湖北研究生入学测验英语+答案18 / 18 作者： 日期：个人收集整理，勿做商业用途2010年湖北省博士研究生入学考试英语联考试题Part I Reading Comprehension (40%)Directions: There are 5 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice and mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets.Questions 1 to 4 are based on the following passage:For most of us, work is the central, dominating factor of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for work, traveling to and from work. What we do there largely determines our standard of living and to a considerable extent the status we are accorded by our fellow citizens as well. It is sometimes said that because leisure has become more important, the indignities and injustices of work can be pushed into a corner; that because more work is pretty intolerable, the people who do it should compensate for its boredom; frustrations and humiliations by concentrating their hopes on the other parts of their lives. I reject that as a counsel pf despair. For the foreseeable future the material and psychological rewards which work can provide, and the conditions in which work is done, will continue to play a vital part in determining the satisfaction that life can offer. Yet only a small minority ean control the pace at which they work or the conditions in which their work is done; only for a small minority does work offer scope for creativity, imagination, or initiative.Inequality at work and in work is still one of the cruelest and most glaring forms of inequality in our society. We can not hope to solve the more obvious problems of industrial life, many of which arise directly or indirectly from the inequality at work. Still less can we hope to create a decent and humane society.The most glaring inequality is that between managers and the rest. For most managers, work is an opportunity and a challenge. Their jobs engage their interest and allow them to develop their abilities. They are able to exercise responsibility; they have a considerable degree of control over their own and the others working lives. Most important of all, they have the opportunity to initiate. By contrast, for most manual workers, work is a boring, monotonous, even painful experience. They spend all their working lives in conditions which would be regarded as intolerable for themselves by those who take the decisions which let such conditions continue. The majority have little control over their work; it provides them with no opportunity for personal development. Often production is so designed that workers are simply part of the technology. In offices, many jobs are so routine that workers justifiably feel themselves to be mere cogs in the bureaucratic machine. As a direct consequence of their work experience, many workers feel alienated from their work and their firm, whether it is in public or in private ownership.1. According to the author, its true about work that .A. ones happy life largely depends on whether his work is rewardingB. concentrating on your work is a counsel when you are in despairC. people should try to avoid the intolerable unfairness of workD. dignity becomes more and more important than work2. What advantage do managers have over the other workers?A. They can control other peoples lives.B. They can make their own decisions.C. They can work at whatever interests them.D. They can get time off to attend courses.3. Working conditions generally remain bad because .A. the workers lose their interests to change themB. few people can decide what to do about themC. office workers want to protect their positionsD. managers do not want to change them4. What frustrates the workers in a modern society?A. Their work interferes with their private lives.B. They are incapable of doing their work properly.C. They feel they are just a small and subordinate part of it.D. Their lives are complicated due to technological advances.Questions 5 to 8 are based on the following passage:The uniqueness of the Japanese character is the result of two seemingly contradictory forces: the strength of traditions and the selective receptivity to foreign achievements and inventions. As early 1860s there were counter movement to the traditional orientation. One of the famous spokesmen of Japans “Enlightenment” claimed “the Confucian civilization of the East seems to me to lack two things possessed by Western civilization: science in the material sphere and a sense of independence in the spiritual sphere.” Another break of relative liberalism followed World War I, when the democratic idealism of President Woodrow Wilson had an important impac