北京师范大学2013年博士英语真题

Part I: Listening Comprehension (略)

Part II: Reading Comprehension

Directions: There are six passages in this part. Each of the passages is followed by five questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best one and mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET.

Passage 1

In 1900 the United States had only three cities with more than a million residents — New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. By 1930, it had ten giant metropolises. The newer ones experienced remarkable growth, which reflected basic changes in the economy.

The population of Los Angeles (114,000 in 1900) rose spectacularly in the early decades of the twentieth century, increasing a dramatic 1,400 percent from 1900 to 1930. A number of circumstances contributed to the meteoric rise of Los Angeles. The agricultural potential of the area was enormous if water for irrigation could be found, and the city founders had the vision and dating to obtain it by constructing a 225-mile aqueduct, completed in 1913, to tap the water of the Owens River. The city had a superb natural harbor, as well as excellent rail connections. The climate made it possible to shoot motion pictures year-round; hence Hollywood. Hollywood not only supplied jobs; it disseminated an image of the good life in Southern California on screens all across the nation. The most important single industry powering the growth of Los Angeles, however, was directly linked to the automobile. The demand for petroleum to fuel gasoline engines led to the opening of the Southern California oil fields, and made Los Angeles North America's greatest refining center.

Los Angeles was a product of the auto age in another sense as well: its distinctive spatial organization depended on widespread private ownership of automobiles. Los Angeles was a decentralized metropolis, sprawling across the desert landscape over an area of 400 square miles. It was a city without a real center. The downtown business district did not grow apace with the city as a whole, and the rapid transit system designed to link the center with outlying areas withered away from disuse. Approximately 800,000 cars were registered in Los Angeles County in 1930, one per 2.7 residents. Some visitors from the east coast were dismayed at the endless urban sprawl and dismissed Los Angeles as a mere collection of suburbs in search of a city. But the freedom and mobility of a city built on wheels attracted floods of migrants to the city.

21. What is the passage mainly about?

A. The growth of cities in the United States in the early 1900's

B. The development of the Southern California oil fields

C. Factors contributing to the growth of Los Angeles

D. Industry and city planning in Los Angeles

22. The author characterizes the growth of new large cities in the United States after 1900 as resulting primarily from ________.

A. new economic conditions

B. images of cities shown in movies

C. new agricultural techniques

D. a large migrant population

23. The word “meteoric” is closest in meaning to ________.

24. According to the passage, the most important factor in the development of agriculture around Los Angeles was the ________.

A. influx of "new residents to agricultural areas near the city

B. construction of an aqueduct

C. expansion of transportation facilities

D. development of new connections to the city's natural harbor

25. The visitors from the east coast mentioned in the passage thought that Los Angeles ________.

A. was not accurately portrayed by Hollywood images

B. lacked good suburban areas in which to live

C. had an excessively large population

D. was not really a single city

Passage 2

Imagine eating everything delicious you want with none of the fat. That would be great, wouldn't it?

New “fake fat” products appeared on store shelves in the United States recently, but not everyone is happy about it. Makers of the products, which contain a compound called olestra, say food manufacturers can now eliminate fat from certain foods, Critics, however, say that the new compound can rob the body of essential vitamins and nutrients and can also cause unpleasant side effects in some people. So it is up to consumers to decide whether the new fat-free products taste good enough to keep eating.

Chemists discovered olestra in the late 1960s, when they were searching for a fat that could be digested by infants more easily. Instead of finding the desired fat, the researchers created a fat that can’t be digested at all.

Normally, special chemicals in the intestines “grab” molecules of regular fat and break them down so they can be used by the body. A molecule of regular fat is made up of three molecules of substances called fatty acids.

The fatty acids are absorbed by the intestines and bring with them the essential vitamins A, D, E and K. When fat molecules are present in the intestines with any of those vitamins, the vitamins attach to the molecules and are carried into the bloodstream.

Olestra, which is made from six to eight molecules of fatty acids, is too large for the intestines to absorb. It just slides through the intestines without being broken down. Manufacturers say it’s that ability to slide unchanged through the intestines that makes olestra so valuable as a fat substitute. It provides consumers with the taste of regular fat without any bad effects on the body. But critics say olestra can prevent vitamins A, D, E, and K from being absorbed. It can also prevent the absorption of carotenoids, compounds that may reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease, etc.

