武汉理工大学考博英语真题,考博英语试题

武汉理工大学
2015年博士研究生入学考试英语试题

Part I Reading Comprehension (2 × 20=40 points)
Directions: There are 5 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice and write your answer on your answer sheet.
Passage 1
One airline chief executive officer (CEO) was the master of the personal touch. Spending hours with his employees and getting to know their jobs, he persuaded them to accept pay cuts in return for an ownership stake. The concession put the company so solidly in the black that the CEO was able to sell it for $860 million. Another CEO scolded managers in front of others, cut one third of the work force and so embittered the survivors that his airline began to lose money, and the board of directors fired him.
In any test of knowledge or IQ, the two CEOs could have dueled to a draw. The difference was the ability to handle relationships, argues Daniel Goleman in his new book, Working with Emotional Intelligence. Building on his 1995 bestseller, Emotional Intelligence, Goleman now probes how EI relates to the world of work. As he did in his earlier book, Goleman masterfully explains how a low EI hinders people’s full intellectual potential by flooding the brain with stress hormones that impair memory, learning and thinking. The heart of the book, though, is an analysis of data collected from more than 150 firms on what distinguishes so-so performers from superstars. Goleman’s findings: conventional intelligence takes second position to emotional intelligence in determining job performance. In jobs ranging from repairman to scientist, IQ accounts for no more than 25 percent of the difference between, say, a successful high-tech entrepreneur and a failed one. In another surprise, the contribution of IQ shrinks and the contribution of EI rises with difficulty of a job and how high it ranks in an organization. Based on traits that companies say distinguish winners from losers, Goleman concludes that EI carries much more weight than IQ in determining success at the top.
However, the many examples of CEOs and other people in top positions who have the emotional intelligence of a snake—but still were CEOs—undermine the case for EI’s indispensability in business. But even if you accept that EI determines who excels, you have to wonder if it should. Goleman describes how 112 entry-level accountants were judged more or less successful (by their bosses) according to their level of EI rather than their actual skills. No wonder so many auditors fail to notice cooked books.
1. According to Goleman, the biggest difference between the two CEOs described in the first paragraph lies in ______.
A. their attitude toward their employees
B. their emotional intelligence
C. their conventional intelligence
D. their business strategy

2. Goleman’s new book Working with Emotional Intelligence is chiefly about ______.
A. the difference between IQ and EI
B. the relationship between EI and job performance
C. the role of EI in a person’s success
D. the importance of handling personal relationships

3. According to Goleman, which of the following persons owes the most to EI for his/her success?
A. President of a company
B. Manager of the personnel department
C. Manager of the sales department
D. Plumber

4. The phrase “cooked books” in the last sentence most probably means ______.
A. falsified account books
B. books containing information for preparation of food
C. damaged books
D. pirated books

Passage 2
Some people say that the study of liberal arts is a useless luxury we cannot afford in hard times. Students, they argue, who do not develop salable skills will find it difficult to land a job upon graduation. But there is a problem in speaking of “salable skills.” What skills are salable? Right now, skills for making automobiles are not highly salable, but they have been for decades and might be again. Skills in teaching are not now as salable as they were during the past 20 years, and the population charts indicate they may not be soon again. Home construction skills are another example of varying salability, as the job market fluctuates. What’s more, if one wants to build a curriculum exclusively on what is salable, one will have to make the course very short and change them very often, in order to keep up with the rapid changes in the job market. But will not the effort be in vain? In very few things can we be sure of future salability, and in a society where people are free to study what they want, and work where they want, and invest as they want, there is no way to keep supply and demand in labor in perfect accord.
A school that devotes itself totally to salable skills, especially in a time of high unemployment, sending young men and women into the world armed with only a narrow range of skills, is also sending lambs into the lion’s den. If those people gain nothing more from their studies than supposedly salable skills, and can’t make the sale because of changes in the job market, they have been cheated. But if those skills were more than salable, if study gave them a better understanding of the world around them and greater adaptability in a changing world, they have not been cheated. They will find some kind of job soon enough. Flexibility, an ability to change and learn new things, is a valuable skill. People who have learned how to learn can learn outside of school. That is where most of us have learned to do what we do, not in school. Learning to learn is one of the highest liberal skills.
5. From this passage, we can learn that the author is in favor of ______.
A. teaching practical skills that can be sold in the current job market
B. a flexible curriculum that changes with the times
C. a liberal education
D. keeping a balance between the supply and demand in the labor market

