1、专业八级分类模拟412及答案解析 (总分：157.60，做题时间：90分钟)一、PART READING COMPR(总题数：1，分数：100.00)Section A In this section there are several passages followed by fourteen multiple-choice questions. For each multiple-choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is t
2、he best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO. Passage One Social circumstances in Early Modern England mostly served to repress womens voices. Patriarchal culture and institutions constructed them as chaste, silent, obedient, and subordinate. At the beginning of the 17th century, the ide
3、ology of patriarchy, political absolutism, and gender hierarchy were reaffirmed powerfully by King James in The Trew Law of Free Monarchie and the Basilikon Doron; by that ideology the absolute power of God the supreme patriarch was seen to be imaged in the absolute monarch of the state and in the h
4、usband and father of a family. Accordingly, a womans subjection, first to her father and then to her husband, imaged the subjection of English people to their monarch, and of all Christians to God. Also, the period saw an outpouring of repressive or overtly misogynist sermons, tracts, and plays, det
5、ailing womens physical and mental defects, spiritual evils, rebelliousness, shrewishness, and natural inferiority to men. Yet some social and cultural conditions served to empower women. During the Elizabethan era (15581603) the culture was dominated by a powerful Queen, who provided an impressive f
6、emale example though she left scant cultural space for other women. Elizabethan women writers began to produce original texts but were occupied chiefly with translation. In the 17th century, however, various circumstances enabled women to write original texts in some numbers. For one thing, some cou
7、nterweight to patriarchy was provided by female communitiesmothers and daughters, extended kinship networks, close female friends, the separate court of Queen Anne (King James consort) and her often oppositional masques and political activities. For another, most of these women had a reasonably good
8、 education (modern languages, history, literature, religion, music, occasionally Latin) and some apparently found in romances and histories more expansive terms for imagining womens lives. Also, representation of vigorous and rebellious female characters in literature and especially on the stage no
9、doubt helped to undermine any monolithic social construct of womens nature and role. Most important, perhaps, was the radical potential inherent in the Protestant insistence on every Christians immediate relationship with God and primary responsibility to follow his or her individual conscience. The
10、re is plenty of support in St Pauls epistles and elsewhere in the Bible for patriarchy and a wifes subjection to her husband, but some texts (notably Galatians 3:28) inscribe a very different politics, promoting womens spiritual equality. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor fre
11、e, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Jesus Christ. Such texts encouraged some women to claim the support of God the supreme patriarch against the various earthly patriarchs who claimed to stand toward them in his stead. There is also the gap or slippage between ideology and com
12、mon experience. English women throughout the 17th century exercised a good deal of accrual power: as managers of estates in their husbands absences at court or on military and diplomatic missions; as members of guilds; as wives and mothers who apex during the English Civil War and Interregnum (16401
13、660), as the execution of the King and the attendant disruption of social hierarchies led many women to seize new rolesas preachers, as prophetesses, as deputies for exiled royalist husbands, as writers of religious and political tracts. (此文选自 The Guardian)Passage Two Another milestone on the journe
14、y towards digital cash was passed on November 13th. That date marked the emergence from beta-testing in America of V. me, a digital wallet that holds multiple payment cards in a virtual repository. Instead of providing their personal details and card numbers to pay for stuff online, customers just e
15、nter a username and a password. The service is provided by Visa, a giant card-payment network whose headquarters is in the heart of Silicon Valley, close to a host of technology firms which would love to get their hands on a chunk of the global payments business. In the short term new technology is
16、actually boosting usage of plastic. Smartphone apps often require users to enter their card details to pay for services. Firms such as Square and PayPal have developed tiny card readers that plug into smartphones and allow small traders using their software to accept payments cheaply. Ed McLaughlin,
17、 who oversees emerging payments technologies at MasterCard, reckons such developments have added 1.2m new businesses over the past 12 months to the card firms list of merchants. But even if plastic cards eventually go the way of vinyl records, card networks should still prosper because they too are
18、investing heavily in new technology and have several built-in advantages. Visa is betting its member banks can help it to narrow the gap with rivals like PayPal, for instance, which is part of eBay and has grown to 117m active users thanks in part to its use on the auction site. Over 50 financial in
19、stitutions are supporting the launch of V. me, which accepts non-Visa cards in its wallet, too. MasterCard and others are also touting digital wallets, some of which can hold digital coupons and tickets as well as card details. Before long all of these wallets are likely to end up on mobile phones,
20、which can be used to buy things in stores and other places. This is where firms such as Square, which has developed its own elegant and easy-to-use mobile wallet, and Google have been focusing plenty of energy. Jennifer Schulz, Visas global head of e-commerce, predicts there will be a shake-out that
21、 leaves only a few wallet providers standing. Thanks to their trusted brands, big budgets and payments savvy, one or more card companies will be among them. Card networks are also taking stakes in innovative firms to keep an eye on potentially disruptive technologies. Visa owns part of Square, which
22、 recently struck a deal with Starbucks to make its mobile-payment service available in 7,000 of the coffee chains outlets in America. Visa has also invested in Monitise, a mobile-banking specialist. American Express, for its part, has set up a $ 100m digital-commerce fund, one of whose investments i
23、s in iZettle, a Square-like firm based in Sweden. So far few have tried to create new payments systems from scratch. Those that have toyed with the idea, such as ISIS, a consortium of telecoms companies in America, have concluded it is far too costly and painful to deal with regulators, set up anti-
