中国农业大学考博英语真题,考博英语试题

English Achievement Test for Ph. D Candidates of 2006 (CAU)
January, 2007

★ Write all your answers on the Answer Sheet
Part One English Reading through Internet and Journals
A. Some basic knowledge about Reading Through Internet, Newspaper and magazine. (15 Points)
Section A Fill in the blanks. (5 points)
1. We all know that news is anything that is newsworthy. There are five accepted values behind newsworthiness, i.e. importance of an event, (1) ________ of an event, prominence of the people or things concerning an event, the uniqueness of an event and (2) ________ of an event.
2. The structure for a hard news story, with the most important elements higher up in the story, less important lower down, has for long been called the (3) ________ structure.
3. According to American Advertisement Act, the labels on the products must conform to two "nots", one is it must not be (4) ________, the other is it must not be (5) ________.
Section B Give brief answers to the following questions. (5 points)
1. List at least two important newspapers in the United States of America.
    (1) ________________________
    (2) ________________________
2. What are features of headlines? (list at least three)
    (1) ________________________
    (2) ________________________
    (3) ________________________
Section C Euphemism is a polite word or expression that you use instead of a more direct one to avoid shocking or upsetting someone. Try to use an euphemism to illustrate the following words. (5 points)
1. (the) old    ________________________
2. dismiss     ________________________
3. jobless mother   ________________________
4. concentration camp ________________________
5. the poor nations   ________________________
B. Directions: Read the following articles and answer the questions below each. (20 marks)
North Korea Nuclear Talks End Without Deal
By REUTERS
Published: December 22, 2006
Filed at 3:15 p.m. ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - Negotiations aimed at coaxing North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons ended without progress on Friday, with Washington and Pyongyang blaming each other for betraying expectations and no date set for fresh talks.
The six parties -- the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China -- agreed only to "reconvene at the earliest opportunity," according to a statement from the chief Chinese negotiator Wu Dawei.
Envoys had sought to flesh out a September 2005 agreement that promised North Korea aid and security guarantees in return for nuclear disarmament, but Pyongyang was preoccupied only with getting U.S. financial curbs lifted.
Chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill said that, after hopeful informal contacts, it became clear that his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, lacked the backing to formally deal on anything but the financial standoff.
"Alas, by the end of the week, it was clear the DPRK team did not have the instructions that they needed to go forward and to agree to the proposals," Hill told reporters. "They were not prepared to engage on the actual agreement."
The DPRK, or Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is the North's formal name.
Emboldened by his country's first nuclear test on October 9, the North Korean chief negotiator did not rule out future tests.
"The U.S. is now jointly undertaking dialogue and pressure, carrots and sticks," he told a news briefing. "And we are standing against them with dialogue and shields. The shield is to improve our deterrent."
Hill said another nuclear test by Pyongyang would do "severe damage" to diplomacy and to the isolated communist state.
BANK IMPASSE
Throughout the five days of talks, envoys said, North Korea dwelt on little more than the freeze on its accounts at Macau's Banco Delta Asia, which Washington alleges abetted Pyongyang's money-laundering and dollar counterfeiting.
North Korea said the financial curbs, which resulted from the U.S. Treasury's September 15, 2005, designation of Banco Delta Asia as a "primary money-laundering concern," showed that Washington had negotiated in bad faith.
The U.S. Treasury action, which was taken four days before the September 19, 2005, breakthrough agreement, has complicated the nuclear diplomacy and was cited by North Korea for its refusal to return to the six-party talks for much of the last year. "The U.S. has been unable to come to a decision to lift its sanctions and give up its hostile policy against us," Kim said.
Hill said that he had gone to Beijing with the "understanding" that North Korea would not press the banking dispute in the nuclear talks, leaving the financial wrangling to separate negotiations which did not promise an instant fix.
The veteran U.S. negotiator said his expectations about the bank dispute also rested on unavoidable diplomatic ambiguity. "Things are always a little more opaque than one would like."
A separate U.S. Treasury team met North Korean officials in Beijing this week for two days of talks on the dispute. They reached no deal, but those talks are expected to continue in New York in January.
SIX-PARTY FUTURE?
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reaffirmed support for U.N. sanctions imposed following the nuclear test and said the dialogue progress must continue.
"The international community will increase its pressure on North Korea," he told reporters.
