1、考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 134 及答案与解析Part B (10 points) 0 Some Tips to Avoid a Credit Card Late FeeIf youre even a minute late with a payment, your credit card company can hit you hard in the walletas much as $39 each time, according to a July 2008 survey. However, some simple steps can help keep your exposure to
2、 these extra costs to a minimum.【R1】 _A few card issuers, including Chase and HSBC, charge extra fees for online payments that you need to post the same day, so even if you pay electronically, do it three to four days ahead so your credit card company will process the payment by the due date. If you
3、re snail-mailing checks, allow even more timeabout 10 daysto allow for mail snafus. And unless youre desperate, forget about phone paymentsa number of banks charge a fee for them, no matter when you call.【R2】 _A few card issuers allow you to choose a due date to coincide with your payday schedule, s
4、o a cash shortfall wont make you late. You can even choose a due date thats easier to remember. Your birthdays on Feb. 17? Make your credit card payment due on the 17th of each month.【R3】 _Some banks offer an autopay program that links your credit card to a checking or savings account; you decide wh
5、ether to automatically pay the new balance, the current minimum payment or a fixed dollar amount. If you bank online, you can also arrange a do-it-yourself autopay. Just estimate your usual monthly minimum, schedule a monthly payment date and have the amount deducted from your account automatically.
6、 Just make sure you have enough in checking to cover it or the overdraft fees will eat up your savings on late fees.【R4】 _Some credit card companies, including Chase, will alert you of upcoming due dates by e-mail or voice mail. You can also schedule a monthly e-mail reminder through a Web site, suc
7、h as MemoToMe. com or RemembertheM.【R5】 _Even conscientious consumers will probably get hit with a late fee at some point. However, if you have a good record of on-time payments, call and politely ask a customer service representative to waive the charge. No dice? Ask to talk to a supervisor, or try
8、 again on a different day. You might even threaten to close your accounts with the companya tactic that worked for Jeff Roth of Molalla, Ore., after his wifes Chase credit card was hit with a $39 late fee when the Fourth of July delayed processing of a payment. “My advice to those who feel they have
9、 unjustly been assessed late fees is to be assertive about getting the charges removed,“ says Roth, who posted about his plight at GetRichSlowly.org. “It wont always work, but most credit card companies will at least give you one freebie.“ Next time, though, you may be on your own.Word count: 472A.
10、You can schedule an automatic payment.B. Trying to get out of the late fee sometimes.C. Youd better plan to pay ahead.D. Change your payment due date in order to avoid late fee.E. Phone payment is another good way to pay.F. You could also set for yourself a reminder to pay in time.G. Consider switch
11、ing cards for a no-fee one.1 【R1 】2 【R2 】3 【R3 】4 【R4 】5 【R5 】5 A. The failings of a rote-memorization system are well-known: lack of social and practical skills, absence of self-discipline and imagination, loss of curiosity and passion for learning. Chinese students burn themselves out testing into
12、 university, where many of them spend their time playing World of Warcraft.B. So the first step of education reform is trying to teach students who are good test takers to be good essay writers. To write well in English, students need to understand concepts such as thesis and argument, structure and
13、 support, coherence and flow, tone and audience, diction and syntax concepts that are barely introduced in Chinese schools. One way well know were succeeding in changing Chinas schools is when those PISA scores come down.C. Its ironic that just as the world is appreciating the strengths of Chinas ed
14、ucation system, Chinese are waking up to its weaknesses. These are two sides of the same coin: Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests. For that reason, they fail to prepare them for higher education and the knowledge economy. On Tuesday, Shanghais 15-year-ol
15、ds topped the global league tables in reading, science and math in the Program for International Student Assessment, a test run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This comes as no surprise to anyone working in Chinese schools.D. With its demanding parents, ambitious studen
16、ts, and test-obsessed culture, Chinas K-9 schooling is probably the most rigorous in the world. And Shanghai, an open and cosmopolitan city that is boundlessly ambitious and fiercely competitive, has always been Chinas K-9 education leader.E. Both multinationals and Chinese companies have the same c
17、omplaints about Chinas university graduates: They cannot work independently, lack the social skills to work in a team and are too arrogant to learn new skills. In 2005, the consulting firm McKinsey released a report saying that Chinas current education system will hinder its economic development.F.
