题目的文章来自于 2009年4月号Scientific American, 作者 Steve Ayan, 原文题目为
How Humor Makes You Friendlier, Sexier:幽默如何使你更加有人缘且性感
Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle viewed laughter as “a bodily exercise precious to health。” But 1despite some claims to the contrary, chuckling probably has little influence on physical fitness. Laughter does 2 produce short-term changes in cardiovascular function and respiration, 3 boosting heart rate, respiratory rate and depth, as well as oxygen consumption. But because hard laughter is difficult to 4 sustain, a good guffaw is unlikely to have 5 measurable cardiovascular benefits the way, say, walking or jogging does。
6 In fact, instead of straining muscles to build them, as exercise does, laughter apparently accomplishes the 7 opposite. Studies dating back to the 1930s indicate that laughter 8 relaxes muscles, decreasing muscle tone for up to 45 minutes after the guffaw subsides。
Such physical relaxation might conceivably help 9 moderate the effects of psychological stress. After all, the act of laughing probably does produce other types of 10 physical feedback that improve an individual’s emotional state. 11 According to one classical theory of emotion, our feelings are partially rooted 12 in physical reactions. American psychologist William James and Danish physiologist Carl Lange argued at the end of the 19th century that humans do not cry 13 because they are sad but that they become sad when the tears begin to flow。
Although sadness also 14 precedes tears, evidence suggests that emotions can flow 15 from muscular responses. In an experiment published in 1988, social psychologist Fritz Strack of the University of Würzburg in Germany and his colleagues asked volunteers to 16 hold a pen either with their teeth—thereby creating an artificial smile—or with their lips, which would produce a 17 disappointed expression. Those forced to exercise their smiling muscles 18 reacted more exuberantly to funny cartoons than did those whose mouths were contracted in a frown, 19 suggesting that expressions may influence emotions rather than just the other way around. 20 Similarly, the physical act of laughter could improve mood。
1.[A]among [B]except [C]despite [D]like C
2.[A]reflect [B]demand [C]indicate [D]produce D
3.[A]stabilizing [B]boosting [C]impairing [D]determining B
4.[A]transmit [B]sustain [C]evaluate [D]observe B
5.[A]measurable [B]manageable [C]affordable [D]renewable A
6.[A]In turn [B]In fact [C]In addition [D]In brief B
7.[A]opposite [B]impossible [C]average [D]expected A
8.[A]hardens [B]weakens [C]tightens [D]relaxes D
9.[A]aggravate [B]generate [C]moderate [D]enhance C
10.[A]physical [B]mental [C]subconscious [D]internal A
11.[A]Except for [B]According to [C]Due to [D]As for B
17.[A]disappointed [B]excited [C]joyful [D]indifferent A
18.[A]adapted [B]catered [C]turned [D]reacted D
19.[A]suggesting [B]requiring [C]mentioning [D]supposing A
20.[A]Eventually [B]Consequently [C]Similarly [D]Conversely C
阅读理解 Part A
Text 1
文章选自不是很热门的一本杂志“Commentary” 2007年9月号,原文作者 TERRY TEACHOUT 题目为 Selling Classical Music。作者从纽约爱乐乐团任命Alan Gilbert为新音乐总监一事谈起,分析了交响乐团现在面临的困境,并给出了自己的解释和解决途径。文章难度一般,后面题目也比较简单
Text 2
文章选自Business Week 商业周刊 2009年11月5日,原文作者Jena McGregor 原文的题目是Top Managers Are Quitting, Without a New Job:顶级经理人在离职,新工作还没着落。讲在西方经济逐渐摆脱金融危机影响后,工作机会也渐渐多了起来,许多高级经理人不等和下家谈好,就先辞职,即现在所谓的“裸辞”或“裸跳”。作者分析了这种情况的利弊和产生的原因。文章难度一般,题目也不难
文章选自2010年9月7日的新闻周刊,文章作者Jennie Yabroff 文章的题目是 Not On Board With Baby (孩子不能登机登船),副标题是Parenthood—the condition, not the TV show—sucks. Or so everyone keeps saying。文章讨论的是美国社会中的一个热点话题,是否要孩子。作者直言不讳地指出,美国流行文化中对养育孩子的好处比较渲染,而养育孩子的艰苦则提的较少。这篇文章的难度主要体现在考生对作者的态度把握上比较困难。
阅读理解 Part B
文章自于2010年2月25日的Economist 经济学人杂志,原文题目为University education in America 美国的大学教育
The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. By Louis Menand. Norton; 174 pages; $24.95 and £17.99. Buy from Amazon.com,Amazon.co.uk
THIS subtle and intelligent little book should be read by every student thinking of applying to take a doctorate. They may then decide to go elsewhere. For something curious has been happening in American universities, and Louis Menand, a professor of English at Harvard University, captures it deftly。
His concern is mainly with the humanities: literature, languages, philosophy and so on. These are disciplines that are going out of style: 22% of American college graduates now major in business compared with only 2% in history and 4% in English. However, many leading American universities want their undergraduates to have a grounding in the basic canon of ideas that every educated person should possess. But most find it difficult to agree on what a “general education” should look like. At Harvard, Mr Menand notes, “The great books are read because they have been read”—they form a sort of social glue。
One reason why it is hard to design and teach such courses is that they cut across the insistence by top American universities that liberal-arts education and professional education should be kept separate, taught in different schools. Many students experience both varieties. Although more than half of Harvard undergraduates end up in law, medicine or business, future doctors and lawyers must study a non-specialist liberal-arts degree before embarking on a professional qualification。
Besides professionalising the professions by this separation, top American universities have professionalised the professor. The growth in public money for academic research has speeded the process: federal research grants rose fourfold between 1960 and 1990, but faculty teaching hours fell by half as research took its toll. Professionalism has turned the acquisition of a doctorate into a prerequisite for a successful academic career: as late as 1969 a third of American professors did not possess one. But the key idea behind professionalisation, argues Mr Menand, is that “the knowledge and skills needed for a particular specialisation are transmissible but not transferable。” So disciplines acquire a monopoly not just over the production of knowledge, but also over the production of the producers of knowledge。
