2000 年专业英语八级考试真题及答案
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Part ⅠListening Comprehension (40 min)
In Sections A, B and C you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then
answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each ques tion on your
Coloured Answer Sheet.
SECTION A TALK
Questions 1 to 5 refer to the talk in this section .At the end of the talk you w
ill be given 15 seconds to answer each of the following five questions. Now list
en to the talk.
1. The rules for the first private library in the US were drawn up by ___.
A. the legislature
B. the librarian
C. John Harvard
D. the faculty members
2. The earliest public library was also called a subscription library
books ___.
A. could be lent to everyone
B. could be lent by book stores
C. were lent to students and the faculty
D. were lent on a membership basis
3. Which of the following is NOT stated as one of the purposes of free pu blic
libraries?
A. To provide readers with comfortable reading rooms.
B. To provide adults with opportunities of further education.
C. To serve the community’s cultural and recreational needs.
D. To supply technical literature on specialized subjects.
4. The major difference between modem private and public libraries lies i n ___.
A. readership
B. content
C. service
D.function
5. The main purpose of the talk is ___.
A. to introduce categories of books in US libraries
B. to demonstrate the importance of US libraries
C. to explain the roles of different US libraries
D. to define the circulation system of US libraries
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Questions 6 to 10 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you wil
l be given 15 seconds to answer each of the following five questions. Now listen
to the interview.
6. Nancy became a taxi driver because ___.
A. she owned a car
B. she drove well
C. she liked drivers’ uniforms
D. it was her childhood dream
7. According to her, what was the most difficult about becoming a taxi dr iver?
A. The right sense of direction.
B. The sense of judgment.
C. The skill of maneuvering.
D. The size of vehicles.
8. What does Nancy like best about her job?
A. Seeing interesting buildings in the city.
B. Being able to enjoy the world of nature.
C. Driving in unsettled weather.
D. Taking long drives outside the city.
9. It can be inferred from the interview that Nancy in a(n) ___ moth er.
A. uncaring
B. strict
C. affectionate
D. perm issive
10. The people Nancy meets are
A. rather difficult to please
B. rude to women drivers
C. talkative and generous with tips
D. different in personality
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
Question 11 is based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you wil
l be given 15 seconds to answer the question. Now listen to the news.
11. The primary purpose of the US anti-smoking legislation is ___.
A. to tighten control on tobacco advertising
B. to impose penalties on tobacco companies
C. to start a national anti-smoking campaign
D. to ensure the health of American children
Questions 12 and 13 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item ,
you will be given 30 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news.
12. The French President’s visit to Japan aims at ___.
A. making more investments in Japan
B. stimulating Japanese businesses in France
C. helping boost the Japanese economy
D. launching a film festival in Japan
13. This is Jacques Chirac’s ___ visit to Japan.
A. second
B. fourteenth
C. fortieth
D. forty-first
Questions 14 and 15 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item ,
you will be given 30 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news.
14. Afghan people are suffering from starvation because ___.
A. melting snow begins to block the mountain paths
B. the Taliban have destroyed existing food stocks
C. the Taliban are hindering food deliveries
D. an emergency air-lift of food was cancelled
15. people in Afghanistan are facing starvation.
A. 160,000
B. 16,000
C. 1,000,000
D. 100 ,000
SECTION D NOTE-TAKING AND GAP-FILLING
Fill each of gaps with ONE word. You may refer to your notes. Make sure the word
you fill in is both grammatically and semantically acceptable.
On Public Speaking
When people are asked to give a speech in public for the first time, theyusually
feel terrified no matter how well they speak in informal situations.In fact, public
speaking is the same as any other form of (1)___ 1.___that people are usually engaged
in. Public speaking is a way for a speaker to(2)___ his thoughts with the audience.
Moreover, the speaker is free 2.___to decide on the (3)___ of his speech. 3.___Two
key points to achieve success in public speaking:—(4)___ of the subject matter.
4.___—good preparation of the speech.To facilitate their understanding, inform
your audience beforehand of the(5)___ of your speech, and end it with a summary.
5.___Other key points to bear in mind:—be aware of your audience through eye contact.
—vary the speed of (6)___ 6.___—use the microphone skillfully to (7)___ yourself
in speech. 7.___—be brief in speech; always try to make your message (8)___
8.___Example: the best remembered inaugural speeches of the US presidents arethe
(9)___ ones. 9.___Therefore, brevity is essential to the (10)___ of a speech. 10.___
Part ⅡProofreading and Error Correction (15 min)
The following passage contains TEN errors. Each line contains a maximum of ONE error.