Manufacturers are adding vitamins A, D, E and K as well as carotenoids to their products now. Even so, some nutritionists are still concerned that people might eat unlimited amounts of food made with the fat substitute without worrying about how many calories they are consuming.

26. We learn from the passage that olestra is a substance that ________.

A. contains plenty of nutrients

B. renders foods calorie-free while retaining their vitamins

C. makes foods easily digestible

D. makes foods fat-free while keeping them delicious

27. The result of the search for an easily digestible fat turned out to be ________.

A. commercially useless

B. just as anticipated

C. somewhat controversial

D. quite unexpected

28. Olestra is different from ordinary fats in that ________?

A. it passes through the intestines without being absorbed

B. it facilitates the absorption of vitamins by the body

C. it helps reduce the incidence of heart disease

D. it prevents excessive intake of vitamins

29. What is a possible effect of olestra according to some critics?

A. It may impair the digestive system.

B. It may affect the overall fat intake.

C. It may increase the risk of cancer.

D. It may spoil the consumers’ appetite.

30. Why are nutritionists concerned about adding vitamins to olestra?

A. It may lead to the over-consumption of vitamins.

B. People may be induced to eat more than is necessary.

C. The function of the intestines may be weakened.

D. It may trigger a new wave of fake food production.

Passage 3

A “scientific” view of language was dominant among philosophers and linguists who affected to develop a scientific analysis of human thought and behavior in the early part of this century. Under the force of this view, it was perhaps inevitable that the art of rhetoric should pass from the status of being regarded as of questionable worth (because although it might be both a source of pleasure and a means to urge people to right action, it might also be a means to distort truth and a source of misguided action) to the status of being wholly condemned. If people are regarded only as machines guided by logic, as they were by these “scientific” thinkers, rhetoric is likely to be held in low regard; for the most obvious truth about rhetoric is that it speaks to the whole person. It presents its arguments first to the person as a rational being, because persuasive discourse, if honestly conceived, always has a basis in reasoning. Logical argument is the plot, as it were, of any speech or essay that is respectfully intended to persuade people. Yet it is a characterizing feature of rhetoric that it goes beyond this and appeals to the parts of our nature that are involved in feeling, desiring, acting, and suffering. It recalls relevant instances of the emotional reactions of people to circumstances — real or fictional — that are similar to our own circumstances. Such is the purpose of both historical accounts and fables in persuasive discourse: they indicate literally or symbolically how people may react emotionally, with hope or fear, to particular circumstances. A speech attempting to persuade people can achieve little unless it takes into account the aspect of their being related to such hopes and fears.

Rhetoric, then, is addressed to human beings living at particular times and in particular places. From the point of view of rhetoric, we are not merely logical thinking machines, creatures abstracted from time and space. The study of rhetoric should therefore be considered the most humanistic of the humanities, since rhetoric is not directed only to our rational selves. It takes into account what the “scientific” view leaves out. If it is a weakness to harbor feelings, then rhetoric may be thought of as dealing in weakness. But those who reject the idea of rhetoric because they believe it deals in lies and who at the same time hope to move people to action, must either be liars themselves or be very naive; pure logic has never been a motivating force unless it has been subordinated to human purposes, feelings, and desires, and thereby ceased to be pure logic.

31. According to the passage, to reject rhetoric and still hope to persuade people is ________.

A. an aim of most speakers and writers

B. an indication either of dishonesty or of credulity

C. a way of displaying distrust of the audience‘s motives

D. a characteristic of most humanistic discourse

32. It can be inferred from the passage that in the late nineteenth century rhetoric was regarded as ________.

A. the only necessary element of persuasive discourse

B. a dubious art in at least two ways

C. an outmoded and tedious amplification of logic

D. an open offense to the rational mind

33. The passage suggests that a speech that attempts to persuade people to act is likely to fail if it does NOT ________.

