南京大学考博英语2008 年 真题

2008

SECTION I

Part A

1. Until the constitution is____, the power to appoint ministers will remain with the president.

A) Corrected B) amended C) remedied D) revised

2. Several experts have been called in to plan ____ for boating, tennis, refreshments and children’s games in the projected town park.

A) equipment B)instruments C)implement D)facilities

3. You can try ___with the landlord for more time to pay the money.

A) pleading B) requesting C)demanding D)dealing

4. His sprained ankle ____ his chances of wining the tournament.

A) damaged B) broke C)ruined D)demolished

5. When he realized he had been ____ to sign the contract by intrigue, he threaten to start legal proceedings to cancel the agreement.

A) elicited B)excited C)deduced D)induced

6. While attempting to look into the case, ____.

A) he found it was difficult B)the case was difficult

C) it happened that the case is difficult C) difficult as the case

7. ____ you cannot pick me up at the airport, please call me immediately.

A) in order that B)in the event that C)if only D)unless

8. it is impossible that the brain, ____, will be replaced by computer.

A) as we know B)which we know C)we know that D) we know

9. it’s more difficult to solve a problem than ____.

A) a question is found B) finding a question

C) that of finding a question D) to find a question

10. ____ in doing an examination, the time passed by quickly.

A) Being absorbed B) Having been absorbed

C) When they were absorbed D) Be absorbed

Part B

11. It is the interaction between people, rather than the events that occur in their lives, that are

the main focus of social psychology.

12. Although we had been present at roughly the same time, Mr. Brown saw the situation quite different from the way I saw it.

13. Should John resign and Henry succeed him, we would have had a more vigorous leadership.

14. Historically, no artists have presented clearer or the more complete records of the development of human culture than sculptors have.

15. Although the police are given considerable authority by society to enforce its laws, they get a relatively low salary as compared with that of other occupational groups which have much fewer authority.

16. Thirteen hundred medical professionals, all of which have been trained to treat drug dependency, attended the annual convention sponsored by a society.

17. More than three years after moving from Australia to this remote point of England, we are still learning how things have done here.

18. There is few evidence that children in language classrooms learn foreign languages any better than adults in similar classroom situations.

19. When he speaks at banquets, he makes a point of going into the kitchen and to shake hands with every waiter and waitress.

20. Other guests at yesterday’s opening, which was broadcast alive by the radio station, included the princess and her husband.

Part C

Science writer must 21 information regarding scientific events. In this capacity, they make the information clearer and more understandable and help readers to coordinate fresh information 22 the knowledge they already have 23 they can relate it to personal circumstances. Science journalism also means making reader curious and entertaining them. Entertainment is the most successful didactic form. Journalists supply readers 24 material for further education and opinion-formation, because, in a society 25 terms like growth, market economy and full employment are filled with new meanings and basic technical innovation such as microelectronics and genetic engineering also makes 26 to the reader fields of knowledge hitherto 27 to him, conveys the

fascination of science and 28 readers to follow discussions and controversies between experts.

Do the popular science publications accomplish all this? If one analyzes the science magazines 29 to, one comes to the conclusion that science journalism has reached a high degree of maturity and finds the necessary reader 30.

21. A. elect B. filter C. choose D. select

22. A. to B. for C. with D. by

23. A. so that B. in order that C. in the fact that D. on condition that

24. A. for B. with C. on D. about

25. A. on which B. by which C. in which D. of which

26. A. access B. accessible C. accessary D. accessory

27. A. know B. known C. unknow D. unknown

28. A. makes B. helps C. enables D. unable

29. A. let B. referred C. related D. concerned

30. A. acceptance B. to accept C. acceptable D. acceptant

SECTION II

Passage 1

In the late 20th century, information has acquired two major utilitarian connotations. On the one hand, it is considered an economic resource, somewhat on par with other resources such as labor, material, and capital. This view stems from evidence that the possession, manipulation, and use of information can increase the cost-effectiveness on many physical and cognitive processes. The rise in information-processing activities in industrial manufacturing as well as in human problem solving has been remarkable. Analysis of one of the three traditional divisions of the economy, the service sector, shows a sharp increase in information-intensive activities since the beginning of the 20th century. By 1975 these activities accounted for half of the labor force of the United States, giving rise to the so-called information society.

As an individual and societal resource, information has some interesting characteristics that separate it from the traditional notions of economic resources. Unlike other resources, information is expansive, with limits apparently imposed only by time and human cognitive

capabilities. Its expansiveness is attributable to the following: (1) it is naturally diffusive; (2) it reproduces rather than being consumed through use; and (3) it can be shared only, not exchanged in transactions. At the same time, information is compressible, both syntactically and semantically. Coupled with its ability to be substituted for other economic resources, its transportability at very high speeds, and its ability to impart advantages to the holder of information, these characteristics are at the base of such societal industries as research, education, publishing, marketing, and even politics. Societal concern with the husbanding of information resources has extended from the traditional domain of libraries and archives to encompass organizational, institutional, and governmental information under the umbrella of information resource management.

