考研英语二阅读理解解题
军事院校-中学教师个人工作总结
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Text 1
The
decision of the New York Philharmonic to hire Alan
Gilbert as its next music director has been
the talk of the
classical-music world ever
since the sudden announcement of his
appointment in 2009. For the most part, the
response has been
favorable, to say the least.
“Hooray! At last!” wrote Anthony
Tommasini, a
sober-sided classical-music critic.
One of the reasons why the appointment came as
such a
surprise, however, is that Gilbert is
comparatively little
known. Even Tommasini,
who had advocated Gilbert‘s appointment
in
the Times
, calls him “an unpretentious
musician with no air
of the formidable
conductor about him.” As a description of
the
next music director of an orchestra that has
hitherto been
led by musicians like Gustav
Mahler and Pierre Boulez, that
seems likely to
have struck at least some
Times
readers as
faint praise.
For my part, I have
no idea whether Gilbert is a great
conductor
or even a good one. To be sure, he performs an
impressive variety of interesting
compositions, but it is not
necessary
for me to visit Avery Fisher Hall, or anywhere
else,
to hear interesting orchestral music.
All I have to do is to go
to my CD shelf, or
boot up my computer and download still more
recorded music from iTunes.
Devoted concertgoers who reply that recordings are
no
substitute for live performance are missing
the point. For the
time, attention, and money
of the art-loving public, classical
instrumentalists must compete not only with
opera houses, dance
troupes, theater
companies, and museums, but also with the
recorded performances of the great classical
musicians of the
20th century. These
recordings are cheap, available everywhere,
and very often much higher in artistic quality
than today’s
live performances; moreover, they
can be “consumed” at a time
and place of the
listener’s choosing. The widespread
availability of such recordings has thus
brought about a crisis
in the institution of
the traditional classical concert.
One
possible response is for classical performers to
program
attractive new music that is not yet
available on record.
Gilbert‘s own interest in
new music has been widely noted:
Alex Ross, a
classical-music critic, has described him as a man
who is capable of turning the
Philharmonic into “a markedly
different, more
vibrant organization.” But what will be the
nature of that difference? Merely expanding
the orchestra’s
repertoire will not be enough.
If Gilbert and the Philharmonic
are to
succeed, they must first change the relationship
between
America‘s oldest orchestra and the new
audience it hopes to
attract.
21. We learn from Paragraph 1 that Gilbert’s
appointment
has________.
[A]incurred criticism
[B]raised
suspicion.
[C]received acclaim
[D]aroused curiosity.
22. Tommasini
regards Gilbert as an artist who is _______.
[A]influential
[B]modest
[C]respectable
[D]talented
23. The author believes that the
devoted concertgoers
_________.
[A]ignore the expenses of live performances
[B]reject most kinds of recorded
performances
[C]exaggerate the variety
of live performances
[D]overestimate
the value of live performances
24.
According to the text, which of the following is
true of
recordings？
[A]They are
often inferior to live concerts in quality.
[B]They are easily accessible to the general
public.
[C]They help improve the
quality of music.
[D]They have only
covered masterpieces.
25. Regarding
Gilbert‘s role in revitalizing the
Philharmonic, the author feels ______.
[A]doubtful
[B]enthusiastic
[C]confident
[D]puzzled
Text 2
When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of
America in
August, his explanation was
surprisingly straight up. Rather
than cloaking
his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came
right out and said he was leaving “to pursue
my goal of
running a company.” Broadcasting
his ambition was “very much
my decision,”
McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for
the first time with the board of Hartford
Financial Services
Group, which named him CEO
and chairman on September 29.
McGee
says leaving without a position lined up gave him
time
to reflect on what kind of company he
wanted to run. It also
sent a clear message to
the outside world about his aspirations.
And
McGee isn‘t alone. In recent weeks the executives
at Avon
and American Express quit with
the explanation that they were
looking for a
CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans
in response to shareholder pressure,
executives who don’t get
the nod also may wish
to move on. A turbulent business
environment
also has senior managers cautious of letting vague
pronouncements cloud their reputations.
