1、考研英语（阅读）-试卷 145 及答案解析(总分：30.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：6，分数：30.00)1.Section II Reading Comprehension_2.Part B_For more than a decade, Dell has posted double-digit growth by selling computers directly to customers, most of them corporate clients. But two unfriendly trends have driven De
2、ll to sell its computers at a place where chairman Michael Dell swore he would never be caught dead: a Dell retail store. 1“We“re seeing more andmore of our technology intersecting with home entertainment,“ says Ro Parra, a senior vice president of Dell“s home and small-business group. To attract ga
3、mesters and movie watchers, Dell has unveiled new models in its multimedia XPS line. The units range from a $3,500 desktop-notebook hybrid with a 20-in. screen and a remote, to a $2,270 gaming desktop with a swanky scarlet-and-gray exterior and high-end specs. Parra says Dell“s stores give consumers
4、 a chance to see its multimedia PCs and laptops in a home environment, paired with some of Dell“s other consumer goods like its flat-screen TV sets. The company expects to open more stores in the fall. The second reason for Dell to go retail is more prosaic. For years, Dell“s direct-shipment model p
5、roved especially good for selling to businesses, which generate 80% of its sales. 2So everyday shoppers are powering the industry“sgrowth. The consumer market grew at twice the pace of the enterprise market last year, according to technology-research firm IDC. Many of the challenges facing Dell seem
6、 to spring from the very innovations that made it a power force. By selling direct, Dell keeps a lid on overhead and offers customized computers at competitive prices, with relatively swift delivery. As the price of computing dropped, Dell was consistently able to shed costs and maintain a price adv
7、antage over rivals. But this year Dell“s competitors have attacked that price gap. 3Retailers have also cut prices, evenselling at cost and relying on upgrades and services for profits. One possibility that doesn“t exist is the ability to walk out of the store with a computer. The newstores won“t ca
8、rry inventory, so consumers will have to wait a few days for delivery. 4Even as the company speeds up its retail operation, Dell CEO KevinRollins still downplays the significance of the home market, saying “It“s a secondary priority compared to our corporate customers.“ And he argues that the move i
9、s really an expansion of the small booths that Dell has set up in malls to allow customers to place orders. Says Parra: “We have 160 booths that have been very successful, and all we are doing is expanding on that success.“ 5Dell is retraining its customer-support staffand offering a new service cal
10、led Dell Direct, which allows a technician to connect to a customer“s computer to root out problems. That“s partly in response to harsh criticism after the company didn“t initially beef up customer support as business grew, leading to 30-min. waits to talk to a phone representative. Last year Dell a
11、lso announced it would hire 1,500 more call-center workers. “What I am most excited about is the investment in customer support,“ says Rollins.“It allows consumers who are not on a network directly, to connect with us the same way a big corporate client would.“ A.HP slashed thousands of jobs and red
12、uced the number of assembly plants, streamlining its supply chain and enabling it to go head to head with Dell on low-end machines. B.The stores are part of a bigger program to make the company more user-friendly. C.That lowers operating costs, but Vitelli, senior vice president of consumer electron
13、ics, says the impatience of the gotta-have-it-now mall shopper is not on Dell“s side: “Are you going to go to the restaurant, look at the menu and say, “That“s great. Send me the meal in 10 days“?“ D.But the business market is becoming more commoditized, and prices are in a free fall. On the other h
14、and, the sale to individual customers has grown rapidly. E.Dell CEO Kevin Rollins considers the home market as its second priority because it generates less profit. F.The first trend is the ever popular commingling of computing and entertainment in your living room. Yet Dell lives at the office. G.T
15、he company is very confident that its retail stores will expand rapidly in the next few years.（分数：10.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_4.Part CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese._Given his recklessly eccentric personal life, Mich
