北京外国语大学硕士研究生入学考试英语语言文学专业能力测试试卷和英语基础测试技能样题.doc

北京外国语大学2011年硕士研究生入学考试英语语言文学专业能力测试试卷（样题）I. Summarize the two views (that of the author and that he criticizes) in the following passage and then write a commentary. Your answer should not exceed 1000 words (50%)资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Asian Americans have increasingly come to be viewed as a “model minority”. But are they as successful as claimed? And for whom are they supposed be model?资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 The model minority thesis first surfaced in the mid-1960s when journalists began publicizing the high educational attainment levels, high median incomes, low crime rates, and absence of juvenile delinquency and mental health problems among Asian Americans. This publicity served an important political purpose at the height of the civil rights movement: proponents of the thesis were in fact telling Black and Chicano activists that they should following examples set by Asian Americans who work hard to pull themselves up by the bootstraps instead of using ,militant protests to obtain their rights.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 Until today, similar political rhetoric can still be heard. Many politicians and pundits ask: “If Asian Americans can make it with their stress on hard work and education, why cant African Americans?” Such comparisons pit minorities against each other and generate African American resentment toward Asian Americans. The victims are blamed for their plight, rather than racism or an economy that has made many young African- American workers superfluous. 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 Without question, the socioeconomic status of Asian Americans as a whole has improved since the early 1940s. The median family income of Asian Americans in 1990 ($42,240) stood above the national average ($35,225). Asian American households are more affluent than any other racial or ethnic group including Whites. Asian Americans also have an enviable record of educational achievement, with almost twice the national average of college graduates.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 The figures, however, can be misleading. The celebration of Asian American success has obscured reality.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 First, most Asian-Americans live in California, Hawaii and New York states with higher incomes and higher costs of living than the national average. Thus, while Asian Americans living there may earn more, they also have to spend more. The so-called high earnings of Asian-Americans relative to Caucasians are really deceptive. Comparing family incomes is even more tricky. Some Asian-American groups do have higher family incomes than Caucasians. But they have more workers per family. For example, in 60% of Chinese American families (compared to only 51% among the US population as a whole), more than one person worked, which helps to account for their higher family income. If per capita income, rather than family income, had been used as the measure, then Chinese Americans are making considerably less than the national average.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 Second, a detailed study of the San Francisco-Oakland Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area showed that Asian Americans were unevenly distributed in the economy. Professionals clustered in accounting, dentistry, nursing, health technology, and engineering and were underrepresented in law, teaching, administration, social services, and higher levels of the medical professions. Managers were more likely to be self-employed than employees of large firms. Sales persons were retail clerks but seldom brokers or insurance agents. Clerical workers were mostly file clerk, typists, or office machine operators, and not secretaries or receptionists. Few Asian American held jobs in the heavy machine, electrical, paper, chemical, or construction industries. Most female operatives were garment workers. In short, Asian Americans were concentrated in occupations that did not pay as well as other jobs in the same industry.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 Third, the low unemployment rate of Asian Americans another measure often used to depict their economic success merely camouflages high underemployment. Wary of being on welfare, many Asian American workers apparently would rather hold low-paid, part-time, or seasonal jobs than receive public assistance.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 Fourth, the high labor force participation rate of Asian American women supposedly a sign of their ready acceptance by employers is in reality a reflection of the fact that more Asian American women are compelled to work because the male members of their families earn such low wages. It is true that working Asian American women earn a higher median income than do white working women, a larger percentage of them work full time, which helps to drive their median income upward. But despite their high educational level, they receive lower returns to their education than do white women, while the disparity between their returns and those of white men is even greater. In other words, they are not receiving earnings that are commensurate with their years of schooling.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 Fifth, with regard to the educational attainment of Asian Americans, the sizable influx of highly educated professionals after1965 has inflated the average years of schooling completed。Critics of the model minority stereotype point out that the most important consideration should not be educational level, but returns to education, which more clearly reveal the existence of discrimination. For Asian Americans, their returns are still not on a par with those received by white men. For example, since some Asian professionals havent been able to find professional jobs, they have bought small businesses, thereby increasing the number of “managers” in the Asian Americans particularly the Korean American population. In 1988, more than three-quarters of Korean greengrocers, those so-called paragons of bootstrap entrepreneurialism, came to America with a college education. Engineers, teachers or administrators while in Korea, they became shopkeepers after their arrival. For many of them, the green grocery represents dashed dreams, a step downward in status. Moreover, many of them operate only small mom-and-pop stores with no paid employees and very low gross earnings. They run a high risk of failure and work long hours. Many of them could not stay afloat ere it not for the unpaid labor they extract from their spouses, children, and other relatives.