清华大学考博英语-2
| I have had just about enough of being treated like a
second-class citizen, simply because I happen to be that put-upon member of
society--a customer. The more I go into shops and hotels, banks and post
offices, railway stations, airports and the like, the more I am convinced the
things are being run solely to suit the firm, the system, or the union. There
seems to be a deceptive new motto for so-called "service" organizations--Staff
Before Service. How often, for example, have you queued for what seems like hours at the Post office or the supermarket because there were not enough staff on duty to man all the service grilles or checkout counters? Sure? in these days of high unemployment it must be possible to hire cashiers and counter staff. Yet supermarkets, hinting darkly at higher prices, claim that uncovering all their cash registers at any one time would increase overheads. And the Post office says we cannot expect all their service grilles to be occupied "at times when demand is low". It is the same with hotels. Because waiters and kitchen staff must finish when it suits them, dining rooms close earlier or menu choice is cut short. As for us guests, we just have to put up with it. There is also the nonsense of so many friendly hotel night porters having been thrown out of their jobs in the interests of "efficiency" (i. e. profits) and replaced by coin--eating machines which offer everything from lager to laxatives. Not to mention the creeping threat of the tea-making kit in your room: a kettle with a mixed collection of tea bags, plastic milk cartons and lump sugar. Who wants to wake up to a raw teabag? I do not, especially when I am paying for "service". Can it be stopped, this worsening of service, this growing attitude that the customer is always a nuisance? I angrily hope so because it is happening, sadly, in all walks of life. Our only hope is to hammer home our anger whenever and wherever we can and, if all else fails, bring back into practice that other, older slogan--Take Our Custom Elsewhere. |
1.The writer feels that nowadays a customer ______
A deserves the lowest status in society.
B is unworthy of proper consideration.
C receives unexpected quality service.
D is the victim of some public services.
2.The writer argues that the quality of service is changing because ______
A customers' demands have radically changed.
B services provided never become consistent.
C the staff receive more consideration than customers.
D the staff are less considerate than their employers.
3.According to the writer, long queues at counters are caused by ______
A difficulties in hiring employees.
B deliberate understaffing.
C lack of cooperation between staff members.
D employers' irresponsibility.
4.Service organizations contend that keeping all checkout counters operated can result in ______
A demands by cashiers for a pay raise.
B insignificant benefits for the customers.
C a rise in the coat for providing service.
D needs to purchase expensive equipment.
5.The writer suggests that a customer ______
A put up with the rode manners of the staff.
B be patient when queuing before checkout counters.
C try to control his temper when ill-treated.
D go to other places where good service is available.
| EI Nino is the term used for the period when sea
surface temperatures are above normal off the South American coast along the
equatorial Pacific, sometimes called the Earth's heartbeat, and is a dramatic
but mysterious climate system that periodically rages across the
Pacific. El Nino means "the little boy" or "the Christ child" in Spanish, and is so called because its warm current is felt along coastal Peru and Ecuador around Christmas. But the local warming is just part of an intricate set of changes in the ocean and atmosphere across the tropical Pacific, which covers a third of the Earth's circumference. Its intensity is such that it affects temperatures, storm tracks and rainfall around the world. Droughts in Africa and Australia, tropical storms in the Pacific, torrential rains along the Californian coast and lush greening of Peruvian deserts have all been ascribed to the whim of EI Nino. Until recently it has been returning about every three to five years. But recently it has become more frequent--for the first time on record it has returned for a fourth consecutive year--and at the same time a giant pool of unusually warm water has settled down in the middle of the Pacific and is showing no signs of moving. Climatologists don't yet know why, though some are saying these aberrations may signal a worldwide change in climate. The problem is that nobody really seems sure what causes the EI Nino to start, and what makes some stronger than others. And this makes it particularly hard to explain why it as suddenly started behaving so differently. In the absence of EI Nino and its cold counterpart, La Nina, conditions in the tropical eastern Pacific are the opposite of those in the west: the east is cool and dry, while the west is hot and wet. In the east, it's the winds and currents that keep things cool. It works like this. Strong, steady winds, called trade winds, blowing west across the Pacific drag the surface water along with them. The varying influence of the Earth's rotation at different latitudes, known as the Coriolis effect, causes these surface winds and water to veer towards the poles, north in the northern hemisphere and south in the southern hemisphere. The surface water is replaced by colder water from deeper in the ocean in a process known as upwelling. The cold surface water in mm chills the air above it. This cold dense air cannot rise high enough or water vapor to condense into clouds. The dense air creates an area of high pressure so that the atmosphere over the equatorial eastern Pacific is essentially devoid of rainfall. |
6.We can learn from the beginning of the text that EI Nino is a phenomenon ______
A which occurs in some areas other than the Pacific.
