考研英语阅读理解复习

　　Passage 9

　　People do not analyze every problem they meet. Sometimes they try to remember a solution from the last time they had a similar problem. They often accept the opinions or ideas of other people. Other times they begin to act without thinking; they try to find a solution by trial and error. However, when all these methods fail, the person with a problem has to start analyzing. There are six stages in analyzing a problem.

　　First the person must recognize that there is a problem. For example, Sam's bicycle is broken, and he cannot read it to class as he usually does. Sam must see that there is a problem with his bicycle.

　　Next the thinker must define the problem. Before Sam can repair his bicycle. he must find the reason why it does not work. For instance, he must determine if the problem is with the gears, the brakes, or the frame. He must make his problem more specific.

　　Now the person must look for information that will make the problem clearer and lead to possible solutions. For instance, suppose Sam decided that his bike does not work because there is something wrong with the gear wheels. At this time. he can look in his bicycle repair book and read about gears. He can talk to his friends at the bike shop. He can look at his gears carefully. after studying the problem, the person should have several suggestions for a possible solution. Take Sam as an illustration. His suggestions might be: put oil on the gear wheels; buy new gea...

　　Passage 8

　　Thirty-two people watched kitty Genovese being killed right beneath their windows. She was their neighbor. Yet none of the 32 helped her. Not one even called the police. Was this in gunman cruelty? Was it lack of feeling about one's fellow man?

　　Not so, say scientists John Barley and Bib Fatane. These men went beyond the headlines to probe the reasons why people didn't act. They found that a person has to go through two steps before he can help. First he has to notice that is an emergency.

　　Suppose you see a middle-aged man fall to the side-walk. Is he having a heart attack? Is he in a coma (昏迷) from diabetes(糖尿病)? Or is he about to sleep off a drunk?

　　Is the smoke coming into the room from a leak in the air conditioning? Is itsteam pipes? Or is it really smoke from a fire? It's not always easy to tell if you are faced with a real emergency.

　　Second, and more important, the person faced with an emergency must feel personally responsible. He must feel that he must help, or the person won't get the help he needs.

　　The researchers found that a lot depends on how many people are around. They had college students in to betested. Some came alone. Some came with one or two others. And some came in large groups. The receptionist started them off on thetests. Then she went into the next room. A curtain divided thetesting roomand the room into which she went. Soon the students heard a scream, the noise of file cabinets fal...

　　Passage 7

　　A moment's drilling by the dentist may make us nervous and upset. Many of us cannot stand pain. To avoid the pain of a drilling that may last perhaps a minute or two, we demand theneedle- a shot of novocaine (奴佛卡因)-that deadens the nerves around the tooth.

　　Now it's true that the human body has developed its millions of nerves to be highly aware of what goes on both inside and outside of it. This helps us adjust to the world. Without our nerves - and our brain, which is a bundle of nerves - we wouldn't know what's happening. But we pay for our sensitivity. We can feel pain when the slightest thing is wrong with any part of our body. The history of torture is based on the human body being open to pain.

　　But there is a way to handle pain. Look at the Indian fakir(行僧)who sits on a bed of nails. Fakirs can put a needle right through an arm, and feel no pain. This ability that some humans have developed to handle pain should give us ideas about how the mind can deal with pain.

　　The big thing in withstanding pain is our attitude toward it. If the dentist says, This will hurt a little, it helps us to accept the pain. By staying relaxed, and by treating the pain as an interesting sensation(感觉), we can handle the pain without falling apart. After all, although pain is an unpleasant sensation, it is still a sensation, and sensations are the stuff of life.

　　1. The passage is mainly about　　　　　　　.

　　A) how to suffer pain

　　Passage 6

　　We can make mistakes at any age. Some mistakes we make are about money. But most mistakes are about people. Did Jerry really care when I broke up with Helen? When I got that great job, did Jim really feel good about it, as a friend? Or did he envy my luck? And Paul-why didn't pick up that he was friendly just because I had a car? When we look back, doubts like these can make us feel bad. But when we look back, it's too late.

　　Why do we go wrong about our friends-or our enemies? Sometimes what people say hides their real meaning. And if we don't really listen we miss the feeling behind the words. Suppose someone tells you, You're a lucky dog. That's being friendly. But lucky dog? There's a bit of envy in those words. Maybe he doesn't see it himself. But bringing in the dog bit puts you down a little. What he may be saying is that the doesn't think you deserve your luck.

　　Just think of all the things you have to be thankful foris another noise that says one thing and means another. It could mean that the speaker is trying to get you to see your problem as part of your life as a whole. But is he? Wrapped up in this phrase is the thought that your problem isn't important. It's telling you to think of all the starving people in the world when you haven't got a date for Saturday night.

