1、专业八级-480 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、READING COMPREHENSIO(总题数：5，分数：100.00)The opening and closing of doors are the most significant actions of man“s life. What a mystery lies in doors! No man knows what awaits him when he opens a door. Even the most familiar room, where the clock ticks and the hear
2、th glows red at dusk, may harbor surprises. The plumber may actually have called (while you were out) and fixed that leaking faucet. The cook may have had a fit of the vapors and demanded her passports. The wise man opens his front door with humility and a spirit of acceptance. Which one of us has n
3、ot sat in some anteroom and watched the inscrutable panels of a door that was full of meaning? Perhaps you were waiting to apply for a job; perhaps you had some “deal“ you were ambitious to put over. You watched the confidential stenographer flit in and out, carelessly turning that mystic portal whi
4、ch, to you, revolved on hinges of fate. And then the young woman said, “Mr. Cranberry will see you now.“ As you grasped the knob the thought flashed, “When I open this door again, what will have happened?“ There are many kinds of doors, such as revolving doors for hotels, shops, and public buildings
5、. These are typical of the brisk, bustling ways of modern life. Can you imagine John Milton or William Penn skipping through a revolving door? Then there are the curious little slatted doors that still swing outside denatured barrooms and extend only from shoulder to knee. There are trapdoors, slidi
6、ng doors, double doors, stage doors, prison doors, glass doors. But the symbol and mystery of a door resides in its quality of concealment. A glass door is not a door at all, but a window. The meaning of a door is to hide what lies inside, and to keep the heart in suspense. Also, there are many ways
7、 of opening doors. There is the cheery push of elbow with which the waiter shoves open the kitchen door when he bears in your try of supper. There is the sympathetic and awful silence of the dentist“s maid who opens the door into the operating room, and, without speaking, implies that the doctor is
8、ready for you. There is the brisk cataclysmic opening of a door when the nurse comes in very early in the morning“It“s a boy!“ Doors are the symbol of privacy, of retreat, of the mind“s escape into blissful quietude or sad secret struggle. A room without doors is not a room, but a hallway. No matter
9、 where he is, a man can make himself at home behind a closed door. The mind works best behind closed doors. Men are not horses to be herded together. Dogs know the meaning and anguish of doors. Have you ever noticed a puppy yearning at a shut portal? It is a symbol of human life. The opening of door
10、s is a mystic act: it has in it some flavor of the unknown, some sense of moving into a new moment, a new pattern of the human rigmarole. It includes the highest glimpses of mortal gladness; reunions, reconciliations, the bliss of lovers long patted. Even in sadness, the opening of a door may bring
11、relief: it changes and redistributes human forces. But the closing of doors is far more terrible. It is a confession of finality. Every door closed brings something to an end. And there are degrees of sadness in the closing of doors. A door slammed is a confession of weakness. A door gently shut is
12、often the most tragic gesture in life. Every one knows the seizure of anguish that comes just after the closing of a door, when the loved one is still near, within sound of voice, and yet already far away. The opening and closing of doors is a part of the stern fluency of life. Life will not stay st
13、ill and let us alone. We are continually opening doors with hope, closing them with despair. Life lasts not much longer than a pipe of tobacco, and destiny knocks us out like the ashes. The closing of a door is irrevocable. It snaps the pack-thread of the heart. It is no avail to reopen, to go back.
