昆明理工大学研究生英语2012 A卷.doc

昆明理工大学研究生试卷2012级硕士研究生(学术型)2012-2013学年上学期综合英语期末试卷(答案必须全部做在答题纸上)考试时间: 授课教师:专业: 学生姓名: 学号:Part I Reading Comprehension (40 points)Directions: There are four reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions. Choose the best answer from the four choices given and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.Passage 1The $ 11 billion self-help industry is built on the idea that you should turn negative thoughts like “I never do anything right” into positive ones like “I can succeed”. But was positive thinking advocate Norman Vincent Peale right? Is there power in positive thinking?Researchers in Canada just published a study in the Journal of Psychological Science that says trying to get people to think more positively can actually have the opposite effect: it can simply highlight how unhappy they are.The studys author, Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elain Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, begin by citing older research showing that when people get feedback which they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better. If you tell your dim friend that he has the potential of an Einstein, youre just underlining his faults. In one 1990s experiment, a team including psychologist Joel Cooper of Princeton asked participants to write essays opposing funding for the disabled. When the essayists were later praised for their sympathy, they felt even worse about what they had written.In their experiment, Wood, Lee and Perunovic measured 68 students self-esteem. The participants were then asked to write down their thoughts and feelings for four minutes. Every 15 seconds, one group of students, heard a bell. When it rang, they were supposed to tell themselves, “Im lovable”. Those with low self-esteem didnt feel better after the forced self-affirmation. In fact, their moods turned significantly darker than those of members of the control group, who werent urged to think positive thoughts.The paper provides support for newer forms of psychotherapy that urge people to accept their negative thoughts and feelings rather than fight them. In the fighting, we not only often fail but can make things worse. Meditation techniques, in contrast, can teach people to put their shortcomings into a larger, more realistic perspective. Call it the power of negative thinking.1. What do we learn from the first paragraph about the self-help industry?A. It is a highly profitable industry.B. It is based on the concept of positive thinking.C. It was established by Norman Vincent Peale.D. It has yielded positive results.2. According to paragraph 3, if you tell your dim friend that he has the potential of an Einstein, it seems that you are: A. encouraging your friend.B. emphasizing your friends negative thinking.C. invigorating your friend.D. emphasizing your friends positive thinking.3. What do we learn from the experiment of Wood, Lee and Perunovic?A. It is important for people to continually boost their self-esteem.B. Self-affirmation can bring a positive change to ones mood.C. Forcing a person to think positive thoughts may lower their self-esteem.D. People with low self-esteem seldom write down their true feelings.4. According to paragraph 5, positive thinking is helpful to whom? A. a person with low self-esteemB. a person with high self-esteemC. a person turning his moods darkerD. a person with forced self-affirmation5. What do we learn from the last paragraph?A. The effects of positive thinking vary from person to person.B. Meditation may prove to be a good form of psychotherapy.C. Different people tend to have different ways of thinking.D. People can avoid making mistakes through meditation. Passage 2The big identity-theft bust last week was just a taste of whats to come. Heres how to protect your good name. HERES THE SCARY THING about the identity-theft ring that the feds cracked last week: there was nothing any of its estimated 40,000 victims could have done to prevent it from happening. This was an inside job, according to court documents. A lowly help-desk worker at Teledata Communications, a software firm that helps banks access credit reports online, allegedly stole passwords for those reports and sold them to a group of 20 thieves at $60 a pop. That allowed the gang to cherry-pick consumers with good credit and applied for all kinds of accounts in their names. Cost to the victims: $3 million and rising. Even scarier is that this, the largest identity-theft bust to date, is just a drop in the bit bucket. More than 700,000 Americans have their credit hijacked every year. Its one of crimes biggest growth markets. A name, address and Social Security number-which can often be found on the Web-is all anybody needs to apply for a bogus line of credit. Credit companies make $1.3 trillion annually and lose less than 2% of that revenue to fraud, so theres little financial incentive for them to make the application process more secure. As it stands now, its up to you to protect your identity. The good news is that there are plenty of steps you can take. Most credit thieves are opportunists, not well-organized gangs. A lot of them go Dumpster diving for those millions of pre-approved credit-card mailings that go out every day. Others steal wallets and return them, taking only a Social Security number. Shredding your junk mail and leaving your Social Security card at home can save a lot of agony later. But the most effective way to keep your identity clean is to check your credit reports once or twice a year. There are three major credit-report outfits: Equifax (at ), Trans-Union () and Experian (). All allow you to order reports online, which is a lot better than wading through voice-mail hell on their 800 lines. Of the three, I found