1、考研英语二（阅读）模拟试卷 23 及答案与解析Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)0 Ten years ago, I got a call from a reporter at a big-city daily paper. “Im writing a story on communication skills,“ she said. “Are communication skills
2、 important in business?“ I assumed I had misheard her question, and after she repeated it for me I still didnt know how to respond. Are communication skills important? “Er, they are very important,“ I managed to squeak out. My brain said: Are breathing skills important? The reporter explained: “The
3、people Ive spoken with so far have been mixed on the subject.“Ten years ago, we were trapped even deeper in the Age of Left-Brain Business. We were way into Six Sigma and ISO 9000 and spreadsheets and regulations and policies. We thought we could line-item budget our way to greatness, create shareho
4、lder value by tracking our employees every keystroke, and employ a dress-code policy to win in the marketplace. And lots of us believed that order and uniformity could save the worldthe business world, anyway. We had to go pretty far down that path before we caught onto the limits of process, techno
5、logy, and linear thinking.The right brain is coming back into style in the business world, and not a moment too soon. Smart salespeople say, “Weve got compelling story that accords with our customers values and history.“ Strong leaders say, “Were creating a context for our team members that weaves t
6、heir passions into ours.“ Consultants get big money for providing perspective on the “user experience.“ Thats not a linear, analytical process. These days, were talking about emotion again, and context and meaning. Thank goodness we are. I was about to choke on the death-by-spreadsheet diet, and I w
7、asnt the only one.Job seekers get great jobs today by avoiding the Black Hole of Keyword-Searching and going straight to a human decision-maker to share a story that links the job seekers powerful history with the decisionmakers present pain. Leadership teams spend their off-site weekends talking ab
8、out not the next 400 strategic initiatives on somebodys list but rather a story-type road map to keep the troops philosophically on board while they take the next hill.The right brains return is coming just at the right time, when employees are sick of not only their jobs but also the cynical, hypoc
9、ritical, and obsessively left-brain behaviors they see all around them in corporate life. Smart employers will grab this opportunity to lose the three-inch-thick policy manuals and enforcement mentality. Theres no leverage in those, no spark, and no aha. Weve seen where the left-brain mentality has
10、gotten us: to the land of spreadsheets, with PowerPoints and burned-out shells where our workforce used to be.1 The author believes that communication skills are _.（A）doubtlessly significant（B） to some extent important（C） inferior to breathing skills（D）a concern of the left-brain age2 The Age of Lef
11、t-Brain Business valued_.（A）budget and shareholders value（B） order and diversity（C） context and meaning（D）analytical process3 By saying “not a moment too soon“ (Para. 3), the author indicates the return of the right brain is _.（A）very timely（B） undesirable（C） too late（D）unexpected4 Under the influen
12、ce of right-brain thinking, the leadership strives to_.（A）inspire the passions of their team members（B） make more practical strategic initiatives（C） create a more favorable working environment（D）adopt an enforcement mentality for management5 The authors attitude toward the return of the right brain
13、is _.（A）skeptical（B） welcoming（C） critical（D）indifferent5 To function well in the world, people need a good sense of where their body is in space and how its postured. This “position sense“ helps us coordinate high-fives, boot a soccer ball or pick up the remote. But that doesnt seem to mean that ou
14、r brains have an accurate sense of our bodys precise proportions. A new study found that people tend to have rather inaccurate mental models of their own hands.When asked to estimate where the fingertips and finger joints of their hidden hands were, study volunteers were way off. But they were all i
15、ncorrect in the same directions, guessing that their hands were both shorter and wider than they actually were. The findings come from a study led by Matthew Longo of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. “Our results show dramatic distortions of hand shape, which wer
16、e highly consistent across participants,“ Longo said in a prepared statement.He and his co-author, Patrick Haggard, had subjects place their left hand on a platform (using different orientations in different groups), which was then covered with a board to obscure the hand. The subjects were asked to
17、 use their free right hand point with a stick to the location of each finger joint and fingertip of their left hand. The process was filmed and compared to before and after pictures of the hand. On average, the volunteers judged their hands to be 27.9 percent shorter and 69 percent wider than they w