In Geneva, United Nations aid agencies warned on Friday of an impending food crisis in North Korea where summer flooding destroyed crops and worsened a chronic shortage of grain.
"The situation is indeed critical," Simon Pluess, spokesman of the U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP), told a news briefing.
North Korea has yet to recover from famine in the 1990s that experts say killed about 2.5 million people, or 10 percent of the population.
Hill said he was unsure when the six-party negotiations could resume, but expected them "in weeks, not months." Washington remained committed to the talks that Beijing has hosted since 2003, he added.
But further failure to make progress would call into question those multilateral talks, Japan's chief envoy said.
"I think various opinions will emerge on the credibility of the six-party talks," Kenichiro Sasae told reporters.
1. This is piece of "________" news report. (0.5 marks)
A. hard
B. soft
2. In this piece of news report, a ________ is employed. (0.5 marks)
A. delayed lead
B. direct lead
3. In this piece of news report, a(n) ________ is employed. (0.5 marks)
A. Inverted Pyramid Structure
B. Pyramid Structure
4. Find in the news lead 5 Ws if there exist, if not, just write "Not mentioned". (2.5 marks)
    What: ________________________
    Who: ________________________
    When: ________________________
    Where: ________________________
    Why: ________________________
5. What is the main idea of this piece of news report? (1 mark)
    ________________________
We're Not Winning This War
Despite Some Notable Achievements, New Thinking Is Needed on the Home Front and Abroad
By John Lehman
Thursday, August 31, 2006; Page A25
Are we winning the war? The first question to ask is, what war? The Bush administration continues to muddle a national understanding of the conflict we are in by calling it the war on terror. This political correctness presumably seeks to avoid hurting the feelings of the Saudis and other Muslims, but it comes at high cost. This is not a war against terror any more than World War II was a war against kamikazes. We are at war with jihadists motivated by a violent ideology based on an extremist interpretation of the Islamic faith. This enemy is decentralized and geographically dispersed around the world. Its organizations range from a fully functioning state such as Iran to small groups of individuals in American cities.
We are fighting this war on three distinct fronts: the home front, the operational front and the strategic-political front. Let us look first at the home front. The Bush administration deserves much credit for the fact that, since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been no successful Islamist attacks within the United States. This is a significant achievement, but there are growing dangers and continuing vulnerabilities.
One of the most deep-seated of these problems is the U.S. government's tendency to treat this war as a law enforcement issue. Following a recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission, Congress sought to remedy this problem by creating a national security service within the FBI to focus on preventive intelligence rather than forensic evidence. This has proved to be a complete failure. As late as June of this year, Mark Mershon of the FBI testified that the bureau will not monitor or surveil any Islamist unless there is a "criminal predicate." Thus the large Islamist support infrastructure that the commission identified here in the United States is free to operate until its members actually commit a crime.
Our attempt to reform the FBI has failed. What is needed now is a separate domestic intelligence service without police powers, like the British MI-5. The Sept. 11 commission catalogued in detail how our intelligence establishment simply does not function. We made priority recommendations to rebuild the 15 bloated and failed intelligence bureaucracies by creating a strong national intelligence director to smash bureaucratic layers, to tear down the walls preventing intelligence-sharing among agencies, and to rewrite personnel policy with the goal of bringing in new blood not just from the career bureaucracy but from the private sector as well. This approach was completely rejected by the Bush administration, which decided instead to leave this sprawling mess untouched and to create yet another bureaucracy of more than 1,000 people in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It was the exact opposite of what we had recommended.
The greatest terrorist threat on the home front is, of course, the use of weapons of mass destruction by Islamists. Here the president has moved to establish a national counter-proliferation center to share and act on intelligence, and he has recently initiated a cooperation agreement with Russia and our allies to work together in preventing nuclear materials from getting into the hands of the Islamists and to undertake joint crisis management if such an attack takes place. These are real accomplishments.
Turning to the operational front, our objectives are to destroy the capability of Islamist organizations to attack us and to deny them geographic sanctuaries in which they can recruit, train and operate.
The post-Sept. 11 threat demanded preemptive attack against Islamist bases, and this was done without delay in the invasion of Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban government, its ally and supporter. It was a brilliantly executed operation in which all our armed forces and CIA operatives combined in a ruthlessly efficient victory. In the succeeding years, however, the Taliban and al-Qaeda have been able to regroup, rebuild and re-attack because they enjoy a secure sanctuary largely free from attack within the border areas of Pakistan.
