2021年考研英语二模拟试题及答案2_第2页

　　Section II Reading Comprehension

　　Part A

　　Directions:

　　Read the following four passages. Answer the questions below each passage by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (40 points)

　　Passage One

　　Shoppers choose hybrid cars, “green” washing-up liquid and energy-saving devices over cheaper but dirtier alternatives partly to improve their social status, according to a new study published today.

　　Bram Van den Bergh of Rotterdam School of Management, one of the study’s authors, said: “Driving a luxurious non-green car, like a Hummer, communicates one’s wealth, but also suggests that the buyer is a selfish and uncaring individual who is concerned primarily about his own comfort rather than the welfare of society. Driving a hybrid, like a Prius, not only displays one’s wealth as it costs many thousands of dollars more than a conventional but highly fuel-efficient car, but also signals the owner cares about others and the environment.”

　　Adam Corner, a research associate at Cardiff University and expert on the psychology of communicating climate change, said social status is a key driver of behavior: “It’s not surprising that people might choose to try and signal their social status through the conspicuous consumption of ’green products’. Even if people don’t care about climate change, they care about what other people think of them.” He added that one of the most important aspects of the research is that the power of social status could be harnessed to become a critical tool in promoting wider changes in pro-environmental behavior, such as voting for the greenest party in an election or engaging in environmental activism.

　　The study does come with one important warning—— no one was actually dipping into their wallet. Michael Valvo, a spokesperson for Toyota UK, said that the company’s market research indicated the attraction of advanced technology and the cost of the ownership, not the environment or social status, were the main reasons drivers bought the Prius hybrid car. “Paying £20,000 for a car is a pretty expensive way to make a statement about being green, it’s the second biggest purchase after a house,” he said.

　　The research also failed to reflect the complexity of ethical consumer activity, said Rob Harrison, the editor of Ethical Consumer magazine. “Ethical buying behavior is far more complicated. If you look at the Co-Operative Bank’s report on ethical spending, a third of that annual spend is on investment and banking, which you can’t do conspicuously unless you leave investment brochures lying around on your coffee table. Our readers say they buy green and ethical products because they want to be instrumental about a goal, such as helping a farm in Kenya by buying fair trade Kenyan coffee.” He said only a minority of green shoppers buy green products for status reasons.

　　21.According to one study, car buyers now .

　　A.regard price as nothing much

　　B.are more environment-conscious

　　C.show off with expensive luxuries

　　D.are more concerned with publicity

　　22.In the view of Bram, Hummer is more a symbol of .

　　A.wealth B.status

　　C.success D.character

　　23.To which of the following does Adam Corner most probably agree?

　　A.People behave largely in order to enhance their public image.

　　B.Voting is an efficient way to change people’s social status.

　　C.Conspicuous consumption is unsurprisingly pursued and done.

　　D.Environmental participation can be promoted in a critical way.

　　24.Judging from the context, “no one was ...dipping into their wallet” (Para.4) probably means that

　　A.technology is the first consideration.

　　B.social status is easily purchased.

　　C.being green is too dear to afford.

　　D.wallet is better covered in hard times.

　　25.The author mentioned the Co-Operative Bank’s report to show .

　　A.Kenya coffee is a good buy as a green product.

　　B.It is not easy to figure out the morality of consuming.

　　C.Spending on expensive cars is becoming a trend.

　　D.Investment decision is mostly made on a coffee table.

　　Passage Two

　　Top business chiefs like Indra Nooyi, Anu Agha and Shikha Sharma may have broken the glass ceiling to command their own boardrooms but these are mere exceptions rather than the norm. A new global survey reveals that women enter the workforce in large numbers but over time steadily “vaporise” from the higher ranks of organizational hierarchy.

　　Research by a business consulting firm Bain and the company showed that organizations lost talent, with a disproportionate number of women employees at middle and senior levels leaving their jobs. “A 5% decrease in female retention, after 10 years, results in the equivalent of wiping out the benefits of increasing female recruitment from 30% to 50%,” the report said.

　　“Achieving gender parity in the workplace is possible if business leaders take a systematic and customized approach to finding out what counteracts women along the way at their organizations,” Orit Gadiesh, Bain chairman and co-author of the study, said. The study showed that senior management in 75% of companies had not made gender parity a stated and visible priority, while 80% of firms had not committed adequate funding or resources to the initiatives.

　　Other findings showed that while 66% of men reported that they believed women shared equal opportunity to be promoted to leadership and governance positions, less than a third of women felt the same. Also, while a majority of responders supported the idea of gender parity in the workplace, it was the women who voted strongly in favor of strategic commitment. More than 80% of women agreed or strongly agreed while only 48% men felt that achieving gender parity should be a critical business imperative for their organizations.

