1、考研英语(二)-13 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：4，分数：100.00)Many animals have some level of social intelligence, allowing them to coexist and cooperate with other members of their species. Wolves, for examplethe probable ancestors of dogslive in packs that hunt together and have a c
2、omplex hierarchy. But dogs have evolved an extraordinarily rich social intelligence as they“ve adapted to life with us. All the things we love about our dogsthe joy they seem to take in our presence, the many ways they integrate themselves into our livesspring from those social skills. Hare Brian, a
3、ssistant professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, and others are trying to figure out how the intimate coexistence of humans and dogs has shaped the animal“s remarkable abilities. Hare suspects that the evolutionary pressures that turned suspicious wolves into outgoing dogs were si
4、milar to the ones that turned combative apes into cooperative humans. “Humans are unique. But how did that uniqueness evolve?“ asks Hare. “That“s where dogs are important.“ The first rule for scientists studying dogs is, Don“t trust your hunches. Just because a dog looks as if it can count or unders
5、tand words doesn“t mean it can. “We say to owners, Look, you may have intuitions about your dog that are valuable,“ says Marc Hauser, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University. “But they might be wrong.“ Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist at Barnard College, and other scientists are now
6、running experiments to determine what a behavior, like a kiss, really means. In some cases, their research suggests that “our pets are manipulating us rather than welling up with human-like feeling. “They could be the ultimate charlatans,“ says Hauser. We“ve all seen guilty dogs slinking away with l
7、owered tails, for example. Horowitz wondered if they behave this way because they truly recognize they“ve done something wrong, so she devised an experiment. First she observed how dogs behaved when they did something they weren“t supposed to do and were scolded by their owners. Then she tricked the
8、 owners into believing the dogs had misbehaved when they hadn“t. When the humans scolded the dogs, the dogs were just as likely to look guilty, even though they were innocent of any misbehavior. What“s at play here, she concluded, is not some inner sense of right and wrong but a learned ability to a
9、ct submissive when an owner gets angry. “It“s a white-flag response,“ Horowitz says. While this kind of manipulation may be unsettling to us, it reveals how carefully dogs pay attention to humans and learn from what they observe. That same attentiveness also gives dogsor at least certain dogsa skill
10、 with words that seems eerily human.（分数：25.00）(1).The author mentions wolves to show that _.（分数：5.00）A.they are ancestors to dogsB.they have similar habitsC.they adapt to human life easilyD.animals have social intelligence(2).Why does Brian want to know how suspicious wolves became friendly dogs?（分数
11、：5.00）A.Because he has realized that dogs are not really friendly animals.B.Because dogs have developed intimate relationships with humans.C.Because it may reveal something about the evolution of humans from apes.D.Because the coexistence of animals and humans is important nowadays.(3).The word “hun
12、ches“ (Para.3) probably means _.（分数：5.00）A.intuitive understandingB.friendly animalsC.academic knowledgeD.psychological explanations(4).Hauser calls dogs “the ultimate charlatans“ (Para.4) because _.（分数：5.00）A.they are unreliable and untrustworthyB.they well up with intimate feeling for usC.our intu
13、itions about them are misled by themD.they actually want to bite us when they kiss us(5).When scolded, dogs _.（分数：5.00）A.demonstrate some submissive behaviorB.pretend to be guilty of some wrongdoingsC.feel guilty of what they have done wronglyD.become attentive to their owners“ wordsNot all admissio
14、n processes are as selective as the press would have us believe. For the class that entered in fall 2007, approximately 70 of the more than 3,000 colleges and universities in the United States offered admission to fewer than one third of their candidates. Admission rates describe raw numbers and per
15、centages, but digging a few levels deeper into those figures may allow individual students to see where they fit in the statistics. The lower the overall admission rate, the more likely it is that grades and scores are not the point where a final admission decision will be made by admissions officer
16、s. Candidate pools at highly selective colleges tend to be self-selective and academic ability is almost a given. Everything matters, but what draws attention may be something unexpected. One former Pomona student worked as a garbage collector on Long Island for a couple of summers rather than pursu
17、ing more-prestigious internships or travel. He earned much higher pay than his classmates did in their internships, and learned a lot about life from the work and his co-workers. Immediately after graduating from Pomona, he got a job as an investment banker. Was he admitted to fewer colleges or offe
