考试科目名称： 翻译硕士英语
说明：考生答题时一律写在答题纸上，否则漏批责任自负
I. Vocabulary and grammar (30’)
SectionAMultiple choice (20’)
Directions:Beneath each sentence there are four words or phrases marked A, B, C and D. Choose the answer that best completes the sentence. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.
1. Creativity should not be as an exceptional talent; it is a basic skill that can be mastered with the right teaching.
A. replaced B. perceived C. cultivated D. probed
2. These guests were to the host for his gracious and impressive hospitality.
A. contemptuous B. resentful C. obliged D. mighty
3. Whatever we attempt to do, we mustn’t our main objective.
A. attain B. reject C. lose sight of D. prosecute
4. With the passage of time, some words are beginning to a new sense.
A. go about B. take on C. draw upon D. turn out
5. Tourism, particularly ecotourism, helps promote of wildlife and natural resources.
A. conservation B. distinction C. extinction D. aspiration
6. Despite the changes in this country, many tough issues remain unsolved.
A. radical B. reversible C. rigorous D. insensible
7. Life is stressful, so it is always difficult to work, school and family.
A. encounter B. eliminate C. illuminate D. prioritize
8. People who diabetes have to minimize their daily consumption of sugar.
A. make up for B. crack down on
C. take fancy to D. are stricken with
9. The city was paralyzed by the transit strike for better wages.
A. subjectively B. imaginably C. virtually D. positively
10. The changes brought about by digital technologies have impacted the whole world.
A. novel B. adverse C. profound D. prospective
11. The camps are not usual tent-type camps. They are mostly long-established,
structures, often with strange Islamic names.
A. historical B. monotonous C. permanent D.raw
12. Among all the changes resulting from the ______ entry of women into the work force, the transformation that has occurred in the women themselves is not the least important.
A. massive B. quantitative C. surplus D. formidable
13. The manufacturing in China is expected to continue to expand in 2019 despite the slight decline of an index.
A. version B. sector C. quest D.factor
14. Researchers say that cigarettes is necessary to dramatically reduce the chance of cardiovascular problems.
A. carrying out B. breaking out C. cutting out D. putting out
15. Economic recessions will weaken one’s confidence in the government and threaten social .
A. cohesion B. erosion C. illusion D. evasion
16. The Mexican settlers built cities and missions in what become California.
A. used to B. would rather C. was to D. had better
17. Each of us is working hard to get happiness which brings substantial benefits for society .
A. by mere chance B. at great length C. all at once D. as a whole
18. Although the colonists ______ to some extent with the native Americans, the Indians’ influence on American culture and language was not extensive.
A. migrated B. matched C. mingled D. melted
19. Most readers believe that this book is , thoughtful and informative.
A. intriguing B. ambiguous C. compulsive D. imperative
20. Some of the recent actions of the government are their statement of policy.
A. in the interest of B. in conformity with
C. in proportion to D. in the event of
SectionB Proofreading and error correction (10’)
The 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:
For a wrong wordunderline the wrong word and write the correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line
For a missing wordmark the position of the missing word with a “Λ” sign and write the word you believe to be missing in the blank provided at the end of the line.
For an unnecessary wordcross the unnecessary word with a slash “/”and put the word in the blank provided at the end of the line.
EXAMPLE
WhenΛart museum wants a new exhibit,(1) an
It never buys things in finished form and hangs(2) never
them on the wall. When a natural history museum
wants an exhibition, it must often build it.(3) exhibit
Many people are disturbed by the genetic diversify of (1)
cancers--- an inevitable result of random evolution. (2)
Cancer therapies used to be applied fairly random or (3)
Carelessly, but nowadays many believe that effective
therapies need to be specific and tailoring to genetic (4)
faults in each individual’s cancer. Therefore, a personalized(5)
treatment disregards the most fundamental reason (6)
it is difficult to cure cancers once for all: cancer cells
adapt and evolve with response to treatment. Even drugs (7)
that are initially effective often have a progressive (8)
diminishing effect, as the biological systems blocked
of the treatment spontaneously compensateof rerouting (9)
the cancer cell’s internal wiring, in restoring the cancer’s (10)
ability to spread. To use an analogy, in the absence of
short cuts, evolution takes over: naturally arising mutant
cancer cells that are resistant to the targeted drug rapidly
outgrow their disabled siblings and cancer comes back.
II. Reading comprehension(40’)
Section A Multiple choice (20’)
Directions: In this section there are two passages followed by multiple choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on the answer sheet.
