1、专业英语八级（阅读）模拟试卷 59及答案与解析 0 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, for as its manufacturers are quick to claim the company devotes hundreds of man-hours to testing and retesting ea
2、ch 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 entrenched within all of today
3、s 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 rowing machine for home exe
4、rcise. 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 building a nuclear reactor. P
5、erseverance 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 in the real world. Take video
6、cassette recorders: VCRs are like snowflakes no two are quite alike. While all are intended to do more or less the same things play, record now, record later the actual designs are about as consistent and predictable as a roulette wheel. If you lose or misplace the manual, you end up with little mor
7、e 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 properly and intuitively select the optimal setting! Only s
8、mall 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 the wheel of your n
9、eighbors 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 which lever to pus
10、h or pull to slide the seat forward without simultaneously upsetting the angle of the seat back or exploding the pneumatically pressured back-support? As with most of todays products, the only thing we really know about car seats is that, given the correct incentive, they will move. Beyond that, you
11、 and your ergonomically inspired intuition are completely on your own. 1 According to the passage, the authors attitude to ergonomics is_. （ A） apprehensive （ B） bemused （ C） affectionate （ D） fervent 2 It can be inferred from the third paragraph that_. （ A） ergonomics is nothing but an illusion （ B
12、） the philosophy of ergonomics is not practiced faithfully （ C） the rowing machine is carefully designed into a desirable shape （ D） the writer likes assembling parts of a rowing machine 3 What disturbs the writer about video-recorders? （ A） They are easily damaged. （ B） It is difficult to operate t
13、hem. （ C） They vary for no obvious reasons. （ D） They are complex. 4 In the writers opinion, what problem affects microwave ovens? （ A） Children may misuse them. （ B） They are still rather unpopular. （ C） Food may not be cooked by alternative methods. （ D） Most users do not understand how they work.
14、 5 The controls of a modern car are criticized for being_. （ A） difficult to identify （ B） less reliable （ C） too sophisticated （ D） badly positioned 5 Another milestone on the journey towards digital cash was passed on November 13th. That date marked the emergence from beta-testing in America of V.
15、 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 enter a username and a password. The service is provided by Visa, a giant card-payment network whose headquarters is
16、 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 actually boosting usage of plastic. Smartphone apps often require users to enter their card details to pay for serv
17、ices. 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, who oversees emerging payments technologies at MasterCard, reckons such developments have added 1. 2m new business
18、es 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 investing heavily in new technology and have several built-in advantages. Visa is betting its member banks can hel
19、p 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 institutions are supporting the launch of V. me, which accepts non-Visa cards in its wallet, too. MasterCard and oth
20、ers 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, which can be used to buy things in stores and other places. This is where firms such as Square, which has develope
21、d 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 leaves only a few wallet providers standing. Thanks to their trusted brands, big budgets and payments savvy, one
22、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 recently struck a deal with Starbucks to make its mobile-payment service available in 7,000 of the coffee chains
23、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 is in iZettle, a Square-like firm based in Sweden. So far few have tried to create new payments systems from scratch
24、. 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-fraud systems and so forth. Fears about the security of new-fangled payment systems also play into the hands of est
25、ablished 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, including stored-value cards and direct bank-account-to-bank-account payments. Big retailers in America have clubbed to
26、gether 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 Dorsey, the boss of Square and a co-founder of Twitter, agrees that digital wallets will make the trade-offs between
27、 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, very few innovations since. “ Some in the payments world might quibble with that but one thing they can all agree o
28、n 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, more of this activity will move online. The biggest prize of all lies in emerging markets, where a lack of fin
29、ancial 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 payment services for the unbanked and underbanked in emerging markets; MasterCard has set up a joint venture cal
30、led Wanda with Telef6nica, 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 rivals swipe their business. 6 Which of the following is NOT a feature of “digital wallet“?(Paragraph One) （ A） It
31、 has already emerged in the developed countries by V. me. （ B） Although it is virtual, it has the same functions with payment cards. （ C） It only requires the users to enter a username and a password. （ D） Its service is only provided by Visa, a card-payment network. 7 What can be inferred from the
32、prediction of Jennifer Schulz? （ A） The future market will be a mixture of digital wallet firms and card companies. （ B） Mobile wallets will dominate the payments world after market shocks. （ C） Though some cards companies survive, they will be replaced at last. （ D） Mobile wallet firms finally win
33、only because they have more convenient functions. 8 Which of the following does NOT belong to the innovative firms? （ A） Square. （ B） Visa. （ C） iZettle. （ D） Monitise. 9 What conclusion can be drawn from the description of ISIS? （ A） The benefit that the card firms got from the failure of ISIS was
34、temporary. （ B） The expensive cost of new payments systems made ISIS go bankrupt. （ C） As a consortium, it is hard to cooperate with regulators and other aspects. （ D） The failure of ISIS speeds the replacement of all payment cards. 10 Which of the following best explains the competition between dig
35、ital wallet and payment card? （ A） Most commerce still involves cash and cheques, so payment cards are hard to remove. （ B） Phone-based payments systems such as M-pesa will spread throughout the world. （ C） The joint ventures combined the innovative firms with card firms will occupy the market all o
36、ver the world. （ D） Though mobile payment will cover all over the world, the card firms are not easy to give up the market. 10 Social circumstances in Early Modern England mostly served to repress womens voices. Patriarchal culture and institutions constructed them as chaste, silent, obedient, and s
37、ubordinate. At the beginning of the 17th century, the ideology 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
38、 imaged in the absolute monarch of the state and in the husband 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 repress
39、ive or overtly misogynist sermons, tracts, and plays, detailing 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(1558 1603)the culture was dom
40、inated by a powerful Queen, who provided an impressive female 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
41、 original texts in some numbers. For one thing, some counterweight to patriarchy was provided by female communities mothers 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.
42、 For another, most of these women had a reasonably good 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 cha
43、racters in literature and especially on the stage no 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 responsib
44、ility to follow his or her individual conscience. There 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
45、neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, 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
46、 is also the gap or slippage between ideology and common 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 ape
47、x during the English Civil War and Interregnum(1640 1660), as the execution of the King and the attendant disruption of social hierarchies led many women to seize new roles as preachers, as prophetesses, as deputies for exiled royalist husbands, as writers of religious and political tracts. 11 All o
48、f the following are characteristics of Early Modern England EXCEPT that_. （ A） womens merits were extolled in publications （ B） womens opinions were not asked （ C） women were subject to their husbands （ D） women were often referred to physical and mental defects 12 Elizabethan women writers began to
49、 write novel articles NOT because_. （ A） there was struggle against womens subordination （ B） they were better educated （ C） they were materially independent （ D） they were inspired by heroines in literary works 13 What did the religion do for the women? （ A） It did nothing. （ B） It appealed to the God. （ C） It supported women unconditionally. （ D） It asked women to be obedient except some texts. 14 It can be inferred from the last paragraph that in the 17th century, women_. （ A） had a hard time in striving for their eq
