1、考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 479 及答案与解析Part B (10 points) 0 They learn to read at age 2, play Bach at 4, breeze through calculus at 6, and speak foreign languages fluently by 8. Their classmates shudder with envy; their parents rejoice at winning the lottery. But to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, their careers tend to end
2、 not with a bang, but with a whimper.Consider the nations most prestigious award for scientifically gifted high school students, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, called the Super Bowl of Science by one American president. From its inception in 1942 until 1994, the search recognized more than
3、2, 000 outstanding teenagers as finalists. But just 1 percent ended up making the National Academy of Sciences, and just eight have won Nobel Prizes.Child prodigies rarely become adult geniuses who change the world. We assume that they must lack the social and emotional skills to function in society
4、. 【R1】_What holds them back is that they dont learn to be original. They strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesnt make new.Th
5、e gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies, but rarely compose their own original scores. They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights. They conform to codified rules, rather than inventing their own. 【R2】 _In adulthood, many prodigies become
6、 experts in their fields and leaders in their organizations. Yet “only a fraction of gifted children eventually become revolutionary adult creators, “ laments the psychologist Ellen Winner. “Those who do must make a painful transition to an adult who ultimately remakes a domain.“ Most prodigies neve
7、r make that leap. They apply their extraordinary abilities by shining in their jobs without making waves. 【R3】_So what does it take to raise a creative child? One study compared the families of children who were rated among the most creative 5 percent in their school system with those who were not u
8、nusually creative. 【R4 】_.Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it s easy to thwart. By limiting rules, parents encouraged their children to think for themselves. They tended to “place emphasis on moral values, rather than on specific rules, “ the Harvard psychologist Teresa Amabile reports.【R5 】_W
9、hen psychologists compared Americas most creative architects with a group of highly skilled but unoriginal peers, there was something unique about the parents of the creative architects: “Emphasis was placed on the development of one s own ethical code.“AEven then, though, parents didn t shove their
10、 values down their children s throats.BThe parents of ordinary children had an average of six rules, like specific schedules for homework and bedtime. Parents of highly creative children had an average of fewer than one rule.CIf you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need
11、 to let them pursue their passions, not yours.DWhen you look at the evidence, though, this explanation doesnt suffice: Less than a quarter of gifted children suffer from social and emotional problems. A vast majority are well adjustedas winning at a cocktail party as in the spelling bee.EThey become
12、 doctors who heal their patients without fighting to fix the broken medical system or lawyers who defend clients on unfair charges but do not try to transform the laws themselves.FResearch suggests that the most creative children are the least likely to become the teachers pet, and in response, many
13、 learn to keep their original ideas to themselves. In the language of the critic William Deresiewicz, they become the excellent sheep.GTop concert pianists didnt have elite teachers from the time they could walk; their first lessons came from instructors who happened to live nearby and made learning
14、 fun.1 【R1 】2 【R2 】3 【R3 】4 【R4 】5 【R5 】5 With the pace of technological change making heads spin, we tend to think of our age as the most innovative ever. We have smartphones and supercomputers, big data and stem-cell transplants. Governments, universities and firms together spend around $1.4 trill
15、ion a year on R and the drop-off since 2004 probably has more to do with the economic crisis than with underlying lack of invention.BEconomic growth is a modern invention: 20th-century growth rates were far higher than those in the 19th century, and pre-1750 growth rates were almost imperceptible by
16、 modern standards.CRather as electrification changed everything by allowing energy to be used far from where it was generated, computing and communications technologies transform lives and businesses by allowing people to make calculations and connections far beyond their unaided capacity.DAnd it wa
17、snt just modern sanitation that sprang from late-19th and early-20th-century brains : they produced cars, planes, the telephone, radio and antibiotics.EMany more brains are at work now than were 100 years ago: American and European inventors have been joined in the race to produce cool new stuff by
18、those from many other countries.FIf the pessimists are right, the implications are huge. Economies can generate growth by adding more stuff;more workers, investment and education. But sustained increases in output per person, which are necessary to raise incomes and welfare, entail using the stuff w
19、e already have in better waysinnovating, in other words.GLife expectancy in America, for instance, has risen more slowly since 1980 than in the early 20th century. The speed of travel, in the rich world at least, is often slower now than it was a generation earlier, after rocketing a century or so a
20、go.6 【R1 】7 【R2 】8 【R3 】9 【R4 】10 【R5 】10 Certain activist lawyers have grabbed headlines recently in their campaign to grant legal rights, first, to chimpanzees and then to other animals. 【R1】_Proponents of animal rights build their case with these arguments: (1)certain animals share qualities of c
21、onsciousness that have heretofore been seen as uniquely human;(2)animals are brutalized in research;(3)research with animals has been made obsolete by computers and other technologies.【R2 】_Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, there is no substitute for animal research to understand biological proc
22、esses that affect a living organism. Think of it this way: Why use costly animals if equally useful non-animal research tools were available?【R3 】_With every medical breakthrough of the past century the direct result of animal-based research, such research is not only ethical, but is our obligation.
