2013年英语二考研试题【2】

　　Section II Reading Comprehension

　　Part A

　　Directions:

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

　　Text 1

　　In an essay entitled “Making It in America”, the author Adam Davidson relates a joke from cotton about just how much a modern textile mill has been automated: The average mill only two employees today,” a man and a dog. The man is there to feed the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines.”

　　Davidson’s article is one of a number of pieces that have recently appeared making the point that the reason we have such stubbornly high unemployment and declining middle-class incomes today is also because of the advances in both globalization and the information technology revolution, which are more rapidly than ever replacing labor with machines or foreign worker.

　　In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job，could earn an average lifestyle ,But ,today ,average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra-their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment.

　　Yes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. But there’s been an acceleration. As Davidson notes,” In the 10 years ending in 2009, [U.S.] factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs-about 6 million in total -disappeared.

　　There will always be changed-new jobs, new products, new services. But the one thing we know for sure is that with each advance in globalization and the I.T. revolution, the best jobs will require workers to have more and better education to make themselves above average.

　　In a world where average is officially over, there are many things we need to do to support employment, but nothing would be more important than passing some kind of G.I.Bill for the 21st century that ensures that every American has access to poet-high school education.

　　21. The joke in Paragraph 1 is used to illustrate_______

　　[A] the impact of technological advances

　　[B] the alleviation of job pressure

　　[C] the shrinkage of textile mills

　　[D] the decline of middle-class incomes

　　22. According to Paragraph 3, to be a successful employee, one has to______

　　[A] work on cheap software

　　[B] ask for a moderate salary

　　[C] adopt an average lifestyle

　　[D] contribute something unique

　　23. The quotation in Paragraph 4 explains that ______

　　[A] gains of technology have been erased

　　[B] job opportunities are disappearing at a high speed

　　[C] factories are making much less money than before

　　[D] new jobs and services have been offered

　　24. According to the author, to reduce unemployment, the most important is_____

　　[A] to accelerate the I.T. revolution

　　[B] to ensure more education for people

　　[C] ro advance economic globalization

　　[D] to pass more bills in the 21st century

　　25. Which of the following would be the most appropriate title for the text?

　　[A] New Law Takes Effect

　　[B] Technology Goes Cheap

　　[C] Average Is Over

　　[D] Recession Is Bad

　　Text 2

　　A century ago, the immigrants from across the Atlantic inclued settlers and sojourners. Along with the many folks looking to make a permanent home in the United States came those who had no intention to stay, and 7millin people arrived while about 2 million departed. About a quarter of all Italian immigrants, for exanmle, eventually returned to Italy for good. They even had an affectionate nickname, “uccelli di passaggio,” birds of passage.

　　Today, we are much more rigid about immigrants. We divide nemcomers into two categories: legal or illegal, good or bad. We hail them as Americans in the making, or our broken immigrantion system and the long political paralysis over how to fix it. We don’t need more categories, but we need to change the way we think about categories. We need to look beyond strick definitions of legal and illegal. To start, we can recognize the new birds of passage, those living and thriving in the gray areas. We might then begin to solve our immigration challenges.

　　Crop pickers, violinists, construction workers, entrepreneurs, engineers, home health-care aides and physicists are among today’s birds of passage. They are energetic participants in a global economy driven by the flow of work, money and ideas .They prefer to come and go as opportunity calls them , They can manage to have a job in one place and a family in another.

　　With or without permission, they straddle laws, jurisdictions and identities with ease. We need them to imagine the United States as a place where they can be productive for a while without committing themselves to staying forever. We need them to feel that home can be both here and there and that they can belong to two nations honorably.

　　Accommodating this new world of people in motion will require new attitudes on both sides of the immigration battle .Looking beyond the culture war logic of right or wrong means opening up the middle ground and understanding that managing immigration today requires multiple paths and multiple outcomes. Including some that are not easy to accomplish legally in the existing system.

　　26 “Birds of passage” refers to those who____

　　[A] immigrate across the Atlantic.

　　[B] leave their home countries for good.

　　[C] stay in a foregin temporaily.

　　[D] find permanent jobs overseas.

　　27 It is implied in paragraph 2 that the current immigration stystem in the US____

　　[A] needs new immigrant categories.

　　[B] has loosened control over immigrants.

　　[C] should be adopted to meet challenges.

　　[D] has been fixeed via political means.

　　28 According to the author, today’s birds of passage want___

　　[A] fiancial incentives.