As the first signs of recovery begin to
take hold, deputy
chiefs may be more willing
to make the jump without a net. In
the third
quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago
as
nervous boards stuck with the leaders they
had, according to
Liberum Research. As the
economy picks up, opportunities will
abound
for aspiring leaders.
The decision to
quit a senior position to look for a better
one is unconventional. For years executives
and headhunters
have adhered to the rule that
the most attractive CEO
candidates are the
ones who must be poached. Says KornFerry
senior partner Dennis Carey: “I can‘t think of
a single
search I’ve done where a board has
not instructed me to look
at sitting CEOs
first.”
Those who jumped
without a job haven’t always landed in top
positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief
of Tropicana a
decade ago, saying she wanted
to be a CEO. It was a year before
she became
head of a tiny Internet-based commodities
exchange.
Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in
2005 with ambitions to be a
CEO. He finally
took that post at a major financial institution
three years later.
Many recruiters
say the old disgrace is fading for top
performers. The financial crisis has made it
more acceptable to
be between jobs or to leave
a bad one. “The traditional rule
was it’s
safer to stay where you are, but that’s been
fundamentally inverted,” says one headhunter.
“The people
who’ve been hurt the worst are
those who’ve stayed too
long.”
26.
When McGee announced his departure, his manner can
best
be described as being ________.
[A]arrogant
[B]frank
[C]self-centered
[D]impulsive
27. According to Paragraph 2, senior
executives’ quitting
may be spurred by
______.
[A]their expectation of better
financial status
[B]their need to
reflect on their private life
[C]their
strained relations with the boards
[D]their pursuit of new career goals
28. The word “poached”（Line 3, Paragraph 4）most
probably
means _______.
[A]approved
of
[B]attended to
[C]hunted for
[D]guarded
against
29. It can be inferred from the
last paragraph that _______.
[A]top
performers used to cling to their posts
[B]loyalty of top performers is
getting out-dated
[C]top performers
care more about reputations
[D]it’s
safer to stick to the traditional rules
30. Which of the following is the best title for
the text？
[A]CEOs: Where to Go?
[B]CEOs: All the Way Up?
[C]Top
Managers Jump without a Net
[D]The Only
Way Out for Top Performers
Text
3
The rough guide to marketing
success used to be that you
got what you paid
for. No longer. While traditional “paid”
media
– such as television commercials and print
advertisements – still play a major role,
companies today can
exploit many alternative
forms of media. Consumers passionate
about a
product may create “earned” media by willingly
promoting it to friends, and a company may
leverage “owned”
media by sending
e-mail alerts about products and sales to
customers registered with its Web site. The
way consumers now
approach the process of
making purchase decisions means that
marketing’s impact stems from a broad range of
factors beyond
conventional paid media.
Paid and owned media are controlled by
marketers promoting
their own products. For
earned media, such marketers act as the
initiator for users‘ responses. But in some
cases, one
marketer’s owned media become
another marketer’s paid media
– for instance,
when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on
its Web site. We define such sold media as
owned media whose
traffic is so strong that
other organizations place their
content or
e-commerce engines within that environment. This
trend, which we believe is still in its
infancy, effectively
began with retailers and
travel providers such as airlines and
hotels
and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson,
for
example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-
alone media property
that promotes
complementary and even competitive products.
Besides generating income, the presence of
other marketers
makes the site seem objective,
gives companies opportunities to
learn
valuable information about the appeal of other
companies’ marketing, and may help expand user
traffic for all
companies concerned.
The same dramatic technological changes that have
provided
marketers with more（and more
diverse）communications choices
have also
increased the risk that passionate consumers will
voice their opinions in quicker, more visible,
and much more
damaging ways. Such hijacked
media are the opposite of earned
media: an
asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers,
other
stakeholders, or activists who make
negative allegations about
a brand or product.