B whose effects direct winds to move to the poles.
C which human activities are chiefly responsible for.
D whose causes remain a mystery to human beings.
7.Paragraphs 2 and 3 are written to
A discuss the causes of climatic irregularities.
B exemplify the abnormal effects of EI Nino.
C explain the way in which EI Nino develops.
D show the recent observations of climatologists.
8.The word "aberrations" (Paragraph 4) can best be replaced by ______
A irregularities.
B destructions.
C frequencies.
D intensities.
9.It can be inferred that when EI Nino and La Nina occurs simultaneously, ______
A the Coriolis effect may make the wind blow to the poles.
B the atmosphere in the Pacific will be short of rainfall.
C the conditions in the eastern Pacific may be hot and wet.
D the cold dense vapor will rise high enough to form droplets.
10.This passage is most likely to a digest of ______
A a popular science article.
B a research report.
C a book review.
D a newspaper editorial.
| The concept of biodiversity encompasses
several different levels of biological organization, from the very specific to
the most general. It has been clear for some time that at all of these levels of
organization the rich biodiversity that has always characterized the natural
world is today declining. The extinctions or threatened extinctions of many
species are but the most visible and well- known manifestation of a deeper and
more far-reaching trend. Changes in how the land is used are probably the principal contributor to the current decline in biodiversity. The pressures on terrestrial resources and land depend very much on population growth and the demands of early stages of economic development. Moreover, land acquisition, especially. for agriculture and forestry, focuses initially on those areas with the most fertile soils and equable climates, which are often the areas of greatest biological diversity. Deforestation in the humid tropics is probably the best-known current example of rapid land-use change. During the decade of the 1970s, vast areas of tropical forest in South America, Africa, and South-east Asia were cleared and converted to agriculture and other uses. In the middle-to-late 1980s, the rates of deforestation in South America slowed dramatically, largely due to economic and tax policy changes in Brazil, but the pace of cutting in Africa and Southeast Asia, though poorly quantified, remains high. Globally, the rate of loss of tropical forests for the 1980s has been estimated at about I percent per year, but there is still considerable uncertainty. The rates of extinction of local species that accompany these rapid changes in land cover may soon be far in excess of what is found today, reaching as high as 10, 000 times the natural background rate. Analyses of potential impacts on biodiversity that are based on simple measures of deforested area can provide little more than very general conclusions. Heavy applications of fertilizers and pesticides have the potential of creating additional environmental problems as well as affecting the abundance and viability of the other plants and animals and micro-organisms in the same or adjoining areas. In addition, because of the understandable tendency to put the best land into production first, the expansion of agriculture into less fertile areas typically requires heavier applications of chemicals, more extensive site preparation, and other forms of more intensive management. The typical result is increased chemical runoff to the landscape, and with ensuing degradation, additional pressure for expansion, and the like. It is such a cycle that has led to widespread desertification in some parts of the world, primarily through overgrazing that can be compounded by naturally occurring droughts. |
11.What is the passage mainly about? ______
A Changes of biological organizations.
B Impact of chemicals on the landscape.
C Causes of decrease in biodiversity.
D origins of worldwide deforestation.
12.In discussing the diminishing biodiversity, the author's argument is based mainly on ______
A the correlations between biodiversity and land features.
B the distinction between specific instances and generalizations.
C the correspondence of deforestation to land exploitation.
D the separation of endangered species into many sub-groups.
13.It can be inferred from Paragraph 4 that ______
A deforestation should usually precede large-scale forestry.
B the rates of tropical forest loss are established by analyses.
C fertilizers and pesticides resulted in the extinctions of species.
D the rates of species extinctions are too complicated to determine.
14.The phrase "are the principal contributor to" (Paragraph 2) most probably means ______
A cause the biggest trouble to.
B are chiefly responsible for.
C subscribe simultaneously to.
D are mainly bound up with.
15.The conclusion that can be drawn from the text is that chemicals should be applied
A very cautiously.
B rather excessively.
C much naturally.
