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2012考研英语(二)阅读理解真题
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
Homework has never been terribly popular with students and even many parents, but in recently years it has been particularly scorned. School districts across the country, most recently Los Angeles Unified, are revising their thinking on this educational ritual. Unfortunately, L.A. Unified has produced an inflexible policy which mandates that with the exception of some advanced courses, homework may no longer count for more than 10% of a student’s academic grade.
This rule is meant to address the difficulty that students from impoverished or chaotic homes might have in completing their homework. But the policy is unclear and contradictory. Certainly, no homework should be assigned that students cannot complete on their own or that they cannot do without expensive equipment. But if the district is essentially giving a pass to students who do not do their homework because of complicated family lives, it is going riskily close to the implication that standards need to be lowered for poor children.
District administrators say that homework will still be a part of schooling; teachers are allowed to assign as much of it as they want. But with homework counting for no more than 10% of their grades, students can easily skip half their homework and see very little difference on their report cards. Some students might do well on state tests without completing their homework, but what about the students who performed well on the tests and did their homework? It is quite possible that the homework helped. Yet rather than empowering teachers to find what works best for their students, the policy imposes a flat, across-the-board rule.
At the same time, the policy addresses none of the truly thorny questions about homework. If the district finds homework to be unimportant to its students’ academic achievement, it should move to reduce or eliminate the assignments, not make them count for almost nothing. Conversely, if should account for a significant portion of the grade. Meanwhile, this policy does nothing to ensure that the homework students receive is meaningful or appropriate to their age and the subject, or that teachers are not assigning more than they are willing to review and correct.
The homework rules should be put on hold while the shool board, which is responsible for setting educational policy, looks into the matter and conducts public hearings. It is not too late for L.A. Unified to do homework right.
21. It is implied in paragraph 1 that nowadays homework____.
[A] is receiving more criticism
[B]is no longer an educational ritual
[C]is not required for advanced courses
[D]is gaining more preferences
22. L.A.Unified has made the rule about homework mainly because poor students_____.
[A] tend to have moderate expectations for their education
[B]have asked for a different educational standard
[C]may have problems finishing their homework
[D]have voiced their complaints about homework
23. According to Paragraph 3’one problem with the policy is that it may____.
[A]discourage students from doing homework
[B]result in students’ indifference to their report cards
[C]undermine the authority of state tests
[D]restrict teachers’ power in education
24. As mentioned in Paragraph 4 a key question unanswered about homework is_____.
[A] it should be eliminated
[B] it counts much in schooling
[C] it places extra burdens on teachers
[D] it is important for grades
25. A suitable title for this text could be____.
[A] wrong Interpretations of an Educational Policy
[B] A Welcomed Policy for Poor Students
[C] Thorny Questions about Homework
[D] A Faulty Approach to Homework
Text 2
Pretty in pink: adult women do not remember being so obsessed with the colour, yet it is pervasive in our young girls’ lives. It is not that pink is intrinsically bad, but it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow and, though it may celebrate girlhood in one way, it also repeatedly and firmly fuses girls’ identity to appearance. Then it presents that connection, even among two-year-olds, between girls as not only innocent but as evidence of innocence. Looking around, I despaired at the singular lack of imagination about girls’ lives and interests.
Girls’ attraction to pink may seem unavoidable, somehow encoded in their DNA, but according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American Studies, it is not. Children were not colour-coded at all until the early 20th century, in the era before domestic washing machines all babies wore white as a practical matter, since the only way of getting clothes clean was to boil them. What’s more, both boys and girls wore what were thought of as gender-neutral dresses. When nursery colours were introduced, pink was actually considered the more masculine colour, a pastel version of red, which was associated with strength. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, symbolized femininity. It was not until the mid-1980s,when amplifying age and sex differences became a dominant children’s marketing strategy, that pink fully came into its own, when it began to seem inherently attractive to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few critical years.
I had not realized how profoundly marketing trends dictated our perception of what is natural to kids, including our core beliefs about their psychological development. Take the toddler. I assumed that phase was something experts developed after years of research into children’s behavior: wrong. Turns out, according to Daniel Cook, a historian of childhood consumerism, it was popularized as a marketing trick by clothing manufacturers in the 1930s.
Trade publications counseled department stores that, in order to increase sales, they should create a “third stepping stone” between infant wear and older kids’ clothes. It was only after “toddler” became a common shoppers’ term that it evolved into a broadly accepted developmental stage. Splitting kids, or adults, into ever-tinier categories has proved a sure-fire way to boost profits. And one of the easiest ways to segment a market is to magnify gender differences-or invent them where they did not previously exist.
26.By saying “it is … the rainbow” (Line3, Para.1), the author means pink____.
[A]should not be the sole representation of girlhood
[B]should not be associated with girls’ innocence
[C]cannot explain girls’ lack of imagination
[D]cannot influence girls’ lives and interests
27. According to paragraph 2, which of the following is true of colours?
[A] Colours are encoded in girls’ DNA.
[B] Blue used to be regarded as the colour for girls.
[C] Pink used to be a neutral colour in symbolising genders.
[D] White is preferred by babies.