No disciplines have seized on professionalism with as much enthusiasm as the humanities. You can, Mr Menand points out, become a lawyer in three years and a medical doctor in four. But the median time—median!—to a doctoral degree in the humanities is nine years. (Advertising note to American students: you can get a perfectly good PhD at a top British university in under four years。) Not surprisingly, up to half of all doctoral students in English drop out before getting their degrees。
Equally unsurprisingly, only about half end up with the jobs they entered graduate school to get: tenured professorships. There are simply too few posts. This is partly because universities continue to churn out ever more PhDs. But fewer students want to study humanities subjects: English departments awarded more bachelor’s degrees in 1970-71 than they did 20 years later. Fewer students require fewer teachers. So, at the end of a decade of thesis-writing, many humanities students leave the profession to do something for which they have not been trained。
The key to reforming higher education, concludes Mr Menand, is to alter the way in which “the producers of knowledge are produced”. Otherwise, academics will continue to think dangerously alike, increasingly detached from the societies which they study, investigate and criticise. “Academic inquiry, at least in some fields, may need to become less exclusionary and more holistic。” Yet quite how that happens, Mr Menand does not say. In reality, baby and bathwater may go out together. Public exasperation with academic introversion may lead to a loss of some independence, the most precious right of academics in a free society。
With its theme that “Mind is the master weaver,” creating our inner character and outer circumstances, the book As a Man Thinking by James Allen is an in-depth exploration of the central idea of self-help writing。
(46) Allen’s contribution was to take an assumption we all share--that because we are not robots we therefore control our thoughts-and reveal its erroneous nature. 我们每个人都认为:自己不是机器人,因此能够控制自己的思想;爱伦的贡献在于他研究了这一假说,并揭示其错误的本质。Because most of us believe that mind is separate from matter, we think that thoughts can be hidden and made powerless; this allows us to think one way and act another. However, Allen believed that the unconscious mind generates as much action as the conscious mind, and (47) while we may be able to sustain the illusion of control through the conscious mind alone, in reality we are continually faced with a question: “Why cannot I make myself do this or achieve that? ”
Since desire and will are damaged by the presence of thoughts that do not accord with desire, Allen concluded : “ We do not attract what we want, but what we are。” Achievement happens because you as a person embody the external achievement; you don’t “ get” success but become it. There is no gap between mind and matter。
Part of the fame of Allen’s book is its contention that “Circumstances do not make a person, they reveal him。” (48) This seems a justification for neglect of those in need, and a rationalization of exploitation, of the superiority of those at the top and the inferiority of those at the bottom。
这种说法似乎为忽视需要帮助的人找到了借口,使剥削合理化,令上层人优越,底层人卑微。
This, however, would be a knee-jerk reaction to a subtle argument. Each set of circumstances, however bad, offers a unique opportunity for growth. If circumstances always determined the life and prospects of people, then humanity would never have progressed. In fat, (49)circumstances seem to be designed to bring out the best in us and if we feel that we have been “wronged” then we are unlikely to begin a conscious effort to escape from our situation. 环境似乎旨在激发我们的最大潜能,如果我们总感觉“上天不公”,那么不太可能会自觉地努力脱离现状。Nevertheless, as any biographer knows, a person’s early life and its conditions are often the greatest gift to an individual。
The sobering aspect of Allen’s book is that we have no one else to blame for our present condition except ourselves. (50) The upside is the possibilities contained in knowing that everything is up to us; where before we were experts in the of limitations, now we become authorities of what is possible。
As one of your closest friend, I‘m writing the letter in purpose of recommending one of my favorite movies to you, Around the World in Eighty Days。
The primary factors for my recommendation as as follows. For one thing, this is a movie of science fiction which tells us an exciting story about an English gentleman,Mr. Phileas Fogg, who makes a bet with his clubmates and managers to travel around the world in eighty days. For another, it gives us a vivid description of the many difficulties and incidents which happen on his journey。
Wish you enjoy the movie. Looking forward to your reply. (104 words)
As is subtly portrayed in the cartoon, two toursits are taking sightseeing on a small boat while discarding their picnicing leftovers casually into a lake. Unfortuantely, the lake is already littered and teamed with flowing rubbish like plastic containers, fish-bones, banana skin, watermelon rind, bottles, tins, food wrappings, and so on. And below the drawing, there is a topic which says: "after" the travel or "me" in the travel。
From the portrayal, we can conclude that the painter wants to convey such a message: a good many popular places are flooded with visitors, who spoil the beauty of nature by creating and leaving behind God-knows-how-much trash. On the one hand, tourism, as a multibillion-dollar business, is booming everywhere. Some people, laboring under the belief that tourism serves as an engine of economic growth, seem to ignore its negative effects on the environment. Nevertheless, it is my view that these are not concerns that we can shrug off lightly. On the other hand, tourism has exerted great pressure on the environment we are living in: water is polluted, the ecological system is disturbed, and natural resources have been excessively used。
Undoubtedly, tourism could not be banned in any country as it does help to shore up the economy in places which offer few sources of income. The significant point is that the unchecked growth of the travel business may render the development of an economy unsustainable. It is high time that we enhanced people‘s awareness to rectify this by taking the environmental protection into consideration. (255 words)