华东师大博士生英语入学试卷三
Passage Two
No agricultural operation has ever been invested with so much glamour as the making of maple syrup. We tapped about two hundred trees, few enough for us to know the personality of each. In a hollow on the south-east corner of the woods was a vast gnarled specimen which always had its three small red buckets full and often running over. I still think of that tree with affection, admiration, and gratitude. On the more exposed westerly side of the wood were almost equally sizeable specimens which scarcely produced a drop. We regarded them with dislike and resentment. Like certain politicians they had successfully divorced promise from performance.
Sap in those days was collected in a wooden tub mounted on a sleigh. A circular track wound through the black, silent woods. The horses pulled the tub on the sleighs from point to point along this track. At each stop we fanned out with large pails to collect the sap from the bucket attached to each tree. If the sap was running well there might be a pleasant air of urgency about this task for numerous buckets would be spilling over. The sap was then boiled in a flat rectangular pan, about three feet by six or seven, which sat on a cement arch over a vigorous log fire. Immediately behind the arch, from which the operation could be watched, and with the whole front open to the fire, was the small, tin-roofed shed. There is no aroma on earth like that of boiling sap. In good years it was necessary to boil all night to keep abreast of the run. Then hour after hour the white steam billowed off into the black night or, on occasion, rolled into the shed as a special reward. Neighbors who did not make syrup came across the fields and through the woods to sit and watch the fire and the steam and enjoy the smell. One could take a dipper, dip out a pint or two of the thickening sap, cool it in a snowbank, and drink it all.
The flavor of the syrup then produced was far better than what a less fortunate generation now gets. I learned the reason in what I believe was my first introduction to scientific investigation. Two brothers named John and Angus McNabb went into production of maple syrup on a commercial basis: they bought covered buckets and an evaporator and a galvanized tank for the sap and set out to make a quality product. It was completely tasteless and Jim McKillop showed them why.
As the sap dripped into the open buckets, quite a few dried leaves fell in too. A large number of brown moths were also attracted by the moisture, sugar, or both. So were the field mice. Jim rightly suspected that these had something to do with the flavor and on the night of the experiment he put a quart or so of water into a sap bucket and added a handful of moths, two dead mice, and several milligrams of mouse droppings which he had got from a mouse’s nest. He boiled all of this into a good thick stock and added it to a gallon of the insipid McNabb syrup. There was no question; the flavor was miraculously improved.
66. The writer and his associates liked or disliked the ‘personality’ of a tree according to the .
A part of the woods in which it grew B amount of sap that it yielded
C size that it eventually reached D amount of time spent tapping it
67. How was the sleigh used to collect the sap?
A It moved continuously around the circular track. B It stopped twice on the track.
C It stopped at every red bucket. D It stopped frequently around the track.
68. What made the work at the shed an especially enjoyable occasion?
A The smell of the boiling sap. B The way it brought the neighbors along.
C The warmth of the fire. D The smell of the wood fire.
69. The McNabb brothers bought the new equipment because they .
A wanted to investigate scientific production methods B wanted to make a less strong-tasting syrup
C wanted a product of marketable quality D thought their neighbors’ methods were old-fashioned
70. Jim McKillop’s experiment proved that much of the flavor of syrup made by the traditional method was produced by .
A the sugar which collected in the open buckets B things that accidentally fell into the buckets
C keeping the buckets covered D using equipment made of wood
Passage Three
As journalism becomes more and more competitive, all of us – whether in broadcast news or in print (some may want to argue that this is true more of broadcast news, and I perhaps wouldn’t want to debate that) – are falling back on the tried and true local news formulas. We have, by and large, accepted the proposition that people don’t care about foreign news, don’t really care much about hard news at all – that “feel-good” news, entertainment, “info-tainment”, features, and gossip sell better than anything serious and certainly sell better than anything too disturbing.
I believe that kind of talk is wrong. I believe that kind of talk is dangerous. And I know that kind of talk has nothing to do with leadership and public service. Using public opinion polls, focus groups, and other market research techniques in a limited role as informational tools is one thing; using them as an excuse to duck our responsibility to the public trust is quite another. And for journalists to become slaves to market research – like the politicians before us – is, I submit, most dangerous of all. Where are the publishers, editors, and reporters of grit, gumption, and guts? Where are the ones who will follow their conscience or even their “nose for news” instead of the public opinion polls? Harry Truman once said that, if Moses had taken a public opinion poll, he would never have left Egypt.
Of course, there is one special problem for those of us who earn our living reporting the news that others make. Leadership requires definite opinions on which course to take, what path to follow; but those of us in the mainstream media are trained to set our opinions aside as far as humanly possible. We try to keep open minds; by and large, we aren’t joiners. We know (often better than we’re given credit for) that we don’t have any secret formulas for answering the important questions. So we can justifiably ask: “How are we to lead?” I know that we in the media are. George Bernard Shaw once observed that newspapers are unable to distinguish between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization. For us, leadership should be the willingness to distinguish between what’s merely interesting and what’s vitally important.
