train2018年英语专业八级真题

2021年1月10日发(作者：羊滔)

TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (2018)

-GRADE EIGHT-

TIME LIMIIT:150 MIN

PARTI LISTENING COMPREHENSION[25 MIN]

SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

In this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the
lecture ONCE listening to mini- lecture, please complete the
gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE and write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS
for each gap. Make sure you fill in isboth grammatically and
semantically acceptable. You may use the blank sheet for note- taking.

You have THIRTY seconds to preview the gap-filling task.

Now listen to the mini-lecture. When it is over, you will be given
THREE minutes to check your work.

SECTIONB INTERVIEW

I n this section you will hear ONE interview will be
divided into TWO the end of each part, five questions will be
asked about what was the interview and the questions will be
spokenONCE ONLY. After each question there will be a ten-second pause.
During the pause, you should read the four choices of A), B), C) and D),
and mark the best answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

You have THIRTY seconds to preview the choices.

Now, listen to the first interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on
Part Oneof the interview.

Now listen to the interview.

1. A. Announcement of results.

B. Lack of a time schedule.

C. Slowness in ballots counting.

D. Direction of the electoral events.

2. A. Other voices within Afghanistan wanted so.

B. The date had been set previously.

C. All the ballots had been counted.

D. The UN advised them to do so.

3. A. To calm the voters.

B. To speed up the process.

C. To stick to the election rules.

D. To stop complaints from the labor.

4. A. Unacceptable.

B. Unreasonable.

C. Insensible.

D. Ill considered.

5. A. Supportive.

B. Ambivalent.

C. Opposed.

D. Neutral.

Now listening to Part Two of the interview. Questions 6 to 10 are
based on Part Two of the interview.

6. A. Ensure the government includes all parties.

B. Discuss who is going to be the winner.

C. Supervise the counting of votes.

D. Seek support from important sectors.

7. A. 36%-24%.

B. 46%-34%.

C. 56%-44%.

D. 66%-54%.

8. A. Both candidates.

B. Electoral institutions.

C. The United Nations.

D. Not specified.

9. A. It was unheard of.

B. It was on a small scale.

C. It was insignificant.

occurred elsewhere.

10.A. Problems in the electoral process.

B. Formation of a new government.

C. Premature announcement of results.

D. Democracy in Afghanistan.

PARTⅡREADING COMPREHENSION[25 MIN]

SECTION A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

In this section there are three passages followed by fourteen
multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are
four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you
think is the best answer and mark your answer on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

PASSAGE ONE

(1) ―Britain’s best export,‖ I was told by the Department of
Immigration in Canberra, ―is people.‖ Close on 100,000 people have
applied for assisted passages in the first five months of the year, and
half of these are eventually expected to migrate to Australia.

(2) The Australian are delighted. They are keenly ware that without
a strong flow of immigrants into the workforce the development of the
Australian economy is unlikely to proceed at the ambitious pace
currently envisaged. The new mineral discoveries promise a splendid
future, and the injection of huge amounts of American and British
capital should help to ensure that they are properly exploited, but with
unemployment in Australia down to less than 1.3 per cent, the government
is understandably anxious to attract more skilled labor.

(3) Australia is roughly the same size as the continental United
States, but has only twelve million inhabitants. Migration has accounted
for half the population increase in the last four years, and has
contributed greatly to the country’s impressive economic development.
Britain has always been the principal source – ninety per cent of
Australians are of British descent, and Britain has provided one million
migrants since the Second World War.

(4) Australia has also given great attention to recruiting people
elsewhere. Australians decided they had an excellent potential source of
applicants among the so-called ―guest workers‖ who have crossed the ir
own frontiers to work in other arts of Europe. There were estimated to
be more than four million of them, and a large number were offered
subsidized passages and guaranteed jobs in Australia. Italy has for some
years been the second biggest source of migrants, and the Australians
have also managed to attract a large number of Greeks

and Germans.

(5) One drawback with them, so far as the Australians are concerned,
is that integration tends to be more difficult. Unlike the British,
continental migrants have to struggle with an unfamiliar language and
new customs. Many naturally gravitate towards the Italian or Greek
communities which have grown up in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne.
These colonies have their own newspapers, their own shops, and their own
clubs. Their habitants are not Australians, but Europeans.

(6) The government’s avowed aim, however, is to maintain ―a
substantially homogeneous society into which newcomers, from whatever
sources, will merge themselves‖. By and large, therefore, Australia
still prefers British migrants, and tends to be rather less selective in
their case than it is with others.

(7) A far bigger cause of concerns than the growth of national
groups, however, is the increasing number of migrants who return to
their countries of origin. One reason is that people nowadays tend to be
more mobile, and that it is easier than in the past to save the return
fare, but economic conditions also have something to do with it. A
slower rate of growth invariably produces discontent –and if this
coincides with greater prosperity in Europe, a lot of people tend to
feel that perhaps they were wrong to come here after all.

