专业英语八级阅读理解专项强化真题试卷2 (题后含答案及解析)
题型有：1.
(1)You should treat skeptically the loud cries now coming from colleges and universities that the last bastion of excellence in American education is being destroyed by state budget cuts and mounting costs. Whatever el it is, higher education is not a bastion of excellence. It is shot through with waste, lax academic standards and mediocre teaching and scholarship. (2)True, the economic pressures—from the Ivy League to state systems—are inten. Last year, nearly two-thirds of schools had to make midyear spending cuts to stay within their budgets. It is also true(as university presidents and deans argue)that relieving tho pressures merely by raising tuition and cutting cours will make matters wor. Students will pay more and get less. The university presidents and deans want to be spared from further government budget cuts. Their ca is weak. (3)Higher education is a bloated enterpri. Too many professors do too little teaching to too many ill-prepared students. Costs can be cut and quality improved without reducing the number of graduates.
Many colleges and universities should shrink. Some should go out of business. Consider: Except for elite schools, admission standards are low. About 70 percent of freshmen at four-year colleges and universities attend their first-choice schools. Roughly 20 percent go to their cond choices. Most schools have eagerly boosted enrollments to maximize revenues(tuition and state subsidies). Dropout rates are high. Half or more of freshmen don’t get degrees. A recent study of PhD programs at 10 major universities also found high dropout rates for doctoral candidates. The attrition among undergraduates is particularly surprising becau college standards have apparently fallen. One study of ven top schools found widespread grade inflation. In 1963 , half of the students in introductory philosophy cours got a B—or wor. By 1986, only 20 percent did. If elite schools have relaxed standards, the practice is almost surely widespread. Faculty teaching loads have fallen steadily since the 1960s. In major universities, nior faculty members often do less than two hours a day of teaching. Professors are “socialized to publish, teach graduate students and spend as little time teaching(undergraduates)as possible,” concludes James Fairweather of Penn State University in a new study. Faculty
pay consistently ris as undergraduate teaching loads drop. Universities have encouraged an almost mindless explosion of graduate degrees. Since 1960, the number of masters’ degrees awarded annually has rin more than fourfold to 337 ,000. Between 1965 and 1989, the annual number of MBAs(masters in business administration)jumped from 7,600 to 73,100. (4)Even so, our system has strengths. It boasts many top-notch schools and allows almost anyone to go to college. But mediocrity is pervasive. We push as many freshmen as possible through the door, regardless of qualifications. Becau bachelors’ degrees are so common, we create more graduate degrees of dubious worth. Does anyone believe the MBA explosion has improved management? (5)You won’t hear much about this from college deans or university presidents. They created this mess and are its biggest beneficiaries. Large enrollments support large faculties. More graduate students liberate tenured faculty from undergraduate teaching to concentrate on writing and rearch: the source of status. Richard Huber, a former college dean, writes knowingly in a new book “How Professors Play the Cat Guarding the Cream: Why We’re Paying More and Getting Less in Higher Education”one night stand : Presidents, deans al
l for more recognition of good teaching with prizes and salary incentives. (6)The reality is clor to the experience of Harvard University’s distinguished paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould: “introduce怎么读To be perfectly honest, though lip rvice is given to teaching, I have never riously heard teaching considered in any meeting for promotion. .. Writing is the currency of prestige and promotion. “ (7)About four-fifths of all students attend state-subsidized systems, from community colleges to prestige universities. How governors and state legislatures deal with their budget pressures will be decisive. Private schools will, for better or wor, be influenced by state actions. The states need to do three things. (8)First, create genuine entrance requirements. Today’s low standards tell high school students: You don’t have to work hard to go to college. States should change the message by raising tuition sharply and coupling the increa with generous scholarships bad on merit and income. To get scholarships, students would have to pass meaningful entrance exams. Ideally, the scholarships should be available for u at instate private schools. All schools would then compete for students on the basis of academic quality and costs. Today’s system of general tuition subsidies provides aid to well-to-do families t
hat don’t need it or to unqualified students who don’t derve it. (9)Next, states should rai faculty teaching loads, mainly at four-year schools.(Teaching loads at community colleges are already high.)This would cut costs and reemphasize the primacy of teaching at most schools. What we need are teachers who know their fields and can communicate enthusiasm to students. Not all professors can be path-breaking scholars. The excessive emphasis on scholarship generates many unread books and mediocre articles in academic journals. “You can’t do more of one(rearch)without less of the other(teaching),” says Fairweather. “People are working hard—it’s just where they’re working. “ (10)Finally, states should reduce or eliminate the least uful graduate programs. Journalism(now dubbed “communications”), business and education are prime candidates. A lot of what they teach can—and should—be learned on the job. If colleges and universities did a better job of teaching undergraduates, there would be less need for graduate degrees. (11)Our colleges and universities need to provide a better education to derving students. This may mean smaller enrollments, but given todaywhole是什么意思’s attrition rates, the number of graduates need not drop. Higher education could become a bastion of excellence, if we would only try.
