考研英语(二)分类真题17
(总分100, 做题时间90分钟)
Reading Comprehension
Part A
Text 1
Killing onelf has been legal in Britain since 1961, but it is a rious crime to help someone el to die. Anyone who "aids, assists, counls or procures" a suicide out of compassion or something more sinister—risks up to 14 years in prison.
It is a risk that many are willing to take. About 120 Britons **mitted suicide at Dignitas, a Zurich suicide clinic that takes advantage of liberal Swiss laws, and many have had relatives or friends with them for moral or practical support. None of **panions has been ch
arged with a crime. But such cas are not unknown. Since April 2005, 16 people have been procuted for assisting suicide in England and Wales, and some of them have gone on to be convicted.
The uncertainty as to whether helpers will be procuted heaps agony on tho who already face the appalling decision whether to end their lives. Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis, asked procutors last year to clarify whether her husband would be charged if he went with her to Zurich. When they declined, she appealed to the Hou of Lords, which ruled in her favour in July. On September 23rd the director of public procutions (DPP), Keir Starmer, duly published guidelines to enlighten her and the thousands like her.
Mr Starmer listed 16 factors that would weigh in favour of procution and 13 against. Helpers are less likely to be procuted if they were clo friends or relatives; if the person who died was verely ill physically; if he had a "ttled" wish to die; and so on. Charges are more likely if the victim was under 18 or mentally ill, or if the suspect stood to gain from his death (though, campaigners note, this is often the ca becau helpers
tend to be spous or offspring). A British version of Dignitas is ruled out. rial assisters can expect to be procuted, as can members of groups who main purpo is facilitating suicide.
One conquence of leaving the matter to lawyers, rather than getting a bill through Parliament, is that the guidelines are framed in broader terms than a new law would have been. Earlier this year Lord Falconer and others propod an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill that would have legalid assisting suicide overas in cas of terminal illness. It was voted down by peers who considered it dangerously radical. The new guidelines, though they do not make assisting suicide legal, apply at home as well as abroad and cover suicide by the riously as welt as the terminally ill.
It remains to be en whether the rules will satisfy the demand for reform or will trigger more change. It ems too important an issue for people not to have their say.
1.
Helping someone to die is illegal, ______
A and prohibitive laws have been made in Britain
B and most helpers have been convicted in Britain
leave的用法C but Switzerland has legalid assisted suicide
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D but most who do will escape procution
2.
Tho who want to choo assisted suicide worry ______
A they might be charged and convicted
B tho who help them may face lawsuits
C the new guidelines could not help them much
D the new guidelines would put an end to suicide
3.
According to the new guidelines, ______
A helping people to kill themlves is legal in some cas
the town
B spous who help family members die will be spared
C no suicide assisting agencies should be t up in Britain
D mentally sick suicide helpers should not be procuted
4.
The rules in the guidelines ______
A are less specific than the terms in a law would be
B will not be pasd by the Parliament
C will meet the demand of the terminally ill
D will finally make suicide assisting acts legal
5.
If Lord Falconer"s proposal had been accepted ______
A accompanying a spou to Dignitas for suicide would have been legal
B assisting suicide would have been made legal within Britain
C it would have aroud more change in law-making endeavor
wipilot是什么D it would have filled up the gap left by the new guidelines
上半年英语四六级口试取消Text 2
There aren"t a whole lot of scientific disciplines that haven"t had something to say about climate change over the years—and with good reason. When a problem is global in scale there"s a univer of specialists and subspecialists who have to try hard to fix it. But one field—psychology—has never had much skin in the game. It"s less important to consider how humans feel about the mess we"ve made of our planet, after all, than how we clean it up.
That, at least, has always been the thinking. Increasingly, however, psychologists are making the ca that the best way to resolve any crisis and prevent it from happening again is to understand the minds of the people who caud it. And that means all six billion of US.
The newest issue of the American Psychologist is devoted largely to making that ca, with a ries of articles by a team of psychologists from around the country exploring the thinking, feelings and other cognitive process that have allowed us to be so neglectful of our world—and could be harnesd to help us take better care of it. The papers are by 美丽英文
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and large illuminating, surprising and, well, occasionally absurd—which is what often happens when scientists are feeling their way in a relatively new field and fall back on jargon and other linguistic terms to try to make it make n. Still, with climate change only growing wor and the U.S. in particular eming unable or unwilling to do much about it, new perspectives are always welcome and badly needed.
