英语专业八级真题及答案.docx

1、英语专业八级真题及答案2010年英语专业八级真题及答案PART IIREADING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)TEXT AStill, the image of any city has a half-life of many years. (So does its name, officially changed in 2001 from Calcutta to Kolkata, which is closer to what the word sounds like in Bengali. Conversing in English, I never heard anyo

2、ne call the city anything but Calcutta.) To Westerners, the conveyance most identified with Kolkata is not its modern subwaya facility whose spacious stations have art on the walls and cricket matches on television monitorsbut the hand-pulled rickshaw. Stories and films celebrate a primitive-looking

3、 cart with high wooden wheels, pulled by someone who looks close to needing the succor of Mother Teresa. For years the government has been talking about eliminating hand-pulled rickshaws on what it calls humanitarian groundsprincipally on the ground that, as the mayor of Kolkata has often said, it i

4、s offensive to see “one man sweating and straining to pull another man.” But these days politicians also lament the impact of 6,000 hand-pulled rickshaws on a modern citys traffic and, particularly, on its image. “Westerners try to associate beggars and these rickshaws with the Calcutta landscape, b

5、ut this is not what Calcutta stands for,” the chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, said in a press conference in 2006. “Our city stands for prosperity and development.” The chief ministerthe equivalent of a state governorwent on to announce that hand-pulled rickshaws soon would be

6、 banned from the streets of Kolkata.Rickshaws are not there to haul around tourists. (Actually, I saw almost no tourists in Kolkata, apart from the young backpackers on Sudder Street, in what used to be a red-light district and is now said to be the single place in the city where the services a rick

7、shaw puller offers may include providing female company to a gentleman for the evening.) Its the people in the lanes who most regularly use rickshawsnot the poor but people who are just a notch above the poor. They are people who tend to travel short distances, through lanes that are sometimes inacc

8、essible to even the most daring taxi driver. An older woman with marketing to do, for instance, can arrive in a rickshaw, have the rickshaw puller wait until she comes back from various stalls to load her purchases, and then be taken home. People in the lanes use rickshaws as a 24-hour ambulance ser

9、vice. Proprietors of cafs or corner stores send rickshaws to collect their supplies. (One morning I saw a rickshaw puller take on a load of live chickenstied in pairs by the feet so they could be draped over the shafts and the folded back canopy and even the axle. By the time he trotted off, he was

10、carrying about a hundred upside-down chickens.) The rickshaw pullers told me their steadiest customers are schoolchildren. Middle-class families contract with a puller to take a child to school and pick him up; the puller essentially becomes a family retainer.From June to September Kolkata can get t

11、orrential rains, and its drainage system doesnt need torrential rain to begin backing up. Residents who favor a touch of hyperbole say that in Kolkata “if a stray cat pees, theres a flood.” During my stay it once rained for about 48 hours. Entire neighborhoods couldnt be reached by motorized vehicle

12、s, and the newspapers showed pictures of rickshaws being pulled through water that was up to the pullers waists. When its raining, the normal customer base for rickshaw pullers expands greatly, as does the price of a journey. A writer in Kolkata told me, “When it rains, even the governor takes ricks

13、haws.”While I was in Kolkata, a magazine called India Today published its annual ranking of Indian states, according to such measurements as prosperity and infrastructure. Among Indias 20 largest states, Bihar finished dead last, as it has for four of the past five years. Bihar, a couple hundred mil

14、es north of Kolkata, is where the vast majority of rickshaw pullers come from. Once in Kolkata, they sleep on the street or in their rickshaws or in a deraa combination garage and repair shop and dormitory managed by someone called a sardar. For sleeping privileges in a dera, pullers pay 100 rupees

15、(about $2.50) a month, which sounds like a pretty good deal until youve visited a dera. They gross between 100 and 150 rupees a day, out of which they have to pay 20 rupees for the use of the rickshaw and an occasional 75 or more for a payoff if a policeman stops them for, say, crossing a street whe

16、re rickshaws are prohibited. A 2003 study found that rickshaw pullers are near the bottom of Kolkata occupations in income, doing better than only the ragpickers and the beggars. For someone without land or education, that still beats trying to make a living in Bihar.There are people in Kolkata, par

