[外语类试卷]专业英语八级（阅读）模拟试卷84及答案与解析.doc

1、专业英语八级（阅读）模拟试卷 84及答案与解析 SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS In this section there are several passages followed by fourteen multiple-choice questions. For each multiple-choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A , B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer. 0 (1)Har

2、ry S. Truman High School in the Bronx has eight floors, seven gymnasiums, a football field and a planetarium. But there is one place off limits to its more than 3,000 students: the six-lane swimming pool, which has been dry for more than a decade. Flanked by empty bleachers, coated with dust and dim

3、ly lighted by a few fluorescent bulbs, whose dull buzzing noise substitutes for splashing and cheering, the pool evokes an aura of eerie loneliness. (2)Within the New York City public school system, though, the troubled Truman pool represents a trend. Of the 50 swimming pools tucked inside the citys

4、 1,200 school buildings, 10 are in unusable condition. At Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Manhattan, the pool, empty since leaks and filtration problems were discovered in 1986, has been used over the years to store old chairs and desks. The pool at Walton High School in the Bronx has been clo

5、sed since the 1980s, despite a $54 million schoolwide renovation. Next to Trumans competitive pool is a smaller practice pool, which is also empty, except for grime, spattered paint and a few cigarette butts. (3)For the swimming enthusiasts of the city public school system, the empty school pools ar

6、e a sad spectacle, hollow symbols of lost opportunities: to combat obesity; to provide summer job training in a city that has had to import lifeguards from Europe in recent years; to entice that subset of students who just may love the water even if they hate everything else about high school. “Swim

7、ming kind of puts you in a different frame of mind theres noise and laughter, people feeling free and weightless,“ said Sana Q. Nasser, the principal of Truman. “Here we have a pool that needs a teensy bit to get it going, and to see it empty is heart-wrenching.“ (4)The latest version of Mayor Micha

8、el R. Bloombergs $13.1 billion, five-year educational capital plan, to be announced in the coming weeks, will include $60 million for upgrades to a dozen school pools, including $7 million for Truman, $5 million for Walton and $4 million for King, said Steven W. Lawitts, senior vice president of the

9、 School Construction Authority. “These pools are going to be fixed,“ Mr. Lawitts said. But the school systems capital plans have historically called for projects that never end up happening, among them the planned renovation of one of two pools at the George Washington High School campus, in Washing

10、ton Heights. Also, the mayors plan relies on $6.5 billion from the state, which is resisting a court order to give the city schools more money. (5)“I would love it to be the case that kids could swim next year at Truman High School,“ said Eva S. Moskowitz, chairwoman of the City Council Education Co

11、mmittee, whose father swam on the Stuyvesant High School team. “People should not be fooled that simply because the pool repair is in the capital budget it will happen.“ (6)Teachers and principals say that when school pools work, they are oases from whatever troubles may pass in the hallways and cla

12、ssrooms. Tension over test scores and safety concerns dissipates in the smell of chlorine, the creak of diving boards, the splash of the butterfly stroke. (7)On the West Side of Manhattan, the purported existence of a pool at Martin Luther King Jr. High School was such a mystery that it inspired an

13、article in The Advocate, a student newspaper on campus. Appearing under the headline “Unlocking MLKs Secrets,“ the article was accompanied by a photograph showing old furniture and a television set stacked next to the empty pool. At other schools, the situation is reversed. “The seniors would always

14、 tell the freshmen they could go find the pool on the fifth floor,“ said Adam Kerzner, a Bronx Science swimmer who graduated from the schoolwhich has no fifth floor in 1997. “It was kind of like a hazing thing.“ Swim teams representing all eight Staten Island high schools vie for practice time at Cu

15、rtis High School, the boroughs only public school with a pool. “Its hectic,“ said Jim Meraglia, Curtiss athletic director. 1 Which of the following details of swimming pool in Martin Luther King Jr. High School is INCORRECT? （ A） It has been used as a storage of old chairs and desks since 1986. （ B）

16、 It is included in the Mayors five-year educational capital plan. （ C） It is still in unusable condition despite a schoolwide renovation. （ D） It ever inspired an article titled “Unlocking MLKs Secrets“. 2 Which of the following benefits of swimming is NOT mentioned in the passage? （ A） Losing weigh