14、 Pinero spoke nonsense when he made Paula Tanqueray say, “The future is only the past entered through another gate.“ Alas, there is no other gate. When the door is shut, it is shut forever. There is no other entrance to that vanished pulse of time. “The moving finger writes, and having writ“ There i
15、s a certain kind of door-shutting that will come to us all. The kind of door-shutting that is done very quietly, with the sharp click of the latch to break the stillness. They will think then, one hopes, of our unfulfilled decencies rather than of our pluperfect misdemeanors. Then they will go out a
16、nd close the door.（分数：20.00）(1).John Milton and William Penn couldn“t have seen -|_|-.（分数：4.00）A.revolving doorsB.slatted doorsC.stage doorsD.prison doors(2).The relationship between the fourth and fifth paragraphs is that -|_|-.（分数：4.00）A.both present the meaning of opening doorsB.the fourth genera
17、lizes and the fifth gives examplesC.each presents one side of the pictureD.the fifth is the logical result of the fourth(3).The closing of doors may imply all the following EXCEPT -|_|-.（分数：4.00）A.endB.sadnessC.reliefD.distance(4).Which of the following idioms can be inferred from the last three par
18、agraphs?（分数：4.00）A.Birds of a feather flock together.B.No pains, no gains.C.Chance favors the prepared mind.D.Time goes never to return.(5).What does the first sentence in the third paragraph indicate?（分数：4.00）Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx has eight floors, seven gymnasiums, a football fi
19、eld and a planetarium. But there is one place off limits to its more than 3,000 students: the six-lane swimming pool, which has been dry for more than a decade. Flanked by empty bleachers, coated with dust and dimly lighted by a few fluorescent bulbs, whose dull buzzing noise substitutes for splashi
20、ng and cheering, the pool evokes an aura of eerie loneliness. Within the New York City public school system, though, the troubled Truman pool represents a trend. Of the 50 swimming pools tucked inside the city“s 1,200 school buildings, 10 are in unusable condition. At Martin Luther King Jr. High Sch
21、ool in Manhattan, the pool, empty since leaks and filtration problems were discovered in 1986, has been used over the years to store old chairs and desks. The pool at Walton High School in the Bronx has been closed since the 1980“s, despite a $54 million schoolwide renovation. Next to Truman“s compe
22、titive pool is a smaller practice pool, which is also empty, except for grime, spattered paint and a few cigarette butts. For the swimming enthusiasts of the city public school system, the empty school pools are a sad spectacle, hollow symbols of lost opportunities: to combat obesity; to provide sum
23、mer job training in a city that has had to import lifeguards from Europe in recent years; to entice that subset of students who just may love the water even if they hate everything else about high school. “Swimming kind of puts you in a different frame of mindthere“s noise and laughter, people feeli
24、ng free and weightless,“ said Sana Q. Nasser, the principal of Truman. “Here we have a pool that needs a teensy bit to get it going, and to see it empty is heart-wrenching.“ The latest version of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg“s $13.1 billion, five-year educational capital plan, to be announced in the c
25、oming weeks, will include $60 million for upgrades to a dozen school pools, including $7 million for Truman, $5 million for Walton and $4 million for King, said Steven W. Lawitts, senior vice president of the School Construction Authority. “These pools are going to be fixed,“ Mr. Lawitts said. But t
26、he school system“s capital plans have historically called for projects that never end up happening, among them the planned renovation of one of two pools at the George Washington High School campus, in Washington Heights. Also, the mayor“s plan relies on $6.5 billion from the state, which is resisti
27、ng a court order to give the city schools more money. “I would love it to be the case that kids could swim next year at Truman High School,“ said Eva S. Moskowitz, chairwoman of the City Council Education Committee, whose father swam on the Stuyvesant High School team. “People should not be fooled t
28、hat simply because the pool repair is in the capital budget it will happen.“ Teachers and principals say that when school pools work, they are oases from whatever troubles may pass in the hallways and classrooms. Tension over test scores and safety concerns dissipates in the smell of chlorine, the c
29、reak of diving boards, the splash of the butterfly stroke. On the West Side of Manhattan, the purported existence of a pool at Martin Luther King Jr. High School was such a mystery that it inspired an article in The Advocate, a student newspaper on campus. Appearing under the headline “Unlocking MLK
30、“s Secrets,“ the article was accompanied by a photograph showing old furniture and a television set stacked next to the empty pool. At other schools, the situation is reversed. “The seniors would always tell the freshmen they could go find the pool on the fifth floor,“ said Adam Kerzner, a Bronx Sci
31、ence swimmer who graduated from the schoolwhich has no fifth floorin 1997. “It was kind of like a hazing thing.“ Swim teams representing all eight Staten Island high schools vie for practice time at Curtis High School, the borough“s only public school with a pool. “It“s hectic,“ said Jim Meraglia, C
