英语专业八级改错10年真题

99 年改错年改错 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 fishing and only one sixth are primarily hunters Overall two thirds and more of the hunter gatherer s calories come from plants Detailed 3 studies of the Kung by the food scientists at the University of London showed that gathering is a more productive source of food than 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 if they escape fatal infections or accidents these contemporary aborigines 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 blood cholesterol 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 government appointed 9 the first Canadian Wheat Board with total authority to 10 buy sell and set prices 2002 改错改错 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 改错改错 One of the most important non legislative functions of the U S Congress is the power to investigate This power is usually delegated to committees either standing 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 for future legislation to test the effectiveness of laws already passed to inquire into the qualifications and performance of members and officials of the other branches and in rare occasions to lay the 3 groundwork for impeachment proceedings Frequently committees rely 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 One is 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 investigations nevertheless 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 compel testimony from unwilling witnesses and to cite for contempt of Congress witnesses who refuse to testify and for perjury these who give false testimony 10 2005 改错改错 The University as Business A number of colleges and universities have announced steep tuition 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 one s 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 改错改错 We use language primarily as a means of communication with other human beings Each of us shares with the community in which we live 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 actively and that which he recognizes increases in size as he grows old as a result of education and experience 6 But whether the language store is relatively small or large the system remains no more than a psychological reality for tike inpidual unless he 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 a concrete transmission form We take it for granted rice two most 8 common forms of transmission by means of sounds produced by our vocal organs speech or by visual signs writing And these are 9 among most striking of human achievements 10 2007 改错改错 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 may say 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 signs but of these that have to be learnt and that are 10 wholly conventional 2008 年改错年改错 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 moves Men have often felt the need 2 to cultivate a given language to show that they are distinctive 3 from another race whose hegemony they resent At 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 Britain 6 There was even one proposal that Americans should adopt Hebrew Others 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 Greek At the end as everyone 8 knows the two countries adopted the practical and satisfactory solution of carrying with the same language as before Since 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 language 2009 年改错年改错 The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passes from one school child to the next and illustrates the further difference 1 between shcool lore and nursery lore In nursery lore a verse learnt in 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 transmitting It 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 age between playmates to be more than five years If therefore a playground rhyme can be shown to have been currently for a hundred years or 7 even just for fifty it follows that it has been retransmitting over and 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