16、ael Jackson“s premature death seems almost destinedone of those deaths Yeats had in mind when he wrote of a friend“s lost son: “What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?“ 【F1】 Still,the global outpouring of grief and craziness of public attentionfocused since Thursday on Jackson“s death is an
17、 acknowledgment not only of his popularity but of the reach and influence of America“s most successful export: popular culture. Jackson was an icon and, in the end, perhaps, a prisoner of that now all-pervasive, world-encompassing force. American popular culture“s triumphant appeal around the world
18、is the product of several forces: First among them is this country“s historic dislike to assigning distinct values to high and low culture.【F2】 Some would say that a fair playing field has opened high cultureliterature and classical music, for exampleto a valuable interaction with popular media and
19、made it more vigorous by forcing it to compete for its audience. The real strength of American popular culture, in fact, is its democratic impulsea willingness to take into account the reality that, for most people, entertainment is an end in itself.【F3】 American entertainment bows to what economist
20、s call “consumer sovereignty,“ and Jackson“s popularity, with its demonstrable impact on music, dance and fashion, was a clear example of that. On cable TV and on newspaper websites, it was all Michael, all the time.【F4】 So, how did a pop singer heavily in debt and desperately hoping for a comeback,
21、 one who was best known for his bizarre life, obsession with cosmetic surgery, become in death the most beloved media figure since JFK? To understand, you need to go back to that all-conquering popular culture. America“s serious news mediawhether print, broadcast or cableare in the grip of a collect
22、ive nervous breakdown. Embracing popular culture and its icons seems somehow remedial on several levels: It appears to address chargesthat seriousmedia areelitist,as well as themanifest indifferenceof younger readersand viewers to conventional news.【F5】 Then there“s the fact of simple, cruel commerc
23、e: popular culture in the form of film, music and TV now provides an outsized share of the financially strapped media“s advertising revenue. Finally, there“s that source of the news media“s anxiety and confusionand that great enabler of popular culturethe Internet.（分数：10.00）(1).【F1】（分数：2.00）_(2).【F2
24、】（分数：2.00）_(3).【F3】（分数：2.00）_(4).【F4】（分数：2.00）_(5).【F5】（分数：2.00）_We“ve been having the wrong discussion about globalization.【F1】 For years, we“ve argued over whether this or that industry and its workers might suffer from imports and whether the social costs were worth the economic gains from foreig
25、n products, technologies and investments. By and large, the answer has been “yes.“ But the truly significant questions about globalization are harder toanswer. Is an increasingly interconnected world economy basically stable? Or does it generate periodic crises that harm everyone and spawn internati
26、onal conflict? 【F2】 Let“s concede that the present U.S. economic slowdownmaybe already a recessionstems mostly from familiar domestic causes: the burst housing “bubble,“ problematic lending practices and households“ heavy debt burdens. All have depressed housing and consumer spending. Still, global
27、factors, notably high oil and food prices, have aggravated the slump, and there is a general anxiety that we are in the grip of worldwide economic and financial forces that we do not understand and cannot easily control. This sense of foreboding is not unreasonable, and it helps explain the yawning
28、gap between the economy“s actual performance (poor, but not horrific) and mass psychology (almost horrific). The good that globalization has done is hard to dispute, though some do.【F3】 Trade-driven economic growth and technology transfer have alleviated much human misery, and if present economic tr
29、ends continue, the worldwide middle class will expand by an additional 2 billion by 2030. In the U-nited States, imports and foreign competition have raised incomes by 10 percent since World War II, some studies suggest. Job losses, though real, are often exaggerated. In the late 1990s, U.S. trade d
30、eficits increased while unemployment fell. 【F4】 But these advances could be halted or reversed by a disorderly global economy, an economy plagued by financial crises, interruptions of crucial supplies (oil, obviously), trade wars or violent business cycles. This is globalization“s Achilles“ heel. Co
