1、2008年武汉大学英语专业（基础英语）真题试卷及答案与解析 一、选词填空 0 Fill in the numbered blank with proper words. Among the 20 words given, only 15 should be used. Make sure the words come in correct forms in terms of spelling, grammar and meaning.Observe a child; any one will do. You will see that not a day passes in which he
2、does not find something or【 K1】 _to make him happy, though he may be【 K2】_tears the next moment. Then look at a man; any one of us will do. You will notice that【 K3】 _and months can pass in which every day is greeted with nothing more than【 K4】 _, and endured with【 K5】 _indifference. 【 K6】 _. most m
3、en are as miserable as【 K7】 _. though they are too bored to sin perhaps their sin is their indifference. But it is true that they so seldom smile that when they do we do not【 K8】 _their face, so【 K9】 _is it from the fixed mask we take for granted. And even then a man can not smile like a child, for
4、a child smiles with his eyes, 【 K10】 _a man smiles with his lips【 K11】 _. It is not a smile; but a grin; something to do with【 K12】 _. but little to do with happiness. And then, 【 K13】_anyone can see, there is a point(but who can define that point?)when a man becomes an old man, and then he will smi
5、les again. It would seem that happiness is something to do with【 K14】 _. and that it is the ability to【 K15】 _pleasure from the simplest thing such as a peach stone, for instance. 1 【 K1】 2 【 K2】 3 【 K3】 4 【 K4】 5 【 K5】 6 【 K6】 7 【 K7】 8 【 K8】 9 【 K9】 10 【 K10】 11 【 K11】 12 【 K12】 13 【 K13】 14 【 K14
6、】 15 【 K15】 二、翻译 16 Keep up with the Joneses. 17 Rub shoulders with the guy. 18 Turn ones nose up. 19 Keep a civil tongue in ones head. 20 Read the writing on the wall. 21 We are ripping matter from its place in the earth in such volume as to upset the balance between daylight and darkness. 22 For t
7、he mighty army of consumers, the ultimate applications of the computer revolution are still around the bend of a silicon circuit. 23 I suspect that there is quite a lot of lore stored away in the Colonels otherwise not very interesting mind. 24 They rise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a
8、 few years, and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard. 25 The war acted merely as a catalytic agent in this breakdown of the Victorian social structure. 三、阅读理解 25 The decline of traditional religion in the West has not removed the need for men and women to find a deeper meani
9、ng behind existence. Why is the world the way it is and how do we, as conscious individuals, fit into the great scheme? There is a growing feeling that science, especially what is known as the new physics, can provide answer where religion remains vague and faltering. Many people in search of a mean
10、ing to their lives are finding enlightenment in the revolutionary developments at the frontiers of science. Much to the bewilderment of professional scientists, quasi-religious cults are being formed around such unlikely topic as quantum physics, space-time relativity, black holes and the big bang.
11、How can physics, with its reputation for cold precision and objective materialism, provide such fertile soil for the mystical? The truth is that the spirit of scientific inquiry has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past 50 years. The twin revolutions of the theory of relativity, with i
12、ts space-warps and time-warps, and the quantum theory, which reveals the shadowy and unsubstantial nature of atoms, have demolished the classical image of a clockwork universe slavishly unfolding along a predetermined pathway. Replacing this sterile mechanism is a world full of shifting indeterminis
13、m and subtle interactions which have no counterpart in daily experience. To study the new physics is to embark on a journey of wonderment and paradox, to glimpse the universe in a novel perspective, in which subject and object, mind and matter, force and field, become intertwined. Even the creation
14、of the universe itself has fallen within the province of scientific inquiry. The new cosmology provides, for the first time, a consistent picture of how physical structures, including space and time, came to exist out of nothing. We are moving towards an understanding in which matter, force, order a
15、nd creation are unified into a single descriptive theme. Many of us who work in fundamental physics are deeply impressed by the harmony and order which pervades the physical world. To me the laws of the universe, from quarks to quasars, dovetail together so felicitously that the impression there is
16、something behind it all seems overwhelming. The laws of physics are so remarkably clever that they can surely only be a manifestation of genius. 26 The writer says people nowadays find that traditional religion is_. （ A） a form of reassurance （ B） inadequate to their needs （ C） responding to scienti
