1、考研英语（阅读）模拟试卷 82 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 In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1 5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the number
2、ed blank. There are two extra choices which you do not need to use.Most people may drink only two litres of water a day, but they consume about 3,000 if the water that goes into their food is taken into account. The rich swallow up far more, since they tend to eat more meat, which takes far more wat
3、er to produce than grains. So as the worlds population grows and incomes rise, farmers will if they use todays methodsneed a great deal more water to keep everyone fed. Yet in many farming regions, water is scarce and likely to get scarcer as global warming worsens. The world is facing not so much a
4、 food crisis as a water crisis.The solution, Colin Chartres(IWMIs director-general)and others contend, is more efficient use of water or, as the sloganeers put it, “more crop per drop“. Farming accounts for roughly 70% of human water consumption. So when water starts to run out, farming tends to off
5、er the best potential for thrift. 【R1】_.The pressing need is to make water go further. 【R2】_. Yet there are many even cheaper ways to save water. As much as 70% of water used by farmers never gets to crops, perhaps lost through leaky irrigation channels or by draining into rivers or groundwater. Inv
6、estment in drip irrigation, or simply repairing the worst leaks, could bring huge savings.【R3】 _.But efficient use of water, cautions Pasquale Steduto of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, is just one step to better agricultural yields. 【R4】_.Raising yields does not always involve
7、 greater water consumption, especially when farms are inefficient. 【R5】_. That is more acceptable than the rigid alternative: giving up meat and other thirsty products altogether.AIt would take little extra water to double cereal output in many parts of Africa. IWMI reckons that some three-quarters
8、of the extra food the world needs could be provided simply by bringing yields in poor countries closer to those of rich ones.BSimilarly, rice farmers can sharply cut water consumption by flooding rice field only some of the time. Wheat growers in hot places such as India and Australia can conserve w
9、ater by minimizing tilling, leaving a layer of mulch on the fields surface to absorb rainwater and limit evaporation.CAntoine Frerot, the head of the water division of Veolia Environnement, a French firm, promotes recycling, whereby city wastewater is treated until it can be used in industry or agri
10、culture. This costs about a third less than desalination(脱盐作用), and cuts pollution.DRaising water productivity means raising yields per unit of water consumed, though with declining yield growth globally, the attention has shifted to potential offered by improved management of water resources.EBy pr
11、omoting small-scale irrigation and drainage, greater efficiency will be achieved in the use of water, hence increasing productivity and raising crop yields. Farmer associations and cooperatives will be encouraged to develop and maintain irrigation schemes in order to increase production.FEven if far
12、mers use the right amount of water they also need decent seeds and enough fertilizer. In Africa in particular, these and other factors such as pest control, storage and distribution are a bigger drag on yields than a shortage of water.GBut governments, whether to win votes or to protect the poor, ra
13、rely charge farmers a market price for water. So they are usually more wasteful than other consumerseven though the value they create from the water is often less than households or industry would be willing to pay for it.1 【R1 】2 【R2 】3 【R3 】4 【R4 】5 【R5 】5 In the following article, some sentences
14、have been removed. For questions 1 5, choose the most suitable one from the list AG to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are two extra choices which you do not need to use.What could be more revealing than a list of ones search queries? The efficiency of finding what we need on the Web enco
15、urages us to quest awaywhether were researching a car purchase, puzzling out some medical symptoms, wondering what happened to an old friend. “Your search record involves aspirations and dreams,“ says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “It becomes almost a reflection of wha
16、ts in ones head. “ And, as we learned recently, when America On-line temporarily released the search history of thousands of customers for the use of researchers, those reflections can be retained by search companiesand, ultimately, exposed.【R1 】_. Indeed, The New York Times was able to deduce the i
17、dentity of a 62-year-old widow in Georgia who researched Italian vacations, termites and hand tremors.The intimacy of our searches has led Rotenberg and other privacy experts to urge companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft not to retain such logs. And a bill proposed by Rep. Edward Markey (Democr
18、at of Massachusetts)would set limits on the length of time such data could be stored. 【R2 】_. “Our searches have improved dramatically because we have that data,“ says Alan Eustace,Googles senior vice president of engineering and research. Furthermore, they contend that without the information, they
19、 would be severely obstructed in further improving their products. “If you dont have such data, there will be significant compromise of the user experience in the future,“ says Prabhakar Raghavan, Yahoos head of research.【R3 】_. For instance, when a fishing enthusiast types in “bass“, he or she will
20、 get a different result than the same research from a Paul McCartney fan.【R4 】_. Yahoo even has a security group referred to informally as “the paranoids“, whose motto is “We worry about these things so you wont have to. “【R5 】_. The federal government has already expressed interest in such records,
21、 and if the data are demanded by the government the companies must turn it over. Its also not much of a stretch to envision a scene(for example, another terrorist attack)that would pressure the companies to submit to a sweeping request for such logs, just to see if there is sleeper cell or two out t
22、here.It is possible to search without a trail. So-called anonymizing services can mask your identity when you surf. And some smaller search engines do not keep session logs. The big players, though, are betting that youll stick aroundbecause, they say, access to your dreams makes their searches grea
23、t.ABut the detailed records of searches conducted by the users and 657,000 other Americans, copies of which continue to circulate online, underline how much people unintentionally reveal about themselves when they use search engines.BIn the AOL case, the records were supposedly anonymous, but since
24、people commonly type in their own names and addresses into search engines, its often trivial to judge who is searching.CIt is no secret that search engines operated by AOL, Google, Yahoo, and other companies compile data on users such as terms searched for, when they were queried, and what computer
25、and browser was used.DAs you would expect, research companies like Google say that protecting the information on those research logs is assigned highest priority.EBut the top researchers in the research field argue that that would be ultimately destructive. These experts believe that the information
26、 extracted from studying the way individuals search has been crucial in raising the quality of search to its present level.FBut even if the companies are flawless in protecting that information, there is still reason to worry.GIn particular, these companies hope to introduce schemes by which ones re
27、searching success would be enhanced by previous behavior.6 【R1 】7 【R2 】8 【R3 】9 【R4 】10 【R5 】10 The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order, for Questions 1 5, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A- H to fill in each numbered box.
