英语阅读(二)2016年4月真题试题及答案解析（00596）

Girls are overly concerned about weight and body shape. (46. hey strive for the "perfect" body and judge themselves by their looks, appearance, and above all thinness. But boys don't escape either. They are concerned with the size and strength of their body. There has been a shift in the male body image. Boys live in a culture that showcases males as glamorous “macho”figures who have to be “tough", build muscles and sculpt their bodies— if they want to ft in. They think they have to be a“real”man, but many admit being confused as to what that means or what's expected of them. This confusion can make it harder than ever to feel good about themselves.

Most of our cues about what we should look like come from the media, our parents, and our peers. This constant obsession with weight, the size of our bodies and longing for a different shape or size can be painful. 

Where do these negative perceptions come from?  

The media plays a big part. (47. Surrounded by thin models and TV stars, teenage girls are taught to achieve an impossible goal. As a result, many teenage girls intensely dislike their bodies and can tell you down to the minutest detail what's wrong with it.) Most teens watch an average of 22 hours of TV a week and are deluged with images of fat-free bodies in the pages of health, fashion and teen magazines. The "standard" is impossible to achieve. A female should look like, and have the same dimensions as Barbie, and a male should look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

(48. Western society places a high value upon appearance. Self-worth is enhanced for those who are judged attractive. Those who are deemed unattractive can feel at a disadvantage.) The message from the media, fashion and our peers can create a longing to win the approval of our culture and fit in at any cost. And that can be disastrous to our self-esteem. 

Parents can give mixed messages, too. Especially if they're constantly dieting or have body or food issues of their own. How we perceive and internalize these childhood messages about our bodies determines our ability to build self-esteem and confidence in our appearance.

(49. Why is a positive body image so important? Psychologists and counselors agree that a negative body image is directly related to self-esteem. The more negative the perception of our bodies. the more negative we feel about ourselves.)

When most people think about body image they think about aspects of physical appearance, attractiveness, and beauty. But body image is much more. It is the mental picture a person has of his/her body as well as their thoughts, feelings, judgments, sensations, awareness and behavior. Body image is developed through interactions with people and the social world. It's our mental picture of ourselves, it's what allows us to become ourselves.

(50. Body image influences behavior. self-esteem, and our psyche. When we feel bad about our body, our satisfaction and mood plummets. If we are constantly trying to push, reshape or remake our bodies, our sense of self becomes unhealthy.) We lose confidence in our abilities. It's not uncommon for people who think poorly of their bodies to have problems in other areas of their lives, including sexuality, careers and relationships.

Paragraph Ten

On your interview day, you should arrive at least half an hour earlier. Tell the secretary at the reception desk about your arranged interview as soon as you get there, and wait in the lounge just to relax. But while waiting, watch your posture. When you name is called, let your interviewer see a candidate full of confidence and ready for nothing else but the interview.

T______ for interviews.

Paragraph Nine

Soil conservation methods help farmers protect their land from the damage caused by farming and the forces of nature. One method of soil conservation is the use of windbreaks. Windbreaks are barriers formed by trees and other plants. Farmers plant these barriers around their fields.

Windbreaks may stop the wind from b_____ soil away.

Paragraph Eight

One of the most influential studies of human performance find that one less hour of sleep is not equal to an extra hour of achievement. In many cases the opposite occurs. When you lose an hour of sleep, it decreases your well-being, productivity, health, and ability to think the following day.

Insufficient sleep, p_______ performance.

Paragraph Seven

Researchers found that of all the forms of inactivity they examined, television-viewing was the worst. It was linked to significantly higher blood pressure in children一the more TV kids watched, the higher their blood pressure一and the effect held true regardless of whether a child was heavy or at a healthy weight.

The c________ between TV watching and high blood pressure in children.

Paragraph Six

Change is the most changeless thing in the universe. We need to accept all changes— welcome or unwelcome — with the understanding that nothing comes to stay, but only to pass. As two things can never occupy the same space at the same time, one change makes way for the next.

Change is i_____.

Paragraph Five

Quite a number of people believe that women's abilities are not so good as men's. As a result, most employers do not choose women to be in charge of important projects. But I think such a view is ridiculous. Everyone is born equal and the ability is cultivated later through education, social action and communication.