18、So China has no problem producing mid-level accountants, computer programmers and technocrats. But what about the entrepreneurs and innovators needed to run a 21st century global economy? Chinas most promising students still must go abroad to develop their managerial drive and creativity, and there
19、they have to unlearn the test-centric approach to knowledge that was drilled into them.G. But dont the PISA results at least show that Chinas K-9 education is the best in the world, and that standardized testing, as U.S. President Barack Obama seems to believe, is necessary to improve American schoo
20、ls? Not really. According to research on education, using tests to structure schooling is a mistake. Students lose their innate inquisitiveness and imagination, and become insecure and amoral in the pursuit of high scores.【R1】 _ 【R2 】_ 【R3】_ 【R4】_ E 【R5】_6 【R1 】7 【R2 】8 【R3 】9 【R4 】10 【R5 】10 A. But
21、 India has run into a surprising hitch on its way to superpower status: its inexhaustible supply of workers is becoming exhausted. Although India has one of the youngest workforces on the planet, the head of Infosys said recently that there was an “acute shortage of skilled manpower,“ and a study by
22、 Hewitt Associates projects that this year salaries for skilled workers will rise fourteen and a half per cent, a sure sign that demand for skilled labor is outstripping supply.B. There was a time when many economists believed that post-secondary education didnt have much impact on economic growth.
23、The really important educational gains, they thought, came from giving rudimentary skills to large numbers of people(which India still needs to doat least thirty per cent of the population is illiterate). They believed that, in economic terms, society got a very low rate of return on its investment
24、in higher education.C. The economic transformation of India is one of the great business stories of our time. As stifling government regulations have been lifted, entrepreneurship has flourished, India has become a high-powered center for information technology and pharmaceuticals and it is frequent
25、ly heralded as “the next economic superpower.“D. India does have more than three hundred universities, but a recent survey by the London Times Higher Education Supplement put only two of them among the top hundred in the world. Many Indian graduates therefore enter the workforce with a low level of
26、skills. A current study led by Vivek Wadhwa, of Duke University, has found that if you define “engineer“ by U.S. standards, India produces just a hundred and seventy thousand engineers a year, not four hundred thousand. Infosys says that, of 1.3 million applicants for jobs last year, it found only t
27、wo per cent acceptable.E. But lately that assumption has been overturned, and the social rate of return on investment in university education in India has been calculated at an impressive nine or ten per cent. In other words, every dollar India puts into higher education creates value for the econom
28、y as a whole. Yet India spends roughly three and a half per cent of its G.D.P. on education, significantly below the percentage spent by the U.S., even though Indias population is much younger, and spending on education should be proportionately higher.F. The irony of the current situation is that I