The next military operation of the war was, of course, the invasion of Iraq. Here again the combined military operations of the United States and Britain were brilliantly successful in defeating Iraqi forces and removing Saddam Hussein and his regime. But in the aftermath of that victory, grave blunders were made. There was a total misunderstanding of the requirements for successful occupation.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was proved right in his keeping the initial invasion force small and agile, but desperately wrong in disbanding all Iraqi security forces and civil service with no plan to fill the resulting vacuum. Certainly it is hard now to understand the logic of that decision.
The military occupation in Iraq is consuming practically the entire defense budget and stretching the Army to its operational limits. This is understood quite clearly by both our friends and our enemies, and as a result, our ability to deter enemies around the world is disintegrating.
This brings us to the third front, the strategic-political. The jihadist regime in Iran feels no reservation about flaunting its policy to go nuclear, and it unleashed Hezbollah, its client terrorist organization, to attack Israel. In Somalia a jihadist group has seized control of the government. In Pakistan, Islamists are becoming more powerful, and attacks within India are increasing. Governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan are under increasing Islamist pressure. In the Pacific, North Korea now feels free to rattle its missile sabers, firing seven on America's Independence Day. China is rapidly building its 600-ship navy to fill the military vacuum that we are creating in the Pacific as our fleet shrinks well below critical mass. Not one of these states believes that we can undertake any credible additional military operations while we are bogged down in Iraq.
The indoctrination and recruiting of jihadists from Indonesia, South Asia and the Middle East are carried out through religious establishments that are supported overwhelmingly by the Saudi and Iranian governments. Even in the United States, some 80 percent of Islamic mosques and schools are closely aligned with the Wahhabist sect and heavily dependent on Saudi funding. Five years after Sept. 11, nothing has been done to materially affect this root source of jihadism. The movement continues to grow, fueled by an ever-increasing flow of petrodollars from the Persian Gulf.
There is no evidence that the administration has ever raised this matter with the Saudi government as a high-level issue, and -- just as damaging -- it has never acknowledged it as an issue to the American people. Thus Rumsfeld's question -- are we killing, capturing or deterring jihadists faster than they are being produced? -- must be answered with an emphatic no.
In reviewing progress on the three fronts of this war, even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude that we are winning or that we can win without some significant changes of policy.
6. According to the author, what is called by the Bush administration the "war on terror" can be defined as:
    ________________________
7. What are the three distinct fronts described by the author in the second paragraph?
    ________________________
8. What is one of the most deep-seated problems mentioned in the third paragraph?
    ________________________
9. According to the author, what are the objectives to the operational front?
    ________________________
10. What is the author's conclusion?
    ________________________
Passage 3
Americans no longer expect public figures, whether in speech or in writing, to command the English language with skill and gift. Nor do they aspire to such command themselves. In his latest book, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should Like, Care, John McWhorter, a linguist and controversialist of mixed liberal and conservative views, sees the triumph of 1960s counter-culture as responsible for the decline of formal English.
Blaming the permissive 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yet another criticism against the decline in education. Mr. McWhorter's academic speciality is language history and change, and he sees the gradual disappearance of "whom", for example, to be natural and no more regrettable than the loss of the case-endings of Old English.
But the cult of the authentic and the personal, "doing our own thing", has spelt the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music. While even the modestly educated sought an elevated tone when they put pen to paper before the 1960s, even the most well regarded writing since then has sought to capture spoken English on the page. Equally, in poetry, the highly personal, performative genre is the only form that could claim real liveliness. In both oral and written English, talking is triumphing over speaking, spontaneity over craft.
Illustrated with an entertaining array of examples from both high and low culture, the trend that Mr. McWhorter documents is unmistakable. But it is less clear, to take the question of his subtitle, why we should, like, care. As a linguist, he acknowledges that all varieties of human language, including non-standard ones like Black English, can be powerfully expressive -- there exists no language or dialect in the world that cannot convey complex ideas. He is not arguing, as many do, that we can no longer think straight because we do not talk proper.