　　Incidentally, while both men (87%) and women (91%) voted in large numbers in favor of the belief that either sex could be a primary breadwinner, when it came to making career sacrifices, however, men and women reacted differently. While 59% of women agreed they would sacrifice their career for the sake of the household, a slightly lower 53% of men felt the same way. Men tended to be more confident than women that their partner would make a career sacrifice: in the survey results, 77 of men felt their partner would compromise on their career for the sake of family, while only 45% of women could confidently make the same claim.

　　When asked about recruitment or promotion into management or executive positions, both men and women were less likely to agree that parity existed and men saw a rosier picture than women. In the survey results, about twice as many men as women felt that women had an equal chance as men of being recruited in executive roles, promoted on the same time line into executive roles or appointed to key leadership or governance roles.

　　26.In the beginning, “vaporise” is closest in meaning to .

　　A.quit B.promote

　　C.employ D.recruit

　　27.One of the findings from the study tells us that .

　　A.senior management had no say due to male dominance

　　B.most companies couldn’t afford the cost of this pursuit

　　C.women could hopefully be treated with dignity one day

　　D.gender equality was largely neglected by most executives

　　28.From paragraph 4, we may learn that .

　　A.most male colleagues had equally strong belief in workplace equality

　　B.a wide gap still existed in how to make gender parity come true

　　C.a large part of the females showed no interest in business leadership

　　D.females should enjoy more opportunities in terms of getting advanced

　　29.Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

　　A.Executive positions were reserved predominantly for men alone.

　　B.Men tended to overestimate the situation for female equality.

　　C.Women were the easier victim when career gave in to family.

　　D.Both sexes accepted the role of supporting the family by work.

　　30.The text is mainly concerned with .

　　A.female sacrifice B.male priorities

　　C.gender equality D.female promotion

　　Passage Three

　　When the American economy was running full tilt two years ago, few places were as breathlessly delighted as Seattle. Its port was thronged with ships bringing goods from Asia. The Boeing Company could barely keep up with demand for its airliners. Microsoft was hiring hordes of software engineers. After each rain shower, another Internet millionaire sprang up. Here was a city that had it all — Old Economy, New Economy, Not-Yet-Invented Economy.

　　Now it has all gone sour. The past 12 months have been a non-stop succession of disappointments. Boeing’s headquarters decamped to Chicago. The Internet economy popped alike a balloon in a nail factory, taking with it once promising local ventures such as Homegrocer.com and leaving can’t-possibly-miss companies such as Drugstore.com barely hanging on. And an already troubled Boeing was hit even harder after September 11th both by a steep drop in airliner orders and by losing a $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter contract to Lockheed Martin.

　　Washington State, battered by what is happening in Seattle, now has the highest unemployment rate in the United States — 6.6% compared with 5.4% in the country as a whole. Right behind it is next-door Oregon, another former boom state, with 6.5% of its workforce out of a job, the country’s second worst figure. In Oregon, manufacturing’s collapse has caused the loss of nearly 30,000 jobs in a year, those hit range from Freightliner, a maker of heavy lorries, to high-tech companies such as Intel and Fujitsu.

　　What makes the current plunge so painful is that every part of the economy seems to have stepped into an open manhole at the same time. Three years ago, when Boeing began to remove more than 20,000 people that Boeing expects to lay off by the middle of 2002 have to compete with unemployed workers not just from the high-tech industry but from construction work and even the retail sector. Portland now has more jobless than the other parts of Oregon: the opposite of how things were years ago.

　　Even worse, the Pacific northwest’s downturn, as well as being deeper than the rest of the country, may also last longer. One reason for fearing this is Boeing’s continuing woes. Nowadays Boeing accounts for less than 5% of employment in the Seattle area, down from 9% two decades ago. But it remains the foundation on which the rest is built. Its network of suppliers and subcontractors gives it a far stronger multiplier effect than, say, Microsoft, which is more an island of prosperity than a center of web. The chances are that Boeing will not really bounce back until the assumed revival in air travel persuades airline companies to start buying plenty of aircraft again. And that may not be until 2003.

　　31.The sentence “After each rain shower, another Internet millionaire sprang up” (Paragraph 1) means .

　　A.many people get rich quickly and easily with the New Economy

　　B.it takes only the time between showers for someone to become boss

　　C.Seattle’s development is sudden like rain showers

　　D.Seattle has as many business millionaires as its rain showers

　　32.What can be inferred in the passage concerning Boeing?

　　A.Its headquarter has been moved from Chicago to Seattle.

　　B.It’s to be blamed for the economic depression in Washington.

