1、专业英语八级-阅读理解(十四)及答案解析 (总分：100.00，做题时间：90分钟)一、BREADING COMPREH(总题数：0，分数：0.00)二、BTEXT A/B(总题数：1，分数：25.00)In 1929, an American woman traveled from her home in China to settle her severely impaired daughter in a New Jersey institution. She did so with borrowed money, as she could not afford the fees. The
2、 parting was excruciating; she was, she recalled, nearly destroyed by grief and fear. The house felt empty on her return to Nanjing, but she knew precisely what to do: This I decided was the time to begin really to write.Five months later, a completed manuscript sailed to America. Published in 1931,
3、 The Good Earth spent two years at the top of the best-seller list and won its author a Pulitzer Prize. Pearl Buck later became the first American woman to win a Nobel for literature.Buck lived in interesting times, and in interesting places. Her father was a Presbyterian missionary to China. Hers w
4、as a fairy-tale childhood of the bleak and semi-tragic variety. Before her birth, her mother had lost a child each to dysentery, cholera, malaria. As Pearl explored the backyard, she stumbled upon tiny limbs and mutilated hands, the remains of infant daughters left to die. Where other little girls c
5、onstructed mud pies, Hilary Spurling writes evenly, Pearl made miniature grave mounds.Bucks father, Absalom Sydenstricker, was a fanatical man with a healthy martyr complex, proud of his ability to whip up quarrels with himself at the center. Daily he ventured out to save souls. Daffy he was spit up
6、on, cursed, stoned in the street. He produced few converts but plenty of frustration. While he devoted himself to God, Bucks mother gave herself over to grief and rage. Money was tight, the more so as Sydenstficker refused to spend any on his wife or daughters. There was every reason why young Pearl
7、 should throw herself into the pages of Dickens, her narcotic of choice and her sole link to the Anglo-Saxon world. Well before she was 10 she determined to be a novelist, as enchanted by ancient Chinese epics as by the Western canon, of which she made quick work. For a period of her childhood she r
8、eread all of Dickens annually.A blond-haired, blue-eyed Chinese girl, Pearl grew up an oddity and remained one. She had no place in the colonial caste system of her adopted country. English was her second language; even as an adult she thought in Chinese. In 1910, she enrolled as a freshman at Rando
9、lph-Macon Womans College in Virginia. Everything about her was wrong, from the cut of her jacket to the braids down her back. Girls came in groups to stare at me, she remembered a half-century later.She drew crowds again after her marriage in 1917 to John Lossing Buck, an American agricultural econo
10、mist stationed in China. With him she ventured into the interior of the country, the first white woman the villagers had seen. They mobbed around her, peeped under her doors, tore at the sides of her sedan chair. Much from those trips would, Spurling notes in Pearl Buck in China, be absorbed and dis
11、tilled a decade later in the magical opening sequence of The Good Earth.Her wrenching trip to America with her daughter, and its improbable aftermath, occur more than three-quarters of the way through this sparkling biography. Spurlings is very much the story of what turned an American missionarys d
12、aughter into a writer; of how literature is extracted from life; of what a woman (and a mother) must do to perform that operation; of what fueled Bucks astonishing output (39 novels, 25 works of nonfiction, short stories, childrens books, translations and countless magazine articles). The American y
13、ears and the fate of The Good Earth mostly tall outside Spurlings purview, which is just as well: the end is not a pretty one, as opulent and disillusioning as the early years were indigent and fantastical. (You really dont want to hear about the white mink or the limo with the silver- monogrammed d
14、oor.) A revelation to America, The Good Earth would be an embarrassment to China, which banned it. Like many political innocents, Buck caused her share of dust-ups. Accused in the United States of being a Communist, she was denounced by the Communist Chinese as an imperialist. Time magazine banned h
15、er from its pages. China forbade her return, with Nixon, in 1972.From her evangelical childhood Buck emerged with an abiding faith in the power of fiction. She also subscribed to a selective amnesia: I have the habit of forgetting what I do not care to remember, she conceded. There was plenty to obl
16、iterate, from the Boxer Rebellion to the years Buck lived in the same house with her feuding father and husband, as well as two small children, one of them compromised. The amnesia also came in handy on the page: her portrait of her mother reads, Spurling notes, more like a biography of the Statue o
17、f Liberty than an actual human being.The author of widely praised biographies of Henri Matisse and Sonia Orwell, Spurling is left to contend not only with a great body of Bucks unreliable autobiographical works, but also with a dearth of documentary evidence and an absence of intimates. Working with
18、in those confines, she has fashioned an extraordinary portrait, rich in detail, ambitious in scope, with a vast historical backdrop that informs but never overwhelms its remarkable subject. Precisely and vividly she restores the ordeals Buck preferred to forget. There were a great number of them, bo
19、th before and after the seismic publication of The Good Earth.（分数：25.00）(1).Which of the following details of Pearl Buck is INCORRECT? A. She is the first American woman to win a Nobel for literature. B. She has an interesting childhood like a fairy-tale. C. She seems weird to both Chinese and Ameri
20、can people. D. She omits some bad memories in her autobiography.（分数：5.00）A.B.C.D.(2).Little Buck was fascinated by Dickens works because A. she is seeking escape from reality. B. she can find no other interesting books. C. she can learn standard English. D. she is sharing her fathers interest.（分数：5.