The a_______ towards working women should be changed attitude

Paragraph Four

High salaries in the electricity, telecommunications and other monopoly industries have drawn strong criticism in China, where the Gini coefficient now stands at 0.46, exceeding the internationally recognized alarm level of 0.45. So China is considering cutting wages in monopoly industries to reduce the country's widening income gap. A draft directive document has been worked out for this purpose.

A measure taken to n______ the income gap.

Paragraph Three

Researchers tested obese men before and after they joined a one-year modest walking plan. The result: Their blood pressure improved and the amount of body fat around their abdomen一the dangerous kind of fat that leads to higher rates 01 heart disease and diabetes一significantly decreased. 

The amazing e____ of modest walking on health.

Paragraph One

The term "Grit”first appeared on the Canadian political scene in 1849 to describe the more progressive members of the Upper Canada Reform Party. They saw themselves as genuine reformers "ll sand and no dirt, clear grit all the way through," as David Christie, one of the reformers, put it.

O______ of a political term.

Paragraph Two

Accidents and illnesses are unhappy things to talk about, but one can expect to live a lifetime without having some kind of accident or becoming ill. Some accidents and illnesses are serious and may result in long periods of recovery from poor health.

Accidents and illnesses are u______.

Pollution is a“dirty” word. To pollute means to contaminate 一to spoil something by introducing impurities, which make it unfit or unclean to use. Pollution comes in many forms. We see it, smell it, taste it, drink it, and stumble through it. We literally live in and breathe pollution, and, not surprisingly, it is beginning to threaten our health, our happiness, and our very civilization.  

Once we thought of pollution as meaning simply smog一the choking, stinging, dirty air that hovers over cities. But air pollution, while it is still the most dangerous, is only one type of contamination among several which attack the most basic life functions.  

Through the uncontrolled use of insecticides, man has polluted the land,  killing the wildlife. By dumping sewage and chemicals into rivers and lakes, we have contaminated our drinking water. We are polluting the ocean, too, killing the fish and thereby depriving ourselves of an invaluable food supply.  

Part of the problem is our exploding population. More and more people produce more wastes. But this problem is intensified by our “throw away" technology. Each year Americans dispose of 7 million autos, 20 million tons of waste paper plates. It is easier and cheaper to buy a new one and discard the old, even though 95 percent of its parts may still be functioning. Baby's diapers, which used to be made of reusable cloth, are now paper throwaways. Soon we will wear  clothing made of paper:“Wear it once and throw it away”will be the slogan of the fashion conscious.  

Where is this all to end? Are we turning the world into a gigantic dump, or is there hope that we can solve the pollution problem? Fortunately, solutions are in sight. A few of them are positively ingenious.    

26. destroy the quality of(Para. 1)

27. actually (Para. 1)

28. polluted air that looks like a mixture of smoke and fog (Para. 2)

29. remains in one place in the air (Para.2)

30. disposing of (Para.3)

31. taking something away from someone (Para.3)

32. made to be more serious (Para. 4)

33. concerned about (Para. 4)

34. extremely large (Para. 5)

35. clever, original and inventive (Para.5)

The word "apparatus" in paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to______.

This passage tells us that______.

The author's point of view on solitary sports is that_______.

The tone of the underlined sentence in paragraph 3 is_____.

Passage Five

Most of us lead unhealthy lives: we spend far too much time sitting down. If, in addition, we are careless about our diets, our bodies soon become flabby and our system sluggish. The guilt feelings start: "I must go on a diet", "I must try to lose weigh", "I must get more fresh air and exercise", "I must stop smoking", "I must try to keep fit". There are some aspects of our unhealthy lives that we cannot avoid. 

I am thinking of such features of modem urban life as pollution, noise, rushed meals and stress. But keeping fit is a way to minimize the effects of these evils. 

The usual suggestion for a person who is looking for a way to keep fit is to take up some sport or other. While it is true that every weekend you will find people playing football and tennis in the local park, they are outnumbered a hundred to one by the people who are simply watching them. It is an illusion to think that you will get fit by going to watch the football match every Saturday, [unless you count the effort required to fight your way through the crowds to get to  the best seats. ] 

For those who do not particularly enjoy competitive sports —and it is especially difficult to do so if you are not good at them—there are such solitary activities as cycling, walking and swimming. What often happens, though, is that you do them in such a leisurely way, so slowly, that it is doubtful if you are doing yourself much good, apart from the fact that you have at least managed to get up out of your armchair. Of course you can be very thorough about exercises. Many ports shops now sell frightening pieces of [apparatus], chest-expanders and other mysterious gadgets of shiny spring steel, which, according to the advertisements, will bring you up to an Olympic standard of fitness, provided programs generally involve long periods of time bending these curious bits of metal into improbable shapes.  