　　How can you tell the real meaning behind someone's words? One way is to take a good look at the person talking. Do his words fit the way he looks? Doe...

　　Passage 5

　　In 1960-1961, Chad (乍得) harvested 9800 tons of cotton seed for the first time in its history, and put out the flag a little too soon. The efforts of the authorities to get the peasants back to work, as they had slacked off (松懈) a great deal the previous year during independence celebrations, largely contributed to it. Also, rains were well spaced, and continued through the whole month of October. If the 1961-1962 total is back to the region of 45000 tons, it is mostly because efforts slackened again and sowing was started too late.

　　The average date of sowing is about July 1st. If this date is simply moved up fifteen or twenty days, 30000 to 60000 tons of cotton are gained, depending on the year. The peasant in Chad sows his millet (小米) first, and it is hard to criticize this instinctive priority given to his daily bread. An essential reason for his lateness with sowing cotton is that at the time when he should leave to prepare the fields he has just barely sold the cotton of the previous season. The work required to sow, in great heat, is psychologically far more difficult if one's pockets are full of money. The date of cotton sales should therefore be moved forward as much as possible, and purchases of equipment and draught animals encouraged.

　　Peasants should also be encouraged to save money, to help them through the difficult period between harvests. If necessary they should be forced to do so, by having the payments for cotton give...

　　Passage 4

　　Those who welcomed the railway saw it as more than a rapid and comfortable means of passing. They actually saw it as afactor in world peace. They did not foresee that the railway would be just one more means for the rapid movement of aggressive armies. None of them foresaw that the more weare together-the more chances there are of war. Any boy or girl who is one of a large family knows that.

　　Whenever any new invention is put forward, those for it and those against it can always find medical men to approve or condemn. The anti-railway group produced doctors who said that tunnels would be most dangerous to public health: they would produce colds, catarrhs (粘膜炎) and consumptions. The deafening noise and the glare of the engine fire, would have a bad effect on the nerves. Further, being moved through the air at a high speed would do grave injury to delicate lungs. In those with high blood-pressure, the movement of the train might produce apoplexy (中风). The sudden plunging of a train into the darkness of a tunnel, and the equally sudden rush into full daylight, would cause great damage to eyesight. But the pro-railway group was of course able to produce equally famous medical men to say just the opposite. They said that the speed and swing of the train would equalize the circulation, promote digestion, tranquilize the nerves, and ensure good sleep.

　　The actual rolling-stock was anything but comfortable. If it was a test of endurance to sit ...

　　Passage 3

　　Everyone has heard of the San Andreas fault (断层), which constantly threatens California and the West Coast with earthquakes. But how many people know about the equally serious New Madrid fault in Missouri?

　　Between December of 1811 and February of 1812, three major earthquakes occurred, all centered around the town of New Madrid, Missouri, on the Mississippi River. Property damage was severe. Buildings in the area were almost destroyed. Whole forests fell at once, and huge cracks opened in the ground, allowing smell of sulfur(硫磺)to filter upward.

　　The Mississippi River itself completely changed character, developing sudden rapids and whirlpools. Several times it changed its course, and once, according to some observers, it actually appeared to run backwards.Few people were killed in the New Marid earthquakes, probably simply because few people lived in the area in 1811; but the severity of the earthquakes are shown by the fact that the shock waves rang bells in church towers in Charleston, South Carolina, on the coast. Buildings shook in New York City, and clocks wer stopped in Washington, D.C. Scientists now know that America's two major faults are essentially different. The San Andreas is a horizontal boundary between two major land masses that are slowly moving in opposite directions. California earthquakes result when the movement of these two masses suddenly lurches (倾斜) forward.

　　The New Madrid fault, on the other hand, is...

　　Passage2

　　You're busy filling out the application form for a position you really need; let's assume you once actually completed a couple of years of college work or even that you completed your degree. Isn't it tempting to lie just a little, to claim on the form that your diploma represents a Harvard degree? Or that you finished an extra couple of years back at State University?

　　More and more people are turning to utter deception like this to land their job or to move ahead in their careers, for personnel officers, like most Americans, value degrees from famous schools. A job applicant may have a good education anyway, but he or she assumes that chances of being hired are better with a diploma from a well-known university. Registrars at most well-known colleges say theydeal with deceitful claims like these at the rate of aboutone per week.

　　Personnel officers do check up on degrees listed on application forms, then. If it turns out that an applicants lying, most colleges are reluctant to accuse the applicant directly. One Ivy League school calls them impostors(骗子); another refers to them asspecial cases. One well-known West Coast school, in perhaps the most delicate phrase of all, says that these claims are made byno such people.

　　To avoid outright(彻底的)lies, some job-seekers claim that they attended or were associated with a college or university. After carefully checking, a personnel officer may discover that attending means being dismis...