Members of social networks, for instance,
are
learning that they can hijack media to apply
pressure on
the businesses that originally
created them.
If that happens,
passionate consumers would try to persuade
others to boycott products, putting the
reputation of the
target company at risk. In
such a case, the company‘s response
may not be
sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning
curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for
example, alleviated
some of the damage from
its recall crisis earlier this year
with a
relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-
media
response campaign, which included
efforts to engage with
consumers directly on
sites such as Twitter and the social-news
site
Digg.
may create “earned” media when
they are_______.
[A] obsessed with
online shopping at certain Web sites
[B] inspired by product-promoting e-mails sent to
them
[C] eager to help their friends
promote quality products
[D]
enthusiastic about recommending their favorite
products
32. According to Paragraph 2,
sold media feature __________.
[A] a
safe business environment
[B] random
competition
[C] strong user traffic
[D] flexibility in organization
33. The author indicates in Paragraph 3 that
earned media
_________.
[A] invite
constant conflicts with passionate consumers
[B] can be used to produce negative
effects in marketing
[C] may be
responsible for fiercer competition.
[D] deserve all the negative comments about them.
34. Toyota Motor‘s experience is cited as
an example of
__________.
[A]
responding effectively to hijacked media
[B] persuading customers into boycotting products
[C] cooperating with supportive
consumers
[D] taking advantage of
hijacked media
35. Which of the following
is the text mainly about?
[A]
Alternatives to conventional paid media.
[B] Conflict between hijacked and earned media.
[C] Dominance of hijacked media.
[D] Popularity of owned media.
Text 4
It‘s no
surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful,
provocative magazine cover story. “I love My
Children, I Hate
My Life,” is arousing much
chatter – nothing gets people
talking like the
suggestion that child rearing is anything less
than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching
experience. Rather
than concluding that
children make parents either happy or
miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine
happiness:
instead of thinking of it as
something that can be measured by
moment-to-
moment joy, we should consider being happy as a
past-
tense condition. Even though the day-to-
day experience of
raising kids can be soul-
crushingly hard, Senior writes that
“the very
things that in the moment dampen our moods can
later
be sources of intense gratification and
delight.”
The magazine cover showing
an attractive mother holding a
cute baby is
hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on
newsstands this week. There are also stories
about newly
adoptive – and newly single – mom
Sandra Bullock, as well as
the usual “Jennifer
Aniston is pregnant” news. Practically
every week features at least one
celebrity mom, or mom-to-be,
smiling on the
newsstands.
In a society that so
persistently celebrates
procreation, is it any
wonder that admitting you regret having
children is equivalent to admitting you
support kitten-killing?
It doesn‘t seem quite
fair, then, to compare the regrets of
parents
to the regrets of the childless. Unhappy parents
rarely
are provoked to wonder if they
shouldn’t have had kids, but
unhappy childless
folks are bothered with the message that
children are the single most important thing
in the world:
obviously their misery must be a
direct result of the gaping
baby-size holes in
their lives.
Of course, the image
of parenthood that celebrity
magazines like
US Weekly and People
present is hugely
unrealistic, especially when the parents are
single mothers
like Bullock. According to
several studies concluding that
parents are
less happy than childless couples, single parents
are the least happy of all. No shock there,
considering how
much work it is to raise a kid
without a partner to lean on;
yet to
hear Sandra and Britney tell it, raising a kid on
their
“own”（read: with round-the-clock help）is
a piece of cake.
It’s hard to
imagine that many people are dumb enough
to
want children just because Reese and Angelina make
it look
so glamorous: most adults understand
that a baby is not a
haircut. But it’s
interesting to wonder if the images we see
every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing
parenthood
aren’t in some small, subconscious
way contributing to our own
dissatisfactions
with the actual experience, in the same way
that a small part of us hoped getting “ the
Rachel” might
make us look just a little bit
like Jennifer Aniston.
Senior suggests
in her article that raising a child can
bring______.