28、 The third, the fifth and the last paragraphs have been correctly placed.AThe biggest extinction threats of all come from space. Solar flares, asteroid strikes and bursts of gamma rays are what we really need to get through. “Every 300 million years we would expect a gamma-ray burst or a severe supe
29、rnova explosion that wipes out most of the ozone layer,“ says Brian Thomas , an expert on intergalactic hazards. Yet these things are so rare that the chance of an extinction event in the next 100,000 years is effectively zero. The same can be said for the threat of a solar flare so powerful that it
30、 knocks out all critical infrastructure, because it would take flares 1000 times more powerful than the biggest ever seen.BMind you, this could be seen as a problem. Probably the greatest threat to an advanced civilisation is technology that runs out of control; nuclear weapons, bioengineering and n
31、anotechnology have all been cited as bogeymen. But disaster expert Jared Diamond, points out that we no longer live in isolated civilisations. Humanity is now a global network of civilisations, with unprecedented access to a diverse, hard-won pool of knowledge already being harnessed for everyones p
32、rotection.CWhat are the odds we will avoid extinction? In 2008, researchers attending the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference took part in a survey of what they thought were the risks to humanity. They gave humans only a 19 per cent chance of surviving until 2100. Yet when you look more closely, suc
33、h extreme pessimism is unfounded. Not only will we survive to 2100, its overwhelmingly likely that well survive for at least the next 100,000 years.DTake calculations by J. Richard Gott, an astrophysicist at Princeton University. Based on 200,000 years of human existence, he estimates we will likely
34、 last anywhere from another 5100 to 7. 8 million years.EWe are also unlikely to be extinguished by a killer virus pandemic. The worst pandemics occur when a new strain of flu virus spreads across the globe. In this scenario people have no immunity, leaving large populations exposed. Four such events
35、 have occurred in the last 100 years the worst, the 1918 flu pandemic, killed less than 6 per cent of the worlds population. More will come, but disease-led extinctions of an entire species only occur when the population is confined to a small area, such as an island. A severe outbreak will kill man
36、y millions but there is no compelling reason to think any future virus mutations will trigger our total demise.FWe should probably work on some anti-asteroid measures, but really humans concerned about the longevity of our species can relax; the view from here is fine.GFossil evidence is similarly r
37、eassuring. Records in the rocks suggest that the average species survival time for mammals is about a million years, though some species survive 10 times as long. It seems there is plenty of time left on our clock. Plus, if youll excuse the blowing of our own trumpet, we are the cleverest of the mam
38、mals.HThe following one will take some luck to avoid. Space is full of rocky debris that acts as an occasional threat to earth. It is widely believed that the impact of a 15-kilometer-wide asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. In any 100,000 year period we can reasonably expect an i
39、mpact from a 400-meter asteroid that will cause damage equivalent to 10,000 megatonnes of TNT. “Not enough to do in the whole civilization, but certainly destroy an entire small country like France, “says former astronaut Thomas Jones, who co-chair NASAs Task Force ON Planetary Defense. Some might a
40、rgue that without France there is little hope for civilization anyway, but in reality there is only l-in-5 chance of total wipeo-ut. “Global effects come from an impact roughly every 500,000 years, so the odds are about 20 percent for a catastrophic, civilization-threatening impact within 100,000 ye
41、ars,“ Jones says.15 The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For questions 1 5, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G to fill in each numbered box. The second and the last paragraphs have been placed for you in Boxes.AIt is
42、easy to argue that teachers ought to do a better job of keeping up with science, but teaching is already a labor-intensive profession. And it is difficult for the nonspecialist to separate scientific research from the usual flood of quackery and pseudoscience. Peddlers of expensive and supposedly re
43、search-based nostrums lobby school districts. Other products that may have scientific validity have not yet been thoroughly tested. For example, theories of mathematical learning suggest that linear(but not circular)board games may boost math preparedness in preschoolers, but the idea needs large-sc
44、ale testing.BThis is just one symptom of a general failure to integrate scientific knowledge of the mind into schooling. Many commonly held ideas about education defy scientific principles of thinking and learning. For example, a common misconception is that teaching content is less important than t
45、eaching critical thinking skills or problem-solving strategies. Scientists have also long known that kids must be explicitly taught the connections between letters and sounds and that they benefit most when such instruction is planned and explicit. Yet some reading programs, even those used in large
46、 school districts, teach this information only if an instructor sees the need.CIt is also important that insights provided by a clearinghouse come from basic science. Many teachers, for instance, need to be disabused of the notions children have different “learning styles“ and that boys brains are h
47、ardwired to be better at spatial tasks than girls. This job of bringing accurate scientific information about thinking and learning to teachers might arguably fall to schools of education, states, districts and teachers professional organizations, but these institutions have shown little interest in
48、 the job. A neutral national review board would be the simplest and quickest answer to a problem that is a big obstacle to broad improvement across many schools.DThe U. S. Department of Education has, in the past, tried to bring some scientific rigor to teaching. The What Works Clearinghouse, create
49、d in 2002 by the DOEs Institute of Education Sciences, evaluates classroom curricula, programs and materials, but its standards of evidence arc overly stringent, and teachers play no role in the checking process. Teachers also play no role in the evaluation, and their participation is crucial. Researchers can evaluate research, but teachers understand education. The purpose of this institution would be to produce information that can be used to shape
