[2005年考研英语]2005考研“考试虫”英语8套模拟试卷(二)2

【shitiku.jxxyjl.com--考研】

Text 3     In recent years, the life insurance industry has abandoned its emphasis on death benefits in favor of a "living benefits" focus. In 1970, 59% of company premium (保险费） income came from life in­surance and only 10% from annuities (年保险金); today, 29% of company premium income comes from life insurance, which nearly half comes from annuities. The transition isn"t rooted in a single cause, but in varied market forces gathering simultaneously.
    Its origin coincided with the release of a 1978 Federal Trade Commission Report that unfairly crit­icized the rate of return paid on the inside buildup of a life policy(保险单). For the first time, the public attention focused on the life product as an investment rather than as a risk protector. Consumer groups soon spread the message. Then came double-digit inflation and rising interest rates, bringing with them new competition for the life insurance premium dollar from other members of the financial service industry. Traditional life insurance policies were being drained of cash values by policy owners who could earn 15% to 20% interest on policy loans placed in money-market investments. To check the cash outflow, interest-sensitive products were developed.
    Meanwhile, the population was aging. For the 70 million Americans born between 1946 and 1961, retirement became an increasing concern. Doubtful about the government"s reliability in generaland of the Social Security trust fund in particular, most retirement-minded individuals took matters in­to their own hands and made retirement funding a top concern. There were other contributing factors as well: the declining proportion of young married adults, the increase in childless couples and of indi­viduals living alone, and the growing diversity in the American population — specifically, the inflow of racial and national groups having different beliefs about security, death, and family responsibility. Fi­nally , more individuals became covered by group insurance through their employer or a professional as­sociation, while the number of people not solely dependent upon a spouse"s (husband or wife"s) in­come increased almost correspondingly.
    Classifying families into five income segments, life insurance ownership is increasing in the two highest segments and declining in the three lowest segments. Approximately seven in ten households in the highest segment own individual life insurance, compared to four in ten in the lowest segment. However, households with incomes of more than $ 75,000 a year account for only 10% of all U. S. households, certainly not a large enough segment to support the entire industry. Others within the fi­nancial services industry — such as banks — are sure to fill the space. Thus, despite the short-term advantages of serving the highest income classes, the current trend could end the life insurance indus­try"s days as a big business and transform it into a cottage industry. It is difficult today to picture life insurance as the protector of widows and children or to justify the continued tax advantages of invest­ment-oriented life products to politicians. To retain the non-taxability of inside buildup and to restrain additional government regulation, the life insurance industry must again become the principal financial advisor to the lower and middle income markets, which in turn will require either work-site and direct-response marketing or a return to single-needs selling.

31. The author"s primary concern is to
A.)identify the historical causes of the current trend in the life insurance industry.
B.)argue for the necessity of action to prevent further erosion of the life insurance industry.
C.)convince the reader of the tax reforms required to reverse the current trend.
D.)evaluate alternative proposals for reforming the current life insurance industry.

32. It can be inferred from the passage that annuities
A.)are attributable primarily to the new emphasis on living benefits.
B.)account for most premium income for life insurance companies.
C.)are a less popular form of life insurance today than in 1970.
D.)tend to provide living benefits rather than death benefits.

33. The author considers the 1978 Federal Trade Commission Report to be unfair most probably because it
A.)failed to adequately account for the benefits associated with risk protection.
B.)failed to represent properly the rate of return on the inside buildup of a life policy.
C.)contributed to the double-digit inflation that worsened national economy.
D.)neglected to consider the relative returns of other types of investments.

34. The author mentions all of the following possible ways for the life industry to reverse the current trend EXCEPT
A.)offering products that fill a single insurance need.
B.)introducing products that are sensitive to interest rates.
C.)establishing an advisory relationship with the lower and middle income market.
D.)instituting a direct-response marketing program.

