英语专业八级改错真题(1999-2009)完整含答案版本.doc

99年改错The hunter-gatherer tribes that today live as our prehistoric 1._human ancestors consume primarily a vegetable diet supplementing 2._with animal foods. An analysis of 58 societies of modem hunter- gatherers, including the Kung of southern Africa, revealed that one half emphasize gathering plant foods, one-third concentrate on fishingand only one-sixth are primarily hunters. Overall, two-thirdsand more of the hunter-gatherers calories come from plants. Detailed 3._studies of the Kung by the food scientists at the University ofLondon, showed that gathering is a more productive source of foodthan is hunting. An hour of hunting yields in average about 100 4._edible calories, as an hour of gathering produces 240. 5._ Plant foods provide for 60 percent to 80 percent of the Kung 6._diet, and no one goes hungry when the hunt fails. Interestingly, ifthey escape fatal infections or accidents, these contemporaryaborigines live to old ages despite of the absence of medical care. 7._They experience no obesity, no middle-aged spread, little dental decay, no high blood pressure, on heart disease, and their bloodcholesterol levels are very low( about half of the average American 8._adult), if no one is suggesting what we return to an aboriginal life 9._style, we certainly could use their eating habits as a model for 10._healthier diet.2000改错The grammatical words which play so large a part in English grammar are for the most part sharply and obviously different 1._ from the lexical words. A rough and ready difference which may seem the most obvious is that grammatical words have“ less meaning”, but in fact some grammarians have called them 2._ “empty” words as opposed in the “full” words of vocabulary. 3._ But this is a rather misled way of expressing the distinction. 4._ Although a word like the is not the name of something as man is, it is very far away from being meaningless; there is a sharp 5._ difference in meaning between “man is vile and” “the man is vile”, yet the is the single vehicle of this difference in meaning. 6._ Moreover, grammatical words differ considerably among themselves as the amount of meaning they have, even in the 7._ lexical sense. Another name for the grammatical words has been “little words”. But size is by no mean a good criterion for 8._ distinguishing the grammatical words of English, when we consider that we have lexical words as go, man, say, car. Apart 9._ from this, however, there is a good deal of truth in what some people say: we certainly do create a great number of obscurity 10._ when we omit them. This is illustrated not only in the poetry of Robert Browning but in the prose of telegrams and newspaper headlines.2001改错During the early years of this century, wheat was seen as the very lifeblood of Western Canada. People on city streets watched the yields and the price of wheat in almost as much feeling as if 1._ they were growers. The marketing of wheat became an increasing 2._ favorite topic of conversation. War set the stage for the most dramatic events in marketing the western crop. For years, farmers mistrusted speculative grain selling as carried on through the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. Wheat prices were generally low in the autumn, so farmers could 3._ not wait for markets to improve. It had happened too often that they sold their wheat soon shortly after harvest when farm debts 4._ were coming due, just to see prices rising and speculators getting rich. 5._ On various occasions, producer groups, asked firmer control, 6._ but the government had no wish to become involving, at 7._ least not until wartime when wheat prices threatened to run wild. Anxious to check inflation and rising life costs, the federal 8._ government appointed a board of grain supervisors to deal with deliveries from the crops of 1917 and 1918. Grain Exchange trading was suspended, and farmers sold at prices fixed by the board. To handle with the crop of 1919, the governmentappointed 9._ the first Canadian Wheat Board, with total authority to10._ buy, sell, and set prices.2002改错There are great impediments to the general use of a standard in pronunciation comparable to that existing in spelling (orthography). One is the fact that pronunciation is learnt “naturally” and unconsciously, and orthography is learnt 1_ deliberately and consciously. Large numbers of us, in fact, remain throughout our lives quite unconscious with what our speech 2._ sounds like when we speak out, and it often comes as a shock 3._when we firstly hear a recording of ourselves. It is not a voice we 4._recognize at once, whereas our own handwriting is something which we almost always know. We begin the natural learning 5._of pronunciation long before we start learning to read or write, and in our early years we went on unconsciously imitating and 6._practicing the pronunciation of those around us for many more hours per every day than we ever have to spend learning even our 7._difficult English spelling. This is “natural”, therefore, that our 8._speech-sounds should be those of our immediate circle; after all, as we have seen, speech operates as a means of holding a community 9._and giving a sense of belonging. We learn quite early to recognize a “stranger”, someone who speaks with an accent of a different community-perhaps only a few miles far. 10._2003改错Demographic indicators show that Americans in the postwar period were more eager than ever to establish families. They quickly brought down the age at marriage for both men and women and brought the birth rate to a twentieth century height after more than a hundred (1)_ years of a steady decline, producing the “baby boom.” These young (2)_ adults established a trend of early marriage and relatively large families that Went for more than two decades and caused a major (3)_ but temporary reversal of long-term demographic patterns. From the 1940S through the early 1960s, Americans married at a high rate (4)_ and at a younger age than their Europe counterparts.