17、fic progress （ D） developing in strange was 27 What does the writer probably have in mind when he in paragraph 3 refers to the classical image of a clockwork universe? （ A） Darwins theory of evolution. （ B） Calvinistic interpretation of the universe. （ C） Newtons discovery about the gravity. （ D） Th
18、e First Industrial Revolution. 28 The writer of the passage is most likely_. （ A） a minister of religion （ B） a science fiction writer （ C） a research scientist （ D） a journalist 28 Once upon a time there was a prince who unwisely confided to the media that while tending his beloved garden, he often
19、 talked to his plants. He also warned his future subjects about losing touch with their natural surroundings and their rich cultural heritage. But the people scoffed and said it was the fuddy-duddy Prince who was out of touch. And as for talking to his plants well, they shook their heads and remembe
20、red the madness of the Princes forebear, King George III, who famously struck up a conversation with a tree that he had mistaken for the King of Prussia. These days Britains Prince of Wales is still considered a tad eccentric: after all, who in his right mind would have lost the love of the fairy-ta
21、le Princess Diana? But increasingly, Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor(who is not only Prince of Wales but also, inter alia, Duke of Cornwall, Lord of the Isle and Great Steward of Scotland)is winning applause for his not-so-crazy campaign to combat what he calls “the wanton destruction that has
22、taken place. in the name of progress.“ For 30 years the Prince has been in the forefront of efforts to promote kinder, gentler farming methods; protect Britains countryside from urban sprawl; improve city landscapes; and safeguard the nations architectural heritage. And whereas his was once a lonely
23、 if plumy voice crying in the wilderness, the Prince has seen many of his once maverick opinions become mainstream. Charles is not the first royal concerned about nature. Mad King George dabbled in botany when he wasnt losing his mind or the American colonies, and Charless father, the Duke of Edinbu
24、rgh, has long supported wildlife causes. But it is Charles who has become the crusader, with a vision of Britain that may border on the romantic but is in synch with Britons alarmed by what is happening to their green and pleasant land. He has the energy and dedication to get things done. “My proble
25、m,“ he has said, “is that I become carried away by enthusiasm to try to improve things, and also feel very strongly that his only way to progress is by setting examples and then hoping others will eventually follow.“ An example people are following is organic farming, which Charles has adopted whole
26、heartedly on his own farmlands in the Duchy of Cornwall and surrounding his country home at Highgrove in western England. Charles once noted that when he decided to go organic, which means forswearing artificial fertilizers and pesticides, the experts were very polite, “but what they were saying abo
27、ut this latest demonstration of insanity once they were out of earshot can only be surmised.“ Today the experts have been confounded. The Duchys Home Farm near Highgrove is 100% organic and organic produce is in high demand, fetching premium prices in shops and supermarkets. “Seeing is believing“ is
28、 one of Charles favorite saying, no doubt repeated when the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture recently paid Highgrove a visit. And its a safe bet that the American visitor received an earful on Charles other farming concern: genetically modified crops. Once again the Prince has shown himself to be ahead
29、 of the curve. Back in December 1995 he pronounced himself “profoundly apprehensive“ about the brave new world of genetically modified organisms and complained of the “confidence bordering on arrogance“ with which they are promoted. The Prince practices what he preaches, and a sign by the lane leadi
30、ng up to his Home Farm announces that “you are entering a gmofree zone.“ Charles philosophy is simply expressed. “We should,“ he says, be adopting a “gentler, more considered approach, seeking always to work with the grain of nature in making better, more sustainable use of what we have.“ 29 Accordi
31、ng to the last sentence in the second paragraph, Charless view on the saving of nature was once regarded as_. （ A） sentimental （ B） idealistic （ C） independent （ D） peculiar 30 “in synch with“ in the third paragraph may probably be closet in meaning to_. （ A） correspondingly （ B） synonymously （ C） s
32、imilarly （ D） simultaneously 31 When he first decided to go organic, Charles said that the experts_. （ A） politely showed their worries （ B） thought that his view was mand （ C） were uncertain about his decision （ D） resisted on their own opinions 32 In the writers opinion, the most important differe
33、nce between Charles and his forbear in their concern about nature is that the former is_. （ A） action-driven （ B） less eccentric （ C） more romantic （ D） more energetic 32 Everyone must have had at least one personal experience with a computer error by this time. Bank balances are suddenly reported t