One of the first things scientists do in trying to wrestle a big problem to the ground is simplify and clarify it, with a nice, clear equation if possible—and the climate psychologists are no exception. If you want to devi policies to make people more climate conscious, they argue, all you have to remember is I=tpn . More specifically put, that means the impact of any behavioral change will be equal its technical potential to fix the problem, times the behavioral plasticity required to comply with it, times the number of people who actually do comply.
"Behavioral science understandably focus on the p ," writes psychologist Paul Stern of the National Rearch Council, "though in tting policy priorities, t and n are critical to take into account." Insulating your attic is technically simple and very effective, but it take
s a lot of behavioral plasticity before anyone will actually get up and do it. Buying a hybrid car can do a lot of good too—but until the **e way down and the lection goes way up not a lot of people are going to do it.
There"s still time, of cour, to rever—or at least slow—our environmental decline. Psychologists may always play more of a supporting than leading role in making that happen, but it"s a critical role nonetheless.
1.
From the first paragraph we learn that ______
A every discipline has tried to avoid talking about climate change
B psychology as a discipline hasn"t had much to say about climate change
C experts in other disciplines than climatology know little about climate change
D no discipline is concerned about how people actually feel about climate change
2.
With which of the issues are the articles not concerned?
英孚学习A how people deliberately change the climate to their advantage
B what makes people mentally indifferent to their environment
C how we think about the earth in order to prerve or protect it
D why are Americans unwilling to do something about climate change
3.
What does the author think of the psychologists" approach to climate change in general?
A Informative and enlightening.
B Intriguing but absurd.
C Ridiculous and unintelligible.
D Insightful but unpractical.
4.
In the formula, p stands for ______
A the policy made for wrestling with environmental problems
B the change in the climate patterns that caus disaster
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C the ability to identify and solve a technical problem
D the adaptive power of people to changes in the environment
5.
The best title for the text might be ______
A Why Should We Put Our Solution into a Formula
antinB Why Psychologists Could Do Nothing about Climate Change
C How the Mind Can Save the Planet from Potential Disasters
D How Environmental Decline Can Be Reverd before it Is Too Late
Text 3
Scot Ca was not happy. Vice president of the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice, Ca last year nt his rearchers into a big retail store to evaluate the green advertising claims of some of the products on its shelves. The results were startling,
of the 1,018 products TerraChoice surveyed, all but one failed to live up fully to their green boasts. Words like nontoxic were ud in meaninglessly vague ways. Terms like Energy Star certified were in fact not backed up by certification.
Many consumers may not have heard the term greenwashing, but they"ve surely experienced it—misleading marketing about the environmental benefits of a product. Greenwashing isn"t new—ever since the environment emerged as an issue in the early 1970s, there have been advertising firms trying to convince consumers that buying Brand X is the only way to save the earth. But as going green has become big business—sales of organic products alone went from $10 billion in 2003 to more than $20 billion in 2007—companies appear eager to associate themlves with the environment, dervedly or not.
If you"re not yet sick of eing rotating wind turbines and solar panels on TV, you will be. the new fall ason is likely to feature a flood of green advertising. It"s gotten so bad that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been holding hearings over the past year to define the difference between genuine environmental claims and empty greenwash. It"s n
ot easy—and environmental advocates worry that truly **panies could get lost in all the clamor.
"We have such a challenge ahead of us on climate change," says Kevin Tuerff, a co-founder of the marketing consultancy EnviroMedia. "Greenwashing harms the effort we need to be making."
The first step to cleaning up greenwashing is to identify it, and Tuerff and his partners have hit on an innovative way to direct public attention to particularly bad examples. They"ve launched the Greenwashing Index (), a website that allows consumers to post ads that might be examples of greenwashing and rate them on a scale of 1 to 5—1 is a little green lie; 5 is an outright falhood.
It"s a simple device, but it shows the power of the Internet to trace misleading ads; with a simple Web arch, any consumer can find out if a car manufacturer boasting of its fuel-efficient hybrids actually earns the majority of its revenue lling gas-consuming trucks and SUVs. "We try to make it a little more transparent with the index," says Kim Sheehan, a communications professor at the University of Oregon and a co-founder of the site. "It teaches people to be a little more cautious about the claims they hear."
