江西师范大学2008年推荐免试研究生英语考试试卷
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Section A: Reading comprehension ( 40 points, 2 points for each)

Passage One
One of the qualities that most people admire in others is the willingness to admit one’s mistakes. It is extremely hard sometimes to say a simple thing like” I was wrong about that, “and it is even harder to say,” I was wrong, and you were right about that.”
   I had an experience recently with someone admitting to me that he had made a mistake fifteen years ago. He told me he had been the manager of a certain grocery store in the neighborhood where I grew up, and he asked me if I remembered the egg cartons. Then he related an incident and I began to remember vaguely the incident he was describing.
   I was about eight years old at the time, and I had gone into the store with my mother to do the weekly grocery shopping. On that particular day, I must have found my way to the dairy food department where the incident took place. There must have been a special sale on eggs that day because there was an impressive display of eggs in dozen and half-dozen cartons. The cartons were stacked three or four feet high. I must have stopped in front of a display to admire the stacks. Just then a woman came by pushing her grocery cart and knocked off the stacks of cartons. For some reason, I decided it was up to me to put the display back together, so I went to work.
   The manager heard the noise and came rushing over to see what had happened. When he appeared, I was on my knees inspecting some of the cartons to see if any of the eggs were broken, but to him it looked as though I was the culprit. He severely reprimanded me and wanted me to pay for any broken eggs. I protested my innocence and tried to explain, but it did no good. Even though I quickly forgot all about the incident, apparently the manager did not.
(!) How old was the author when he wrote this article?
A) About 8         B) About 18          C) About 23           D) About 15
(2) Who was to blame for knocking off the stacks of canons?
A) The author.       B) The manager.     C) A woman.          D) The author’s mother.
(3) Which of the following statements is not true?
A) The woman who knocked off the stacks off cartoon was seriously criticized by the manager.
B) The author was severely criticized by the manager.
C) A woman carelessly knocked off the stacks of cartons.
D) It was the author who put the display truck together.
(4) Which of the following can serve as the best title for the passage?
A) It’s Harder to Admit One’s Mistake       B) I Was Once the Culprit
C) Remember an Incident                 D) A Case of Mistaken Identity
(5) The tone of the article expresses the author’s __________________.
A) admiration for the manager’s willingness to admit mistakes
B) anger to the manager for his wrong accusation
C) indignation against the woman who knocked off the stacks of cartons
D) regret for the mistake he made in the store

Passage Two
Real policemen, both in Britain and the United States, hardly recognize any similarities between their lives and what they see on TV – if they ever get home in time.
The first difference is that a policeman’s real life revolves round law. Most of his training is in criminal law. He has to know exactly what actions are crimes and what evident can be used to prove them in court. He has to know nearly as much law as a professional lawyer, and what’s more, he has to apply it in his feet, in the dark and rain, running down an alley after someone he wants to talk to.
Little of his time is spent in dramatic confrontations with desperate criminals. He will spend most of his working life typing millions of words on thousands of forms about hundreds of sad, unimportant people who are guilty—or not—of stupid, petty crimes.
Most television crime drama is about finding the criminal: as soon as he’s arrested, the story is over. In real life, finding criminals is seldom much of a problem. Except in very serious cases like murders and terrorist attacks—where failure to produce results reflects on the standing of the police—little effort is spent on searching. The police have an elaborate machinery which eventually show up most wanted men.
Having made an arrest, a detective really starts to work. He has to prove his case in court and to do that he often has to gather a lot of different evidence. Much of this has to be given by people who don’t want to get involved in a court case. So, as well as being overworked, a detective has to be out at all hours of day and night interviewing his witnesses and persuading them, usually against their own best interests, to help him.
If the detective has to deceive the word, the word often deceives him. Hardly anyone he meets tells him the truth. And this separation the detective feels between himself and the rest of the word is deepened by the simple mindedness—as he sees it—of citizens, social workers ,law makers and judges, who, instead of stamping out crime, punish the criminals less severely in the hope that this will make them reform. The result, detectives feel, is that nine tenths of their work is recatching people who should have stayed behind bars. This makes them rather cynical.
(6) It is essential for a policeman to be trained in criminal law____________.
A) because many of the criminals he has to catch are dangerous
B) so that he can catch criminals in the streets
C) so that he can justify his arrests in court
D) because he has to know nearly as much about law as a professional lawyer
(7) The everyday life of a policeman or a detective is _____________.
A) devoted mostly to routine matters
B) exciting and glamorous
C) full of danger
D) wasted on unimportant matters
(8) When murders and terrorist attacks occur, the police___________.
A) prefer to wait for the criminal to give himself away
B) spend a lot of effort on trying to track down the criminals
C) try to make a quick arrest in order to keep up their reputation
D) usually fail to produce results

