1、考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 479 及答案解析(总分：60.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：6，分数：60.00)1.Section II Reading Comprehension（分数：10.00）_2.Part B（分数：10.00）_They learn to read at age 2, play Bach at 4, breeze through calculus at 6, and speak foreign languages fluently by 8. Their classmates shudder with envy; t
2、heir parents rejoice at winning the lottery. But to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, their careers tend to end not with a bang, but with a whimper. Consider the nations most prestigious award for scientifically gifted high school students, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, called the Super Bowl of Scie
3、nce by one American president. From its inception in 1942 until 1994, the search recognized more than 2, 000 outstanding teenagers as finalists. But just 1 percent ended up making the National Academy of Sciences, and just eight have won Nobel Prizes. Child prodigies rarely become adult geniuses who
4、 change the world. We assume that they must lack the social and emotional skills to function in society. 1 What holds them back is that they dont learn to be original. They strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and bec
5、ome chess champions, something unexpected happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesnt make new. The gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies, but rarely compose their own original scores. They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights. They
6、conform to codified rules, rather than inventing their own. 2 In adulthood, many prodigies become experts in their fields and leaders in their organizations. Yet “only a fraction of gifted children eventually become revolutionary adult creators, “ laments the psychologist Ellen Winner. “Those who do
7、 must make a painful transition to an adult who ultimately remakes a domain.“ Most prodigies never make that leap. They apply their extraordinary abilities by shining in their jobs without making waves. 3 So what does it take to raise a creative child? One study compared the families of children who
8、 were rated among the most creative 5 percent in their school system with those who were not unusually creative. 4. Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it s easy to thwart. By limiting rules, parents encouraged their children to think for themselves. They tended to “place emphasis on moral values
9、, rather than on specific rules, “ the Harvard psychologist Teresa Amabile reports. 5When psychologists compared Americas most creative architects with a group of highly skilled but unoriginal peers, there was something unique about the parents of the creative architects: “Emphasis was placed on the
10、 development of one s own ethical code.“ AEven then, though, parents didn t shove their values down their children s throats. BThe parents of ordinary children had an average of six rules, like specific schedules for homework and bedtime. Parents of highly creative children had an average of fewer t
11、han one rule. CIf you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours. DWhen you look at the evidence, though, this explanation doesnt suffice: Less than a quarter of gifted children suffer from social and emotional problems. A vast ma
12、jority are well adjustedas winning at a cocktail party as in the spelling bee. EThey become doctors who heal their patients without fighting to fix the broken medical system or lawyers who defend clients on unfair charges but do not try to transform the laws themselves. FResearch suggests that the m
13、ost creative children are the least likely to become the teachers pet, and in response, many learn to keep their original ideas to themselves. In the language of the critic William Deresiewicz, they become the excellent sheep. GTop concert pianists didnt have elite teachers from the time they could
14、walk; their first lessons came from instructors who happened to live nearby and made learning fun.（分数：10.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_With the pace of technological change making heads spin, we tend to think of our age as the most innovative ever. We have smartphones and supercomputers, big
15、 data and stem-cell transplants. Governments, universities and firms together spend around $1.4 trillion a year on R and the drop-off since 2004 probably has more to do with the economic crisis than with underlying lack of invention. BEconomic growth is a modern invention: 20th-century growth rates
16、were far higher than those in the 19th century, and pre-1750 growth rates were almost imperceptible by modern standards. CRather as electrification changed everything by allowing energy to be used far from where it was generated, computing and communications technologies transform lives and business
17、es by allowing people to make calculations and connections far beyond their unaided capacity. DAnd it wasnt just modern sanitation that sprang from late-19th and early-20th-century brains : they produced cars, planes, the telephone, radio and antibiotics. EMany more brains are at work now than were
18、100 years ago: American and European inventors have been joined in the race to produce cool new stuff by those from many other countries. FIf the pessimists are right, the implications are huge. Economies can generate growth by adding more stuff;more workers, investment and education. But sustained
19、increases in output per person, which are necessary to raise incomes and welfare, entail using the stuff we already have in better waysinnovating, in other words. GLife expectancy in America, for instance, has risen more slowly since 1980 than in the early 20th century. The speed of travel, in the r
20、ich world at least, is often slower now than it was a generation earlier, after rocketing a century or so ago.（分数：10.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_Certain activist lawyers have grabbed headlines recently in their campaign to grant legal rights, first, to chimpanzees and then to other animals
21、. 1 Proponents of animal rights build their case with these arguments: (1)certain animals share qualities of consciousness that have heretofore been seen as uniquely human;(2)animals are brutalized in research;(3)research with animals has been made obsolete by computers and other technologies. 2Last
22、ly, and perhaps most importantly, there is no substitute for animal research to understand biological processes that affect a living organism. Think of it this way: Why use costly animals if equally useful non-animal research tools were available? 3With every medical breakthrough of the past century
23、 the direct result of animal-based research, such research is not only ethical, but is our obligation. 4Philosopher Peter Singer first made the argument that some animals ought to count as “persons“, whereas mentally defective humans should not and that the lives of healthy animals ought to be weigh
24、ed equally with human beings. Singer says parents of a newborn with Down s syndrome would be justified in ending her life to make room in their lives for a baby with normal intelligence. Recall, though, that Nazi Germany used the same kind of personhood criterion to justify killing the physically an
