1、专业英语八级（阅读）模拟试卷 140及答案与解析 SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS 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 the best answer. 0 Ameri
2、cans are still chuckling about the “pants suit“. A man a judge, no less sued his dry cleaners for $54m for allegedly losing his trousers. A sign at the shop promised “Satisfaction Guaranteed“. The plaintiff was not satisfied, so he cried fraud. He then used his highly trained legal brain to calculat
3、e the damages he was owed. He started with $1,500, a reasonable fine for consumer fraud. He multiplied it by 12, for the number of his complaints. Then by 1,200, for the number of days he was deprived of his trousers. And then by three, for the three owners of the dry-cleaning shop. After adding a b
4、it more for mental anguish, the total came to $67m, but he kindly reduced it to $54m. When the case was dismissed in 2007, many felt justice had prevailed. But the defendants had been put through purgatory and saddled with $100,000 in legal costs. They closed the shop and considered moving back to S
5、outh Korea. The case illustrates “ an important truth about human nature that angry people can go nuts,“ observes Philip Howard, a campaigner for legal reform. What was most shocking about the pants suit was not the idiotic claim, he says, “but that the case was allowed to go on for more than two ye
6、ars.“ Some judges think even the nuttiest plaintiffs deserve their day in court. As the judge who let a woman sue McDonalds for serving her the coffee with which she scalded herself put it: “Who am I to judge?“ The rule of law is a wonderful thing, as anyone who has visited countries ruled by the wh
7、ims of the powerful can attest. But you can have too much of a wonderful thing. And America has far too much law, argues Mr. Howard in a new book, Life without Lawyers. For nearly every problem, lawmakers and bureaucrats imagine that more detailed rules are the answer. But people need to exercise th
8、eir common sense, too. Alas, the proliferation of rules is making that harder. At a school in Florida, for example, a five-year-old girl decided to throw everyones books and pencils on the floor. Sent to the head teachers office, she continued to wreak havoc. Her teachers dared not restrain her phys
9、ically. Instead, they summoned the police, who led her away in handcuffs, howling. The teachers acted as they did for fear of being sued. A teacher at a different school was sued for $20m for putting a hand on a rowdy childs back to guide him out of the classroom. The school ended up settling for $9
10、0,000. Understandably, many schools ban teachers from touching pupils under any circumstances. In New York City, where more than 60 bureaucratic steps are required to suspend a pupil for more than five days, teachers are so frightened of violating pupils rights that they cannot keep order. The relen
11、tless piling of law upon law the federal register has 70,000 ever-changing pages-does not make for a more just society. When even the most trivial daily interactions are subject to detailed rules, individual judgment is stifled. When rule-makers seek to eliminate small risks, perverse consequences p
12、roliferate. Bureaucrats rip up climbing frames for fear that children may fall off and break a leg. So children stay indoors and get fat. The direct costs of lawsuits are only one of the drawbacks of an over-legalistic society. Too many rules squeeze the joy out of life. Doctors who inflict dozens o
13、f unnecessary tests on patients to fend off lawsuits take less pride in their work. And although the legal system is supposed to be neutral, the scales are tilted in favour of whoever is in the wrong. Because the process is so expensive and juries are so unpredictable, blameless people often settle
14、baseless claims to make them go away. The law is supposed to protect individuals from the state, but it often allows selfish individuals to harness the states power to settle private scores. Will any of this change under Barack Obama? At first glance, the odds are poor. The new President is a lawyer
15、 from a party dominated by lawyers. His vice-president publicly thanked God last year that lawyers are such a problem for corporate America. When Mr. Obama was in the Senate, he once voted for a mild curb on jurisdiction-shopping by class-action lawyers, but otherwise tended to vote against tort ref
16、orm. And Democrats in the new Congress are itching to reward the lawyers who donated so generously to their election campaigns, for example by revoking the (admittedly short) statute of limitations on pay-discrimination claims, allowing lawyers to mine decades-old grievances. 1 In the case of “pants
17、 suit“,_. （ A） the plaintiff ended up getting $54m from the shop owners （ B） the defendants reluctantly agreed to pay a fine of $100,000 （ C） both the plaintiff and the defendants suffered great agony （ D） many Americans felt relieved when the case was settled 2 According to the passage, Mr. Howard
