1、专业英语八级（阅读）-试卷143及答案解析 (总分：44.00，做题时间：90分钟)一、READING COMPREHENSIO(总题数：11，分数：44.00)1.PART II READING COMPREHENSION_2.SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONSIn this section there are several passages followed by fourteen multiple-choice questions. For each multiple-choice question, there are four suggested
2、 answers marked A , B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer._As video game giants like Sony and Microsoft touted their new gizmos at the Tokyo Game Show this week, industry executives had more than the coming holiday sales season on their minds. Apples recent foray into video ga
3、meswith the iPhone, the iPod Touch and its ever-expanding online App Storeis causing as much hand-wringing among old industry players as the global economic slump, which threatens to take the steam out of year-end shopping for the second consecutive year. Among the questions voiced by video game exe
4、cutives; How can Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft keep consumers hooked on game-only consoles, like the Wii or even the PlayStation Portable, when Apple offers games on popular, everyday devices that double as cellphones and music players? And how can game developers and the makers of big consoles persu
5、ade consumers to buy the latest shootem-ups for $30 or more, when Apples App store is full of games, created by developers around the world and approved by Apple, that cost as little as 99 centsor even are free? The concerns highlight an accelerating shift away from hard-core games, which have tradi
6、tionally driven console sales, to more casual ones played on cellphones. Of the 758 new game titles shown at the Tokyo Game Show, 168 were for cellphone platformsmore than twice as many as in the previous year. Apple did not participate in the Tokyo Game Show, which ends Sunday. But the company intr
7、oduced a beefed-up version of the iPod Touch this month, explicitly comparing it as a gaming platform with the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable. Apples assault could even eat into sales of home consoles like Nintendos Wii, Sonys PlayStation 3 or Microsofts XBox, as game-playing quickly beco
8、mes centered on cellphones. Many in the industry say that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft need to explore more radical changes to their businesses, including an emphasis on software rather than hardware and a better way for users to download games. For game makers like Konami, the iPhone could be an at
9、tractive platform because it is cheap and easy to develop games for, with potentially large returns Developing games for sophisticated machines like PlayStation 3 and XBox, on the other hand, is time-consuming and expensive. Decreasing interest from game makers could further hurt Sony, Nintendo and
10、Microsoft, because they rely on solid game lineups to drive console sales. And in turn, lower console sales would mean fewer developers interested in making new games. To bolster sales of its Wii, Nintendo said Thursday that it would cut its price by a fifth in major markets, following similar cuts
11、by Sony and Microsoft for their own consoles. Nintendo is trying to stem a recent slide in popularity of the Wii. The console was a hit with consumers, thanks to its motion-sensitive controller, but sales have stalled, dropping to 2.23 million units in the April-to-June quarter from 5.17 million a y
12、ear earlier. A year ago, Nintendo also introduced a new version of its DS handheld device that lets users download digital content, including music, photos, videos and games, via a Wi-Fi connectiona clear imitation of Apples App Store. Microsoft, meanwhile, is developing technology that lets people
13、play video games using natural body movements instead of hand-held controllers. In June, the company introduced a prototype of a project code-named Natal, a motion system that combines cameras with voice and face-recognition software. Sony has promised even more hardware wizardry: 3-D video games an
14、d a new controller much like the Wii that is shaped like a lollipop and senses motion. Its PlayStation Go portable console, due next month, does away with memory discs and instead relies on downloads from a virtual store. But analysts say hardware is fast losing center stage to software in the game-
15、playing world. What will draw consumers, said Hirokazu Hanamura, president of the Tokyo market research company, Enterbrain, is software prowess, like Apples App Store, which already has 21,100 gamesfar more than Nintendo and Sony combined. Many within the industry are wary of change. Still, Japan h
16、as experience in developing games for cellphones. According to an industry group, Japans cellphone game market reached ￥16.25 billion in 2007. Japanese companies have been especially successful in combining mobile phone games with social networking. Gree, a fast-growing site with about 12.6 million