21、00）A.B.C.D.(3).Spurlings biography elaborates on all of the following EXCEPT A. how Pearl Buck becomes a writer. B. how Pearl Buck writes from life experience. C. why Pearl Buck is so productive in writing. D. how Pearl Buck lives her late years.（分数：5.00）A.B.C.D.(4).Which of the following implies a
22、contrast? A. Hers was a fairy-tale childhood of the bleak and semi-tragic variety. (Para.3) B. ., as opulent and disillusioning as the early years were indigent and fantastical. (Para.7) C. .she was denounced by the Communist Chinese as an imperialist. (Para.7) D. The author of widely praised biogra
23、phies of Henri Matisse and Sonia Otwell, Spurling is left to contend. (Para.9)（分数：5.00）A.B.C.D.(5).What is the authors opinion toward Spurlings biography? A. Positive. B. Neutral. C. Negative. D. Undecided.（分数：5.00）A.B.C.D.三、BTEXT B/B(总题数：1，分数：25.00)All the buzz lately is that the Obama administrati
24、on is antibusiness. And there are widespread claims that fears about taxes, regulation and budget deficits are holding down business spending and blocking economic recovery.How much truth is there to these claims? None. Business spending is indeed low, but no lower than one would have expected given
25、 widespread overcapacity and weak consumer spending.Ask the Obama-is-scaring-business crowd for some actual evidence supporting their claim, and theyll tell you that business spending on plant and equipment is at its lowest level, as a share of G.D.P., in 40 years. What they dont mention is the fact
26、 that business investment always falls sharply when the economy is depressed. After all, why should businesses expand their production capacity when theyre not selling enough to use the capacity they already have? And in case you havent noticed, we still have a deeply depressed economy.So wheres the
27、 evidence that an antibusiness climate is depressing spending? The Obamas-socialist-policies-are-wrecking-the-economy chorus isnt coming from businesses; its coming from business lobbyists, which isnt at all the same thing. Read through the latest survey of small business trends by the National Fede
28、ration for Independent Business, an advocacy group. The commentary at the front of the report is largely a diatribe against government Washington is applying leeches and performing blood-letting as a cure and you might naively imagine that this diatribe reflects what the surveyed businesses said. Bu
29、t while a few businesses declared that the political climate was deterring expansion, they were vastly outnumbered by those citing a poor economy.The charts at the back of the report, showing trends in business perceptions of their most important problem, are even more revealing. It turns out that b
30、usiness is less concerned about taxes and regulations than during the 1990s, an era of booming investment. Concerns about poor sales, on the other hand, have surged. The weak economy, not fear about government actions, is whats holding investment down.So why are we hearing so much about the alleged
31、harm being inflicted by an antibusiness climate? For the most part its the same old, same old: lobbyists trying to bully Washington into cutting taxes and dismantling regulations, while extracting bigger fees from their clients along the way. Beyond that, business leaders are, as I said, feeling unl
32、oved: the financial crisis, health insurance scandals, and the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico have taken a toll on their reputation. Somehow, however, rather than blaming their peers for bad behavior, C.E.O.s blame Mr Obama for demonizing business by which they apparently mean speaking frankly ab
33、out the culpability of the guilty parties.Well, C.E.O.s are people, too but soothing their hurt feelings isnt a priority fight now, and it has nothing at all to do with promoting economic recovery. If we want stronger business spending, we need to give businesses a reason to spend. And to do that, t
34、he government needs to start doing more, not less, to promote overall economic recovery.（分数：25.00）(1).The author introduces his topic of argument by A. defining a key economic concept. B. citing the oppositions viewpoint. C. sharing his own personal experience. D. commenting on the government policy