6. The word “fluctuate” in the first paragraph most probably means ______.
A. remain steady
B. change in an irregular way
C. follow a set pattern
D. become worse and worse

7. According to the author, who of the following is more likely to get a job in times of high unemployment?
A. A person with the ability to learn by himself
B. A construction worker
C. A car repairman
D. A person with quite a few salable skills

8. According to the author, in developing a curriculum schools should ______.
A. predict the salability of skills in the future job market
B. take the current job market into consideration
C. consider what skills are salable
D. focus on the ability to adapt to changes

Passage 3
Sex and connections: these are not the criteria on which science should be judged, least of all by scientists. But in the first extensive analysis of the way that fellowships in science are awarded, which is published this week in Nature, Christine Wenneras and Agnes Wold, microbiologists at Gothenburg University, in Sweden, found that these factors matter as much as, if not more than, scientific merit.
Peer review, the evaluation (often anonymous) of a piece of scientific work by other scientists in the same field, is central to the way in which science proceeds. Journals use it to help decide whether to publish papers and funding agencies use it when deciding to whom to award grants.
Dr. Wenneras and Dr. Wold analyzed the reviews of the 114 applications that the Swedish Medical Research Council received for the 20 postdoctoral fellowships it offered in 1995. Of the applicants, 46% were women. Of the successful recipients of the awards, only 20% were women. In principle, of course, that might reflect their abilities. In practice, other factors seem to be at work.
When the council gets a grant application, it is evaluated by five reviewers, on three measures: scientific competence, the proposed methodology and the relevance of the research. Each measure is given a score of between zero and four, each reviewer’s scores are multiplied together, giving a single score between zero and 64; and finally, the scores from the reviewers are averaged together, giving the total score.
Dr. Wenneras and Dr. Wold identified, after careful analysis, two factors that improved the scores significantly: being male and knowing a reviewer. In fact, the difference was so great that in order to get the same competence score as a man, a woman would need either to know someone on the committee or to have published three more papers than the man in Nature or Science. It is often joked that a woman has to be twice as good as a man to do well; Dr. Wenneras and Dr. Wold found that she would need to be, on average, 2.5 times as good on their measures to be rated as highly by reviewers. Such being the case, ambitious women would perhaps do well to return to a time-honored but supposedly obsolete tradition, and apply under a male name.
9. What is this passage mainly about?
A. Abuses in peer review
B. Favoritism in granting fellowships
C. A comparison of male and female scientists
D. Sex discrimination in the science world

10. What is the other most important factor beside sex that may affect peer review scores?
A. Connections
B. Publication of papers in major science journals
C. Competence of the researcher
D. Methods used by the research

11. What does the author suggest by using “supposedly” in the last sentence?
A. It is no longer fashionable for women to write under male names.
B. Bias against women still exists today.
C. Women today are on an equal footing with men.
D. Nowadays women do as well in science as men.

12. This piece of writing is most likely ______.
A. a news report
B. a research paper
C. a lecture
D. an argument

Passage 4
Ideas about “spoiling” children have always involved consideration of just what is a spoiled child, how does spoiling occur, and what are the consequences of spoiling. They have always included concepts of a child’s nature and concepts of the ideal child and the ideal adult.
The many mothers of 1820 who belonged to the early “maternal associations” struggled to uphold the ideas about child raising that had been prevalent in the eighteenth century. They had always been told that the spoiled child stood in danger of having trouble later in life (when exposed to all the temptations of the world) and, more importantly, stood in danger of spiritual ruin.
At first, the only approach these mothers knew was to “break the will” of the child. This approach, coming initially from the theology of Calvin, the French Protestant reformer, was inherited from the stern outlook of the Puritans. As one mother wrote, “No child has ever been known, since the earliest period of the world, destitute of an evil disposition—however sweet it appears.” Infant depravity, by which was meant the child’s impulses, could be curbed only by breaking the will so that the child submitted implicitly to parental guidance.
In 1834, a mother described this technique: Upon the father’s order, her 16-month-old daughter had refused to say “Dear Mama,” so the toddler was alone in a room where she screamed wildly for ten minutes. After the ten minutes, the child was commanded again, and again she refused, so she was whipped and ordered again. This continued for four hours until the child finally obeyed. Parents commonly reported that after one such trial of “will,” the child became permanently submissive. In passing, we can note that knowledge about a child’s “No” period might have moderated the disciplining of little children and the application of the proverb “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
By freeing the child from its evil nature, parents believed they could then guide the child into acquiring the right character traits, such as honesty, industriousness and sobriety. These moral principles fixed in the child’s character, were to govern it throughout life, in a society where free enterprise, individual effort, and competition were believed to be the ruling forces.
13. When the author talks about ideas considered in “the spoiling of children,” he does not include ______.
A. the nature of a child
B. attitudes of spoiled children when they become adults
C. reasons why spoiling occurs
D. consequences from spoiling a child

