北京外國語大學2013年基礎英語考試試題

PartⅠGRAMMAR(30Points)

A.Correct Errors

The passage contains ten errors.Each indicated line contains amaximum of one error.In each case,only ONE word is involved.You should proofread the passage and correct it in the following way:

For awrong word,underline the wrong word and write the correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line.

For amissing word,mark the position of the missing word with a∧and write the word which you believe is missing in the blank at the end of the line.

For an unnecessary word,cross the unnecessary word with aslash/and put the word in the blank at the end of the line.

PartⅡREADING COMPREHENSION(80 points)

A.Multiple Choice

Please read the following passages and choose A,B,C or Dto best complete the statements or best answer the questions in front of them.

Passage 1

Germany has gold reserves of just under3,400tons,the second-largest reserves in the world after the United States.Much of that is in the safekeeping of central banks outside Germany,especially in the US.One would think that with such avaluable stash,worth around€133billion($170billion),the German government would want to keep aclose eye on its whereabouts.But now abizarre dispute has broken out between different German institutions over how closely the reserves should be checked.

Germany’s federal audit office,the Bundesrechnungshof,which monitors the government’s financial management,is unhappy with how the central bank,the Bundesbank,keeps tabs on its gold.According to media reports,the auditors arc dissatisfied with the fact that gold reserves in Frankfurt are more closely monitored than those held abroad.

In Germany,spot checks are carried out to make sure that the gold bars are in the right place.But for the German gold that is stored on the Bundesbank’s behalf by the US Federal Reserve in New York,the Bank of England in London and the Banque de France in Paris,the German central bank relics on the assurances of its foreign counterparts that the gold is where it should be.The three foreign central banks give the Bundesbank annual statements confirming the size of the reserves,but the Germans do not usually carry out physical inspections of the bars.

According to German media reports,the Bundesrechnungshof has now recommended in its confidential annual audit of the Bundesbank for2011that Germany’s central bank check its foreign gold reserves with yearly spot checks.The Bundesbank has rejected the demand,arguing that central banks do not usually check each others’reserves,and there are no doubt about the integrity and the reputation of these foreign depositories.

Germany moved some of its gold reserves abroad during the Cold War to protect them from apossible Soviet attack.Some of the gold was moved back to Frankfurt after the collapse of communism.But the Bundesbank argues that it still makes sense to store some gold in major financial centers so that it can be sold quickly if necessary.Although the Bundesbank does not provide exact details about the distribution,it has revealed that the largest share of Germany’s gold is held in New York,followed by Frankfurt,London and Paris.

In times of uncertainty about the future of Europe’s common currency,gold is ahot topic,and some Germans take adim view of the fact that much of the country’s gold—which theoretically belongs to the people—is held abroad.Some members of parliament have even expressed doubts as to whether the foreign gold reserves really exist.Philipp Missfelder,a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union(CDU),wanted to see the gold for himself and traveled to New York in person to inspect the holdings,according to the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau.

Peter Gauweiler,a Bundestag member with the Christian Social Union(CSU),is also skeptical about the foreign gold reserves.In recent years he has attempted to gain more information about Germany’s gold through parliamentary questions.Last year,he had an economics professor prepare an expert report on the subject,which concluded that the Bundesbank was not fulfilling its inventory regulations by failing to physically inspect the gold.Gauweiler doubts that the Bundesbank would have immediate access to all its gold if necessary,suggesting that part of the gold may have even been lent out—a claim that the Bundesbank rejects.

Some Germans even want to bring the gold reserves back to Germany.An initiative called“Gold Action”is campaigning under the slogan:“Repatriate Our Gold!”Its petition has been signed by prominent industrialist Hans-Olaf Henkel and Frank Sch?ffler,a parliamentarian with the business-friendly Free Democrats.The initiative alleges that there is an“acute”danger that the German gold could be expropriated as aresult of the financial and debt crisis.They argue that the German government could soon be forced to sell gold to cover the costs of the crisis.

