[外语类试卷]雅思（阅读）历年真题试卷汇编13及答案与解析.doc

1、雅思（阅读）历年真题试卷汇编 13及答案与解析 0 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. Man or Machine? MITs humanoid robots showcase both human creativity and contemporary pessimism. Humanoid robots were once the stuff of political and science fiction. Today, scien

2、tists working in Japan and the USA have been turning fiction into a physical reality. A During July 2003, the Museum of Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts exhibited what Honda calls the worlds most advanced humanoid robot, ASIMO(the Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility). Hondas brainchild is on tou

3、r in North America and delighting audiences wherever it goes. After 17 years in the making, ASIMO stands at four feet tall, weighs around 115 pounds and looks like a child in an astronauts suit. Though it is difficult to see ASIMOs face at a distance, on closer inspection it has a smile and two larg

4、e eyes that conceal cameras. The robot cannot work autonomously its actions are remote controlled by scientists through the computer in its backpack. Yet watching ASMIO perform at a show in Massachusetts it seemed uncannily human. The audience cheered as ASIMO walked forwards and backwards, side to

5、side and up and downstairs. It can even dance to the Hawaiian Hula. B While the Japanese have made huge strides in solving some of the engineering problems of human kinetics and bipedal movements, for the past 10 years scientists at MITs former Artificial Intelligence(Al)lab(recently renamed the Com

6、puter Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, CSAIL)have been making robots that can behave like humans and interact with humans. One of MITs robots, Kismet, is an anthropomorphic head and has two eyes(complete with eyelids), ears, a mouth, and eyebrows. It has several facial expressions, in

7、cluding happy, sad, frightened and disgusted. Human interlocutors are able to read some of the robots facial expressions, and often change their behaviour towards the machine as a result - for example, playing with it when it appears sad. Kismet is now in MITs museum, but the ideas developed here co

8、ntinue to be explored in new robots. C Cog(short for Cognition)is another pioneering project from MITs former Al lab. Cog has a head, eyes, two arms, hands and a torso and its proportions were originally measured from the body of a researcher in the lab. The work on Cog has been used to test theorie

9、s of embodiment and developmental robotics, particularly getting a robot to develop intelligence by responding to its environment via sensors, and to learn through these types of interactions. This approach to Al was thought up and developed by a team of students and researchers led by the head of M

10、ITs former Al lab, Rodney Brooks(now head of CSAIL), and represented a completely new development. D This work at MIT is getting furthest down the road to creating human-like and interactive robots. Some scientists argue that ASIMO is a great engineering feat but not an intelligent machine because i

11、t is unable to interact autonomously with unpredictabilities in its environment in meaningful ways, and learn from experience. Robots like Cog and Kismet and new robots at MITs CSAIL and media lab, however, are beginning to do this. E These are exciting developments. Creating a machine that can walk

12、, make gestures and learn from its environment is an amazing achievement. And watch this space: these achievements are likely rapidly to be improved upon. Humanoid robots could have a plethora of uses in society, helping to free people from everyday tasks. In Japan, for example, there is an aim to c

13、reate robots that can do the tasks similar to an average human, and also act in more sophisticated situations as firefighters, astronauts or medical assistants to the elderly in the workplace and in homes partly in order to counterbalance the effects of an ageing population. F So in addition to thes

14、e potentially creative plans there lies a certain dehumanisation. The idea that companions can be replaced with machines, for example, suggests a mechanical and degraded notion of human relationships. On one hand, these developments express human creativity our ability to invent, experiment, and to

15、extend our control over the world. On the other hand, the aim to create a robot like a human being is spurred on by dehumanised ideas by the sense that human companionship can be substituted by machines; that humans lose their humanity when they interact with technology; or that we are little more t

16、han surface and ritual behaviours, that can be simulated with metal and electrical circuits. G The tension between the dehumanised and creative aspects of robots has long been explored in culture. In Karel Capeks Rossums Universal Robots, a 1921 play in which the term robot was first coined, althoug

