专八考试模拟题(一)

发布时间:2019-03-07


QUESTION BOOKLET

  TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS 

  -GRADE EIGHT-

  TIME LIMIT: 150 MIN

  PART I LISTENING COMPREHENSION [25 MIN]

  SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

  In this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the mini-lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening to the mini-lecture, please complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE and write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each gap. Make sure the word(s) you fill in is (are) both grammatically and semantically acceptable. You may use the blank sheet for note-taking.

  You have THIRTY seconds to preview the gap-filling task.

  Now listen to the mini-lecture. When it is over, you will be given THREE minutes to check your work.

SECTION B INTERVIEW

  In this section you will hear ONE interview. The interview will be divided into TWO parts. At the end of each part, five questions will be asked about what was said. Both the interview and the questions will be spoken ONCE ONLY. After each question there will be a ten-second pause. During the pause, you should read the four choices of A, B, C and D, and mark the best answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO. You have THIRTY seconds to preview the questions.

  Now, listen to the Part One of the interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on Part One of the interview.

Now, listen to the Part Two of the interview. Questions 6 to 10 are based on Part Two of the interview.

PART II READING COMPREHENSION

  [45 MIN]

  SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS

  In this section there are three passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

  PASSAGE ONE

  Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance, were determined by technologists, artisans, designers, inventors, and engineers ?D using nonscientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in the mind by a visual, nonverbal process. In the development of Western technology, it has been nonverbal thinking, by and large, that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details of our material surroundings. Pyramids, cathedrals, and rockets exist not because of geometry or thermodynamics, but because they were first a picture in the minds of those who built them.

  The creative shaping process of a technologist’s mind can be seen in nearly every artifact that exists. For example, in designing a diesel engine, a technologist might impress individual ways of nonverbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitive sense of rightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber? Where should be valves be placed? Should it have a long or short piston? Such questions have a range of answers that are supplied by experience, by physical requirements, by limitations of available space, and not least by a sense of form. Some decisions such as wall thickness and pin diameter may depend on scientific calculations, but the nonscientific component of design remains primary.

  Design courses, then, should be an essential element in engineering curricula. Nonverbal thinking, a central mechanism in engineering design,  involves perceptions, the stock-in-trade of the artist, not the scientist. Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail hard thinking, nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development of cognitive processes and inferior to verbal or mathematical thought. But it is paradoxical that when the staff of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric views of industrial processes for its historical record of American engineering, the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students, but rather students attending architectural schools.

  If courses in design, which in a strongly analytical engineering curriculum provide the background required for practical problem-solving, are not provided, we can expect to encounter silly but costly errors occurring in advanced engineering systems. For example, early models of high-speed railroad cars loaded with sophisticated controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because a fan sucked snow into the electrical system. Absurd random failures that plague automatic control systems are not merely trivial aberrations; they are a reflection of the chaos that results when design is assumed to be primarily a problem in mathematics.

  11.In the text, the author is primarily concerned with

  [A] Identifying the kinds of thinking that is used by technologists.

  [B] Stressing the importance of nonverbal thinking in engineering design.

  [C] Proposing a new role for nonscientific thinking in the development of technology.

  [D] Contrasting the goals of engineers with those of technologists.

  12. It can be inferred that the author thinks engineering curricula are

  [A] Strengthened when they include courses in design.

  [B] Weakened by the substitution of physical science courses for courses designed to develop mathematical skills.

  [C] Strong because nonverbal thinking is still emphasized by most of the courses.

  [D] Strong despite the errors those graduates of such curricula have made in the development of automatic control systems.

  13.Which of the following statements best illustrates the main point of the first two paragraphs of the text?

  [A] When a machine like a rotary engine malfunctions, it is the technologist who is best equipped to repair it.

  [B] Each component of an automobile? D for example, the engine or the fuel tank? D has a shape that has been scientifically determined to be best suited to that component’s function.

  [C] A telephone is a complex instrument designed by technologists using only nonverbal thought.

  [D] The distinctive features of a suspension bridge reflect its designer''s conceptualization as well as the physical requirements of its site.

  14.Which of the following statements would best serve as an introduction to the text?

  [A] The assumption that the knowledge incorporated in technological developments must be derived from science ignores the many nonscientific decisions made by technologists.

  [B] Analytical thought is no longer a vital component in the success of technological development.

  [C] As knowledge of technology has increased, the tendency has been to lose sight of the important role played by scientific thought in making decisions about form, arrangement, and texture.

  [D] A movement in engineering colleges toward a technician’s degree reflects a demand for graduates who have the nonverbal reasoning ability that was once common among engineers.

  15. The author calls the predicament faced by the Historic American Engineering Record paradoxical (line 6, paragraph 3) most probably because

  [A] The publication needed drawings that its own staff could not make.

  [B] Architectural schools offered but did not require engineering design courses for their students.

  [C] College students were qualified to make the drawings while practicing engineers were not.

  [D] Engineering students were not trained to make the type of drawings needed to record the development of their own discipline.