32、urtis“s athletic director.（分数：20.00）(1).Which of the following details of swimming pool in Martin Luther King Jr. High School is INCORRECT?（分数：4.00）A.It has been used as a storage of old chairs and desks since 1986.B.It is included in the Mayor“s five-year educational capital plan.C.It is still in u
33、nusable condition despite a schoolwide renovation.D.It ever inspired an article titled “Unlocking MLK“s Secrets“.(2).Which of the following benefits of swimming is NOT mentioned in the passage?（分数：4.00）A.Losing weight.B.Keeping healthy.C.Relieving stress.D.Forgetting troubles.(3).The author“s tone t
34、owards the topic can most probably be described as -|_|-.（分数：4.00）A.concernedB.optimisticC.criticalD.sarcastic(4).According to the passage, what may be the cause of empty school pools?（分数：4.00）(5).What does Adam Kerzner imply by saying “The seniors would always tell the freshmen they could go find t
35、he pool on the fifth floor“?（分数：4.00）As we hurtle towards the new millennium, what is the better symbol of the relentless passage of time than the ancient sundial? Sundials come in many forms, but horizontal ones are by far the most common. Usually set on a pedestal, they consist of a flat dial face
36、 and a gnomonthe slanting piece of metal that casts the shadow. Believe it or not, interest in sundials is increasing in the west. A quick glance at the Interact reveals burgeoning sundial societies all over the world for the scientifically inclined and even detailed sundial trials for those who wan
37、t to check out the dials in gardens in the United States, France or Britain. This is time travel with a difference. Quotes or mottoes have traditionally been inscribed on sundials to promote reflection and thought, and these sayings are repeated on the modern versions of the old timepiece. The philo
38、sophical sayings add to the image of the timelessness of sundials, but are also reminders in the great poetic traditions of the transient nature of human life. “Time began in a garden“ is a quotation referring to the Christian Bible legend of the Garden of Eden where, Christian belief says, human li
39、fe began at the dawn of Creation, and from having been eternal, humans became subject to the decay of time. “I am a shadow. So are you“ reminds the observer that a passing life can be as swift and transitory as the shadow that drifts over the face of a sundial, while the enigmatic “I make timeDost t
40、hou?“ plays on the double meaning of the English words for marking or keeping time, like a clock, and marking time by failing to make progress. Sundials have long been beautifully crafted but now some innovative Western Sculptors are creating dramatic new variations on the theme, such as a vertical
41、or wall dial from a modern courtyard setting. Bold colorful sun designs or simple minimalist wall plaques are available, and there is even a water fountain dial where the water jet replaces the gnomon (finger) as marker of time. Clever designs playing with the sun and resulting shadow forms also use
42、 stark hunks of rough-hewn stone, taking us back to those pointers of old, or employ reflective materials like glass. The earliest sundials are recorded in use around 300 BC. They come from the stage in ancient times when men and women began to use simple sticks and markers to show the time of day a
43、s the shadows progressed. Such devices grew steadily more complex until by Roman times no fewer than 12 types of sundial were recorded, including a sophisticated portable version. More than mere markers of time, such dials served for centuries to indicate mankind“s understanding of the complexities
44、of the heavens. Somewhere along the line, someone realized that a slanting object would cast a more accurate shadow than a vertical one for the purposes of keeping time. The problem of seasonal changes was removed by placing the slanting object parallel to the Earth“s axis. Even after clocks and wat
45、ches were invented, their reliability was questionable and sundials still had to be used to check their accuracy. But eventually, as the 18th and 19th centuries progressed, and coinciding with the era of “picturesque“ or idealized landscape gardening in Britain and Europe, sundials became garden orn
46、aments first and timekeepers second. Their value in this area has never been questioned, as successful gardens often rely on such focal points for impact. With their inherent dignity and image of scientific order triumphing over chaos, sundials provide the perfect centerpiece for herb gardens, histo
47、ric gardens, hospitals, schools, riversides churches (set in thyme of cause), knot gardens, memorial gardens, cemeteries and civic gardens. Armillary sundials are especially aesthetically pleasing, with their circular or spherical shape and make superb garden ornaments. Consisting of several rings,
48、they revolved from the celestial globes used by ancient astronomers to plot the position of the stars. The word armillary comes from the Latin armillarya bracelet or ring. One ring representing the equator has the hours walked on it, a second stands for the meridian, and a third the horizon. The rod
49、 through the centre representing the earth“s axis shows the time by casting its shadow on to the hour times marked on the equatorial ring. Sun time is not the same as watch time because it measures time as it is, not as we would like it to be, with noon today exactly 24 hours away from noon tomorrow. Before the world became a small place and people didn“t move around very much, local time was a perfectly satisfactory measurement. But as modern communication and means of travel grew more sophisticated standard time zones were ad