Russians have a deep love for their own language and carry large chunks of memorized poetry in their heads, while Italian politicians tend to elaborate speech that would seem old-fashioned to most English-speakers. Mr. McWhorter acknowledges that formal language is not strictly necessary, and proposes no radical education reforms -- he is really grieving over the loss of something beautiful more than useful. We now take our English "on paper plates instead of china". A shame, perhaps, but probably an inevitable one.
11. According to McWhorter, the decline of formal English
[A] is inevitable in radical education reforms.
[B] is but all too natural in language development.
[C] has caused the controversy over the counter-culture.
[D] brought about changes in public attitudes in the 1960s.
12. The word "talking" (Line 7, Paragraph 3) denotes
[A] modesty.
[B] personality.
[C] liveliness.
[D] informality.
13. To which of the following statements would McWhorter most likely agree?
[A] Logical thinking is not necessarily related to the way we talk.
[B] Black English can be more expressive than standard English.
[C] Non-standard varieties of human language are just as entertaining.
[D] Of all the varieties, standard English can best convey complex ideas.
14. The description of Russians' love of memorizing poetry shows the author's
[A] interest in their language.
[B] appreciation of their efforts.
[C] admiration for their memory.
[D] contempt for their old-fashionedness.
15. According to the last paragraph, "paper plates" is to "china" as
[A] "temporary" is to "permanent".
[B] "radical" is to "conservative".
[C] "functional" is to "artistic".
[D] "humble" is to "noble".
Passage 4
Why do so many Americans distrust what they read in their newspapers? The American Society of Newspaper Editors is trying to answer this painful question. The organization is deep into a long self-analysis known as the journalism credibility project.
Sad to say, this project has turned out to be mostly low-level findings about factual errors and spelling and grammar mistakes, combined with lots of head-scratching puzzlement about what in the world those readers really want.
But the sources of distrust go way deeper. Most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard templates (patterns) into which they plug each day's events. In other words, there is a conventional story line in the newsroom culture that provides a backbone and a ready-made narrative structure for otherwise confusing news.
There exists a social and cultural disconnect between journalists and their readers, which helps explain why the "standard templates" of the newsroom seem alien to many readers. In a recent survey, questionnaires were sent to reporters in five middle-size cities around the country, plus one large metropolitan area. Then residents in these communities were phoned at random and asked the same questions.
Replies show that compared with other Americans, journalists are more likely to live in upscale neighborhoods, have maids, own Mercedeses, and trade stocks, and they're less likely to go to church, do volunteer work, or put down roots in a community.
Reporters tend to be part of a broadly defined social and cultural elite, so their work tends to reflect the conventional values of this elite. The astonishing distrust of the news media isn't rooted in inaccuracy or poor reportorial skills but in the daily clash of world views between reporters and their readers.
This is an explosive situation for any industry, particularly a declining one. Here is a troubled business that keeps hiring employees whose attitudes vastly annoy the customers. Then it sponsors lots of symposiums and a credibility project dedicated to wondering why customers are annoyed and fleeing in large numbers. But it never seems to get around to noticing the cultural and class biases that so many former buyers are complaining about. If it did, it would open up its diversity program, now focused narrowly on race and gender, and look for reporters who differ broadly by outlook, values, education, and class.
16. What is the passage mainly about?
[A] Needs of the readers all over the world.
[B] Causes of the public disappointment about newspapers.
[C] Origins of the declining newspaper industry.
[D] Aims of a journalism credibility project.
17. The results of the journalism credibility project turned out to be
[A] quite trustworthy.
[B] somewhat contradictory.
[C] very illuminating.
[D] rather superficial.
18. The basic problem of journalists as pointed out by the writer lies in their
[A] working attitude.
[B] conventional lifestyle.
[C] world outlook.
[D] educational background.
19. Despite its efforts, the newspaper industry still cannot satisfy the readers owing to its
[A] failure to realize its real problem.
[B] tendency to hire annoying reporters.
[C] likeliness to do inaccurate reporting.
[D] prejudice in matters of race and gender.
20. Why do most journalists' work tend to reflect the traditional values of themselves?
[A] Because they seldom go to church.
[B] Because they're likely to be part of a broadly defined social and cultural elite.
[C] Because there exists a social and cultural disconnect between journalists and their reader.
[D] Because they are in a broadly sense traditional people.