18、red a lesser job because of his summer experience? Apparently not. In the last few years, many students have routinely applied to more than a dozen schools, a huge increase from a decade ago when three to five was more common. This skews the process down the lineand ultimately hurts students. Applic
19、ation numbers rise (far more than population increases should suggest) and rates of admission drop, potentially stimulating even more applications the following year. Waiting lists grow and April notification may become May or June or July notification. As students submit more applications, they ine
20、vitably and perhaps necessarily may communicate less with each college where they submit an application and may dig less deeply into the information available that could help them target their real needs and interests. Students and their families have a wealth of information available about colleges
21、 and the admission process, and should take advantage of the resources. Understanding your talents and interests while working to understand the academic structures and offerings of a college is a vital step. Gaining insight into the social fabrics, geographic and even political environments of coll
22、eges should help students think more clearly about their own interests as they align with realistic possibilities. It takes hard work and real thinking. No student should have to look at a handful of bad news in April because he didn“t take the admission process seriously enough or had insufficientl
23、y developed his college list. And none should be left on May 1 with complete confusion and an inability to decide among multiple offers. In this case, homework is not busywork. It is time very well spent.（分数：25.00）(1).To those who apply to highly selective colleges, _.（分数：5.00）A.good academic perfor
24、mance is taken for grantedB.they should prepare for the possibility of being rejectedC.they should realize that the admission rates are the lowestD.they should be wary of the press since its analysis may be wrong(2).The example of the Pomona student shows that _.（分数：5.00）A.students should not be too
25、 picky about part-time jobsB.collecting garbage can also be financially rewardingC.other things than scores may matter to your admissionD.you do not have to apply to a highly selective college(3).When students apply to more colleges _.（分数：5.00）A.they are more likely to be accepted by one of themB.th
26、ey know less about each of themC.they don“t have to wait for all the notifications to comeD.they are at a loss which one is the best for them(4).The applicant should do all of the following except _. A. reassessing his interests and intelligence B. making exploration into the colleges he applies to
27、C. studying how the colleges meet his academic interests D turning his homework into busywork and doing it well（分数：5.00）A.B.C.D.(5).The author advises the applicants _.（分数：5.00）A.to apply to as many colleges as they can manageB.not to apply to many colleges but focus on a fewC.not to hesitate when t
28、hey decide among multiple offersD.to think about an offer before they decide to take itIs performance art really art at all? We must determine what art is or how it is defined before answering this question. The oldest theory of art in the West is to be found in Plato, in Book X of “The Republic.“ T
29、here, Socrates defines art as imitation. He then declares that it is very easy to get perfect imitationsby means of mirrors. His intent is to show that art belongs to the domain of reflections, shadows, illusions, dreams. He proceeds to map the universe in terms of three degrees of reality. The high
30、est reality is found in the domain of what he calls “ideas,“ the forms of things. Ideas are grasped by the mind. The next degree of reality is possessed by ordinary objects, the kind carpenters make. The artist only knows how ordinary objects look, as rendered in painting or drawings. The carpenter“
31、s knowledge is higher than the artist“s: his beds, for example, hold the sleeping body. The highest knowledge is possessed by those who grasp the idea of the bed, understanding how it supports the body. The lowest knowledge, if it is knowledge at all, is the artist“s ability to draw pictures of beds
32、. They only show appearances. This famous design of the universe and its degrees of reality was clearly constructed to put art in its placethe domain of illusions, shadows, dreams. The artist is cognitively useless. It explains why philosophers tend to have little use for art. Several of Plato“s dia
33、logues stress the inferiority of art. The political message of “The Republic“ is that philosophers, at home in the realm of ideas, should be kings. Artists don“t even belong in the Republic! Meanwhile, the mimetic theory, as it is called, had a certain power. Aristotle, in his “Poetics,“ characteriz
