626华南理工大学2016 年攻读硕士学位研究生入学考试试卷（试卷上做答无效，请在答题纸上做答，试后本卷必须与答题纸一同交回） 科目名称：英语综合水平测试适用专业：英语语言文学，外国语言学及应用语言学共页Part 1 Reading Comprehension (60 marks, 2 marks each)Directions: Read the following passages and make ONE choice that best complete or answer each of the statements or questions after the passages.Passage 1Fall is staggering in, right on schedule, with its baggage of chilly nights, spectacular, heart-stoppingly beautiful leaves. People will travel up and down the East Coast just to stare at it a whole season of leaves.Where do the colors come from? Sunlight rules most living things with its golden edicts. When the days begin to shorten, a tree reconsiders its leaves. All summer it feeds them so they can process sunlight, but in the dog days of summer the tree begins pulling nutrients back into its trunk and roots, reduces and gradually chokes off its leaves. A dry layer of cells forms at the leaves slender stems, then scars over. Undernourished, the leaves stop producing the pigment chlorophyll, and photosynthesis ceases. Animals can migrate, hibernate, or store food to prepare for winter. But where can a tree go? It survives by dropping its leaves, and by the end of autumn only a few fragile threads of fluid-carrying xylem hold leaves to their stems.A turning leaf stays partly green at first, then reveals spots of yellow and red as the chlorophyll gradually breaks down. Dark green seems to stay longest in the veins. During the summer, chlorophyll dissolves in the heat and light, but it is also being steadily replaced. In the fall, on the other hand, no new pigment is produced, and so we notice the other colors that were always there, right in the leaf, although chlorophylls shocking green hid them from view. With their camouflage gone, we see these colors for the first time all year, but they were always there, hidden like a vivid secret beneath the hot glowing greens of summer.An odd feature of the colors is that they dont seem to have any special purpose. Animals and flowers color for a reason adaptation to their environment but there is no adaptive reason for leaves to color so beautifully in the fall any more than there is for the sky or ocean to be blue. Its just one of the haphazard marvels the planet presents every year. We find the sizzling colors thrilling, and in a sense they cheat us. Colored like living第14页things, they signal death and disintegration. In time, they will become fragile and, like the body, return to dust. They are as we hope our own fate will be when we die: Not to vanish, just to sublime from one beautiful state into another. Though leaves lose their green life, they bloom with urgent colors, as the woods grow mummified day by day, and Nature becomes more carnal, mute, and radiant1. The signal for a tree to begin its preparation for winter is when .A) nights feel chilly days become shorterB) days become shorterC) there is less nutrientsD) the weather turns drier2. According to the passage, the leaves color changing process should be traced back to .A) the blooming spring daysB) the dog days of summerC) the late autumn daysD) the previous winter3. We just see green in summer because .A) trees can only produce chlorophyllB) trees in green can easily get more nutrientsC) enough sunlight provides strong green colorsD) chlorophyll is strong enough to cover other colors4. In the last paragraph, the beautifully colored leaves are compared to .A) the fragile plantsB) the blooming flowersC) the dying human bodyD) the God-created wonder5. Which of the following will the author agree?A) The ocean chooses blue color to match the surroundings.B) The spectacularly colored leaves signal the end of life.C) Leaves change color in autumn for adaptive purpose.D) People hope for a more beautiful world after death.Passage 2Imagine a world in which everyone uses all the energy they want, yet dependence on oil, with its attendant smog and green-house-gas emissions, is a thing of the past. This utopia is plausible many would say probably. It is one in which hydrogen, rather thanfossil fuels, is central to our energy economy.Vehicles could use hydrogen in a variety of ways. Some researchers favor the introduction of electric cars powered solely by fuel cells, which combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity. Others say that conventional car engines can be converted to run on hydrogen with relatively minor modifications. Experts are also split over whether, as a temporary step towards a full hydrogen economy, vehicles should initially use on-board equipment to extract hydrogen from fossil fuels.Infrastructure issues play a big role in the debate over which approach should be taken. The lack of an existing system for storing and distributing hydrogen presents a dilemma. Car manufacturers do not want to sell vehicles that people cannot fuel, and energy companies do not want to spend money developing a hydrogen distribution