But the Bundesbank wants to leave the gold where it is.Observers point out that apart from the high cost of transporting the gold back to Frankfurt,the symbolic effect of Germany repatriating its gold reserves might unsettle the nervous financial markets,who could see it as asign of an impending collapse of the euro.

1.The German Bundesbank makes sure of its gold reserves stored in the U.S. by____

A.carrying out spot checks of the gold bars

B.requesting annual statements from foreign depositories

C.traveling to New York to inspect the holdings

D.conducting confidential annual audit of the depositories

2.Germany stores alarge share of its gold reserves abroad because____

A.the Bundesbank wants to safeguard the gold against the Soviets

B.the foreign banks have suspicious integrity and reputation

C.the gold can be traded instantly when there is aneed to do so

D.the assurances of its foreign counterparts are so far reliable

3.The Bundestag member Gauweiler suggests that____

A.the gold may be just figures and non-existent in reality

B.the government could soon sell the gold to tackle debt crisis

C.the gold may have been already used for other purposes

D.to repatriate the gold is the central bank’s inventory regulation

4.What will be the biggest impact of transporting the gold back to Germany?

A.Prosperity of Frankfurt.

B.Burden of transport costs.

C.Chaos of federal audits.

D.Panic in financial markets.

5.What is the central idea of this passage?

A.Germany does check on its gold reserves in foreign banks.

B.Germans worry about the safety of their gold reserves abroad.

C.Germany’s gold reserves stored in the US are not safe.

D.The Bundesbank tailed to fulfill its inventory duties on gold.

Passage 2

In the late1960s,a television producer named Joan Gantz Cooney set out to start an epidemic.Her target was three-,four-,and five-year-olds.Her agent of infection was television,and the“virus”she wanted to spread was literacy.The show would last an hour and run five days aweek,and the hope was that if that hour was contagious enough it could serve as an educational Tipping Point:giving children from disadvantaged homes aleg up once they began elementary school,spreading prolearning values from watchers to non-watchers,infecting children and their parents and lingering long enough to have an impact well after the children stopped watching the show.Cooney probably wouldn’t have used these concepts or described her goals in precisely this way.But what she wanted to do,in essence,was create alearning epidemic to counter the prevailing epidemics of poverty and illiteracy.She called her idea Sesame Street.

By any measure,this was an audacious idea.Television is agreat way to reach lots of people,very easily and cheaply.It entertains and dazzles.But it isn’t aparticularly educational medium.Gerald Lesser,a Harvard University psychologist who joined with Cooney in founding Sesame Street,says that when he was first asked to join the project,back in the late1960s,he was skeptical.“I had always been very much into fitting how you teach to what you know about the child,”he says.“You try to find the kid’s strengths,so you can play to them.You try to understand the kid’s weaknesses,so you can avoid them.Then you try and teach that individual kid’s profile...Television has no potential,no power to do that.”Good teaching is interactive.It engages the child individually.It uses all the senses.It responds to the child.But atelevision is just atalking box.In experiments,children who are asked to read apassage and are then tested on it will invariably score higher than children asked to watch avideo of the same subject matter.Educational experts describe television as“low involvement”.Television is like astrain of the common cold that can spread like lightning through apopulation,but only causes afew sniffles and is gone in aday.

But Cooney and Lesser and athird partner—Lloyd Morrisett of the Markle Foundation in New York—set out to try anyway.They enlisted some of the top creative minds of the period.They borrowed techniques from television commercials to teach children about numbers.They used the live animation of Saturday morning cartoons to teach lessons about learning the alphabet.They brought in celebrities to sing and dance and star in comedy sketches that taught children about the virtues of cooperation or about their own emotions.

Sesame Street aimed higher and tried harder than any other children’s show had,and the extraordinary thing was that it worked.Virtually every time the show’s educational value has been tested—and Sesame Street has been subject to more academic scrutiny than any television show in history—it has been proved to increase the reading and learning skills of its viewers.There are few educators and child psychologists who don’t believe that the show managed to spread its infectious message well beyond the homes of watched the show regularly.The creators of Sesame Street accomplished something extraordinary,and the story of how they did that is amarvelous illustration of arule of the Tipping Point,the Stickiness Factor.They discovered that by making small but critical adjustments in how they presented ideas to preschoolers,they could overcome television’s weakness as ateaching tool and make what they had to say memorable.Sesame Street succeeded because it learned how to make television sticky.

