1、考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 155 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 ANo disciplines have seized on professionalism with as much enthusiasm as the humanities. You can, Mr. Menand points out, become a lawyer in three years
2、 and a medical doctor in four. But the regular time it takes to get a doctoral degree in the humanities is nine years. Not surprisingly, up to half of all doctoral students in English drop out before getting their degrees.BHis concern is mainly with the humanities; literature, languages, philosophy
3、and so on. These are disciplines that are going out of style; 22% of American college graduates now major in business compared with only 2% in history and 4% in English. However, many leading American universities want their undergraduates to have a grounding in the basic canon of ideas that every e
4、ducated person should possess. But most find it difficult to agree on what a “general education“ should look like. At Harvard, Mr. Menand notes, “the great books are read because they have been read“they form a sort of social glue.CEqually unsurprisingly, only about half end up with professorships f
5、or which they entered graduate school. There are simply too few posts. This is partly because universities continue to produce ever more PhDs. But fewer students want to study humanities subjects: English departments awarded more bachelors degrees in 1970-71 than they did 20 years later. Fewer stude
6、nts require fewer teachers. So, at the end of a decade of thesis-writing, many humanities students leave the profession to do something for which they have not been trained.DOne reason why it is hard to design and teach such courses is that they cut across the insistence by top American universities
7、 that liberal-arts education and professional education should be kept separate, taught in different schools. Many students experience both varieties. Although more than half of Harvard undergraduates end up in law, medicine or business, future doctors and lawyers must study a non-specialist liberal
8、-arts degree before embarking on a professional qualification.EBesides professionalising the professions by this separation, top American universities have professionalised the professor. The growth in public money for academic research has speeded the process: federal research grants rose fourfold
9、between 1960 and 1990, but faculty teaching hours fell by half as research took its toll. Professionalism has turned the acquisition of a doctoral degree into a prerequisite for a successful academic career; as late as 1969 a third of American professors did not possess one. But the key idea behind
10、professionalisation, argues Mr. Menand, is that “ the knowledge and skills needed for a particular specialisation are transmissible but not transferable. “ So disciplines acquire a monopoly not just over the production of knowledge, but also over the production of the producers of knowledge.FThe key
11、 to reforming higher education, concludes Mr. Menand, is to alter the way in which “the producers of knowledge are produced. “ Otherwise, academics will continue to think dangerously alike, increasingly detached from the societies which they study, investigate and criticise. “Academic inquiry, at le
12、ast in some fields, may need to become less exclusionary and more holistic. “ Yet quite how that happens, Mr. Menand dose not say.GThe subtle and intelligent little book The Marketplace of Ideas; Reform and Resistance in the American University should be read by every student thinking of applying to
13、 take a doctoral degree. They may then decide to go elsewhere. For something curious has been happening in American Universities, and Louis Menand, a professor of English at Harvard University, captured it skillfully.Order:5 Worrying about making ends meet, it seems, can occupy enough of the brains
14、finite thinking power that it makes it difficult to think clearly.【R1 】_That may help to explain why poverty can become a vicious cycle, with lower income people tending to make seemingly irrational and risky decisions, particularly when it comes to money.【R2 】_The mall visitors had household income
15、s ranging from $20,000 to $150,000, with a median income of $70,000. The farmers were relatively flush with cash at harvestbut desperately poor for most of the rest of the year.The shoppers considered a range of financial difficulties, from having to take small pay cuts to larger ones, or to suddenl