infrastructure when there are no hydrogen cars on the road. The equation becomes more complicated with fuel cells because they have yet to be produced in large numbers and their long-term reliability has not been proven.This deadlock could be broken by “reformers”, which would allow hydrogen cars to run on fossil fuels. Reformers can break down the hydrocarbons in fossil fuels and so liberate hydrogen. Natural gas, for example, can be reformed by heating it together with water and a nickel-based catalyst. The result is a series of reactions whose products are carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Other fossil fuels, including petrol or gasoline, can be reformed in a similar way.Hydrogen cars fitted with reformers would still run on petrol, but would reform it into hydrogen. Advocates of the technology say that this would give car companies the confidence to produce the vehicles, and so provide a fresh impetus for fuel-cell development. Several car manufacturers, including General Motors and DaimlerChrysler, are now working with Ballard Power Systems, a fuel-cell producer based in Burnaby, near Vancouver, to develop vehicles that are powered by fuel cells fed by reformers.But reformers still produce carbon dioxide, and for many environmentalists, this is enough to rule them out. In addition, it has to be taken into account that hydrogen vehicles with reformers are also technologically more complex and costly to build than straight fuel-cell cars.6. In this article, what is introduced as the most promising substitute for fossil fuels?A) Fuel cells.B) Reformers.C) Hydrogen.D) Hydrocarbons.7. Car manufacturers and energy companies are reluctant in the energy reform campaignmainly because .A) They dont believe applying the new technology will be profitable.B) The infrastructure system is not ready to support hydrogen-fed cars.C) Mass production of fuel cells is still difficult in terms of technology.D) Consumers do not have belief in the long-term reliability of new fuels.8. Which is NOT included as the problems with the “reformers”?A) Fossil fuels are used in the hydrogen-fed cars.B) Reformers promote the fuel-cell development.C) Burning reformers will release carbon dioxide.D) Building vehicles with reformers is expensive.9. Why did General Motors and DaimlerChrysler favor reformers?A) Because they have confidence in fuel cells.B) Because they want to protect the environment.C) Because cars can still store fossil fuels to produce hydrogen.D) Because reformers are the necessary step towards a better economy.10. The main idea of this article is .A) How to have cars run on hydrogen remains a problem.B) Experts still argue whether hydrogen is the best substitute.C) The long-talked-about energy utopia will be realized in near future.D) Car manufacturers and energy companies cant come to an agreement.Passage 3Dr. Joseph Bell, the eminent surgeon and medical instructor, had all people wide-eyed with his deductive acrobatics.“A patient walked into the room where I was instructing the students, and his case seemed to be a very simple one. I was talking about what was wrong with him. He has been a soldier in a Highland regiment, and probably a bandsman. I pointed out the swagger in his walk, suggestive of the Highland piper; while his shortness told me that if he had been a soldier, it was probably as a bandsman. But the man insisted he was nothing but a shoemaker and had never been in the army in his life. This was rather a floorer, but being absolutely certain, I told two of the strongest clerks to remove the man to a side room and strip him. Under his left breast I instantly detected a little blue D branded on his skin. He was an army deserter. That was how they used to mark them in the Crimean days. He confessed having played in the band of a Highland regiment in the war against the Russians.”Of all the Edinburgh undergraduates, it was Conan Doyle who was the most deeply impressed by his incredible mentor. One time when the young Doyle was working as Dr.Bells assistant, a patient entered and sat down. “Did you like your walk over the golf links today, as you came in from the south of the town?” inquired Dr. Bell. The patient replied: “Why, yes, did Your Honor see me?” Dr. Bell had not seen him.