试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-考研英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

题库

首页 > 题库 > 考研英语

Trust is a tricky business. On the one hand, it’s a necessary condition _1_ many worthwhile things: child care, friendships, etc. On the other hand, putting your _2_ in the wrong place often carries a high _3_._4_, why do we trust at all? Well, because it feels good. _5_ people place their trust in an individual or an institution, their brains release oxytocin, a hormone that _6_ pleasurable feelings and triggers the herding instinct that prompts humans to _7_ with one another. Scientists have found that exposure _8_ this hormone puts us in a trusting _9_: In a Swiss study, researchers sprayed oxytocin into the noses of half the subjects; those subjects were ready to lend significantly higher amounts of money to strangers than were their _10_ who inhaled something else._11_ for us, we also have a sixth sense for dishonesty that may _12_ us. A Canadian study found that children as young as 14 months can differentiate _13_ a credible person and a dishonest one. Sixty toddlers were each _14_ to an adult tester holding a plastic container. The tester would ask, “What’s in here?” before looking into the container, smiling, and exclaiming, “Wow!” Each subject was then invited to look _15_. Half of them found a toy; the other half _16_ the container was empty—and realized the tester had _17_ them.Among the children who had not been tricked, the majority were _18_ to cooperate with the tester in learning a new skill, demonstrating that they trusted his leadership. _19_, only five of the 30 children paired with the “_20_” tester participated in a follow-up activity.

Directions: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the picture below. In your essay, you should1) describe the picture briefly,2) interpret the implied meaning, and3) give your comments.You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (20 points)

Directions: Suppose you are working for the “Aiding Rural Primary School” project of your university. Write an email to answer the inquiry from an international student volunteer, specifying the details of the project.You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET.Do not use your own name in the email. Use “Li Ming” instead. (10 points)

It was only after I started to write a weekly column about the medical journals, and began to read scientific papers from beginning to end, that I realized just how bad much of the medical literature frequently was. I came to recognize various signs of a bad paper: the kind of paper that purports to show that people who eat more than one kilo of broccoli a week were 1.17 times more likely than those who eat less to suffer late in life from pernicious anaemia. (1) There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals which, when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press, generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms.Why is so much bad science published? A recent paper, titled “The Natural Selection of Bad Science”, published on the Royal Society’s open science website, attempts to answer this intriguing and important question. It says that the problem is not merely that people do bad science, but that our current system of career advancement positively encourages it. What is important is not truth, but publication, which has become almost an end in itself. There has been a kind of inflationary process at work: (2) nowadays anyone applying for a research post has to have published twice the number of papers that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago. Never mind the quality, then, count the number.(3) Attempts have been made to curb this tendency, for example, by trying to incorporate some measure of quality as well as quantity into the assessment of an applicant’s papers. This is the famed citation index, that is to say the number of times a paper has been quoted elsewhere in the scientific literature, the assumption being that an important paper will be cited more often than one of small account. (4) This would be reasonable if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications, or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favors.Boiling down an individual’s output to simple metrics, such as number of publications or journal impacts, entails considerable savings in time, energy and ambiguity. Unfortunately, the long-term costs of using simple quantitative metrics to assess researcher merit are likely to be quite great. (5) If we are serious about ensuring that our science is both meaningful and reproducible, we must ensure that our institutions encourage that kind of science.

