阅读理解Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A., B., C. and D.. You should deicide the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center.Passage TwoThere is no denying that students should learn something about how computers work. There is no denying that students should learn something about how computers work, just as we expect them at least to understand that the internal-combustion engine has something to do with burning fuel, expanding gases and pistons being driven. For people should have some basic idea of how the things that they use do what they do. Further, students might be helped by a course that considers the computer’s impact on society. But that is not what is meant by computer literacy. For computer literacy is not a form of literacy; it is a trade skill that should not be taught as a liberal art.Learning how to use a computer and learning how to program one are two distinct activities. A case might be made that the competent citizens of tomorrow should free themselves from their fear of computers. But this is quite different from saying that all ought to know how to program one. Leave that to people who have chosen programming as a career. While programming can be lots of fun, and while our society needs some people who are experts at it, the same is true of auto repair and violin- making.Learning how to use a computer is not that difficult, and it gets easier all the time as programs become more “user-friendly”. Let us assume that in the future everyone is going to have to know how to use a computer to be a competent citizen. What does the phrase “learning to use a computer” mean? It sounds like “learning to drive a car”, that is, it sounds as if there is some set of definite skills that, once acquired, enable one to use a computer. In fact, “learning to use a computer” is much more like “learning to play a game”, but learning the rules of one game may not he1p you play a second game, whose rules may not be the same. There is no such a thing as teaching someone how to use a computer. One can only teach people to use this or that program and generally that is easily accomplished.

阅读理解Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. For each of them there are four choices marked A.,B., C. and D. You should decide on the best choice.Passage 1A study of art history might be a good way to learn more about a culture than that is possible to learn in general history classes. Most typical history courses concentrate on politics, economics, and war. But art history focuses on much more than this because art reflects not only the political values of a people, but also religious beliefs, emotions, and psychology. In addition, information about the daily activities of our ancestors—or of people very different from our own—can be provided by art. In short, art expresses the essential qualities of a time and a place, and a study of it clearly offers us a deeper understanding than that can be found in most history books.In history books, objective information about the political life of a country is presented; that is, facts about politics are given, but opinions are not expressed. Art, on the other hand, is subjective: it reflects emotions and opinions. The great Spanish painter Francisco Goya was perhaps the first truly “political” artist. In his well-known painting The Third of May 1808, he criticized the Spanish government for its misuse of power over people. Over a hundred years later, symbolic images were used in Pablo Picasso’s Guernica to express the horror of war. Meanwhile, on another continent, the powerful paintings of Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros—as well as the works of Alfredo Ramos Martines—depicted these Mexican artists’ deep anger and sadness about social problems.In the same way, art can reflect a culture’s religious beliefs. For hundreds of years in Europe, religious art was almost the only type of art that existed. Churches and other religious buildings were filled with paintings that depicted people and stories from the Bible. Although most people couldn’t read, they could still understand biblical stories in the pictures on church walls. By contrast, one of the main characteristics of art in the Middle East was (and still is) its absence of human and animal images. This reflects the Islamic (伊斯兰教的） belief that statues are unholy (不神圣的）.

阅读理解By and large, then, society demands that these harmful physical practices be controlled insofar as it can be done humanely

阅读理解No matter what their specific forms, families in all known societies have performed major social functions production, maintenance, socialization, and social placement of the young

阅读理解Passage 3 Engineering students are supposed to be examples of practicality, and rationality, but when it comes to my college education I am an idealist and a fool

阅读理解Passage 3 Southwell in Nottinghamshire is full of surprises

阅读理解Text 2 Trying to map the brain has always been cartography for fools

阅读理解Oddly, the latter must suppose that speaking loudly will somehow make up for the listeners apparent lack of comprehension

阅读理解China is the most populous nation in the world; India has one billion people in a land one-third the size of Australia; and Indonesia, the fourth, most-populous nation, has 107 people crammed into each square kilometer of land

阅读理解Science is a dominant theme in our culture

阅读理解Being told I would be expected to talk here, I inquired what sort of talk I ought to make

阅读理解Passage 2 Between 1977 and 1981, three groups of American women, numbering 27 in all, between the ages of 35 and 65,were given month-long tests to determine how they would respond to conditions resembling those aboard the space shuttle

阅读理解Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A., B., C. and D.. You should deicide the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center.Passage ThreeThe typical American worker with a four-year college degree earns a lot more money than a similar worker who didn’t go beyond high school—45% more.Education does pay. But in today’s economy, getting a bachelor’s degree is no longer a guarantee of raises big enough to beat inflation.Although the best-paid college grads are doing well, wages of college grads have fallen on average in the past five years. The only group that enjoyed rising wages between 2000 and 2005 were the small slice with graduate degrees.Even though the economy has been growing smartly, lots of workers who played by the rules and went the distance to get a four-year college degree aren’t getting ahead.How come? Labor’s slice of the apples is smaller and corporate profits’ slice is larger. Moreover, labor’s share has been sliced increasingly unevenly. The very best-paid workers are getting the bulk of the raises.Wage inequality has been widening for a couple of decades. But in the past decade, the gap between the bottom and the middle hasn’t widened much while wages at the top have pulled away. The top 1% in the U.S. got 16% of all income in 2014, compared with 9% in 1984.The question isn’t whether the gap between winners and losers in the labor market is widening; it’s why. And it’s no longer as simple as saying. The more education one gets, the more one earns. Something more complicated is driving up pay at the top.There are three explanations, all of which have some merit. One, it’s more socially acceptable than it was a generation ago for the top-tier chief executive, hedge-fund manager or baseball players to make an enormous amount of money. Two, the world has changed in ways that make No.1 or No.2— whether a trial lawyer or a rock star—much more valuable than No.19 and 20. And, three, there’s the influence on supply and demand of globalization and technology. At the high end, sharply rising wages suggest demand for the most-educated workers is growing faster than the supply. It’s changes in demand; combined with the fact that it’s very hard to replicate a lot of that talent, and we haven’t expanded the ranks of those professors as fast as we could.

阅读理解It is impossible to produce spoken language without using some form of communication beyond the literal meaning of the words chosen

阅读理解Passage 1 When you think of a culture, you usually think of things such as art, language, music, literature, and architecture

阅读理解Passage 6 In every known human society the males needs for achievements can be recognizedIn a great number of human societies mens sureness of their sex role is tied up with their right, or ability, to practice some activity that women are not allowed to practice

阅读理解Cheating is nothing new

阅读理解Passage 2 Not too many decades ago it seemed obvious both to the general public and to sociologists that modem society, has changed peoples natural relations, loosened their responsibilities to kin and neighbors, and substituted in their place superficial relationships with passing acquaintances

阅读理解In its most abstract sense the perception of a loss of community in modern society refers to changes in both the structure and content of personal relationships

阅读理解Passage 2 By the year 2020 AD, a single silicon chip will contain more components than the number of cells in the human brain