1、考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 296（无答案）Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)0 Music is a mystery. It is unique to the human race: no other species produces elaborate sound for no particular reason. It has been, and remains, part of
2、every known civilization on Earth. Lengths of bone fashioned into flutes were in use 40,000 years ago. And it engages peoples attention more comprehensively than almost anything else: scans show that when people listen to music, virtually every area of their brain becomes more active.Yet it serves n
3、o obvious adaptive purpose. Charles Darwin, in “The Descent of Man“, noted that “neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life.“ Then, what is the point of music. Steven Pinker, a cognitive p
4、sychologist, has called music “auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties.“ If it vanished from our species, he said, “the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged.“ Others have argued that, on the contrary, mu
5、sic, along with art and literature, is part of what makes people human; its absence would have a brutalizing effect.Philip Ball, a British science writer and an avid music enthusiast, comes down somewhere in the middle. He says that music is ingrained in our auditory, cognitive and motor functions.
6、We have a music instinct as much as a language instinct, and could not rid ourselves of it. He goes through each component of music to explain how and why it works, using plentiful examples drawn from a refreshingly wide range of different kinds of music, from Bach to the Beatles, and from nursery r
7、hymes to jazz.His basic message is encouraging and uplifting: people know much more about music than they think. They start picking up the rules from the day they are born, perhaps even before, by hearing it all around them. Very young children can tell if a tune or harmony is not quite right and mo
8、st adults can differentiate between kinds of music even if they have had no training.Music is completely sui generis, ft should not tell a non-musical story; the listener will decode it for himself. Many, perhaps most, people have experienced a sudden rush of emotion on hearing a particular piece of
9、 music; a thrill or chill, a sense of excitement or exhilaration, a feeling of being swept away by it. They may even be moved to tears, without being able to tell why. Musical analysts have tried hard to find out how this happens, but with little success. Perhaps some mysteries are best preserved.1
10、It can be inferred from the first paragraph that（A）except mankind species produce sounds with specific purposes.（B） the earliest flutes were made of bones 40,000 years ago.（C） peoples attention is more attentively attracted by music.（D）peoples brains go inactive in an environment with no music.2 To
11、which of the following statements would Steven Pmker most probably agree?（A）Music serves no facility for the formation of peoples habits.（B） Music and exquisite dessert share great similarities.（C） The absence of music brings little effect to human life.（D）Music helps to erase the brutal characteris
12、tics in human.3 According to Philip Balls research, which of the following is true?（A）Human beings are born to be professional musicians.（B） There exist no sharp differences among various types of music.（C） People usually learn music by means of hearing around.（D）Mankind posses a natural music insti
13、nct and cant wipe it off.4 The saying “sui generis“(line 1, Para, 5)is closest in meaning to（A）unique.（B） touching.（C） overwhelming.（D）mysterious.5 Which of the following would be the best title of the text?（A）Sounds WonderfulThe Science of Music（B） Mission ImpossibleThe Mystery of Music（C） Touching
14、 AlwaysThe Power of Music（D）Anti-Brutalization The Effect of Music5 As people in rich countries know very well, eating too much food and burning too lew calories is why a substantial number of us are overweight or obese. Now, however, a remarkable change in perspective has come from the discovery th
15、at obesity actually provides people with temporary protection from the harmful effects of fatThe insight has come from re-examining the common assumption that fatness itself drives the development of metabolic syndrome, which is what causes so much of the actual damage. The syndrome comes with a mix
16、ture of life-threatening effects, with cardiovascular disease(diseases relating to the heart and blood vessels)and type 2 diabetes being among the most serious. In fact, it now seems that body fat may be a barrier that stops-millions of Americans and fatty citizens elsewhere from going on to develop
17、 the syndrome. And the real damage is caused by the inflammatory effect of high levels of fat in the bloodstream. And ironically, its fat cells that protect us from this by serving as toxic dumps, locking away the real villains of the modern diet.The problem is that this protection only lasts so lon