magnitude 英语四级报名时间
1． It can be concluded from Para. 3 that the author was______towards higher education.
A．indifferent
B．neutral
C．positive
D．negative
正确答案：D
解析：推理判断题。根据题干定位至第三段。该段开头提到，高等教育就像一个臃肿的企业。太多的教授对太多准备不足学生的教学做的太少……很多高等院校都应该缩小规模。有些甚至应该被取缔。可以判断作者对高等教育持否定态度，故[D]为正确答案。
2． The following are current problems facing all American universities EXCEPT______.
A．high dropout rates
B．low admission standards
C．low undergraduate teaching loads
D．explosion of graduate degrees
正确答案：B
catfight
解析：细节理解题。根据题干定位至第三段。该段中作者列举了美国大学普遍存在的五个问题。其中包括：部分高校人学标准低、辍学率高、本科学生流失严重、教职工教学任务量下降及盲目增加研究生学位的授予数量。因此[A]、[C]、[D]均有提及。文中提到除了名校外，其他院校入学标准确实较低，[B]选项与题干中所说的所有高校所面临的问题不符，故答案为[B]。
3． In order to ensure teaching quality, the author suggests that the states do all the following EXCEPT______.
A．t entrance requirements
lotus是什么意思B．rai faculty teaching loads
C．increa undergraduate programs
D．reduce uless graduate programs
正确答案：C
解析：细节理解题。根据题干定位至第八、九、十段。作者在这三段中提出了国家需要做好的三件事：首先，制定真正的入学标准；其次，国家应该增加教师的教学工作量；最后，国家应该削减或取消无用的研究生课程，它们分别对应了[A]、[B]、[D]，故均排除，故[C]为正确答案。 447空难
4． “Prime candidates” in Para. 10 is ud as______.
英文词典A．euphemism
千年期B．metaphor
C．analogy
D．personification
正确答案：B
解析：修辞格题。根据题干定位至第十段第二句。该段第一、二句句意为：最后，国家应该削减或取消无用的研究生课程。新闻专业(现在被冠以“通信专业”之名)、商科和教育学都应被首先考虑在内。candidates原意是“候选人”，此处本体是“新闻专业、商科和教育学”，喻体是“候选人”，比喻词是are，故[B]“暗喻”为正确答案。
5． What is the author’s main argument in the passage?
A．American education can remain excellent by ensuring state budget.
B．Professors should teach more undergraduates than postgraduates.
C．Academic standards are the main means to ensure educational quality.
D．American education can remain excellent only by raising teaching quality.