16、y being faced with minor or more expensive car repairs. They were asked about how they would cope with such problemsby borrowing, cutting spending or skipping the car repair and hoping for the best. Then they took tests to measure IQ and their cognitive skills.【R3 】_But when faced with more serious
17、financial concerns, the lower income individuals did much worse than their wealthier counterparts. In fact, in one version of the experiment where participants were paid for each correct answer, the rich earned 18% more than those who werent as well off.The findings among the Indian sugarcane farmer
18、s were almost as strong. The researchers tested 464 farmers before and after harvest, when their finances were drastically different. When the farmers had cash after harvest, they performed well on the cognitive tests. But before harvest, when money was scarcer, they did much worseshowing a decline
19、similar to the loss of 10 IQ points.With half the American population living from paycheck to paycheck, the studys lead author Eldar Shafir, professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, says the findings are relevant to understanding how financial circumstances influence intel
20、lectual ability.【R4 】_says Shafir, in explaining the findings. And numerous studies confirm that when mental load increases, decision-making quality goes down. Thats why people tend to make worse choices at the end of the dayor after making multiple decisions, even if some were trivial.Can you overc
21、ome the problem by not allowing yourself to be overwhelmed, or by convincing yourself that you have more mental thinking power than you actually do? While some studies found that such mental gymnastics could boost, they may only work up to a point.【R5】_ATo determine how budgetary concerns affect thi
22、nking, the researchers examined the effects of financial strain among both a group of shoppers at a New Jersey mall and impoverished sugarcane farmers in rural India.B“Theres always been this perception that the poor function less well, but its not the person, its the situation theyre in and anyone
23、could find themselves there. When you dont have enough money, it occupies your mind and takes away bandwidth that you could use for other things.“CA growing body of research suggests that such inequality has a profound influence on a populations health, in every socioeconomic group from rich to midd
24、le class to poor.DAccording to the latest research published in Science, just thinking about shaky finances can drop IQ by the equivalent of 13 points.EPositive thinking alone, it seems, isnt enough to tackle a heavy mental load.F“Previous studies have found the poor to be generally less productive
25、and to have lower IQs, but those studies also left the impression that these factors might be causes of poverty, while the latest research suggests that they may be the result.“GWhen confronted with relatively minor financial problems, the lower income people performed equally well on the tests as h
26、igher income folks.6 【R1 】7 【R2 】8 【R3 】9 【R4 】10 【R5 】10 “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one,“ goes a Chinese proverb.Thats increasingly the mindset for investorsespecially wealthier onesseeking hard assets in the face of the ongoing market turmoil.【R1】_In fact, diamonds actuall
27、y outperformed other commodities in 2010, according to Saul Singer, a partner at the alternative assets investment firm Fusion Alternatives, which specializes in diamond investments. Says Singer:“Many might remember 2010 as the year global commodity prices continued to surge. The Dow Jones-UBS Commo
28、dity Index ended the year up 36 percent. Strong gains were experienced across all major commodity markets with the industrial metals market leading the charge.【R2】_“The U. S. consumer price index for jewelry(a CPI for jewelry)jumped by 11.9% on a year-to-year basis in July to a record of 176.46. Tha
29、ts the seventh-straight month that the index climbed above the 170 level.【R3 】_ Not surprisingly, higher diamond prices and increased demand have boosted global diamond stocks as well. “Weve seen much more demand than we can supply, especially for very expensive diamonds, which is where we operate.
