Text 1 Imagine a classroom where the instructors speak a foreign language and the students can't take notes, turn to a textbook, or ask any questions. Yet at the end of the final exam, one participant may face life in jail or even death. That's the task handed to American jurors, briefly thrown together to decide accused criminals' fate. In "A Trial by Jury," Princeton history professor D. Graham Burnett offers a rare glimpse inside jury deliberations at a New York murder trial where he served as foreman last year. According to the prosecutor, the case seems clear cut: a sexual encounter between two men went wrong. The defendant stabbed his victim 26 times, but claims he acted in self-defense, killing a man who was attempting to rape him. Burnett opens with a detailed description of the crime. He then introduces the characters and walks readers through the 10-day trial. You hear the testimony of witnesses dressed in strange clothes and find yourself put off by a growling prosecutor and the judge's indifference. Once retreated in the jury room, confusion reigns. Most jurors don't understand the charges or the meaning of self-defense. Uninterested jurors seem more concerned about missing appointments. On the third day, one juror runs to a bathroom in tears after exchanging curses. By the final day, nearly everyone cries. Though he's no more familiar with the law than the other jurors, who include a vacuum-cleaner repairman and a software developer, it's fitting that Burnett is a teacher. For us, he serves as a patient instructor, illustrating with his experience just what a remarkable and sometimes remarkably strange duty serving on a jury can be. For many citizens, jury duty is their first exposure to our justice system. Jurors discover first hand the gap between law and justice. They face two flawed versions of the same event, offered by witnesses they may not believe. We assume jurors will take their job seriously. We expect them to digest complicated definitions that leave lawyers confused. But as Burnett quickly discovers, jurors receive little help. The judge offers them no guidance about how to conduct themselves and races through his delivery of the murder charges. Only within the past decade have we finally abandoned the misconception that jurors naturally reach the right decision without any assistance. Led by Arizona, states have instituted jury reforms as simple as letting jurors take notes or obtain written copies of their instructions. It's not clear whether these changes improve the quality of justice, but the reforms certainly ensure that jurors leave their tour of duty with better feelings about the experience. Unfortunately, such reforms hadn't come yet to New York at the time of this trial. Nonetheless, Burnett and his fellow jurors grope toward their own solution, ultimately reaching what he describes as an "avowedly imperfect" result.
1. The focal point of "A Trial by Jury" seems to be on ______
A.the presentation of a series of measures aimed to reform the jury system
B.the description of the writer's experience on a typical jury
C.the reporting of a special lawsuit and the comment on it
D.the introduction of the American jury system and its weaknesses
A B C D
B
[解析] 从第二段第一句我们了解到,伯内特教授去年在一次凶杀案的审讯中被选入陪审团,并任陪审团主席(foreman)。第二段简述了案件的审讯过程,第四、五段描述了陪审团制度的缺点和改革该制度的一些努力。在“A Trial by Jury”中,伯内特用自己的亲身经历和所见所闻揭示了陪审团制度的缺点。
2. The point the author intends to make by employing the analogy in the first paragraph is that ______
A.students should never be taken by surprise
B.jurors are not qualified for reaching a verdict
C.jurors often make mistakes in their decision
D.the jury system can not do justice to the accused
Text 2 Mr Mitsuyasu Ota, the Mayor of Hirate, in western Japan, made this week's news columns after imposing a one-day-a-week ban on the use of computer equipment in the town's municipal offices. The step was taken on the grounds that young staff "mistakenly think they are working" when sitting attentively at their computer screens. At the same time, Mr Ota lamented that "young people are not in the habit of writing by hand any more". One of the favourite arguments brought out by the opposition in technology wars is the notion that a technical short cut is simultaneously a kind of mental impoverishment, and that the man with the pen will think and write more effectively than the man with the Compaq. Leaving aside the question of whether advanced technology makes you think less dynamically, the idea that there should be recognisable stylistic discrepancies between the work of pen-pushers and key-tappers shouldn't in the least surprise us. Historically, literary styles have always borne a strong relationship to the available technology. The quill pen, most obviously, allowed its owner only a certain number of words between refills, thereby encouraging all those lengthy Gibbonian sentences crammed with subordinate clauses. The fountain pen—which allowed you to write as many words as you wanted—and the manual typewriter created further revolutions. It is not particularly far-fetched, for example, to suggest that the elliptical prose of early-20th-century Modernist masters such as Hemingway derives in part from its having been typed, rather than written down. But what about the computer screen? What effect does that have on the elemental patterns by which the writer downloads the words in his or her head? Without wanting to sound like Mayor Ota, I suspect that to a certain kind of writer it is as much a hindrance as a help. A single glance at the average bookshop will demonstrate that novels are getting longer. There are excellent aesthetic reasons for that, of course, but there is also a technical explanation. Which is to say that computers allow you to write more words and to write them more quickly, without the restraint of having to alter everything by hand and then rewrite. Every so often, as a reviewer, one stumbles with a sinking heart across one of these enormous wordy affairs, which, however assiduous the attentions of its editor, betrays its origin as a screen-aided mental show-off. Perhaps, like the municipal employees of Mayor Ota's Hirate, we should all try banning computers one day a week.