35- The number of people entirely dependent on a spouse"s income has
A.)increased, but not as much as that of people covered by employers" group insurance.
B.)increased, although their proportion in relation to the overall population has decreased.
C.)decreased almost as much as that of people not covered by employers" group insurance.
D.)decreased, but not so much as that of people covered by employers" group insurance. Text 4     Before a big exam, a sound night"s sleep will do you more good than poring over textbooks. That, at least， is the folk wisdom. And science, in the form of behavioral psychology, supports that wisdom. But such behavioral studies cannot distinguish between two competing theories of why sleep is good for the memory. One says that sleep is when permanent memories form. The other says that they are actually formed during the day, but then "edited" at night, to flush away(冲掉^) what is superfluous.
    To tell the difference, it is necessary to look into the brain of a sleeping person, and that is hard. But af­ter a decade of painstaking work, a team led by Pierre Maquet at Liege University in Belgium has managed to do it. The particular stage of sleep in which the Belgian group is interested is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when brain and body are active, heart rate and blood pressure increase, the eyes move back and forth behind the eyelids as if watching a movie, and brainwave traces resemble those of wakefulness. It is during this period of sleep that people are most likely to relive events of the previous day in dreams.
    Dr. Maquet used an electronic device called PET to study the brains of people as they practiced a task during the day, and as they slept during the following night. The task required them to press a button as fast as possible, in response to a light coming on in one of six positions. As they learnt how to do this, their re­sponse times got faster. What they did not know was that the appearance of the lights sometimes followed a pattern — what is referred to as an "artificial grammar". Yet the reductions in response time showed that they learnt faster when the pattern was present than when there was not.
    What is more, those with more to learn (i.e. , the "grammar", as well as the mechanical task of pushing the button) have more active brains. The "editing" theory would not predict that, since the number of irrelevant stimuli would be the same in each case. And to eliminate any doubts that the ex­perimental subjects were learning as opposed to unlearning, their response times when they woke up were even quicker than when they went to sleep.
    The team, therefore, concluded that the nerve connections involved in memory are reinforced through reactivation during REM sleep, particularly if the brain detects an inherent structure in the material being learnt.. So now, on the eve of that crucial test, maths students can sleep soundly in the knowledge that what they will remember the next day are the basic rules of algebra and not the inco­herent talk from the radio next door.

36. The phrase "poring over" in the 1st sentence of the text may be best interpreted as
A.)memorizing with great effort.
B.)studying with close attention.
C.)learning earnestly from.
D.)going thoroughly through.

37. The reason why sleep is good for the memory
A.)is to be clarified by behavioral psychology.
B.)is rooted in its function of relaxing the brain.
C.)ties in its contribution to the formation of lasting memories.
D.)stems from its compiling memories and ridding things unwanted.

38. During REM sleep, all of the following happen EXCEPT
A.)an increase in brain activities.
B.)a rise in blood pressure.
C.)the speeding up of the heartbeat.
D.)the review of the day"s experiences.

39. The experimenters found that their subjects
A.) learnt quickly how to respond to the light stimuli.
B.)- pushed the button faster in the absence of the light pattern.
C.)increased their response time as they learnt the artificial grammar.
D.)picked up the artificial grammar during their REM sleep.