18、might agree that_. （ A） the claim of $54m is not absurd （ B） even a mad accuser deserve his day in court （ C） the rule of law results in more detailed rules for almost every problem （ D） the explosion of laws is not conducive to judging by ones sense 3 According to the author, the proliferation of l
19、aw upon law might lead to the following EXCEPT _. （ A） the obesity among school children （ B） the abuse of law for personal gains （ C） the prevalence of more justice in society （ D） the decline of enjoyment in life 4 In the last paragraph, “the odds are poor“ mainly because_. （ A） the vice-President
20、 disagrees with the changes （ B） Obama is inconsistent in his vote toward legal reform （ C） Obama once supported the restriction on jurisdiction-shopping by class-action lawyers （ D） lawyers have strong influence on Obamas administration and the new congress 4 Not since Harry Truman seized Americas
21、steel mills in 1952 rather than allow a strike to imperil the conduct of the Korean War has Washington toyed with nationalization, or its functional equivalent, on this kind of scale. Mr. Obama may be thinking what Mr. Truman told his staff; “The President has the power to keep the country from goin
22、g to hell.“ (The Supreme Court thought differently and forced Mr. Truman to relinquish control.) The fact that there is so little protest in the air now certainly less than Mr. Truman heard reflects the desperation of the moment. But it is a strategy fraught with risks. The first, of course, is the
23、one the President-elect himself highlighted. Governments record as a corporate manager is miserable, which is why the world has been on a three-decade-long privatization kick, turning national railroads, national airlines and national defense industries into private companies. The second risk is tha
24、t if the effort fails, and the American car companies collapse or are auctioned off in pieces to foreign competitors, taxpayers may lose the billions about to be spent. And the third risk one barely discussed so far is that in trying to save the nations carmakers, the United States is violating at l
25、east the spirit of what it has preached around the world for two decades. The United States has demanded that nations treat American companies on their soil the same way they treat their home-grown industries, a concept called “national treatment.“ Yet so far, there is no talk of offering aid to Toy
26、ota, Honda, BMW or the other foreign automakers that have built factories on American soil, employed American workers and managed to make a profit doing so. “If Japan was doing this, wed be threatening billions of dollars in retaliation,“ said Jeffrey Garten, a professor at the Yale School of Manage
27、ment, who as under secretary of commerce in the 1990s was one of many government officials who tried in vain to get Detroit prepared for a world of international competition. “In fact, when they did something a lot more subtle, we threatened exactly that,“ referring to calls for import restrictions.
28、 It is hard to measure just what kind of chances Mr. Obama may be taking with this plan, in part because so many parts of it are still in motion. In the short term, Democrats are floating the idea of linking $15 billion in immediate loans to the designation of a “car czar“ who, in doling out the mon
29、ey, could require or veto big transactions or investments essentially a one-man board of directors. The White House indicates that President Bush, who has spent his entire presidency proclaiming that the governments role is to create an environment that spurs free enterprise and minimizes government
30、 regulation, would very likely sign the rescue plan. The first $15 billion and the car czar who oversees it, however, are only the beginning. “After that, were in uncharted water,“ said Malcolm S. Salter, a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School who has studied the auto industry for two decad
31、es and, until a few years ago, was an adviser to General Motors and Ford. “Think about this: Who in the federal government would have the tremendous insight needed to fix this industry?“ Depending on how the longer-term revamping of the industry proceeds, Washington could become a major shareholder
32、in the Big Three, it could provide loans, or, in one course that Mr. Obama seemed to hint at on Sunday, it could organize what amounts to a “structured bankruptcy. “ In that case, the government would convene the creditors, the unions, the shareholders and the companys management, and apportion a sh
33、are of the hit to each of them. If that “consensus building“ sounds a lot like the role of the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry in the 1970s and the 1980s, well, it is. To promote the Japanese car industry on the way up, the trade ministry nudged companies toward consolidation,
