1、考博英语（阅读理解）模拟试卷 57（无答案）一、Reading Comprehension0 A little more than a century ago, Michael Faraday, the noted British physicist, managed to gain audience with a group of high government officials, to demonstrate an electro-chemical principle, in the hope of gaining support for his work.After observing
2、 the demonstrations closely, one of the officials remarked bluntly, “Its a fascinating demonstration, young man, but just what practical application will come of this?“I dont know,“ replied Faraday, “but I do know that 100 years from now youll be taxing them.“From the demonstration of a principle to
3、 the marketing of products derived from that principle is often a long way, involved series of steps. The speed and effectiveness with which these steps are taken are closely related to the history of management, the art of getting things done. Just as management applies to the wonders that have evo
4、lved from Faraday and other inventors, so it applied some 4,000 years ago to the working of the great Egyptian and Mesopotamian import and export firms.to Hannibals remarkable feat of crossing the Alps in 218 B.C. with 90,000 foot soldiers, 12,000 horsemen and a “conveyor belt“ of 40 elephants .or t
5、o the early Christian Church, with its world-shaking concepts of individual freedom and equality.These ancient innovators were deeply involved in the problems of authority, divisions of labor, discipline, unity of command, clarity of direction and the other basic factors that are so meaningful to ma
6、nagement today. But the real impetus to management as an emerging profession was the Industrial Revolution. Originating in 18-century England, it was triggered by a series of classic inventions and new processes; among them John Kays Flying Shuttle in 1733, James Hargroves Spinning Jenny in 1770, Sa
7、muel Comptons Mule Spinner in 1779 and Edmund Cartwrights Power Loom in 1785.1 The anecdote about Michael Faraday indicates that_.（A）politicians tax everything（B） people are skeptical about the values of pure research（C） government should support scientists（D）he was rejected by his government2 Manag
8、ement is defined as_.（A）the creator of the Industrial Revolution（B） supervising subordinates（C） the art of getting things done（D）an emerging profession3 Management came into its own_.（A）in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian import and export firms（B） in Hannibals famous trip across the Alps（C） in the dev
9、elopment of early Christian Church（D）in the eighteenth century4 A problem of management NOT mentioned in this passage is_.（A）the problem of command（B） division of labor（C） control by authority（D）competition4 By education, I mean the influence of the environment upon the individual to produce a perma
10、nent change in the habits of behavior, of thought and of attitude. It is in being thus susceptible to the environment that man differs from the animals, and the higher animals from the lower. The lower animals are influenced by the environment but not in the direction of changing their habits. Their
11、 instinctive responses are few and fixed by heredity. When transferred to an unnatural situation, such an animal is led astray by its instincts. Thus the “ant-lion“ whose instinct implies it to bore into loose sand by pushing backwards with abdomen, goes backwards on a plate of glass as soon as dang
12、er threatens, and endeavors, with the utmost exertions to bore into it. It knows no other mode of flight, “or if such a lonely animal is engaged upon a chain of actions and is interrupted, it either goes on vainly with the remaining actions(as useless as cultivating an unsown field)or dies in helple
13、ss inactivity“. Thus a net-making spider which digs a burrow and rims it with a bastion of gravel and bits of wood, when removed from a half finished home, will not begin again, though it will continue another burrow, even one made with a pencil.Advance in the scale of evolution along such lines as
14、these could only be made by the emergence of creatures with more and more complicated instincts. Such beings we know in the ants and spiders. But another line of advance was destined to open out a much more far-reaching possibility of which we do not see the end perhaps even in man. Habits, instead
15、of being born ready-made(when they are called instincts and not habits at all), were left more and more to the formative influence of the environment, of which the most important factor was the parent who now cared for the young animal during a period of infancy in which vaguer instincts than those
16、of the insects were molded to suit surroundings which might be considerably changed without harm.This means, one might at first imagine, that gradually heredity becomes less and environment more important. But this is hardly the truth and certainly not the whole truth. For although fixed automatic r
17、esponses like those of the insect-like creatures are no longer inherited, although selection for purification of that sort is no longer going on, yet selection for educability is very definitely still of importance. The ability to acquire habits can be conceivably inherited just as much as can defin
18、ite responses to narrow situations. Besides, since a mechanismis now, for the first time, created by which the individual(in contradiction to the species)can be fitted to the environment, the latter becomes, in another sense, less not more important. And finally, less not the higher animals who poss
19、ess the power of changing their environment by engineering feats and the like, a power possessed to some extent even by the beaver, and preeminently by man. Environment and heredity are in no case exclusive but always-supplementary factors.5 Which of the following is the most suitable title for the
20、passage?（A）The Evolution of Insects.（B） Environment and Heredity.（C） Education: The Influence of the Environment.（D）The Instincts of Animals.6 What can be inferred from the example of the ant-lion in the first paragraph?（A）Instincts of animals can lead to unreasonable reactions in strange situations
21、.（B） When it is engaged in a chain actions it cannot be interrupted.（C） Environment and heredity are two supplementary factors in the evolution of insects.（D）Along the lines of evolution heredity becomes less and environment more important.7 Based on the example provided in the passage, we can tell
22、that when a spider is removed to a new position where half of a net has been made, it will probably_.（A）begin a completely new net（B） destroy the half-net（C） spin the rest of the net（D）stay away from the net8 Which of the following is true about habits according to the passage?（A）They are natural en
23、dowments to living creatures.（B） They are more important than instincts to all animals.（C） They are subject to the formative influence of the environment.（D）They are destined to open out a much more far-reaching possibility in the evolution of human beings.8 It is a wise father that knows his own ch