23、【R4 】_Philosopher Peter Singer first made the argument that some animals ought to count as “persons“, whereas mentally defective humans should not and that the lives of healthy animals ought to be weighed equally with human beings. Singer says parents of a newborn with Down s syndrome would be justi
24、fied in ending her life to make room in their lives for a baby with normal intelligence. Recall, though, that Nazi Germany used the same kind of personhood criterion to justify killing the physically and mentally handicapped.【R5 】_Animals are not little persons; The necessity of distinguishing betwe
25、en a person and animal strikes at the heart of the dilemma faced by a scientist who is very fond of animals, yet who uses them in research. I have come to realize the obvious: We decide what animals are to be in relation to us. I adore my cat, Buster, but I also used members of his species in my res
26、earch for years.AThey believe that these animals deserve legal protection, including an end to their use as subjects of medical research. As a research scientist who for 40 years has used animals in sleep studies, I am deeply concerned.BWe have a great obligation to the animals under our control; We
27、 have a moral responsibility to care for animals and should not treat them cruelly. And we scientists are obligated to perform critical experiments as skillfully and humanely as possible.CAll human beings are persons: This is obvious to mostbut not to some in the animal rights movementDWhile perhaps
28、 superficially credible, these assertions are simplistic and, in my view, simply wrong. First, limited similarities of consciousness are not sufficient grounds to make the important leap of granting legal personhood to animals. Secondly, scientists have every reason to treat animals humanely because
29、 good science depends on healthy animals.EOur first obligation is to our fellow humans: As a biologist, I say that the most powerful imperative for the use of animals in research is that of survival, of protecting kin and, by extension, other persons from conquerable disease and untimely death. View
30、ed this way, scientists work seems no different from a mother eagle s dismembering prey to feed her babies.FGranting “personhood“ to animal species deemed to share qualities with us, such as cognition, autonomy and self-awareness, is not a benign campaign to protect animals. It is an effort to use t
31、he legal system as a tool to enforce a flawed ethic concerning the relationship between humanity and the animal world.GWe would be foolish, at best, to ignore the realities of Nature and the power of natural impulses for survival.11 【R1 】12 【R2 】13 【R3 】14 【R4 】15 【R5 】15 In the early 19th century,
32、French philosopher Auguste Comte proposed a scientific hierarchy ranging from the physical sciences at the bottom up through biology to the “queen“ of sciences, sociology, at the top. A science of human social behavior, Comte contended, could help humanity make moral and political decisions and cons
33、truct more efficient Just governments. Today, social science receives much less federal funding than the biological and physical sciences do. Social scientists are accused of being “soft“, of working with theories so lacking in precision and predictive power that they dont deserve to be called scien
34、tific.Some social scientistsIll call them “softies“shrug off this criticism, because they identify less with physicists and chemists than with scholars in the humanities. 【R1】 _Other social scientists, “hardies“ hope for and believe they can eventually attain the same status as hard science, say, bi
35、ology. Softies and hardies have been fighting for as long as I can remember. 【R2】_The term “sociobiology“ became so controversial that it is rarely used today, except by softies as an insult. Hardies nonetheless embraced the tenets of sociobiology. They attached the term “evolutionary“ to their fiel
36、dscreating disciplines such as evolutionary psychology and evolutionary economicsand churned out unreliable conclusions about the adaptive origins of war and capitalism.Softies look skeptically at the aspirations of hardieswith good reason. The recent recession provides a powerful demonstration of s
