Part 2 Reading Comprehension (20 points, 20 minutes)
In this section you will find after each of the passages a number of questions or unfinished statements about the passage, each with four (A, B, C and D) suggested answers or way of finishing. You must choose the one which you think fits best.
To Err Is Human by Lewis Thomas
Everyone must have had at least one personal experience with a computer error by this time. Bank balances are suddenly reported to have jumped form $379 into the millions, appeals for charitable contributions are mailed over and over to people with crazy sounding names at your address, department stores send the wrong bills, utility companies write that they’re turning everything off, that sort of thing. If you manage to get in touch with someone and complain, you then get instantaneously typed, guilty letters from the same computer, saying, “Our computer was in error, and an adjustment is being made in your account.”
These are supposed to be the sheerest, blindest accidents. Mistakes are not believed to be the normal behavior of a good machine. If things go wrong, it must be a personal, human error, the result of fingering, tampering a button getting stuck, someone hitting the wrong key. The computer, at its normal best, is infallible.
I wonder whether this can be true. After all, the whole point of computers is that they represent an extension of the human brain, vastly improved upon but nonetheless human, superhuman maybe. A good computer can think clearly and quickly enough to beat you at chess, and some of them have even been programmed to write obscure verse. They can do anything we can do, and more besides.
It is not yet known whether a computer has its own consciousness, and it would be hard to find out about this. When you walk into one of those great halls now built for the huge machines, and standing listening, it is easy to imagine that the faint, distant noises are the sound of thinking, and the turning of the spools gives them the look of wild creatures rolling their eyes in the effort to concentrate, choking with information. But real thinking, and dreaming, are other matters. On the other hand, the evidence of something like an unconscious, equivalent to ours, are all around, in every mail. As extensions of the human brain, they have been constructed the same property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities.
Question 1: The title of the writing “To Err Is Human” implies that
A. making mistakes is confined only to human beings.
B. every human being cannot avoid making mistakes.
C. all human beings are always making mistakes.
D. every human being is born to make bad mistakes.
Question 2: The first paragraph implies that
A. computer errors are so obvious that one can hardly prevent them form happening.
B. a computer is so capable of making errors that none of them is avoidable.
C. computers make such errors as miscalculation and inaccurate reporting.
D. computers can’t think so their errors are natural and unavoidable.
Question 3: The author uses his hypothesis that “computers represent an extension of the human brain” in order to indicate that
A. human beings are not infallible, nor are computers.
B. computers are bound to make as many errors as human beings.
C. errors made by computers can be avoided the same as human mistakes can be avoided.
D. computers are made by human beings and so are their errors.
Question 4: The rhetoric the author employed in writing the third paragraph, especially the sentence “A good computer can think clearly and quickly enough to beat you at chess…” is usually referred to in writing as
A. climax. B. personification C. hyperbole D. onomatopoeia
Question 5: The author compared the faint and distant sound of the computer to the sound of thinking and regarded it as the product of A. dreaming and thinking B. some property of errors C. consciousness D possibilities
The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American by Jeff Smith
Our real American foods have come from our soil and have been used by many groups — those who already lived here and those who have come here to live. The Native Americans already had developed an interesting cuisine using the abundant foods that were so prevalent.
The influence that the English had upon our national eating habits is easy to see. They were a tough lot, those English, and they ate in a tough manner. They wiped their mouths on the tablecloth, if there happened to be one, and they ate until you would expect them to burst. European travelers to this country in those days were most often shocked by American eating habits, which included too much salt and too much liquor. Not much has changed! And, the Revolutionists refused to use the fork since it marked them as Europeans. The fork was not absolutely common on the American dinner table until about the time of the Civil War, the 1860s. Those English were a tough lot.
Other immigrant groups added their own touches to the preparation of our New World food products. The groups that came still have a special sense of self-identity through your ancestors who came from other lands was supposed to disappear in this country. The term melting pot was first used in reference to America in the late 1700s, so this belief that we would all become the same has been with us for a long time. Thank goodness it has never worked. The various immigrant groups continue to add flavor to the pot, all right, but you can pick out the individual flavors easily.
The largest ancestry group in America is the English. There are more people in America who claim to have come from English blood than there are in England. But is their food English? Thanks be to God, it is not! It is American. The second largest group is the Germans, then the Irish, the Afro-Americans, the French, the Italians, the Scottish, and the Polish. The Mexican and American Indian groups are all smaller than any of the above, though they were the original cooks in this country.
Question 6: Which of the following statements is nearly identical in meaning with the sentence “they ate until you would expect them to burst” in the second paragraph?
A. You bet they would never stop to eat till they are full.
B. What you can expect is that they would not stop eating unless there was no more food.
C. The only thing you would expect is that they wouldn’t stop eating till they had had enough of the food.
D. the only thing is that they wouldn’t stop eating till they felt sick.
Question 7: Which of the following statements is Not true?
A. English people had bad table manners.
B. American food was exclusively unique in its flavors and varieties.
C. American diet contained a lot of fat, salt and liquor.
D. Europeans were not at all accustomed to the American way of eating.
Question 8: The author’s attitude towards American food is that
A. American food is better than foods from other countries.
B. American food is superior to European food.
C. European food had helped enrich the flavors and varieties of American food.
D. People from other countries could still identify from the American foods the foods that were unique to their countries.
Q9: Immigrant groups, when they got settled down in the United States, still have had their own sense of self-identity because
A. their foods are easily identified among all the foods American eat.
B. their foods stand out in sharp contrast to foods of other countries.
C. they know pretty well what elements of American food are of their own countries’ origin.
D. they know pretty well how their foods contribute to American cuisine.
Question 10: Which of the following statements is true?
A. People from other cultures or nations start to lose their self-identity once they get settled down in America.
B. The “melting pot” is supposed melt all the foods but in reality it doesn’t.
C. The special sense of self-identity of people from other countries can’t be maintained once they become Americans.
D. The “melting pot” finds it capable of melting all the food traditions into the American tradition.
1.评分要点：
ⅰ 简要描述该事件。普罗文扎诺让人用锤子敲折了贪污的雇员的拇指，再请医生接上，但没有开除他。普罗文扎诺因此被起诉。作者觉得他的做法对于企业经理大有教益。
ⅱ 在以人为本的经营环境里，管理者面临以下问题：
A. 如何对付表现最差的雇员。解雇评估结果最差的工人。普罗文扎诺的创举将成为管理手段的新内容，“管理手段”不能是空话。
B. 如何成为人们首选的雇主。普罗文扎诺的做法向求职者传递了明白的信息：他的公司很讲人道。
C. 如何杀一儆百。此举可能会使雇员的贪污行为越来越少。可口可乐公司前首席执行官持同样观点，但没有实行。
D. 如何区别对待雇员。韦尔奇主张，经理应当根据雇员的不同表现给予不同的待遇;但与普罗文扎诺相比，这位管理大师的想象力还不够丰富。
ⅰ 整体效果：
A. 总结作者的真正意图：许多企业管理有许多问题尚待解决，普罗文扎诺一案值得深思。
B. 文字精炼、准确，语句完整、通顺，保留作者的诙谐口吻。
C. 语病、错别字、标点使用不当，倒扣分。
2.(40 points)
评分要点：
a) 核心信息：译文难以传达原文的神韵。
b) 产生原因，如：东、西方思维方式的不同——西方人的曲折细腻、复杂繁琐与分析解剖，东方人的省略锁事与不重分析等。
c) 具体特点，如：译文句子生硬、色彩单调、说理强而描绘弱。
d) 整体效果：文字精炼、准确;语句通顺、无语病;标点使用准确。
