2008年中石油職稱英語考試閱讀真題匯總

　　08年

　　III. Reading Comprehension

　　Section A

　　Directions: There are 5 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by4 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.

　　Questions 41 to 44 are based on the following passage:

　　One of the most interesting paradoxes in America today is that Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, is now engaged in a serious debate about what a university should be, and whether it is measuring up.

　　Like the Roman Catholic Church and other ancient institutions, it is asking―still in private rather than in public―whether its past assumptions about faculty, authority, admissions, courses of study, are really relevant to the problems of the 1990's.

　　Should Harvard―or any other university―be an intellectual sanctuary, apart from the political and social revolution of the age, or should it be a laboratory for experimentation with these political and social revolutions; or even an engine of the revolution? This is what is being discussed privately in the big clapboard houses of faculty members around the Harvard Yard.

　　The issue was defined by Waiter Lippmann, a distinguished Harvard graduate, several years ago.

　　“If the universities are to do their work," he said, "they must be independent and they must be disinterested...They are places to which men can turn for judgments which are unbiased by partisanship and special interest. Obviously, the moment the universities fall under political control, or under the control of private interests, or the moment they themselves take a hand in politics and the leadership of government, their value as independent and disinterested sources of judgment is impaired...”

　　This is part of the argument that is going on at Harvard today. Another part is the argument of the militant and even many moderate students: that a university is the keeper of our ideals and morals, and should not be “disinterested” but activist in bringing the nation's ideals and actions together.

　　Harvard's men of today seem more troubled and less sure about personal, political and academic purpose than they did at the beginning. They are not even clear about how they should debate and resolve their problems, but they are struggling with them privately, and how they come out is bound to influence American universities and political life in the 1990's.

　　41. The issues in the debate on Harvard's goals are whether the universities should remain independent of our society and its problems, and whether they should .

　　A. overcome the widespread drug dependency B. take an active part in solving society's ills

　　C. fight militarism D. support our old and established institutions

　　42. The word “paradox” in paragraph 1 is .

　　A. an abnormal condition B. a parenthetical expression

　　C. a difficult puzzle D. a self-contradiction

　　43. The word “sanctuary” in paragraph 3 is .

　　A. a temple or nunnery of middle age B. a certain place you can hide in and avoid mishaps

　　C. a holy place dedicated to a certain god D. an academy for intelligent people

　　44. In the author's judgment, the ferment going on at Harvard .

　　A. will soon be over, because times are bound to change

　　B. is of interest mostly to Harvard men and their friends

　　C. will influence future life in America

　　D. is a sad symbol of our general bewilderment

　　Questions 45 to 48 are based on the following passage:

　　Scientists now believe that many, if not all, living things are born with some type of hidden clock. These clocks are sometimes set by the number of hours of light or darkness in a day, by the rhythm of the tides or by the seasons.

　　One of the most remarkable of nature's living clocks belongs to the fiddler crab, that familiar beach-dweller with tile overgrown claw. Biologists have long known that the crab's shell is darkest during the day, grows pale in late afternoon, then begins to darken again at daybreak. This daytime darkening is valuable for protection against enemies and sunlight, and for many years it was thought to be a simple response by the crab to the sun--just as if we were to get a tan during the day and lose it at night.

　　But when an enterprising scientist placed a fiddler crab in darkness, be was amazed to find that the color of the crab's shell kept ticking off the time with the same accuracy.

　　Yet another startling fact was revealed: the crab's shell reached the darkest color about 50 minutes later each day. There was a second clock inside the crab, for the tides also occur 50 minutes later from day to day. Moreover, even when the crabs were taken from the beach and put back in the dark, they continued their tidal rhythm. More research disclosed that a crab from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, reached its darkest color four hours earlier than the one taken from a beach on a neighboring island. The tides on the nearby island were found to be exactly four hours later than the Cape Cod tides.

　　Ants don't carry calendars around with them any more than fiddler crabs possess real wrist watches. But ants show amazing accuracy as to the day of the year. Each year, an ant nest sends out winged, young queens on mating flights. Hundreds of them may fly out of a single nest in the soil. Last summer, at the crest of my mountain, I watched an ant city prepare to send forth its young queens. At the precise moment that they took wing, a colony of the same species that my wife was watching near the bottom of the mountain, also sent its queen on a wedding flight. There was, of course, no way could the two colonies have checked take off time with each other.

