跨考网：考研英语阅读理解A命题思路透析(九)_跨考网

Part II、真题解题

1993年Passage 2

In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic (官僚主义的) management in which man becomes a small , well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and "human-relations" experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become powerless, that he does not wholeheartedly participate in his work and that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue-and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management.

The worker and employee are anxious, not only because they might find themselves out of a job; they are anxious also because they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction or interest in life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings.

Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary but even more a matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the tight mixture of submissiveness and independence. From that moment on they are tested again and again-by the psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior, sociability, capacity to get along, etc. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one’ s fellow-competitor creates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness.

Am I suggesting that we should return to the preindustrial mode of production or to nineteenth-century "free enterprise" capitalism? Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and full development of his potentialities-those of love and of reason-are the aims of all social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.

40. The author’s attitude towards industrialism might best be summarized as one of __

[A] approval

[B] dissatisfaction

[C] suspicion

[D] tolerance

[答案] B

[解题思路]

纵观全文，其主要基调就是表达了对目前这个工业化体制的不满，人在其中失去了个性和独立性。其中，文章第一段最后一句指出“In fact, the blue-and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management”（事实上，蓝领和白领工人已经成了伴随自动化机器和官僚主义管理方式的节奏翩翩起舞的经济玩偶）。最后一段第二句话进一步指出“I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and full development of his potentialities-those of love and of reason-are the aims of all social arrangements”（我建议把我们的社会制度从以最大限度生产和最大限度消费为目的的官僚主义管理工业体制变成一个充分发挥人的潜能——如爱和理性的潜能——为目的的人道主义工业体制），要求改变这个社会体制，作者的不满情绪也是显而易见的。

[题目译文]

作者对于工业化的态度用以下哪个词语可以最好的概括？

[A]赞成

[B]不满

[C]怀疑

[D]容忍

1995年Passage l

Money spent on advertising is money spent as well as any I know of. It serves directly to assist a rapid distribution of goods at reasonable price, thereby establishing a firm home market and so making it possible to provide for export at competitive prices. By drawing attention to new ideas it helps enormously to raise standards of living. By helping to increase demand it ensures an increased need for labour, and is therefore an effective way to fight unemployment. It lowers the costs of many services: without advertisements your daily newspaper would cost four times as much, the price of your television license would need to be doubled, and travel by bus or tube would cost 20 per cent more.

And perhaps most important of all, advertising provides a guarantee of reasonable value in the products and services you buy. Apart from the fact that twenty-seven acts of Parliament govern the terms of advertising, no regular advertiser dare promote a product that fails to live up to the promise of his advertisements. He might fool some people for a little while through misleading advertising. He will not do so for long, for mercifully the public has the good sense not to buy the inferior article more than once. If you see an article consistently advertised, it is the surest proof I know that the article does what is claimed for it , and that it represents good value.

Advertising does more for the material benefit of the community than any other force I can think of.

There is one more point I feel I ought to touch on. Recently I heard a well-known television personality declare that he was against advertising because it persuades rather than informs. He was drawing excessively fine distinctions. Of course advertising seeks to persuade.

If its message were confined merely to information-and that in itself would be difficult if not impossible to achieve, for even a detail such as the choice of the colour of a shirt is subtly persuasive----advertising would be so boring that no one would pay any attention. But perhaps that is what the well-known television personality wants.

54. In the author’s opinion,__.

[A]advertising can seldom bring material benefit to man by providing information

[B]advertising informs people of new ideas rather than wins them over

[C]there is nothing wrong with advertising in persuading the buyer

[D]the buyer is not interested in getting information from an advertisement

[答案] C

[解题思路]

本题对应于文章最后一段，该段第一句话指出“If its message were confined merely to information-and that in itself would be difficult if not impossible to achieve, for even a detail such as the choice of the colour of a shirt is subtly persuasive----advertising would be so boring that no one would pay any attention”（如果广告内容仅限于提供信息——这件事如果不是不可能，也很难实现，因为即使是对于衬衫颜色的挑选也具有一些劝诱性——那么广告将会变得非常索然无味，甚至没有人会注意到它），这是对那位电视名人的反驳，因而说明作者认为广告试图说服人们购买产品并不是一个问题，因此正确答案为C选项。B选项与原文意思相反，而A和D选项的表述在原文中没有提及。

[题目译文]

在作者看来， 。

[A]广告几乎不能通过提供信息给人们带来物质上的好处

[B]广告诉人们的是新想法，而不是要赢得他们

[C]通过广告来说服人们购买产品并没有什么过错

[D]买东西的人对于从广告中得到信息并不感兴趣

1995年Passage 5

That experiences influence subsequent behaviour is evidence of an obvious but nevertheless remarkable activity called remembering. Learning could not occur without the function popularly named memory. Constant practice has such as effect on memory as to lead to skillful performance on the piano, to recitation of a poem, and even to reading and understanding these words. So-called intelligent behaviour demands memory, remembering being a primary requirement for reasoning. The ability to solve any problem or even to recognize that a problem exists depends on memory. Typically, the decision to cross a street is based on remembering many earlier experiences.