The second perception of information is that it is an economic commodity, which helps to stimulate the worldwide growth of a new segment of national economies — the information service sector. Taking advantage of the properties of information and building on the perception of its individual and societal utility and value, this sector provides a broad range of information products and services. By 1992 the market share of the U. S. information service sector had grown to about $ 25 billion. This was equivalent to about one-seventh of the country’s computer market, which, in turn, represented roughly 40 percen t of the global market in computers in that year. However, the probably convergence of computers and television (which constitutes a market share 100 times larger than computers) and its impact on information services, entertainment, and education are likely to restructure the respective market shares of the information industry before the onset of the 21st century.

31. The first paragraph is mainly about ______.

A) The remarkable rise in information-processing activities.

B) a sharp increase in information-intensive activities

C) information as an economic resource

D) the birth of information society

32. which of the following is NOT a characteristic of information?

A) information can be condensed

B) information can be consumed through use.

C) information can be shared by many people

D) information can be delivered at very high speed

33. The characteristics of information are ______ those of other economic resources

A) same with B) different from

C) contrary to D) opposite to

34. According to this passage, the market share of _______.

A) the U.S. information service sector was equivalent to 40 percent of the global market share

B) the U.S. information service sector was about one-seventh of the global market share

C) computers in the United States had reached about $ 3.5 billion by 1992.

D) computers in the United States is much smaller than that of television

35. which would be the most appropriate title for the passage?

A) information Society

B) Characteristics of information

C) Two major utilitarian connotations

D) information as a Resource and commodity

Passage 2

Pity those who aspire to put the initials PhD after their names. After 16 years of closely supervised education, prospective doctors of philosophy are left more or less alone to write the equivalent of a large book. Most social-science postgraduates have still not completed their theses by the time their grant runs out after three years. They must then get a job and finish in their spare time, which can often take a further three years. By then, most new doctors are sick to death of the narrowly defined subject which has blighted their holidays and ruined their evenings.

The Economic and Social Research Council, which gives grants to postgraduate social scientists, wants to get better value for money by cutting short this agony. It would like to see faster completion rates: until recently, only about 25% of PhD candidates were finishing within four years. The ESRC’s response has been to stop PhD grants to all institutions where the proportion taking less than four years is below 10%; in the first year of this policy the national average shot up to 39%. The ESRC feels vindicated in its toughness, and will progressively raise the threshold to 40% in two years. Unless completion rates improve further, this would exclude 55 out of 73 universities and polytechnics-including Oxford

University, the London School of Economics and the London Business School.

Predictably, howls of protest have come from the universities, who view the blacklisting of whole institutions as arbitrary and negative. They point out that many of the best students go quickly into jobs where they can apply their research skills, but consequently take longer to finis their theses. Polytechnics with as few as two PhD candidates complain that they are penalized by random fluctuations in student performance. The colleges say there is no hard evidence to prove that faster completion rates result from greater efficiency rather than lower standards or less ambitious doctoral topics.

The ESRC thinks it might not be a bad thing if PhD students were more modest in their aims. It would prefer to see more systematic teaching of research skills and fewer unrealistic expectations placed on young men and women who are undertaking their first piece of serious research. So in future its grants will be given only where it is convinced that students are being trained as researchers, rather than carrying out purely knowledge-based studies.

The ESRC can not dictate the standard of thesis required by external examiners, or force departments to give graduates more teaching time. The most it can do is to try to persuade universities to change their ways. Recalcitrant professors should note that students want more research training and a less elaborate style of thesis, too.

36. By the time new doctors get a job and try to finish their theses in spare time .

A) their holidays and evenings have been ruined by their jobs.

B) most of them are completely tired of their subject

C) most of them have got some fatal diseases

D) most of their grants are running out

37. Oxford University would be excluded out of those universities that receive PhD grants from ESRC, because the completion rate of its PhD students’ theses within four years is lower than _______

A) 25% B) 39% C) 55% D) 10%

38. Which is not arguments against ESRC’s policy ?

A) All the institutions on the blacklist are arbitrary and negative, which will inevitably result in howls of protests.

B) Faster completion rates may result from lower standards or less ambitious doctoral

topics rather than efficiency.

C) it takes some good students longer to finish their theses because they go more quickly into jobs where they can apply their research skills.