25、d mentally handicapped. 5 Animals are not little persons; The necessity of distinguishing between a person and animal strikes at the heart of the dilemma faced by a scientist who is very fond of animals, yet who uses them in research. I have come to realize the obvious: We decide what animals are to
26、 be in relation to us. I adore my cat, Buster, but I also used members of his species in my research for years. AThey believe that these animals deserve legal protection, including an end to their use as subjects of medical research. As a research scientist who for 40 years has used animals in sleep
27、 studies, I am deeply concerned. BWe have a great obligation to the animals under our control; We have a moral responsibility to care for animals and should not treat them cruelly. And we scientists are obligated to perform critical experiments as skillfully and humanely as possible. CAll human bein
28、gs are persons: This is obvious to mostbut not to some in the animal rights movement DWhile perhaps superficially credible, these assertions are simplistic and, in my view, simply wrong. First, limited similarities of consciousness are not sufficient grounds to make the important leap of granting le
29、gal personhood to animals. Secondly, scientists have every reason to treat animals humanely because good science depends on healthy animals. EOur first obligation is to our fellow humans: As a biologist, I say that the most powerful imperative for the use of animals in research is that of survival,
30、of protecting kin and, by extension, other persons from conquerable disease and untimely death. Viewed this way, scientists work seems no different from a mother eagle s dismembering prey to feed her babies. FGranting “personhood“ to animal species deemed to share qualities with us, such as cognitio
31、n, autonomy and self-awareness, is not a benign campaign to protect animals. It is an effort to use the legal system as a tool to enforce a flawed ethic concerning the relationship between humanity and the animal world. GWe would be foolish, at best, to ignore the realities of Nature and the power o
32、f natural impulses for survival.（分数：10.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_In the early 19th century, French philosopher Auguste Comte proposed a scientific hierarchy ranging from the physical sciences at the bottom up through biology to the “queen“ of sciences, sociology, at the top. A science of
33、 human social behavior, Comte contended, could help humanity make moral and political decisions and construct more efficient Just governments. Today, social science receives much less federal funding than the biological and physical sciences do. Social scientists are accused of being “soft“, of work
34、ing with theories so lacking in precision and predictive power that they dont deserve to be called scientific. Some social scientistsIll call them “softies“shrug off this criticism, because they identify less with physicists and chemists than with scholars in the humanities. 1 Other social scientist
35、s, “hardies“ hope for and believe they can eventually attain the same status as hard science, say, biology. Softies and hardies have been fighting for as long as I can remember. 2 The term “sociobiology“ became so controversial that it is rarely used today, except by softies as an insult. Hardies no
36、netheless embraced the tenets of sociobiology. They attached the term “evolutionary“ to their fieldscreating disciplines such as evolutionary psychology and evolutionary economicsand churned out unreliable conclusions about the adaptive origins of war and capitalism. Softies look skeptically at the
37、aspirations of hardieswith good reason. The recent recession provides a powerful demonstration of social sciences limits. 3 Even when supported by the latest findings from neuroscience, genetics, and other fields, social science will never approach the precision and predictive power of the hard scie
38、nces. 4 In contrast, the basic units of social systemspeopleare all different from each other; each person who has ever lived is unique in ways that are not trivial but essential to our humanity. 5 So we are left with a paradox: Although social science is in many aspects quite weak, it can also be e
39、xtraordinarily powerful in terms of its impact, for ill or good, on our lives. Heres a more specific suggestion : Social scientists should not consider identifying with the harder sciences or the humanities. Rather, they should focus more intensely on finding answers to specific problems. AThe world
40、s smartest economists, equipped with the most sophisticated mathematical models and powerful computers that money can buy, did not foreseeor at any rate could not preventthe financial calamities that struck the United States and the rest of the world in 2008. BHowever, James Weatherall who has a Ph.
41、 D. in physics as well as in philosophy pointed out that the methods of hard sciences can help make social sciences more rigorous. CStevens Institute of Technology is a case in point;Social science falls within the charge of the Stevens College of Arts their parents rejoice at winning the lottery. B
42、ut to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, their careers tend to end not with a bang, but with a whimper. Consider the nations most prestigious award for scientifically gifted high school students, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, called the Super Bowl of Science by one American president. From its incept
43、ion in 1942 until 1994, the search recognized more than 2, 000 outstanding teenagers as finalists. But just 1 percent ended up making the National Academy of Sciences, and just eight have won Nobel Prizes. Child prodigies rarely become adult geniuses who change the world. We assume that they must la
44、ck the social and emotional skills to function in society. 1 What holds them back is that they dont learn to be original. They strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happ
45、ens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesnt make new. The gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies, but rarely compose their own original scores. They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights. They conform to codified rules, rather than inventi
46、ng their own. 2 In adulthood, many prodigies become experts in their fields and leaders in their organizations. Yet “only a fraction of gifted children eventually become revolutionary adult creators, “ laments the psychologist Ellen Winner. “Those who do must make a painful transition to an adult wh
47、o ultimately remakes a domain.“ Most prodigies never make that leap. They apply their extraordinary abilities by shining in their jobs without making waves. 3 So what does it take to raise a creative child? One study compared the families of children who were rated among the most creative 5 percent
48、in their school system with those who were not unusually creative. 4. Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it s easy to thwart. By limiting rules, parents encouraged their children to think for themselves. They tended to “place emphasis on moral values, rather than on specific rules, “ the Harvard psychologist Teresa Amabile reports. 5When psychologists compared Americas most cre