14. According to the article, the mothers of 1820 were determined to ______.
A. develop independence in their children
B. avoid exposing their children to spiritual ruin
C. broaden the experiences of their children
D. set good examples to their children

15. Calvin is mentioned in this article to show ______.
A. the derivation of the stern outlook of the Puritans
B. French influence in the discipline of children
C. a dissenting view in the spoiling of children
D. how the Reformation moderated the severe discipline

Passage 5
It is not compatible with the egalitarian ideal that there should be sharp differences in the scale of monetary reward for services performed. In New Zealand, care of the underdog has long since been a more important consideration than is the case in many other countries. Successive governments may claim with some justice to have abolished poverty, but this has not been done without there taking place a narrowing of margins between the rewards for skilled and unskilled labor, with its consequent denial of incentive to acquire skill, to strive for self-improvement. The country’s citizens have come to regard social security as their inalienable right, but by taking too readily for granted the State’s obligation towards themselves they are apt to lose sight of the converse proposition that they themselves have obligations to the State.
The reluctance to reward skilled labor at rates calculated to provide an incentive for acquiring skill has its counterpart in the reluctance to remunerate the nations’ best scholars and scientists on a scale sufficient to keep a fair proportion of them at home.
The fact is often deplored that so many young men of the highest ability prefer to take up a career overseas, but it is doubtful whether higher salaries would stem their exodus in more than a minor degree. Under any circumstances, regardless of monetary reward, the intellectual elite would be tempted to go abroad in search of a wider field of endeavor than can be found in so small a country as New Zealand.
In a society where great wealth is regarded as antisocial, it is natural that ostentation should be looked at askance. Marks of distinction are liable to be a handicap. For instance, the politician who accepts a title does not usually improve his chances of gaining or retaining office by doing so. Richard Seddon, it will be remembered, consistently and doubtless wisely, refused to accept a knighthood. Wealth carries with it a minimum of prestige; it is a positive disadvantage to the aspirant to a political career. Strongly marked individuality or eccentricity are seldom in evidence among New Zealanders, and even where they do exist, the qualities are tolerated rather than appreciated. The rule of conformity prevails, and if the American writer, Sydney Greenbie, is to be believed, it has already produced a considerable measure of standardization among the inhabitants of the Dominion. “In face and feature, in mind and taste,” writes Greenbie, “the modern New Zealanders are so much alike that it is hard to remember the names of persons you meet casually for lack of distinguishing characteristics to which the eye can cling.”
Under conditions such as those described above, it is not surprising that no privileged class should have come into existence through long possession of landed estate or other permanent source of income. Nevertheless, the claim that New Zealanders have developed a classless society can scarcely be substantiated. Snobbery, when discouraged in one quarter, is prone to appear in some new form elsewhere. Recent investigations by A. A. Congalton and R. J. Havighurst show that there is a fairly well defined and universal appreciation of the graduated social status attaching to various social occupations. Results of a survey in which a cross section of the public was asked to answer a series of apposite questions showed, for example, that doctors, lawyers, and big businessmen were graded above heads of Government Departments, clergymen, and university professors; that office workers rated higher than shop assistants, miners than wharf laborers, and so on. Incidentally, the investigation also brought to light the fact that any attempt to inquire into the existence of social distinctions within the community invariably roused resentment.
A privileged class being also a leisured class, its rejection is in keeping with a deep-seated belief that work has a virtue in its own right, without regard to its usefulness. In pioneer days, when hands were few and subsistence hard to win, it was indeed a crime to remain idle, and the habit of seeing idleness as a vice has endured. At the beginning of the great slump, when Forbes the Prime Minister, shocked at what he had seen of the “dole” during a visit to England, declared that so long as he retained office there would be no payment without work, his words appealed to a moral precept deeply inculcated not only in the minds of reactionaries but of many radicals as well.
16. One result of New Zealand’s effort to abolish poverty is ______.
A. sharp differences between the rich and the poor
B. the egalitarian ideal becomes incompatible
C. care of the underdog becomes more important
D. skill learning and self-improvement are not desired

