1、考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 239 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 Its no secret that the job of a political pollster is getting harder and harder every election cycle. People are cutting the landline, and regulations m
2、ake it incredibly hard for pollsters to reach voters on their cell phones. Mass onslaughts of getoutthe-vote phone calls near Election Day swamp phone lines and make voters recoil from the idea of actually picking up the phone. Finding voters who are willing to talk about their attitudes and beliefs
3、 on politics over the phone is an increasingly difficult challenge. Its hard out there for a pollster these days.Advances in computing allow us to analyze huge quantities of unstructured data(think “my random 140 character musings“ instead of “my clear answer to a yes or no question“). Culturally, p
4、eople are more and more comfortable putting it all out there online, from their tastes in music to their political preferences. Not to mention, samples can be enormous, dwarfing the “small data“ samples of a pollster who interviews a thousand registered voters. Technological innovation and a cultura
5、l shift toward sharing(and oversharing)make it possible for researchers to assess what people think without having to go to the trouble of actually asking questions.Or do they? This week, the Few Research Center is out with a study throwing cold water on the idea that analyzing data from sources lik
6、e Twitter can be an accurate substitute fur more traditional research methods. They find that Tweets are inconsistent in how they match up with polling data. Twitter users were more excited than American voters as a whole about the re-election of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Pew finds that Twitter users
7、 were less excited about Obama s inaugural address than their poll respondents.If the challenges facing more traditional “small data“ pollsters are actually pretty big. the challenges facing “big data“ analysts are huge in this area. It seems obvious that the demographics of the universe of “people
8、Tweeting about the inaugural address“ might be different from the universe of “registered voters nationwide. “ While traditional pollsters can get a sense of the race, age, and gender of their samples and make corrections accordingly, its a lot harder to know all the demographic data behind the Twee
9、ts being analyzed. Not to mention, its much less clear what counts as a “positive“ or “negative“ Tweet in any given context, and that this up-or-down-vote approach to sentiment analysis might be too blunt an instrument to be useful.As technology moves forward, so too must the way people gather infor
10、mation about public opinion. But dont count the “small data“ polls out quite yet. While some high-profile misses by political pollsters raised important questions about how accurate election polls really are, quite a few pollsters managed to get it very close to right, even given all the aforementio
11、ned challenges pollsters face these days. Both “big data“ analysis of online conversations and “small data“ surveys and focus groups have a role to play in politics, and smart campaigns will value both as complementary methods of learning about where voters stand.1 Which one of the following stateme
12、nts is TRUE of the traditional “small data“ polls?（A）Traditional pollsters dont actually asking questions.（B） Traditional pollsters can gel a sense of the race, age, and gender of their samples and make corrections accordingly.（C） Traditional “small data“ polls is a better method than “big data“ ana
13、lysis of online conversations.（D）Traditional “small data“ polls made more high-profile misses than “big data“ polls.2 By citing the examples of Obamas re-election and inaugural address, the author intends to show that _.（A）analyzing data from sources like Twitter can be an accurate substitute for mo
14、re traditional research methods（B） Pew Research Centers study on Twitter users online musings and their poll respondents is questionable（C） Tweets are inconsistent in how they match up with polling data（D）Twitter users usually hold mutually contradictory political beliefs3 The authors attitude towar
15、ds the idea that analyzing data from sources like Twitter can be an accurate substitute for more traditional research methods can be said as_.（A）unrestrained approval（B） mild disapproval（C） amused tolerance（D）indifference4 It can be inferred from the last paragraph that _.（A）as technology moves forw
16、ard “small“ data polls will be phased out（B） to get accurate election polls will be an mission impossible in the future（C） Technological innovation makes it easy to gather information about public opinion（D）combining “small“ and “big“ data surveys will be the trend of future political polls.5 The be
17、st title for the passage would be_.（A）Political polling in the age of Twitter（B） The power of data（C） Technology makes polling easier（D）The development of Modern Campaign5 It is hard to pinpoint the date at which Americans developed an Indianor perhaps British fatalism about the declining quality of
18、 their infrastructure. When my British mother spent several months in the US in the 1950s, it was dazzlingly futuristic. There was air conditioning, an icebox in every fridge, ubiquitous neon lights and an open road on which even the working class could afford to drive. But bit by bit over the past
19、30 years, the worlds first truly modern infrastructure has shown its age. It has been starved by a generation of under-investment. And Americans have adapted around it.At some point in the next 12 months, we will discover whether the US has the will to bring its infrastructure into the 21st century.
