2021年最新职称英语学习资料(阅读理解讲义)4

1、最新职称英语学习资料(阅读理解讲义)4 PASSAGE 29 Live with Computer After too long on the Net, even a phone call can be a shock. My boyfriends Liverpudlian aent suddenly bees indecipherable after the clarity of his words on screen; a secretarys tone seems more rejecting than Id i _gined it would be. Time itself bees

2、fluid - hours bee minutes, and alternately seconds stretch into days. Weekends, on _ a highlight of my week, and now just two ordinary days. For the last three years, sin _ I stopped working as a produ _r for Charlie Rose, I have done much of my work as a telemuter. I submit articles and edit them v

3、ia E- _il and municate with colleagues on Inter _iling lists. My boyfriend lives in England, so much of our relationship is puter-mediated. If I desired, I could stay inside for weeks without wanting anything. I can order food, and _nage my money, love and work. In fact, at times I have spent as lon

4、g as three weeks alone at home, going out only to get _il and buy newspapers and gro _ries. I watched most of the blizzard of 96 on TV. But after a while, life itself begins to feel unreal. I start to feel as though Ive merged with my _chines, taking data in, spitting them back out, just another nod

5、e on the Net. Others on line report the same symptoms. We start to strongly dislike the outside forms of socializing. Its like attending an A. A. meeting in a bar with everyone holding a half-sipped drink. We have bee the Net opponents; worst night _re. What first seemed like a luxury, crawling from

6、 bed to puter, not worrying about hair, and clothes and fa _, has bee an avoidan _, a lack of discipline. And on _ you start replacing real hu _n contact with cyber-interaction, ing back out of the cave can be quite difficult. At times, I turn on the television and just leave it to chatter in the ba

7、ckground, something that Id never done previously. The voi _s of the programs soothe me, but then Im jarred by the mercials. I find myself sucked in by soap operas, or pulsively needing to keep up with the latest news and the weather. Dateline, Frontline, Nightline, N, New York 1, every possible ang

8、le of every story over and over and over, even when they are of no possible use to me. Work moves from foreground to background. 练习： 1. Compared to the clear words of her boyfriend on screen, his aent bees A) unidentifiable. B) unbearable. C) unreal. D) misleading. 2. The passage implies that the au

9、thor and her boyfriend live in A) different cities in England. B) different countries. C) the same city. D) the same country. 3. What is the _in idea of the last paragraph? A) she is so absorbed in the TV programs that she often forgets her work. B) In order to keep up with the latest news and the w

10、eather, she watches TV a lot. C) In order to get some fort from TV programs she, sometimes, turns on the television. D) Having worked on the puter for too long, she became a bit odd. 4. What is the authors attitude to the puter? A) She dislikes it because TV is more attractive. B) She dislikes it be

11、cause it cuts off her relation with the outside world. C) She has bee bored with it. D) She likes it because it is very convenient. 5. The phrase ing back out of the cave in the fifth paragraph means A) ing back home. B) going back home. C) living a luxurious life. D) restoring direct hu _n contact.

12、 Keys：ABCCD PASSAGE 30 Knitting My mother knew how to knit, but she never taught me. She assumed, as did _ny women of her generation, that knitting was no longer a skill worth passing down from mother to daughter. A bination of femini _, consumeri _ and household gadgetry _de _ny women feel that suc

13、h homely aomplishments were no obsolete. My grandmother still knitted, though, and every Christ _s she _de a pair of socks for my brother and me, of red wool. They were the ones we wore under our i _ skates, when it was really important to have warm feet. Knitting is a nervous habit that happens to

14、be productive. It helped me quit _oking by giving my hands something else to do. It is wonderful for depression because no _tter what else happens, you are creating something beautiful. Time spent in front of the television or just sitting is no longer time wasted. I love breathing life into the pat

15、terns. Its true _gic, finding a neglected, dog-eared old book with the perfect snowflake design, buying the same Ger _ntown knitting worsted my grandmother used, in the exact blue to _tch my daughters eyes, taking it on the train with me every day for two months, working feverishly to get it done by

16、 Christ _s, staying up late after the stocking are filled to sew in the sleeves and weave in the ends. Knitting has taught me patien _. I know that if I just keep going, even if it takes months, there will be a reward. When I _ke a mistake, I know that a temper tantrum will not fix it, that I just h

17、ave to go back and take out the stitches between and start over again. People often ask if I would do it for money, and the answer is always a definite no. In the first pla _, you could not pay me though for the hours I put into a sweater. But more important, this is an activity I keep separate from