18、ere measure to be. Underestimation of each finger length, from the thumb to the little finger, increased by about 7 percent in each finger, rendering the little finger quite a bit littler than it really was.This trend “mirrors similar grades of decreasing sensory acuteness,“ the authors pointed out,
19、 and the results seem to back up models of the human body constructed from the amount of sensory cortex dedicated to various body parts. In these models the hands and face are disproportionately large in comparison to most of the body. But Longo and Haggard are still not sure why the brain has such
20、a distorted perception of our hand proportions.Longo speculated that these disproportions might occur in other parts of the body as well. “These findings may well be relevant to psychiatric conditions involving body image such as anorexia nervosa, as there may be a general bias toward perceiving the
21、 body to be wider than it is,“ Longo said. “Our healthy participants had a basically accurate visual image of their own body, but the brains model of the hand underling position sense was highly distorted. This distorted perception could come to dominate in some people, leading to distortions of bod
22、y image.“6 It can be learned from the first paragraph that _.（A）position sense helps people coordinate high and far（B） brains have accurate sense of our hands proportions（C） people have imprecise sense of their hand shape（D）we do not need good sense of our bodies proportions7 In Longos study, volunt
23、eers estimations of hand shape _.（A）have different tendency（B） are basically correct（C） are longer and wider（D）have obvious inaccuracy8 According to Paragraph 3, which of the following is true of Longos study?（A）Underestimations of thumbs are less than those of little fingers.（B） Participants point
24、the location of left hands with right hands.（C） Subjects of different groups place hands in the same direction.（D）Participants estimate the length of the little finger accurately.9 According to Longo and Haggard, the reason for inaccurate sense of hand shape is _.（A）sensory cortex（B） sensory acutene
25、ss（C） body models（D）still unknown10 Longo would most likely agree that_.（A）healthy people have a basic idea of their body（B） some people have imprecise sense of body proportions（C） distorted senses of hand are dominant among all people（D）people only have inaccurate sense of hand proportions10 While
26、the mission of public schools has expanded beyond education to include social support and extra-curricular activities, the academic schedule has changed little in more than a century.Reclaiming the school day for academic instruction and escaping the time-bound traditions of education are vital step
27、s in the school-reform process, says a report released today by the National Education Commission on Time and Learning.The commissions report, titled “Prisoners of Time,“ calls the fixed clock and calendar in American education a “fundamental design flaw“ in desperate need of change. “Time should se
28、rve children instead of children serving time,“ the report says.The two-year commission found that holding American students to “world-class standards,“ will require more time for classroom instruction. “We have been asking the impossible of our studentsthat they learn as much as their foreign peers
29、 while spending half as much as in core academic subjects,“ it states.The Commission compared the relationships between time and learning in Japan, Germany, and the United States and found that American students receive less than half the basic academic instruction that Japanese and German students
30、are provided. On average, American students can earn a high school diploma if they spend only 41 percent of their school time on academics, says the report.American students spend an average of three hours a day on “core“ academics such as English, math, science, and history, the commission found. T
31、heir report recommends offering a minimum of 5.5 hours of academics every school day.The nine-member commission also recommends lengthening the school day beyond the traditional six hours.“If schools want to continue offering important activities outside the academic core, as well as serving as a hu
32、b for family and community services, they should keep school doors open longer each day and each year,“ says John Hodge Jones, director of schools in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and chairman of the commissionThe typical school year in American public schools is 180 days. Eleven states allow school years of
33、 175 days or less, and only one state requires more than 180 day.“For over a decade, education reform advocates have been working feverishly to improve our schools,“ says Milton Goldberg, executive director of the commission. “But. if reform is to truly take hold, the six-hour, 180-day school year s