(9) Detectives are rather cynical because______________.
A) nine tenths of their work involves arresting people
B) hardly anyone tells them the truth
C) too many criminals escapes from jail
D) society does not punish criminals severely enough
(10) All the following statements are true EXCEPT________________.
A) policemen feel that the image of their lives shown on TV is inaccurate
B) television crime plays tend to concentrate on the search for the criminal
C) much of the detective’s work involves arresting former criminals
D) in real life , finding criminals is one of the policemen’s greatest problems

Passage Three
Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary. Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts, and other vocations, like farming and fishery, that have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary, is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very fibre of our language. Hence, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood, than most other technicalities. The special dialects of law, medicine, divinity, and philosophy have also, in their older strata, become pretty familiar to cultivated persons and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary. Yet every vocation still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion has been much increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic arts. Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned with indifference when they have served their turn. Most of the new coinages are confined to special discussions, and seldom get into general literature or conversation. Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close guild. The lawyer, the physician, the man of science, the divine, associated freely with his fellow-creatures, and does not meet them in a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called “popular science” makes everybody acquainted with modern views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported in the newspapers, and everybody is soon talking about it –as in the case of the Roentgen rays and wireless telegraphy. Thus our common speech is always taking up new technical terms and making them commonplace.
(11) Special words used in technical discussion_____________.
A) never last long
B) are considered artificial language speech
C) should be confined to scientific fields
D) may become part of common speech
(12) It is true that_____________________.
A) an educated person would be expected to know most technical terms
B) everyone is interested in scientific findings

C) the average man often uses in his own vocabulary what was once technical language not meant for him
D) various professions and occupations often interchange their dialects and jargons
(13) In recent years, there has been a marked increase in number of technical terms in the terminology of
A) farming      B) sports      C) government         D) fishery
(14) The writer of the article was, no doubt_____________.
A) a linguist     B) an essayist     C) a scientist        D)  an attorney
(15) The author’s main purpose in the passage is to _____________.
A) describe a phenomenon
B) be entertaining
C) argue a belief
D) propose a solution

Passage Four
Contemporary office technology requires software or programs to carry out complicated information-processing activities. References to software usually indicate a set of instructions. A broader application of the term includes any nonhardware element of a computer system: Programs, written documentation to accompany programs, flow charts, and user manuals, for example. The latter use of the terms is rare.
     Software is now available from a variety of sources: hardware manufacturers and vendors, software houses (firms that develop and market software), and staff programmers (user-developed software). Office supply houses, computer shops, and even bookstores market packaged software for the microcomputer market.
     Early computer users thought in terms of developing their own software or using software developed by computer manufacturers to perform the information-processing activities desired form the computer system. Users of medium-to-large scale computer systems still rely heavily on programs developed, tested, and perfected by their own programmers.
      Large-to-medium scale computer manufacturers or vendors have traditionally included software with the system package, sometimes providing alterations necessary to customize the programs to user needs. These packages have represented significant portions of the purchase or lease price of systems.
      The microcomputer revolution in the early 1980s brought with it the concept of the commercial software publisher (software house). Companies were formed to engage in writing and marketing software for all types and sizes of computers, but those producing software for microcomputers were especially numerous. Major hardware manufacturers began to market software produced by these software specialists with their systems. The quality of the programs and the instructional materials that accompanied them were frequently poor. Because of the ease with which users could duplicate software, software prices remained high. Yet, those high prices were frequently preferable to the cost of programs developed in-house. Experience and competition have increased the quality of both programs and instructional materials.
(16) According to the passage, the most commonly used definition of software is______________.