Practice (or review) tends to build and maintain memory for a task or for any learned material. Over a period of no practice what has been learned tends to be forgotten; and the adaptive consequences may not seem obvious. Yet, dramatic instances of sudden forgetting can seem to be adaptive. In this sense, the ability to forget can be interpreted to have survived through a process of natural selection in animals. Indeed, when one’s memory of an emotionally painful experience lead to serious anxiety, forgetting may produce relief. Nevertheless, an evolutionary interpretation might make it difficult to understand how the commonly gradual process of forgetting survived natural selection.

In thinking about the evolution of memory together with all its possible aspects, it is helpful to consider what would happen if memories failed to fade. Forgetting clearly aids orientation in time, since old memories weaken and the new tend to stand out, providing clues for inferring duration. Without forgetting, adaptive ability would suffer, for example, learned behaviour that might have been correct a decade ago may no longer be. Cases are recorded of people who (by ordinary standards) forgot so little that their everyday activities were full of confusion. This forgetting seems to serve that survival of the individual and the species.

Another line of thought assumes a memory storage system of limited capacity that provides adaptive flexibility specifically through forgetting. In this view, continual adjustments are made between learning or memory storage (input) and forgetting (output). Indeed, there is evidence that the rate at which individuals forget is directly related to how much they have learned. Such data offers gross support of contemporary models of memory that assume an input-output balance.

70. In this article, the author tries to interpret the function of__.

[A]remembering

[B]forgetting

[C]adapting

[D]experiencing

[答案] B

[解题思路]

本文从第二段开始直到文章最后都在讨论forgetting 这个问题，只有第一段讨论了remembering的问题来引出主要话题，因此可以轻松判断正确答案为B选项。

[题目译文]

在这篇文章中，作者试图揭示 的功能。

[A]记忆

[B]遗忘

[C]适应

[D]经历

1996年Passage 3

In the last half of the nineteenth century “capital” and “labour” were enlarging and perfecting their rival organizations on modern lines. Many an old firm was replaced by a limited liability company with a bureaucracy of salaried managers. The change met the technical requirements of the new age by engaging a large professional element and prevented the decline in efficiency that so commonly spoiled the fortunes of family firms in the second and third generation after the energetic founders. It was moreover a step away from individual initiative, towards collectivism and municipal and state-owned business. The railway companies, though still private business managed for the benefit of shareholders, were very unlike old family business. At the same time the great municipalities went into business to supply lighting, trams and other services to the taxpayers .

The growth of the limited liability company and municipal business had important consequences. Such large, impersonal manipulation of capital and industry greatly increased the numbers and importance of shareholders as a class, an element in national life representing irresponsible wealth detached from the land and the duties of the landowners; and almost equally detached from the responsible management of business. All through the nineteenth century, America, Africa, India, Australia and parts of Europe were being developed by British capital, and British shareholders were thus enriched by the world’s movement towards industrialisation. Towns like Bournemouth and Eastboume sprang up to house large. “comfortable” classes who had retired on their incomes, and who had no relation to the rest of the community except that of drawing dividends and occasionally attending a shareholders’ meeting to dictate their orders to the management. On the other hand "shareholding" meant leisure and freedom which was used by many of the later Victorians for the highest purpose of a great civilisation.

The “shareholders” as such had no knowledge of the lives, thoughts or needs of the workmen employed by the company in which he held shares, and his influence on the relations of capital and labour was not good. The paid manager acting for the company was in more direct relation with the men and their demands, but even he had seldom that familiar personal knowledge of the workmen which the employer had often had under the more patriarchal system of the old family business now passing away. Indeed the mere size of operations and the numbers of workmen involved rendered such personal relations impossible. Fortunately, however, the increasing power and organization of the trade unions, at least in all skilled trades, enabled the workmen to meet on equal terms the managers of the companies who employed them. The cruel discipline of the strike and lockout taught the two parties to respect each other’ s strength and understand the value of fair negotiation.

62. The author is most critical of___.

[A]family film owners

[B]landowners

[C]managers

[D]shareholders

[答案] D

[解题思路]

本文中四个选项的四中人都有所提及，但阅读细节可以发现作者对A、B、C选项中的三类人没有表明态度，而对D选项中的shareholders却颇有微词，如第二段提到他们的“irresponsible wealth”，第三段第一句话“The “shareholders” as such had no knowledge of the lives, thoughts or needs of the workmen employed by the company in which he held shares, and his influence on the relations of capital and labour was not good”（这种股东尽管持有股份，却丝毫不了解他们所持股公司里工人们的生活、思想和需求。他们对劳资关系也不会产生任何积极的影响）则更明显地表明了作者的态度。

[题目译文]

作者对 最持批评态度。

[A]家族企业老板

[B]土地所有者

[C]经理

[D]股东