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 Finally the “model minority” image homogenizes Asian Americans, hides their difference and obscures the poverty found within their ranks. For example, while thousands of Vietnamese-American young people attend universities, other are on the streets. They live in motels and hang out in pool halls in places like East Los Angeles; some join gangs. Hmong and Mien refugees from Laos have unemployment rates that reach as high as 80 percent. A 1987 California study showed that 3 out of 10 Southeast Asian refugee families had been on welfare for 4 to 10 years. Even within the relatively successful groups, such as Chinese Americans and Korean Americans, there are serious problems and difficulties. 25% of the people in New York Citys Chinatown lived below the poverty level in 1980, compared with 17% of the citys population. Some 60% of the workers in the Chinatowns of Los Angeles and San Francisco crowded into low-paying jobs in garment factories and restaurants. It is the same with Korean Americans. Most of the Korean immigrants do not become shopkeepers. Instead, many find themselves trapped as clerks in grocery stores, service workers in restaurants, seamstresses in garment factories and janitors in hotels.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 In sum, most Americans know their “success” or “superiority” is largely a myth. They also see how the celebration of Asian-Americans as a “model minority” perpetuates their inequality and exacerbates relations between them and other minorities, esp. African-Americans.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途II. Write an essay on one of the issues below, using relevant reasons and / or examples to support your views. Your essay should be written in your own words and should not exceed 1000 words (50%) 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Topic 1:Public figures such as actors, politicians, and athletes should expect people to be interested in their private lives. When they seek a public role, they should expect that they will lose at least some of their privacy.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Topic 2:As long as people in a society are hungry or out of work or lack the basic skills needed to survive, the use of public resources to support the arts is inappropriate and, perhaps, even cruel when one considers all the potential uses of such money.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途_ The End _资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途北京外国语大学2011年硕士研究生入学考试英语基础测试（技能）（样题）Part I GRAMMAR (30 Points)A、Correct ErrorsThe passage contains ten errors. Each indicated line contains a maximum of one error. In each case, only ONE word is involved. You should proofread the passage and correct it in the following way:资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途For a wrong word, underline the wrong word and write the correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途For a missing word, mark the position of the missing word with a and write the word which you believe is missing in the blank provided at the end of the line.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途For an unnecessary word, cross the unnecessary word with a slashand put the word in the blank provided at the end of the line. 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 The elderly who finds great rewards and satisfactions (1)_资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途In their later lives are a small minority in this country. But they资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Do exist. They are the “aged elite”. It is most striking about these (2)_资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途People is their capacity for growth. When Arthur Robinson was 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Eighty, someone told him that he was plying piano better than (3)_资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Ever. “I think so,” he agreed. “Now I take chances I never took 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Before. I was used to be so much more careful. No wrong notes. (4)_资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Not too bold ideas. Now I let go and enjoy myself and to be with (5)_资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Everything besides the music.” Another reason for the success of资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途The aged elite are the traits they formed earlier in their lives. A (6)_资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Sixty-eight-year old woman, three times married and widowed,资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Says,” Its not just what you do when youre past sixty-five. Its what资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途You did all your life which matters. If you have lived a full life, (7)_资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Developed your mind, you will be able to use it past sixty-five.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途 Along frankness comes humor. A sense of humor is an (8)_资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途aid people use to cope with tension. “Humor,” says Dr. Barren, 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途“also leads you to join with other people. There are two ways to 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Deal with stress. We either reach out or withdraw. The reachers (9)_资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途seek out other people to share their problems instead of pulling 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途away.” Growing, active, humorous, sharing these are all qualities资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途which describe the aged elite. (10)_资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Part II READING COMPREHENSION (60 points)A. Multiple ChoicePlease read the following passages and choose A, B, C or D to best complete the statements about them.