20、 If all goes well, Congress will take steps to avert a fiscal cliff before January 1. As part of that deal lawmakers will schedule another ticking time bomb for late 2013, before which they will have to strike a larger bargain or hit another fiscal cliff. The likelihood is that Congress will shrink
21、the already meagre federal investment budget. The hope, as the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Center puts it, is that Congress will “cut to invest“ rather than doing so crudely across the board.There are three reasons to worry. First, there is remarkably little public outrage over the dilapidati
22、on in the power grid, public roads, domestic airports and waterways. This means that lawmakers will be feeling stronger pressures in other directions(such as defending the existing low level of capital gains tax, for example, or maintaining job-creating defence budgets). It is hard to fly domestical
23、ly in the US and not at regular intervals face heavy delays, cancellations or being bumped off your flight. It is also hard not to miss the impressively stoical reaction of most passengers.Second, most Americans are unaware of how far behind the rest of the world their country has fallen. According
24、to the World Economic Forums competitiveness report, US infrastructure ranks below 20th in most of the nine categories, and below 30 for quality of air transport and electricity supply. The US gave birth to the internet the kind of decentralised network that the US power grid desperately needs, yet
25、according to the OECD club of mostly rich nations, average US internet speeds are barely a 10th of those in countries such as South Korea and Germany. In an age where the global IT superhighway is no longer a slogan, this is no joke. The budding US entrepreneur can survive gridlocked traffic, but a
26、slow internet can be crippling.Third, it may be asking too much of Washington in its present state of polarisation to give the green light to an ambitious infrastructure plan. In a departure from their partys traditions, many Republicans are now ideologically opposed to any serious federal role in i
27、nfrastructure and want to decentralise it to the states. It is thus also a stretch to imagine Congress setting up a public infrastructure bank, as President Barack Obama has requested. The bank would use $ 10bn in seed money to leverage a multiple of that in private money for cross-state projects mu
28、ch like the European Investment Bank. The chances are it will stay on the drawing board.6 The word “stoical“(Line 5, Paragraph 3)is closest in meaning to_.（A）impatient（B） persevering（C） proud（D）disdainful7 The US infrastructure falls behind many countries of the world because_.（A）the US has a larger
29、 and larger population in recent years（B） the US has experienced frequent natural disasters and political turmoil（C） its current infrastructure has already existed over 50 years（D）the quality of its old infrastructure is low8 Which one of the following is not a reason to worry about the USs will to
30、bring its infrastructure into the 21st century?（A）Most Americans are remarkbly tolerant over the di lapidation of their infrastructure.（B） Most Americans have no idea how far behind the rest of the world their country has fallen.（C） The two parlies could not reach an agreement on an ambitious infras
31、tructure plan.（D）President Obama opposed to any serious federal role in infrastructure.9 Accraording to the passage, the determining factor for the USs will to bring its infrastructure into the 21st century is_.（A）federal investment（B） public outrage（C） public awakening（D）bipartisan consensus10 It c
32、an be inferred from the last paragraph that_.（A）infrastructure transformation is a bipartisan pursuit in the US（B） the US still has a long way to go to bring its infrastructure into the 21st century（C） republicans have a tradition of opposing to any serious federal role in infrastructure（D）congress
33、will set up a public infrastructure bank by the end of this year10 Blast injuries, caused by the sort of explosions that occurred in Boston Monday, can be sonic of the most difficult and complex injuries to treat. The “blast wave“ from the explosion acts like “an invisible wall of energy. “ Its trem
34、endous energy can inflict massive internal injuries, says Mark Morocco, associate professor of emergency medicine. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.“Blast injury is one of the most challenging constellations of injuries,“ says John Chovanes, trauma surgeon at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, N