17. Some high ability people prefer a career overseas because of ______.
A. fierce competition at home
B. higher social status overseas
C. more opportunities abroad
D. monetary reward at home

18. Which of the following best describes the New Zealand society?
A. ostentation
B. eccentricity
C. individuality
D. conformity

19. New Zealand is not a classless society in that ______.
A. snobbery is discouraged everywhere in New Zealand
B. people with more wealth seem to enjoy a high social status
C. the difference between the rich and the poor is great
D. New Zealanders don’t have a permanent source of income

20. If people believe that work has a virtue in its own right, they will do all the following EXCEPT ______.
A. see idleness as a vice
B. try their best not to be idle
C. not accept a privileged class
D. inquire into social distinctions

Part II English-Chinese Translation (20 points)
Directions: Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese.
(1) Science fiction can help to explain what science and scientists are all about to the non-scientists. It is no accident that several hundred universities and public schools are now offering science fiction courses and discovering that these classes are a meeting ground for the scientist-engineers and the humanists. Science and fiction. Reason and emotion.
The essence of the scientific attitude is that the human mind can succeed in understanding the universe. By taking thought, men can move mountains—and have. In this sense, science is an utterly humanistic pursuit.
Much of science fiction celebrates this spirit. (2) Very few science fiction stories picture humanity as a passive species, allowing the tidal forces of nature to flow freely. The heroes of science fiction stories—the gods of the new mythology—struggle manfully against the darkness, whether it’s geological doom for the whole planet or the evil of grasping politicians. They may not always win. But they always try.
Perhaps, however, the most important aspect of science fiction’s role in the modern world is best summed up in a single word. Change.
After all, science fiction is the literature of change. Each and every story preaches from the same gospel: tomorrow will be different from today, violently different perhaps.
(3) Science fiction very clearly shows that changes—whether good or bad—are an inherent part of the universe. Resistance to change is an archaic, and nowadays dangerous, habit of thought. Humanity’s most fruitful course of action is to determine how to shape these changes, how to influence them and produce an environment where the changes that occur are those we want.
Perhaps this is the ultimate role of science fiction: to act as an interpreter of science to humanity. This is a two-edged weapon, of course. It is necessary to warn as well as evangelize. (4) Science can kill as well as create; technology can deaden the human spirit or lift it to the farthermost corners of our imaginations. Only knowledgeable people can wisely decide how to use science and technology for humankind’s benefit. In the end, this is the ultimate role of all art: to show ourselves to ourselves, to help us to understand our own humanity.
Part III Chinese-English Translation (20 points)
Directions: Read the following passage carefully and then translate it into English.
如果要我用一个词来概括优秀经理人员的话，那我就会说是果断。你可以使用世界上最复杂的计算机，你可以收集所有的图表和数字，但最终你必须把所有的信息汇集起来，提出一张时间表，然后采取行动。
一位企业领导人希望得到所有事实，坚持等到研究工作能确保某项计划定会成功后才采取行动，这是非常自然的事情。如果你要花三亿美元开发一项新产品，你毕竟希望绝对保证你的做法是对头的。在理论上是不错的，现实生活中却并非如此。毫无疑问，你有责任尽量多地收集有关事实和数据。但到了某一时刻，你必须根据自己的信念跳一步，迅速地做出决定才行。因为，第一，即使是正确的决定，做得太晚，也会变成错误的；第二，在大多数情况下，根本就没有十拿九稳的事情。有时候，最优秀的经理人员，也会像牵着一条大狗的小孩一样，先要弄清楚狗想往哪儿去，再把它往哪儿牵。
决策者需要多少信息才算够用呢？要提出一个具体数字是不可能的；但如果你只有50%的事实就贸然行动，那你成功的可能性显然就会微乎其微。如果是这样的话，你最好是吉星高照，要不然也得有极妙的预感。有时候这种冒险是需要的，但管理铁路却不可这样。
Part IV Writing (20 points)
Directions: Suppose you have watched a TV debate on whether the government should encourage people to buy cars. One side held the opinion that the government should on the ground that car consumption might contribute to the national economy, while the other side argued that the government shouldn’t because too many cars might cause a lot of social problems. You are supposed to write an essay of no less than 200 words on the topic: The Issue of Cars. Marks will be awarded for content, organization and diction.
The Issue of Cars