Directions: The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 1-5, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent text by choosing from the list A-G and filling them into the numbered boxes. Paragraphs C and F have been correctly placed. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)[A] These tools can help you win every argument—not in the unhelpful sense of beating your opponents but in the better sense of learning about the issues that divide people, learning why they disagree with us and learning to talk and work together with them. If we readjust our view of arguments—from a verbal fight or tennis game to a reasoned exchange through which we all gain mutual respect and understanding—then we change the very nature of what it means to “win” an argument.[B] Of course, many discussions are not so successful. Still, we need to be careful not to accuse opponents of bad arguments too quickly. We need to learn how to evaluate them properly. A large part of evaluation is calling out bad arguments, but we also need to admit good arguments by opponents and to apply the same critical standards to ourselves. Humility requires you to recognize weaknesses in your own arguments and sometimes also to accept reasons on the opposite side.[C] None of this will be easy, but you can start even if others refuse to. Next time you state your position, formulate an argument for what you claim and honestly ask yourself whether your argument is any good. Next time you talk with someone who takes a stand, ask them to give you a reason for their view. Spell out their argument fully and charitably. Assess its strength impartially. Raise objections and listen carefully to their replies.[D] Carnegie would be right if arguments were fights, which is how we often think of them. Like physical fights, verbal fights can leave both sides bloodied. Even when you win, you end up no better off. Your prospects would be almost as dismal if arguments were even just competitions—like, say, tennis games. Pairs of opponents hit the ball back and forth until one winner emerges from all who entered. Everybody else loses. This kind of thinking is why so many people try to avoid arguments, especially about politics and religion.[E] In his 1936 work How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote: “There is only one way... to get the best of an argument—and that is to avoid it.” This aversion to arguments is common, but it depends on a mistaken view of arguments that causes profound problems for our personal and social lives—and in many ways misses the point of arguing in the first place.[F] These views of arguments also undermine reason. If you see a conversation as a fight or competition, you can win by cheating as long as you don’t get caught. You will be happy to convince people with bad arguments. You can call their views stupid, or joke about how ignorant they are. None of these tricks will help you understand them, their positions or the issues that divide you, but they can help you win—in one way.[G] There is a better way to win arguments. Imagine that you favor increasing the minimum wage in our state, and I do not. If you yell, “Yes,” and I yell, “No,” neither of us learns anything. We neither understand nor respect each other, and we have no basis for compromise or cooperation. In contrast, suppose you give a reasonable argument: that full-time workers should not have to live in poverty. Then I counter with another reasonable argument: that a higher minimum wage will force businesses to employ fewer people for less time. Now we can understand each other’s positions and recognize our shared values, since we both care about needy workers.1. →2. →F→3. →4. →C→5.

States will be able to force more people to pay sales tax when they make online purchases under a Supreme Court decision Thursday that will leave shoppers with lighter wallets but is a big financial win for states.The Supreme Court’s opinion Thursday overruled a pair of decades-old decisions that states said cost them billions of dollars in lost revenue annually. The decisions made it more difficult for states to collect sales tax on certain online purchases.The cases the court overturned said that if a business was shipping a customer’s purchase to a state where the business didn’t have a physical presence such as a warehouse or office, the business didn’t have to collect sales tax for the state. Customers were generally responsible for paying the sales tax to the state themselves if they weren’t charged it, but most didn’t realize they owed it and few paid.Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the previous decisions were flawed. “Each year the physical presence rule becomes further removed from economic reality and results in significant revenue losses to the States,” he wrote in an opinion joined by four other justices. Kennedy wrote that the rule “limited states’ ability to seek long-term prosperity and has prevented market participants from competing on an even playing field.”The ruling is a victory for big chains with a presence in many states, since they usually collect sales tax on online purchases already. Now, rivals will be charging sales tax where they hadn’t before. Big chains have been collecting sales tax nationwide because they typically have physical stores in whatever state a purchase is being shipped to. Amazon.com, with its network of warehouses, also collects sales tax in every state that charges it, though third-party sellers who use the site don’t have to.Until now, many sellers that have a physical presence in only a single state or a few states have been able to avoid charging sales taxes when they ship to addresses outside those states. Sellers that use eBay and Etsy, which provide platforms for smaller sellers, also haven’t been collecting sales tax nationwide. Under the ruling Thursday, states can pass laws requiring out-of-state sellers to collect the state’s sales tax from customers and send it to the state.Retail trade groups praised the ruling, saying it levels the playing field for local and online businesses. The losers, said retail analyst Neil Saunders, are online-only retailers, especially smaller ones. Those retailers may face headaches complying with various state sales tax laws. The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council advocacy group said in a statement, “Small businesses and internet entrepreneurs are not well served at all by this decision.”1. The Supreme Court decision Thursday will .2. It can be learned from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that the overruled decisions .3. According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, the physical presence rule has .4. Who are most likely to welcome the Supreme Court ruling?5. In dealing with the Supreme Court decision Thursday, the author .