In each case, only ONE word is involved. You should proofread the passage and correct
it in the following way.For a wrong word, underline the wrong word and wri te the
correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line.For a missing word, mark
the position of the missing word with a “∧”sign and write the word you believe
to be missing in the blank provided at the end of the line.For an unnecessary word
cross out the unnecessary word with a slash“/’and put the word in the blank provided
at the end of the line.
Example
When∧art museum wants a new exhibit, (1) an
it never/buys things in finished form and hangs (2) never
them on the wall. When a natural history museum
wants an exhibition, it must often build it. (3) exhibit
The grammatical words which play so large a part in English
grammar are for the most part sharply and obviously different 1.___
from the lexical words. A rough and ready difference which may
seem the most obvious is that grammatical words have“less
meaning”, but in fact some grammarians have called them 2.___
“empty”words as opposed in the “full”words of vocabulary. 3.___
But this is a rather misled way of expressing the distinction. 4.___
Although a word like the is not the name of something as man is,
it is very far away from being meaningless; there is a sharp 5.___
difference in meaning between “man is vile and”“the man is
vile”, yet the is the single vehicle of this difference in meaning. 6.___
Moreover, grammatical words differ considerably among
themselves as the amount of meaning they have, even in the 7.___
lexical sense. Another name for the grammatical words has been
“little words”. But size is by no mean a good criterion for 8.___
distinguishing the grammatical words of English, when we
consider that we have lexical words as go, man, say, car. Apart 9.___
from this, however, there is a good deal of truth in what some
people say: we certainly do create a great number of obscurity 10.___
when we omit them. This is illustrated not only in the poetry of
Robert Browning but in the prose of telegrams and newspaper headlines.
Part ⅢReading Comprehension (40 min)
SECTION A READING COMPREHENSION (30 min)
In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of fifteen
multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your
Coloured Answer Sheet.
TEXT A
Despite Denmark’s manifest virtues, Danes never talk about how proud they a re to
be Danes. This would sound weird in Danish. When Danes talk to foreigners about
Denmark, they always begin by commenting on its tininess, its unimportance , the
difficulty of its language, the general small-mindedness and self-indulgen ce of
their countrymen and the high taxes. No Dane would look you in the eye and say,
“Denmark is a great country.”You’re supposed to figure this out for yo urself.
It is the land of the silk safety net, where almost half the national budg et goes
toward smoothing out life’s inequalities, and there is plenty of money f or schools,
day care, retraining programmes, job seminars-Danes love seminars: t hree days at
a study centre hearing about waste management is almost as good as a ski trip. It
is a culture bombarded by English, in advertising, pop music, the Internet, and
despite all the English that Danish absorbs—there is no Danish Academy to defend
against it —old dialects persist in Jutland that can barel y be understood by
Copenhageners. It is the land where, as the saying goes,“ Fe w have too much and
fewer have too little, ”and a foreigner is struck by the swe e t egalitarianism
that prevails, where the lowliest clerk gives you a level gaze, where Sir and Madame
have disappeared from common usage, even Mr. and Mrs. It’ s a nation of recyclers
—about 55 % of Danish garbage gets made into something new— and no nuclear power
plants. It’s a nation of tireless planner. Trains run on time. Things operate well
in general.
Such a nation of overachievers — a brochure from the Ministry of Busines s and
Industry says,“Denmark is one of the world’s cleanest and most organize d countries,
with virtually no pollution, crime, or poverty. Denmark is the most c orruption-free
society in the Northern Hemisphere. ”So, of course, one’s heart l ifts at any
sighting of Danish sleaze: skinhead graffiti on buildings(“Foreigne r s Out of
Denmark! ”), broken beer bottles in the gutters, drunken teenagers slu mped in the
park.
Nonetheless, it is an orderly land. You drive through a Danish town, it co mes to
an end at a stone wall, and on the other side is a field of barley, a nic e clean
line: town here, country there. It is not a nation of jay-walkers. Peopl e stand
on the curb and wait for the red light to change, even if it’s 2 a.m. a n d there’
s not a car in sight. However, Danes don’ t think of themselves as a w ai
nting-at-2-a.m.-for-the-green-light people——that’s how they see Swedes and Ge
r mans. Danes see themselves as jazzy people, improvisers, more free spirited than
Swedes, but the truth is( though one should not say it)that Danes are very much like
Germans and Swedes. Orderliness is a main selling point. Denmark has few n atural
resources, limited manufacturing capability; its future in Europe will be as a broker,
banker, and distributor of goods. You send your goods by container ship to Copenhagen,
and these bright, young, English-speaking, utterly honest, highly disciplined
people will get your goods around to Scandinavia, the Baltic States, and Russia.
