考研英语模拟

2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（七）

考研英语阅读理解 2014考研英语模拟题 2014考研英语押题

　　以下《2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（七）》由出国留学网考研英语模拟题为您独家提供，欢迎大家参考。

　　In spite of “endless talkof difference,”American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people.There is “the democratizing uniformity of dress and discourse, and thecasualness and absence of difference” characteristic ofpopular culture. People are absorbed into “a culture ofconsumption” launched by the 19th-century department stores that offered “vast arraysof goods in an elegant atmosphere. Instead of intimate shops catering to aknowledgeable elite。” these were stores “anyone could enter, regardless of class or background. This turnedshopping into a public and democratic act。” The mass media,advertising and sports are other forces for homogenization。

　　Immigrants are quickly fitting into this common culture, which maynot be altogether elevating but is hardly poisonous. Writing for the NationalImmigration Forum, Gregory Rodriguez reports that today’simmigration is neither at unprecedented level nor resistant to assimilation. In1998 immigrants were 9.8 percent of population; in 1900, 13.6 percent .In the10 years prior to 1990, 3.1 immigrants arrived for every 1,000 residents; inthe 10years prior to 1890, 9.2 for every 1,000. Now, consider three indices ofassimilation-language, home ownership and intermarriage。

　　The 1990 Census revealed that “a majority ofimmigrants from each of the fifteen most common countries of origin spokeEnglish ‘well’ or ‘very well’ after ten years of residence。” Th...

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2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（六）

考研英语阅读理解 2014考研英语模拟题 2014考研英语押题

　　以下《2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（六）》由出国留学网考研英语模拟题为您独家提供，欢迎大家参考。

　　Americans no longerexpect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the Englishlanguage with skill and gift. Nor do they aspire to such command themselves. Inhis latest book, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Why We Should,Like, Care, John McWhorter, a linguist and controversialist of mixed liberaland conservative views, sees the triumph of 1960s counter-culture asresponsible for the decline of formal English。

　　Blaming the permissive 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yetanother criticism against the decline in education. Mr. McWhorter’s academicspecialty is language history and change, and he sees the gradual disappearanceof “whom”， for example, to be natural and no more regrettable than the loss ofthe case-endings of Old English。

　　But the cult of the authentic and the personal, “doing ourown thing”， has spelt the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music.While even the modestly educated sought an elevated tone when they put pen topaper before the 1960s, even the most well regarded writing since then hassought to capture spoken English on the page. Equally, in poetry, the highlypersonal, performative genre is the only form that could claim real liveliness.In both oral and written English, talking is triumphing over speaking,spontaneity over craft。

　　Illustrated with an entertaining array of examples from both highand low culture, the trend...

与考研英语模拟相关的考研英语

2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（四）

考研英语阅读理解 2014考研英语模拟题 2014考研英语押题

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　　Of all thecomponents of a good night’s sleep, dreams seem to be least within our control. In dreams, awindow opens into a world where logic is suspended and dead people speak. Acentury ago, Freud formulated his revolutionary theory that dreams were thedisguised shadows of our unconscious desires and fears; by the late 1970s,neurologists had switched to thinking of them as just “mental noise”—the randombyproducts of the neural-repair work that goes on during sleep. Now researcherssuspect that dreams are part of the mind’s emotionalthermostat, regulating moods while the brain is “off-line。” And oneleading authority says that, these intensely powerful mental events can be notonly harnessed but actually brought under conscious control, to help us sleepand feel better. “It’s your dream,” says Rosalind Cartwright, chair of psychology at Chicago’s MedicalCenter. “If you don’t like it, change it。”

　　Evidence from brain imaging supports this view. The brain is asactive during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep—when most vividdreams occur—as it is when fully awake, says Dr. Eric Nofzinger at the Universityof Pittsburgh. But not all parts of the brain are equally involved; the limbicsystem (the “emotional brain”) is especially active, while the prefrontal cortex (the center ofintellect and reasoning) is relatively quiet. “We wake up fromdreams happy or depressed, and those feelings can stay with us all day”， saysStanford sleep researcher ...