24、fraud systems and so forth. Fears about the security of new-fangled payment systems also play into the hands of established card firms. Still, they cannot relax. Bryan Keane, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, points out that rival digital wallets could promote alternatives to credit and debit cards, incl
25、uding stored-value cards and direct bank-account-to-bank-account payments. Big retailers in America have clubbed together to create their own digital wallet and are likely to prompt users to choose the payment options that are cheapest for the chains, by offering them incentives like coupons. Jack D
26、orsey, the boss of Square and a co-founder of Twitter, agrees that digital wallets will make the trade-offs between various payment options clearer to consumers and reckons this will force card networks to up their game. They had a major innovation 60 years ago he says, and there have been very, ver
27、y few innovations since. Some in the payments world might quibble with that but one thing they can all agree on is that the spread of mobile payments will bring many more customers. MasterCards Mr. McLaughlin claims that 85% of commerce still involves cash and cheques. As mobile purchases take off,
28、more of this activity will move online. The biggest prize of all lies in emerging markets, where a lack of financial infrastructure is hastening the rise of phone-based payments systems such as M-Pesa, which serves Kenya and several other markets. Visa has snapped up Fundamo, which specialises in pa
29、yment services for the unbanked and underbanked in emerging markets; MasterCard has set up a joint venture called Wanda with Telefnica, a Spanish telecoms firm, which aims to boost mobile payments across Latin America. The payments world is changing fast but the card firms are not about to let rival
30、s swipe their business. (此文选自 The Economist)Passage Three My cars gear lever does more than dispense transmission rations. It panders to me. It cajoles and beckons. It wears out its chrome heart to make my life easier, foras its manufacturers are quick to claimthe company devotes hundreds of man-hou
31、rs to testing and retesting each possible design and configuration to see which does the job best. Which shape fits most naturally into a human hand? Which covering is most pleasing? And which overall look makes your fingers tremble with anticipation? This curious pursuit, reputedly espoused by and
32、entrenched within all of todays major manufacturing firms, is called ergonomics, defined as the degree to which the system has been developed with the human user in mind. Personally, I like the sound of the word. I wish only that the results lived up to the hype. Recently, for example, I purchased a
33、 rowing machine for home exercise. Within minutes of unwrapping my booty, I realized the unit I was so cautiously dissecting did not in any way match the color picture on the box. The assembly instructions hinted darkly that putting the contraption together would be only slightly less complex than b
34、uilding a nuclear reactor. Perseverance paid off, however. After applying equal amounts of time and luck, I was finally able to make my rower. But the only cogent ergonomic thought that went into the design of this product was the shape of the cardboard container it was packed in. Thats ergonomics i
35、n the real world. Take videocassette recorders: VCRs are like snowflakesno two are quite alike. While all are intended to do more or less the same thingsplay, record now, record laterthe actual designs are about as consistent and predictable as a roulette wheel. If you lose or misplace the manual, y
36、ou end up with little more than a digital clock. And then there is the ubiquitous microwave oven. What do those low , medium and high settings really hint at? Show me a consumer sufficiently schooled in the effect of microwave transmissions on food molecules to properlyand intuitivelyselect the opti
37、mal setting! Only small children, bless then, seem to know how to make these machines bend to their wills. Put it on high and blast it, says my nine-year-old niece. I do. It works. Can anyone truly say the modern car is designed with the human user in mind? Recall the last time you plopped behind th
38、e wheel of your neighbors new vehicle. How quickly did you find the knob that popped open the bonnet or the hood? Were you able to adjust the left-side mirror without adjusting the right-side mirror, activating the headlight washers or wipers, or possibly lowering the convertible top? Did you know w
39、hich lever to push or pull to slide the seat forward without simultaneously upsetting the angle of the seat back or exploding the pneumatically pressured backsupport? As with most of todays products, the only thing we really know about car seats is that, given the correct incentive, they will move.
40、Beyond that, youand your ergonomically inspired intuition are completely on your own. (此文选自 The Economist)Passage Four To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind is prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error. If the
41、 matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he k
42、new. Thinking that you know when in fact you dont is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone. I believe myself that hedgehogs eat black beetles, because I have been told that they do; but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I should not commit myself until I had seen one enjoying
43、 this unappetizing diet. Aristotle, however, was less cautious. Ancient and medieval authors knew all about unicorns and salamanders; not one of them thought it necessary to avoid dogmatic statements about them because he had never seen one of them. Many matters, however, are less easily brought to
44、the test of experience. If, like most of mankind, you have passionate convictions on many such matters, there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own bias. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason
45、for thinking as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters
46、 as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find,
47、 on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants. A good way of ridding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own. When I was young, I lived much outside my own countryin France, Germany, Italy, an
48、d the United States. I found this very profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yours
49、elf that you seem so to them. In this opinion both parties may be right, but they cannot both be wrong. This reflection should generate a certain caution. For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time an