Airports, seaports, highways, and rail lines are ultramodern and well-maintained.
The orderliness of the society doesn’t mean that Danish lives are less me s sy or
lonely than yours or mine, and no Dane would tell you so. You can hear ple nty about
bitter family feuds and the sorrows of alcoholism and about perfectly sensible people
who went off one day and killed themselves. An orderly society c an not exempt its
members from the hazards of life.
But there is a sense of entitlement and security that Danes grow up with. Certain
things are yours by virtue of citizenship, and you shouldn’t feel bad f o r taking
what you’re entitled to, you’re as good as anyone else. The rules of th e welfare
system are clear to everyone, the benefits you get if you lose your jo b, the steps
you take to get a new one; and the orderliness of the system makes it possible for
the country to weather high unemployment and social unrest witho ut a sense of crisis.
16. The author thinks that Danes adopt a ___ attitude towards their country.
A. boastful
B. modest
C. deprecating
D. mysterious
17. Which of the following is NOT a Danish characteristic cited in the pa ssage?
A. Fondness of foreign culture.
B. Equality in society.
C. Linguistic tolerance.
D. Persistent planning.
18. The author’s reaction to the statement by the Ministry of Business a nd Industry
is ___.
A. disapproving
B. approving
C. noncommittal
D. doubtful
19. According to the passage, Danish orderliness ___.
A. sets the people apart from Germans and Swedes
B. spares Danes social troubles besetting other people
C. is considered economically essential to the country
D. prevents Danes from acknowledging existing troubles
20. At the end of the passage the author states all the following EXCEPT that ___.
A. Danes are clearly informed of their social benefits
B. Danes take for granted what is given to them
C. the open system helps to tide the country over
D. orderliness has alleviated unemployment
TEXT B
But if language habits do not represent classes, a social stratification in to
something as bygone as “aristocracy” and “commons”, they do still of cour se
s erve to identify social groups. This is something that seems fundamental in the
use of language. As we see in relation to political and national movements, lang
uage is used as a badge or a barrier depending on which way we look at it. The n
ew boy at school feels out of it at first because he does not know the fight wor
ds for things, and awe-inspiring pundits of six or seven look down on him for no
t being aware that racksy means “dilapidated”, or hairy “out first ball”. Th
e mi ner takes a certain pride in being “one up on the visitor or novice who calls
t h e cage a “lift” or who thinks that men working in a warm seam are in their
“u nde rpants”when anyone ought to know that the garments are called hoggers. The
“i ns ider”is seldom displeased that his language distinguishes him from the “outsi
der”.
Quite apart from specialized terms of this kind in groups, trades and profe ssions,
there are all kinds of standards of correctness at which mast of us feel more or
less obliged to aim, because we know that certain kinds of English invi te irritation
or downright condemnation. On the other hand, we know that other k inds convey some
kind of prestige and bear a welcome cachet.
In relation to the social aspects of language, it may well be suggested tha t English
speakers fall into three categories: the assured, the anxious and the in different.
At one end of this scale, we have the people who have “position” an d “status”,
and who therefore do not feel they need worry much about their use o f English. Their
education and occupation make them confident of speaking an uni mpeachable form of
English: no fear of being criticized or corrected is likely t o cross their minds,
and this gives their speech that characteristically unself c onscious and easy flow
which is often envied.
At the other end of the scale, we have an equally imperturbable band, speak ing with
a similar degree of careless ease, because even if they are aware that their English
is condemned by others, they are supremely indifferent to the fact . The Mrs Mops
of this world have active and efficient tongues in their heads, a nd if we happened
not to like the/r ways of saying things, well, we “can lump i t ”. That is their
attitude. Curiously enough, writers are inclined to represent t he speech of both
these extreme parties with -in’for ing. On the one hand, “w e’re goin’huntin’,
my dear sir”; on the other, “we’re goin’racin’, ma te.”
In between, according to this view, we have a far less fortunate group, th e anxious.
