北外考研基础英语样题Word文档下载推荐.docx

1、For a wrong word, underline the wrong word and write the correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line.For a missing word, mark the position of the missing word with a and write the word which you believe is missing in the blank provided at the end of the line.For an unnecessary word, cro

2、ss the unnecessary word with a slashand put the word in the blank provided at the end of the line. The elderly who finds great rewards and satisfactions （1）_In their later lives are a small minority in this country. But theyDo exist. They are the “aged elite”. It is most striking about these （2）_Peo

3、ple is their capacity for growth. When Arthur Robinson was Eighty, someone told him that he was plying piano better than （3）_Ever. “I think so,” he agreed. “Now I take chances I never took Before. I was used to be so much more careful. No wrong notes. （4）_Not too bold ideas. Now I let go and enjoy m

4、yself and to be with （5）_Everything besides the music.” Another reason for the success ofThe aged elite are the traits they formed earlier in their lives. A （6）_Sixty-eight-year old woman, three times married and widowed,Says,” Its not just what you do when youre past sixty-five. Its whatYou did all

5、 your life which matters. If you have lived a full life, （7）_Developed your mind, you will be able to use it past sixty-five. Along frankness comes humor. A sense of humor is an （8）_aid people use to cope with tension. “Humor,” says Dr. Barren, “also leads you to join with other people. There are tw

6、o ways to Deal with stress. We either reach out or withdraw. The reachers （9）_seek out other people to share their problems instead of pulling away.” Growing, active, humorous, sharing these are all qualitieswhich describe the aged elite. （10）_Part II READING COMPREHENSION （60 points）A.Multiple Choi

7、cePlease read the following passages and choose A, B, C or D to best complete the statements about them.The Perils of EfficiencyThis spring, disaster loomed in the global food market. Precipitous increases in the prices of staples like rice （up more than a hundred and fifty per cent in a few months）

8、 and maize provoked food riots, toppled governments, and threatened the lives of tens of millions. But the bursting of the commodity bubble eased those pressures, and food prices, while still high, have come well off the astronomical levels they hit in April. For Americans, the drop in commodity pri

9、ces has put a few more bucks in peoples pockets; in much of the developing world, it may have saved many from actually starving. So did the global financial crisis solve the global food crisis?Temporarily, perhaps. But the recent price drop doesnt provide any long-term respite from the threat of foo

10、d shortages or future price spikes. Nor has it reassured anyone about the health of the global agricultural system, which the crisis revealed as dangerously unstable. Four decades after the Green Revolution, and after waves of market reforms intended to transform agricultural production, were still

11、having a hard time insuring that people simply get enough to eat, and we seem to be more vulnerable to supply shocks than ever. It wasnt supposed to be this way. Over the past two decades, countries around the world have moved away from their focus on “food security” and handed market forces a great

12、er role in shaping agricultural policy. Before the nineteen-eighties, developing countries had so-called “agricultural marketing boards,” which would buy commodities from farmers at fixed prices （prices high enough to keep farmers farming）, and then store them in strategic reserves that could be use

13、d in the event of bad harvests or soaring import prices. But in the eighties and nineties, often as part of structural-adjustment programs imposed by the I.M.F. or the World Bank, many marketing boards were eliminated or cut back, and grain reserves, deemed inefficient and unnecessary, were sold off

14、. In the same way, structural-adjustment programs often did away with government investment in and subsidies to agriculturemost notably, subsidies for things like fertilizers and high-yield seeds. The logic behind these reforms was simple: the market would allocate resources more efficiently than go

15、vernment, leading to greater productivity. Farmers, instead of growing subsidized maize and wheat at high cost, could concentrate on cash crops, like cashews and chocolate, and use the money they made to buy staple foods. If a country couldnt compete in the global economy, production would migrate t

16、o countries that could. It was also assumed that, once governments stepped out of the way, private investment would flood into agriculture, boosting performance. And international aid seemed a more efficient way of relieving food crises than relying on countries to maintain surpluses and food-securi

17、ty programs, which are wasteful and costly.This “marketization” of agriculture has not, to be sure, been fully carried through. Subsidies are still endemic in rich countries and poor, while developing countries often place tariffs on imported food, which benefit their farmers but drive up prices for

18、 consumers. And in extreme circumstances countries restrict exports, hoarding food for their own citizens. Nonetheless, we clearly have a leaner, more market-friendly agricultural system than before. It looks, in fact, a bit like global manufacturing, with low inventories （wheat stocks are at their

19、lowest since 1977）, concentrated production （three countries provide ninety per cent of corn exports, and five countries provide eighty per cent of rice exports）, and fewer redundancies. Governments have a much smaller role, and public spending on agriculture has been cut sharply.The problem is that

20、, while this system is undeniably more efficient, its also much more fragile. Bad weather in just a few countries can wreak havoc across the entire system. When prices spike as they did this spring （for reasons that now seem not entirely obvious）, the result is food shortages and malnutrition in poo

21、rer countries, since they are far more dependent on imports and have few food reserves to draw on. And, while higher prices and market reforms were supposed to bring a boom in agricultural productivity, global crop yields actually rose less between 1990 and 2007 than they did in the previous twenty

22、years, in part because in many developing countries private-sector agricultural investment never materialized, while the cutbacks in government spending left them with feeble infrastructures.These changes did not cause the rising prices of the past couple of years, but they have made them more damag

23、ing. The old emphasis on food security was undoubtedly costly, and often wasteful. But the redundancies it created also had tremendous value when things went wrong. And one sure thing about a system as complex as agriculture is that things will go wrong, often with devastating consequences. If the j

24、ust-in-time system for producing cars runs into a hitch and the supply of cars shrinks for a while, people can easily adapt. When the same happens with food, people go hungry or even starve. That doesnt mean that we need to embrace price controls or collective farms, and there are sensible market re

25、forms, like doing away with import tariffs, that would make developing-country consumers better off. But a few weeks ago Bill Clinton, no enemy of market reform, got it right when he said that we should help countries achieve “maximum agricultural self-sufficiency.” Instead of a more efficient syste

26、m, we should be trying to build a more reliable one.（1）What can be learned from the first paragraph?AGlobal financial crisis destablized governments.BFood riots resulted from skyrockeing food bills. CFinancial crisis worsens food crisis.DFood prices surged by 150% in April.（2）The food crisis reveale

27、d the global agricultural system as .AfragileBunresponsiveCcostlyDunbearable（3）According to the third paragraph, structural-adjustment programs . Aintended to cope with poor harvestsBwere introduced as part of “market forces” policiesCremoved price controls and state subsidiesDencouraged countries t

28、o focus on food security（4）The marketization of agriculture probably means .Aprivate investment floods into agriculture Bmarket forces provide efficiency in agricultureCagricultural policy works with the free market systemDagricultural production is free from government intervention（5）Which of the f

29、ollowing is NOT a feature of the existing agricutural system?AReduced government spending.BConcentrated production.CSelf-sufficiency.DLow wheat stocks.（6）In the last paragraph, the underlined part “the redundancies” probably refer to .AHigh-yield seedsBGrain reservesCCash cropsDCorn importsMinding t

30、he Inequality GapDuring the first 70 years of the 20th century, inequality declined and Americans prospered together. Over the last 30 years, by contrast, the United States developed the most unequal distribution of income and wages of any high-income country.Some analysts see the gulf between the r

31、ich and the rest as an incentive for strivers, or as just the way things are. Others see it as having a corrosive effect on peoples faith in the markets and democracy. Still others contend that economic polarization is a root cause of Americas political polarization. Could, and should, something be done?Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, two Harvard economists, think yes. Their book, T