6.Why does the author use“virus”and“epidemic”to describe the Sesame Street?

A.It is considered as adisease.

B.It has medical implications.

C.It hopes to spread like the flu.

D.It infects educational health.

7.The term“educational Tipping Point”in Paragraph1probably means____

A.crucial point in mental growth

B.yardstick of literacy

C.stimulus to learning

D.point where change begins

8.What is the purpose the Sesame Street project hopes to achieve?

A.Change the life of underprivileged children.

B.Give poor children an equal start.

C.Eliminate poverty and illiteracy.

D.Help disadvantaged homes acquire education.

9.Gerald Lesser was skeptical about Sesame Street,because____

A.the show was more recreational than educational

B.television was not an interactive or engaging medium

C.there was no involvement among the audience

D.non-watchers scored higher in the tests than watchers

10.Which of the following did Cooney and her partners exclude from of the show?

A.Recruiting celebrities as guest stars.

B.Employing techniques of TV commercials.

C.Enlivening the teaching with cartoons.

D.Involving parents for interactive purposes.

B.True or False

Read the following passage carefully and then decide whether the statements which follow are true(T)or false(F).

Most serious scientists spend agood part of their waking hours amid papers and preprints,equations and equipment,conducting experiments,talking about graphs and data,arguing about ideas and theories,teaching,and writing grant proposals.But if they browse in bookstores or glance in the book review sections of journals,they cannot fail to find afascinating phenomenon in the scientific landscape:books proclaiming the extra-rational implications of science are proliferating.Religion and mysticism are inching their way back into the arena of science whence(some thought)they had been gradually weeded out during the past two centuries.

Right from the days of Kepler and Galileo,scientists have generally had areligious side to them:after all,except when they encounter faiths of adifferent shade,religions normally have only civilizing effects on the human heart.Isaac Newton believed in apersonal God,explicitly calling himself His servant.Leonard Euler was deeply religious,and so were Augustin Cauchy and Michael Faraday.One author has written a100-page volume filled with quotations from eminent scientists expressing their religious convictions.No reflecting scientist can be immune to the awe and majesty of the physical world,nor insensitive to the deep mystery underlying life and consciousness,though some may not express it in traditional ways.

But the scientific world view arrived at by collective and extensive inquiries,fortified by countless instruments and carefully-erected conceptual tools,has been in awkward contradiction to explanations of how the world began and behaves,or how life emerged,as reported in the holy books of human history.As aresult,ever since the Copernican revolution,there have been confrontations between scientific theories and religious worldviews.In1896,A.D.White published his erudite work,which was an embarrassingly candid exposure,instance after instance,of the dogged obstinacy of the religious establishment in upholding ancient doctrines in the face of mounting scientific evidence to the contrary.

After afull century,however,the situation seems to have changed drastically.A plethora of extrapolations of science are cropping up whose goal is to reestablish prescience.Many popular books,TV specials,magazine articles,and conference papers are joyously declaring that the ancients were not as much in the dark as Bacon and company had imagined;that,if anything,they had,through intuition and revelation,pretty much summed up the essence of twentieth-century physics and cosmology:from the strange physics of vacuums to the big bang.

In the view of quite afew writers(including some practicing scientists of repute),physics has shown that Hindu mystics were right in picturing the cosmos as the Dancing Divine;that Chinese philosophers were on target when they spoke of yin and yang,for these referred implicitly to the conservation of matter and energy;and that the Book of Genesis formulates the principle of evolution in metaphorical meters.It has been claimed that receding galaxies provide experimental confirmation of what cabalists had already recognized in medieval times,and inklings of the esoteric formulations of quantum physics(the so-called S-matrix theory)have been detected in Buddhist sutras.