These actively try to suppress what they believe to be bad English an d assiduously
cultivate what they hope to be good English. They live their lives in some degree
of nervousness over their grammar, their pronunciation, and thei r choice of words:
sensitive, and fearful of betraying themselves. Keeping up wi th the Joneses is
measured not only in houses, furniture, refrigerators, cars, a nd clothes, but also
in speech.
And the misfortune of the “anxious”does not end with their inner anxiet y. Their
lot is also the open or veiled contempt of the “assured”on one side of them and
of the “indifferent”on the other.
It is all too easy to raise an unworthy laugh at the anxious. The people t hus
uncomfortably stilted on linguistic high heels so often form part of what is, in
many ways, the most admirable section of any society: the ambitious, tense,
inner-driven people, who are bent on“ going places and doing things”. The grea
te r the pity, then, if a disproportionate amount of their energy goes into what
Mr Sharpless called“ this shabby obsession” with variant forms of English— espe
ci ally if the net result is(as so often)merely to sound affected and ridiculous.
“ Here”, according to Bacon, “is the first distemper of learning, when men study
w ords and not matter …. It seems to me that Pygmalion’ s frenzy is a good emble
m …of this vanity: for words axe but the images of matter; and except they have
l ife of reason and invention, to fall in love with them is to fall in love with
a picture.”
21. The attitude held by the assured towards language is ___.
A. critical
B. anxious
C. self-conscious
D. nonchalant
22. The anxious are considered a less fortunate group because ___.
A. they feel they are socially looked down upon
B. they suffer from internal anxiety and external attack
C. they are inherently nervous and anxious people
D. they are unable to meet standards of correctness
23. The author thinks that the efforts made by the anxious to cultivate w hat they
believe is good English are ___.
A. worthwhile
B. meaningless
C. praiseworthy
D. irrational
TEXT C
Fred Cooke of Salford turned 90 two days ago and the world has been beating a path
to his door. If you haven’t noticed, the backstreet boy educated at Bla c kpool
grammar styles himself more grandly as Alastair Cooke, broadcaster extraor dinaire.
An honorable KBE, he would be Sir Alastair if he had not taken American citizenship
more than half a century ago.
If it sounds snobbish to draw attention to his humble origins, it should be reflected
that the real snob is Cooke himself, who has spent a lifetime disguis ing them. But
the fact that he opted to renounce his British passport in 1941 — just when his
country needed all the wartime help it could get-is hardly a ma tter for
congratulation.
Cooke has made a fortune out of his love affair with America, entrancing l isteners
with a weekly monologue that has won Radio 4 many devoted adherents. Pa rt of the
pull is the developed drawl. This is the man who gave the world “mida tlantic”,
the language of the disc jockey and public relations man.
He sounds American to us and English to them, while in reality he has for decades
belonged to neither. Cooke’s world is an America that exists largely in the
imagination. He took ages to acknowledge the disaster that was Vietnam and e ven
longer to wake up to Watergate. His politics have drifted to the right with age,
and most of his opinions have been acquired on the golf course with fellow
celebrities.
He chased after stars on arrival in America, Fixing up an interview with Ch arlie
Chaplin and briefly becoming his friend. He told Cooke he could turn him i nto a
fine light comedian; instead he is an impressionist’s dream.
Cooke liked the sound of his first wife’s name almost as much as he admir e d her
good looks. But he found bringing up baby difficult and left her for the w ife of
his landlord.Women listeners were unimpressed when, in 1996, he declared on air that
th e fact that 4% of women in the American armed forces were raped showed remarkabl
e self-restraint on the part of Uncle Sam’s soldiers. His arrogance in not allo
w ing
editors to see his script in advance worked, not for the first time,
to his detriment. His defenders said he could not help living with the 1930s values
he had acquired and somewhat dubiously went on to cite “gallantry” as chief a mo
ng them. Cooke’s raconteur style encouraged a whole generation of BBC men to th
i nk of themselves as more important than the story. His treacly tones were the mo
del for the regular World Service reports From Our Own Correspondent, known as F
OOCs in the business. They may yet be his epitaph.
24. At the beginning of the passage the writer sounds critical of ___.
A. Cooke’s obscure origins
B. Cooke’s broadcasting style
C. Cooke’s American citizenship
D. Cooke’s fondness of America
25. The following adjectives can be suitably applied to Cooke EXCEPT ___.
A. old-fashioned
B. sincere
C. arrogant
BBC