17、users, gets visitors hooked on its social networking service, then offers cellphone games on its mobile version. The company makes money on advertisements and by charging for premium accounts. Some Japanese game developers, meanwhile, have jumped on the iPhone bandwagon. Since Apple first released t
18、he iPhone in the United States in 2007, Hudson, a games company, has introduced 26 applications for the App Store and logged 3 million downloads. Hudson plans to increase the pace of development, creating 20 applications a year.（分数：8.00）(1).Which of the following words is used metaphorically?（分数：2.0
19、0）A.Steam (Paragraph Two).B.Assault (Paragraph Three).C.Controller (Paragraph Four).D.Account (Paragraph Six).(2).The following are all Apples advantages over game console makers EXCEPT that_.（分数：2.00）A.Apples game devices can also be cell phones and music playersB.Apples games are much cheaper and
20、even freeC.Apple offers a much larger variety of gamesD.Apples controller is light and can sense motion(3).We can learn from Paragraph Six that_.（分数：2.00）A.it is always hard to get accustomed to the fast changing industryB.Japan has had some successful ways to deal with the changeC.Japanese companie
21、s can no longer survive by themselvesD.traditional game console makers will disappear sooner or later(4).Which of the following is the best title of the passage?（分数：2.00）A.Apples Shadow Hangs over Game Console MakersB.New Trend Appeared in the Video Game IndustryC.Japan Gives Away its Leading Role i
22、n the Video Game IndustryD.An Introduction and Review on the Tokyo Game ShowFor more than 2,000 years, a liberal education has been the ideal of the Westfor the brightest, if not for all, students. The tradition goes back to Plato, who argued in The Republic that leadership should be entrusted to th
23、e philosopher. More recently, in a World War -era treatise, a Harvard University committee concluded that a liberal education best prepared an individual to become an expert in the general art of the free man and the citizen. The report, which led to the introduction of Harvards general education cu
24、rriculum, concluded, The fruit of education is intelligence in action. The aim is mastery of life. In recent years, the fruit has spoiled and such high-sounding rhetoric has been increasingly challenged. Critics have charged that liberal arts education is elitist education, based on undefined and em
25、pty shibboleths. Caroline Bird, social critic and author, argues in The Case Against College that the liberal arts are a religion, the established religion of the ruling class. Bird writes, The exalted language, the universalistic setting, the ultimate value, the inability to define, the appeal to p
26、ersonal witness.these are all the familiar modes of religious discourse. Students in the 1960s charged that such traditional liberal arts courses as Western Thought and Institutions and Contemporary Civilization were ethnocentric and imperialistic. Other students found little stimulation in a curric
27、ulum that emphasized learning to both formulate ideas and engage in rational discourse. They preferred, instead, to express themselves in experience and action; they favored feeling over thought, the nonverbal over the verbal, the concrete over the abstract. In the inflationary, job-scarce economy o
28、f the 1970s, many students argue that the liberal arts curriculum is irrelevant because it neither prepares them for careers nor teaches them marketable skills. In its present form, moreover, liberal arts education is expensive education. Partly in response to these charge and, more immediately to f
29、aculty discontent, Harvard recently approved a redesigning of the liberal arts program. Faculty had complained that the growing numbers and varieties of courses had eroded the purpose of the existing general education program. Students, they felt, could use any number of courses to satisfy the unive
30、rsitys minimal requirements, making those requirements meaningless. The new core curriculum will require students to take eight courses carefully distributed among five basic areas of knowledge. The Harvard plan proposed to give students a critical appreciation of the ways in which we gain knowledge
31、 and understanding of ourselves. Plausible as this credo may be, it rests on rhetoric and not solid research evidencelike curriculum innovations of the 1960s. In an era of educational accounting and educational accountability, it would be helpful to have a way of determining what the essential and m
32、ost valuable core of a university education is and what is peripheral and mere tradition. What are the actual effects of a liberal education, this most persistent of Western ideals? It is sobering to realize that we have little firm evidence. Against this background, we recently designed and carried
