在职攻人员攻读公共管理硕士学位英语模拟练习五
发布时间：2010/1/20 15:20:27 来源：城市学习网 编辑：紫藤
paragraph One
For the last 82 years. Sweden's Nobel Academy has decided who will receive the Nobel Prize in literature, thereby determining who will be elevated from the great and the near-great to the immortal But today the Academy is coming under heavy criticism both from without and from within. Critics protest that the selection of the winners often has less to do with true writing ability than with the peculiar internal politics of the Academy and of Sweden itself. According to Ingmar Bjorksten, the cultural editor for one of the country's two major newspapers, the prize continues to represent "what people call a very Swedish exercise: reflecting Swedish tastes."
The Academy has defended itself against such charges of provincialism in its selection by asserting that its physical distance from the great literary capitals of the world actually serves to protect the Academy from outside influences. This may well be true, but critics respond that this very distance may also be responsible for the Academy's inability to perceive accurately authentic trends in the literary world.
Question
The word "provincialism" in the second paragraph might refer to
A. the location of the Academy
B. internal politics of the Academy
C. iso!ation from outside influences
D. genuine trends in the literary world
Paragraph Two
In late 1994 the panel of economists which The :Economist polls each month said that America's inflation rate would average 3.5% in 1995. In fact, it fell to 2.6% in August, and is expected to average only about 3% for the year as a whole. In Britain and Japan inflation is running half a percentage point below the rate predicted at the end of last year. This is no flash in the pan. Over the past couple of years, inflation has been consistently lower than expected in Britain and America.
Question
The sentence "This is no flash in the pan" means that
A.The low inflation rate will last for some time
B. the inflation rate will soon rise
C. the inflation will disappear quickly
D. there is no inflation at present
Paragraph Three
Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of Gallileo's 17th century trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William Blake's harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of lssac Newton. The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything deepened in this century.
Question
The word "schism" in the context probably means
A. confrontation B. dissatisfaction C.separation D.contempt
Paragraph Four
In a market system individual economic units are free to interact among each other in the marketplace. It is possible to buy commodities from other economic units or sell commodities to them. In a market, transactions may take place via barter or money exchange. In a barter economy, real goods such as automobiles, shoes, pizzas are traded against each other. Obviously, finding somebody who wants to trade my old car in exchange for a sailboat may not always be an easy task. Hence, the introduction of money as a medium of exchange eases transactions considerably. In the modem market economy, goods and services are bought or sold for money.
Question
The word "real" could best be replaced by which of the following?
A. high quality B..concrete C. utter D. authentic
Searching for implications
Paragraph One
Air pollution costs us a lot of money. It soils and corrodes our buildings. It damages farm crops and forests.It has a destructive effect on our works of art. The cost of all this damage to our government is astronomical. It would be much more worthwhile, both for the environment and for us, to spend our tax dollars on air pollution control.
Question
The author implies that as air pollution becomes more serious,____
A. factories will be forced to stop operation.
B. great damages will be done to our government.
C.more money should be spent to solve the problem.
D. government will spend a lot to development astronomy.
Paragraph Two
The only solid piece of scientific troth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature. Indeed, I regard this as the major discovery of the past hundred years of biology. It is, in its way, an illuminating piece of news. It would have amazed the brightest minds of the 18th century Enlightenment to be told by any of-us how little we know and how bewildering seems the way ahead. It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of the 20th century science to the human intellect. In earlier times, we either pretended to understand how things worked or ignored the problem, or simply made up stories to fill the gaps. Now that we have begun exploring in earnest, we ate getting glimpses of how huge the questions are, and how far from being answered. Because of this. We are depressed. It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some &tail the reality of ignorance, the worst spots and here and there the not-so-bad spots, but no true light at the end of the tunnel nor even any tunnels that can be trusted.
Question
It can be inferred from the passage that scientists of the 18th century ..
A.thought that they knew a great deal and could solve most problems of science
B. were afraid of faceing up the realities of scientific research
C. knew that they were ignorant and wanted to know more about nature
D. did more harm than good in promoting man's understanding of nature