Passage A
The language of rights now dominates political debate in the United States. Does the Government respect the moral and political rights of its citizens? Or does the Government’s war policy, or its race policy, fly in the face of these rights? Do the minorities whose rights have been violated have the right to violate the law in return? Or does the silent majority itself have rights, including the right that those who break the law be published? It is not surprising that these questions are now prominent. The concept of rights, and particularly the concept of rights against the Government, has its most natural use when a political society is divided, and appeals to co-operation or a common goal are pointless.
The debate does not include the issue of whether citizens have some moral rights against their Government. It seems accepted on all sides that they do. Conventional lawyers and politicians take it as a point of pride that our legal system recognizes, for example, individual rights of free speech, equality, and due process. They base their claim that our law deserves respect, at least in part, on that fact, for they would not claim that totalitarian system deserve the same loyalty.
Some philosophers, of cause, reject the idea that citizens have rights apart from what the law happens to give them. Bentham thought that the idea of moral rights was “nonsense on stilts”. But that view has never been part of our orthodox political theory, and politicians of both parties appeal to the rights of the people to justify a great part of what they want to do. I shall not be concerned, in this essay, to defend the thesis that citizens have moral rights against their governments; I want instead to explore the implications of that thesis for those, including the present United States Government, who profess to accept it.
It is much in dispute, of cause, what particular rights citizens have. Does the acknowledged right to free speech, for example, include the right to participate in nuisance demonstrations? In practice, the Government will have the last word on what an individual’s rights are, because its police will do what the officials and courts say. But that does not mean that the Government’s view is necessarily the correct view, anyone who thinks it does must believe that men and women have such moral rights as Government chooses to grant, which means they have no moral rights at all.
All this is sometimes obscured in the United States by the constitutional system. The American Constitution provides a set of individual legal rights in the First Amendment, and in due process, equal protection, and similar clauses. Under present legal practice the Supreme Court has the power to declare an act of Congress or of a state legislature void if the Court finds that the act offends these provisions. This practice has had some commentators to suppose that individual moral rights are fully protected by this system, but that is hardly so, nor could it be so.
1. In the United States nowadays__________.
A. politicians are discussing about the right language.
B. politicians are debating about what is right and what is wrong.
C. language is the most important theme in the political debate.
D. we can hear lots of talks about rights.
2. It is only natural that questions about citizens’ rights are now prominent because__________
A. the minorities are violating the law.
B. the political society in the USA is divided.
C. the silent majority wants to punish those who have violated the law.
D. people are looking for a common goal.
3. Which of the following statements is not true?
A. It is generally agreed that citizens should have some moral rights.
B. It is a moral right of the citizens to respect the legal system.
C. Citizens’ moral rights include free speech, equality and due process.
D. The legal system deserves respect because it recognizes citizens’ moral rights.
4. In this essay the author will not be concerned to defend the thesis that citizens have moral rights against their government because__________
A. this thesis has never bee put into question in the mainstream political theory.
B. he shares the view of those philosophers who think that citizens only have the rights that the law gives them.
C. this thesis has appeal to politicians of both parties.
D. the United States government professes to accept this thesis.
5. The author believes that__________
A. the United States Constitution protects citizens’ moral rights but the government does not.
B. the Supreme Court has the power to protect citizens’ moral rights but it does not do that.
C. Citizens’ moral rights could not be fully protected by the present legal practice.
D. the United States Constitution does not have provisions that fully protect citizens’ moral rights.
Passage B
What do you do when everyone hates you? That is the problem faced by America’s pharmaceutical industry. Despite its successes in treating disease and extending longevity, soaring health-care costs and bumper profits mean that big drug firms are widely viewed as exploitative, and regarded almost as unfavorably as tobacco and oil firms (see chart). Last week, at a conference organized by The Economist in Philadelphia, the drug industry was offered some advice from an unlikely source: a tobacco firm. Steven Parrish of Altria, the conglomerate that includes Philip Morris, gave his perspective on how an industry can improve its tarnished public image.
Comparing the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries might seem absurd, or even offensive. “Their products kill people. Our products save people's lives,” says Alan Holmer, the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry association. Yet the drug giants currently face an unprecedented onslaught of class-action lawsuits and public scrutiny; industry bosses are being grilled by lawmakers asking who knew what and when. It is all reminiscent of what happened to the tobacco industry in 1994.
Mr. Parrish advised drug firms to abandon their bunker mentality and engage with their critics. Rather than arguing about the past, he said, it is better to move on, and give people something new to think about. (Philip Morris now acknowledges, for example, that cigarettes are addictive and deadly, and is trying to develop less harmful products.) Not everyone is open to persuasion, so focus on those who are, he said. But changing opinions takes time and demands deeds as well as words: “This is not about spin, this is about change.”