　　C.Boeing itself is having a hard time.

　　D.It’s expected to have a revival in the year 2003.

　　33.What does the passage imply about “Homegrocer.com” and “Drugstore.com”?

　　A.They are neither promising companies.

　　B.They are affiliated to large companies.

　　C.They are dealing in medical products.

　　D.They are also affected by the economic crisis.

　　34.What is special about this economic downturn in Seattle?

　　A.All sectors have entered recession at the same time.

　　B.The lay-off workers have found jobs elsewhere.

　　C.The Old Economy is hit harder than other economies.

　　D.The low employment rate will last longer than in Oregon.

　　35.We can learn from the last paragraph that .

　　A.Microsoft has a strong multiplier effect on the economy

　　B.Boeing is crucial for the survival of other companies

　　C.Seattle area’s employment rate has fallen considerably

　　D.the economic foundation of Seattle is Boeing’s continuing prosperity

　　Passage Four

　　Education begins with teachers. Yet teaching seems to be losing its appeal for many of the best and brightest college students. In high school, many of the best students decide that they want to be teachers, but their relatives and friends soon convince them to change their minds. One student’s mother kept reminding her of the relatively skimpy salaries teachers currently earn until the student changed to another major. Another student took computer science courses because his father thought that teachers were at the bottom of the social ladder. One said that none of her friends looked upon teaching as a worthwhile career, so she came to think of teaching as not noble enough and went into pharmacy instead. According to several recent reports on the shortcomings of American public schooling, teaching’s lack of appeal for the brightest college students is one of the teaching profession’s most worrisome problems.

　　Many articles on teaching, currently popular in newspapers, magazines, and professional education journals, concentrate on the negative aspects of teaching. The expression “teacher burnout” is commonly ascribed to thousands of thoughtful and dedicated teachers who are leaving the profession. Teacher burnout is caused by such problems as violence in the classroom, vandalism, inadequate salaries, involuntary transfers, interfering parents, oversized classes, and excessive paperwork. Even the best teachers cannot solve a child’s problems, but many of them believe the public expects them to, and they give up teaching in despair.

　　Despite the more limited financial prospects, the deterioration of the American public’s attitude toward teachers, and the problems caused by disruptive students, many of the best students conclude that they want to pursue careers in the classroom after all. The three students mentioned above discovered that they wanted personal fulfillment from their life’s work more than they wanted material rewards. Each eventually chose to become a teacher. However, a growing body of evidence shows that such students are exceptions, rather than the rule, in America’s more than 1,200 teacher-training programs. Many teacher-training schools are beginning to look at ways to recruit the kind of people who would be inclined toward the positive aspects of teaching. The teaching profession has to become more attractive to good students.

　　Prospective teachers will see increased emphasis by national teacher organizations, state certification agencies, and local districts on improving the status of the profession, as well as on improving teacher salaries. Continued efforts to eliminate jobs teachers do that are not teacher — such as policing the restrooms, hallways, and cafeterias — are important for upgrading the profession.

　　While teaching is not a wise career choice for all, teaching is a noble and rewarding profession for those who indeed seek personal fulfillment from their life’s work. The first year of teaching is frequently the most frustrating year in a teacher’s life. The experience of solving problems that deal with instruction, students, parents, administrators, and fellow teachers is of immeasurable value for future success.

　　36.The main idea of the first paragraph is that .

　　A.teachers are indispensable to education

　　B.teaching is not a worthwhile career

　　C.teaching is losing its appeal for the best college students

　　D.teaching profession is looked down on by most parents

　　37.Which of the following statements is TRUE?

　　A.The percentage of the best college students who want to become teachers is still very low.

　　B.Despite the negative aspects of teaching, more and more good students want to pursue teaching career.

　　C.More and more good students want to pursue careers in the classroom because teaching profession has become more attractive to them.

　　D.Teaching career has become more attractive because it offers more material rewards than ever before.

　　38.What does the word “disruptive” (Paragraph 3) most probably mean?

　　A.Naughty. B.Rude. C.Bad-mannered. D.Careless.

　　39.It is implied in the passage that .

　　A.the expression “teacher burnout” does not reflect the reality of the teaching profession

　　B.most teachers are not willing to do jobs which have little to do with teaching

　　C.personal fulfillment is of extreme importance for most students to choose their future careers

　　D.no articles in professional education journals pay attention to the positive aspects of teaching

　　40.It can be inferred from the passage that .

　　A.the future of teaching profession will become much brighter

　　B.teaching profession is not a wise choice for the brightest students

　　C.teaching profession has become more attractive to good students

　　D.teaching is the most rewarding profession in the U.S.