(8) Several surveys have been conducted recently into the reasons
why people go home. One noted that ―flies, dirt, and outside
lavatories‖ were on the list of complaints from British immigrants, and
added that many people also complained about ―the crudity, bad manners,
and unfriendliness of the Australians‖. Another survey gave climate
conditions, homesickness, and ―the stark appearance of the Australian
countryside‖ as the main reasons for leaving.

(9) Most British migrants miss council housing the National Health
scheme, and their relatives and former neighbor. Loneliness is a big
factor, especially among housewives. The men soon make new friends at
work, but wives tend to find it much harder to get used to a different
way of life. Many are housebound because of inadequate public transport
in most outlying suburbs, and regular correspondence with their old
friends at home only serves to increase their discontent. One housewife
was quoted recently as saying: ―I even find I miss the people I used to
hate at home.‖

(10) Rent are high, and there are long waiting lists for Housing
Commission homes. Sickness can be an expensive business and the climate
can be unexpectedly rough. The gap between Australian and British wage
packets is no longer big, and people are generally expected to work
harder here than they do at home. Professional men over forty often have
difficulty in finding a decent job. Above all, perhaps, skilled
immigrants often finds a considerable reluctance to accept their
qualifications.

(11) According to the journal Australian Manufacturer, the attitude
of many employers and fellow workers is anything but friendly. ―We
Australians,‖ it stated in a recent issue, ―are just too fond of
painting the rosy picture of the big, warm- hearted Aussie. As a matter
of fact, we are so busy blowing our own trumpets that we have not not
time to be warm-hearted and considerate. Go down ―heart-break alley‖
among some of the migrants and find out just how expansive the Aussie is
to his immigrants.‖

Australians want a strong flow of immigrants because .

ants speed up economic expansion

oyment is down to a low figure

ants attract foreign capital

lia is as large as the United States

lia prefers immigrants from Britain because .

are selected carefully before entry

are likely to form national groups

easily merge into local communities

are fond of living in small towns

explaining why some migrants return to Europe the author .

es their economic motives

izes the variety of their motives

es loneliness and homesickness

izes the difficulties of men over forty

of the following words is used literally, not
metaphorically?

A.―flow‖ (Para. 2).

B.―injection‖ (Para. 2).

C.―gravitate‖(Para. 5).

D.―selective‖(Para. 6).

. 11 pictures the Australians as .

athetic

rous

nstrative

able

PASSAGE TWO

(1) Some of the advantages of bilingualism include better
performance at tasks involving ―executive function‖ (which involves
the brain’s ability to plan and prioritize), better defense against
dementia in old age and—the obvious—the ability to speak a second
language. One purported advantage was not mentioned, though. Many
multilinguals report different personalities, or even different
worldviews, when they speak their different languages.

(2) It’s an exciting notion, the idea that one’s very self coul d
be broadened by the mastery of two or more languages. In obvious ways
(exposure to new friends, literature and so forth) the self really is
broadened. Yet it is different to claim—as many people do—to have a
different personality when using a different language. A former
Economist colleague, for example, reported being ruder in Hebrew than in
English. So what is going on here?

(3) Benjamin Lee Whorf, an American linguist who died in 1941, held
that each language

encodes a worldview that significantly infl uences its speakers.
Often called ―Whorfianism‖, this idea has its sceptics,but there are
still good reasons to believe language shapes thought. (4) This
influence is not necessarily linked to the vocabulary or grammar of a
second language. Significantly, most people are not symmetrically
bilingual. Many have learned one language at home from parents, and
another later in life, usually at school. So bilinguals usually have
different strengths and weaknesses in their different languages—and
they are not always best in their first language. For example, when
tested in a foreign language, people are less likely to fall into a
cognitive trap (answering a test question with an obvious-seeming but
wrong answer) than when tested in their native language. In part this is
because working in a second language slows down the thinking. No wonder
people feel different when speaking them. And no wonder they feel looser,
more spontaneous, perhaps more assertive or funnier or blunter, in the
language they were reared in from childhood.

(5) What of ―crib‖ bilinguals, raised in two languages? Even they
do not usually have perfectly symmetrical competence in their two
languages. But even for a speaker whose two languages are very nearly
the same in ability, there is another big reason that person will feel
different in the two languages. This is because there is an important
distinction between bilingualism and biculturalism.

(6) Many bilinguals are not bicultural. But some are. And of those
bicultural bilinguals, we should be little surprised that they feel
different in their two languages. Experiments in psychology have shown
the power of ―priming‖—small unnoticed factors that can affect
behavior in big ways. Asking people to tell a happy story, for example,
will put them in a better mood. The choice between two languages is a
huge prime. Speaking Spanish rather than English, for a bilingual and
bicultural Puerto Rican in New York, might conjure feelings of family
and home. Switching to English might prime the same person to think of
school and work.

(7) So there are two very good reasons (asymmetrical ability, and
priming) that make people feel different speaking their different
languages. We are still left with a third kind of argument, though. An
economist recently interviewed here at Prospero, Athanasia Chalari, said
for example that:

Greeks are very loud and they interrupt each other very often. The
reason for that is the Greek grammar and syntax. When Greeks talk they
begin their sentences with verbs and the form of the verb includes a lot
of information so you already know what they are talking about after the
first word and can interrupt more easily.