[A]temporary delight
[B]enjoyment in progress
[C]happiness in retrospect
[D]lasting
reward
learn from Paragraph 2 that
________.
[A]celebrity moms are a
permanent source for gossip
[B]single
mothers with babies deserve greater attention
[C]news about pregnant celebrities is
entertaining
[D]having children is
highly valued by the public
is
suggested in Paragraph 3 that childless folks
________.
[A]are constantly exposed to
criticism
[B]are largely ignored by
the media
[C]fail to fulfill their
social responsibilities
[D]are less
likely to be satisfied with their life
to Paragraph 4, the message conveyed by celebrity
magazines is
______.
[A]soothing
[B]ambiguous
[C]compensatory
[D]misleading
of the
following can be inferred from the last paragraph？
[A]Having children contributes little
to the glamour of
celebrity moms.
[B]Celebrity moms have influenced our attitude
towards child
rearing.
[C]Having
children intensifies our dissatisfaction with
life.
[D]We sometimes neglect the
happiness from child rearing.
Text
5
Text 3
The US$$3-million
Fundamental Physics Prize is indeed an
interesting experiment, as Alexander Polyakov
said when he
accepted this year’s award in
March. And it is far from the
only one of its
type. As a News Feature article in
Nature
discusses, a string of lucrative awards for
researchers have
joined the Nobel Prizes in
recent years. Many, like the
Fundamental
Physics Prize, are funded from the
telephone-
number-sized bank accounts of
Internet entrepreneurs. These
benefactors have
succeeded in their chosen fields, they say,
and they want to use their wealth to draw
attention to those
who have succeeded in
science.
What’s not to like? Quite a lot,
according to a handful of
scientists quoted in
the News Feature. You cannot buy class, as
the
old saying goes, and these upstart entrepreneurs
cannot buy
their prizes the prestige of the
Nobels. The new awards are an
exercise in
self-promotion for those behind them, say
scientists. They could distort the
achievement-based system of
peer-review-led
research. They could cement the status quo of
peer-reviewed research. They do not fund peer-
reviewed research.
They perpetuate the myth of
the lone genius.
The goals of the prize-
givers seem as scattered as the
criticism.
Some want to shock, others to draw people into
science, or to better reward those who have
made their careers
in research.
As
Nature
has pointed out before, there are
some legitimate
concerns about how science
prizes – both new and old – are
distributed. The Breakthrough Prize in
Life Sciences, launched
this year, takes an
unrepresentative view of what the life
sciences include. But the Nobel Foundation’s
limit of three
recipients per prize, each of
whom must still be living, has
long been
outgrown by the collaborative nature of modern
research – as will be demonstrated by the
inevitable row over
who is ignored when it
comes to acknowledging the discovery of
the
Higgs boson. The Nobels were, of course,
themselves set up
by a very rich individual
who had decided what he wanted to do
with his
own money. Time, rather than intention, has given
them
legitimacy.
As much as some
scientists may complain about the new
awards,
two things seem clear. First, most researchers
would
accept such a prize if they were offered
one. Second, it is
surely a good thing that
the money and attention come to
science rather
than go elsewhere. It is fair to criticize and
question the mechanism – that is the culture
of research,
after all – but it is the prize-
givers’ money to do with as
they
please. It is wise to take such gifts with
gratitude and
grace.
31. The
Fundamental Physics Prize is seen as ______
[A] a symbol of the entrepreneurs’ wealth.
[B] a possible replacement of the Nobel
Prizes.
[C] an example of bankers’
investments.
[D] a handsome reward for
researchers.
32. The critics think that
the new awards will most benefit
________
[A]the profit-oriented scientists.
[B]the founders of the new awards.
[C]the achievement-based system.
[D]peer-review-led research.
33. The
discovery of the Higgs boson is a typical case
which
involves _______
[A]controversies over the recipients’
status.
[B]the joint effort of modern
researchers.
[C]legitimate concerns over
the new prizes.
[D]the demonstration of
research findings.