A) complicated information-processing activities
B) any nonhardware element of a computer system
C) a set of instructions
D) flow charts and user manuals
(17)Which of the following statements is not true?
A) Now hardware manufacturers also develop and market software.
B) Early computer users had no choice but to develop their own software.
C) Software is now available for the microcomputer user even from bookstores.
D) Early computer manufacturers also developed and marketed software.
(18) Large-to-medium scale computer manufacturers__________________.
A) rely heavily on software developed by their customers
B) used to include software with the system package
C) can make changes for software to meet customer needs
D) sell their system packages at very low prices
(19) Since the microcomputer revolution in the early 1980s, ________________.
A) Commercial software publishers have gradually disappeared
B) major hardware manufacturer began to develop their own software
C) Many companies stopped the development of software for large computers
D) there have been numerous choices of software for micro-computer users
(20) It is implied in the passage that_____________.
A) it will cost a great deal more for computer users to develop their own software than to buy it
B) software prices remained high because it was not easy to develop any software
C) it is very difficult for users to duplicate software
D) software has long been of high quality due to experience and competition

Section B: Error Correction(10 points)
This part consists of a short passage. In this passage, there are altogether 10 mistakes, one in each underlined line. You may have to add a word, cross out a word, or change a word. Mark out the mistakes and put the corrections in the blanks provided. If you cross a word, put a slash(/) in the blank.
Criticism is  judgment.  A critic is a judge.
A judge must study and think about  the  material
presented  to it, correct  it or  reject  it  after          21.____________________
thinking what he has  read,  watched or heard.           22.                   
   Another word for criticism is the appreciation.          23.                   
when  I  criticize or  appreciate  some  object or
another, I look  for its good points and its  bad
points. In reading any printing or written matter.           24._____________________
I always have a pencil in hand and put any comments
 in the book or on a separate piece of paper. In
other words, I never talk back to the writer.               25____________________
   The sort of critical reading may well be called
creation reading because  I am thinking along with the     26_______________    _
writer, asking him  questions,   seeing that he           27_____________________
answers the questions and how well he answers them.
I mark the good passages to restore them in my            28_____________________
memory and ask myself about every other part and
about the complete piece of writing: where, how and
why could or should I improve upon them?               29______________________
   You might think that doing what I suggested is
 work. Yes, it is, and the work is a pleasure               30______________________
because I  can feel my brain expanding, my emotion
reacting and my way of living changing. 

Section C: Close ( 10 points)