35、. J. , and an Army reservist who has done three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has treated dozens of blast victims. In one explosive event, Chovanes says, a victim can suffer the blunt trauma of a high-speed auto accident from the high-pressure blast wave, the penetrating destruction of mu
36、ltiple bullet wounds from the shrapnel and potentially a swath of disfiguring burns. The rapid pressure wave can instantly inflate the stomach with air, then immediately suck it out. Such pressure is many times worse than the sudden pressure changes that people feel in their ears when a plane change
37、s altitude. The force can rupture intestines, collapse lungs and knock the brain around inside the skull, he says. “You can have disruption of brain function without any physical finding,“ Morocco says,“ You can have internal injuries even without any obvious bleeding. “Boston hospitals reported tha
38、t many patients had injuries to their lower legs. Thats consistent with a bomb placed at ground level, such as in a backpack, Morocco says. “Bits of leg can be blown away from the pressure wave, which is like a big wind,“ Morocco says. “It knocks you down.“ In addition to creating a massive shock wa
39、ve, an explosion can also cause shrapnel or other bits of metal to slice through flesh like a knife, Morocco says.While no city is ever completely prepared for the kind of horror that beset Boston Monday, the city s emergency management system is about as good as it gets, says Richard Zane, chair of
40、 emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Boston has the most robust mass casualty plan of any city in the United States,“ says Zane. who previously worked in Boston s Brigham and Womens Hospital for 14 years. “Im certain this response was so well orchestrated because th
41、ey have planned for this before, they have drilled for this before. “Boston is home to some of the best regarded hospitals in the world. Beyond the skill of its surgeons and staff, however, the city also has an integrated emergency response system-including police, fire and othersto coordinate and d
42、irect care in an emergency. That ensures that patients are portioned out to hospitals evenly, so that individual facilities arent overwhelmed. Coordinating care at the scene of a disaster can save lives, Morocco says, through making hard choices about which patients need to be taken first to a hospi
43、tal, which can wait and which is too injured to even try.Even patients with extensive injuries are likely to survive if treated within “the golden hour,“ Morocco says. Patients who languish more than an hour without treatment often dont make it.11 By saying that the “blast wave“ from the explosion a
44、cts like “an invisible wall of energy“, the author intends to say that _.（A）blast can cause shrapnel or other bits of metal to slice through flesh like a knife（B） its energy can cause a swath of disfiguring burns（C） this energy wall can prevent victims from physical injury and obvious bleeding（D）its
45、 tremendous energy can inflict massive internal injuries12 According to the second paragraph, which of the following is not an injury a victim can suffer in one explosive event?（A）blunt trauma of a high-speed auto accident（B） damage to the nervous system and spinal injuries（C） disruption of brain fu
46、nction（D）rupturing intestines, collapsing lungs and knocking the brain13 Whats the possible meaning of the underlined words “portioned out“(line 4, paragraph 5)?（A）dealt out（B） given out（C） sent out（D）taken out14 Whats the authors attitude toward Bostons emergency management system?（A）critical（B） ne
47、gative（C） satisfied（D）neutral15 Which one of the following is not a characteristic of Bostons emergency management system?（A）hospital, police, fire and others coordinate and direct care（B） patients are portioned out to hospitals evenly（C） it is created by a non-governmental organization（D）coordinati
48、ng care makes hard choice about which patients need treatment first15 Undeniably, many Europeans arc suffering. Levels of unemployment are the highest since records began in France(3. 2 million)and Spain(6 million). Bad European news mounts almost daily.Europe is having a terrible timeexcept compare
49、d with probably every other continent and any time in history. Look at crisis stricken Spain, for instance. The average Spaniard now lives to 82, seven years longer than in 1980.(Most countries where people can expect to reach 82 are European, says the World Health Organization.)Today that average Spaniards income, despite years of crisis, is still nearly double what it was in 1980. And across Europe, daily life has tended to get gradually more pleasant. For instance, crime rates have kept falling in most wes