17、t. （ B） Keeping healthy. （ C） Relieving stress. （ D） Forgetting troubles. 3 The authors tone towards the topic can most probably be described as _. （ A） concerned （ B） optimistic （ C） critical （ D） sarcastic 3 (1)As we hurtle towards me new millennium, what is the better symbol of the relentless pas

18、sage of time than me ancient sundial? Sundials come in many forms, but horizontal ones are by far the most common. Usually set on a pedestal, they consist of a flat dial face and a gnomon the slanting piece of metal that casts the shadow. Believe it or not, interest in sundials is increasing in the

19、west. A quick glance at the Internet reveals burgeoning sundial societies all over me world for the scientifically inclined and even detailed sundial trials for those who want to check out me dials in gardens in the United States, France or Britain. This is time travel with a difference. (2)Quotes o

20、r mottoes have traditionally been inscribed on sundials to promote reflection and thought, and these sayings are repeated on the modern versions of the old timepiece. The philosophical sayings add to the image of the timelessness of sundials, but are also reminders in the great poetic traditions of

21、the transient nature of human life. (3)“Time began in a garden“ is a quotation referring to the Christian Bible legend of the Garden of Eden where, Christian belief says, human life began at the dawn of Creation, and from having been eternal, humans became subject to the decay of time. (4)“I am a sh

22、adow. So are you“ reminds the observer that a passing life can be as swift and transitory as the shadow that drifts over the face of a sundial, while the enigmatic “I make time Dost thou?“ plays on the double meaning of the English words for marking or keeping time, like a clock, and marking time by

23、 failing to make progress. (5)Sundials have long been beautifully crafted but now some innovative Western Sculptors are creating dramatic new variations on the theme, such as a vertical or wall dial from a modern courtyard setting. Bold colorful sun designs or simple minimalist wall plaques are avai

24、lable, and there is even a water fountain dial where the water jet replaces the gnomon(finger)as marker of time. Clever designs playing with the sun and resulting shadow forms also use stark hunks of rough-hewn stone, taking us back to those pointers of old, or employ reflective materials like glass

25、. (6)The earliest sundials are recorded in use around 300 BC. They come from the stage in ancient times when men and women began to use simple sticks and markers to show the time of day as the shadows progressed. Such devices grew steadily more complex until by Roman times no fewer than 12 types of

26、sundial were recorded, including a sophisticated portable version. More than mere markers of time, such dials served for centuries to indicate mankinds understanding of the complexities of the heavens. (7)Somewhere along the line, someone realized that a slanting object would cast a more accurate sh

27、adow than a vertical one for the purposes of keeping time. The problem of seasonal changes was removed by placing the slanting object parallel to the Earths axis. Even after clocks and watches were invented, their reliability was questionable and sundials still had to be used to check their accuracy

28、. (8)But eventually, as the 18th and 19th centuries progressed, and coinciding with the era of “picturesque“ or idealized landscape gardening in Britain and Europe, sundials became garden ornaments first and timekeepers second. Their value in this area has never been questioned, as successful garden

29、s often rely on such focal points for impact. (9)With their inherent dignity and image of scientific order triumphing over chaos, sundials provide the perfect centerpiece for herb gardens, historic gardens, hospitals, schools, riversides churches(set in thyme of cause), knot gardens, memorial garden

30、s, cemeteries and civic gardens. (10)Armillary sundials are especially aesthetically pleasing, with their circular or spherical shape and make superb garden ornaments. Consisting of several rings, they revolved from the celestial globes used by ancient astronomers to plot the position of the stars.

31、(11)The word armillary comes from the Latin armillary a bracelet or ring. One ring representing the equator has the hours walked on it, a second stands for the meridian, and a third the horizon. (12)The rod through the centre representing the earths axis shows the time by casting its shadow on to th

32、e hour times marked on the equatorial ring. (13)Sun time is not the same as watch time because it measures time as it is, not as we would like it to be, with noon today exactly 24 hours away from noon tomorrow. Before the world became a small place and people didnt move around very much, local time

33、was a perfectly satisfactory measurement. But as modern communication and means of travel grew more sophisticated standard time zones were adopted. As a result, your sundial will agree with your watch only on four days of the year, not because it is inaccurate but because it is measuring a different