31、nnections among countries have deepened and become more contradictory. Take oil producers.【F5】 On one hand, high oil prices hurt advanced countries; but on the other, oil countries have an interest in keeping advanced countries prosperous, because that“s where much surplus oil wealth is invested. To
32、day“s global economy baffles expertscorporate executives, bankers, economistsas much as ordinary people. Anyone who says differently is either deluded or dishonest. Countries are growing economically more interdependent and politically more nationalistic. They try to maximize their own advantage rat
33、her than make the system work for everyone. Considering how much could go wrong, the record is so far remarkably favorable. Alas, that“s no guarantee for the future.（分数：10.00）(1).【F1】（分数：2.00）_(2).【F2】（分数：2.00）_(3).【F3】（分数：2.00）_(4).【F4】（分数：2.00）_(5).【F5】（分数：2.00）_考研英语（阅读）-试卷 145 答案解析(总分：30.00，做题时间：
34、90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：6，分数：30.00)1.Section II Reading Comprehension_解析：2.Part B_解析：For more than a decade, Dell has posted double-digit growth by selling computers directly to customers, most of them corporate clients. But two unfriendly trends have driven Dell to sell its computers at a
35、place where chairman Michael Dell swore he would never be caught dead: a Dell retail store. 1“We“re seeing more andmore of our technology intersecting with home entertainment,“ says Ro Parra, a senior vice president of Dell“s home and small-business group. To attract gamesters and movie watchers, De
36、ll has unveiled new models in its multimedia XPS line. The units range from a $3,500 desktop-notebook hybrid with a 20-in. screen and a remote, to a $2,270 gaming desktop with a swanky scarlet-and-gray exterior and high-end specs. Parra says Dell“s stores give consumers a chance to see its multimedi
37、a PCs and laptops in a home environment, paired with some of Dell“s other consumer goods like its flat-screen TV sets. The company expects to open more stores in the fall. The second reason for Dell to go retail is more prosaic. For years, Dell“s direct-shipment model proved especially good for sell
38、ing to businesses, which generate 80% of its sales. 2So everyday shoppers are powering the industry“sgrowth. The consumer market grew at twice the pace of the enterprise market last year, according to technology-research firm IDC. Many of the challenges facing Dell seem to spring from the very innov
39、ations that made it a power force. By selling direct, Dell keeps a lid on overhead and offers customized computers at competitive prices, with relatively swift delivery. As the price of computing dropped, Dell was consistently able to shed costs and maintain a price advantage over rivals. But this y
40、ear Dell“s competitors have attacked that price gap. 3Retailers have also cut prices, evenselling at cost and relying on upgrades and services for profits. One possibility that doesn“t exist is the ability to walk out of the store with a computer. The newstores won“t carry inventory, so consumers wi
41、ll have to wait a few days for delivery. 4Even as the company speeds up its retail operation, Dell CEO KevinRollins still downplays the significance of the home market, saying “It“s a secondary priority compared to our corporate customers.“ And he argues that the move is really an expansion of the s
42、mall booths that Dell has set up in malls to allow customers to place orders. Says Parra: “We have 160 booths that have been very successful, and all we are doing is expanding on that success.“ 5Dell is retraining its customer-support staffand offering a new service called Dell Direct, which allows
43、a technician to connect to a customer“s computer to root out problems. That“s partly in response to harsh criticism after the company didn“t initially beef up customer support as business grew, leading to 30-min. waits to talk to a phone representative. Last year Dell also announced it would hire 1,
44、500 more call-center workers. “What I am most excited about is the investment in customer support,“ says Rollins.“It allows consumers who are not on a network directly, to connect with us the same way a big corporate client would.“ A.HP slashed thousands of jobs and reduced the number of assembly pl
45、ants, streamlining its supply chain and enabling it to go head to head with Dell on low-end machines. B.The stores are part of a bigger program to make the company more user-friendly. C.That lowers operating costs, but Vitelli, senior vice president of consumer electronics, says the impatience of the gotta-have-it-now mall shopper is not on Dell“s side: “Are you goi