Whether or not mainstream professional scientists take note of it,whether or not they attach weight to such claims,a significant fact in the closing decade of our century is that mysticism and old-time religion are back in full vigor in public consciousness,not just as enriching dimensions of the human spirit,nor even as competing modes of knowing or perceiving,but as profound intuitive visions that have at long last been“scientifically proven”.A good deal of academic discussion is dedicated either to showing how limited and misleading the intellect is or to proving that non-rationally-derived insights have been confirmed by the most recent scientific theories.

11.Scientists in the west have cherished atradition of keeping their religious beliefs since the time of Kepler and Galileo.

12.According to A.D.White,religious authorities simply turned adeaf ear to the growing amount of scientific evidence contrary to their worldviews.

13.The last decade of the20th century saw achange of view in the science field regarding ancient wisdom:after all,profound intuitions are valuable as they successfully predicted contemporary scientific findings.

14.As science writers suggest,hints of the modern“S-matrix theory”of quantum physics can be found in Buddhist teachings.

15.The coming back of old-time religion and mysticism in the arena of science is not surprising,as insightful ancient intuitions and recent scientific theories have arrived at similar worldviews.

C.Gap Filling

Choose from the list Ato Fafter the passage the best sentences to fill in the gaps in the text.There are more sentences than gaps.

Brevity

Those of us who are small in physical stature are often reassured by kindly friends who say:‘The best things come in small packages...A little person is abeautiful thing...It’s the size of the brain that counts...’and so on.

For the man who craves those extra inches in order to dominate an audience,for the woman who regularly has to speak in public while resting her chin on the table,these thoughts provide little consolation.But they do contain agerm of truth.16____Tall people cannot stretch out in the bath or extend their legs in asleeper or couchette.They can peer over the top of the crowd but seldom slide through it.As with people,so with letters.

There are times when aletter must be long to achieve its purpose.But generally,the shorter the words,the sentences and the letter,the more effective the results will be.Even the longest epistle should be broken up into brief sections.There is no excuse for the sentence that stretches into aparagraph,nor the paragraph that becomes apage.

17____

The bore,the windbag,the person whom we would all go the longest distance to avoid,is also the writer whose letters we least like to read.“Oh,him again,”you say,recognizing the prolix prose.“I’ll read it later...if Ihave time.”So the writer joins the rank of the great unread.

In the world of journalism there are newspapers that pay by the word or column inch.This puts apremium on padding.18____“We only want500words”writes the editor.“We pay&x per thousand.”“I shall be delighted to write your piece!”the journalist replies.But it will be harder for me to condense the material you want into500words than to produce apiece of1,000.I suggest that it would be fairer to pay the rate of￡x+￡y for the500-word piece.It will take me longer to write and will cost more in care”.With luck,the editor will agree—as aprofessional,he will know that length and value are seldom the same.Quality counts.Brevity matters.

19____

In the world of public speaking there is atrite saying:“Stand up,speak up and then shut up.”But at least the spoken work is transitory.Unless you are on radio or television,or you are apolitician who produces some glorious gaffe—or,of course,you slander someone—your words will probably go unrecorded and unremembered.Commercial correspondence,though,have their words preserved in files,to be used in evidence if necessary.So keep those words short,accurate and to the point.

If you find your letter is too long,take out your equivalent of the sub-editor’s blue pencil.Peel away the extra words with which your thoughts are clothed and leave them to stand on their own naked merits.If you are ashamed of them when they stand stripped,then think again.Redraft,rewrite,rethink...20____

A magazine once asked millionaire Paul Getty for ashort article explaining his success.The editor enclosed his cheque for￡200.The multi-millionaire wrote:“Some people find oil.Others don’t.”

Be brief,then.Or in the famous words of another oil man,“If you don’t strike oil soon,stop boring!”

A.Churchill was once asked how long it took him to prepare aspeech.“If it’s atwo-hour speech,”he replied“ten minutes.If it’s aten-minute speech,two hours.”