18、 such considerations. I knit to cover my children and other people I love in warmth and color. I knit to give them something earthly that money could never buy. Knitting gives me life an alternative rhythm to the daily deadline. By day I can write about Northern Ireland or the New York City Poli _ D

19、epartment and get paid for it, but on the train home, surrounded by people with laptops, I stage my little rebellion. I take out my old knitting bag and join the _nturies of women who have knitted for love. 1. Which of the following reasons does NOT explain the fact that Knitting was no longer a ski

20、ll worth passing down from mother to daughter? A) The struggle of women for equal rights. B) The belief that it is good to buy and use a lot of goods. C) The plain feature of Knitting. D) The introduction of domestic devi _s. 2.At what time did the author wear the stocks her grandmother had knitted

21、for her? A) In winter. B) When she went skiing. C) During the Christ _s holiday. D) When she needed to keep her feet warm for skating. 3.Knitting is nervous habit means A) knitting involves the work of ones nerves. B) Knitting gets on ones nerves. C) Knitting _kes one nervous. D) Knitting _y act as

22、a trigger for a nervous breakdown. 4.Which of the following is false con _rning knitting aording the author? A) It helps one give up ones bad habit. B) It helps one get rid of ones bad mood. C) It requires patien _. D) It is profit- _ business. 5.What is NOT her purpose for knitting aording to this

23、passage? A) It saves money. B) It activate ones life. C) It enriches ones life. D) It is a pleasant pastime. Keys: CDADA PASSAGE 31 Powers of Self-suggestion Most systems of medicine are based on theater. With leeches, acupuncture needles, vitamin pills or whatever stage prop is appropriate for the

24、time and culture, the healer artfully evokes the patients powers of self-suggestion, which are responsible for whatever healing _y our. Western medicine operates on a different plane. For one thing, it has the most impressive props - expensive medicines, elaborate rituals and mysterious high-tech _c

25、hines with a white-gowned cast to operate them. For another, it evokes the patients auto suggestive powers all the more for _fully by pretending to ignore them. This mysterious gift of self-healing is cloaked with an anodyne label, the pla _bo effect, and recognized only as a nuisan _ likely to conf

26、ound clinical trials. But the pla _bo (Latin for I will please) and its shadowy twin the no _bo (I will harm) are much more than methodological problems: they lie at the heart of every interaction between doctor and patient. How they work no one knows. But the brain rules the body in _ny subconsciou

27、s ways, including its control of the bodys _jor hormones and its subtle influen _ over the immune system. So its possible that, in ways yet unknown, expectations about health or disease are sometimes translated into a bodily reaction that fulfills them. The power of these effects is hard to overstat

28、e. A rule of thumb is that 30 per _nt of patients in the pla _bo half of a drug trial (i.e. those who unknowingly re _ive a dummy pill instead of the real thing) will experien _ an improvement in symptoms. But the proportion _y be much higher. Just like real drugs, pla _bo pills can produ _ stronger

29、 effects in larger doses. Patients will report greater relief when given a larger pill, or two dummy capsules instead of one. Doctors expectations also contribute to the awesome power of the pla _bo effect. In a study of tooth extractions, patients were given either a painkiller or sham drugs. Some

30、dentists were assigned to give either drug, without knowing which, but other dentists knew they would be giving only sham drugs. The patients whose dentists thought they had at least a 50-50 chan _ of giving a painkiller suffered significantly less pain. Presu _bly, doctors tran _it their expectatio

31、ns to the patient through subtle cues, often without knowing they are doing so. For this reason, all properly designed drug trials are double blind. But given that both groups can often guess from the side effects, even this precaution _y not always crush the generation of expectancies. 1. Which of

32、the following is NOT a feature of Western medicine? A) It redu _s the patients; self-healing powers. B) It has the full support of high-tech _chines. C) It is very expensive. D) It has plicated rituals. 2. What dose the term the pla _bo effect mean? A) It means the mind-troubling effect. B) It means

33、 the psychological effect. C) It means the harmful effect. D) It means the theatrical effect. 3. What does them (the last word in paragraph 3) refer to? A) Clinical trials. B) The bodys _jor hormones. C) Expectations about health or disease. D) Many subconscious ways. 4. Why did the patients whose d

34、entists thought they had at least a 50-50 chan _ of being given a painkiller suffer significantly less pain? A) Because of doctors expectations. B) Because of the pla _bo effect. C) Because of the healing power of the medicine taken. D) Because of the ex _llent medical skills of the doctors. 5. What