18、g, until there is simply no more room inside the fat cells. Thats when they start to break down, leading to a toxic spill into the bloodstream. This sets off an inflammatory response that causes various kinds of damage to body tissues. In this way, every excess calorie takes people closer to metabol
19、ic syndrome.So what can we do to stop a superabundance of fat triggering the syndrome? Of course theres no substitute for a healthy diet and exercise, but incitation to this effect seem to be of limited use. As with cigarettes and alcohol, a tax on caloriespricing foods by their energy contentis inc
20、reasingly seen as another “lever“ to change behaviour by making obesity too costly.The new research may even suggest treatments to combat metabolic syndrome, such as antiinflammatory drugs. One promising candidate is salsalate, an arthritis drug related to aspirin, and the Joslin Diabetes Center in
21、Boston is now considering large-scale trials.What might be more helpful, though, is simply a wider recognition that fatty and sugary foods are more directly toxic than we had assumed. Ideally, people should be as well informed about the harmful effects of what they eat as, for example, pregnant wome
22、n are about drinking and smoking.There is a consolationyou have your fat tissue to protect you when you consume that extra burger or sweetened soda. But now you know the perils of pushing your friendly fat cells beyond their natural limits.6 Its implied in the first paragraph that the reasons for ob
23、esity include overeating and（A）lacking exercise.（B） absorbing fats.（C） keeping unhealthy diets.（D）burning calories.7 From Paragraph 2 we know that the real villain of actual damages is（A）fat cells.（B） metabolic syndrome.（C） cardiovascular disease.（D）bloodstream fats.8 The protective function of fat
24、cells stop working once（A）their capacity reaches a limit.（B） toxin spills into the bloodstream.（C） an inflammatory response appears.（D）metabolic syndrome is developed.9 The author indicates in the text that obesity can be restricted by（A）putting fats protective function to full use.（B） unifying peop
25、les diet and exercise habits.（C） raising the prices of cigarettes and alcohol.（D）manipulating food prices by their calorie content.10 To combat metabolic syndrome, the authors suggestion is to（A）develop more anti-inflammatory drugs.（B） ask people to keep away from fatty food.（C） strengthen the aware
26、ness of the harms of fatty food.（D）protect pregnant women from tobacco and wine.10 The technology revolution may be coming to poor countries via the mobile phone, not the personal computer, as it did in rich ones. And just as the Internet encouraged an entrepreneurial philosophy, and with it the cre
27、ation of a few too many dotcom firms, Africas surge in mobile-phone use may unleash the same sort of business energy, but tailored to local needs.One such initiative is about to begin. TradeNet, a software company based in Accra, Ghana, will unveil a simple sort of eBay for agricultural products acr
28、oss a dozen countries in West Africa. It lets buyers and sellers indicate what they are after and their contact information, which is sent to all relevant subscribers as an SMS text message in one of four languages. Interested parties can then reach others directly to do a deal. Listing offers is fr
29、ee, as is receiving the texts. TradeNet plans to earn revenue by putting advertisements in the messages, though it hopes the service will become so useful that recipients will eventually want to pay. For the moment, though, the company is busy signing up users and swallowing the cost of sending the
30、messages.Mobile-phone use in sub-Saharan Africa is soaring. Whereas only 10% of the population had network coverage in 1999, today more than 60% have it, a figure expected to exceed 85% in the coming year, according to the GSM Association, an industry trade group. This provides the infrastructure fo
31、r businesses like TradeNet to function.TradeNet is the brainchild of Mark Davies, a British dotcom tycoon who gave up the rat race and went to Africa in 2000. In 2005, he started the prototype for TradeNet using around $600,000 of his own money and about $200,000 from aid agencies. An early set of t
32、rials last year generated a surplus of trades, such as a sale of organic fertilizer between a person in Yemen and another in Nigeria.A number of other mobile-phone market-places taking shape also started as aid projects. For example, Trade at Hand, a project funded by the UNs International Trade Cen
33、tre in Geneva, provides daily price information for fruit and vegetable exports in Burkina Faso and Mali, with plans to add more countries. And Manobi, a telecoms firm based in Senegal, providing real-time agricultural and fish prices to fee-paying subscribers, is also backed by aid money. But Trade