17、ticularly educated and politically aware people, who will not ride in a rickshaw, because they are offended by the idea of being pulled by another human being or because they consider it not the sort of thing people of their station do or because they regard the hand-pulled rickshaw as a relic of co

18、lonialism. Ironically, some of those people are not enthusiastic about banning rickshaws. The editor of the editorial pages of Kolkatas TelegraphRudrangshu Mukherjee, a former academic who still writes history bookstold me, for instance, that he sees humanitarian considerations as coming down on the

19、 side of keeping hand-pulled rickshaws on the road. “I refuse to be carried by another human being myself,” he said, “but I question whether we have the right to take away their livelihood.” Rickshaw supporters point out that when it comes to demeaning occupations, rickshaw pullers are hardly unique

20、 in Kolkata.When I asked one rickshaw puller if he thought the governments plan to rid the city of rickshaws was based on a genuine interest in his welfare, he smiled, with a quick shake of his heada gesture I interpreted to mean, “If you are so naive as to ask such a question, I will answer it, but

21、 it is not worth wasting words on.” Some rickshaw pullers I met were resigned to the imminent end of their livelihood and pin their hopes on being offered something in its place. As migrant workers, they dont have the political clout enjoyed by, say, Kolkatas sidewalk hawkers, who, after supposedly

22、being scaled back at the beginning of the modernization drive, still clog the sidewalks, selling absolutely everythingor, as I found during the 48 hours of rain, absolutely everything but umbrellas. “The government was the government of the poor people,” one sardar told me. “Now they shake hands wit

23、h the capitalists and try to get rid of poor people.”But others in Kolkata believe that rickshaws will simply be confined more strictly to certain neighborhoods, out of the view of World Bank traffic consultants and California investment delegationsor that they will be allowed to die out naturally a

24、s theyre supplanted by more modern conveyances. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, after all, is not the first high West Bengal official to say that rickshaws would be off the streets of Kolkata in a matter of months. Similar statements have been made as far back as 1976. The ban decreed by Bhattacharjee has

25、been delayed by a court case and by a widely held belief that some retraining or social security settlement ought to be offered to rickshaw drivers. It may also have been delayed by a quiet reluctance to give up something that has been part of the fabric of the city for more than a century. Kolkata,

26、 a resident told me, “has difficulty letting go.” One day a city official handed me a report from the municipal government laying out options for how rickshaw pullers might be rehabilitated.“Which option has been chosen?” I asked, noting that the report was dated almost exactly a year before my visi

27、t.“That hasnt been decided,” he said.“When will it be decided?”“That hasnt been decided,” he said.11. According to the passage, rickshaws are used in Kolkata mainly for the following EXCEPTA. taking foreign tourists around the city.B. providing transport to school children.C. carrying store supplies

28、 and purchasesD. carrying people over short distances.12. Which of the following statements best describes the rickshaw pullers from Bihar?A. They come from a relatively poor area.B. They are provided with decent accommodation.C. Their living standards are very low in Kolkata.D. They are often caugh

29、t by policemen in the streets.13. That “For someone without land or education, that still beats trying to make a living in Bihar” (4 paragraph) means that even so,A. the poor prefer to work and live in Bihar.B. the poor from Bihar fare better than back home.C. the poor never try to make a living in

30、Bihar.D. the poor never seem to resent their life in Kolkata.14. We can infer from the passage that some educated and politically aware peopleA. hold mixed feelings towards rickshaws.B. strongly support the ban on rickshaws.C. call for humanitarian actions fro rickshaw pullers.D. keep quiet on the i

31、ssue of banning rickshaws.15. Which of the following statements conveys the authors sense of humor?A. “not the poor but people who are just a notch above the poor.” (2 paragraph)B. “,.which sounds like a pretty good deal until youve visited a dera.” (4 paragraph)C. Kolkata, a resident told me, “ has

32、 difficulty letting go.” (7 paragraph).D.“or, as I found during the 48 hours of rain, absolutely everything but umbrellas.” (6 paragraph)16. The dialogue between the author and the city official at the end of the passage seems to suggestA. the uncertainty of the courts decision.B. the inefficiency of the municipal government.C. the difficulty of finding a good solution.D. the slowness in processing options.TEXT BDepending on whom you believe, the average American will, over a lifetime, wait in lines for two years (says National Public Radio) or five y