1. The author's attitude towards Mayor Ota's one-day-a-week ban on computer use is one of ______
A.acknowledgement
B.opposition
C.neutrality
D.enthusiasm
A B C D
A
[解析] 第一段提到了Ota市长的做法和观点,他每周一天禁止市政办公室的人使用计算机设备,原因是年轻人不再用手写字了。第四段表达了作者的一些观点,他虽然不想让人感到他与Ota市长口气一样,但他认为,对某些写作者来说,计算机既可以是一种帮助,同时也可能是一个障碍,如:小说变长了,这当然有美学上的原因,但是也有技术原因在里面,因为计算机能使人写得更快,并随意修改。言外之意,写得长未必内容更丰富。 最后一段更清楚地表达了作者的观点。一名写评论的人(指作者自己)会经常伤心地(with a sinking heart)见到一本这样的漫长的宏卷,无论编辑者多么用心,你都能立刻看出来这是用计算机写出来的用以炫耀智力的东西(称其华而不实)。像Ota市长的雇员们那样,或许我们都应该尝试一下每周一天不使用计算机。
2. Which of the following statements does the author support?
A.Frequent use of computer leads to mental impoverishment.
B.Computer users think less effectively than pen users.
C.There are stylistic differences between pen and computer users.
D.Frequent computer users have trouble concentrating on what they do.
4. In what way is the computer a hindrance to a writer?
A.A writer may run his writing long just for a mental show-off.
B.A writer is less willing to rewrite his novel to make it better.
C.Ideas are put into words before they are made clearer in the mind.
D.The computer allows a writer to write quickly without careful choice of words.
A B C D
A
[解析] 参阅第1小题题解。
5. The word "assiduous" in the last paragraph probably means ______
A.cautious
B.intentional
C.conscious
D.purposeless
A B C D
A
[解析] 该词意为:刻苦的;小心谨慎的。这里应该理解为后者。有关本句的理解参阅第1小题题解。
Text 3 The evolution of the social sciences has reached a crucial point that might be called a phase change in which old, atomistic, and impressionistic ways of doing research are superseded by a far more systematic and united methodology. To bring social science to the level of rigor already achieved by some of the physical sciences, a new type Of facility will be needed. This will be a transdisciplinary, Internet-based collaborative endeavour that will provide social and behavioral scientists with the databases, software and hardware tools, and other resources to conduct worldwide research that integrates experimental, survey, geographic, and economic methodologies on a much larger scale than was possible previously. This facility will enable advanced research and professional education in economics, sociology, psychology, political science, social geography, and related fields. In many branches of social science, a new emphasis on the rigor of formal laboratory experimentation has driven researchers to develop procedure and software to conduct online interaction experiment using computer terminals attached to local area networks. The opportunity to open these laboratories to the Internet will reduce the cost per research participant and increase greatly the number of institutions, researchers, students, and research participants who can take part. The scale of social science experimentation can increase by an order of magnitude or more, examining a much wider range of phenomena and ensuring great confidence in results through multiple replication of crucial studies. Technology for administering questionnaires to very large numbers of respondents over the Internet will revolutionize survey research. Data from past questionnaire surveys can be the springboard for new surveys with vastly larger numbers of respondents at lower cost than by traditional methods. Integrated research studies can combine modules using both questionnaire and experimental methods. Results can be linked via geographic analysis to other sources of data including census information, economic statistics, and data from other experiments and surveys. Longitudinal studies will conduct time-series comparisons across data sets to chart social and economic trends. Each new study will be designed so that the data automatically and instantly become part of the archives, and scientific publications will be linked to the data sets on which they are based so that the network becomes a universal knowledge system.