下面小编为大家准备了 专四专八考试 的相关考题,供大家学习参考。

Thomas Hardy's impulses as a writer, all of which he indulged in his novels, were numerous and divergent, and they did not always work together in harmony. Hardy was to some degree interested in exploring his characters' psychologies, though impelled less by curiosity than by sympathy. Occasionally he felt the impulse to comedy (in all its detached coldness) as well as the impulse to farce, but he was more often inclined to see tragedy and record it. He was also inclined to literary realism in the several senses of that phrase. He wanted to describe ordinary human beings; he wanted to speculate on their dilemma rationally (and, unfortunately, even schematically); and he wanted to record precisely the material universe. Finally, he wanted to be more than a realist. He wanted to transcend what he considered to be the banality of solely recording things exactly and to express as well his awareness of the occult and the strange.

In his novels these various impulses were sacrificed to each other inevitably and often. Inevitably, because Hardy did not care in the way that novelists such as Flaubert or James cared, and therefore took paths of least resistance. Thus, one impulse often surrendered to a fresher one and, unfortunately, instead of exacting a compromise, simply disappeared. A desire to throw over reality a light that never was might give way abruptly to the desire on the part of what we might consider a novelist-scientist to record exactly and concretely the structure and texture of a flower. In this instance, the new impulse was at least an energetic one, and thus its indulgence did not result in a relaxed style. But on other occasions Hardy abandoned a perilous, risky, and highly energizing impulse in favor of what was for him the fatally relaxing impulse to classify and schematize abstractly. When a relaxing impulse was indulged, the style. —that sure index of an author's literary worth —was certain to become verbose. Hardy's weakness derived from his apparent inability to control the comings and goings of these divergent impulses and from his unwillingness to cultivate and sustain the energetic and risky ones. He submitted to first one and then another, and the spirit blew where it listed; hence the unevenness of any one of his novels. His most controlled novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, prominently exhibits two different but reconcilable impulses —a desire to be a realist-historian and a desire to be a psychologist of love —but the slight interlockings of plot are not enough to bind the two completely together. Thus even this book splits into two distinct parts.

The most appropriate title for the passage could be ______.

A.Under the Greenwood Tree: Hardy's Ambiguous Triumph

B.The Real and the Strange: the Novelist's Shifting Realms

C.Hardy's Novelistic Impulses: the Problem of Control

D.Divergent Impulses: the Issue of Unity in the Novel

正确答案:C

【M2】

正确答案:occured改成occurred
occured改成occurred 解析:这属于拼写错误。

Griffith's film innovations had a direct effect on all of the following EXCEPT ______.

A.film editing

B.camera work

C.range of subjects

D.sound editing

正确答案:D

Ask an American schoolchild what he or she is learning in school these days and you might even get a reply, provided you ask it in Spanish. But don't bother, here's the answer: Americans nowadays are not learning any of the things that we learned in our day, like reading and writing. Apparently these are considered fusty old subjects, invented by white males to oppress women and minorities.

What are they learning? In a Vermont college town I found the answer sitting in a toy store book rack, next to typical kids' books like Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy Is Dysfunctional. It's a teacher's guide called Happy To Be Me, subtitled Building Self Esteem.

Self-esteem, as it turns out, is a big subject in American classrooms. Many American schools see building it as important as teaching reading and writing. They call it "whole language" teaching, borrowing terminology from the granola people to compete in the education marketplace.

No one ever spent a moment building my self-esteem when I was in school. In fact, from the day I first stepped inside a classroom my self-esteem was one big demolition site. All that mattered was "the subject", be it geography, history, or mathematics. I was praised when I remembered that "near", "fit", "friendly", "pleasing", "like" and their opposites took the dative case in Latin. I was reviled when I forgot what a cosine was good for. Generally I lived my school years beneath a torrent of castigation so consistent I eventually ceased to hear it, as people who live near the sea eventually stop hearing the waves.

Schools have changed. Reviling is out, for one thing. More important, subjects have changed. Whereas I learned English, modern kids learn something called "language skills." Whereas I learned writing, modern kids learn something called "communication". Communication, the book tells us, is seven per cent words, 23 per cent facial expression, 20 per cent tone of voice, and 50 per cent body language. So this column, with its carefully chosen words, would earn me at most a grade of seven per cent. That is, if the school even gave out something as oppressive and demanding as grades.

The result is that, in place of English classes, American children are getting a course in How to Win Friends and Influence People. Consider the new attitude toward journal writing: I remember one high school English class when we were required to keep a journal. The idea was to emulate those great writers who confided in diaries, searching their souls and honing their critical thinking on paper.

"Happy To Be Me" states that journals are a great way for students to get in touch with their feelings. Tell students they can write one sentence or a whole page. Reassure them that no one, not even you, will read what they write. After the unit, hopefully all students will be feeling good about themselves and will want to share some of their entries with the class.

There was a time when no self-respecting book for English teachers would use "great" or "hopefully" that way. Moreover, back then the purpose of English courses (an antique term for "Unit") was not to help students "feel good about themselves." Which is good, because all that reviling didn't make me feel particularly good about anything.

Which of the following is the author implying in paragraph 5?

A.Self-criticism has gone too far.

B.Communication is a more comprehensive category than language skills.

C.Evaluating criteria are inappropriate nowadays.

D.This column does not meet the demanding evaluation criteria of today.

正确答案:C

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