B.Many professional writers do their best to avoid this sort of yardstick

C.Excess verbiage not only offends,bores and muddles the reader.It also fools the writer

D.Length is fine in its way,but it may be anuisance

E.When General Eisenhower appointed Arthur Bums as Chairman of his Economic Advisors,Burns suggested sending the President amemo outlining plans to organize the flow of economic advice.He said,“Keep it short.I can’t read.”Burns replied,“That’s fine,Mr.President.I can’t write!”So they had aone-hour weekly conference instead

F.Brevity is the soul of agood letter.Short,snappy,concise,clear and pungent paragraphs.Thoughts neatly packed into words with punch.Neat,lively expressions,shorn of padding and pomposity.These are the keys to successful correspondence

PartⅢTRANSLATION(40points)

A.Please read the following passage and translate it into Chinese.

Shakespeare starts by assuming that to make yourself powerless is to invite an attack.This does not mean that everyone will turn against you,but in all probability someone will.If you throw away your weapons,some less scrupulous person will pick them up.If you turn the other check,you will get aharder blow on it than you got on the first one.This does not always happen,but it is to be expected,and you ought not to complain if it does happen.The second blow is,so to speak,part of the act of turning the other check.First of all,therefore,there is the vulgar,common-sense moral:“Don’t relinquish power;don’t give away your lands.”But there is also another moral.Shakespeare never utters it in so many words,and it does not very much matter whether he was fully aware of it:“Give away your lands if you want to,but don’t expect to gain happiness by doing so.Probably you won’t gain happiness.If you live for others,you must live for other,and not as aroundabout way of getting advantage for yourself.”

B.Please read the following passage and translate it into English.

我是歐洲人，這一點我從未懷疑過。我的父母雙方都有歐洲祖先，年代久遠，但至今聯系牢固。生于蘇格蘭的人比如我和我父親，從來都認為蘇格蘭和歐洲是連接在一起的。

現在歐洲人身份已經不僅僅是一種努力目標，也不單單是拿破侖當年的夢想，而是一個事實。不列顛失去了帝國，只是歐洲海岸外的若干島嶼而已。至于歐洲的將來，我個人的希望是：英國可以繼續把它最好的東西獻給歐洲，即它的語言。英語是了不起的語言，是極好的材料，既可用來完成實際任務，又可用來表達各式各樣的觀念。沒有一種語言能與之媲美。它已經代替了法語成為國際標準語。希望能興旺下去。

參考答案

PartⅠGRAMMAR(30Points)

A.Correct Errors

1.to→with。compare to“把……比作……”；compared with“與……相比”。

2.those^→who。number作動詞，句子主干完整，不能出現兩個謂語動詞，所以此處加關系代詞who改成定語從句。

3.第一個of→at。look at sth.表示“觀察”。

4.rather^→than。rather than“而不是”；the other way round“相反”。

5.第一個was→were。中心詞the language revelations是復數形式。

6.eventually→eventual。修飾名詞separation用形容詞。

7.with→from。separation from sth.“與……脫離”。

8.expecting→expected。with復合結構中，expect與new legislation是動賓關系，所以用過去分詞形式。

9.law→laws。the existing law與上文的language laws形成對應。

10.would→should。表示“建議，命令，要求”接賓語從句或者跟同位語從句時，形式：（should）+動詞原形。

PartⅡREADING COMPREHENSION(80points)

B.Multiple Choice

Passage1

1.B.文章第三段提到德國中央銀行主要依賴英美法三國的相應機構的擔保，即提供黃金儲備數量的年度報告，德國不再對此進行實地考察。

2.C.由題目信息定位到第五段。冷戰期間，德國將一些黃金移至國外，當共產主義解體后，又將黃金移回，但依然有必要將黃金儲備于國外大型金融中心，這樣可以在必要時快速出售。