30、We expect a pause in the rise in diamond prices. It is unlikely that prices will continue rushing ahead as theyve done in the past year. But then it will get back in its upward phase.“ noted Gem Diamonds Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Clifford Elphick in an interview with Bloomberg Friday.The higher p
31、rices havent stopped the super-rich from trying to grab as many high-quality diamonds as they can. In an interview with CNBC Friday, Henri Barguirdjian, CEO of luxury jewelry Graff Holdings, said that burgeoning interest in diamonds as an investment is a relatively new phenomenon:【R4 】_These people
32、never considered diamonds as an investment, but as something very beautiful and nice to own, it made their wife happy and its gorgeous to look at but they always neglected the financial aspect of the transaction. And now they see what has happened with the price of diamonds and they realize it is no
33、t so much a silly idea.【R5 】_Of course, Barguirdjian has a vested interest in the idea of diamonds as an asset class and not just as pretty baubles. In his comments, he perhaps inadvertently hinted at the risks of this largely untested investment ideaand the reason that ordinary investors should pro
34、bably tread carefully there, if at all. “Financial institutions are seriously studying the diamond market,“ he said. “We have been getting lots of calls by people who are doing reports on this and they want charts and price history to formulate their research. “AThis is something that has never happ
35、ened before. We are being approached by money managers of very wealthy clients, or the wealthy clients themselves, all considering investing a small percentage of their portfolio in diamonds.BThe investment parameter of diamonds is their high value per unit weight, which makes them easy to store and
36、 transport. A high quality diamond weighing as little as 2 or 3 grams could be worth as much as 100 kilos of gold. This extremely condensed value and portability does bestow diamonds as a form of emergency funding.CInvestment diamonds gained 20 percent in 2010, however on a risk-adjusted basis, inve
37、stment diamonds outperformed even the surging commodities market.DThe diamond company De Beers expends marketing efforts to encourage sales of diamond sizes and qualities which are being produced in relatively large quantities. They have also been known to take steps to discourage investment, primar
38、ily because they perceive that bubble prices which are followed by sharp falls are bad for long term consumer confidence in diamonds as a long-term store of value.EWith gold climbing to record highs in the past yearit topped $ 1,800 per ounce this weekmany investors have been looking to diamonds as
39、a viable alternative.FDe Beers, one of the worlds biggest diamond companies, says that while the increase of diamond prices was limited to 7% in the U. S. last year, spikes in China(26%)and India(37%)were much bigger and have continued in 2011.GHe added that some Forbes 400 types are investing up to
40、 $100 million in the diamond market these days, mostly favoring “finished“ diamonds over rough ones. He says that affluent investors are starting to view diamonds as a great inflation hedge and as a low-maintenance investment that is traded all over the world.11 【R1 】12 【R2 】13 【R3 】14 【R4 】15 【R5 】
41、15 AThat kind of dominance creates a tension between property rights and antitrust(opposing or intended to restrain trusts, monopolies, or other large combinations of business and capital)principles. American competition authorities have been loth(unwilling)to compel dominant firms to grant rivals a
42、ccess to their private property, whether physical(as in the case of telecoms networks)or virtual(as with computer code). In their view intellectual-property rights have to be upheld to induce firms to innovate. Patents and copyrights are the rightful prize for new inventions. Trustbusters(a federal
43、official who seeks to dissolve business trusts)should be wary of compelling firms to hand over their business secrets in the name of competition.BDrawing on recent academic work, Mr Vickers makes the case for intervention on two counts. First, he outlines models that suggest a rival is less likely t
44、o develop new products if it cannot share in the profits from the dominant firms invention. If the leading firm is free to licence its technology on stringent terms, it curbs the profits of rivals who have to stump up. True, it spurs rival firms to innovate since the prospective pay-off is greater.
45、But on balance, the incentive to innovate is greater where access is granted more freely, because upfront profits are more valuable.CBy contrast, Europes trustbusters have acted to free up access to telecoms networks in France and Germany. Backed by the courts, they have required Microsoft to make p
46、rivate information about its Windows operating system available to rivals, who can then compete more readily in software development.DEconomic policy is rarely uniform on either side of the Atlantic, but the differences in some cases are exaggerated or soon narrowed. That is true of antitrust policy
47、, where there has been a great deal of convergence. The European Commissions trustbusters tend to take a more cautious view of big global mergers, but the way such tie-ups are assessed is very similar to American practice. In the policing of cartels(an international combine formed esp. to regulate p
48、rices and output in some field of business), the commission has adopted many of the methods and models of its American cousins.EWhich view is right? In a new paper John Vickers of Oxford University surveys the economics literature and concludes that a hands-off approach is far from ideal. Mr Vickers
49、, once head of the Office of Fair Trading, Britains main antitrust outfit, says that like many economists he finds himself “rowing in the mid-Atlantic“ when it comes to the treatment of dominant firms. American policy is too cautious about treading on big firms toes but Europes trustbusters may intervene too boldly.FA second argument for reining in dominant firms is that the contest to innovate tends to be keenest where there is a neck-and-neck battle t