It all strikes me as utterly boring and also time-consuming. Somebody suggested recently that all such effort was pointless anyway because if you spend half an hour every day jogging round the local park, you will add to your life exactly the number of hours that you wasted during the "jogging" in the first place. The argument is false even if the facts are correct, but there is no doubt that exercise in itself can be boring.  

Even after you have found a routine for keeping in shape, through sport or gymnastics, you are still only half way to good health, because, according to the experts, you must also master the art of complete mental and physical relaxation. Now this does not mean snoozing in the armchair or going dancing. It has something to do with deep breathing, emptying your mind of all thoughts,  medication and so on.   

Questions 21-25 are based on Passage Five.

If you want to keep fit, you should______.

The tone of this passage can be best described as____.

The author's main purpose in writing this passage is to____.

From paragraph 4 we know that______.

What can we learn from paragraph 6?

We can infer from paragraph 3 that, if a person never forgot,____.

Passage Four

That experiences influence subsequent behavior is evidence of an obvious but nevertheless remarkable activity called remembering. Learning could not occur i without the function popularly named memory. Constant practice has such an effect on memory as to lead to skillful performance on the piano, to recitation of a poem, and even to reading and understanding these words. So-called intelligent behavior demands memory, remembering being a primary requirement for reasoning. The ability to solve any problem or even to recognize that a problem exists depends on memory. Typically, the decision to cross a street is based on remembering many earlier experiences. 

Practice (or review) tends to build and maintain memory for a task or for any learned material. Over a period of no practice what has been 1earned tends to be forgotten, and the adaptive consequences may not seem obvious. Yet, dramatic instances of sudden forgetting can be seen to be adaptive. In this sense, the ability to forget can be interpreted to have survived through a process of natural selection in animals. Indeed, when one's memory of an emotionally painful experience leads to serious anxiety, forgetting may produce relief. Nevertheless, an evolutionary interpretation might make it difficult to understand how the commonly gradual  process of forgetting survived natural selection.

In thinking about the evolution of memory together with all its possible aspects, it is helpful to consider what would happen if memories failed to fade. Forgetting clearly aids orientation in time, since old memories weaken and the new tend to stand out, providing clues for inferring duration. Without forgetting, adaptive ability would suffer, for example, learned behavior that might have been correct a decade ago may no longer be. Cases are recorded of people who (by  ordinary standards) forgot so little that their everyday activities were full of confusion. This forgetting seems to serve that survival of the individual and the species.  

According to the passage, Michael Lewis and Sam Apple_______.

Fathers are better positioned to write parenting books today because_____.

Passage Three

My mother used to tell my father that he was a very good mother. This was her way of praising his attendance at every concert and game, his patience and care. In those days, "good mother" was the highest domestic achievement; to have called him a good father, given how low the bar was set, wouldn't have done him justice.  

But that was long, long ago. Now fathers sing to their babies in uteri, come to birthing class, coach mom through delivery (as opposed to the days of the hospital clubs, where fathers smoked and paced while mothers delivered their offspring). They can buy strap-on breasts, so they can share in the bonding. And  baby toupees, for those sensitive about hairlessness. I can't help thinking that the increased engagement of fathers has some direct connection to [the increased  availability of baby gadgets], since having two fanatically engaged parents offers twice the target for retailers.  

The typical father spends about seven hours per week in "primary child care", which doesn't sound like a lot until you realize it's more than twice as much as in 1965. Among other things, this all means fathers are now much better positioned to write parenting books like Michael Lewis' Home Game and Sam Apple's American Parent: My Strange and Surprising Adventures in Modern Babyland. 

The dad diarists approach their subject like anthropologists, engaged in rational inquiry into an alien culture and the nature of nurture. Thus I learned from  Apple things I never knew from reading What to Expect When You're Expecting, like the fact that in the I st century Pliny the Elder recommended that women in labor drink goose semen mixed with water to ease the process along. 

Maybe the respectful distance men keep reflects the obvious ambivalence so many women show about male involvement. We talk about fathers like puppies ripping over their big paws, a portrait long mirrored in a culture in which "Father Knows Least". We diminish with faint praise; dads still get points for returning children at the end of the day with all their limbs in place. But the more engaged fathers become, the more women have to reckon with what a true parenting  partnership would look like.   