This year marks exactly two centuries since the publication of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley. Even before the invention of the electric light bulb, the author produced a remarkable work of speculative fiction that would foreshadow many ethical questions to be raised by technologies yet to come.Today the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) raises fundamental questions: “What is intelligence, identity, or consciousness? What makes humans humans?”What is being called artificial general intelligence, machines that would imitate the way humans think, continues to evade scientists. Yet humans remain fascinated by the idea of robots that would look, move, and respond like humans, similar to those recently depicted on popular sci-fi TV series such as “Westworld” and “Humans”.Just how people think is still far too complex to be understood, let alone reproduced, says David Eagleman, a Stanford University neuroscientist. “We are just in a situation where there are no good theories explaining what consciousness actually is and how you could ever build a machine to get there.”But that doesn’t mean crucial ethical issues involving AI aren’t at hand. The coming use of autonomous vehicles, for example, poses thorny ethical questions. Human drivers sometimes must make split-second decisions. Their reactions may be a complex combination of instant reflexes, input from past driving experiences, and what their eyes and ears tell them in that moment. AI “vision” today is not nearly as sophisticated as that of humans. And to anticipate every imaginable driving situation is a difficult programming problem.Whenever decisions are based on masses of data, “you quickly get into a lot of ethical questions,” notes Tan Kiat How, chief executive of a Singapore-based agency that is helping the government develop a voluntary code for the ethical use of AI. Along with Singapore, other governments and mega-corporations are beginning to establish their own guidelines. Britain is setting up a data ethics center. India released its AI ethics strategy this spring.On June 7 Google pledged not to “design or deploy AI” that would cause “overall harm,” or to develop AI-directed weapons or use AI for surveillance that would violate international norms. It also pledged not to deploy AI whose use would violate international laws or human rights.While the statement is vague, it represents one starting point. So does the idea that decisions made by AI systems should be explainable, transparent, and fair.To put it another way: How can we make sure that the thinking of intelligent machines reflects humanity’s highest values? Only then will they be useful servants and not Frankenstein’s out-of-control monster.1. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is mentioned because it .2. In David Eagleman’s opinion, our current knowledge of consciousness .3. The solution to the ethical issues brought by autonomous vehicles .4. The author’s attitude toward Google’s pledges is one of .5. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

Grade inflation—the gradual increase in average GPAs (grade point averages) over the past few decades—is often considered a product of a consumer era in higher education, in which students are treated like customers to be pleased. But another, related force—a policy often buried deep in course catalogs called “grade forgiveness”—is helping raise GPAs.Grade forgiveness allows students to retake a course in which they received a low grade, and the most recent grade or the highest grade is the only one that counts in calculating a student’s overall GPA.The use of this little-known practice has accelerated in recent years, as colleges continue to do their utmost to keep students in school (and paying tuition) and improve their graduation rates. When this practice first started decades ago, it was usually limited to freshmen, to give them a second chance to take a class in their first year if they struggled in their transition to college-level courses. But now most colleges, save for many selective campuses, allow all undergraduates, and even graduate students, to get their low grades forgiven. College officials also tend to emphasize that the goal of grade forgiveness is less about the grade itself and more about encouraging students to retake courses critical to their degree program and graduation without incurring a big penalty.“Ultimately,” said Jack Miner, Ohio State University’s registrar, “we see students achieve more success because they retake a course and do better in subsequent courses or master the content that allows them to graduate on time.”That said, there is a way in which grade forgiveness satisfies colleges’ own needs as well. For public institutions, state funds are sometimes tied partly to their success on metrics such as graduation rates and student retention—so better grades can, by boosting figures like those, mean more money. And anything that raises GPAs will likely make students—who, at the end of the day, are paying the bill—feel they’ve gotten a better value for their tuition dollars, which is another big concern for colleges.Indeed, grade forgiveness is just another way that universities are responding to consumers’ expectations for higher education. Since students and parents expect a college degree to lead to a job, it is in the best interest of a school to turn out graduates who are as qualified as possible—or at least appear to be. On this, students’ and colleges’ incentives seem to be aligned.1. What is commonly regarded as the cause of grade inflation?2. What was the original purpose of grade forgiveness?3. According to Paragraph 5, grade forgiveness enables colleges to .4. What does the phrase “to be aligned” (Para. 6) most probably mean?5. The author examines the practice of grade forgiveness by .