34、hould be put in museumsan exhibit from our education past.“11 Compared with the academic courses more than a hundred years ago, the academic courses now _.（A）include some extra-curricular activities（B） focus more on education of social support（C） demand students more contribution of time（D）remain mo
35、re or less what they used to be12 The researches by the commission are most concerned about _.（A）the time attributed to academic learning（B） the components of school education（C） the changes in education in the recent century（D）the fashion of education management13 American students differ from thos
36、e in Japan, Germany in that_.（A）they stay at school for a shorter time every day（B） they learn as much as their counterparts abroad（C） they devote less time to academic learning（D）they earn a high school diploma more easily14 It can be learned that schools in the United States_.（A）refuse to provide
37、important outside-academic activities（B） serve social units such as family and community（C） arrange five-hour teaching and learning every day（D）have competition with schools of other countries15 According to the last paragraph, Milton Goldberg would most probably agree that _.（A）what the education r
38、eform advocates have done is very bad（B） the time of school day and school year should be extended（C） visiting museums can improve students academic learning ability（D）social support and extra-curricular activities should be cancelled15 “Watch out, itll hurt for a second.“ Not only children but also
39、 many adults get uneasy when they hear those words from their doctors. And, as soon as the needle touches their skin the piercing pain can be felt very clearly. “After such an experience it is enough to simply imagine a needle at the next vaccination appointment to activate our pain memory,“ knows P
40、rof. Dr. Thomas Weiss from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.As the scientist and his team from the Deptartment of Biological and Clinical Psychology could show in a study for the first time it is not only the painful memories and associations that set our pain memory on the alert. “Even verbal
41、 stimuli lead to reactions in certain areas of the brain,“ claims Prof. Weiss. As soon as we hear words like “tormenting,“ “tiring“ or “plaguing,“ exactly those areas in the brain are being activated which process the corresponding pain. The psychologists from Jena University were able to examine th
42、is phenomenon using functional magnetic resonance tomography (fMRT). In their study they investigated how healthy subjects process words associated with experiencing pain. In order to prevent reactions based on a plain negative affect the subjects were also confronted with negatively connotated word
43、s like “tenifying,“ “horrible“ or “disgusting“ besides the proper pain words.“Subject performed two tasks,“ explains Maria Richter in Weisss team. “In a first task, subjects were supposed to imagine situations which correspond to the words,“ the Jena psychologist says. In a second task, subjects wer
44、e also reading the words but they were distracted by a puzzle. “In both cases we could observe a clear activation of the pain matrix in the brain by pain-associated words,“ Maria Richter states. Other negatively connotated words, however, do not activate those regions. Neither for neutrally nor for
45、positively connotated words comparable activity patterns could be examined.“These findings show that words alone are capable of activating our pain matrix,“ underlines Prof. Weiss. To save painful experiences is of biological advantage since it allows us to avoid painful situations in the future whi
46、ch might be dangerous for our lives. “However, our results suggest as well that verbal stimuli have a more important meaning than we have thought so far.“ For the Jena psychologist the question remains open which role the verbal confrontation with pain plays for chronic pain patients. “They tend to
47、speak a lot about their experiencing of pain to their physician,“ Maria Richter says. It is possible that those conversations intensify the activity of the pain matrix in the brain and therefore intensify the pain experience.And so far it wont do any harm not to talk too much about pain. Maybe then
48、the next injection will be only half as painful.16 It can be inferred from the first paragraph that _.（A）both children and adults find the warning depressing（B） people can feel real pain is felt when hearing pain words（C） a simple setting is enough to activate the pain memory（D）association can set y
49、our pain memory on the alert17 Prof. Thomas Weiss holds that _.（A）painful association will trigger more reactions in the brain（B） words are also effective in stimulating pain memories（C） pain words and negatively implied words have the same effect（D）fMRT is a widely-used tool in the scientific research of psychology18 The study Jena psychologists conduct is to find out _.（A）whether subjects will react in the same way in two tasks（B） how healthy people react to words associated with p