37、ocial sciences limits. 【R3】_Even when supported by the latest findings from neuroscience, genetics, and other fields, social science will never approach the precision and predictive power of the hard sciences. 【R4】_In contrast, the basic units of social systemspeopleare all different from each other
38、; each person who has ever lived is unique in ways that are not trivial but essential to our humanity. 【R5】_So we are left with a paradox: Although social science is in many aspects quite weak, it can also be extraordinarily powerful in terms of its impact, for ill or good, on our lives. Heres a mor
39、e specific suggestion : Social scientists should not consider identifying with the harder sciences or the humanities. Rather, they should focus more intensely on finding answers to specific problems.AThe worlds smartest economists, equipped with the most sophisticated mathematical models and powerfu
40、l computers that money can buy, did not foreseeor at any rate could not preventthe financial calamities that struck the United States and the rest of the world in 2008.BHowever, James Weatherall who has a Ph. D. in physics as well as in philosophy pointed out that the methods of hard sciences can he
41、lp make social sciences more rigorous.CStevens Institute of Technology is a case in point;Social science falls within the charge of the Stevens College of Arts & Letters, which also encompasses philosophy, history, literature, music and my own humble discipline, science communication. As far as I ca
42、n tell, my social-science colleagues arent seething with resentment at being lumped together with the humanities folks.DEach individual mind also keeps changing in response to new experienceswatching Lord of the Rings, having a baby, teaching freshman composition. Imagine how hard physics would be i
43、f every electron were the unique product of its entire history.ERecently, as the prestige of neuroscience has surged, hardies have discovered the benefits of including magnetic-resonance imaging and other brain-scanning experiments in grant proposals, and they have attached the prefix “neuro“ to the
44、ir disciplines, yielding new terms such as neuroeconomics and neuroan-thropology.FIn 1975, for example, the Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson contended in his blockbuster Sociobiology that social science would only become truly scientific by embracing evolutionary theory and genetics. Horrified softies
45、denounced sociobiology as a throwback to social Darwinism and eugenics, two of the most notorious social applications of science.GPhysics addresses phenomenaelectrons, elements, gravitythat are relatively simple, stable and amenable to precise mathematical definition. Gravity works in exactly the sa
46、me way whether you measure it in 17th-century England or 21st-century America. Every neutron is identical to every other neutron.16 【R1 】17 【R2 】18 【R3 】19 【R4 】20 【R5 】考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 479 答案与解析Part B (10 points) 【知识模块】 阅读理解1 【正确答案】 D【试题解析】 本段第一句是讨论的中心话题，即少年神童很少能成为改变世界的成人精英。第三段出现了 social and emotional，
47、与此呼应的是 D 项的 social and emotional。且 D 项中的 this explaination 指代的就是空格前一句中 We assume that 的具体的内容。故 D 项为正确答案。【知识模块】 阅读理解2 【正确答案】 F【试题解析】 文章第五段主要讲一些富有天赋的孩子通常遵循已经建立好的规则，而不是创造自己的。空格前的 inventing 与 F 项中的 creative 呼应，F 项主要讲富有创造力的孩子的表现保留自己最原本的想法，变成了杰出的温顺绵羊。这与第五段的内容相符。干扰项为 G 项 Top concert pianists(顶尖的钢琴演奏家)，但G 项
48、主要讲的是成为大家的人最初的老师资源，与该段内容无关。【知识模块】 阅读理解3 【正确答案】 E【试题解析】 本段主要讲很多神童成为了他们领域里的专家或者领导，但是从来无法实现跨越。空格前一句指出“他们利用自己超凡的能力在自己的行业中闪耀着，却不能掀起浪潮”。该句中的 in their jobs 和 without making waves 是关键词。E项中的 doctors 和 lawyers 引出两个行业，without fighting 和 but do not 说明他们没有在自己的行业中“掀起浪潮”。E 项与该段衔接最紧密，故 E 项为正确答案。【知识模块】 阅读理解4 【正确答案】
49、B【试题解析】 本段主要介绍了一项研究，对比了学校系统中富有创造力的和普通的孩子的家庭。空格前面句子中的 raise a creative child 和 the families of children都提示考生 B 项符合题意，尤其是 B 项中的 The parents of ordinary children 和Parents of highly creative children 与该段中心一致。故 B 项为正确答案。【知识模块】 阅读理解5 【正确答案】 A【试题解析】 空格前一段提到，家长鼓励他们的孩子们可以为自己思考，他们倾向于强调道德价值观，而不是非常明确的条条框框。A 项中的 Even then，though与前一段的结尾衔接，then 指代上一句的内容。且 A 项中的 values 和上一句的moral values 相呼应，符合题意。干扰项为 C 项，该项虽然讲的也是家长，但bring original ideas
