1、专业八级-593 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、PART LISTENING COM(总题数：0，分数：0.00)二、SECTION A(总题数：1，分数：15.00)The Delivery of Humor. Understanding delivery A. definition: the ability of the speaker to present the humorous material in the 1 way B. characteristics (drawn from the definition of a joke) 2 The setup
2、 should be direct and 3 . Otherwise, the humor will be 4 . a climactic twist being neat, absolutely clear and 5 . 6 delivery A. control over 7 definition: 8 between the end of the setup and the delivery of a punchline learning from 9 and noticing how to vary the delay to achieve the most effective r
3、esults B. 10 the material working on it in one“s mind seeking to make it appear 11 connecting it to the important points of one“s message weaving it in as a/an 12 part of the speech . Suggested practice material: “The Bird“ story The idea that anyone can tell a joke is 13 Suggested steps for practic
4、e learning it 14 and practicing it working on details telling it as often as possible observing 15 （分数：15.00）填空项 1:_三、SECTION B(总题数：2，分数：10.00)（分数：5.00）A.Engineers stay away from customers.B.Engineers understand customers“ needs.C.Engineers are willing to face customers.D.Engineers want to touch cus
5、tomers with their products.A.It“ll be engineer-oriented.B.It“ll be customer-oriented.C.It“ll be technology-oriented.D.It“ll be service-oriented.A.Everyone will have access to a computer connected to the Internet.B.Everyone will have access to information including that of others.C.Everyone will have
6、 access to advanced technologies related to their daily life.D.Everyone will have access to the virtual world full of information.A.It“s annoying.B.It“s something that everyone needs.C.It“s useful.D.It“s expensive.A.There will be more regulations on this issue in the future.B.Individual fight of pri
7、vacy should be respected.C.Governments should not enjoy the fight of privacy.D.People will adapt their attitudes towards the issue of privacy.（分数：5.00）A.They“ll be nostalgic.B.They“ll be sad.C.They“ll be regretful.D.They“ll be resentful.A.Because he thinks that it will help protect people“s privacy.
8、B.Because he thinks it is a legitimate fight belonging to mature citizens.C.Because he thinks people will regret what they previously revealed online.D.Because he thinks it signals the maturity of an individual.A.The huge progress of technology.B.The demand of consumers.C.The progress of civilizatio
9、n.D.The demand of social development.A.It means that engineers can spend one day a week working on the new interesting ideas.B.It means that engineers can spend 20 percent of their lifetime finding an interesting subject for further research.C.It means that engineers can spend 20 hours a month worki
10、ng on things that they find interesting.D.It means that engineers can spend 20 percent of their work time doing their own things.A.Relentless pursuit of innovation.B.An extreme focus on customers“ experience.C.Respect to technological experts.D.A friendly environment at Google.四、PART READING COMPR(总
11、题数：1，分数：44.00)PASSAGE ONE As anyone in a household with infants or toddlers knows, bedtime can be a nightmare. But that“s where technology, in the form of Web-based sleep counseling, can help. Although Internet use has been blamed for keeping teens and adults awake too late at night, researchers in
12、the U.S. and Israel report that a Web-based program can be a powerful tool for helping parents get babies to hit the sackand to improve their own sleep and mood. Scientists in Philadelphia created an interactive database of the sleeping habits of more than 5,000 babies under age three. That informat
13、ion, which included what parents and infants did in the minutes and hours before going to sleep, was coupled with studies on the most effective practices for inducing sleep. The resulting program, the Customized Sleep Profile, allows parents to input data on their own child“s sleeping habits, and co
14、mpare that profile with those of thousands of other children the same age. The program then gives parents personalized recommendations for their child“s specific sleep problems. If you“ve been trying to rock your baby to sleep, for instance, the program suggests putting your child to bed awakehe“ll
15、be more likely to drift off naturally, ff your baby wakes up hungry hours after falling asleep, you can try eliminating nighttime feedings, and he“ll be more likely to sleep through the night. The study, which involved 264 mothers and their infant or toddler, randomly assigned two groups of parents
16、to use the Web program (a third control group followed their usual bedtime practices), and one of the intervention groups was also asked to establish a three-step bedtime routine that included a bath, a massage and a quiet activity such as listening to a lullaby or cuddling. A 2009 study suggested t
17、hat this routine helped improve problem sleeping in infants and toddlers. In both intervention groups, babies went to bed easier and slept longer at night, and mothers reported better sleep and less tension, depression and fatigue, compared with the families in the control group. Previously fussy ba