　　Entomologist Albro T. Gaul once jotted down in his notebook that a particular the same time! This split-second timing is not always the rule. However, most flights take place within a definite period of time.

　　Birds also have built-in timepieces which send them off on fall and spring migrations. What the birds really have is a clock like mechanism which allows them to time hours of darkness or light in each day.

　　But what sends birds northward again in the spring? New research by Dr. Albert Wdifson of Northwestern University seems to indicate that the timing of return flight is extraordinarily complex. In the fall of the year the short days and long nights cause the "clocks" in migratory birds to undergo a kind of "winding" in preparation for their spring return and breeding. Then during the late fall and winter as the clock "ticks", certain physiological changes occur in the bird. The length of each day during the winter determines how fast the clock will run, and hence when the "alarm" will ring for the spring migration. The clock continues to run through breeding time, then stops―to be re-wound again the next fall.

　　45. The alarm clock that determines the activity of certain living things is governed by ____.

　　A. hours of daylight B. the time of day in their native environments

　　C. the moon D. something we don't understand completely

　　46. The fiddler crab seems to darken his color according to ____.

　　A. time of sunrise B. its background C. amount of daylight D. time of tides

　　47. The reported activity of the ant colony occurred in relation to ____.

　　A. the position of the sun B. the day of the year C. the temperature D. the geographical location

　　48. What controls the migration of birds seems to be ____.

　　A. dark, cloudy days and bright, sunny days B. direction of migration

　　C. time between sunrise and sunset D. breeding habits

　　Questions 49 to 52 are based on the following passage:

　　Medicine comes in many forms. In its liquid form, medicine affects the body very quickly. But the effects of liquid medicine aren't usually long lasting. That is why pills and capsules are also used.

　　The pills and capsules being sold today aren't perfect, either. Pills dissolve in the stomach. The medicine in the pills is released when the pills dissolve. But often, the pills dissolve too quickly.

　　Scientists have been trying to develop a pill that can release medicine slowly over a long period of time. They have applied their knowledge of plants to produce the “osmotic (滲透的) pump pill”.

　　The cell walls of plants are made of cellulose (纖維素). Cellulose is a very porous substance. There are millions of tiny holes, or pores, in the cellulose walls of plants. These holes are big enough to allow water through the cell walls. As water enters a cell, pressure builds up in the cell. The pressure pumps other substances out of the cell. These substances leave the cell through the cellulose wall. This slow, steady process is called osmosis.

　　The osmotic pump pill is coated with synthetic cellulose. Liquid medicine is contained in the pill. The holes in the cellulose coating of the pill are big enough to allow water in the pill. As water from the body enters the pill, pressure builds up and the medicine is then slowly pumped out of the pill.

　　49. The passage implies that the osmotic pump pill is better than other pills and capsules because____.

　　A. it releases medicine slowly over a long period of time

　　B. the coating doesn't dissolve in the stomach

　　C. the medicine in the pill can affect the body quickly

　　D. it helps to build pressure in the body

　　50. The way that the osmotic pump pill works is based on a process called ____.

　　A. cellulose B. osmosis C. pressure D. synthesis

　　51. The passage implies that medicine in an osmotic pump pill will leave the pill when ____.

　　A. the pill is swallowed

　　B. the cellulose coating is dissolved

　　C. enough pressure builds up in the pill

　　D. the medicine is dissolved with water from the body

　　52. The passage implies that cellulose is a very porous substance because it contains ____.

　　A. millions of tiny holes

　　B. a substance that dissolves it

　　C. a substance that creates pressure

　　D. liquid medicine

　　Questions 53 to 56 are based on the following passage:

　　Prices determine how resources are to be used. They are also the means by which products and services that are in limited supply are rationed among buyers. The price system of the United States is a very complex network composed of the prices of all the products bought and sold in the economy as well as those of a myriad of services, including labor, professional transportation, and public-utility services. The interrelationships of all these prices make up the "system" of prices. The price of any particular product or service is linked to a broad, complicated system of prices in which everything seems to depend more or less upon everything else.