D. polytechnics students’ performances vary un predictably and penalty based on theses completion rate is not justified.

39. The ESRC would prefer _______

A) that PhD students were less modest in their aims

B) that more students were carrying out knowledge-based studies

C) more systematic teaching of research skills

D) higher standards of PhD students’ these and more ambitious doctoral topics

40. what the ESRC can do is to _____

A) force departments to give graduates more teaching time

B) try to persuade universities to change their ways

C) dictate the standard of thesis required by external examiners

D) notify students they want less elaborate style of thesis

Passage 3

Practically speaking, the artistic maturing of the cinema was the single-handed achievement of David W. Griffith (1875-1948). Before Griffith, photography in dramatic films consisted of little more than placing the actors before a stationary camera and showing them in full length as they would have appeared on stage. From the beginning of his career as a director, however, Griffith, because of his love of Victorian painting, employed composition. He conceived of the camera image as having a foreground and a rear ground, as well as the middle distance preferred by most directors. By 1910 he was using close-ups to reveal significant details of the scene or of the acting and extreme long shots to achieve a sense of spectacle and distance. His appreciation of the camera’s possibilities produced novel dramatic effects. By splitting an event into fragments and recording each from the most suitable camera position, he could significantly vary the emphasis from camera shot to camera shot.

Griffith also achieved dramatic effects by means of creative editing. By juxtaposing images and varying the speed and rhythm of their presentation, he could control the dramatic intensity of the events as the story progressed. Despite the reluctance of his producers, who

feared that the public would not be able to follow a plot that was made up of such juxtaposed images, Griffith persisted, and experimented as well with other elements of cinematic syntax that have become standard ever since. These included the flashback, permitting broad psychological and emotional exploration as well as narrative that were not chronological, and the crosscut between two parallel actions to heighten suspense and excitement. In thus exploiting fully the possibilities of editing, Griffith transposed devices of the Victorian novel to film and gave film mastery of time as well as space.

Besides developing the cinema’s language, Griffit h immensely broadened its range and treatment of subjects. His early output was remarkably eclectic: it included not only the standard comedies, melodramas, westerns, and thrillers, but also such novelties as adaptations from Browning and Tennyson, and treatments of social issues. As his successes mounted, his ambitions grew, and with them the whole of American cinema. When he remade Enoch Arden in 1911, he insisted that a subject of such importance could not be treated in the then conventional length of on e reel. Griffith’s introduction of the American-made multi-reel picture began an immense revolution. Two years later, Judith of Bethulea, an elaborate historic philosophical spectacle, reached the unprecedented length of four reels, or one hour’s running time. From our contemporary viewpoint, the pretensions of this film may seem a trifle ludicrous, but at the time it provoked endless debate and discussion and gave a new intellectual respectability to the cinema.

41. the suthor suggests that Griffith film innovations had a direct effect on all of the following EXCEPT ______

A) film editing B) camera work C) scene composing D) sound editing

42. it can be inferred from the passage that passage that before 1910 the normal running time of a film was _____.

A) 15 minutes or less B) between 15 and 30 minutes

C) between 30 and 45 minutes D) between 45 minutes and 1 hour

43. it can be inferred from the passage that Griffith would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements?

A) the good dirctor will attempt to explore new ideas as quickly as possible

B) the most important element contributing to a film’s success is the ability of the actors

C) the camera must be considered an integral and active element in the creatin of a film

D) the cinema should emphasize serious and sober examinations of funfamental human problems.

44. the author’s attitude toward photography in the cinema before Gritffith can best be described as ______.

A) sympathetic B) nostalgic C) amused D) condescending

45. the primary purse of the passage is to _______

A) discuss the importance of Griffth to the development of the cinema

B) describe the impact on cinema of the flashback and other editing innovations

C) deplore the state of American cinema before the advent of Gritffith

D) analyze the changes in the cinema brought by the introduction of the multi-reel film Passage 4

In the early 1950’s historians who studied pre-industrial Europe (which we may define here as Europe in the period fro, roughly 1300 to 1800) began, for the first time in large numbers, to investigate more of the pre-industrial European population than the 2 or 3 percent who comprised the political and social elite: the kings, generals, judges, nobles, bishops and local magnates who had hitherto usually filled history books. One difficulty, however, was that few of the remaining 97 percent recorded their thoughts or had them chronicled by contemporaries. Faced with this situation, many historians based their investigations on the only records that seemed to exits: birth, marriage, and death records. As a result, much of the early work on the non-elite was aridly statistical in nature; reducing the vast majority of the population to a set of numbers was hardly more enlightening than ignoring them altogether. Historian still did not know what these people thought or felt.