Financial regulators in Britain have imposed a rather unusual rule on the bosses of big banks. Starting next year, any guaranteed bonus of top executives could be delayed 10 years if their banks are under investigation for wrongdoing. The main purpose of this “clawback” rule is to hold bankers accountable for harmful risk-taking and to restore public trust in financial institutions. Yet officials also hope for a much larger benefit: more long-term decision-making not only by banks but by all corporations, to build a stronger economy for future generations.“Short-termism” or the desire for quick profits, has worsened in publicly traded companies, says the Bank of England’s top economist, Andrew Haldane. He quotes a giant of classical economics, Alfred Marshall, in describing this financial impatience as acting like “children who pick the plums out of their pudding to eat them at once” rather than putting them aside to be eaten last.The average time for holding a stock in both the United States and Britain, he notes, has dropped from seven years to seven months in recent decades. Transient investors, who demand high quarterly profits from companies, can hinder a firm’s efforts to invest in long-term research or to build up customer loyalty. This has been dubbed “quarterly capitalism”.In addition, new digital technologies have allowed more rapid trading of equities, quicker use of information, and thus shorter attention spans in financial markets. “There seems to be a predominance of short-term thinking at the expense of long-term investing,” said Commissioner Daniel Gallagher of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in a speech this week.In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has pushed most public companies to defer performance bonuses for senior executives by about a year, slightly helping reduce “short-termism”. In its latest survey of CEO pay, The Wall Street Journal finds that “a substantial part” of executive pay is now tied to performance.Much more could be done to encourage “long-termism”, such as changes in the tax code and quicker disclosure of stock acquisitions. In France, shareholders who hold onto a company investment for at least two years can sometimes earn more voting rights in a company.Within companies, the right compensation design can provide incentives for executives to think beyond their own time at the company and on behalf of all stakeholders. Britain’s new rule is a reminder to bankers that society has an interest in their performance, not just for the short term but for the long term.1. According to Paragraph 1, one motive in imposing the new rule is to .2. Alfred Marshall is quoted to indicate .3. It is argued that the influence of transient investment on public companies can be .4. The US and France examples are used to illustrate .5. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

Today, we live in a world where GPS systems, digital maps, and other navigation apps are all available on our smart phones. _1_ of us just walk straight into the woods without a phone. But phones _2_ on batteries, and batteries can die faster than we realize. _3_ you get lost without a phone or a compass, and you _4_ can’t find north, we have a few tricks to help you navigate _5_ to civilization, one of which is to follow the land.When you find yourself well _6_ a trail, but not in a completely _7_ area, you have to answer two questions: Which _8_ is downhill, in this particular area? And where is the nearest water source? Humans overwhelmingly live in valleys, and on supplies of fresh water. _ 9_, if you head downhill, and follow any H2O you find, you should _10_ see signs of people.If you’ve explored the area before, keep an eye out for familiar sights—you may be _11_ how quickly identifying a distinctive rock or tree can restore your bearings.Another _12_: Climb high and look for signs of human habitation. _13_, even in dense forest, you should be able to _14_ gaps in the tree line due to roads, train tracks, and other paths people carve _15_ the woods. Head toward these _16_ to find a way out. At night, scan the horizon for _17_ light sources, such as fires and streetlights, then walk toward the glow of light pollution._18_, assuming you’re lost in an area humans tend to frequent, look for the _19_ we leave on the landscape. Trail blazes, tire tracks, and other features can _20_ you to civilization.