24、ild, but today a man can boost his paternal(fatherly)wisdom or at least confirm that hes the kids dad. All he needs to do is shell out $ 30 for paternity testing kit(PTK)at his local drugstore and another $ 120 to get the results.More than 60,000 people have purchased the PTKs since they first becom
25、e available without prescriptions last years, according to Doug Fog, chief operating officer of Identigene, which makes the over-the-counter kits. More than two dozen companies sell DNA tests directly to the public, ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to more than $ 2500.Among the most popul
26、ar: paternity and kinship testing, which adopted children can use to find their biological relatives and latest rage a many passionate genealogists and supports businesses that offer to search for a familys geographic roots.Most tests require collecting cells by swabbing saliva in the mouth and send
27、ing it to the company for testing. All tests require a potential candidate with whom to compare DNA.But some observers are skeptical, “There is a kind of false precision being hawked by people claiming they are doing ancestry testing,“ says Trey Duster, a New York University sociologist. He notes th
28、at each individual has many ancestors numbering in the hundreds just a few centuries back. Yet most ancestry testing only considers a single lineage, either the Y chromosome inherited through men in a fathers line or mitochondrial DNA, which a passed down only from mothers. This DNA can reveal genet
29、ic information about only one or two ancestors, even though, for example, just three generations back people also have six other great-grandparents or, four generations back, 14 other great-great-grandparents.Critics also argue that commercial genetic testing is only as good as the reference collect
30、ions to which a sample is compared. Databases used by some companies dont rely on data collected systematically but rather lump together information from different research projects. This means that a DNA database may have a lot of data from some regions and not others, so a persons test results may
31、 differ depending on the company that processes the results. In addition, the computer programs a company uses to estimate relationships may be patented and not subject to peer review or outside evaluation.9 In paragraphs 1 and 2, the text shows PTKs_.（A）easy availability（B） flexibility in pricing（C
32、） successful promotion（D）popularity with households10 PTK is used to_.（A）locate ones birth place（B） promote genetic research（C） identify parent-child kinship（D）choose children for adoption11 Skeptical observers believe that ancestry testing fails to_.（A）trace distant ancestors（B） rebuild reliable bl
33、oodlines（C） fully use genetic information（D）achieve the claimed accuracy12 In the last paragraph, a problem commercial genetic testing faces is_.（A）disorganized data collection（B） overlapping database building（C） excessive sample comparison（D）lack of patent evaluation13 An appropriate title for the
34、text is most likely to be_.（A）Fors and Againsts of DNA Testing（B） DNA Testing and Its Problems（C） DNA Testing Outside the Lab（D）Lies behind DNA Testing13 The truly incompetent may never know the depths of their own incompetence, a pair of social psychologists said on Thursday. “We found again and ag
35、ain that people who perform poorly relative to their peers tended to think that they did rather well,“ Justin Kruger, co-author of a study on the subject, said in a telephone interview.Kruger and co-author David Dunning found that when it came to a variety of skills logical reasoning, grammar, even
36、sense of humor people who essentially were inept never realized it, while those who had some ability were self-critical.“It had little to do with innate modesty,“ Kruger said, “but rather with a central paradox: Incompetents lack the basic skills to evaluate their performance realistically. Once the
37、y get those skills, they know where they stand, even if that is at the bottom.“Americans and Western Europeans especially had an unrealistically sunny assessment of their own capabilities,“ Dunning said by telephone in a separate interview, “while Japanese and Koreans tended to give a reasonable ass
38、essment of their performance. In certain areas, such as athletic performance, which can be easily quantified, there is less self-delusion, the researchers said. But even in some cases in which the failure should seem obvious, the perpetrator is blithely unaware of the problem.“This was especially tr
39、ue in the areas of logical reasoning, where research subjects students at Cornell University, where the two researchers were basedoften rated themselves highly even when they flubbed all questions in a reasoning test.Later, when the students were instructed in logical reasoning, they scored better o
40、n a test but rate themselves lower, having learned what constituted competence in this area.Grammar was another area in which objective knowledge was helpful in determining competence, but the more subjective area of humor posed different challenges, the researchers said.Participants were asked to r
41、ate how funny certain jokes were, and compare their responses with what an expert panel of comedians thought. On average, participants overestimated their sense of humor by about 16 percentage points.This might be thought of as the “above-average effect“, the notion that most Americans would rate th
42、emselves as above average, a statistical impossibility.The researchers also conducted pilot studies of doctors and gun enthusiasts. The doctors overestimated how well they had performed on a test of medical diagnoses and the gun fanciers thought they knew more than they actually did about gun safety
43、.So who should be trusted: The person who admits incompetence or the one who shows confidence? Neither, according to Dunning.“You cant take them at their word. Youve got to take a look at their performance,“ Dunning added.14 Why do incompetent people rarely know they are inept?（A）They are too inept
44、to know what competence is.（B） They are not skillful at logical reasoning, grammar, and sense of humor.（C） They lack the basic skills to evaluate their performance realistically.（D）They have some ability to over criticize themselves.15 Which of the following statement is NOT true, according to the p
45、assage?（A）Students at Cornell University often rated themselves highly even when they flubbed all questions in a reasoning test.（B） Grammar was an area in which objective knowledge was helpful in determining competence.（C） Participants in the test estimated their sense of humor by about 16 percentag
46、e points.（D）Students scored better on a logical reasoning test but rated themselves lower.16 What do you know about “above-average effect“ based on the passage?（A）Most Americans assess themselves as above average.（B） American doctors overestimated how well they had performed on a test of medical diagnoses.（C） American gun enthusiasts thought they knew more than they actually did about gun safety.（D）All of the above.