(5)_ Less noted but equally more significant, the men and women on who (6)_ formed families between 1940 and 1960 nevertheless reduced the (7)_ divorce rate after a postwar peak; their marriages remained intact to a greater extent than did that of couples who married in earlier as well (8)_ as later decades. Since the United States maintained its dubious (9)_ distinction of having the highest divorce rate in the world, the temporary decline in divorce did not occur in the same extent in (10)_ Europe. Contrary to fears of the experts, the role of breadwinner and homemaker was not abandoned.2004改错One of the most important non-legislative functions of the U.S Congressis the power to investigate. This power is usually delegated to committees - eitherstanding committees, special committees set for a specific (1)_purpose, or joint committees consisted of members of both houses. (2)_Investigations are held to gather information on the need forfuture legislation, to test the effectiveness of laws already passed,to inquire into the qualifications and performance of members andofficials of the other branches, and in rare occasions, to lay the (3)_groundwork for impeachment proceedings. Frequently, committeesrely outside experts to assist in conducting investigative hearings (4)_and to make out detailed studies of issues. (5)_There are important corollaries to the investigative power. Oneis the power to publicize investigations and its results. Most (6)_committee hearings are open to public and are reported (7)_widely in the mass media. Congressional investigationsnevertheless represent one important tool available to lawmakers (8)_to inform the citizenry and to arouse public interests in national issues.(9)_Congressional committees also have the power to compeltestimony from unwilling witnesses, and to cite for contemptof Congress witnesses who refuse to testify and for perjurythese who give false testimony. (10)_2005改错The University as Business A number of colleges and universities have announced steeptuition increases for next year much steeper than the current, very low, rate of inflation. They say the increases are needed because of a loss in value of university endowments heavily investing in common 1 stock. I am skeptical. A business firm chooses the price that maximizes its net revenues, irrespective fluctuations in income; and increasingly the 2 outlook of universities in the United States is indistinguishable from those of 3 business firms. The rise in tuitions may reflect the fact economic uncertainty 4 increases the demand for education. The biggest cost of being in the school is foregoing income from a job (this is primarily a factor in 5 graduate and professional-school tuition); the poor ones job prospects, 6 the more sense it makes to reallocate time from the job market to education, in order to make oneself more marketable. The ways which universities make themselves attractive to students 7 include soft majors, student evaluations of teachers, giving students a governance role, and eliminate required courses. 8 Sky-high tuitions have caused universities to regard their students as customers. Just as business firms sometimes collude to shorten the 9 rigors of competition, universities collude to minimize the cost to them of the athletes whom they recruit in order to stimulate alumni donations, so the best athletes now often bypass higher education in order to obtain salaries earlier from professional teams. And until they were stopped by the antitrust authorities, the Ivy League schools colluded to limit competition for the best students, by agreeing not to award scholarships on the basis of merit rather than purely of need-just like business firms agreeing not to give discounts on their best 10 customer.2006改错We use language primarily as a means of communication withother human beings. Each of us shares with the community in which welive a store of words and meanings as well as agreeing conventions as 1_to the way in which words should be arranged to convey a particular 2_message: the English speaker has in his disposal vocabulary and a 3_set of grammatical rules which enables him to communicate his 4_thoughts and feelings, in a variety of styles, to the other English 5_speakers. His vocabulary, in particular, both that which he uses activelyand that which he recognizes, increases in size as he growsold as a result of education and experience. 6_But, whether the language store is relatively small or large, the systemremains no more, than a psychological reality for tike inpidual, unlesshe has a means of expressing it in terms able to be seen by another 7_member of his linguistic community; he bas to give tile system aconcrete transmission form. We take it for granted rice two most 8_common forms of transmission-by means of sounds produced by ourvocal organs (speech) or by visual signs (writing). And these are 9_among most striking of human achievements. 