Directions: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the picture below. In your essay, you should1) describe the picture briefly,2) interpret the implied meaning, and3) give your comments.You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (20 points)

Directions: The Students Union of your university has assigned you to inform the international students about an upcoming singing contest. Write a notice in about 100 words.Write your answer on the ANSWER SHEET.Do not use your own name in the notice. (10 points)

Following the explosion of creativity in Florence during the 14th century known as the Renaissance, the modern world saw a departure from what it had once known. It turned from God and the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and instead favored a more humanistic approach to being. Renaissance ideas had spread throughout Europe well into the 17th century, with the arts and sciences flourishing extraordinarily among those with a more logical disposition. (1) With the Church’s teachings and ways of thinking eclipsed by the Renaissance, the gap between the Medieval and modern periods had been bridged, leading to new and unexplored intellectual territories.During the Renaissance, the great minds of Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei demonstrated the power of scientific study and discovery. (2) Before each of their revelations, many thinkers at the time had sustained more ancient ways of thinking, including the geocentric view that the Earth was at the center of our universe. Copernicus theorized in 1543 that in actual fact, all of the planets that we knew of revolved not around the Earth, but the Sun, a system that was later upheld by Galileo at his own expense. Offering up such a theory during a time of high tension between scientific and religious minds was branded as heresy and any such heretics that continued to spread these lies were to be punished by imprisonment or even death.(3) Despite attempts by the Church to suppress this new generation of logicians and rationalists, more explanations for how the universe functioned were being made at a rate that the people could no longer ignore. It was with these great revelations that a new kind of philosophy founded in reason was born.The Church’s long-standing dogma was losing the great battle for truth to rationalists and scientists. This very fact embodied the new ways of thinking that swept through Europe during most of the 17th century. (4) As many took on the duty of trying to integrate reasoning and scientific philosophies into the world, the Renaissance was over and it was time for a new era—the Age of Reason.The 17th and 18th centuries were times of radical change and curiosity. Scientific method, reductionism and the questioning of Church ideals was to be encouraged, as were ideas of liberty, tolerance and progress. (5) Such actions to seek knowledge and to understand what information we already knew were captured by the Latin phrase “sapere aude” or “dare to know”, after Immanuel Kant used it in his essay An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? It was the purpose and responsibility of great minds to go forth and seek out the truth, which they believed to be founded in knowledge.