34、and even tried to mandate which parts of the market each could go into. (Soichiro Honda, the founder of the company, rebelled when bureaucrats told him he was supposed to limit himself to making motorcycles. ) By the 1980s, Congress was denouncing this as “industrial policy,“ and arguing that it put
35、 American makers at a competitive disadvantage and polluted free enterprise. Now, it is Congress doing exactly that, but this time as emergency surgery. Other nations will doubtless complain, or begin doing the same for their own companies. “Were at this moment in history, in which the Chinese are t
36、outing that their system is better than ours“ with their mix of capitalism and state control, said Mr. Garten, who has long experience in Asia. “And our response, it looks like, is to begin replicating what theyve been doing.“ 5 The relationship between the first paragraph and the second one is that
37、_. （ A） each presents one side of the picture （ B） the first exposes an event, and the second comments （ C） the second is the logical result of the first （ D） the first generalizes, and the second gives examples 6 Which of the following is NOT the risk of nationalization this time? （ A） Government,
38、more often than not, is inadequate in running business. （ B） Taxpayers money would be lost if the nationalization of the car companies fails. （ C） When saving the nations car companies, America is reducing their competitiveness. （ D） America is eating its word that each country should treat all comp
39、anies within its territory equally. 7 The phrase “car czar“ in Paragraph Nine means_. （ A） one of the current biggest carmakers in America （ B） a combination of the biggest car companies in America （ C） a brand new car company set up with $15 billion （ D） a new organization with $15 billion 8 Why do
40、es the author mention Japanese Ministry of International Trade and industry? （ A） To make a comparison between the practices of nationalization in America and Japan. （ B） To show that America is violating the spirit it has preached for long. （ C） To show that Japanese enjoys an industrial developmen
41、t because of its nationalization. （ D） To criticize America for its inadequacy in innovation. 8 It may be no surprise that the best-selling computer book so far this year is Phone: The Missing Manual, by my colleague David Pogue. But here is something that did surprise me: The most popular edition o
42、f this book isnt on paper or the PDF file that OReilly Media also sells. It is the downloadable application for the iPhone, according to Tim OReilly, the chief executive of OReilly Media. Amid all the discussion of micropayments and other ways that the creators of news and other content can be paid
43、for their work, the iTunes App store is shaping up to be a surprisingly viable way to sell all sorts of information and entertainment. There is a lot more content of the sort you would have bought in the past but now you can get free on the Web: a directory of Congressional offices, standup comedy r
44、outines, gym workout videos, Zagat restaurant guides and a growing library of books. There is also a fair bit of free content, public-domain e-books like the complete works of Shakespeare and lots of advertising-supported media. (Business Week has a report this week on the App stores role in music.)
45、 Whats most interesting is how iPhone users are willing to spend money in ways that Web users are not. Ive criticized Apple from time to time for not having a coherent approach to delivering free content with advertising. But in some ways, the development of a market for paid content is a bigger and
46、 less expected achievement. Why has this happened? Apple has created an environment that makes buying digital goods easy and common. With an infrastructure that supports one-click purchases of songs and videos, it was easy to add applications in the same paradigm. Paying for software, especially gam
47、es, is not new to Apple customers. So when you see the iPhone manual or the Frommers Paris guidebook, it feels natural to click. (And of course, your credit card is already on file with Apple. ) There are certainly other precedents. Many people who steal songs through Lime-wire nonetheless pay $1.99
48、 to use the same tunes as ringtones. And for avid book readers, Amazons Kindle has found a market willing to pay for electronic books. Apple is also starting to sell subscriptions to bundles of music, video and images from certain bands, like Depeche Mode. This is technically a product of the Music
49、store, not the App store, but it still shows how people may be willing to pay for various bundles of content online. There is a lot of work to do here. For example, I find the OReilly iPhone book a little hard to use. The text doesnt seem particularly well-formatted for the iPhone page. And I would love to see more interactive features that utilize the phone interface (including some of Davids videos). Andrew Savikas, OReillys vice president for digital initiatives, agrees with me, saying that the
