2013年10月英语阅读（二）自考试题

全国2013年10月英语阅读（二）自考试题

选择题部分

注意事项：

1. 答题前，考生务必将自己的考试课程名称、姓名、准考证号用黑色字迹的签字笔或钢笔填写在答题纸规定的位置上。

2. 每小题选出答案后，用2B铅笔把答题纸上对应题目的答案标号涂黑。如需改动，用橡皮擦干净后，再选涂其他答案标号。不能答在试题卷上。

I. Reading Comprehension (50 points, 2 points for each)

Directions: In this part of the test, there are five passages. Following each passage, there are five questions with four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and then blacken the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.

Passage One

Computers should be in the schools. They have the potential to accomplish great things. With the right software, they could help make science tangible or teach neglected topics like art and music. They could help students form a concrete idea of society by displaying on screen a version of the city in which they live — a picture that tracks real life moment by moment.

In practice, however, computers make our worst educational nightmares come true. While we bemoan the decline of literacy, computers discount words in favor of pictures and pictures in favor of video. While we fret about the decreasing cogency of public debate, computers dismiss linear argument and promote fast, shallow romps across the information landscape. While we worry about basic skills, we allow into the classroom software that will do a student’s arithmetic or correct his spelling.

Take multimedia. The idea of multimedia is to combine text, sound and pictures in a single package that you browse on screen. You don’t just read Shakespeare; you watch actors performing, listen to songs, view Elizabethan buildings. What’s wrong with that? By offering children candy—coated books, multimedia is guaranteed to sour them on unsweetened reading. It makes the printed page look even more boring than it used to look. Sure, books will be available in the classroom, too—but they’ll have all the appeal of a dusty piano to a teen who has a Walkman handy.

So what if the little nippers don’t read? If they’re watching Olivier instead, what do they lose? The text, the written word along with all of its attendant pleasures. Besides, a book is more portable than a computer, has a higher—resolution display, can be written on and dog—eared and is comparatively dirt cheap.

Hypermedia, multimedia’s comrade in the struggle for a brave new classroom, is just as troubling. It’s a way of presenting documents on screen without imposing a linear start—to—finish order. Disembodied paragraphs are linked by theme; after reading one about the First World War, for example, you might be able to choose another about the technology of battleships, or the life of Woodrow Wilson, or hemlines on the 20s. This is another cute idea that is good in minor ways and terrible in major ones. Teaching children to understand the orderly unfolding of a plot or a logical argument is a crucial part of education. Authors don’t merely agglomerate paragraphs; they work hard to make the narrative read a certain way, prove a particular point. To turn a book or a document into hypertext is to invite readers to ignore exactly what counts — the story.

Questions 1—5 are based on Passage One.

1. The first paragraph is primarily concerned with ______.

A. picturing in what ways computers can help in schools

B. describing how computers make all subjects easier in schools

C. showing what computers have accomplished in schools

D. examining how computers are being used in schools

2. What is the author’s attitude towards the software that will do a student’s arithmetic or correct his spelling?

A. Amazed.

B. Reserved.

C. Interested.

D. Disapproval.

3. What does the author mean by “unsweetened reading” in Paragraph 3?

A. Online reading.

B. Difficult reading materials.

C. Regular books.

D. Serious and sad stories.

4. The author mentions Shakespeare in order to ______.

A. illustrate how multimedia presents information in classroom

B. cite one of the most frequently used sources in schools

C. introduce the importance of reading classics

D. show how multimedia is integrated in traditional teaching

5. Which of the following statement is TRUE according to the author?

A. Teaching students to understand logical argument is highly ignored.

B. The employment of hypermedia may hurt students’ learning process.

C. Hypermedia exposes students to too much information.

D. Students’ reading skills have drastically dropped.

Passage Two

One theory that has gained influence among sociologists is that some members of stigmatized groups, when faced with stressful situations, expect themselves to do worse — a prophecy that fulfills itself. These expectations, which can occur even in otherwise fair situations — such as, say, a standardized test —produce stress and threaten cognitive function. The effect is called “stereotype threat,” and African—Americans, girls, even jocks have all been shown susceptible to stereotype threat.

Now a new study shows that old people are also vulnerable to the phenomenon. Research psychologists recruited 103 volunteers, ages 60 to 82, to perform simple arithmetic and recall tests. The psychologists manipulated about half of the participants into feeling stereotype threat by telling them that the entire purpose of the tests was “to examine aging effects on memory.” That statement was designed to prime the participants’ worry that their advanced age would affect their performance. By contrast, participants in the control group were told that the tests had been constructed to correct for any biases that might be associated with age, a white lie imparted to damp down stereotype threat.

Those in the first group performed significantly worse on the memory tests than those whose internal stereotypes hadn’t been triggered. Interestingly, people between the ages of 60 and 70 were far more susceptible to stereotype threat than those aged 71 to 82. The authors theorize, persuasively, that people who have just entered their seventh decade are more sensitive to stereotype threat than those who have already been considered old for a decade.

Remarkably, the power of stereotype threat was enough to overcome true aptitude: even people who generally had good working memories and weren’t prone to anxiety — in short, great test—takers — performed worse after being reminded of their age. The power of stereotype is so strong that it can overwhelm many of our other traits.

But the good news is that you can flip this particular psychological coin on its opposite side: recent research has found that positive stereotype reinforcement may be just as powerful as any negative threat. Indiana University psychologists found that women’s performance on math tests did not suffer as researchers had expected, even when the typical “women are bad at math” stereotype was invoked, as long as a positive stereotype (say, college students are good at math) was presented at the same time. In this case, that means that the aged are likely to have better—functioning memories when they are told, for instance, that older people “have more experience” or “have seen it all before.”

Questions 6—10 are based on Passage Two.

6. What is the first paragraph mainly about?

A. Examples of discriminations.

B. The concept of stereo