[考研类试卷]考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷73及答案与解析.doc

1、考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 73 及答案与解析Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)0 Everyone will be familiar with the frustration of losing a favourite book. But losing an entire library is another thing altogether. Martin Bekkelund, a

2、Norwegian technology writer, recently blogged about a woman whose e-reader had been wiped by Amazon because it claimed her account was linked to a previously blocked account. Her books were unreadable and no refund was offered. Though it now appears that the womans e-books have since been restored,

3、this incident is hardly a first. In 2009, a copyright problem led to Amazon remotely deleting copies of Animal Farm and 1984, two books by George Orwell, from thousands of Kindles.It may come as a surprise that this sort of thing is even possible. After all, a high-street bookseller would not sponta

4、neously remove paperbacks from a customers home, whatever infractions they may have committed. But, unlike with paper books, customers do not actually “own“ the e-books they buy. Instead, they are licensed to the purchaser. Customers cannot resell them and there are restrictions on lending them. The

5、 transaction is more like renting access to a book than owning one altogether. Plus, e-book sellers have the capability to take them back without warning.The furious backlash against Amazons Orwell deletions in 2009 suggests that many customers do not realise this distinction. Yet this lack of aware

6、ness of the legal terms-of-use is largely the fault of the e-book sellers. Their websites talk of “buying“ books as if the digital transaction is exactly the same as one in a bookshop. And the explanation that customers are, in effect, merely “renting“ their e-books is buried in long, jargon-filled

7、license agreements that almost nobody reads.Why are e-book buyers faced with this encumbrance? A likely reason is that publishing digital editions opens up a new form of vulnerability to the business. At the moment, people typically share or resell their books in moderation. And they keep them shelv

8、ed neatly in a sitting room, in order to have information at their fingertips and to serve as a discreet testimony to ones characteror perhaps a form of self-congratulation to ones vanity. All of this is lost with e-books: they dont suffer from wear and tear, can be transferred at the speed of light

9、 and a digital copy may seem less valuable than a tangible one. Booksellers and publishers might reasonably fear that the sale of a single e-book could result in it being shared or resold many times over, denying the author and publisher income from their product. The threat of illegal copying must

10、be taken into account too.In this view, publishers and booksellers have an interest in licensing e-books and retaining control o-ver their distribution and secondary uses. After all, e-books are a new format and a different product. If the business model needs to change, why shouldnt the terms-of-us

11、e and legal rights associated with the product change as well? But, if this is the case, there should be transparency for the customer too.1 We may learn from Paragraph 1 that in the digital era_.（A）losing a whole library of books is less likely to happen（B） conflicts between booksellers and buyers

12、become common（C） booksellers may randomly take away books from users（D）readers could regain the books they lost easily2 According to the author, the incidents of e-book removal are rooted in_.（A）sellers lack of professional ethics（B） buyers abandonment of user right（C） buyers conduction of improper

13、practices（D）sellers retaining of books ownership3 Paragraph 3 mainly shows that the terms-of-use of e-book sellers are_.（A）anger-provoking（B） legally invalid（C） technically erroneous（D）overworded4 The comparison between printed books and e-books in Paragraph 4 is used to show that_.（A）printed books

14、have advantage in cultivating character（B） e-books can be transferred among readers easily（C） printed books are more convenient to use（D）e-books are of better durability5 The authors attitude towards e-book sellers can be described as_.（A）fundamentally critical（B） unreservedly supportive（C） chiefly

15、understanding（D）profoundly worried5 From The Tipping Point to Nudge, the rise of pop-social science has been a noticeable feature of the past decade in publishing. Not everyone is impressed. A professor of education who is an expert in policy evaluation lamented the fact that politicians tend to get

16、 their facts from popular social science books containing inaccuracies.I think the professor was right to worry about ministerial exposure to authors such as Malcolm Glad-well and Dan Ariely and even Tim Harford but not for quite the right reasons. The problem is not that such authors are inaccurate