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途The Perils of EfficiencyThis spring, disaster loomed in the global food market. Precipitous increases in the prices of staples like rice (up more than a hundred and fifty per cent in a few months) and maize provoked food riots, toppled governments, and threatened the lives of tens of millions. But the bursting of the commodity bubble eased those pressures, and food prices, while still high, have come well off the astronomical levels they hit in April. For Americans, the drop in commodity prices has put a few more bucks in peoples pockets; in much of the developing world, it may have saved many from actually starving. So did the global financial crisis solve the global food crisis?资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途Temporarily, perhaps. But the recent price drop doesnt provide any long-term respite from the threat of food shortages or future price spikes. Nor has it reassured anyone about the health of the global agricultural system, which the crisis revealed as dangerously unstable. Four decades after the Green Revolution, and after waves of market reforms intended to transform agricultural production, were still having a hard time insuring that people simply get enough to eat, and we seem to be more vulnerable to supply shocks than ever. 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途It wasnt supposed to be this way. Over the past two decades, countries around the world have moved away from their focus on “food security” and handed market forces a greater role in shaping agricultural policy. Before the nineteen-eighties, developing countries had so-called “agricultural marketing boards,” which would buy commodities from farmers at fixed prices (prices high enough to keep farmers farming), and then store them in strategic reserves that could be used in the event of bad harvests or soaring import prices. But in the eighties and nineties, often as part of structural-adjustment programs imposed by the I.M.F. or the World Bank, many marketing boards were eliminated or cut back, and grain reserves, deemed inefficient and unnecessary, were sold off. In the same way, structural-adjustment programs often did away with government investment in and subsidies to agriculturemost notably, subsidies for things like fertilizers and high-yield seeds. 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途The logic behind these reforms was simple: the market would allocate resources more efficiently than government, leading to greater productivity. Farmers, instead of growing subsidized maize and wheat at high cost, could concentrate on cash crops, like cashews and chocolate, and use the money they made to buy staple foods. If a country couldnt compete in the global economy, production would migrate to countries that could. It was also assumed that, once governments stepped out of the way, private investment would flood into agriculture, boosting performance. And international aid seemed a more efficient way of relieving food crises than relying on countries to maintain surpluses and food-security programs, which are wasteful and costly.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途This “marketization” of agriculture has not, to be sure, been fully carried through. Subsidies are still endemic in rich countries and poor, while developing countries often place tariffs on imported food, which benefit their farmers but drive up prices for consumers. And in extreme circumstances countries restrict exports, hoarding food for their own citizens. Nonetheless, we clearly have a leaner, more market-friendly agricultural system than before. It looks, in fact, a bit like global manufacturing, with low inventories (wheat stocks are at their lowest since 1977), concentrated production (three countries provide ninety per cent of corn exports, and five countries provide eighty per cent of rice exports), and fewer redundancies. Governments have a much smaller role, and public spending on agriculture has been cut sharply.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途The problem is that, while this system is undeniably more efficient, its also much more fragile. Bad weather in just a few countries can wreak havoc across the entire system. When prices spike as they did this spring (for reasons that now seem not entirely obvious), the result is food shortages and malnutrition in poorer countries, since they are far more dependent on imports and have few food reserves to draw on. And, while higher prices and market reforms were supposed to bring a boom in agricultural productivity, global crop yields actually rose less between 1990 and 2007 than they did in the previous twenty years, in part because in many developing countries private-sector agricultural investment never materialized, while the cutbacks in government spending left them with feeble infrastructures.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途These changes did not cause the rising prices of the past couple of years, but they have made them more damaging. The old emphasis on food security was undoubtedly costly, and often wasteful. But the redundancies it created also had tremendous value when things went wrong. And one sure thing about a system as complex as agriculture is that things will go wrong, often with devastating consequences. If the just-in-time system for producing cars runs into a hitch and the supply of cars shrinks for a while, people can easily adapt. When the same happens with food, people go hungry or even starve. That doesnt mean that we need to embrace price controls or collective farms, and there are sensible market reforms, like doing away with import tariffs, that would make developing-country consumers better off. But a few weeks ago Bill Clinton, no enemy of market reform, got it right when he said that we should help countries achieve “maximum agricultural self-sufficiency.” Instead of a more efficient system, we should be trying to build a more reliable one.资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途(1) What can be learned from the first paragraph?A Global financial crisis destablized governments.B Food riots resulted from skyrockeing food bills. C Financial crisis worsens food crisis.D Food prices surged by 150% in April.(2) The food crisis revealed the global agricultural system as .资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途A fragileB unresponsiveC costlyD unbearable(3) According to the third paragraph, structural-adjustment programs . 资料个人收集整理，勿做商业用途A intended to cope with poor h