34、 kind of time. Adjustments for “daylight saving“ time throw yet another spoke in the wheel. Theres a new kind of tour for you time travel. It couldnt catch on. 4 Nowadays, the sundial is popular again in the West because _. （ A） many quotes or mottoes promote peoples reflection of the use of sundial

35、s （ B） sundials can be used as a tool to check the accuracy of clocks and watches （ C） sundial can be a perfect ornament with its dignity and image of scientific order （ D） many nations in the West begin to rely on the sundial for making the time 5 According to the passage, armillary sundials _. （ A

36、） consists of at least three rings with different meanings （ B） can not be used to mark the time at that time （ C） are used purely as a kind of garden ornaments （ D） are a kind of bracelets representing the equator 6 According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true? （ A） According to the

37、 historical record, people began to use sundials around 300 BC. （ B） The quotes or mottoes now are inscribed on sundials to promote thought. （ C） Sundials are set on a pedestal, consisting of a dial face and a piece of metal. （ D） Sundials have been beautifully crafted and modified since its existen

38、ce. 6 (1)As some who has lived without a car for the past three years, I am no fan of freeways or expressways. But forgive me a moment of qualified nostalgia for two overhead urban highways that have met their demise on opposite sides of America. (2)San Francisco and now Boston have brought down ele

39、vated inner-city expressways, part and parcel of urban revitalization programs that have transformed these and many other downtowns over the past two decades. To my mind, these are good steps. (3)But that doesnt mean there isnt anything nice to say about the departed roadways. (4)They were a logical

40、 extension of the highway systems that attempted, in part, to keep the countrys post-World War II suburban sprawl and its older cities somehow connected. (5)Those highways provided room to roam after they were beyond the city limits. But up against the denser urban landscapes, the designers often ha

41、d to resort to tunneling or taking to the air with roadways on stilts. (6)The erasure of an overhead highway in San Francisco and now in Boston amounts to stunning reclamations of now-prized real estate in each city. (7)In San Francisco, an elevated freeway that wrapped along the citys eastern edge

42、separated the downtown business district from its waterfront. For a city fed by ocean commerce, it struck many as a travesty. (8)Today, an enormous public space of benches, sculptures, charming old-world trolley cars, and stalls of produce and crafts has replaced the freeway. (9)In Boston, as the Bi

43、g Dig winds down and the Rose Kennedy Greenway begins to take shape, few vestiges are now left of the old expressway that once separated the citys financial district from one of the oldest ethnic neighborhoods in the nation: the Italian North End. (10)As an inhabitant of each city for many years, I

44、wouldnt want to turn back the clock. But I would like to pause for a moment and admit a certain nostalgia for these past chapters in each citys admirable history. (11)The North End is one of Bostons most interesting neighborhoods. It was built on European scale. The brick buildings line narrow stree

45、ts, many of which have trouble accommodating more than one car at a time. In the early morning, the cafes are populated by older men speaking exclusively in Italian with both hands and mouth. (12)To get to the North End, you used to have to take a twisted and littered path beneath the expressway. Pa

46、rt of the journey was to feel lost. (13)But for those who persisted in venturing beneath that dark behemoth, the eventual emergence into the quaint Italian neighborhood had the quality of a revelation: It was an adventure from dark, dirty, and lost to warm and charming. (14)I will miss that journey

47、and have a slightly queasy feeling about what might become of the North End now that its stripped of its ugly, but formidable, protection from the spit-and-polished downtown. (15)In San Francisco, I also recall the freeway days with some fondness. The waterfront, having lost much of its ocean commer

48、ce to less-costly Oakland, across the San Francisco Bay, had already crept into a state of charming disrepair when the freeway was built in the 1970s. (16)01d wooden piers reached out into the bay, and die waterfront was populated by authentically bedraggled taverns and seafood joints that served th

49、e dwindling number of seafarers and longshoremen who still worked the wharf. (17)But enough nostalgia. (18)Each city is writing a new chapter. Space has returned to the people. That is good, even if me shadows from those ugly overhead roadways created a certain sense of urban grit mat had its own shades of appeal. 7 Which word can NOT be used as an adjective to describe an overhead highway? （ A） Ugly. （ B） Protective. （ C） Elevated. （ D） Modern. 8 It can be inferred from the passage all the following EXCEPT _. （ A） the author