Questions 11-15 are based on Passage Three.

Why did the author's mother call her father a "very good mother"? 

When the author mentions "the increased availability of baby gadgets" (Para.2), her tone is_______.

What is the message the author wants to convey in this passage?

By saying "they employ chemical warfare" (Para.2), Bruce Ames means ______.

The author considers it impossible to obtain no-risk food because______.

The word "withstand" in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.

What is the message the author intends to convey in this passage?

What can we learn from paragraph 4?

Passage Two

Many Americans harbor a grossly distorted and exaggerated view of most of the risks surrounding food. Fergus Clydesdale, head of the department of food science and nutrition at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, says bluntly that if the dangers from bacterially contaminated chicken were as great as some people believe, “the streets would be littered with people lying here and there."  

Though the public increasingly demands no-risk food, there is no such thing. Bruce Ames, chairman of the biochemistry department at the University of California, Berkelcy, points out that up to 10% of a plant's weight is made up of natural pesticides. He says, "Since plants do not have jaws or teeth to protect themselves, [they employ chemical warfare.]” And many naturally produced chemicals, though occurring in tiny amounts, prove in laboratory tests to be strong  carcinogens - substance which can cause cancer. Mushrooms might be banned if they were judged by the same standards that apply to food additives. Declares Christina Stark, a nutritionist at Cornell University, "We've got far worse natural chemicals in the food supply than anything man-made."  

Yet the issues are not that simple. While Americans have no reason to be terrified to sit down at the dinner table, they have every reason to demand significant improvements in food and water safety. They unconsciously and unwillingly take in too much of too many dangerous chemicals. If food already contains natural carcinogens, it does not make much sense to add dozens of new man-made ones. Though most people will [withstand] the small amount of  contaminants generally found in food and water, at least a few individuals will probably get cancer one day because of what they eat and drink.  

To make good food and water supplies even better, the Government needs to tighten its regulatory standards, stiffen its inspection program and strengthen its enforcement policies. The food industry should modify some long-accepted practices or turn to less hazardous alternatives. Perhaps most important, consumers will have to do a better job of learning how to handle and cook food properly. The problems that need to be tackled exist all along the food-supply chain, from fields I  to processing plants to kitchens.   

Questions 6-10 are based on Passage Two.

The author thinks that many Americans _______.

According to the author, the biggest benefit of the Internet is that_____.

The example of FinalThoughts.com is given to make the point that______.

Passage One

Today, there's scarcely an aspect of our life that isn't being upended by the torrent of information available on the hundreds of millions of sites crowding the Internet, not to mention its ability to keep us in constant touch with each other via electronic mail.“If the automobile and aerospace technology had exploded at the same pace as computer and information technology," says Microsoft, “a new car would cost about $2 and go 600 miles on a thimbleful of gas. And you could buy a  Boeing 747 for the cost of a pizza."  

Probably the biggest payoff, however, is the billions of dollars the Internet is saving companies in producing goods and serving for the needs of their customers. Nothing like it has been seen since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when power-driven machines began producing more in a day than men could turn out in nearly a year.“We view the growth of the Internet and e-commerce as a global megatrend,” says Merrill Lynch, “along the lines of printing press, the telephone, the computer, and electricity."  

You would be hard pressed to name something that isn't available on the Internet. Consider. books, health care, movie tickets, construction materials, baby clothes，stocks, cattle feed, music, electronics, antiques, tools, real estate, toys, autographs of famous people, wine and airline tickets. And even after you've moved on to your final resting place, there's no reason those you love can't keep it touch. A company called FinalThoughts.com offers a place for you to store “afterlife e-mails" you can send to Heaven with the help of a "guardian angel".  

Kids today are so computer savvy that it virtually ensures the United States will remain the unchallenged leader in cyberspace for the foreseeable future. Nearly all children in families with incomes of more than $75,000 a year have home computers, according to a study by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Youngsters from ages 2 to 17 at all income levels have computers, with 52% of those connected to the Internet. Most kids use computers to play games (some for 30 hours or more a week), and many teenage girls think nothing of rushing home from school to have e-mail chats with friends they have just left.

What's clear is that, whether we like it or not, the Internet is an ever growing part of our lives and there is no turning back.”The Internet is just 20% invented," says cyber pioneer Jake Winebaum.“ The last 80% is happening now."

Questions 1-5 are based on Passage One.

What can we learn from Microsoft's remark?