29、ndia was once considered to be overeducated. In the seventies, as its economy languished, it seemed to be a country with too many engineers and Ph.D.s working as clerks in government offices. Once the Indian business climate loosened up, though, that meant companies could tap a backlog of hundreds o
30、f thousands of eager, skilled workers at their disposal. Unfortunately, the educational system did not adjust to the new realities. Between 1985 and 1997, the number of teachers in India actually fell, while the percentage of students enrolled in high school or college rose more slowly than it did i
31、n the rest of the world. G. How is this possible in a country that every year produces two and a half million college graduates and four hundred thousand engineers? Start with the fact that just ten per cent of Indians get any kind of post-secondary education, compared with some fifty per cent who d
32、o in the U.S. Moreover, of that ten per cent, the vast majority go to one of Indias seventeen thousand colleges, many of which are closer to community colleges than to four-year institutions.C 【 R1】 _ 【R2 】_ 【R3 】_ 【R4】_ 【R5】_ F11 【R1 】12 【R2 】13 【R3 】14 【R4 】15 【R5 】15 A. Mitigation addresses, if y
33、ou will, the front end of the global-warming problem; by cutting emissions, it aims to slow rising temperatures. Adaptation is the back end of the problemtrying to live with the changes in the environment and the economy that global warming has and will continue to generate.B. When climate scientist
34、s use the word adaptation, they are referring to actions intended to safeguard a person, community, business or country against the effects of climate change. Its complement is mitigationany measure that will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, such as drawing power from a wind turbine rather than a co
35、al-fired power plant.C. The need for adaptation is rooted in the unhappy fact that we cant turn global warming off, at least not anytime soon. The momentum of the climate systemcarbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for decades, while oceans store heat for centuriesensures that no matter how much
36、humanity cuts greenhouse-gas emissions, our previous emissions will keep warming the planet for decades.D. For years, adaptation was overlooked or disparaged in policy circles; many complained that even discussing it was a sellout that gave governments and others an excuse not to act.E. Even if we w
37、ere to magically stop all emissions today, “temperatures will keep rising, and all the impacts will keep changing for about 25 years,“ says Sir David King, chief science adviser to the British government. So while we strive to green our economies, we must also mount a major new effort to strengthen
38、our resilience against the impact on the climate that our past emissions have set in motion.F. Today adaptation has become an accepted part of the discussion. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), which will be released April 6 in Brussels, makes it official. “A
39、daptation to climate change is now inevitable,“ says Roger Jones of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, a co-author of the IPCC report. “The only question is whether it will be by plan or by chaos.“ Jones, like the other contributors to the IPCC report whom