正确答案：C
解析：主旨大意题。此题涉及作者的主要观点，需纵观全文进行解答。文章开篇提到如今的高等教育学术标准不规范，教学平庸，接着列举了美国大学中普遍存在的问题。教授们为了名声和升职，只顾科研而忽略教学，结尾部分提出国家应该重视教师的专业素质。因此，作者意在说明学术标准才是教学质量的保证，故[C]为正确答案。
(1)It’s 7 pm on a balmy Saturday night in June, and I have just ordered my first beer in I Cervejaria, a restaurant in Zambujeira do Mar, one of the prettiest villages on Portugal’s south-west coast. The place is empty, but this doesn’t surpri me at all. I have spent two weeks in this area, driving along empty roads, playing with my son on empty beaches, and staying in B&Bs where we are the only guests. (2)No doubt the restaurant, run by two brothers for the past 28 years, is buzzing in July and August, when Portugue holidaymakers descend on the Alentejo coast. But for the other 10 months of the year, the trickle of diners who come to feast on fantastically fresh afood reflects the general pace of life in the Alentejo: sleepy, bordering on comato. (3)One of the poorest, least-
developed, least-populated regions in western Europe, the Alentejo has been dubbed both the Provence and the Tuscany of Portugal. Neither is accurate. Its scenery is not as pretty and, apart from in the capital Evora, its food isn’t as sophisticated. The charms of this land of wheat fields, cork oak forests, wildflower meadows and tiny white-washed villages, are more subtle than in France or Italy’s poster regions. (4)To travel here is to step back in time 40 or 50 years. Life rolls along at a treacly pace: there’s an unnerving stillness to the landscape. But that stillness ends abruptly at the Atlantic Ocean, where there is drama in spade. Protected by the South West Alentejo and Costa Vicentina national park, the 100 km of coastline from Porto Covo in the Alentejo to Burgau in the Algarve is the most stunning in Europe. And yet few people em to know about it Walkers come to admire the views from the Fisherman’s Way, surfers to ride the best waves in Europe, but day after day we had spectacular beaches to ourlves. (5)The lack of awareness is partly a matter of accessibility(the beaches are a good two hours’ drive from either Faro or Lisbon airports)and partly to do with a lack of beach side accommodation. There are some gorgeous, independent guesthous in this area, but th
ey are hidden in valleys or at the end of dirt tracks. (6)Our ba was a beautiful 600-acre estate of uncultivated land covered in rock-ro, eucalyptus and wild flowers 13 km inland from Zambujeira. Our one-bedroom home, Azenha, was once home to the miller who tended the now-restored watermill next to it. A kilometre away from the main hou, pool and restaurant, it is gloriously isolated. (7)Stepping out of the hou in the morning to greet our neighbours — wild hors on one side, donkeys on the other — with nothing but birdsong filling the air, I felt a n of adventure you normally only get with wild camping. (8)”When people first arrive, they feel a little anxious wondering what they are going to do the whole time,” Sarah Gredley, the English owner of the estate, told me. “But it doesn’t usually take them long to realize that the whole point of being here is to slow down, to enjoy nature.” (9)We followed her advice, walking down to the stream in arch of terrapins and otters, or through clusters of cork oak trees. On some days, we tramped uphill to the windmill, now a romantic hou for two, for panoramic views across the estate and beyond. (10)When we ventured out, we were always drawn back to the coast — the gentle sands and shallow bay of Farol beach. At the end of the day, we woul
d head, sandy-footed, to the nearest restaurant, knowing that at every one there would be a cabinet full of fresh afood to choo from — bass, salmon, lobster, prawns, crabs, goo barnacles, We never ate the same thing twice. (11)A kilometre or so from I Cervejaria, on Zambujeira’s idyllic natural harbour is O Sacas, originally built to feed the fishermen but now popular with everyone. After eating platefuls of afood on the terrace, we wandered down to the harbour where two fishermen, in wetsuits, were tting out by boat across the clear turquoi water to collect goo barnacles. Other than them, the place was derted — just another empty beauty spot where I wondered for the hundredth time that week how this pristine stretch of coast has remained so undiscovered.