18、bies reduced the number of times they awoke at night and the length of time they were awake by up to 50%, and also took less time to fall asleep. As for the recommendations generated by the program, there really is no magic to them; they are based on well-known advice supported by research. The diff
19、erence is that they“re tailored to address specific sleep behaviors, while previous advice to sleep-deprived parents tended to be more general. Whatever the parent inputs, the recommendations provided are based on that input. The program was a blessing for the exhausted parents in the trial. Nearly
20、all of them said they would continue using the program even after the study ended. For parents, late-night screen time may not be such a bad thing after all. PASSAGE TWO In recent years firms have stuffed a lot more money into their final-salary pension schemes. With a fair wind from more favorable
21、markets, that helped to plug the big deficits that had emerged. Now it turns out that some of the improvement may be illusory. The Pensions Regulator said this week in a consultation paper that it will insist on tougher assumptions about longevity trends when the trustees responsible for the schemes
22、 get actuarial valuations. The new guidance will increase pension liabilities. Actuaries have been caught out by startling falls in death rates among older people. In the 1980s life expectancy for men aged 65 rose by a year. In the 1990s it went up by two years, and official forecasts suggest that i
23、t will increase by 2.5 years in the current decade. Gains for women aged 65, who live longer than men, have been less dramatican extra year a decade in the 1980s and 1990sbut they have also picked up, to 1.5 years, in the 2000s. These big improvements reflect especially steep falls in death rates fo
24、r people born between 1920 and 1945. A crucial question is how much longer this “golden cohort“ will lead the way to lower mortality. According to the regulator, 55% of pension schemes have been assuming that the big declines in death rates will taper away to more normal falls by 2020; 11% that they
25、 will fade by 2010; and virtually all the others have paid no heed to the phenomenon. The watchdog wants schemes to pick 2040 as the date when the golden cohort“s super-fast mortality reductions draw to an end. It is also serving notice on valuations that assume an eventual end to improvements in lo
26、ngevity. Instead they should allow for future falls in death rates of at least 1% a year. The scope for further gains in life expectancy is clear in the gap between Britain and other countries where longevity is higher, especially for women. The new guidance may be more realistic but it will be a co
27、ld shower for firms with final- salary schemes. It will raise life expectancy assumptions for people retiring today by two to three years. According to the regulator, an increase of a year pushes up pension-scheme liabilities by 2.5%, which suggests that they would rise by between 5% and 7.5%. Some
28、accountancy firms even think that the. liabilities will rise by as much as 10%. The watchdog“s tough line on longevity is not the only worry for firms with final-salary schemes. In a recent discussion paper, the Accounting Standards Board called for the discount rate, which is used to calculate the
29、present value of future pensions, to be based on government rather than high-quality corporate bonds. This would push up pension-scheme liabilities, which vary inversely with the discount rate, because gilts are safer than company debt and so have a lower yield. Like the regulator“s guidance on long
30、evity, the ASB“s proposal injects realism. If companies generally become more likely to default, then corporate-bond spreadsthe extra interest they pay compared with giltswill rise. Perversely, that will shrink pension-plan liabilities even though the firms backing the schemes have become less credi
31、tworthy. It will take several years for the ASB“s new approach, if adopted, to affect company accounts. Yet, together with the regulator“s move on longevity, the reform could have an unfortunate consequence for pension-scheme members. More firms may conclude that maintaining a defined-benefit scheme
32、even one closed to new membersis the financial equivalent of running up the down escalator. PASSAGE THREE The reenactors are busloads of touristsusually Turkish, sometimes European. The buses blunder over the winding, indifferently paved road to the ridge and dock like dreadnoughts before a stone po
33、rtal. Visitors flood out, fumbling with water bottles and MP3 players. Guides call out instructions and explanations. Paying no attention, the visitors straggle up the hill. When they reach the top, their mouths flop open with amazement, making a line of perfect cartoon O“s. Before them are dozens o