17、h Capeks robots had human-like appearance and behaviour, the dramatist never thought these robots were human. For Capek, being human was about much more than appearing to be human. In part, it was about challenging a dehumanising system, and struggling to become recognised and given the dignity of m

18、ore than a machine. A similar spirit would guide us well through twenty-first century experiments in robotics. Questions 1-7 Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet. NB You may u

19、se any letter more than once. 1 The different uses of robots in society 2 How robot is used in the artistic work 3 A robot that was modelled on an adult 4 A comparison between two different types of robots 5 A criticism of the negative effects of humanoid robots on the society 6 A reference to the f

20、irst use of the word “robot“ 7 People feel humanity may be replaced by robots 7 Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage. Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet. It took Honda【 R1】 _years to make ASIMO, a human-looking robot that attracted broad interes

21、ts from audiences. Unlike ASIMO, which has to be controlled through a computer installed in the【 R2】 _, MITs scientists aimed to make robots that can imitate human behavior and【 R3】 _with humans. One of such particular inventions can express its own feelings through【 R4】 _. Another innovative projec

22、t is a robot called【 R5】 _, which is expected to learn from its environment to gain some【 R6】 _. 8 【 R1】 9 【 R2】 10 【 R3】 11 【 R4】 12 【 R5】 13 【 R6】 13 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. Californias Age of Megafires Drought, housing expan

23、sion, and oversupply of tinder make for bigger, hotter fires. Theres a reason fire squads now battling more than a dozen blazes in southern California are having such difficulty containing the flames, despite better preparedness than ever and decades of experience fighting fires fanned by the notori

24、ous Santa Ana winds. The wildfires themselves, experts say, generally are hotter, move faster, and spread more erratically than in the past. Megafires, also called “siege fires,“ are the increasingly frequent blazes that burn 500,000 acres or more 10 times the size of the average forest fire of 20 y

25、ears ago. One of the current wildfires is the sixth biggest in California ever, in terms of acreage burned, according to state figures and news reports. The short-term explanation is that the region, which usually has dry summers, has had nine inches less rainfall than normal this year. Longer term,

26、 climate change across the West is leading to hotter days on average and longer fire seasons. The trend to more superhot fires, experts say, has been driven by a century-long policy of the US Forest Service to stop wildfires as quickly as possible. The unintentional consequence was to halt the natur

27、al eradication of underbrush, now the primary fuel for megafires. Three other factors contribute to the trend, they add. First is climate change marked by a I -degree F rise in average yearly temperature across the West. Second is a fire season that on average is 78 days longer than in the late 1980

28、s. Third is increased building of homes and other structures in wooded areas. “We are increasingly building our homes . in fire-prone ecosystems,“ says Dominik Kulakowski, adjunct professor of biology at Clark University Graduate School of Geography in Worcester, Mass. Doing that “in many of the for

29、ests of the Western US . is like building homes on the side of an active volcano.“ In California, where population growth has averaged more than 600,000 a year for at least a decade, housing has pushed into such areas. “What once was open space is now residential homes providing fuel to make fires b

30、urn with greater intensity,“ says Terry McHale of the California Department of Forestry firefighters union. “With so much dryness, so many communities to catch fire, so many fronts to fight, it becomes an almost incredible job.“ That said, many experts give California high marks for making progress

31、on preparedness since 2003, when the largest fires in state history scorched 750,000 acres, burned 3,640 homes, and killed 22 people. Stung then by criticism of bungling that allowed fires to spread when they might have been contained, personnel are meeting the peculiar challenges of neighborhood- a

32、nd canyon-hopping fires better than in recent years, observers say. State promises to provide newer engines, planes, and helicopters have been fulfilled. Firefighters unions that then complained of dilapidated equipment, old fire engines, and insufficient blueprints for fire safety are now praising

33、the states commitment, noting that funding for firefighting has increased despite huge cuts in many other programs. “We are pleased that the Schwarzenegger administration has been very proactive in its support of us and come through with budgetary support of the infrastructure needs we have long sou