   The accuracy of scientific observations and calculations is always at the _31___of the scientist’s timekeeping methods. __32____this reason, scientists are __33__ in devices that give promise of more precise timekeeping.
   In their search for ___34_, scientists have ___35__ to atomic clocks that depend on __36__vibrating atoms or molecules to supply their “ticking”. This is __37_because each kind of atom or molecule has its own__38___ rate of vibration. The nitrogen atom in ammonia, ___39_vibrates or “ticks” 24 billion times a second.
   One such atomic clock is so accurate _40___ it will probably___41__ no more than a second in 3,000 years. It will be _42___great importance in __43___ such as astronomical observation and long-range navigation. The heart of this Atomichron is a cesium atom__44___ vibrates 9.2 billion times a second when _45____ to the temperature of boiling water.
An atomic clock that operates with an ammonia molecule may be used to check the accuracy of predications__46___ Einstein’s relativity theories, according _47____which a clock in _48___and a clock at rest should keep time _49____. Placed in an orbiting satellite moving at a speed of 18,000 miles an hour, the clock could broadcast its time readings to a ground station, where they would be compared with the reading on a similar model. Whatever difference developed would be checked against the difference__50_____.
31.  A) sympathy      B) mercy           C) kindness         D) courage
32.  A)In             B)At              C) For             D) By
33.  A) interested       B) surprised        C) fond            D) keen
34.  A) pleasure        B) precision        C) information      D) sponsor
35.  A) turned          B) relied           C) asked           D) pursue
36.  A) various         B) vary            C) variable         D) variant
37.  A) impossible       B) possible         C) imaginary       D) valuable
38.  A) practical        B) reliable          C) characteristic     D) realistic
39.  A) such as         B) for example      C) namely          D) that is
40.  A) that            B) as              C) which           D) what
41.  A) decrease        B) subtract         C) reduce           D) lose
42.  A) at             B) to              C) for              D) of
43.  A) areas          B) fields            C) subjects         D) places
44.  A) that           B) what             C) who            D) it
45.  A) heating        B) heat             C) heated           D) being heated
46.  A) instead of       B) relative to        C) emphasized on     D) based on
47.  A) to              B) for             C)at                D) on
48.  A) motion          B) work           C) wrong            D) research
49.  A) similarly        B) differently       C) accurately         D) continuously
50.  A) imagined        B) calculated       C) anticipated        D) predicted

Section D: Choices: (10 points, one point for each)

51. My aunt was an admirable woman, whom I took the greatest____ to resemble in my life.
    A) pains         B) attempts       C) efforts         D) cautions
52. A few hours of sleep were sufficient to relieve the ____of a long journey.
   A) effect          B) intensity       C) fatigue       D) consequence
53. Many doctors believe that lung cancer may to some extent be due to ____smoking.
   A) persistent       B) consistent      C) successive     D) excessive
54. Children who are not good at studying may _____games easily.
   A) catch up        B) make up       C) pick up        D)keep up
55. The boys splashed each other in the water and ____with excitement.
   A) shielded        B) shrieked        C) shrinked       D) shivered
56. When the storm broke, the flock of sheep were ____in all directions.
   A) straying        B) dispersing       C) separating      D) distributing
57. Education which ___many benefits should be a preparation for life.
   A) comprises      B) undertakes       C) bestows       D) embraces
58. The president warned that internal arguments would threaten the _____of the government.
   A) authority       B) tactics         C) stability        D) prestige
59. Clothes, cooking utensils, and ornaments were all ____on the ground for sale.
    A) laid aside      B) laid down     C) laid off         D) laid out
60. A sudden gust of wind nearly tore the mountaineer from the narrow rock where he was _______.
   A) perched        B) inhabited      C) located         D) squatted

Section E: Complete the sentences on Answer Sheet 2 by translating into English the Chinese given in brackets.（10 points）

61． _____________________________( 应征者必须不小于20岁) nor older than 28.
62． _____________________________(如果女孩们工作做得好) it is because of proper training.
63． They must know ________________________（如何用三国的货币算出一包香烟的价格）。
64． They must also know something about _________________（飞行原理和一架飞机的详尽零件）。
65． I love the air and the air-traveling business because_______________(这真是太令人兴奋了)。

 Section F: Writing: (20 points)
   For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition of no less than 150 words on Changes in People’s Diet in China.

Section G: Translate the following text into English. Write your translation on ANSWEER SHEET.( 20 points)(For English majors applicants only 英语专业的考生必考，非英语专业的考生不考)
       在近几年的投资中，由于一直实施的是积极的财政政策， 发行了大量的国债，政府投资一直起着主导作用。 据有关媒体报道，2005 年实施稳健财政政策后，发行的国债将会比今年减少300亿元。直接减少的国债投资是300亿 元，但由于国债投资都有很强的带动效应,由这减少的300 亿元国债连带而减少的其他相关的银行投资、民间投资数量也不可小视。 虽然有统计局官员称，民间投资已有启动迹象，但是启动了的民间投资能不能持续下去，民间投资是否是在地方政府的催生下发出的，是不是一种自发的力量，还是一个未知的变数。