34. According to
Paragraph 4, which of the following is true of
the Nobels?
[A]Their endurance
has done justice to them.
[B]Their
legitimacy has long been in dispute.
[C]They are the most representative honor.
[D]History has never cast doubt on them.
35. The author believes that the new awards
are ______
[A]acceptable despite the
criticism.
[B]harmful to the culture of
research.
[C]subject to undesirable
changes.
[D]unworthy of public
attention.
Text 6
“The Heart
of the Matter,” the just-released report by
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
(AAAS)，deserves
praise for affirming the
importance of the humanities and
social
sciences to the prosperity and security of liberal
democracy in America. Regrettably, however,
the report’s
failure to address the
true nature of the crisis facing liberal
education may cause more harm than good.
In 2010, leading congressional Democrats and
Republicans
sent letters to the AAAS asking
that it identify actions that
could be taken
by “federal, state and local governments,
universities, foundations, educators,
individual benefactors
and others” to
“maintain national excellence in humanities
and social scientific scholarship and
education.” In response,
the American Academy
formed the Commission on the Humanities
and
Social Sciences. Among the commission’s 51 members
are
top-tier-university presidents, scholars,
lawyers, judges, and
business executives, as
well as prominent figures from
diplomacy,
filmmaking, music and journalism.
The
goals identified in the report are generally
admirable.
Because representative government
presupposes an informed
citizenry, the report
supports full literacy, stresses the
study of
history and government, particularly American
history
and American government; and
encourages the use of new digital
technologies. To encourage innovation and
competition, the
report calls for
increased investment in research, the crafting
of coherent curricula that improve students’
ability to solve
problems and communicate
effectively in the 21st century,
increased
funding for teachers and the encouragement of
scholars to bring their learning to bear on
the great
challenges of the day. The report
also advocates greater study
of foreign
languages, international affairs and the expansion
of study abroad programs.
Unfortunately, despite 2? years in the making,
“The Heart
of the Matter” never gets to the
heart of the matter: the
illiberal nature of
liberal education at our leading colleges
and
universities. The commission ignores that for
several
decades America’s colleges and
universities have produced
graduates who don’t
know the content and character of liberal
education and are thus deprived of its
benefits. Sadly, the
spirit of inquiry once at
home on campus has been replaced by
the use of
humanities and social sciences as vehicles for
publicizing “progressive, ”or left-liberal
propaganda.
Today, professors
routinely treat the progressive
interpretation
of history and progressive public policy as the
proper subject of study while portraying
conservative or
classical liberal ideas—such
as free markets and self-reliance
—as falling
outside the boundaries of routine, and sometimes
legitimate, intellectual investigation.
The AAAS displays great enthusiasm for liberal
education.
Yet its report may well set back
reform by obscuring the depth
and breadth of
the challenge that Congress asked it to
illuminate.
36. According to
Paragraph 1, what is the author’s attitude
toward the AAAS’s report?
[A]
Critical
[B] Appreciative.
[C]
Contemptuous.
[D] Tolerant.
37.
Influential figures in the Congress required that
the AAAS
report on how to ______
[A] retain people’s interest in liberal
education.
[B] define the
government’s role in education.
[C] keep a
leading position in liberal education.
[D]
safeguard individuals’ rights to education.
38. According to Paragraph 3, the report
suggests _______
[A] an exclusive
study of American history.
[B] a greater
emphasis on theoretical subjects.
[C] the
application of emerging technologies.
[D]
funding for the study of foreign languages.
39. The author implies in Paragraph 5 that
professors are
________
[A] supportive
of free markets.
[B] cautious about
intellectual investigation.
[C]
conservative about public policy.
[D]
biased against classical liberal ideas.
40. Which of the following would be the best
title for the text?
[A] Ways to
Grasp “The Heart of the Matter”
[B]
Illiberal Education and “The Heart of the
Matter”
[C] The AAAS’s Contribution to
Liberal Education
[D] Progressive Policy
vs. Liberal Education