A. distort the truth a little to make it more acceptable to the audience

B. appeal to the self-interest as well as the humanitarianism of the audience

C. address listeners’ emotions as well as their intellects

D. concede the logic of other points of view

34. Which of the following persuasive devices is NOT used in the passage?

A. A sample of an actual speech delivered by an orator

B. The contrast of different points of view

C. The repetition of key ideas and expressions

D. An analogy that seeks to explain logical argument

35. Which of the following best states the author’s main point about logical argument?

A. It is a sterile, abstract discipline, of little use in real life.

B. It is an essential element of persuasive discourse, but only one such element.

C. It is an important means of persuading people to act against their desires.

D. It is the lowest order of discourse because it is the least imaginative.

Passage 4

Extraordinary creative activity has been characterized as revolutionary, flying in the face of what is established and producing not what is acceptable but what will become accepted. According to this formulation, highly creative activity transcends the limits of an existing form and establishes a new principle of organization. However, the idea that extraordinary creativity transcends established limits is misleading when it is applied to the arts, even though it may be valid for the sciences. Differences between highly creative art and highly creative science arise in part from differences in their goals. For the sciences, a new theory is the goal and end result of the creative act. Innovative science produces new propositions in terms of which diverse phenomena can be related to one another in more coherent ways. Such phenomena as a brilliant diamond or a nesting bird are relegated to the role of data, serving as the means for formulating or testing a new theory. The goal of highly creative art is very different: the phenomenon itself becomes the direct product of the creative act. Shakespeare's Hamlet is not a tract about the behavior of indecisive princes or the uses of political power, nor is Picasso's painting Guernica primarily a propositional statement about the Spanish Civil War or the evils of fascism. What highly creative artistic activity produces is not a new generalization that transcends established limits, but rather an aesthetic particular. Aesthetic particulars produced by the highly creative artist extend or exploit, in an innovative way, the limits of an existing form, rather than transcend that form.

This is not to deny that a highly creative artist sometimes establishes a new principle of organization in the history of an artistic field: the composer Monteverdi, who created music of the highest aesthetic value, comes to mind. More generally, however, whether or not a composition establishes a new principle in the history of music has little bearing on its aesthetic worth. Because they embody a new principle of organization, some musical works, such as the operas of the Florentine Camerata, are of signal historical importance, but few listeners or musicologists would include these among the great works of music. On the other hand, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro is surely among the masterpieces of music even though its modest innovations are confined to extending existing means. It has been said of Beethoven that he toppled the rules and freed music from the stifling confines of convention. But a close study of his compositions reveals that Beethoven overturned no fundamental rules. Rather, he was an incomparable strategist who exploited limits — the rules, forms, and conventions that he inherited from predecessors such as Haydn and Mozart, Handel and Bach — in strikingly original ways.

36. The author considers a new theory that coherently relates diverse phenomena to one another to be the ________.

A. basis for reaffirming a well-established scientific formulation

B. byproduct of an aesthetic experience

C. tool used by a scientist to discover a new particular

D. result of highly creative scientific activity

37. The passage supplies information for answering all of the following questions EXCEPT ________.

A. Has unusual creative activity been characterized as revolutionary?

B. Did Beethoven work within a musical tradition that also included Handel and Bach?

C. Is Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro an example of a creative work that transcended limits?

D. Who besides Monteverdi wrote music that the author would consider to embody new principles of organization and to be of high aesthetic value?

38.The author regards the idea that all highly creative artistic activity transcends limits with ________.

39. The author implies that an innovative scientific contribution is one that ________.

A. is cited with high frequency in the publications of other scientists

B. is accepted immediately by the scientific community

C. does not relegate particulars to the role of data

D. introduces a new valid generalization

40. Which of the following statements would most logically conclude the last paragraph of the passage?

A. Unlike Beethoven, however, even the greatest of modern composers, such as Stravinsky, did not transcend existing musical forms.

B. In similar fashion, existing musical forms were even further exploited by the next generation of great European composers.

C. Thus, many of the great composers displayed the same combination of talents exhibited by Monteverdi.

D. By contrast, the view that creativity in the arts exploits but does not transcend limits is supported in the field of literature.

Passage 5

Cultural norms so completely surround people, so permeate thought and action that we never recognize the assumptions on which their lives and their sanity rest. As one observer put it, if birds were suddenly endowed with scientific curiosity they might examine many things, but the sky itself would be overlooked as a suitable subject; if fish were to become curious about the world, it would never occur to them to begin by investigating water. For birds and fish would take the sky and sea for granted, unaware of their profound influence because they comprise the medium for every fact. Human beings, in a similar way, occupy a symbolic universe governed by codes that are unconsciously acquired and automatically employed. So much so that they rarely notice that the ways they interpret and talk about events are distinctively different from the ways people conduct their affairs in other cultures.