Now, when someone says that some stories are more important than others, he or she is often labeled an elitist, someone who just doesn’t understand what “real people” care about. This is, of course, the familiar defense for trash television and trash tabloids. And it’s also the reason given for reducing foreign news coverage, as well as coverage of political campaigns. There are a lot of people in the business who say “real people” won’t care unless it bleeds or burns. There are a lot of doctors and market researchers out there who insist that “real people” don’t care much what happens in the rest of the world – they want the words American and the United States plastered all over their news like flags crowding a campaign platform.
71. Which of the following words can substitute duck in the second paragraph?
A Shoulder B Assume C Dodge D Confront
72. What did Harry Truman mean by saying that “if Moses had taken a public opinion poll, he would never have left Egypt?”
A Moses did not want to leave Egypt, but he was forced to.
B Moses should have taken a public opinion poll before he made the decision.
C Moses left Egypt because he did not take a public opinion poll.
D Anyone who wants to do something great shall act resolutely.
73. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
A In the U.S., local news had a wider coverage than foreign news. B Local news is more serious than foreign news.
C “Real people” favor foreign news over local news. D Foreign news is forbidden in the U.S.
74. The tone of the passage is .
A commanding B ironical C critical D appreciative
75. According to the writer, the media should .
A report what the “real people” like B base their decisions on the public opinion
C have their own judgment in what is to be broadcast D learn from the politicians in making strategies
Passage Four
Imagine arriving at a beach at the end of a long summer of wild goings-on. The beach crowd is exhausted, the sand shopworn, hot, and full of debris – no place for walking barefoot. You step on a bottle, and some cop yells at you for littering. The sun is directly overhead and leaves no patch of shade that hasn’t already been taken. You feel the glare beating down on a barren landscape devoid of secrets or innocence. You look around at the disapproving faces and can’t help but sense that, somehow, the entire universe is gearing up to punish you.
This is how today’s young people feel as members of what 30-year-old writer Nancy Smith calls “the generation after. Born after 1960, after you, after it all happened.” After Boomers. And before the Babies-on-Board of the 1980s, those cuddly tykes deemed too cute and fragile to be left home alone. Who does the leave stuck in the middle? Eighty million young men and women, ranging in age from 11 to 31. They make up the biggest generation in American history (yes, bigger than the Boom); the most diverse generation – ethnically, culturally, economically, and in family structure; the only generation born since the Civil War to come of age unlikely to match their parents’ economic fortunes; and the only one born this century to grow up personifying (to others) not the advance, but the decline of their society’s greatness.
As they shield their eyes with Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses, and their ears with their Model TCD-D3 Sony Walkmen, today’s teens and twenties tone-setters look shocking on the outside, unknowable on the inside. To older eyes, they present a splintered image of brassy sights and smooth manner. Families aside, what the older crowd knows of them comes mostly from a mix of film cuts, celebrity blurbs, sports reports, and crime files.
Are they a “generation”? Yes, with a personality that reaches across the board---rich and poor, black and white, Hispanic and Asian, male and female, celebrity and everyman. Whatever a 15- or 25-year-old’s individual circumstances, he or she can sense a composite personality, a generational core. It’s something each individual can help define, “slack” within, or fight against – but cannot easily ignore. The simple fact of ethnic and socioeconomic diversity (in contrast to the far greater homogeneity found in older generations) is an essential part of this persona.
Yes, this is a generation with a PR problem. Its collective reputation comes from young celebrities and criminals, from the biggest stories of success and failure. Yet most in their teens and twenties are quick to insist that people cover stories and police blotters tell little about them personally, about their circles of friends, about their lives in school or on the job, about what it means to come of age in 1990s America. And, they insist, their generation will remain a mystery until elders take the trouble to block out the iconography and look more discerningly at the young men and women in daily American life.
76. It can be inferred from the passage that the writer feels the current generation of youth in America .
A is looked down upon B is extremely arrogant C has great potential for success
D represents the advance of America’s greatness
77. Judging by the context, the word “iconography” in the last paragraph means .
A image B past experiences C criticism D statistics
78. According to the passage, the present generation of youth differs greatly from older generations .
A in its homogeneity B in its ambitions C in its education D in its knowledge
79. Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?
A The current generation has a healthy self-esteem B The current generation is largely misunderstood.
C The current generation will likely be as wealthy as their parents.
D The current generation has ruined American beaches.
80. The phrase “devoid of” in the first paragraph can be replaced by .
A caught up in B swarming with C bereft of D depraved by
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