TransUnions website to be the cheapest and most comprehensive-laying out state-by-state prices, rights and tips for consumers in easy-to-read fashion. If youre lucky enough to live in Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey or Vermont, you are entitled to one free report a year by law. Otherwise its going to cost $8 to $14 each time. Avoid services that offer to monitor your reports year-round for about $70; thats $10 more than the going rate among thieves. If you think youre a victim of identity theft, you can ask for fraud alerts to be put on file at each of the three credit-report companies. You can also download a theft-report form at /idtheft, which, along with a local police report, should help when irate creditors come knocking. Just dont expect justice. That audacious help-desk worker was one of the fewer than 2% of identity thieves who are ever caught.6. What is the trend of credit-theft crime? A. Tightly suppressed. B. More frightening. C. Rapidly increasing. D. loosely controlled.7. The expression “inside job” most probably means _. A. a crime that is committed by a person working for the victim B. a crime that should be punished severely C. a crime that does great harm to the victim D. a crime that poses a great threat to the society 8. The creditors can protect their identity in the following way except _.A. destroying your junk mailB. leaving your Social Security card at homeC. visiting the credit-report website regularly D. obtaining the free report from the government9. Why is it easy to have credit-theft?A. More people are using credit service. B. The application program is not safe enough.C. Creditors usually disclose their identity.D. Creditors are not careful about their identity.10. What is the best title of the text?A. The danger of credit-theft B. The loss of the creditorsC. How to protect your good nameD. Why the creditors lose their identity Passage 3Occasional self-medication has always been part of normal living. The making and selling of drugs have a long history and are closely linked, like medical practice itself, with the belief in magic. Only during the last hundred years or so has the development of scientific techniques made it possible for some of the causes of symptoms to be understood, so that more accurate diagnosis has become possible. The doctor is now able to follow up the correct diagnosis of many illnesses with specific treatment of their causes. In many other illnesses, of which the causes remain unknown, it is still limited, like the unqualified prescribes, to the treatment of symptoms. The doctor is trained to decide when to treat symptoms only and when to attack the cause: this is the essential difference between medical prescribing and self-medication. The advance of technology has brought about much progress in some fields of medicine, including the development of scientific drag therapy. In many countries public health organization is improving and peoples nutritional standards have risen. Parallel with such beneficial trends have two adverse effects. One is the use of high-pressure advertising by the pharmaceutical industry, which has tended to influence both patients and doctors and has led to the overuse of drugs generally. The other is the emergence of the sedentary society with its faulty ways of life: lack of exercise, over-eating, unsuitable eating, insufficient sleep, excessive smoking and drinking. People with disorders arising from faulty habits such as these, as well as from unhappy human relationships, often resort to self-medication and so add the taking of pharmaceuticals to the list. Advertisers go to great lengths to catch this market. Clever advertising, aimed at chronic sufferers who will try anything because doctors have not been able to cure them, can induce such faith in a preparation, particularly if steeply priced, that it will produce-by suggestion-a very real effect in some people. Advertisements are also aimed at people suffering from mild complaints such as simple colds and coughs, which clear up by themselves within a short time. These are the main reasons why laxatives, indigestion remedies, painkillers, tonics, vitamin and iron tablets and many other preparations are found in quantity in many households. It is doubtful whether taking these things ever improves a persons health; it may even make it worse. Worse because the preparation may contain unsuitable ingredients; worse because the taker may become dependent on them; worse because they might be taken in excess; worse because they may cause poisoning, and worse of all because symptoms of some serious underlying cause may be masked and therefore medical help may not be sought.11. The first paragraph is intended to_.A. suggest that self-medication has a long history B. define what diagnosis means exactly C. praise doctors for their expertise D. tell the symptoms from the causes 12. Advertisements are aimed at people suffering from mild complaints because _. A. they often watch ads on TV B. they are more likely to buy the drugs advertised C. they generally lead a sedentary life D. they dont take to sports and easily catch colds 13. Paragraphs 2 and 3 explain _. A. those good things are not without side effects B. why clever advertising is so powerful C. why in modern times self-medication is still practised D. why people develop faulty ways of life 14. The author tells us in paragraph 4 _. A. the reasons for keeping medicines at home B. peoples doubt about taking drugs C. what kind of medicine people should prepare at home D. the possible harms self-medication may do to people 15. The best title for the passage would be _. A. Medical Practice B. Clever Advertising C. Self-Medication D. Self-Treatment Passage 4Age has its privileges in