34、f massive stone pillars arranged into a set of rings, one mashed up against the next. Known as G bekli Tepe, the site is vaguely reminiscent of Stonehenge, except that G bekli Tepe was built much earlier and is made not from roughly hewn blocks but from cleanly carved limestone pillars splashed with
35、 bas-reliefs of animalsa cavalcade of gazelles, snakes, foxes, scorpions, and ferocious wild boars. The assemblage was built some 11,600 years ago, seven millennia before the Great Pyramid of Giza. It contains the oldest known temple. Indeed, G bekli Tepe is the oldest known example of monumental ar
36、chitecturethe first structure human beings put together that was bigger and more complicated than a hut. When these pillars were erected, so far as we know, nothing of comparable scale existed in the world. At the time of G bekli Tepe“s construction much of the human race lived in small nomadic band
37、s that survived by foraging for plants and hunting wild animals. Construction of the site would have required more people coming together in one place than had likely occurred before. Amazingly, the temple“s builders were able to cut, shape, and transport 16-ton stones hundreds of feet despite havin
38、g no wheels or beasts of burden. The pilgrims who came to G bekli Tepe lived in a world without writing, metal, or pottery; to those approaching the temple from below, its pillars must have loomed overhead like rigid giants, the animals on the stones shivering in the firelightemissaries from a spiri
39、tual world that the human mind may have only begun to envision. Archaeologists are still excavating G bekli Tepe and debating its meaning. What they do know is that the site is the most significant in a volley of unexpected findings that have overturned earlier ideas about our species“ deep past. Ju
40、st 20 years ago most researchers believed they knew the time, place, and rough sequence of the Neolithic Revolutionthe critical transition that resulted in the birth of agriculture, taking Homo sapiens from scattered groups of hunter-gatherers to farming villages and from there to technologically so
41、phisticated societies with great temples and towers and kings and priests who directed the labor of their subjects and recorded their feats in written form. But in recent years multiple new discoveries, G bekli Tepe preeminent among them, have begun forcing archaeologists to reconsider. At first the
42、 Neolithic Revolution was viewed as a single eventa sudden flash of geniusthat occurred in a single location, Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now southern Iraq, then spread to India, Europe, and beyond. Most archaeologists believed this sudden blossoming of civilizati
43、on was driven largely by environmental changes: a gradual warming as the Ice Age ended that allowed some people to begin cultivating plants and herding animals in abundance. The new research suggests that the “revolution“ was actually carried out by many hands across a huge area and over thousands o
44、f years. And it may have been driven not by the environment but by something else entirely. After a moment of stunned quiet, tourists at the site busily snap pictures with cameras and cell phones. Eleven millennia ago nobody had digital imaging equipment, of course. Yet things have changed less than
45、 one might think. Most of the world“s great religious centers, past and present, have been destinations for pilgrimagesthink of the Vatican, Mecca, Jerusalem, Bodh Gaya (where Buddha was enlightened), or Cahokia (the enormous Native American complex near St. Louis). They are monuments for spiritual
46、travelers, who often came great distances, to gawk at and be stirred by. G bekli Tepe may be the first of all of them, the beginning of a pattern. What it suggests, at least to the archaeologists working there, is that the human sense of the sacredand the human love of a good spectaclemay have given
47、 rise to civilization itself. The pillars of G bekli Tepe are bigthe tallest are 18 feet in height and weigh 16 tons. Swarming over their surfaces is a menagerie of animal bas-reliefs, each in a different style, some roughly rendered, a few as refined and symbolic as Byzantine art. Other parts of th
48、e hill are littered with the greatest store of ancient flint toolsa Neolithic warehouse of knives, choppers, and projectile points. Even though the stone had to be lugged from neighboring valleys, there are more flints in one little area here, a square meter or two, than many archaeologists find in
49、entire sites. The circles follow a common design. All are made from limestone pillars shaped like giant spikes or capital T“s. Bladelike, the pillars are easily five times as wide as they are deep. They stand an arm span or more apart, interconnected by low stone walls. In the middle of each ring are two taller pillars, their thin ends mounted in shallow grooves cut into the floor. The T-shaped pillars are stylized human beings, an idea bolstered by the carved arms that angle from the shoulders of some pillars, hands reaching toward thei
