专八阅读和翻译.docx
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专八阅读和翻译
2014年专八
PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)
In this section there are four reading passages followed be a total of 20 multiple-choicequestions. Read the passages and then mark the best answer to each question on ANSWERSHEER TWO.
TEXT A
My class at Harvard Business School helps students understand what good managementtheory is and how it is built. In each session, we look at one company through the lenses ofdifferent theories, using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examinewhat action will yield the needed results. On the last day of class, I asked my class to turnthose theoretical lenses on themselves to find answers to two questions:
First, How can I besure I’ll be happy in my career?
Second, how can I be sure my relationships with my spouseand my family will become an enduring source of happiness?
Here are some managementtools that can be used to help you lead a purposeful life.
1. Use Your Resources Wisely. Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, andtalent shape your life’s strategy. I have a bunch of “businesses” that compete for theseresources:
I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise great kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, and contribute to my church. And Ihave exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time, energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?
Allocation choices can make your life turn out to very different from what youintended.Sometimes that’s good:
opportunities that you have never planned for emerge. Butif you don’t invest your resources wisely, the outcome can be bad. As I think about people whoinadvertently invested in lives of hollow unhappiness, I can’t help believing that their troublesrelated right back to a short-term perspective.
When people with a high need for achievement have an extra half hour of time or an extraounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangibleaccomplishments. Our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re movingforward.You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale teach aclass, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in yourrelationships with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer the same immediate senseof achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road thatyou can say,“I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship withyour spouse and on a daily basis it doesn’t seem as if thing are deteriorating. People who aredriven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families andoverinvest in their careers, even though intimate and loving family relationships are the mostpowerful and enduring source of happiness.
If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predispositiontoward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives throughthat lens,you’ll see that same stunning and sobering pattern:
people allocating fewer andfewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.
2. Create A Family Culture. It’s one thing to see into the foggy future with a acuity and chartthe course corrections a company must make. But it’s quite another to persuade employees toline up and work cooperatively to take the company in that new direction.
When there is little agreement, you have to use “power tools”– coercion, threats, punishments and so on, to secure cooperation. But if employee’s ways of working togethersucceed over and over, consensus begins to form. Ultimately, people don ‘t even think aboutwhether their way yields success. They embrace priorities and follow procedures by instinctand assumption rather than by explicit decision, which means that they’ve created aculture. Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, acceptable methodsby which member s of a group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the prioritygiven to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool.
I use this model to address the question, How can I be my family becomes an enduringsource of happiness?
My students quickly see that the simplest way parents can elicitcooperation from children is to wield power tools. But there comes a point during the teenyears when power tools no longer work. At that point, parents start wishing they had begunworking with their children at a very young age to build a culture in which children instinctivelybehave respectfully toward one another, obey their parents, and choose the right thing to do. Families have cultures, just as companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously.
If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and the confidence that they can solve hardproblems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design theminto your family’s culture and you have think about this very early on. Like employees, childrenbuild self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.
11. According to the author, the key to successful allocation of resources in your life dependson whether you ________.
A. can manage your time well
B. have long-term planning
C. are lucky enough to have new opportunities
D. can solve both company and family problems
12. What is the role of the statement “Our careers provide the most concrete evidence thatwe’re moving forward” with reference to the previous statement in the paragraph?
A. To offer further explanation
B. To provide a definition
C. To present a contrast
D. To illustrate career development
13. According to the author, a common cause of failure in business and family relationships is________.
A. lack of planning
B. short-sightedness
C. shortage of resources
D. decision by instinct
14. According to the author, when does culture begin to emerge ________.
A. When people decide what and how to do by instinct
B. When people realize the importance of consensus
C. When people as a group decide how to succeed
D. When people use “power tools” to reach agreement
15. One of the similarities between company culture and family culture is that ________.
A. problem-solving ability is essential
B. cooperation is the foundation
C. respect and obedience are key elements
D. culture needs to be nurtured
Text B
It was nearly bedtime and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphaillit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After twoyears at the front and a wound that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad tosettle down quietly at Apia (阿皮亚,西萨摩亚首都) for twelve months at least, and he feltalready better forthe
journey. Since some of the passengers were leaving the ship next daythey had had a little dance that evening and in his ears hammered still the harsh notes of themechanical piano. But the deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a longchair talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat down under the lightand took off his hat you saw that he had very red hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and thered, freckled skin which accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face, precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very low, quiet voice.
Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there had arisen theintimacy of shipboard, which is due to proximity rather than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval they shared of the men who spent their days and nights inthe smoking-room playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs. Macphail was not a little flatteredto think that she and her husband were the only people on board with whom the Davidsonswere willing to associate,and even the doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciouslyacknowledged the compliment. It was because he was of an argumentative mind that intheir cabin at night he permitted himself to carp (唠叨).
‘Mrs. Davidson was saying she didn’t know how they’d have got through the journey if it hadn’tbeen for us,’ said Mrs. Macphail, as she neatly brushed out her transformation (假发).‘Shesaid we were really the only people on the ship they cared to know.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought a missionary was such a big bug (要人、名士) that he could afford toput on frills (摆架子).’
‘It’s not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn’t have been very nice for theDavidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot in the smoking-room.’
‘The founder of their religion wasn’t so exclusive,’ said Dr. Macphail with a chuckle.
‘I’ve asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,’ answered his wife.‘I shouldn’tlike to have a nature like yours, Alec. You never look for the best in people.’
He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not reply. After many years ofmarried life he had learned that it was more conducive to peace to leave his wife with the lastword.He was undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled down toread himself to sleep.
When he came on deck next morning they were close to land. He looked at it with greedyeyes.There was a thin strip of silver beach rising quickly to hills covered to the top withluxuriant vegetation. The coconut trees, thick and green, came nearly to the water’s edge, andamong them you saw the grass houses of the Samoaris (萨摩亚人); and here and there, gleaming white, alittle church. Mrs. Davidson came and stood beside him. She was dressed inblack, and wore round her neck a gold chain, from which dangled a cross. She was a littlewoman, with brown, dull hair very elaborately arranged, and she had prominent blue eyesbehind invisible pince-nez (夹鼻眼镜). Her face was
long, like a sheep’s, but she gave noimpression of foolishness, rather of ex