3.C.由題目信息定位到第七段結尾。高威勒指出，他對德國央行是否能在必要時直接使用這些黃金表示懷疑，并暗示有些黃金儲備是否真正存在。

4.D.觀察者指出黃金儲備的召回除了消耗高額的運輸成本外，還造成金融市場的動蕩。

5.B.全文主要圍繞德國人對國外黃金儲備安全性的擔憂。

Passage2

6.C.作者將芝麻街比作流行病。因為流行病會傳播，極有傳染性，芝麻街也是如此。

7.C.由題目信息定位到首段第三句。可見作者認為芝麻街這個“教育引爆點”是可以促進孩子們開始學習并持續下去的刺激物。

8.C.首段結尾以轉折方式引出節目制作人啟動該項目的真正目的：創造學習風潮并以此來對抗貧困和文盲。

9.B.由題目信息定位到第二段。杰拉爾德給出的懷疑芝麻街項目的理由是：良好的教學是互動的，必須有孩子們親自參與體驗，要調動所有感官，對孩子們作出反饋，而電視沒有這種才能。

10.D.由題目信息定位到第三段。幾種芝麻街節目制作過程中所采用的技術和手段，ABC三項都是該節目中使用的方法。

B.True or False

11.T.由題目信息定位到第二段首句。西方科學家有宗教信仰的傳統。

12.F.由題目信息定位到第三段結尾。與宗教權威的觀點相對的科學證據日益增多，宗教權威并沒有充耳不聞。

13.T.20世紀，人們對古老智慧的態度有所改變，因為有些深奧的直覺和發現確實成功地預測了當代的科學發現。

14.T.由題目信息定位到第五段。列舉了一些古老智慧與科學發現相吻合，在結尾作者指出，量子物理神秘形成的一些跡象早就在佛教經典中被察覺出來。

15.F.由題目信息定位到首段結尾。古宗教和神秘主義的重現并不驚奇，但并不是因為它們最終與近代科學理論達成類似的世界觀，而是這些深刻的古代智慧可以在科學理論下得以驗證。

C.Gap Filling

16.D.作者的觀點是高或者長亦有不好之處，這樣才可以論證前面那句“濃縮才是精華”，并且引出空格后的例子。

17.C.可見文章冗長不僅讓讀者感到無聊，也會愚弄作家。

18.B.通過編輯和記者的對話說明，字數少所需支付的錢反而應該多，因為專業人士應該明白精簡材料更費力，文章長度不等于價值，可見空白處應該表達專業人士對新聞界這一標準的不認同。

19.A.從文章長度和質量的關系論證文章的長度和價值不等同。

20.F.商務信件的寫作要簡短，精準，刪除一切多余的話語。作者強調書信簡潔性的重要性。

PartⅢTRANSLATION(40points)

A.Please read the following passage and translate it into Chinese.

莎士比亞從一開始就認為把自己搞得無權無勢會招來攻擊，這倒不是說每個人都會背叛你，但是非常可能有人會。如果你扔掉你的武器，某些無所顧忌的人就會撿起它們。別人打你一耳光，如果你把你的另一半臉伸出去，那么你挨的打可能比第一次更重，這種事情并不總是發生，但卻在所難免。如果真的發生了，你也沒什么可抱怨的。可以說，第二個耳光是你把另一邊臉伸給對方的結果。于是，首先就有了這樣一個略顯粗淺而又頗富常識性的認識：“不要放棄權力；不要把土地贈人。”但它還有另外一個寓意。莎士比亞沒有用這么長的篇幅來表述，甚至他是否完全明了也無關緊要：“如果你愿意，你可以把你的土地贈人，但是別指望借此得到幸福。很可能你不會得到幸福，如果你為別人而活，那你就必須為了別人而活，而不是把為別人而活當作是自己得益的迂回路線。”

B.Please read the following passage and translate it into English.

I’m an European,about which Ihave never doubted.Both my parents have European stock—ages ago yet still closely connected.People born in Scotland,just like my father and I,have always realized that Scotland is related to the Europe.Now the European identity is not only atarget to fight for,nor adream of Napoleon’s,but an actual fact.The Great Britain has lost its empire,being no more than several islands outside the European coast.As for the future of the Europe,my personal hope is that Britain can continue offering its best part—its language—to the Europe.English is an outstanding language and afantastic material to complete practical tasks and to express diversified ideas.No other language is like it.English has taken the place of French and become one of the international standard languages.I hope it can remain prosperous.