2012年全国硕士研究生入学考试英语(二)试题(4)

　　Part B

　　Directions:

　　Read the following text and answer the questions by reading information from the left column that corresponds to each of the marked details given in the right column. There are two extra choices in the right column. Make your answer on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)

　　“University history, the history of what man has accomplished in the world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here,” wrote the Victorian Thomas Carlyle Well, not any more it is not.

　　Suddenly, Britain looks to have fallen out with its favorite historical form. This could be no more than a passing literary craze, but it also points to a broader truth about how we now approach the past: less concerned with learning from our forefathers and more interested in feeling their pain. Today, we want empathy, not inspiration.

　　From the earliest days of the Renaissance, the writing of history meant recounting the exemplary lives of great men. In 1337, Petrarch began work on his rambling writing Debins Illustribus-on Famous Men, highlighting the virtus (or virtue) of classical heroes. Petrarch celebrated their greatness in conquering fortune and rising to the top. This was the biographical tradition which Niccolo Machiavelli turned on its head. In The Prince, he championed cunning, ruthlessness, and boldness, rather than virtue, mercy and justice, as the skills of successful leaders.

　　Over time, the attributes of greatness shifted. The Romantics commemorated the leading painters and author of their day, stressing the uniqueness of the artist’s person experience rather than public glory. By contrast, the Victorian author Samuel Smile wrote self-Help as a catalogue of the worthy lives of engineers, industrialists and explorers. “The valuable examples which they furnish of the power of self -help, of patient purpose resolute working and steadfast integrity, issuing in the formation of truly noble and manly character, exhibit.” wrote Smile, “what it is in the power of each to accomplish for himself.” His biographies of James Watt, Richard Arkwright and Josian Wedgwood were held up as beacons to guide the working man through his difficult life.

　　This was all a bit bourgeois for Thomas Carlyle, who focused his biographies on the truly heroic lives of Martin Luther, Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte. These epochal figures represented lives hard to imitate, but to be acknowledged as possessing higher authority than mere mortals.

　　Not everyone was convinced by such bombast. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” wrote Marx and Engel in The Communist Manifesto. For them, history did nothing, it possessed no immense wealth nor waged battles: “It is man, living man who does all that.” And history should be the story of the masses and their record of struggle, As such, it needed to appreciate the economic realities, the social contexts and power relations in which each epoch stood. For:“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past.”

　　This was the tradition which revolutionized our appreciation of the past. In place of Thomas Carlyle, Britain nurtured Christopher Hill, EP Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm. History from below stood alongside biographies of great men. Whole new realms of understanding - from gender to race to cultural studies - were opened up as scholars unpicked the multiplicity of lost societies. And it transformed public history too: downstairs became just as fascinating as upstairs.

　　Section III     Translation

　　46. Directions:

　　Translate the following text from English into Chinese. Write your translation on ANSWER SHEET 2. (15 points)

　　When people in developing countries worry about migration, they are usually concerned at the prospect of their best and brightest departure to Silicon Valley or to hospitals and universities in developed world. These are the kind of workers that countries like Britain, Canada and Australia try to attract by using immigration rules that privilege college graduates.

　　Lots of studies have found that well-educated people from developing countries are particularly likely to emigrate. A big survey of Indian households in 2004 found that nearly 40% of emigrants had more than a high-school education, compared with around 3.3% of all Indians over the age 25. This “brain drain” has long bothered policymakers in poor countries. They fear that it hurts their economies, depriving them of much-needed skilled workers who could have taught at their universities, worked in their hospitals and come up with clever new products for their factories to make.

　　Section IV     Writing

　　Part A

　　47. Directions:

　　Suppose you have found something wrong with the electronic dictionary that you bought from an online store the other day. Write an email to the customer service center to

　　1)make a complaint, and

　　2)demand a prompt solution.

　　You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2.

　　Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use“Zhang Wei”instead.

　　Part B

　　48. Directions:

　　Write an essay based on the following table. In your writing, you should

　　1) describe the table, and

　　2) give your comments.

　　You should write at least 150 words.

　　Write your essay on ANSWER SHEET 2. (15point)

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