34、o have jumped from $379 into the millions, appeals for charitable contributions are mailed over and over to people with crazy-sounding names at your address, department stores send the wrong bills, utility companies write that theyre turning everything off, that sort of thing. If you manage to get i
35、t touch with someone and complain, you then get instantaneously typed, guilty letters from the same computer, saying, “Our computer was in error, and adjustment is being made in your account.“ I wonder whether this can be true. After all, the whole point of computer is that they represent an extensi
36、on of the human brain, vastly improved upon but nonetheless human, superhuman maybe. A good computer can think clearly and quickly enough to beat you at chess, and some of them have even been programmed to write obscure verse. They can do anything we can do, and more besides. It is not yet known whe
37、ther a computer has its own consciousness, and it would be hard to find out about this. When you walk into one of those great halls now built for the huge machines, and stand listening, it is easy to imagine that the faint, distant noises are the sound of thinking, and the turning of the spools give
38、s them the look of wild creatures rolling their eyes in the effort to concentrate, choking with information. But real thinking, and dreaming, are other matters. On the other hand, the evidences of something like an unconscious, equivalent to ours, are all around, in every mail. As extensions of the
39、human brain, they have been constructed with the same property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities. Mistakes are at very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never ge
40、t anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as frequently as the right ones. We get along in life this way. We built to make mistakes, coded for error. A good laboratory, like a good bank or a corporation or g
41、overnment, has to run like a computer. Almost everything is done flawlessly, by the book, and all the numbers add up to the predicted sums. The days go by. And then, if it is a lucky day, and a lucky laboratory, somebody makes a mistake: the wrong buffer, something in one of the blanks, a decimal mi
42、splaced in reading counts, the warm room off by a degree and a half, a mouse out of his box, or just misreading of the days protocol. Whatever, when the results come in, something is obviously screwed up, and then the action can begin.The misreading is not the important error; it opens the way. The
43、next step is the crucial one. If the investigator can bring himself to say, “But even so, look at that!“ then the new finding, whatever it is, is ready for snatching. What is needed, for progress to be made, is the base on the error. Whenever new kinds of thinking are about to be accomplished, or ne
44、w varieties of music, there has to be an argument beforehand. With two sides debating in the same mind, haranguing, there is an amiable understanding that One is right and the other wrong. Sooner or later the thing is settled, but there can be no action at all if there are not the two sides, and the
45、 argument. The hope is in the faculty of wrongness, the tendency toward error. The capacity to leap across mountains of information to land lightly on the wrong side represents the highest of human endowments. It may be that this is a uniquely human gift, perhaps even stipulated in our genetic instr
46、uctions. Other creatures do not seem to have DNA sequences for making mistakes as a routine part of daily living, certainly not for programmed error as a guide for action. We are at our human finest, dancing with our minds, when there are more choices than two. Sometimes there are ten, even twenty d
47、ifferent ways to go, all but one bound to be wrong, and the richness of selection in such situations can lift us onto totally new ground. This process is called exploration and is based on human fallibility. If we had only a single center in our brain, capable of responding only when a correct decis
48、ion was to be made, instead of the jumble of different, credulous, easily conned clusters of neurons that provide for being flung off into blind alleys, up trees, down dead ends, out into blue sky, along wrong turnings, around bends, we could only stay the way we are today, struck fast. The lower an
49、imals do not have this splendid freedom. They are limited, most of them, to absolute infallibility. Cats, for all their good side, never make mistake charming minor mistakes, but they get this way by trying to mimic their masters. Fish are flawless in everything they do. Individual cells in a tissue are mindless machines, perfect in their performance, as absolutely inhuman as bees. We should have this in mind as we become dependent on more complex computers for