As long as people remain blind to the sources of their meanings, they are imprisoned within them. These cultural frames of reference are no less confining simply because they cannot be seen or touched. Whether it is an individual neurosis that keeps an individual out of contact with his neighbors, or a collective neurosis that separates neighbors of different cultures, both are forms of blindness that limit what can be experienced and what can be learned from others.

It would seem that everywhere people would desire to break out of the boundaries of their own experiential worlds. Their ability to react sensitively to a wider spectrum of events and peoples requires an overcoming of such cultural parochialism. But, in fact, few attain this broader vision. Some, of course, have little opportunity for wider cultural experience, though this condition should change as the movement of people accelerates. Others do not try to widen their experience because they prefer the old and familiar, seek from their affairs only further confirmation of the correctness of their own values. Still others recoil from such experiences because they feel it dangerous to probe too deeply into the personal or cultural unconscious. Exposure may reveal how tenuous and arbitrary many cultural norms are; such exposure might force people to acquire new bases for interpreting events. And even for the many who do seek actively to enlarge the variety of human beings with whom they are capable of communicating there are still difficulties.

Cultural myopia persists not merely because of inertia and habit, but chiefly because it is so difficult to overcome. One acquires a personality and a culture in childhood, long before he is capable of comprehending either of them. To survive, each person masters the perceptual orientations, cognitive biases, and communicative habits of his own culture. But once mastered, objective assessment of these same processes is awkward since the same mechanisms that are being evaluated must be used in making the evaluations.

41. The examples of birds and fish are used to ________.

A. show that they, too, have their respective cultures

B. explain humans occupy a symbolic universe as birds and fish occupy the sky and the sea

C. illustrate that human beings are unaware of the cultural codes governing them

D. demonstrate the similarity between man, birds, and fish in their ways of thinking

42. The term "parochialism" (Para. 3) most possibly means ________.

43. It can be inferred from the last two paragraphs that ________.

A. everyone would like to widen their cultural scope if they can

B. the obstacles to overcoming cultural parochialism lie mainly in people’s habit of thinking

C. provided one’s brought up in a culture, he may be with bias in making cultural evaluations

D. childhood is an important stage in comprehending culture

44. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

A. Individual and collective neurosis might prevent communications with others.

B. People in different cultures may be governed by the same cultural norms.

C. People’s visions will be enlarged if only they knew that cultural differences exist.

D. If cultural norms are something tangible, they won’t be so confirming.

45. The passage might be entitled ________.

A. How to Overcome Cultural Myopia

B. Behavioral Patterns and Cultural Background

C. Harms of Cultural Myopia

D. Cultural Myopia — A Deep-rooted Collective Neurosis

Passage 6

When you leave a job with a traditional pension, don't assume you've lost the chance to collect it. You're entitled to whatever benefit you've earned — and you might even be entitled to take it now. “A lot of people forget they have it, or they think that by waiting until they're 65, they'll have a bigger benefit,” says Wayne Bogosian, president of the PFE Group, which provides corporate pre-retirement education.

Your former employers should send you a certificate that says how much your pension is worth. If it's less than >,000, or if the company offers a lump-sum payout, it will generally close your account and cash you out. It may not seem like much, but >,000 invested over 20 years at eight percent interest is (3,000. If your pension is worth more than >,000, or your company doesn't offer the lump-sum option, find out how much money you're eligible for at the plan's normal retirement age, the earlier age at which you can collect the pension, the more severe penalty for collecting it early. You'll probably still come out ahead by taking the money now and investing it.

What if you left a job years ago, and you're realizing you may have unwittingly left behind a pension? Get help from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. It has an online search tool that has helped locate <7 million in lost benefits for more than 12,000 workers.

If you have a traditional pension, retiring early costs more than you might expect. Most people assume you take a proportional cut for leaving before your plan's normal retirement age. For example, you might think that if you need to accrue 30 years of service and you leave three years early, you'd get a pension 90 percent of the full amount.

But that's not how it works. Instead, you take an actuarial reduction, determined by the employer but often around five percent a year, for each year you leave early. So retiring three years early could leave you with only 85 percent of the total amount.