34、Nets approach is unique so far because it collects valuable economic datanames, locations, business interests and telephone numbersand then sells them to advertisers. The price of economic development may be junk mail by mobile phone.11 The word “unleash“(Line 4, Paragraph 1)is closest in meaning to
35、（A）generate.（B） intensify.（C） create.（D）loosen.12 Which of the following about TradeNet is true?（A）TradeNet is to agricultural products what eBay is to manufactured products.（B） The ultimate goal of TradeNet is to let its users pay for the services.（C） Users payment for TradeNets services forms Trad
36、eNets revenue.（D）TradeNet is possible due to high network coverage and cell-phone availability.13 What do we learn about Mark Davies?（A）His dotcom firm had dominated the British market.（B） He was the person who benefited most from the African market.（C） He had been tired of the fierce competition am
37、ong British dotcom firms.（D）He created and founded the firm TradeNet all by himself.14 What can we infer from the last paragraph of the text?（A）With the UNs support, Trade at Hand is bound to spread to the whole African continent（B） Aid projects played an important role in fostering mobile-phone mar
38、ket-places in Africa（C） TradeNet is the most successful one of all the mobile-phone market-places in Africa.（D）The junk mail by mobile phone will ruin the economic development in Africa.15 What is the authors attitude towards mobile-phone market-places?（A）Objective.（B） Ambiguous.（C） Optimistic.（D）Sk
39、eptical.15 How soon your performance will be rated may influence how well you do, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science. In the study, researchers Keri L. Kettle and Gerald Haubl from the University of Alberta set out to determine whether the timing of feedback infl
40、uences performance. Because earlier feedback means a more proximate possibility of disappointment, the researchers hypothesized that students told they would be learning their grade sooner would be more likely to perform well, compared with those who wouldnt find out their grade until later.Of 501 s
41、tudents taking a particular course, 271 agreed to participate in the study. All students were assigned a four minute oral presentation, which they had to deliver in front of about 10 classmates. Their performance was ranked on a scale of 1-10 by classmates, and the average of those scores made up th
42、eir grade for the assignment Prior to giving their oral presentation, study participants were asked to predict how well they would do, and were also told how soon they would learn their grade.The researchers found that study participants whod been told they would be given their scores earlier perfor
43、med far better than those told theyd receive their scores later. Whats more, despite the fact that, on average, students who anticipated finding out how theyd done earlier significantly outperformed classmates who were given their scores later, they were more likely to predict low marks for themselv
44、es. In contrast, those who were told they wouldnt learn their scores until later were more likely to predict very high markswhich they seldom actually went on to earn. As a control, the researchers also assessed the scores of the 230 students who had declined to participate in the study. While stude
45、nts with the earliest feedback scored in the 60th percentile on average, and those with the latest feedback scored in the 40th percentile on average, those not included in the study(and whose feedback time hadnt been manipulated)consistently scored in the 50th percentile.The findings suggest that “m
46、ere anticipation of more rapid feedback improves performance,“ the authors conclude, and that, interestingly, proximity of feedback influences predicted performance and actual performance differently. As the authors sum up: “People do best precisely when their predictions about their own performance
47、 are least optimistic.“ The influence of feedback anticipation on performance has implications beyond the classroom as well, the researchers arguein the way that managers respond to employee work, for example, or maybe even how Mom and Dad size up how clean that room is. The findings, Kettle and Hau
48、bl conclude, “have important practical implications for all individuals who are responsible for mentoring and for evaluating the performance of others.“16 According to Paragraph 1, researchers put forward such a hypothesis because（A）feedback and performance are related.（B） the timing of feedback aff
49、ects performance.（C） feedback may cause disappointment.（D）feedback evaluates ones performance.17 In paragraph 2, the author describes（A）the experiment design.（B） process of the experiment.（C） participants and their tasks.（D）evaluation of performance.18 Participants who are told they will be given their scores earlier（A）underperform those who are told later.（B） perform worse than they predict.（C） are least optimistic at making prediction.（D）seldom earn the marks they predict.19 The significance of the findings lies in that（A）mere anticipation of m