The pharmaceutical industry is pursuing a range of initiatives to mollify its critics, Mr. Holmer noted in his own speech. But Mr. Parrish suggested that speaking with one voice through a trade association might be counter-productive, since it can give the impression that the industry is a monolithic cartel. And too much advertising, he said, can actually antagonize people further.
The audience was generally receptive, claims Mr. Parrish. This is not the first time he has offered his thoughts on dealing with implacable critics. At a conference at the University of Michigan last year, he offered America’s State Department advice on improving America’s image in the Middle East. So does his prescription work? There has been a positive shift in attitudes towards tobacco firms, if only a small one. But at least, for once, a tobacco firm is peddling a cure, rather than a disease.
1. Why is America’s pharmaceutical industry so unpopular?
A. Because it, like tobacco and oil firms, does harm to people‘s health and environment.
B. Because it fails to cure disease and make people live longer.
C. Because the prices of its products are too high and its profit margin is too wide.
D. Because it exploits its employees.
2. Alan Holmer is quoted to illustrate that __________
A. the comparison between tobacco and pharmaceutical industries might seem ridiculous, or even insulting.
B. the pharmaceutical industries agree that they are similar to tobacco industry.
C. tobacco products do more harm to people than pharmaceutical products.
D. pharmaceutical industries are currently facing lots of problems.
3. According to the text, Mr. Parrish gives the following suggestions to drug firms except__________
A. To acknowledge the problems and try to do something to improve their images.
B. Not to react to the public in one voice through the drug association.
C. Not to care about the past.
D. To try to spend time and energy to persuade the majority of the audience who are open to persuasion.
4. The word “mollify” (Line 1, Paragraph 4) might mean?
A. placate
B. enrage
C. fight
D. relieve
5. What does the author imply by saying “This is not the first time he has offered his
thoughts on dealing with implacable critics.”?
A. Mr. Parrish has offered his advice to other on dealing with tough critics for several times.
B. Mr. Parrish has dealt successfully with other critics himself.
C. Mr. Parrish has given sound advice to drug firms.
D. Mr. Parrish has been of help to others on critical moments.
Section B Answering questions(20’)
Directions: Read the following two passages and then answer IN COMPLETE SENTENCES the questions which follow each passage. Use only information from the passage you have just read and write your answers on the answer sheet.
Questions 1-3
New tools offer new opportunities, but what are the risks and who benefits?
Human intervention for the improvement of crops, trees, livestock and fish is nothing new. For millennia, humans have bred, crossed and selected those varieties, ecotypes and breeds that were more productive, better adapted or particularly useful.
Conventional breeding practices can now be complemented by a number of new and powerful techniques. Some of these allow, for example, the propagation of plant material in glass tubes to keep it free of diseases, and the production of more sensitive and specific reagents for diagnosing diseases in plants, livestock and fish through tissue and cell culture. Others, often referred to as molecular methods, enable scientists to see the layout of the entire genome of any organism and to select plants and animals with preferred characteristics by “reading” at the molecular level, saving precious time and resources.
Modern biotechnology also includes an array of tools for introducing or deleting a particular gene or genes to produce plants, animals and micro-organisms with novel traits. This kind of genetic manipulation is called “genetic engineering” and the product is a genetically modified organism, or GMO. Both traditional and modern biotechnologies result in plants, animals and micro-organisms with combinations of genes that would not have come about without human intervention. It has to be emphasized, however, that biotechnology includes a range of techniques and products, and GMOs are but one of them.
“With the increasingly limited amount of new land available to agriculture, modern biotechnologies could complement and improve the efficiency of traditional selection and breeding techniques to enhance agricultural productivity,” says Mahmoud Solh, Director of FAO’s Division of Plant Production and Protection.
A plant or an animal resistant to a particular disease can be produced through a “traditional” breeding programme, that is, through crosses with resistant relative, selection and backcrossing again, or by the introduction of a gene that confers the resistance through genetic engineering. While the products of both approaches will be disease resistant, only the second one is a GMO. What is new is the ability of scientists to unravel the genome to look at the genes of an organism, and then make use of that information to change the organism, and even transfer genes to another organism very distant in the evolutionary scale. And that is where the controversy comes in.
“FAO recognizes that genetic engineering has the potential to help increase production and productivity in agriculture, forestry and fisheries,” says FAO’s Statement on Biotechnology. “It could lead to higher yields on marginal lands in countries that today cannot grow enough food to feed their people.” But, it adds, FAO “is also aware of the concern about the potential risks posed by certain aspects of biotechnology. These risks fall into two basic categories: the effects on human and animal health and the environmental consequences.”