When you retire early with a defined-contribution plan, the problem is you start spending investments on which you could be earning interest. If you retire when you're 55, for example, and start using the traditional pension then, by age 65 you'll have only about half of what you would have had if you'd kept working until 65.

46. When one leaves a job with a traditional pension, ________.

A. he tends to forget that he has the pension

B. he has no right to ask for the pension

C. he'll have a bigger benefit than if he waits until the age of 65

D. he has a specified worth of pension

47. If one leaves early before his plan's normal retirement age, ________.

A. he'll take 90 percent of the total amount of his pension

B. he'll have half of his pension payments

C. he'll have his pension payment reduced by 5% a year

D. he'll have only 85 percent of his full pension

48. If one retires early with a defined-contribution plan, he is expected to ________.

49. Which of the following can be used as the subtitle for the last three paragraphs?

50. Which of the following is NOT true?

A. If one leaves 3 years early on a 30-year-service basis, he won't get a pension worth 27/30ths.

B. It pays to get an early retirement if one understands how retirement pension plan works.

C. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation helps the retiree to recover last benefits.

D. If one keeps his expenses within his retirement framework, he won't be severely affected.

Part III: Translation and Writing

Part A: Translation

Translate the following into Chinese:

Blacks have traditionally been poorly educated — look at the crisis in urban public schools — and deprived of the sorts of opportunities that create the vision necessary for technological ambition. Black folkways in America, those unspoken, largely unconscious patterns of thought and belief about what is possible that guide aspiration and behavior, thus do not encompass physics and calculus. Becoming an engineer — unlike becoming a doctor or a lawyer or an insurance salesman — has not been seen as a way up in the segregated black community. These folkways developed in response to very real historical conditions, to the limited and at best ambivalent interactions between blacks and technology in this country. Folkways, the "consciousness of the race", change at a slower pace than societal conditions do — and so a working strategy can turn into a crippling blindness and self-limitation.

Translate the following into English:

“失落之城”马丘比丘坐落在秘鲁热带山地森林，直到1911年才被美国探险家海勒姆·宾厄姆发现。马丘比丘海拔2430米，为热带森林所包围。它可能是印加帝国全盛时期最辉煌的城市建筑，那巨大的城墙和梯田好像是在连绵的悬崖绝壁上自然形成的一样。古城矗立在安第斯山脉东边的斜坡上，环绕着亚马逊河上游的盆地。马丘比丘废墟是世界上最美最神秘的古代遗址之一。早在15世纪初期，印加人就在那里建起数百座石建筑，传说和神话表明马丘比丘曾是一个圣地。古城废墟有宫殿、洗浴室、寺庙、贮藏室和大约150间房子，皆保存完好。这些建筑均用山顶的灰色花岗岩雕筑而成，是建筑学和美学的奇迹。

Part B: Summary Writing

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and then write a summary of it in English in about 120 words.

There is extraordinary exposure in the United States to the risk of injury and death from motor vehicle accidents. More than 80 percent of all households own passenger cars or light trucks and each of these is driven an average of more than 11,000 miles each year. Almost one-half of fatally injured drivers have a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.1 percent or higher. For the average adult, over five ounces of 80 proof spirits would have to be consumed over a short period of time to attain these levels. A third of drivers who have been drinking, but fewer than 4 percent of all drivers, demonstrate these levels. Although less than 1 percent of drivers with BAC’s of 0.1 percent or more are involved in fatal crashes, the probability of their involvement is 27 times higher than for those without alcohol in their blood.

There are a number of different approaches to reducing injuries in which intoxication plays a role. Based on the observation that excessive consumption correlates with the total alcohol consumption of a country’s population, it has been suggested that higher taxes on alcohol would reduce both. While the heaviest drinkers would be taxed the most, anyone who drinks at all would be penalized by this approach.

To make drinking driving a criminal offense is an approach directed only at intoxicated drivers. In some states, the law empowers police to request breath test of drivers cited for any traffic offense and elevated BAC can be the basis for every arrest. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates, however, that even with increased arrests, there are about 700 violations for every arrest. At this level there is little evidence that laws serve as deterrents to drinking while intoxicated. In Britain, motor vehicle fatalities fell 25 percent immediately following implementation of the Road Safety Act in 1967. As Britishers increasingly recognized that they could drink and not to be stopped, the effectiveness declined, although in the following three years the fatality rate seldom reached that observed in the seven years prior to the Act.