34、ght,“ says Mr. McHale with the firefighters union. Besides providing money to upgrade the fire engines that must traverse the mammoth state and wind along serpentine canyon roads, the state has invested in better command-and-control facilities as well as the strategies to run them. “In the fire sieg

35、es of earlier years, we found out that we had the willingness of mutual-aid help from other jurisdictions and states, but we were not able to communicate adequately with them,“ says Kim Zagaris, chief of the states Office of Emergency Services, fire and rescue branch. After a 2004 blue-ribbon commis

36、sion examined and revamped those procedures, the statewide response “has become far more professional and responsive,“ he says. Besides ordering the California National Guard on Monday to make 1,500 guardsmen available for firefighting efforts, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked the Pentagon to send a

37、ll available Modular Airborne Fighting Systems to the area. The military Lockheed C-130 cargo/utility aircraft carry a pressurized 3,000-gallon tank that can eject fire retar-dant or water in fewer than five seconds through two tubes at the rear of the plane. This load can cover an area 1/4-mile lon

38、g and 60 feet wide to create a fire barrier. Governor Schwarzenegger also directed 2,300 inmate firefighters and 170 custody staff from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to work hand in hand with state and local firefighters. Residents and government officials alike are not

39、ing the improvements with gratitude, even amid the loss of homes, churches, businesses, and farms. Despite such losses, there is a sense that the speed, dedication, and coordination of firefighters from several states and jurisdictions are resulting in greater efficiency than in past “siege fire“ si

40、tuations. “I am extraordinarily impressed by the improvements we have witnessed between the last big fire and this,“ says Ross Simmons, a San Diego-based lawyer who had to evacuate both his home and business on Monday, taking up residence at a Hampton Inn 30 miles south of his home in Rancho Bernard

41、o. After fires consumed 172,000 acres there in 2003, the San Diego region turned communitywide soul-searching into improved building codes, evacuation procedures, and procurement of new technology. Mr. Simmons and neighbors began receiving automated phone calls at 3:30 a.m. Monday morning telling th

42、em to evacuate. “Notwithstanding all the damage that will be caused by this, we will not come close to the loss of life beciuse of what we have . put in place since then,“ he says. Questions 14-18 Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage. Write your answers in boxes 1

43、4-18 on your answer sheet. Fighting Californian wildfires is still not an easy task because the fires the firefighters now face【 R7】 _in more unpredictable manner in addition to the raging heat and faster speed than ever. Megafires, as they are called, are often【 R8】 _ bigger than average forest fir

44、e. The reasons for this include【 R9】 _below the average and the extended【 R10】 _due to climate change. And according to experts, the government policy has also contributed to this by accidentally making the underbrush the【 R11】 _for megafires. 14 【 R7】 15 【 R8】 16 【 R9】 17 【 R10】 18 【 R11】 18 Do the

45、 following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet, write TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 19 Open space has been disappearin

46、g in the past 10 years. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 20 The equipment firefighters use today is better than before. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 21 The state recruited new firefighters. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 22 In the early years, no other states wished to help California to fight the fire. （ A）真 （

47、 B）假 （ C） Not Given 23 The 2004 blue-ribbon commission did not make any achievements. （ A）真 （ B）假 （ C） Not Given 23 Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet. 24 Why does the author mention Governor Schwarzenegger, California National Guard, Pent

48、agon and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation? （ A） To show the active involvement of the Schwarzeneggers administration （ B） To illustrate the cross-state and cross-jurisdiction cooperation in fire-fighting （ C） To demonstrate how the military is more effective at fighting fi

49、re than others （ D） To give an example of how resources should be mobilised to fight fires 25 How do the locals feel about the improvements made by the state government? （ A） glad （ B） unsatisfied （ C） unconcerned （ D） bitter 26 According to Ross Simmons, which of the following statements is true? （ A） Its harder to evacuate people in daytime. （ B） People refuse to improve their house in fire resisting ability. （ C） People can hardly believe the magnitude of damage today. （ D） People are less l