33、 out a new study to get some of the evidence. Our findings suggest that liberal arts education does, in fact, change students more or less as Plato envisioned, so that the durability of this educational ideal in western civilization may not be undeserved. In our research, liberal education appears t
34、o promote increases in conceptual and social-emotional sophistication. Thus, according to a number of new tests we developed, students trained in the liberal arts are better able to formulate valid concepts, analyze arguments, define themselves, and orient themselves maturely to their world. The lib
35、eral arts education in at least one college also seems to increase the leadership motivation patterna desire for power, tempered by self-control. We started our study from two fundamental premises: first, that the evidence to date was probably more a reflection of the testing procedures used than of
36、 the efficacy of higher education; and, second, that new tests should be modeled on what university students actually do rather than on what researchers can easily score. If liberal education teaches articulate formation of complex concepts, then student research subjects should be asked to form con
37、cepts from complex material and then scored on how well they articulate them, rather than being asked to choose the best of five concepts by putting a check mark in one of the boxes. Any study of the effects of higher education has the difficult task of distinguishing educational effects from simply
38、 maturational effects. In order to have some control over the effects of maturation, therefore, we tested students who were receiving three different kinds of higher education: A traditional four-year liberal arts education at a prestigious Eastern US institution? A four-year undergraduate program f
39、or training teachers and other professionals; A two-year community college that offers career programs in data processing, electronics, nursing secreta-rial skills, and business administration. At all three institutions, last-year students scored higher than first-year students, but seniors at the l
40、iberal arts college far outdistanced their counterparts at the teachers and community colleges.（分数：8.00）(1).To some critics, liberal arts education is but_.（分数：2.00）A.a high-sounding idea of religious peopleB.an ideal for a few brightest peopleC.the general art of the free manD.something revered onl
41、y by philosophers(2).What did the author think of the Harvards efforts in redesigning liberal arts program?（分数：2.00）A.It was carefully designed and therefore should prove effective.B.It spoiled the purpose of the present general education program.C.It enabled students to appreciate the ways they gai
42、ned knowledge.D.It was not any better than their earlier attempts in effect.(3).The major aim of the authors research was set to_.（分数：2.00）A.study the problems of liberal arts education in universitiesB.refute Platos theory concerning liberal arts educationC.find out the best college in developing s
43、tudents talentsD.prove the effectiveness of liberal arts education on students development(4).We may infer from the authors designing of the study that natural maturation with age might_（分数：2.00）A.affect the accuracy of the scoring of the testsB.lower the score of the testsC.be a factor to be ignore
44、d in the testingD.be the dominant variable in the testsWeve spent more than 60 years dissecting Willy Loman, the character artfully sketched by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman. Willy is, perhaps, Americas consummate loser, a failure to his family. But if you can bear with me for one moment, ima
45、gine he lived in current times, not amid the postwar prosperity of 1949. Sure, his career was ebbing, but Willy kept a job for 38 years, he owned his househe had just made the last mortgage paymentand had a wife and two children. Today hed be a survivor. Has our view of failure softened since Willy
46、Lomans day? In a country with a level of unemployment so high that it is likely to determine the outcome of the midterm elections, and where promotions, bonuses, and retirement savings seem like relics, failure is something many of us are wrestling with right now. But if we begin to accept that succ
47、ess is not a simple, upward career trajectory, this economic crisis may not just reduce the stigma of being sacked but transform the way we think of failing. Shocking as it sounds, failure can be a good thing. Its true, recessions can wreck self-esteem. In a nation built on success and a gloriously
48、entrepreneurial spirit, the prospect of failure can make people fearfuland shamefuleven when it is not their fault. There is a crash in every generation, wrote Arthur Miller in 2005, just before he died, sufficient to mark us with a kind of congenital fear of failure. Miller was commenting on a wonderful book by historian Scott Sandage called Born Losers-. A History of Failure in America. Sandage believes Willy Loman was a success. But the message of the play, he says, i