Part Two Contrastive Study of English and Chinese
Multiple Choice: (1 point each)
Determine the adverbial functions of the following attributive clauses: (adverbial: 状语的; attributive clauses: 定语从句; supposition: 假设; concession: 让步)
1. Men became desperate for work, any work, which will help them to keep alive their families.
A. Cause.
B. Effect.
C. Condition.
D. Purpose.
2. The Carter Administration has tentatively decided against the sale to Taiwan of long-range F-4 Phantom fighters which could be used to attack China, Administration officials said today.
A. Cause.
B. Effect.
C. Condition.
D. Purpose.
3. My assistant, who had carefully read through the instructions before doing his experiment, could not obtain satisfactory results, because he followed them mechanically.
A. Supposition.
B. Concession.
C. Condition.
D. Purpose.
4. Chinese trade delegations have been sent to African countries, who will negotiate trade agreements with the respective governments.
A. Cause.
B. Effect.
C. Condition.
D. Purpose.
5. He would be a shortsighted commander who merely manned his fortress and did not look beyond.
A. Supposition.
B. Concession.
C. Condition.
D. Purpose.
Decide which translation is more idiomatic:
6. If the child catches a chill, what are we going to say to his mother?
A. 要是小孩冻坏了，那我们怎么跟他妈妈说？
B. 把小孩冻坏了，我们怎么向他的母亲交待？
7. 医生迅速到达，并非常仔细地检查了病人，因此病人很快就康复了。
A. The doctor arrived extremely quickly and examined the patient uncommonly carefully; the result was that he recovered very speedily.
B. The doctor's extremely quick arrival and uncommonly careful examination of the patient brought about his very speedy recovery.
8. The teacher thanked her students because they are very cooperative.
A. 老师感谢她的学生，因为他们非常合作。
B. 学生合作得很好，老师向他们表示感谢。
9. Science covers a wide range of subjects.
A. 科学涵盖了广泛的领域。
B. 科学所涉及的领域很广。
10. 他说，这次会议给人提供了不少消息。
A. He said the meeting was informative.
B. He said that the meeting had provided much information.
Determine the corresponding relationships of the following pairs of words in regard to their definition(s) and implication(s). (1 point each)
Note: =: equivalent; >: larger in connotation; <: smaller in connotation; ><: partial overlapping; ?: no equivalent (in translation)
11. three   三
A. =
B. >
C. <
D. ><
12. British Council, 英国文化委员会
A. =
B. <
C. >
D. ><
13. appreciate   欣赏
A. ?
B. >
C. <
D. ><
14. and   和
A. =
B. <
C. >
D. ><
15. marry   娶
A. =
B. <
C. >
D. ><
Arrange the modifiers in the following groups of words in the correct order:
16. these ________ hills
A. gray steep Norwegian rocky
B. Norwegian steep gray rocky
C. steep gray Norwegian rocky
17. a(n) ________ car
A. expensive Japanese sports
B. Japanese expensive sports
C. expensive sports Japanese
18. a(n) ________ shirt
A. old dirty brown
B. dirty old brown
C. brown dirty old
19. some ________ authors
A. famous, modern, American
B. modern, American, famous
C. American, famous, modern
20. these ________ crystals
A. tiny, round, beautiful
B. beautiful, round, tiny
C. beautiful, tiny, round
Translation (2.5 points each)
Directions: Put the following sentences into Chinese:
1. It is physically impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts; as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them.
2. The rusting of iron is only one example of corrosion, which may be described as the destructive chemical attack of a metal by media with which it comes in contact, such as moisture, air and water.
3. The realization that man is an integral part of nature and that his interaction with the ecological systems which surround him is of paramount importance to his continued survival, is prompting a revaluation of the functional relationships that exist between the environment, its ecology, and man.
4. The great scientists are often men of supernormal vitality which enables them to retain a freshness of outlook and enterprise even into their old age.
Part Three Research Method and English Thesis Writing
Directions: Write out the answer for each of the questions listed below within 50 to 100 words. Be sure to illustrate the major points only. (35 marks)
1. Can you demonstrate the research process with either a "flow chart" or a "research wheel"?
2. What is the purpose of doing literature review?
3. What content should be covered in the Abstract of a research paper?
4. What is Plagiarism? What are the common acts of plagiarism?
5. What are the APA requirements for long quotations in text of a research paper?
6. What are the essential elements in the Discussion part of a research paper?
7. What need to be considered when using the sources online?