Directions: In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For questions 1–5, choose the most suitable one from the list A–G to fit into each of numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)In a social situation, eye contact with another person can show that you are paying attention in a friendly way. But it can also be antagonistic, such as when a political candidate turns toward their competitor during a debate and makes eye contact that signals hostility. Here’s what hard science reveals about eye contact:1. _______We know that a typical infant will instinctively gaze into its mother’s eyes, and she will look back. This mutual gaze is a major part of the attachment between mother and child. In adulthood, looking someone else in a pleasant way can be a complimentary sign of paying attention. It can catch someone’s attention in a crowded room. “Eye contact and smile” can signal availability and confidence, a common-sense notion supported in studies by psychologist Monica Moore.2. _Neuroscientist Bonnie Auyeung found that the hormone oxytocin increased the amount of eye contact from men toward the interviewer during a brief interview when the direction of their gaze was recorded. This was also found in high-functioning men with some autistic spectrum symptoms, who may tend to avoid eye contact. Specific brain regions that respond during direct gaze are being explored by other researches, using advanced methods of brain scanning.3. _With the use of eye-tracking technology, Julia Minson of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government concluded that eye contact can signal very different kinds of messages, depending on the situation. While eye contact may be a sign of connection or trust in friendly situations, it’s more likely to be associated with dominance or intimidation in adversarial situations. “Whether you’re a politician or a parent, it might be helpful to keep in mind that trying to maintain eye contact may backfire if you’re trying to convince someone who has a different set of beliefs than you,” said Minson.4. _When we look at a face or a picture, our eyes pause on one spot at a time, often on the eyes or mouth. These pauses typically occur at about three per second, and the eyes then jump to another spot, until several important points in the image are registered like a series of snapshots. How the whole image is then assembled and perceived is still a mystery although it is the subject of current research.5. _________In people who score high in a test of neuroticism, a personality dimension associated with self-consciousness and anxiety, eye contact triggered more activity associated with avoidance, according to the Finnish researcher Jari Hietanen and colleagues. “Our findings indicate that people do not only feel different when they are the center of attention but that their brain reactions also differ.” A more direct finding is that people who scored high for negative emotions like anxiety looked at others for shorter periods of time and reported more comfortable feelings when others did not look directly at them.A. Eye fixations are briefB. Too much eye contact is instinctively felt to be rudeC. Eye contact can be a friendly social signalD. Personality can affect how a person reacts to eye contactE. Biological factors behind eye contact are being investigatedF. Most people are not comfortable holding eye contact with strangersG. Eye contact can also be aggressive

Last Thursday, the French Senate passed a digital services tax, which would impose an entirely new tax on large multinationals that provide digital services to consumers or users in France. Digital services include everything from providing a platform for selling goods and services online to targeting advertising based on user data, and the tax applies to gross revenue from such services. Many French politicians and media outlets have referred to this as a “GAFA tax,” meaning that it is designed to apply primarily to companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon—in other words, multinational tech companies based in the United States.The digital services tax now awaits the signature of President Emmanuel Macron, who has expressed support for the measure, and it could go into effect within the next few weeks. But it has already sparked significant controversy, with the United States trade representative opening an investigation into whether the tax discriminates against American companies, which in turn could lead to trade sanctions against France.The French tax is not just a unilateral move by one country in need of revenue. Instead, the digital services tax is part of a much larger trend, with countries over the past few years proposing or putting in place an alphabet soup of new international tax provisions. They have included Britain’s DPT (diverted profits tax), Australia’s MAAL (multinational anti-avoidance law), and India’s SEP (significant economic presence) test, to name but a few. At the same time, the European Union, Spain, Britain and several other countries have all seriously contemplated digital services taxes.These unilateral developments differ in their specifics, but they are all designed to tax multinationals on income and revenue that countries believe they should have a right to tax, even if international tax rules do not grant them that right. In other words, they all share a view that the international tax system has failed to keep up with the current economy.In response to these many unilateral measures, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is currently working with 131 countries to reach a consensus by the end of 2020 on an international solution. Both France and the United States are involved in the organization’s work, but France’s digital services tax and the American response raise questions about what the future holds for the international tax system.France’s planned tax is a clear warning: Unless a broad consensus can be reached on reforming the international tax system, other nations are likely to follow suit, and American companies will face a cascade of different taxes from dozens of nations that will prove burdensome and costly.1. The French Senate has passed a bill to .2. It can be learned from Paragraph 2 that the digital services tax .3. The countries adopting the unilateral measures share the opinion that .4. It can be learned from Paragraph 5 that the OECD’s current work .5. Which of the following might be the best title for this text?