35、 does the author mean by saying that for this reason, all properly designed drug trials are double blind (in the last paragraph)? A) The physician and the patient are both ignorant of the healing power of the medicine. B) The physician doesnt know whether the given pill is real or fake. C) The patie

36、nt doesnt know whether the given pill is real or fake. D) Neither the physician nor the patient knows whether the given pill is real or fake. Key: ABCAD PASSAGE 32 Fords Assembly Line When it es to singling out those who have _de a differen _ in all our lives, you cannot overlook Henry Ford. A histo

37、rian a _ntury from now might well conclude that it was Ford who most influen _d all _nufacturing, everywhere, even to this day, by introducing a new way to _ke cars-one, strange to say, that originated in slaughterhouses. Back in the early 1900s, slaughterhouses used what could have been called a di

38、sassembly line. Ford reversed this pro _ss to see if it would speed up production of a part of an automobile engine called a _go. Rather than have each worker pletely assemble a _go, one of its elements was pla _d on a conveyer, and each worker, as it passed, added another ponent to it, the same one

39、 each time. Professor David Hounshell of the University of Delaware, an expert on industrial development, _s what happened: The previous day, workers carrying out the entire pro _ss had averaged one assembly every 20 minutes. But on that day, on the line, the assembly team averaged one every 13 minu

40、tes and 10 seconds per person. Within a year, the time had been redu _d to five minutes. In 1913, Ford went all the way. Hooked together by ropes, partially assembled vehicles were towed past workers who pleted them one pie _ at a time. It wasnt long before Ford was turning out several hundred thous

41、and cars a year, a re _rkable achievement then. And so efficient and economical was this new system that he cut the pri _ of his cars in half, to $260, putting them within reach of all those who, up until that time, could not afford them. Soon, auto _kers the world over copied him. In fact, he encou

42、raged them to do so by writing a book about all of his innovations, entitled Today and Tomorrow. The Age of the Automobile has arrived. Today, aided by robots and other forms of auto _tion, everything from toasters to perfumes are _de on assembly lines. 1. Which of the following statements is NOT tr

43、ue? A) Henry Ford influen _d our lives. B) Henry Ford influen _d all _nufacturing. C) Henry Ford influen _d the _nufacture of cars. D) Henry Ford influen _d historians. 2. The writer mentioned slaughterhouses because these were the pla _s in which A) Fords assembly line originated. B) he _de cars. C

44、) he innovated the assembly line. D) he innovated the disassembly line. 3. A _go is a technical term for A) an automobile. B) an engine. C) a part of an automobile engine. D) an automobile engine. 4. The phrase turning out in the last paragraph can best be repla _d by A) producing. B) appeasing. C)

45、assembling. D) fixing. 5. It didnt take long for Henry Ford A) to turn out a few hundred cars a year. B) to turn out a few thousand cars a year. C) to redu _ the pri _ of his cars to $260. D) to cut the production of his cars by 50%. KEY: DACAC PASSAGE 33 The Gene Industry Major panies are already i

46、n pursuit of mercial applications of the new biology. They dream of placing enzymes in the automobile to monitor exhaust and send data on pollution to a micropro _ssor that will then adjust the engine. They speak of what the New York Times calls metal-hungry microbes that might be used to mine valua

47、ble tra _ metal from o _an water. They have already de _nded and won the right to patent new lifeforms. Nervous critics, including _ny scientists, worry that there is corporate, national, international, and inter-scientific rivalry in the entire biotechnological field. They create i _ges not of oil

48、spills, but of microbe spills that could spread disease and destroy entire populations. The creation and aidental release of extremely poisonous microbes, however, is only one cause for alarm. Completely rational and respectable scientists are talking about possibilities that stagger the i _gination

49、. Should we breed people with cow-with sto _chs so they can digest grass and hay, thereby relieving the food problem by modifying us to eat lower down on the food chain? Should we biologically alter workers to fit the job requirement, for example, creating pilots with faster reaction times or assemb

50、ly-line workers designed to do our monotonous work for us? Should we attempt to eliminate inferior people and breed a super-ra _? (Hitler tried this, but without the geic weaponry that _y soon issue from our laboratories.) Should we produ _ sol _rs to do our fighting? Should we use geic forecasting to pre-eliminate unfit babies? Should we grow reserve organs for ourselves, each of us having, as it were, a savings bank full of spare kidney, livers, or hands? Wild as these notions _y sound, every one has its advocates (and opposers) in the scientific munity as well as its striking merci