One way out of this dilemma was to turn to the records of legal courts for here the voices of the non-elite can most often be heard, as witnesses, plaintiffs, and defendants. These documents ha ve acted as “a point of entry into the mental world of the poor.” Historians such as Le Roy Ladurie have used the documents to extract case histories, which have illuminated the attitudes of different social groups (these attitudes include, but are not confined to, attitudes toward crime and the law) and have revealed how the authorities administered justice. It has been societies that have had a developed police system and practiced Roma law,

with its written depositions, whose court records have yielded the most data to historians. In Anglo-Saxon countries hardly any of these benefits obtain, but it has still been possible to glean information from the study of legal documents.

The extraction of case histories is not, however, the only use to which court record may be put. Historians who study pre-industrial Europe have used the records to establish a series of categories of crime and to quantify indictments that were issued over a given number of years. This use of the records does yield some information about the non-elite, but this information gives us little insight into the mental lives of the non-elite. We also know that the number of indictments in pre-industrial Europe bears little relation to the number of actual criminal acts, and we strongly suspect that the relationship has varied widely over time. In addition, aggregate population estimates are very shaky, which makes it difficult for historians to compare rates of crime per thousand in one decade of the pre-industrial period with rates in another decade. Given these inadequacies, it is clear why the case history use of court records is to be preferred.

46. which of the following did most historians who studied pre-industrial Europe do before the early 1950’s, according to the author?

A) they failed to make distinctions among members of the pre-industrial European political.

B) they used investigatory methods that were almost exclusively statistical in nature.

C) they inaccurately estimated the influence of the pre-industrial European political and social elite.

D) they confined their work to a narrow range of the pre-industrial European population.

47. it can be inferred from the passage that much of the early work by historians on the European non-elite of the pre-industrial period might have been more illuminating if these historians had ____

A) used different methods of statistical analysis to investigate the non-elite

B) been more successful in identifying the attitudes of civil authorities, especially those who administered justice, toward the non-elite

C) been able to draw on more accounts written by contemporaries of the non-elite that described what these non-elite thought

D) relied more heavily on the personal records left by members of the European political and social elite who lived during the period in question

48. the author mentions Le Roy Ladurie(in paragraph 2) in order to ________

A) given a example of a historian who has made one kind of use of court records

B) cite a historian who has based case histories on the birth, marriage, and death records of the non-elite

C) gain authoritative support for the view that the case history approach is the most fruitful approach to court records.

D) point out the first historian to realize the value of court records in illuminating the beliefs and values of the non-elite

49. According to the passage, which of the following is true of indictments for crime in Europe in the pre-industrial period?

A) they have, in terms of their numbers, remained relatively constant over time

B) their problematic relationship to actual crime has not been acknowledged by most historians.

C) they are not a particularly accurate indication of the extent of actual criminal activity.

D) their importance to historians of the non-elite has been generally overestimated.

50. the passage would be most likely to appear as part of _____

A) a book review summarizing the achievements of historians of the European aristocracy

B) an essay describing trends in the practice of writing history

C) a textbook on the application of statistical methods in the social science

D) an article urging the adoption of historical methods by the legal profession. SECTION III

Part A

Many people in industry and the Services, who have practical experience of noise, regard any investigation of this question as a waste of time; they are not prepared even to admit the possibility that noise affects people. On the other hand, those who dislike noise will sometimes use most inadequate evidence to support their pleas for a quieter society. This is a pity, because noise abatement really is a good cause. and it is likely to be discredited if it gets

to be associated with bad science.

What is needed in the case of noise is a study of large numbers of people living under noisy conditions, to discover whether they are mentally ill more often than other people are. The United States Navy, for instance, recently examined a very large number of men working on aircraft carriers: the study was known as Project Anehin. It can be unpleasant to live even several miles from an aerodrome. But neither psychiatric interviews nor objective tests were able to show any effects upon these American sailors. This result merely confirms earlier American and British studies: if there is any effect of noise upon mental health it must be so small that present methods of psychiatric diagnosis cannot find it. That does not prove that it does not exist

Part B

1. 科学技术是第一生产力。振兴经济首先要振兴科技，只有坚定的推动科技进步，才能在激烈的竞争中取得主动。我国经济正面临着加速发展，调整结构，提高效益的重大任务，尤其需要全社会提高科技意识，多方面增加科技投入，真正依靠科技进步。

2. 世界知识产权组织为一政府间组织，总部设在瑞士日内瓦，他是联合国系统下的许多专门机构之一，他负责通过国际间的合作促进世界知识产权的保护。知识产权包括两个主要部分：工业产权和版权。当前，知识产权的保护工作应该引起我们特别的重视。

3. 人类自有文化就有文化交流。人类文化从总体来说，是各国、各民族文化汇集、交流的产物。交流促进发展，促进相互学习，有利于文化多样性的建设。在新时期，我国要特别重视对外交流，在历史的发展中，不断借鉴，不断丰富中华民族的文化。