17、. Gladwell has plenty of critics, but I find him a careful reporter. And I am told Tim Harford is all but infallible.Yet infallibility is not enough. Its perfectly possible for an author to do nothing but weave together credible, peer-reviewed research and yet produce a highly partial view of realit

18、y. Different pieces of research invariably point in different directions. Dan Arielys Predictably Irrational is full of examples of irrational behaviour. My own Logic of Life is full of examples of rational behaviour.If Ariely describes a rainy day and I describe a sunny one, we are not really contr

19、adicting each other. We each offer our spin, but its really about whether most people expect sunshine or rain: Dan says that its rainier than we tend to think, while I say the sun shines more often than anyone would credit. A serious review of this metaphorical evidence would count up the rainy days

20、 and the sunny ones.For real policy questions, such reviews exist. They are called systemic reviews. They should be the first port of call for anyone wanting to understand what works. But they are not exactly bestsellers in airport bookshops.Quite apart from the fact that nobody wants to read all th

21、e evidence, there is a deep problem with the way evidence is selected throughout academia. Even a studiously impartial literature review will be biased towards published results. Many findings are never published because they just arent very intriguing. Alas, boring or disappointing evidence is stil

22、l evidence. It is dangerous to discard it.The systemic review tries to track down unpublished research as well as what makes it into the journals. A less careful review will often be biased towards results that are interesting. A peer-reviewed article presents a single result, while a popular social

23、-science book will highlight a series of results that tell a tale. The final selection mechanism is the reader, who will half remember some findings and forget the rest.Those of us who tell ourselves we are curious about the world are actually swimming in “evidence“ that has been filtered again and

24、again in favour of interestingness. Its a heady and perhaps toxic drink, but we shouldnt blame popularisers alone for our choice to dive in.6 The author might agree to the statement that_.（A）publishers should produce less social science books（B） social science writers should enhance their accuracy（C

25、） critics should discard their prejudice against pop social science writers（D）policy makers should not base their decisions on pop social science books7 Predictably Irrational and Logic of Life are mentioned to show that_.（A）nearly all the peer-reviewed researches are partial reviews of reality（B） t

26、wo seemingly contradictory ideas can be in fact consistent with each other（C） the combination of two partial views can form a systemic one（D）the synthesis of accurate evidences may be a partial view of reality8 “A sunny day“ to “a rainy one“ in paragraph 4 metaphorically refers to_.（A）a basically ac

27、curate social science field to “a social science field full of inaccuracies“（B） a rationality-oriented society to “a society filled with irrational behaviors“（C） a world cherishing evidence to “a world neglecting evidence“（D） a policy system based on systemic reviews to “a policy system guided by bi

28、ased reviews“9 It can be inferred that the lack of systemic reviews should be mainly blamed on_.（A）the publishing system（B） the policy system（C） social science authors（D）scientific researchers10 The text intends to tell information users that its essential to_,（A）remain sober-minded before intriguin

29、g research（B） produce a correct view of reality from contradictory researches（C） compromise between interestingness and objectiveness（D）extract concrete facts from pop social science10 For years, digital news conformed to one section of the 1984 prophecy of the technology guru Stewart Brand that “in

30、formation wants to be free because the cost of getting it out is getting lower. “ Now, it is relying on his other, lesser-known maxim that “information wants to be expensive because its so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. “As paywalls go up, and advertising

31、yields continue to fall, publishers have pinned their hopes on subscriptions. Some suggest that it is a breach of publishers moral obligation to make news freely accessible because it is a public good.I dont see why publishers have an ethical duty not to charge for the content they originate. Free n

32、ews is a recent phenomenon. Newspaper publishers always charged readers, albeit a small amount compared with the cost of newsgathering. Furthermore, nothing will change the fact that people have access to far more information than before the internet. News cannot be patented - once information is un

33、covered, it spreads rapidly across Twitter and Facebook, and is repeated by rivals and aggregators.Yet the trend is clear. Most of the top US newspapers have a paywall in place, or are planning one. The financial model for print newspapers that most revenues came from advertising, with subscriptions

