北京师范大学2011年博士入学英语试题与答案详解

北京师范大学2011年博士入学英语试题与答案详解

一、试题部分

Part I: Listening Comprehension(略)

Part II: Reading Comprehension

Directions: There are six passages in this part. Each of the passages is followed by five questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. choose the best one and mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET.

Passage One

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 entre 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.”Observes thus differed concerning the social desirability of mechanization’s effects, but they agreed that it would transform women’s lives.

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 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 an apprenticeship for beginning managers, from administrative work that in the 1880’s created a new class of “dead-end”jobs, thenceforth consider “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 pool of single women workers, previously, in many cases, the only women employers would hire.

Women’s work has changed considerably in the past 200 years, moving from the household to the office or the factory, and later becoming mostly white-collar instead of blue-collar work. Fundamentally, however, the conditions under which women work have changed little since before the industrial revolution: the segregation of occupations by sex, lower pay for women as a group, jobs that require relatively low levels of shill 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.

16. The main idea of the text is that mechanization_________.

A. does not perform an inherently revolutionary function

B. revolutionizes the traditional values of a society

C. has caused the nature of women’s work to change

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

17. In relation to those historians who study the history of women, the author most probably believes that_________.

A. they provide a valuable insight into the social phenomena affecting the position of women

B. their work can only be used cautiously by scholars in historical studies

C. they tend to draw less reliable conclusions than do other historians

D. their work has not had an impact on other historians’ current assumptions

18. The text states that, before the twentieth century, many employers_________.

A. employed women only in traditional household work

B. tended to employ single rather than married women

C. resisted changing women’s roles in their social life

D. hired only qualified women to fill the open position

19. According to the author, which of the following may indicate a fundamental alteration in working women’s conditions?

A. the majority of women occupy white-collar positions

B. married men are doing the same household tasks as are women

C. female workers outnumber male ones in a new class of jobs

D. working women’s pay is as high as that of working men

20. The function of the concluding sentence of the text is that_________.

A. it sum up the general points concerning the mechanization of work in the text

B. it draws a conclusion which goes beyond the evidence presented in the text as a whole

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

D. it suggests a compromise between two seemingly contradictory views stated in the text

Passage Two

Old people are always saying that the young are not what they were. The same comment is made from generation to generation and it is always true. It has never been truer than it is today. The young are better educated. They have a lot more money to spend and enjoy more freedom. They grow up more quickly and are not so dependent on their parents. They think more for themselves and do not blindly accept the ideals of their elders. Events which the older generation remembers vividly are nothing more than past history. This is as it should be. Every new generation is different from the one that preceded it. Today the difference is very marked indeed.

The old always assume that they know best for the simple reason that they have been around a bit longer. They don’t like to feel that their values are being questioned or threatened. And this is precisely what the young are doing. They are question the assumptions of their elders and disturbing their complacency. Office hours, for instance, are nothing more than enforced slavery. Wouldn’t people work best if they were given complete freedom and responsibility? And what about clothing? Who said that all the men in the world should wear drab grey suits and convict haircuts? If we ruin our minds to more serious matters, who said that human difference can best be solved through conventional politics or by violent means? Why have the older generation so often used violence to solve their problems? Why are they so unhappy and guilt-ridden in their personal lives, so obsessed with mean ambitions and the desire to amass more and more material possessions? Can anything be right with the rat-race? Haven’t the old lost touch with all that is important in life?

These are not questions the older generation can shrug off lightly. Their record over the past forty years or so hasn’t been exactly spotless. Traditionally, the young have turned to their elders for guidance. Today, the situation might be reversed. The old—if they are prepared to admit it—could learn a thing or two from their children. One of the biggest lessons they could learn is that enjoyment is not ‘sinful’. Enjoyment is a principle one could apply to all aspects of life. It is surely not wrong to enjoy your work and enjoy your leisure; to shed restricting inhibitions. It is surely not wrong to live in the present rather than in the past or future. This emphasis on the present is only to be expected because the young have grown up under the shadow of the bomb: the constant threat of complete annihilation. This is their glorious heritage. Can we be surprised that they should so often question the sanity of the generation that bequeathed it?

21. Which of the following features in the young is NOT mentioned? _________.

A. Better educated.

B. More money and freedom.

C. Independence.

D. Hard work.

22. What so the young reject most? _________.

A. Values.

B. The assumption of the elders.

C. Conformity.

D. Conventional ideas.

23. Why do the young stress on the present? _________.

A. They have grown up under the shadow of the bomb.

B. They dislike the past.

C. They think the present world is the best.

D. They are afraid of destruction.

24. What can the old learn from the young generation? _________.

A. Enjoyment is not sinful.

B. People should have more leisure time.

C. Men might enjoy life.

D. One should enjoy one’s work.

Passage Three

Two conditions are necessary for the formation of ice: the presence of water and temperatures below freezing. Ice in the atmosphere and on the ground can assume various forms, depending on the conditions under which water is converted to its solid state. Ice that forms in the atmosphere can fall to the ground as snow, sleet, or hail. Snow is an assemblage of ice crystals in the form of flakes; sleet is a collection of frozen raindrops, which are actually ice pellets. Hail consists of rounded or jagged lumps of ice, often in layers of water. In North America, ice forms in late autumn, winter, and early spring. On very large bodies of water, it may not form until late winter because there must be several months of low temperatures to chill such large amounts of water.

On puddles and small ponds, ice first freezes in a thin layer with definite crystal structure that becomes less apparent as the ice thickens. On lakes large enough to have waves, such as the Great Lakes, the first ice to form is a thin surface layer of