emerged, including new forms of states and of diplomatic and military alignments. The mid-19th century, in either formulation, looms as a particularly important point of transition within the extended 19th century.

(2008)

build up ,and like some magnificent structure without foundation.

Answer:

（2007）

（2006）

Finland, an enormous land of unspoiled lakes and forests, nourishes Finnic genius of commitmen and coexistence with nature. The basic nucleus of the Finnic population are Finns coming from the Urals in the early century of the Christian age. Being such short history, Finland does not have enormous number of work of art, but it is still possible to meet craftsman in Savonlinna who are working according to the old techniques. Glas, which is a typical Finnish product, seems to sum up the characteristics of the world from which it originates: purity, simplicity, and a sense of nature. The forests and waters inspire contemporary works of art; and the meditative soul of the Finns, who blend in with nature, is nourished by these fresh color. Near Leiksa, an extraordinary sculptor working with wood is one of the example of contemporary artists who is inspired by nature.

（2005）

A tool is a device use directly upon a piece of material to shape it into a desired form. The date of the earliest toll is extremely remote. Stones as tool were the keys to early human survival. The twin development of agriculture and animal domestication developed the general-purpose tool into single-purpose tool. Generally speaking, tools are removal of material from workplace. It is helpful to draw the distinction between hand and machine tools. Hand tools are those used by craftsmen in manual operations. Machine tools are complementary to hand tools in their functions, but they require stationary, mounting and mechanical drive for the working of strong materials, primarily metal, and the mass processing of precision parts. The earliest tools were multipurpose; specialized tools were latecomers.

（2004）

(2003)

Europe was the first of the major world regions to develop a modern economy. Its

successful modernization facilitated the movement of raw materials and finished goods and the communication of ideas.

Concerning the time, it first began in the 17th century. The traditional method of cultivation involved allowing land to remain fallow thus fewer farmlands were needed to work the land and the accumulated capital and labor created by this revolution fueled the development of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.

Industrialization outside of England began in the mid-19th century in Belgium and spread to some of the other European countries. Although they had recognized the importance of factory production and had taken steps to encourage local development, there still existed large areas untouched by modern in industrial development. During the 20th century Europe has experienced periods of economic growth and prosperity, but continued economic development in Europe has been handicapped to a large degree by its multinational character.

（2002）

（2008）

The creation of a scientific method was critical to the development of science. In his book The Great Restoration, Francis Bacon put forth the call for the reconstruction of sciences, arts and all human knowledge on a correct foundation, the basis of which was inductive principles, or proceeding from the particular to the general. Bacon believed in the value of experiments and observations. Besides, he was more concerned with applied sciences than theoretical ones. He deemed that the purpose of science should be bringing discoveries and power to human beings and conquering nature. As he claimed, his new foundation was not for any specific branch of science, but for human utility and power. Of course, this began to be doubted as the major cause of the modern ecological crisis in the twentieth century.