Progressives often support diversity mandates as a path to equality and a way to level the playing field. But all too often such policies are an insincere form of virtue-signaling that benefits only the most privileged and does little to help average people.A pair of bills sponsored by Massachusetts state Senator Jason Lewis and House Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad, to ensure “gender parity” on boards and commissions, provide a case in point.Haddad and Lewis are concerned that more than half the state-government boards are less than 40 percent female. In order to ensure that elite women have more such opportunities, they have proposed imposing government quotas. If the bills become law, state boards and commissions will be required to set aside 50 percent of board seats for women by 2022.The bills are similar to a measure recently adopted in California, which last year became the first state to require gender quotas for private companies. In signing the measure, California Governor Jerry Brown admitted that the law, which expressly classifies people on the basis of sex, is probably unconstitutional.The US Supreme Court frowns on sex-based classifications unless they are designed to address an “important” policy interest. Because the California law applies to all boards, even where there is no history of prior discrimination, courts are likely to rule that the law violates the constitutional guarantee of “equal protection”.But are such government mandates even necessary? Female participation on corporate boards may not currently mirror the percentage of women in the general population, but so what?The number of women on corporate boards has been steadily increasing without government interference. According to a study by Catalyst, between 2010 and 2015 the share of women on the boards of global corporations increased by 54 percent.Requiring companies to make gender the primary qualification for board membership will inevitably lead to less experienced private sector boards. That is exactly what happened when Norway adopted a nationwide corporate gender quota.Writing in The New Republic, Alice Lee notes that increasing the number of opportunities for board membership without increasing the pool of qualified women to serve on such boards has led to a “golden skirt” phenomenon, where the same elite women scoop up multiple seats on a variety of boards.Next time somebody pushes corporate quotas as a way to promote gender equity, remember that such policies are largely self-serving measures that make their sponsors feel good but do little to help average women.1. The author believes that the bills sponsored by Lewis and Haddad will .2. Which of the following is true of the California measure?3. The author mentions the study by Catalyst to illustrate .4. Norway’s adoption of a nationwide corporate gender quota has led to .5. Which of the following can be inferred from the text?

Scientific publishing has long been a license to print money. Scientists need journals in which to publish their research, so they will supply the articles without monetary reward. Other scientists perform the specialized work of peer review also for free, because it is a central element in the acquisition of status and the production of scientific knowledge.With the content of papers secured for free, the publisher needs only to find a market for its journal. Until this century, university libraries were not very price sensitive. Scientific publishers routinely report profit margins approaching 40% on their operations at a time when the rest of the publishing industry is in an existential crisis.The Dutch giant Elsevier, which claims to publish 25% of the scientific papers produced in the world, made profits of more than £900m last year, while UK universities alone spent more than £210m in 2016 to enable researchers to access their own publicly funded research; both figures seem to rise unstoppably despite increasingly desperate efforts to change them.The most drastic, an thoroughly illegal, reaction has been the emergence of Sci-Hub, a kind of global photocopier for scientific papers, set up in 2012, which now claims to offer access to every paywalled article published since 2015. The success of Sci-Hub, which relies on researchers passing on copies they have themselves legally accessed, shows the legal ecosystem has lost legitimacy among its users and must be transformed so that it works for all participants.In Britain the move towards open access publishing has been driven by funding bodies. In some ways it has been very successful. More than half of all British scientific research is now published under open access terms: either freely available from the moment of publication, or paywalled for a year or more so that the publishers can make a profit before being placed on general release.Yet the new system has not yet worked out any cheaper for the universities. Publishers have responded to the demand that they make their product free to readers by charging their writers fees to cover the costs of preparing an article. These range from around £500 to $5,000. A report last year pointed out that the costs both of subscriptions and of these “article preparation costs” had been steadily rising at a rate above inflation. In some ways the scientific publishing model resembles the economy of the social internet: labor is provided free in exchange for the hope of status, while huge profits are made by a few big firms who run the market places. In both cases, we need a rebalancing of power.1. Scientific publishing is seen as “a license to print money” partly because .2. According to Paragraphs 2 and 3, scientific publishers Elsevier have .3. How does the author feel about the success of Sci-Hub?4. It can be learned from Paragraphs 5 and 6 that open access terms .5. Which of the following characterizes the scientific publishing model?