These new tools offer new opportunities for solving problems where traditional techniques have failed. Genetically modified products are usually developed and used for large-scale commercial interests, and with a few exceptions, small-scale farmers have so far not benefited from the technology.
The articles in this focus are intended to provide background information on genetic engineering in agriculture for the non-specialist--what it is, how it is being used, how it might be used in the future and possible benefits and risks. If you are new to the subject, you might find it easiest to read the pages in the order shown in the column on the right. Those who would like to pursue the subject further may wish to visit.
1. According to the passage, what is called “genetic engineering”?
2. What are the potential benefits and risks of genetic engineering in agriculture?
3. Why are small-scale farmers unlikely to benefit from biotechnology?
Questions 4-5
According to the latest figures, the majority of the world’s population is now bilingual or multilingual, having grown up speaking two or more languages. In the past, such children were considered to be at a disadvantage compared with their monolingual peers. Over the past few decades, however, technological advances have allowed researchers to look more deeply at how bilingualism interacts with and changes the cognitive and neurological systems, thereby identifying several clear benefits of being bilingual.
Research shows that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be. If you hear ‘can’, you will likely activate words like ‘candy’ and ‘candle’ as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition. For bilingual people, this activation is not limited to a single language; auditory input activates corresponding words regardless of the language to which they belong. Some of the most compelling evidence for this phenomenon, called ‘language co-activation’, comes from studying eye movements. A Russian-English bilingual asked to ‘pick up a marker’ from a set of objects would look more at a stamp than someone who doesn’t Know Russian, because the Russian word for ‘stamp’, marka, sounds like the English word he or she heard, ‘marker’. In cases like this, language co-activation occurs because what the listener hears could map onto words in either language.
Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in difficulties, however. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name picture more slowly, and can increase ‘tip-of-the-tongue states’, when you can almost, but not quite, bring a word to mind. As a result, the constant juggling of two language creates a need to control how much a person accesses a language at any given time. For this reason, bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require conflict management. In classic Stroop Task, people see a word and are asked to name the colour of the word’s font. When the colour and the word match (i.e., the word ‘red’ printed in red), people correctly name the colour more quickly than when the colour and the word don’t match (i.e., the word ‘red’ printed in blue). This occurs because the word itself (‘red’) and its font colour (blue) conflict. Bilingual people often excel at tasks such as this, which tap into the ability to ignore competing perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input. Bilinguals are also better at switching between two tasks; for example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by colour (red or green) to categorizing them by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more quickly than monolingual people, reflecting better cognitive control when having to make rapid changes of strategy.
It also seems that the neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, however, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception.
Such improvements in cognitive and sensory processing may help a bilingual person to process information in the environment, and help explain why bilingual adults acquire a third language better than monolingual adults master a second language. This advantage may be rooted in the skill of focusing on information about the new language while reducing interference from the languages they already know.
Research also indicates that bilingual experience may help to keep the cognitive mechanisms sharp by recruiting alternate brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging. Older bilinguals enjoy improved memory relative to monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits. In a study of over 200 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative brain disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease an average of five years later than monolingual patients. In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual patients match on the severity of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Surprisingly, the bilinguals’ brains had more physical signs of disease than their monolingual counterparts, even though their outward behaviour and abilities were the same. If the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help it to go farther on the same amount of fuel.
Furthermore, the benefits associated with bilingual experience seem to start very early. In one study, researchers taught seven-month-old babies growing up in monolingual or bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet appearing on the opposite side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants had to adjust the rule they’d learned; only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule. This suggests that for very young children, as well as for older people, navigating a multilingual environment imparts advantages that transfer far beyond language.
4. Why do bilingual people often perform better than monolingual people on tasks that require conflict management?
5. According to the passage, what are the results when monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds with or without intervening background noise?
III. Writing (30’)
Directions:
After Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer were awarded the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for their outstanding contributions to “experimental research” into the “daunting issue” of global poverty, many have questioned the Nobel Committee’s choice, with some saying China’s poverty alleviation efforts have been the most effective in the world and are more worthy of study. But since the three winners are experts in development economics, this year’s Nobel Prize for economics is seen as highlighting the global need for eradicating poverty and achieving common economic growth.
Write a composition of about 400 words on the ANSWER SHEET, in which you should:
(1) express your opinion on why poverty alleviation core of development economics and what further steps to be taken.
(2) give sound arguments to support your view.
Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization, and language quality.
Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.
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