2007考研英语强化班授课讲义(十)

文章作者 100test 发表时间 2007:02:25 10:10:05
来源 100Test.Com百考试题网

I. Reading Comprehension:

Text 1

Get ready for the second act of the grand drama we call globalization. The 1980’s opened with a massive manufacturing migration from industrialized countries to the Third World that accelerates to this day. This decade is witnessing a second huge shift, this time in services, with white-collar professional jobs following the same blue-collar migratory routes to Asia and elsewhere.

We believe that the latest iteration(=repetition) in the evolution of the global economy will generate more growth for everyone over time as countries focus their abilities on doing what they do best. But the adjustment may well be painful for those middle-class Americans and Europeans who see their jobs in software writing, chip design, architecture, and accounting move to India, China, Israel, Russia, and the Philippines. If the migration of services is not intervened in by good growth-promoting government policy, there is a serious risk that the anti-globalization forces will gain an army of jobless white-collar recruits.

The dimensions of service shift are only just beginning to come into focus. We can discern the trend but not the strength or size of the move. The collapse of the tech bubble and the weak recovery are leading a growing number of U.S. bank, insurance, credit card, accounting, investment banking, high-tech, engineering, and design companies to outsource white-collar work.

This is likely to prove to be more than just a cyclical phenomenon. The Internet, digitization, the spread of white-collar skills abroad, and the big cost savings of outsourcing will probably make the shift of services a permanent feature of economic life. The good news is that flinging off of commodity-like service work will increase the profits and efficiency of American corporations and set the stage for the next big growth-generating breakthrough. Innovation is the driving force of the U.S. economy, not mass production of low-value goods or services. The painful loss of manufacturing in the 1970s and 1980s paved the way to the high-tech gains of the 1990s. The same forces are at work today.

For their part, India, China, and other countries are gaining large numbers of well-paying jobs, expanding the middle class, and reducing poverty. As a result, China is emerging as a locomotive to world growth. American exports to China in November 2003 were up 30% year-over-year at an annual rate of $24 billion, matching what the U.S. exports to France.

The U.S. must act without hesitation. It should do what it has done in the past – move up the value-added ladder to create new products and services. That means promoting better education, completing the job of reforming the capital market, and reducing business and investor risk at home and abroad. If it can restart the growth engine, the U.S. has nothing to fear from the great white-collar migration. If it doesn’t, there may be serious trouble ahead. (468 words)

Notes: migration n. 迁移。may well 很可能。intervene in 干预。come into focus (=become clearly seen) 变得清晰、明确或对准焦点。outsource使…源源不断流出；把…外包。 fling off脱掉，甩掉，逃脱。set the stage for为…准备条件。

1. Globalization of the current decade proves to be __________.

A. a dramatic event resulting in serious economic problems B. a massive transfer of manual workers from West to East
B. identical to the previous movement in scale and value D. sending upscale jobs off the highly-developed countries

2. The white-collar migration may lead to __________.

A. rapid progress in manufacturing industry B. sufferings for U.S. technical professionals
C. great advances in information technology D. forceful intervention by the government

3. In consequence of the burst of the tech bubble, many companies are __________.

A. shifting well-paying jobs to the developing countries B. exporting well-trained and experienced workers
C. exhausting the sources of service-job supply D. undermining the healthy basis of employment

4. The move of services may be beneficial to developed countries, for it __________.

A. throws off the heavy burden of service duties B. prevents the production of low-value goods
C. makes conditions ready for new breakthroughs D. drives corporations to pursue the biggest profits

5. In order to get over the difficulties caused by service shift, __________.

A. developed countries have to check their exports B. the U.S. should act as it did during the last shift
C. the middle class must receive further education

Text 2

Human relations have commanded people’s attention from early times. The ways of people have been recorded in innumerable myths, folktales, novels, poems, plays, and popular or philosophical essays. Although the full significance of a human relationship may not be directly evident, the complexity of feelings and actions that can be understood at a glance is surprisingly great. For this reason psychology holds a unique position among the sciences.

“Intuitive” knowledge may be remarkably penetrating and can significantly help us understand human behavior whereas in the physical sciences such commonsense knowledge is relatively primitive. If we erased all knowledge of scientific physics from our world, not only would we not have cars and television sets, we might even find that the ordinary person was unable to cope with the fundamental mechanical problems of pulleys and levers. On the other hand, if we removed all knowledge of scientific psychology from our world, problems in interpersonal relations might easily be coped with and solved much as before. We would still “know” how to avoid doing something asked of us and how to get someone to agree with us. we would still “know” when someone was angry and when someone was pleased. One could even offer sensible explanations for the “whys” of much of the self’s behavior and feelings. In other words, the ordinary person has a great and profound understanding of the self and of other people which, though unformulated or only vaguely conceived, enables one to interact with others in more or less adaptive ways. Kohler in referring to the lack of great discoveries in psychology as compared with physics, accounts for this by saying that “people were acquainted with practically all territories of mental life a long time before the founding of scientific psychology.”

Paradoxically, with all this natural, intuitive, commonsense capacity to grasp human relations, the science of human relations had been one of the last to develop. Different explanations of this paradox have been suggested. One is that science would destroy the vain and pleasing illusions people have about themselves. but we might ask why people have always loved to read pessimistic, debunking writings, from Ecclesiastes to Freud. It has also been proposed that just because we know so much about people intuitively, there has been less incentive for studying them scientifically: why should one develop a theory, carry out systematic observations, or make predictions about the obvious? In any case, the field of human relations, with its vast literary documentation but meager scientific treatment, is in great contrast to the field of physics in which there are relatively few nonscientific books. (435 words)

注：command vt. 博得；命令。account for 解释,说明。paradoxically反常的是。illusion 幻想。debunking暴露真相的。 Ecclesiastes 圣经传道书。Freud 弗洛伊德(谮意识论)。incentive刺激，激励。meager 贫乏的。scientific treatment科学阐述。

1. The author’s statement that “psychology holds a unique position among the sciences” (line 4) is supported by the claim that ______________.

A. the full meaning of a human relationship may not be obvious
B. commonsense understanding of human relations can be clear and precise
C. intuitive knowledge in the physical sciences is relatively advanced
D. subjective bias is difficult to control in psychological research

2. It can be inferred that when it comes to people who lived before the coming of scientific psychology, the author would most likely agree that _______________.

A. their understanding of human relations was quite limited
B. they were uninterested in acquiring knowledge of the physical world
C. they misunderstood others more frequently than do people today
D. their intuitions about human relations were reasonably sophisticated

3. The author refers to people who are attracted to “pessimistic, debunking writing “ (line 4, the last paragraph) in order to support the idea that ______________.

A. interesting books about human relations are typically pessimistic
B. people tend to ignore scientific explanations of human relations
C. people rarely hold pleasing illusions about themselves
D. it is doubtful that the science of human relations developed slowly because of a desire to maintain pleasing illusions

4. It can be inferred that the author assumes that commonsense knowledge of human relations is _______________.

A. usually sufficiently accurate to facilitate interactions with others
B. equally well developed among all adults within a given society
C. biased insofar as it is based on myths and folktales
D. typically unrelated to an individual’s interactions with other people

5. According to the text, it has also been suggested that the science of human relations was slow to develop because________.

A. intuitive knowledge of human relations is derived from philosophy
B. early scientists were more interested in the physical world
C. scientific studies of human relations appear to investigate the obvious
D. the scientific method is difficult to apply to the study of human relations