34、 and news-stand prices making up the rest does not work online. The double-digit increase in online advertising revenues in the early 2000s has slowed to the low single figures, as growing traffic is mostly offset by falling advertising yields. With hindsight, it is blindingly obvious that when the

35、space for advertising expands as it did hugely with the shift from print to online prices fall. For a long time, this evaded news publishers, who lived in the vain hope that they could rely more on advertising in the online world, rather than less. Papers such as the FT and the New York Times have r

36、eversed that tactic the NYTs circulation revenues now exceed those from advertising. Thus, news is increasingly being paid for by affluent individuals the average household income of NYT subscribers is about $100, 000 or produced as part of a corporate service, such as Bloomberg News and Thomson Reu

37、ters.Should we be worried? The risk is that news will become slanted in the interests of corporations and the wealthy. So far, there isnt much sign of that. The news organisations best placed to prosper from the shift Bloomberg, Reuters, the FT, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist have high stand

38、ards. Indeed, the shift towards subscriptions could raise editorial standards, rather than lowering them. Free sites that need to boost page views to gain advertising have an incentive to go downmarket with more gossip and celebrity news; the ones that rely more on subscriptions have the reverse inc

39、entive.But the fading era of advertising-subsidised newspapers and free-to-air television was at least democratic. At relatively low cost, everyone could be well informed. In the future, the information superhighway will have both fast and slow lanes.11 Steward Brands two maxims are quoted to show t

40、hat_.（A）digital news nowadays cost less than printed news（B） the current news price doesnt conform to its value（C） the worth of online information has been enhanced greatly（D）the charge of online news has experienced great changes12 On which of the following would the author agree, according to Para

41、graphs 2 and 3?（A）News media ought to make news freely accessible.（B） Newspapers should lower their subscription prices.（C） Charging online news has little impact on the availability of news.（D）Online content should be treated as patentable items.13 The trend of setting up paywalls is mainly driven

42、by the fact that_.（A）traffic growth is slowing down（B） online advertising prices are dropping（C） advertising is shifting from print to online（D）the number of wealthy readers is increasing14 A possible effect of news subscription is that .（A）paid news will bias towards the rich（B） paid news will be o

43、f higher quality（C） free news will lose their market share（D）free news will be improved in their taste15 The authors attitude towards online news charging can be best described as_.（A）enthusiastically favorable（B） basically supportive（C） profoundly worried（D）deeply regretful15 In 2004 Google unveile

44、d Gmail: a powerful e-mail account with a gigabyte of storage. That was 500 times what Hotmail was offeringso much storage, the original Gmail didnt even offer a delete button and all for free. But not everyone rejoiced. Gmail paid for all of this goodness by displaying small text ads, off to the ri

45、ght of each incoming message, relevant to its contents. Privacy advocates went ballistic. It didnt seem to matter to them that a software algorithmnot a human being -was scanning your messages for keywords. The Electronic Privacy Information Center called for Gmail to be shut down, and a California

46、state senator proposed a bill that would make it illegal to scan the contents of incoming e-mail.To many people, it seems that the more time we spend online, the more often we are offered convenience in exchange for our privacy. Grocery stores affinity cards give us discountsbut let them track what

47、we are buying and eating. Amazon, com greets us by name and remembers what we have bought. Facebook has amassed the largest database of personal information in human history(more than half a billion people).Of course, convenience-for-privacy deals have been going on for years. Credit cards leave a t

48、rail. Phones give phone company employees a record of who youve been calling. Its nice to have a house to live in but buying one leaves a permanent record of your whereabouts.There are some good reasons to protect certain aspects of our privacy, of course. We would never want our medical or financia

49、l details to keep us from getting a jobor a date. We might not want our voting patterns made public. But beyond those obvious exceptions, privacy fears have always been more of an emotional reaction than a rational one.(Does anyone really care what groceries you buy? Does it matter if they do?)And in the online world, much of it is simply fear of the unknown, of whats new.In time, as the unknown becomes familiar, each new wave of online-privacy terror seems to