40、 I interviewed, speaks here only for himself.G. For years, global warming was discussed in the hypotheticala threat in the distant future. Now it is increasingly regarded as a clear, observable fact. This sudden shift means that all of us must start thinking about the many ways global warming will a
41、ffect us, our loved ones, our property and our economic prospects. We must thinkand then adapt accordingly.G 【R1】_【R2 】 _【R3】_【 R4】_ 【R5】_F16 【R1 】17 【R2 】18 【R3 】19 【R4 】20 【R5 】考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 134 答案与解析Part B (10 points) 【知识模块】 阅读1 【正确答案】 C【试题解析】 本段文字中提到如果要求当天付款到账的话，一些银行会加收费用(charge extrafees)。即使选择电子
42、付款(pay electronically)也要提前三四天，以便于你的信用卡银行在到期之前处理好你的还款。用普通邮递(snail-mailing checks)就需要提前 10 天左右。最后本段还提到如果你不是特别紧急，不要使用电话付款(forget about phone payments)，因为很多银行都会为此再收费的。所以综合来看，本段内容主要讲的是要提前付款，避免因为中间传送或银行业务处理带来的时间拖延使得付款不能及时到达。故选 C。【知识模块】 阅读2 【正确答案】 D【试题解析】 本段内容是讲有一些发卡银行允许持卡者自由选择还款日期，这样一来持卡者可以在工资日还款(coincide
43、 with your payday schedule)，不会因资金短缺导致还款推迟(a cash shortfallwont make you late)。还可以选择一个容易记的日期(choose a due date thats easier to remember)比如自己的生日作为还款日期。所以本段主要内容是说可以改变还款日期以避免还款推迟，故答案选 D。【知识模块】 阅读3 【正确答案】 A【试题解析】 本段刚开始就提到一些银行提供自动付款服务(autopay program)，将持卡者的其他账户和信用卡绑定；或者如果开通了网上银行的话，还可以使用“自定义自动付款”功能(arrange
44、a do it-yourself autopay)，只要账户里的资金足以支付信用卡的支出，这些都可以使持卡者免受因延迟付款而不得不付的 late fee。所以本段内容是建议使用 autopay 服务，故答案选 A。【知识模块】 阅读4 【正确答案】 F【试题解析】 本段内容比较少，意思也很清楚，文中用到了 reminder(提醒)以及alert(使警觉)这样的词，意思都是在说持卡者要提醒自己还款日期以免延误而被罚款。意思很明了，所以答案选 F。【知识模块】 阅读5 【正确答案】 B【试题解析】 本段内容比较有意思，主要讲信用度一直比较高的持卡人(you have a good record o
45、fontime payments)，偶尔没有及时还款的话可以尝试“赖账”，同银行工作人员协商去掉这部分费用(waive the charge)，一次不行可以改天再试，甚至可以以注销在该银行的账户为威胁(You mighteven threaten to close your accounts with the company)。虽然不会每次都奏效，但可以一试，尤其是对那些被错误地认为延迟还款的人，更要非常坚定地要求抹去这笔费用。所以本段内容就是在讲可以尝试不付这笔费用。故本题选 B。【知识模块】 阅读【知识模块】 阅读6 【正确答案】 C【试题解析】 快速浏览所有段落，把握各段基本内容。文章首
46、段的作用是引入主题或者交代与主题相关的背景或者故事。C 段一上来就提出了文章的主旨观点，即“当这个世界在赞赏中国教育系统的优点时，中国人却清醒地看到它的弱点”，符合我们的需求。【知识模块】 阅读7 【正确答案】 D【试题解析】 本题考查的是上下文的衔接。作者在首段提出了文章的主旨以及相关背景、故事之后，应该对中国教育制度有所介绍或评价。故 D 段为正确答案。【知识模块】 阅读8 【正确答案】 F【试题解析】 作者在 D 段介绍过九年义务教育制度之后，应该会谈到在这种教育制度下，中国学生表现如何。F 段一开始讲到了中国教育制度的好处，即这样的教育制度很容易培养电脑程序员与技术官僚，但是这样的制度
47、能培养出适应新形势要求的人才吗?F 段能够同 D 段紧密联系在一起。【知识模块】 阅读9 【正确答案】 A【试题解析】 该题考查的也是上下文的衔接。F 段的最后提到了中国最有前途的学生们必须要把以前应试教育灌输给他们的那一套统统忘掉，那么造成这一现象的原因又是什么呢?A 段谈到了中国教育制度的弊端，故能够跟上一段形成完整的逻辑关系。【知识模块】 阅读10 【正确答案】 G【试题解析】 做到最后一个题我们只剩下了两个备选项：B 段和 G 段。B 段所讲的内容同前文联系不是那么紧密，而 G 段则对文章做出了一个很好的总结，即学生在追求成绩的过程中容易失去求知欲和想象力。故 G 段适合作为最后一段。
48、【知识模块】 阅读【知识模块】 阅读11 【正确答案】 A【试题解析】 在首段 C 中作者提到，随着印度政府在政策法规方面日益宽松开放，印度企业开始迅猛发展，印度已成为强大的信息技术和医药中心。接着在 A 段，作者话锋一转，指出印度看似蓬勃发展的经济正面临着技术工人短缺的问题。A 段第一句话中的 on its way to superpower status 和上一段末尾提到的 economic superpower 相呼应，起到了衔接作用。【知识模块】 阅读12 【正确答案】 G【试题解析】 A 段提到印度迅猛发展的经济正遭遇技术工人短缺的问题， G 段便开始分析这个问题的成因。G 段的第一
49、句话中的代词 this 指代的是 A 段中的 acute shortage of skilled manpower，因此它起到了衔接这两段的作用。【知识模块】 阅读13 【正确答案】 D【试题解析】 作者在 G 段分析印度技术工人短缺的原因时提到，与美国相比，印度接受高等教育的人数非常有限。而且在仅有的那十分之一的上大学的人中，大部分上的都是类似于社区大学的较差的学校而非四年制的大学。那么，在 D 段作者试图从另一个角度进一步分析这个问题，即：论数量，印度的大学的确不少，有300 多所，但进人世界前 100 名的只有两所。因此，是大学的质量问题影响了人才的培养。本段与上一段的衔接部分是第一句中的 India does have。另外，D 段后文提到如果按美国标准定义“enginees”这一词，印度实际培养出来的工程师人数只有17 万而非 G 段首句提到的 40 万，两者前后呼应。【知识模块】 阅读14 【正确答案】 B【试题解析】 在 G 段和 D 段，作者指出印度的教育问题是阻碍经济发展的原因。因此，B
