2024年3月31日发(作者：)

管理类专业学位联考英语（阅读理解）历年真题试卷汇编4

(总分50,考试时间90分钟)

2. Reading Comprehension

I was addressing a small gathering in a suburban Virginia living room—a women"s group that had

invited men to join them. Throughout the evening one man had been particularly talkative,

frequently offering ideas and anecdotes, while his wife sat silently beside him on the couch.

Toward the end of the evening I commented that women **plain that their husbands don"t talk to

them. This man quickly nodded in agreement. He gestured toward his wife and said "She"s the

talker in our family." The room burst into laughter. The man looked puzzled and hurt. "It"s true,"

he explained. "When I come home from work I have nothing to say. If she didn"t keep the

conversation going, we"d spend the whole evening in silence." This episode crystallizes the

irony that although American men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often

talk less at home. And this pattern iswreaking havocwith marriage. The pattern was observed

by political scientist Andrew Hacker in the late 1970s. Sociologist Catherine Kohler Riessman

reports in her new book Divorce Talk that most of the women she interviewed — but only a few of

the men — gave lack of communication as the reason for their divorces. Given the current divorce

rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United States every year—a

virtual epidemic of failed conversation. In my own research, complaints from women about

their husbands most often focused not on tangible inequities such as having given up the chance

for a career to accompany a husband, or doing far more than their share of daily life-support work

like cleaning, cooking and social arrangements. Instead, they focused on communication: "He

doesn"t listen to me.", "He doesn"t talk to me." I found, as Hacker observed years before, that

most wives want their husbands to be, first and foremost, conversational partners, but few

husbands share this expectation of their wives. In short, the image that best represents the

current crisis is the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a

newspaper held up in front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk.

1. What is most wives" main expectation of their husbands?

A. Talking to them.

B. Trusting them.

C. Supporting their careers.

D. Sharing housework.

2. Judging from the context, the phrase "wreaking havoc"(Para.2)most probably means_____.

A. generating motivation.

B. exerting influence

C. causing damage

D. creating pressure

3. All of the following are true EXCEPT______.

A. men tend to talk more in public than women

B. nearly 50 percent of recent divorces are caused by failed conversation

C. women attach much importance to communication between couples

D. a female tends to be more talkative at home than her spouse

4. Which of the following can best summarize the main idea of this text?

A. The moral decaying deserves more research by sociologists.

B. Marriage break-up stems from sex inequalities.

C. Husband and wife have different expectations from their marriage.

D. Conversational patterns between man and wife are different.

5. In the following part immediately after this text, the author will most probably focus on______.

A. a vivid account of the new book Divorce Talk

B. a detailed description of the stereotypical cartoon

C. other possible reasons for a high divorce rate in the U.S.

D. a brief introduction to the political scientist Andrew Hacker

Over the past decade, **panies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors— habits —

among consumers. These habits have **panies earn billions of dollars when customers eat snacks

or wipe counters almost without thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set of daily

cues. "There are fundamental public health problems, like hand washing with soap, that

remain killers only because we can"t figure out how to change people"s habits," said Dr. Curtis,

the director of the Hygiene Center at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. "We

wanted to learn from private industry how to create new behaviors that happen automatically."

**panies that Dr. Curtis turned to—Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever— had

invested hundreds of millions of dollars finding the subtle cues in consumers" lives that

corporations could use to introduce new routines. If you look hard enough, you"ll find that

many of the products we use every day—chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air

fresheners, water purifiers, health snacks, antiperspirants, colognes, teeth whiteners, fabric

softeners, vitamins — are results of manufactured habits. A century ago, few people regularly

brushed their teeth multiple times a day. Today, because of shrewd advertising and public health

campaigns, many Americans habitually give their pearly whites a cavity-preventing scrub twice a

day, often with Colgate, Crest or one of the other brands. A few decades ago, many people

didn"t drink water outside of a meal. Then **panies started bottling the production of far-off

springs, and now office workers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day long. Chewing gum, once

bought primarily by adolescent boys, is now featured in commercials as a breath freshener and

teeth cleanser for use after a meal. Skin moisturizers are advertised as part of morning beauty

rituals, slipped in between hair brushing and putting on makeup. "Our products succeed when

they become part of daily or weekly patterns," said Carol Berning, a consumer psychologist who

recently retired from Procter & Gamble, **pany that sold $76 billion of Tide, Crest and other

products last year. "Creating positive habits is a huge part of improving our consumers" lives, and

it"s essential to making new **mercially viable." Through experiments and observation,

social scientists like Dr. Berning have learned that there is power in tying certain behaviors to

habitual cues through relentless advertising. As this new science of habit has emerged,

controversies have erupted when the tactics have been used to sell questionable beauty creams or

unhealthy foods.