America. And one of the more prominent of them is the senior citizen discount. Anyone who has reached a certain agein some cases as low as 55is automatically entitled to a dazzling array of price reductions at nearly every level of commercial life. Eligibility is determined not by ones need but by the date on ones birth certificate. Practically unheard of a generation ago, the discounts have become a routine part of many businessesas common as color televisions in motel rooms and free coffee on airliners.People with gray hair often are given the discounts without even asking for them；yet, millions of Americans above age 60 are healthy and solvent. Businesses that would never dare offer discounts to college students or anyone under 30 freely offer them to older Americans. The practice is acceptable because of the widespread belief that “elderly” and “needy” are synonymous. Perhaps that once was true, but today elderly Americans as a group have a lower poverty rate than the rest of the population. To be sure, there is economic diversity within the elderly, and many older Americans are poor, but most of them arent.It is impossible to determine the impact of the discounts on individual companies. For many firms, they are a stimulus to revenue. But in other cases the discounts are given at the expense, directly or indirectly, of younger Americans. Moreover, they are a direct irritant in what some politicians and scholars see as a coming conflict between the generations.Generational tensions are being fueled by continuing debate over Social Security benefits, which mostly involves a transfer of resources from the young to the old. Employment is another sore point. Buoyed by laws and court decisions, more and more older Americans are declining the retirement dinner in favor of staying on the job-thereby lessening employment and promotion opportunities for younger workers.Far from a kind of charity they once were, senior citizen discounts have become a formidable economic privilege to a group with millions of members who dont need them.It no longer makes sense to treat the elderly as a single group whose economic needs deserve priority over those of others. Senior citizen discounts only enhance the myth that older people cant take care of themselves and need special treatment; they threaten the creation of a new myth, that the elderly are ungrateful and taking for themselves at the expense of children and other age groups. Senior citizen discounts are the essence of the very thing older Americans are fighting against discrimination by age.16.We learn from the first paragraph that _.A. offering senior citizens discounts has become routine commercial practiceB. senior citizen discounts have enabled many old people to live a decent lifeC. giving senior citizens discounts has boosted the market for the elderlyD. senior citizens have to show their birth certificates to get a discount（A）17.What assumption lies behind the practice of senior citizen discounts?A. Businesses, having made a lot of profits, should do something for society in return.B. Old people are entitled to special treatment for the contribution they made to society.C. The elderly, being financially underprivileged, need humane help from society.D. Senior citizen discounts can make up for the inadequacy of the Social Security system.（C）18.According to some politicians and scholars, senior citizen discounts will _.A. make old people even more dependent on societyB. intensify conflicts between the young and the oldC. have adverse financial impact on business companiesD. bring a marked increase in the companys revenues（B）19.How does the author view the Social Security system?A. It encourages elderly people to retire in time.B. It opens up broad career prospects for young people.C. It benefits the old at the expense of the young.D. It should be reinforced by laws and court decisions.（C）20.Which of the following best summarizes the authors main argument?A. Senior citizens should fight hard against age discrimination.B. The elderly are selfish and taking senior discounts for granted.C. Priority should be given to the economic needs of senior citizens.D. Senior citizen discounts may well be a type of age discrimination.（D）Part II Cloze (15 points)Directions:Choose an appropriate word from the following list to fill in each of the following blanks. Each word can be used only ONCE. Change the word form where necessary. Write your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. joyful pursue meaningful becoming foreseecomplaint customer scale despite afford capital declare cardinal partial pleasureHappiness is never more than 1 . There are no pure states of mankind. Whatever else happiness may be, it is neither in having nor in being, but in 2 . What the Founding Fathers 3 for us as an inherent right, we should do well to remember, was not happiness but the 4 of happiness. What they might have underlined, could they have 5 the happiness market, is the 6 fact that happiness is in the pursuit itself, in the 7 pursuit of what is life-engaging and life-revealing, which is to say, in the idea of becoming. In hundreds of conversations during our year there and during three half summer stays since, we repeatedly notice that, 8 their simpler living, the Scots appeared no less 9 than Americans. We heard 10 about Margaret Thatcher, but never about being underpaid or unable to 11 wants. With less money, there was no less satisfaction with living, no less warmth of spirit, no less 12 in one anothers company. By all means let the happiness-market sell us minor satisfactions and even minor follies so long as we keep them in 13 and buy them out of spiritual change. I am no 14 for either Puritanism or asceticism. But drop any real spiritual 15 at those ba