2006年中国传媒大学考博英语真题及详解【圣才出品】

Part I Listening Comprehension (20％).

(略)

Part II Reading Comprehension (40%).

Directions: There are 4 four passages in this part Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements For each of them there are four choices marked A , B, C and D. You should decide on the host choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre. Passage one: Questions 21-15 are based on the following passage.

It is Frequently assumed that the mechanization of work has a revolutionary effect on the lives of the people who operate the new machines and on the society into which the machines have been introduced For example, it has been suggested that the employment of women in industry took them out of the household, their traditional sphere, and fundamentally altered their position in society. in the nineteenth century, when women began to enter factories, Jules Simon. a French politician. warned that by doing so, women would give up their femininity. Friedrich Engels however, predicted that women would be liberated from the “social, legal and economic subordination” of the family by technological developments that made possible the recruitment of “the whole female sex into public industry. “Observers thus differed conceding the social desirability of mechanization’s effects, hut they agreed that it weald transform

Historians, particularly those investigating the history of women now seriously question this assumption of transforming power. They conclude that such dramatic technological innovations as the spinning jenny, the sewing machine, the typewriter, and the vacuum cleaner have not resulted in equally dramatic social changes in women’s economic position or in the prevailing evaluation of women’s work, The employment of young women in textile mills during the Industrial Revolution was largely an extension of an older pattern of employment of young single women as domestics It was not the change in office Technology but rather the separation of secretarial work, previously seen as all apprenticeship for beginning managers, from administrative work that in the 1880’s created a new class of “deadened” jobs. Thenceforth considered “women’s work” The increase in the numbers of married women employed outside the home in the twentieth century had less to do with the mechanization of housework and an increase in leisure time for these women than it did with their own economic necessity and with high marriage rates that shrank the available poor of single women workers previously, in many cases, the only women employers would hire.

Women’s work has changed considerably in the past 200 yearn moving from the household to the office or the factory, and later becoming mostly white-collar instead of blearier work Fundamentally. However the conditions under which women work have changed little since before the Industrial Revolution: the segregation of occupations by gender lower pay for women as a group jobs that

require relatively low levels of skill and offer women little opportunity for advancement all persist, while women’s household labor remains demanding Recent historical investigation has led to a major revision of the notion that technology is always inherently revolutionary in its effects on society Mechanization may, even have slowed any change in the traditional position of women both in the labor market and in the home.

21. Which of the following statements best summarizes the main idea of the passage?

A. The effects of the mechanization of women’s work have not home out the

frequently held assumption that new technology is inherently revolutionary B. Recent studies have shown that mechanization revolutionizes a society’s

traditional values and the customary roles of its members.

C. Mechanization has caused the nature of women’s work to change since the Industrial Revolution.

D. the mechanization of work creates whole new classes of jobs that did not previously exist

22. The author mentions all of the following inventions as examples of dramatic technological innovations EXCEPT the

A. sewing machine

B. vacuum cleaner

C. typewriter

D. telephone

the following to be

an indication of a fundamental alteration in the conditions of women’s work?

A. Statistics showing that the majority of women now occupy white-collar positions

B. Interviews with married men indicating thin they are now doing some household tasks

C. Surveys of the labor market documenting the recent creation era new class

of jobs in electronics in which women workers outnumber men four to one D. Census results showing that working women’s wages and salaries are. on

the average, as high as those of working women.

24. The passage states that before tile twentieth century, which of the following was true of many employers?

A. They did not employ women in factories.

B. They tended to employ single rather than married women.

C. They employed women in only those jobs that were related in women’s traditional household work.

D. They resisted technological innovations that would radically change women’s roles in the family

25. Which of the following best describes the function of the concluding sentence of the passage?

A. It sums up the general points concerning the mechanization of work made

B. It draws a conclusion concerning the effects of the mechanization of work

which goes beyond the evidence presented in the passage as a whole

C. It restates the point concerning technology made in the sentence immediately preceding it

D. It qualifies the author’s agreement with scholars who argue for a major revision in the assessment of the impact or mechanization on society

【答案与解析】

21.A 文章第一段提出假定It is frequently assumed that the mechanization of work

has a revolutionary effect, “人们通常认为工作机械化能产生革命性影响”。第二、三段从历史学家的角度分析女性工作角色的转化，指出这项假定并不正确。A项指

出文章主旨：机械化对女性工作的影响并未证明人们经常持有的一个观点，即新技

术固然是革命性的。B项“机械化能带来社会传统价值观和社会成员角色的革命性

变化”和C项“机械化导致女性工作自工业革命以来有了本质的变化”与文意不符；

D项“工作机械化创造了全新的工作”，文中第二段只稍有提及。故答案为A。22.D 从第二段“innovations as the spinning jenny, the sewing machine, the

typewriter, and the vacuum cleaner”可知，A、B、C项都有提及，故答案为D。

23.A 作者在第三段第一句话指出，过去200年中，女性工作发生了巨大变化：从家庭主

妇转向办公室和工厂，逐渐成为白领阶层。A项符合要求，B、C、D项都是文中表面和次要方面，与题意“a fundamental alteration in the conditions of women’s work”“女性工作状况的根本变化”不符。

24.C 从文章第二段“largely an extension of an older pattern of employment of

young single women as domestics”可知，很多雇主只是从女性传统角色出发，雇用女性从事她们的传统工作。故答案为C。A、B、D均与文意不符。

25.A 全文讲述了机械化对女性角色转换的影响。文章最后一句“机械化甚至阻碍了而不

是推动了女性在工作和家庭两方面传统地位的转化”是对全文主旨的总结。故A项正确。B、C、D项与文意不符。

Passage Two: Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage.

Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance, were determined by technologists artisans, designers, inventors, and engineers---using non-scientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in the mind by a visual, nonverbal process.

In the development of Western technology it has been non verbal thinking, by and large that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details of our material surroundings pyramids cathedrals, and rockers exist not because of geometry or thermodynamics but because they were first a picture in the minds of those who built them The creative shaping process of a technologist’s mind can be seen in nearly every artifact that exists For example, in designing a diesel engine, a technologist might impress individual ways of nonverbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitive sense of rightness and fitness. What would be the