6. According to Dr. Curtis, habits like hand washing with soap______.

A. should be further cultivated

B. should be changed gradually

C. are deeply rooted in history

D. are basically private concerns

7. Bottled water, chewing gum and skin moisturizers are mentioned in Paragraph 5 so as

to______.

A. reveal their impact on people" habits

B. show the urgent need of daily necessities

C. indicate their effect on people" buying power

D. manifest the significant role of good habits

8. Which of the following does NOT belong to products that help create people"s habits?

A. Tide B. Crest

C. Colgate D. Unilever

9. From the text we know that some of consumer"s habits are developed due to______.

A. perfected art of products

B. automatic behavior creation

C. commercial promotions

D. scientific experiments

10. The author"s attitude toward the influence of advertisement on people"s habits is______.

A. indifferent B. negative

C. positive D. biased

Many Americans regard the jury system as a concrete expression of crucial democratic values,

including the principles that all citizens who meet minimal qualifications of age and literacy are

**petent to serve on juries; that jurors should be selected randomly from a representative cross

section of **munity; that no citizen should be denied the right to serve on a jury on account of

race, religion, sex, or national origin; that defendants are entitled to trial by their peers; and that

verdicts should represent the conscience of **munity and not just the letter of the law. The jury is

also said to be the best surviving example of direct rather than representative democracy. In a

direct democracy, citizens take turns governing themselves, rather than electing representatives to

govern for them. But as recently as in 1986, jury selection procedures conflicted with these

democratic ideals. In some states, for example, jury duty was limited to persons of supposedly

superior intelligence, education, and moral character. Although the Supreme Court of the United

States had prohibited intentional racial discrimination in jury selection as early as the 1880 case of

Strauder v. West Virginia, the practice of selecting so-called elite or blue-ribbon juries provided a

convenient way around this and other antidiscrimination laws. The system also failed to

regularly include women on juries until the mid-20th century. Although women first served on

state juries in Utah in 1898, it was not until the 1940s that a majority of states made women

eligible for jury duty. Even then several states automatically exempted women from jury duty

unless they personally asked to have their names included on the jury list. This practice was

justified by the claim that women were needed at home, and it kept juries unrepresentative of

women through the 1960s. In 1968, the Congress of the United States passed the Jury

Selection and Service Act, ushering in a new era of democratic reforms for the jury. This law

abolished special educational requirements for federal jurors and required them to be selected at

random from a cross section of the **munity. In the landmark 1975 decision Taylor v. Louisiana,

the Supreme Court extended the requirement that juries be representative of all parts of **munity

to the state level. The Taylor decision also declared sex discrimination in jury selection to be

unconstitutional and ordered states to use the same procedures for selecting male and female

jurors.

11. From the principles of the U.S. jury system, we learn that______.

A. both literate and illiterate people can serve on juries

B. defendants are immune from trial by their peers

C. no age limit should be imposed for jury service

D. judgment should consider the opinion of the public

12. The practice of selecting so-called elite jurors prior to 1968 showed______.

A. the inadequacy of antidiscrimination laws

B. the prevalent discrimination against certain races

C. the conflicting ideals injury selection procedures

D. the **mon among the Supreme Court judges

13. Even in the 1960s, women were seldom on the jury list in some states because______.

A. they were automatically banned by state laws

B. they fell far short of the required qualifications

C. they were supposed to perform domestic duties

D. they tended to evade public engagement

14. After the Jury Selection and Service Act was passed,______.

A. sex discrimination injury selection was unconstitutional and had to be abolished

B. educational requirements became less rigid in the selection of federal jurors

C. jurors at the state level ought to be representative of the **munity

D. states ought to conform to the federal court in reforming the jury system

15. In discussing the U.S. jury system, the text centers on______.

A. its nature and problems

B. its characteristics and tradition

C. its problems and their solutions

D. its tradition and development

Henric Ibsen, author of the play "A Doll"s House", in which a pretty, helpless housewife abandons

her husband and children to seek a more serious life, would surely have approved. From January

1st, 2008, all **panies in Norway are obliged to ensure that at least 40% of their board directors

are women. Most firms have obeyed the law, which was passed in 2003. But about 75 out of the

480 companies it affects are still too male for the government"s liking. They will shortly receive a

letter informing them that they have until the end of February to act, or face the legal

consequences—which could include being dissolved. Before the law was proposed, about 7%

of board members in Norway were female, according to the Centre for Corporate Diversity. The

number has since jumped to 36%. That is far higher than the average of 9% for **panies across

Europe or America"s 15% for the Fortune 500. Norway"s stock exchange and its main business

lobby oppose the law, as do many businessmen. "I am against quotas for women or men as a

matter of principle," says Sverre Munck, head of international operations at a media firm. "Board

members of **panies should be chosen solely on the basis of merit and experience," he says.

Several firms have even given up their status in order to escape the new law. Companies have