D quite intensively.
| Science Fiction can provide students
interested in the future with a basic introduction to the concept of thinking
about possible futures in a serious way, a sense of the emotional forces in
their own culture that are affecting the shape the future may take, and a
multitude of predictions regarding the results of present trends. Although SF seems to take as its future social settings nothing more ambiguous than the current status or its totally evil variant, SF is actually a more important vehicle for speculative visions about macroscopic social change. At this level, it is hard to deal with any precision as to when general value changes or evolving social institutions might appear, but it is most important to think about the kinds of societies that could result from the rise of new forms of interaction, even if one cannot predict exactly when they might occur. In performing this "what if..." function, SF can act as a social laboratory as authors ruminate upon the forms social relationships could take if key variables in their own societies were different, and upon what new belief systems or mythologies could arise in the future to provide the basic rationalizations for human activities. If it is true that most people find it difficult to conceive of the ways in which their society, or human nature itself, could undergo fundamental changes, then SF of this type may provoke one's imagination --to consider the diversity of paths potentially open to society. Moreover, if SF is the laboratory of the imagination, its experiments are often of the kind that may significantly alter the subject matter even as they are being carried out. That is, SF has always had a certain cybernetic effect on society, as its visions emotionally engage the future--consciousness of the mass public regarding especially desirable and undesirable possibilities. The shape a society takes in the present is in part influenced by its image of the future; in this way particularly powerful SF images may become self-fulfilling or self-avoiding prophecies for society. For that matter, some individuals in recent years have even shaped their own life styles after appealing models provided by SF stories. The reincarnation and diffusion of SF futuristic images of alternative societies through the media of movies and television may have speeded up and augmented SF's social feedback effects. Thus SF is not only change speculator but change agent, send an echo from the future that is becoming into the present that is sculpting it. This fact alone makes imperative in any education system the study of the kinds of works discussed in this section. |
16.What is the main idea of the passage?
A The feedback effects of SF on society.
B The role of SF and its implications.
C The underlying emotional forces of SF.
D The concept of possible future for students.
17.From Paragraph 2, we can infer that ______
A SF is able to provide fairly reliable prophecies of social relationships.
B SF's predictions about the evils in a future society have proved true.
C SF can provoke imagination and could in itself undergo radical changes.
D SF's representations of present trends may not so accurate as anticipated.
18.According to the last paragraph, "self-fulfilling" is to "self-avoiding" as ______
A "exact" to "inaccurate".
B "fictional" to "factual".
C "desirable" to "undesirable".
D "individual" to "public".
19.In discussing the role of SF, the author focuses on ______
A its main characteristics.
B its general assumptions.
C its social impact.
D its utter fabrications.
20.The overall tone of the piece of writing can best be described as ______
A indignant.
B ironic.
C humorous.
D informative.
21.Desert plants ______ two categories according to the way they deal with the problem of surviving drought.
A break down
B fall into
C differ in
D refer to
22.In no ______ should you do this without help and advice from your doctor--restricting the diet of small children can be very dangerous.
A perspectives
B restrictions
C circumstances
D consequences
23.In the airport, I could hear nothing except the roar of aircraft engines which ______ all other sounds.
A dwarfed
B diminished
C drowned
D devastated
24.Criticism without suggesting areas of improvement is not ______ and should be avoided if possible.
A constructive
B productive
C descriptive
D relative
25.Communicating orally involves more than reading or talking: gesture, posture, movements may all be ______ to it.
A intrinsic
B coherent
C appealing
D submissive
26.Without Bob's testimony, evidence of bribery is lacking and ______ in the case will be impossible.
A verdict
B sentence
C conviction
D acquittal
27.It would then be replaced by an interim government, which would ______ be replaced by a permanent government after four months.
A in step
B in turn
C in practice
D in haste
28.Such an ______ act of hostility can only lead to war.
A overt
B episodic
C ample
D ultimate
29.In his view, though Hong Kong has no direct cultural identity, local art is thriving by" being ______ ",being open to all kinds of art.
A gratifying
B predominating
C excelling
D accommodating
30.I am to inform you, that you may, if you wish, attend the inquiry, and at the inspectors discretion state your case ______ or through an entrusted representative.
A in person
B in depth
C in secret
D in excess
31.Consumers deprived of the information and advice they needed were quite simply ______ very cheat in the marketplace.
A at the mercy of
B in lieu of
C by courtesy of
D for the price of
32.Most of them had visited the invalid often during the past few months, marveling at his ______ spirit and his unfailing good temper.