“Conan Doyle could not understand how I knew,” Dr. Bell related later, “but on a showery day such as that had been, the reddish clay at bare parts of the golf links adheres to the boot, and a tiny part is bound to remain. There is no such clay anywhere else.”Thus, Conan Doyles five years as a struggling medical student and his months serving his uncanny Scotch instructor gave him both the idea for the character and much of the material that helped make him a world-famous author. But actually, when he graduated from Edinburgh University in 1881, Doyle intended to be a doctor. He nailed up his oculists shingle in a suburb of Portsmouth and waited for patients. Six years later he was still waiting. Lacking a practice, desperate for any kind of income, Doyle turned to writing. He decided to try a detective story. And for it he wanted a new kind of detective. Perhaps he looked at the photograph of Dr. Bell which he kept on the mantelpiece of his study. At any rate, he thought of Bell, and, thinking of him, hit upon his detective.He called him Sherlock Holmes after an English cricketer and Oliver Wendell Holmes.11. Dr. Bell decided that the patient (in the 2nd paragraph) was a soldier mainly because of .A) his being shortB) his way of walkingC) his refusal to be strippedD) the mark under his breast12. What did Conan Doyle learn in Edinburgh University?A) Writing.B) Surgery.C) Deduction.D) Medicine.13. What is true about Conan Doyle?A) He began writing stories to make a living.B) He had been one of Dr. Bells best students.C) He had always dreamed to be a famous writer.D) He had learned much from Dr. Bell about deduction.14. Which contributed to Conan Dolyes finally becoming a famous author?A) His intimate relationship with Dr. Bell.B) His good memory and deductive capabilityC) His interest in detective stories and his skills with words.D) His medical knowledge and working experience with Dr. Bell.15. Which of the following is NOT true about Dr. Bell and his deductive ability?A) Seeing the patient was not tall, Dr. Bell could tell with certainty he was a solider.B) From the clay attached to the boot, Dr. Bell knew where the person came from.C) By observing how people walked, he could tell what profession they were probably in.D) Conan Doyle was much impressed by Dr. Bells deductive feats while working together.Passage 4A few months before, as I was visiting Texas, I heard the taped voice used to guide passengers to their connections at the Dallas Airport announcing items in both Spanish and English. This trend is likely to continue; after all, for some southwestern states like Texas, where the largest minority is now Mexican-American, Spanish was the first written language and the Spanish style lives on in the western way of life.Shortly after my Texas trip, I sat in a campus auditorium at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee as a Yale professor whose original work on the influence of African cultures upon those of the Americas has led to his ostracism from some intellectual circles walked up and down the aisle like an old-time Southern evangelist, dancing and drumming the top of the lectern, illustrating his points before some Afro-American intellectuals and artists who cheered and applauded his performance. The professor was "white." After his lecture, he conversed with a group of Milwaukeeans all of whom spoke Yoruban, though only the professor had ever traveled to Africa.Such blurring of cultural styles occurs in everyday life in the United States to a greater extent than anyone can imagine. Yet members of the nation's present educational and cultural elite still cling to the notion that the United States belongs to some vaguely defined entity they refer to as "Western civilization," by which they mean, presumably, a civilization created by people of Europe, as if Europe can even be viewed as completely uninfluenced by the rest of the world. Is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which includes Turkish marches, a part of Western civilization? Or the late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century French paintings, whose creators were influenced by Japanese art? And what of the cubists, through whom the influence of African art changed modem painting? Or the surrealists, who were so impressed with the art of the Pacific Northwest Indians that, in their map of North America, Alaska dwarfs the lower forty-eight states in size?Are the Russians, who are often criticized for their adoption of "Western" ways by Tsarist dissidents in exile, members of Western civilization? And what of the millions of Europeans who have black African and Asian ancestry, black Africans having occupiedseveral European countries for hundreds of years? Are these "Europeans" a part of Western civilization? Or the Hungarians, who originated across the Urals in a place called Greater Hungary? Or the Irish, who came from the Iberian Peninsula?Even the notion that North America is part of Western civilization because our "system of government" is derived from Europe is being challenged by Native American historians who say that the founding fathers Benjamin Franklin especially, were actually influenced by the system of government that had been adopted by Iroqois hundreds of years prior to the arrival of Europeans.16. Why did the Dallas airport announcement speak both Spanish and English?A) The majority people living there is Mexican.B) The airport announcer was of Spanish origin.C) Spanish and English are official languages there.D) Spanish is a requi