　　If one were to ask a group of randomly selected individuals to define "price", many would reply that price is an amount of money paid by the buyer to the seller of a product or service or, in other words, that price is the money value of a product or service as agreed upon in a market transaction. This definition is, of course, valid as far as it goes. For a complete understanding of a price in any particular transaction, much more than the amount of money involved must be known. Both the buyer and the seller should be familiar with not only the money amount, but also with the amount and quality of the product or service to be exchanged, the time and place at which the exchange will take place and payment will be made, the form of money to be used, the credit terms and discounts that supply to the transaction, guarantees on the product or service, delivery terms return privileges, and other factors. In other words, both buyer and seller should be fully aware of all the factors that comprise the total "package" being exchanged for the asked amount of money in order that they may evaluate a given price.

　　53. According to the passage, the price system is related primarily to ____.

　　A. labor and education

　　B. transportation and insurance

　　C. utilities and repairs

　　D. products and services

　　54. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT a factor in complete understanding of price?

　　A. Instructions that come with a product.

　　B. The quantity of a product.

　　C. The quality of a product.

　　D. Warranties that cover a product.

　　55. In the last sentence of the passage, the word "they" refers to ____.

　　A. return privileges B. all the factors C. buyer and seller D. money

　　56. The paragraph following the passage most likely discusses ____.

　　A. unusual ways to advertise products

　　B. types of payment plans for service

　　C. theories about how products affect different levels of society

　　D. how certain elements of a price "package" influence its market value

　　Questions 57 to 60 are based on the following passage:

　　Following the end of the Apollo space program, the National Geographic Society published an excellent set of articles about the moon. Here, in shorter form, are some questions and answers from one of these articles.

　　Is the moon like the earth?

　　Yes and no. It is more like it than many scientists thought before Apollo. Like the earth, the moon is in layers, with a crust on the outside and a deep mantle below. It may also have a core, as the earth does. However, the crust is almost four times thicker than the earth's crust. We do not know much yet about the moon's mantle, that section of superheated rock which goes down hundreds of miles below the crust. We think―but we are not sure that the moon has a center core which includes molten rock, as the earth does.

　　In other ways, of course, the moon is very different. There is no life, and there is no water. The makeup of its atmosphere is very different; the earth creatures cannot breathe in it.

　　Is the moon hot or cold?

　　Most scientists agree that some of the moon was hot for at 1east a time. Rocks from the moon show that they were once melted. Right now there seems to be heat someplace inside the moon, possibly a great deal of it. On the surface, however, there is no sign of heat -- no volcano, for example. The surface itself ranges from heat of 230 F to cold of minus 290~F, depending upon where the sun is.

　　Where did the moon come from?

　　We don't know. The three main theories (ideas) are (1) that the moon was horn from the earth, (2) that the earth and the moon were born together at the same time from the same cloud of gas and dust, and (3) that the moon was born someplace else in the solar system and then captured by the earth's gravity. So far, none of these theories has been proved to be either fight or wrong. Professor George W. Wetherill of the University of California in Los Angeles says that he would give the first two theories each a 10 percent chance and the third theory a 20 percent chance. The other 60 percent he would give to "things we haven't thought of yet."

　　57. The atmosphere of the moon is __ that of the earth.

　　A. much the same as

　　B. harder to see than

　　C. much different from

　　D. cleaner than

　　58. The surface of the moon is ___.

　　A. so hot that it warms the eart

　　B. much colder at all times than the earth

　　C. about the same as that of the earth in terms of heat and cold

　　D. sometimes much hotter, sometimes much colder than the earth

　　59. In talking about the question of where the moon came from, Professor Wetherill of the University of California said that he believes that the answer is ____.

　　A. going to be found by 1990 at the latest

　　B. that the moon was once part of the earth

　　C. a chmd of gas and dust thom which both the earth and the sun were born

　　D. probably something no one has thought of yet

　　60. Since earth creatures cannot breathe in the moon's atmosphere, we can safely say that ____.

　　A. it is impossible for people to live on the moon

　　B. people would need special equipment in order to live on the moon

　　C. there is no way to grow food there

　　D. no one would want to live there

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