与考研英语模拟相关的考研英语

2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（五）

考研英语阅读理解 2014考研英语模拟题 2014考研英语押题

　　以下《2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（五）》由出国留学网考研英语模拟题为您独家提供，欢迎大家参考。

　　Do you rememberall those years when scientists argued that smoking would kill us but thedoubters insisted that we didn’t know for sure? That the evidence was inconclusive, the scienceuncertain? That the antismoking lobby was out to destroy our way of life andthe government should stay out of the way? Lots of Americans bought thatnonsense, and over three decades, some 10 million smokers went to early graves。

　　There are upsetting parallels today, as scientists in one waveafter another try to awaken us to the growing threat of global warming. Thelatest was a panel from the National Academy of Sciences, enlisted by the WhiteHouse, to tell us that the Earth’s atmosphere is definitely warming and that the problem is largelyman-made. The clear message is that we should get moving to protest ourselves.The president of the National Academy, Bruce Alberts, added this key point inthe preface to the panel’s report: “Science never has all the answers。” But science doesprovide us with the best available guide to the future, and it is critical thatour nation and the world base important policies on the best judgments thatscience can provide concerning the future consequences of present actions。

　　Just as on smoking, voices now come from many quarters insistingthat the science about global warming is incomplete, that it’s OK to keeppouring fumes into the air until we know for sure. This is a dangerous game: byt...

与考研英语模拟相关的考研英语

2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（三）

考研英语阅读理解 2014考研英语模拟题 2014考研英语押题

　　以下《2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（三）》由出国留学网考研英语模拟题为您独家提供，欢迎大家参考。

　　Everybody loves afat pay rise. Yet pleasure at your own can vanish if you learn that a colleaguehas been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he has a reputation for slacking, youmight even be outraged. Such behaviour is regarded as “all toohuman”，with the underlying assumption that other animals would not becapable of this finely developed sense of grievance. But a study by SarahBrosnan and Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which hasjust been published in Nature, suggests that it is all too monkey, as well。

　　The researchers studied the behaviour of female brown capuchinmonkeys. They look cute. They are good-natured, co-cooperative creatures, andthey share their food readily. Above all, like their female human counterparts,they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of “good andservices” than males。

　　Such characteristics make them perfect candidates for Dr. Brosnan’s and Dr. deWaal’s study. The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys toexchange tokens for food. Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to exchangepieces of rock for slices of cucumber. However, when two monkeys were placed inseparate but adjoining chambers, so that each could observe what the other wasgetting in return for its rock, their behaviour became markedly different。

　　In the world of capuchins, grapes are luxury goods (and muchpreferable to cucumbers). So when one monkey was handed...

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2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（二）

考研英语阅读理解 2014考研英语模拟题 2014考研英语押题

　　以下《2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（二）》由出国留学网考研英语模拟题为您独家提供，欢迎大家参考。

　　Americans today don’t place avery high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, andentrepreneurs, not scholars. Even our schools are where we send our children toget a practical education—not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Symptoms ofpervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren’t difficultto find。

　　“Schools havealways been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual,”sayseducation writer Diane Ravitch. “Schools could be a counterbalance。” Ravitch’s latestbock, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, traces the roots ofanti-intellectualism in our schools, concluding they are anything but acounterbalance to the American distaste for intellectual pursuits。

　　But they could and should be. Encouraging kids to reject the lifeof the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without theability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas ofothers, they cannot fully participate in our democracy. Continuing along thispath, says writer Earl Shorris,“We will become a second-rate country. We will have a less civilsociety。”

　　“Intellect isresented as a form of power or privilege,”writes historian andprofessor Richard Hofstadter in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, aPulitzer Prize winning book on the roots of anti-intellectualism in USpolitics, religion, and education. From the beginning of our...

与考研英语模拟相关的考研英语

2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（一）

考研英语阅读理解 2014考研英语模拟题 2014考研英语押题

　　以下《2014考研英语模拟押题：阅读理解篇（一）》由出国留学网考研英语模拟题为您独家提供，欢迎大家参考。

　　When it comes tothe slowing economy, Ellen Spero isn’t biting her nailsjust yet. But the 47-year-old manicurist isn’t cutting, fillingor polishing as many nails as she’d like to, either. Most of her clients spend $12 to $50 weekly, butlast month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. Spero blames thesoftening economy. “I’m a good economic indicator,” she says. “I provide aservice that people can do without when they’re concerned aboutsaving some dollars。” So Spero is downscaling, shopping at middle-brow Dillard’s departmentstore near her suburban Cleveland home, instead of Neiman Marcus. “I don’t know ifother clients are going to abandon me, too” she says。

　　Even before Alan Greenspan’s admission thatAmerica’s red-hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seensigns of the slowdown themselves. From car dealerships to Gap outlets, saleshave been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. For retailers,who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between Thanksgiving andChristmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. Already, expertssay, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year’s pace. Butdon’t sound any alarms just yet. Consumers seem only mildly concerned,not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy’s long-termprospects, even as they do some modest belt-tightening。

　　Consumers say they’re not in despair because...

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