A variant
B gallant
C pertinent
D solitary
33.In some countries preschool education in nursery schools or kindergartens ______ the 1st grade.
A leads
B precedes
C forwards
D advances
34.Since neither side was ready to ______ what was necessary for peace, hostility was resumed in 1980.
A precede
B recede
C concede
D intercede
35.Pupils often want to sit next to their particular friend and many classroom activities involve moving about, but even relatively small alterations can make ______ to the visual comfort of pupils with sight defects.
A a difference
B an interference
C a modification
D an impact
36.He did not tell his parents because he knew they would try to change his mind but he ______ in a colleague at work.
A involved
B joined
C engrossed
D confided
37.The Committee pronounced four members expelled for failure to provide information in the ______ of investigations.
A case
B chase
C cause
D course
38.______ both in working life and everyday living to different sets of values, and expectations places a severe strain on the individual.
A Recreation
B Transaction
C Disclosure
D Exposure
39.The idea was just beginning to ______ in America and we knew that it was going to become the way that retailing companies were run.
A show up
B catch on
C open out
D get by
40.Haven't I told you I don't want you keeping ______ with those awful riding-about bicycle boys.?
A company
B acquaintance
C friends
D place
| on April 20,2000, in Accra, Ghana, the leaders of
six West African countries declared their intention to proceed to monetary union
among the non CFA franc countries of the region by January 2003, as first step
toward a wider monetary union including all the ECOWAS countries in 2004. The
six countries 56 themselves to reducing central bank
financing of budget deficits 57 10 percent of the previous
years government 58 ;reducing budget deficits to 4 percent
of the second phase by 2003 ;creating a Convergence Council to help 59
macroeconomic policies; and 60 up a common
central bank. Their declaration 61 that, "Member States
62 the need 63 strong political
commitment and 64 to 65 all such national policies 66 would facilitate the regional monetary integration process. " The goal of a monetary union in ECOWAS has long been an objective of the organization, going back to its formation in 1975, and is intended to 67 broader integration process that would include enhanced regional trade and 68 institutions. In the colonial period, currency boards linked sets of countries in the region. 69 independence, 70 ,these currency boards were 71 ,with the 72 of the CFA franc zone, which included the Francophone countries of the region. Although there have been attempts to advance the agenda of ECOWAS monetary cooperation, political problems and other economic priorities in several of the region's countries have to 73 inhibited progress. Although some problems remain, the recent initiative has been bolstered by the election in 1999 of a democratic government and a leader who is committed to regional 74 in Nigeria, the largest economy of the region, raising hopes that the long delayed project can be 75 . |
41.
A committed
B devoted
C adjusted
D attributed
42.
A to
B by
C with
D until
43.
A finance
B profit
C income
D revenue
44.
A coordinate
B draft
C ordinate
D compromise
45.
A building
B setting
C founding
D erecting
46.
A says
B writes
C reads
D states
47.
A accept
B understand
C recognize
D realize
48.
A for
B of
C with
D without
49.
A commence
B undertake
C initiate
D try
50.
A pursue
B seek
C quest
D explore
51.
A which
B that
C as
D what
52.
A accompany
B enforce
C execute
D compel
53.
A common
B separate
C several
D public
54.
A Towards
B From
C By
D on
55.
A therefore
B moreover
C however
D thus
56.
A dissolved
B discharged
C dismissed
D dispelled
57.
A consideration
B intention
C exception
D regard
58.
A date
B deter
C hinder
D delay
59.
A development
B prosperity
C integration
D cooperation
60.
A revived
B renewed
C restored
D refreshed
1.The hardest hit of all that week were Wall Street's specialist firms, the traders who were charged with maintaining orderly markets. That task required them to purchase stocks when there were no other buyers and to make sales when other sellers disappeared. Until the end of that week, a total 52 specialist lb-ms had worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange: each had handled the shares of 20 to 30 specified Big Board companies. on Black Monday, the specialists grimly fulfilled their responsibilities, buying millions of shares as prices plunged all around them. Their losses could amount to as much as $ 50 million. Securities firms outside Wall Street also felt mortal pain. The 4,500 accounts of the New York Stock Exchange member were taken over by Rodman & Renshaw, a Chicago firm.
1.A. Title: To Have a Child or Not B. Your essay should be based on the OUTLINE below: (1) some married couples today choose not to have children. (2) my view and the reasons.