10_2007改错From what has been said, it must be clear that no one can make very positive statements about how language originated. There is no material in any language today and in the earliest 1 _ _ records of ancient languages show us language in a new and 2 _emerging state. It is often said, of course, that the language 3 _ _originated in cries of anger, fear, pain and pleasure, and the 4 _ necessary evidence is entirely lacking: there are no remote tribes, no ancient records, providing evidence of a language with a large proportion of such cries 5 _ than we find in English. It is true that the absence of such evidence does not disprove the theory, but in 6_ other grounds too the theory is not very attractive. People of all races and languages make rather similar noises in return to pain or pleasure. The fact that 7 such noises are similar on the lips of Frenchmen and Malaysians whose languages are utterly different, serves to emphasize on the fundamental difference 8_between these noises and language proper. We maysay that the cries of pain or chortles of amusement are largely reflex actions, instinctive to large extent, 9 whereas language proper does not consist of signsbut of these that have to be learnt and that are 10_wholly conventional.2008年改错The desire to use language as a sign of national identity is a very natural one，and in result language has played a 1_prominent part in national movesMen have often felt the need 2_to cultivate a given language to show that they are distinctive 3_from another racewhose hegemony they resentAt the time the 4._United States split off from Britain，for example，there were proposals that independence should be linguistically accepted by 5._the use of a different language from those of Britain6._There was even one proposal that Americans should adopt HebrewOthers favoured the adoption of Greek，though，as one man put it，things would certainly be simpler for Americans if they stuck on to 7._English and made the British learn GreekAt the end，as everyone 8._ knows，the two countries adopted the practical and satisfactory solution of carrying with the same language as beforeSince nearly two hundred years now，they have shown the 9._world that political independence and national identity can be 10._ complete without sacrificing the enormous mutual advantages of a common language2009年改错The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passesfrom one school child to the next and illustrates the further difference (1)_between shcool lore and nursery lore. In nursery lore a verse, learntin early childhood, is not usually passed on again when the little listener (2)_has grown up, and has children of their own, or even grandchildren. (3)_The period between learning a nursery rhyme and transmittingIt may be something from twenty to seventy years. With the playground (4)_lore, therefore, a rhyme may be excitedly passed on whtin the very hour (5)_it is learnt; and in the general, it passes between children of the (6)_same age, or nearly so, since it is uncommon for the difference in agebetween playmates to be more than five years. If therefore, a playgroundrhyme can be shown to have been currently for a hundred years, or (7)_even just for fifty, it follows that it has been retransmitting overand over; very possibly it has passed along a chain of two or three (8)_hundred young hearers and tellers, and the wonder is that it remains live (9)_after so much handling, to let alone that it bears resemblance to the (10)_original wording.2010年改错So far as we can tell, all human languages are equally complete and perfect as instruments of communication: that is, every language appears to be as well equipped as any other to say the things its speakers want to say. It may or may not be appropriate to talk about primitive peoples or cultures, but that is another matter. Certainly, not all groups of people are equally competent in nuclear physics or psychology or the cultivation of rice or the engraving of Benares brass. But this is not the fault of their language. The Eskimos can speak about snow with a great deal more precision and subtlety than we can in English, but this is not because the Eskimo language (one of those sometimes miscalled primitive) is inherently more precise and subtle than English. This example does not bring to light a defect in English, a show of unexpected primitiveness. The position is simply and obviously that the Eskimos and the English live in different environments. The English language would be just as rich in terms for different kinds of snow, presumably, if the environments in which English was habitually used made such distinction important.Similarly, we have no reason to doubt that the Eskimo language could be as precise and subtle on the subject of motor manufacture or cricket if these topics formed part of the Eskimos life. For obvious historical reasons, Englishmen in the nineteenth century could not talk about motorcars with the minute discrimination which is possible today: cars were not a part of their culture. But they had a host of terms for horse-drawn vehicles which send us, puzzled, to a historical dictionary when we are reading Scott or Dickens. How many of us could distinguish between a chaise, a landau, a victoria, a brougham, a c