A group of Labor MPs, among them Yvette Cooper, are bringing in the new year with a call to institute a UK “town of culture” award. The proposal is that it should sit alongside the existing city of culture title, which was held by Hull in 2017, and has been awarded to Coventry for 2021. Cooper and her colleagues argue that the success of the crown for Hull, where it brought in £220m of investment and an avalanche of arts, ought not to be confined to cities. Britain’s towns, it is true, are not prevented from applying, but they generally lack the resources to put together a bid to beat their bigger competitors. A town of culture award could, it is argued, become an annual event, attracting funding and creating jobs.Some might see the proposal as a booby prize for the fact that Britain is no longer able to apply for the much more prestigious title of European capital of culture, a sought-after award bagged by Glasgow in 1990 and Liverpool in 2008. A cynic might speculate that the UK is on the verge of disappearing into an endless fever of self-celebration in its desperation to reinvent itself for the post-Brexit world: after town of culture, who knows what will follow—village of culture? Suburb of culture? Hamlet of culture?It is also wise to recall that such titles are not a cure-all. A badly run “year of culture” washes in and washes out of a place like the tide, bringing prominence for a spell but leaving no lasting benefits to the community. The really successful holders of such titles are those that do a great deal more than fill hotel bedrooms and bring in high-profile arts events and good press for a year. They transform the aspirations of the people who live there; they nudge the self-image of the city into a bolder and more optimistic light. It is hard to get right, and requires a remarkable degree of vision, as well as cooperation between city authorities, the private sector, community groups and cultural organizations. But it can be done: Glasgow’s year as European capital of culture can certainly be seen as one of a complex series of factors that have turned the city into the powerhouse of art, music and theatre that it remains today.A “town of culture” could be not just about the arts but about honoring a town’s peculiarities—helping sustain its high street, supporting local facilities and above all celebrating its people. Jeremy Wright, the culture secretary, should welcome this positive, hope-filled proposal, and turn it into action.1. Cooper and her colleagues argue that a “town of culture” award could .2. According to Paragraph 2, the proposal might be regarded by some as .3. The author suggests that a title holder is successful only if it .4. Glasgow is mentioned in Paragraph 3 to present .5. What is the author’s attitude towards the proposal?

Even if families don’t sit down to eat together as frequently as before, millions of Britons will nonetheless have got a share this weekend of one of that nation’s great traditions: the Sunday roast. _1_ a cold winter’s day, few culinary pleasures can _2_ it. Yet as we report now, the food police are determined that this _3_ should be rendered yet another guilty pleasure _4_ to damage our health.The Food Standards Authority (FSA) has _5_ a public warning about the risks of a compound called acrylamide that forms in some foods cooked _6_ high temperatures. This means that people should _7_ crisping their roast potatoes, reject thin-crust pizzas and only _8_ toast their bread. But where is the evidence to support such alarmist advice? _9_ studies have shown that acrylamide can cause neurological damage in mice, there is no _10_ evidence that it causes cancer in humans.Scientists say the compound is _11_ to cause cancer but have no hard scientific proof. _12_ the precautionary principle, it could be argued that it is _13_ to follow the FSA advice. _14_, it was rumored that smoking caused cancer for years before the evidence was found to prove a _15_.Doubtless, a piece of boiled beef can always be _16_ up on Sunday alongside some steamed vegetables, without the Yorkshire pudding and no wine. But would life be worth living? _17_, the FSA says it is not telling people to cut out roast foods _18_, but to reduce their lifetime intake. However, its _19_ risks coming across as being pushy and overprotective. Constant health scares just _20_ with one listening.

Directions: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the picture below. In your essay, you should1) describe the picture briefly,2) interpret its intended meaning, and3) give your comments.You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (20 points)

暂未登录

学员用户尊享特权

老师批改作业做题助教答疑学员专用题库高频考点梳理

上一页 2 3 4 5 6 7 下一页