1. A "phase change" (in the first paragraph) is one in which ______
A.an old period ends and a new period begins
B.a gradual invisible transition takes place
C.fragments are united into a whole
D.social science comes to be united with physical sciences
Text 4 Scientists had until very recently believed that there were around 100,000 human genes, available to make each and every one of us in our splendid diversity. Now, the two rival teams decoding the book of life, have each found that instead there are only somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 genes. So that grand panjandrum, the human, may not manage to boast twice as many genes as that microscopic nowhere-worm, with its 18,000 genes, the nematode. Even the fruit fly, considered so negligible that even the most extreme of animal rights activists don't kick up a fuss about its extensive use in genetic experimentation, has 16,000 genes. Not for the first time it has to be admitted that it's a funny old world, and that we humans are the beings who make it such. Without understanding in the least what the scientific implications of this discovery might be, anybody with the smallest curiosity about people—and that's pretty much all of us—can see that it is pretty significant. The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the limited number of genes available to programme a human is that biological determination goes so far and no further. Human complexity, on this information, can be best explained in the manner it looks to be best explained before scientific evidence becomes involved at all. In other words, in the nature versus nurture debate, the answer, thankfully, is "both". Why is this so important? Because it should mean that we can accept one another's differences more easily, and help each other when appropriate. Nurture does have a huge part to play in human destiny. Love can transform humans. Trust can make a difference. Second chances are worth trying. Life, to a far greater extent than science thought up until now, is what we make it. One day we may know exactly what we can alter and what we cannot. Knowing that there is a great deal that we can alter or improve, as well as a great deal that we must accept and value for its own sake, makes the human journey progressive rather than deterministic, complex and open, rather than simple and unchangeable. For no one can suggest that 30,000 genes don't give the human race much room for manoeuvre. Look how many tunes, after all, we're able to squeeze out of eight notes. But it surely must give the lie to the rather sinister belief that has been gaining credence in the West that there is a hard-wired, no-prisoners-taken, gene for absolutely everything, and that whole sections of the population can be labelled as "stupid" or "lazy" or "criminal" or somehow or other sub-human. Instead, like the eight notes which can only make music (albeit in astounding diversity), the 30,000 genes can only make people. The rest is up to US.
1. From the first sentence of the passage we learn that scientists used to think ______
A.some human beings were superior to others because they had more genes
B.life was much more complicated that it appeared to be
C.a society should be composed of a rich diversity of ethnic groups
D.enough genes were what made humans diverse beings
Text 5 Often called the intellectual leader of the animal-rights movement, Regan "is the foremost philosopher in this country in the field of the moral status of nonrational animals," says Bryan. Regan has lectured from Stockholm to Melbourne about the importance of recognizing animals as part of the evolving field of ethics. His books are widely acknowledged as having cemented the roots of the modern animal rights movement in academia. To be sure, vegetarianism dates back to Plato and Plutarch. But society viewed animals largely as properties, until Regan and a handful of other philosophers pushed animal-rights issues into the academic mainstream. Indeed, this academic focus has dramatically altered how Americans approach the ethics of husbandry, some observers say. Once-radical ideas have been firmly woven into society. Regan envisions a type of "bill of rights" for animals, including the abandonment of pet ownership, elimination of a meat-based diet, and new standards for biomedical research on animals. Essentially, he wants to establish a new kind of solidarity with animals, and stop animal husbandry altogether. "In addition to the visible achievements and changes, there's been what I might call an invisible revolution taking place, and that revolution is the seriousness with which the issue of animal rights is taken in the academy and in higher education," Regan says. But with Regan planning to retire in December, a growing number of farmers, doctors, and others are questioning the sustainability of his ideas. Increasingly, Americans who feel their rights have become secondary to animals' rights are speaking out against a wave of arson attacks on farmers and pies thrown in the faces of researchers. Radical groups, with sometimes-violent tactics, have been accused of scaring farmers away from speaking up for traditional agrarian values. Indeed, tensions are only rising between animal-rights activists and groups that have traditionally used the land with an eye toward animals' overall welfare, not their "right" to be happy or to live long lives. The controversy around Regan is heightened by the fact that he's no pacifist. He says he believes it's OK to break the law for a greater purpose. He calls it the "greater-evil doctrine," the idea that there's moral hierarchy to crime. "I think that you can win in court, and that's what I tell people," Regan says. The shift in the level of respect has been "seismic," he says. "Contrary to what a lot of people think, there really has been a recognition that there are some things that human beings should not be permitted to do to animals. Where the human heart has grown is in the recognition of what is to be prohibited."
1. Regan is called the intellectual leader of the animal-rights movement because ______
A.he is a philosopher in the field of animal rights protection
B.he helps to make animal rights movement an academic subject
C.he has written many books on how to protect animal rights
D.he proves that animal societies have their moral standards as human societies do