34、es plays and epics as imitations of actions, such as the death of Hektor. But a performance is not the imitation of an action, but the action itself. It is art and reality in one. In the 1960s, a group of philosophers argued that art was indefinable, so many things are classified as art that the mos
35、t one could hope for is what Wittgenstein called a “family resemblance.“ Yet not having a definition does not stand in the way of our picking out the art works from a pile of assorted things. A definition will make us none the wiser. Unfortunately, the philosophers who subscribed to this view were o
36、ut of touch with the avant garde. Between 1913 and 1917, Duchamp presented a number of readymades, most famously his “Fountain,“ a toilet bowl. In 1964, Andy Warhol exhibited wooden facsimiles of shipping cartons. A work of art and a mere shipping carton can look exactly alike. What explains the dif
37、ference? What is the difference between sitting down with someone in a performance and merely sitting down with someone? The work of art has meaning; it is about something. And it embodies that meaning.（分数：25.00）(1).Who knows what a bed really is according to Socrates?（分数：5.00）A.The philosopher.B.Th
38、e artist.C.The carpenter,D.None of the above.(2).The artist is cognitively useless because _.（分数：5.00）A.he knows nothing about the universe and philosophyB.he often creates art that is inferior and meaninglessC.his knowledge about the universe is highly unreliableD.his action never matches what he s
39、ays about art(3).Aristotle“s art theory _.（分数：5.00）A.is strongly supported by Hektor in his performanceB.wins the sympathy of some modern philosophersC.is dismissed as partial by the author of this articleD.finds the latest expression in the art of avant garde(4).The author insists that _.（分数：5.00）A
40、.there is no difference between works of art and ordinary objectsB.the meaning expressed in art is what makes it different and definableC.the exhibits of Duchamp and Warhol should not be classified as works of artD.a performance is an imitation of what has really happened in the real world(5).The pa
41、ssage aims to _.（分数：5.00）A.explain how art was defined in Plato“s timeB.classify art works on the basis of their materialsC.distinguish what is art from what is not artD.define the essential property of an art workWho is poor in America? This is a hard question to answer. Despite poverty“s messiness
42、, we“ve measured progress against it by a single statistic: the federal poverty line. In 2008, the poverty threshold was $21,834 for a four-member family with two children under 18. By this measure, we haven“t made much progress. Except for recessions, when the poverty rate can rise to 15 percent, i
43、t“s stayed in a narrow range for decades. In 2007the peak of the last business cycle-the poverty rate was 12.5 percent; one out of eight Americans was “poor.“ In 1969, another business-cycle peak, the poverty rate was 12.1 percent. But the apparent lack of progress is misleading for two reasons. Fir
44、st, it ignores immigration. Many immigrants are poor and low skilled. They add to the poor. From 1989 to 2007, about three quarters of the increase in the poverty population occurred among Hispanicsmostly immigrants, their children, and grandchildren. The poverty rate for blacks fell during this per
45、iod, though it was still much too high (24.5 percent in 2007). Poverty “experts“ don“t dwell on immigration, because it implies that more restrictive policies might reduce U.S. poverty. Second, the poor“s material well-being has improved. The official poverty measure obscures this by counting only p
46、retax cash income and ignoring other sources of support. These include the earned-income tax credit (a rebate to low-income workers), food stamps, health insurance (Medicaid), and housing subsidies. Although many poor live hand to mouth, they“ve participated in rising living standards. In 2005, 91 p
47、ercent had microwaves, 79 percent air-conditioning, and 48 percent cell phones. The existing poverty line could be improved by adding some income sources and subtracting some expenses (example: child care). Unfortunately, the administration“s proposal for a “supplemental poverty measure“ in 2011to c
48、omplement, not replace, the existing poverty linegoes beyond that. The new poverty number would compound public confusion. It also raises questions about whether the statistic is tailored to favor a political agenda. The “supplemental measure“ ties the poverty threshold to what the poorest third of
49、Americans spend on food, housing, clothing, and utilities. The actual threshold-not yet calculatedwill probably be higher than today“s poverty line. Moreover, this definition has strange consequences. Suppose that all Americans doubled their income tomorrow, and suppose that their spending on food, clothing, housing, and utilities also doubled. That would seem to signify less povertybut not by the new poverty measure. It wouldn“t decline, because the poverty threshold would go up as spending went up. Many America