35、.（分数：5.00）A.B.C.D.(2).The fact spending on plant and equipment is at its lowest level (Paragraph 3) can not prove that the government is antibusiness because A. government is pouring more money in expanding businesses. B. businesses do not need to expand in economic depression. C. businesses care ab
36、out taxes, regulation and budget deficits. D. government is advocating businesses expansion.（分数：5.00）A.B.C.D.(3).The word diatribe (Line 5, Para.4) is closest in meaning to A. bitter attack. B. vivid description. C. well-meant criticism. D. humorous metaphor.（分数：5.00）A.B.C.D.(4).The business leaders
37、 are unhappy about A. their peers misconduct. B. the slow process of economic recovery. C. the government policies. D. the presidents talk about their mistakes.（分数：5.00）A.B.C.D.(5).Which of the following statements would the author most probably agree? A. Shrink in business spending has blocked Amer
38、icas economic recovery. B. Lobbyists are supervising the government to boost economic recovery. C. In an age of economic prosperity people care more about taxes and regulations. D. The governments key task now is to console the unhappy CEOs.（分数：5.00）A.B.C.D.四、BTEXT C/B(总题数：1，分数：25.00)As 56 million c
39、hildren return to the nations 133,000 elementary and secondary schools, the promise of reform is again in the air. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced $4 billion in Race to the Top grants to states whose proposals demonstrated, according to Duncan, a bold commitment to education reform and
40、 creativity and innovation that is breathtaking. What they really show is that few subjects inspire more intellectual dishonesty and political puffery than school reform.To be sure, some improvements have occurred in elementary schools. But what good are they if theyre erased by high school? Theres
41、also been a modest narrowing in the high-school achievement gaps between whites and blacks, although the narrowing generally stopped in the late 1980s. (Average scores have remained stable because, although blacks scores have risen slightly, the size of these minority groups has also expanded. This
42、means that their still-low scores exert a bigger drag on the average. The two effects offset each other.)Standard explanations of this meager progress fail. Too few teachers? Not really. From 1970 to 2008, the student population increased 8 percent while the number of teachers rose 61 percent. Are t
43、eachers ill paid? Perhaps, but thats not obvious. In 2008 the average teacher earned $53,230; two full-time teachers married to each other and making average pay would rank among the richest 20 percent of households. Maybe more preschools would help. Yet the share of 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool
44、has rocketed from 11 percent in 1965 to 53 percent in 2008.Reforms have disappointed for two reasons. First, no one has yet discovered transformative changes in curriculum or pedagogy, especially for inner-city schools, that are scalable that is, easily transferable to other schools, where they woul
45、d predictably produce achievement gains. Efforts in New York City and Washington, D.C., to raise educational standards involve contentious and precarious school-by-school campaigns to purge ineffective teachers and principals. Charter schools might break this pattern, though there are grounds for sk
46、epticism. In 2009 the 4,700 charter schools enrolled about 3 percent of students and did not uniformly show achievement gains.The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation. Students, after all, have to do the work. If the students arent motivated, even capable teac
47、hers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a good college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school reform is that if students arent motivated, its mainly the fault of schoo
48、ls and teachers. The reality is that, as high schools have become more inclusive and adolescent culture has strengthened, the authority of teachers and schools has eroded.Motivation has weakened because more students dont like school, dont work hard, and dont do well. The conflict between expanding access and raising standards goes against standards. Michael Kirst, an emeritus educat