40. The Belgian group reached the conclusion that
A.)the second theory failed to cover all the brain responses during sleep.
B.)REM sleep reactivates the connections between the nerves and the memory.
C.)it"s beyond doubt that the subjects were learning in contrast with unlearning.
D.)the brain works more efficiently by knowing a set pattern of things to be learnt PartB
Directions:
In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41—45, choose the most suitable one from the list A—G to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)
    Public schools in the United States are becoming steadily more segregated, isolating black and Hispanic students in poor, largely minority schools, according to a new study released April 5, 1997.
    The study found that between 1991 and 1994 there was the largest backward movement toward school segregation since 1954, when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that laws enforcing segregated education under the "separate but equal" doctrine were unconstitutional. Researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Indiana University in Bloomington conducted the study.
    41)"In American race relations, the bridge from the 20th century
may be leading back into the 19th century. . . We may be deciding to bet the future of the country once more on separate but equal," the study concluded.
    In 1972, after a 1971 Supreme Court decision mandated school busing to desegregate school sys­
tems, 63.6 percent of black students went to predominantly minority schools. That percentage rema­
ined almost the same through the mid-1980s. 42) .
Nearly 75 percent of Hispanic students — the fastest growing segment of the school population — attend predominantly minority schools, the study found.
    Schools in the South and along the Mexican border were leading the nation in the trend toward the seg­regation of black students. In the South, the proportion of black students in integrated, mostly white schools dropped from a high of 44 percent in 1988 to 39.2 percent in 1991 and 36.6 percent in 1994.
    The nation"s ten largest innercity school districts are predominantly black and Hispanic, the study found. But even in the suburbs, where minorities have moved in increasing numbers, the pattern of segregation for black and Latino students continued. By 1994 most Latino students living in suburbs went to schools that were 64 percent nonwhite.
    The study found "the relationship between segregation by race and segregation by poverty is ex­ceptionally strong. " Only 5 percent of the nation"s segregated white schools face conditions of concen­trated poverty, while more than 80 percent of segregated black and Latino schools do. "If the growing community of Latino students is increasingly isolated in inferior schools, there could be a vicious cycle of declining opportunity," the report found.
    The study concluded that poor, segregated schools are unequal in a number of different ways that
affect students" academic achievement. Among other things, high-poverty schools have to devote more
time and resources to family and health crises and security. 43)_ .
    The focus is more often on remediation, rather than advanced, demanding classes. 44)
    45)"More and more minority parents, when asked what they care
about for their kids" schools, no longer say they care about the skin color of the kid in the next seat," said Chester Finn, a prominent conservative analyst of education. "They care if their child is going to a safe school that teaches them to read and write. " (596)
Seme education experts disagree with the study"s conclusions, arguing instead that the trend toward
school segregation reflects housing patterns and the search for ethnic identity on the part of minority parents.
Despite vigorous resistance for many years by many southern states, by 1980 the federal45)"More and more minority parents, when asked what they care
    about for their kids" schools, no longer say they care about the skin color of the kid in the next seat," said Chester Finn, a prominent conservative analyst of education. "They care if their child is going to a safe school that teaches them to read and write. " (596)
A.)Seme education experts disagree with the study"s conclusions, arguing instead that the trend toward
school segregation reflects housing patterns and the search for ethnic identity on the part of minority parents.
B.)Despite vigorous resistance for many years by many southern states, by 1980 the federal courts had largely succeeded in eliminating the system of legalized segregation in southern schools.
C.)But by 1995 the percentage of black .students isolated in minority schools had risen to 67.1 percent.
D.)Although there are exceptions, students attending high-poverty schools face a lower level of
competition regardless of their own interests and abilities, according to the study.
E.)Segregation usually resulted in inferior education for blacks, whether in the North or the South. Av­
erage public expenditures for white schools routinely exceeded expenditures for black schools.
F.)The study, "Deepening Segregation in American Public Schools," concluded that the trend
toward segregation was accelerating, in large part because court cases in the 1990s have made it easier
for school districts to abandon desegregation plans.
G.)They tend to attract less qualified teachers and are unable to hold on to qualified teachers for as long as wealthy schools do. PartC
Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your trans­lation should be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (10 points)
   To avoid the various foolish opinions to which man is liable, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. 46) Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thi­nking that you know when in fact you don"t is a fatal mistake, to which we are all liable.
   Many matters, however, are less easily brought to the test of experience. 47) If, like most of mankind, you have strong convictions on many such matters, there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own prejudice. If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you subconsciously are aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. 48) The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way . So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence justifies.
   For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different opinion. 49) This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time and space. Mahatma Gandhi considered it unfortunate to have railways and steam­boats and machinery; he would have liked to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of actually meeting anyone who holds this opinion, because in Western cou­ntries most people take the advantage of modern technology for granted. 50) But if you want to make sure that you are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might have said in refutation of them. I have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary dialogue. Further­more, I have frequently found myself growing more agreeable through realizing the possible reason­ableness of a hypothetical opponent. Section It Writing Part A
51. Directions:
You fell ill and needed an operation. The doctors of Tall Oaks Hospital carried out an operation on you. Writer a letter of thanks, including the following details :
1.)Describing the mood before operation;
2.)Acknowledging the stuff of the Tall Oaks Hospital;
You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. (10 points)
PartB
52. Directions:
Study the following picture carefully and write an essay to
1.)describe the picture,
2.)deduce the purpose of the painter of the picture,
3.)give your suggestions as to how to cooperate in harmony.
n harmony.
You should write about 160 — 200 words neatly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (20 points)
Cooperation

本文来源：https://shitiku.jxxyjl.com/kaoyan/1457.html