28. The author suggests that our perception of children’s psychological development was much influenced by_____.
[A]the marketing of products for children
[B]the observation of children’s nature
[C]researches into children’s behaviour
[D]studies of childhood consumption
29. We may learn from paragraph 4 that department stores were advised to____.
[A]focus on infant wear and older kids’ clothes
[B]attach equal importance to different genders
[C]classify consumers into smaller groups
[D]create some common shoppers’ terms
30. It can be concluded that girls’ attraction to pink seems to be____.
[A]clearly explained by their inborn tendency
[B]fully understood by clothing manufacturers
[C]mainly imposed by profit-driven businessmen
[D]well interpreted by psychological experts
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Text 3
In2010, a federal judge shook America’s biotech industry to its core. Companies had won patents for isolated DNA for decades-by 2005 some 20% of human genes were patented .But in March 2012 a judge ruled that genes were unpatentable. Executives were violently agitated. The Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO), a trade group, assured members that this was just a “preliminary step” in a longer battle
On July 29th they were relieved, at least temporarily. A federal appeals court overturned the prior decision, ruling that Muriad Genetics could indeed hold patents to two genes that help forecast a woman’s risk of breast cancer .The chief executive of Mytiad, a company in Utah, said the ruling was a blessing to firms and patients alike.
But as companies continue their attempts at personalised medicine, the courts will remain rather busy. The Myriad case itself is probably not over. Critics make three main arguments against gene patents: a gene is a product of nature, so it may not be patented; gene patents suppress innovation rather than reward it; and patents monopolies restrict access to genetic tests such as Myriads A growing number seem to agree. Last year a federal task-force urged reform for patents related to genetic tests. In October the Department of Justice filed a brief in the Myriad case, arguing that an isolated DNA molecule “is no less a product of nature…than are cotton fibres that have been separated from cotton seeds.”
Despite the appeals court’s decision, big questions remain unanswered. For example, it is unclear whether the sequencing of a whole genome violates the patents of individual genes within it. The case may yet reach the Supreme Court.
As the industry advances, however, other suits may have an even greater impact. Companies are unlikely to file many more patents for human DNA molecules-most are unlikely patented or in the public domain. Firms are now studying how genes interact, looking for correlations that might be used to determine the causes of disease or predict a drug’s efficacy. Companies are eager to win patents for “connecting the dots,” explains Hans Sauer, a lawyer for the BIO.
Their success may be determined by a suit related to this issue, brought by the Mayo Clinic, which the Supreme Court will hear in its next term. The BIO recently held a convention which included sessions to coach lawyer on the shifting landscape for patents.Each meeting was packed.
31. It can be learned from Paragraph 1 that the biotech companies would like_____.
[A] their executives to be active
[B] judges to rule out gene patenting
[C] genes to be patentable
[D] the BIO to issue a warning
32. Those who are against gene patents believe that_____.
[A] genetic tests are not reliable
[B] only man-made products are patentable
[C] patants on genes depend much on innovation
[D] courts should restrict access to genetic tests
33. According to Hans Sauer , companies are eager to win patents for_____.
[A] establishing disease correlations
[B] discovering gene interactions
[C] drawing pictures of genes
[D] identifying human DNA
34. By saying“Each meeting was packed”(Line 4,Para.6), the author means that______.
[A] the supreme court was authoritative
[B] the BIO was a powerful organisation
[C] gene patenting was a great concern
[D] lawyers were keen to attend conventions
35. Generally speaking, the author’s attitude toward gene patenting is______.
[A] critical
[B] supportive
[C] scornful
Text 4
The great recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. And ultimately, it is likely to reshape our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years.
No one tries harder than the jobless to find silver linings in this national economic disaster. Many said that unemployment, while extremely painful, had improved them in some ways: they had become less materialistic and more financially prudent; they were more aware of the struggles of others. In limited respects, perhaps the recession will leave society better off. At the very least, it has awoken us from our national fever dream of easy riches and bigger houses, and put a necessary end to an era of reckless personal spending.
But for the most part, these benefits seem thin, uncertain, and far off. In The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, the economic historian Benjamin Friedman argues that both inside and outside the U.S., lengthy periods of economic stagnation or decline have almost always left society more mean-spirited and less inclusive, and have usually stopped or reversed the advance of rights and freedoms. Anti-immigrant sentiment typically increases, as does conflict between races and classes.
Income inequality usually falls during a recession, but it has not shrunk in this one. Indeed, this period of economic weakness may reinforce class divides, and decrease opportunities to cross them - especially for young people. The research of Till Von Wachter, the economic at Columbia University, suggests that not all people graduating into a recession see their life chances dimmed: those with degrees from elite universities catch up fairly quickly to where they otherwise would have been if they had graduated in better times; it is the masses beneath them that are left behind.
In the Internet age, it is particularly easy to see the resentment that has always been hidden within American society. More difficult, in the moment, is discerning precisely how these lean times are affecting society’s character. In many respects, the U.S. was more socially tolerant entering this recession than at any time in its history, and a variety of national polls on social conflict since then have shown mixed results. We will have to wait and see exactly how these hard times will reshape our social fabric. But they certainly will reshape it, and all the more so the longer they extend.
36. By saying “to find silver linings”(Line 1,Para.2)the author suggests that the jobless try to ___.
[A] seek subsidies from the government
[B] explore reasons for the unemployment
[C] make profit from the troubled economy
[D] look on the bright side of the recession
37. According to Paragraph 2, the recession has made people___.
[A] realize the national dream
[B] struggle against each other
[C] challenge their prudence
[D] reconsider their lifestyle
38. Benjamin Friedman believes that economic recessions may___.
[A] impose a heavier burden on immigrants
[B] bring out more evils of human nature
[C] promote the advance of rights and freedoms
[D] ease conflicts between races and classes
39. The research of Till Von Wachter suggests that in the recession graduates from elite universities tend to___.
[A] lag behind the others due to decreased opportunities
[B] catch up quickly with experienced employees
[C] see their life chances as dimmed as the others
[D] recover more quickly than the others
40. The author thinks that the influence of hard times on society is _____.
[A] certain
[B] positive
[C] trivial
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