大学生英语竞赛A类阅读理解专项强化真题试卷9

Cultural imperialism, a term first coined in the 1960s, refers to cultural hegemony, or the domination of other nations, specifically as practiced by the United States, through the dissemination of a consumer ideology. Critics of the US point to the plethora of US cultural products available in other countries, particularly media products, such as music, television, movies, news and technology. They argue that the ubiquity and influence of US cultural exports threaten the cultures of other nations and communities. With the growing popularity of the Internet, many countries worried about an unregulated and uni-directional flow of information and have approved policies to control the amount and types of information available to their citizens. Those who oppose regulations declare that the leaders of these countries are opposed to freedom or progress. However, those in favor of regulations believe that their cultures and very identities may be under siege. [*] Herbert Schiller, a communications scholar, asserts that although the advent of an information society and innovations such as the Internet have been heralded as democratic, in reality both information and technology are controlled by a wealthy elite. Within Marxist theory, this is explained in terms of the “ core“ versus “ periphery“ argument, which posits the presence of global imbalances between “core“ and “periphery“ nations. Core nations such as the United States, are those with political power and economic advantages which the periphery nations are poor, so-called Third World nations. According to this perspective, information flows from the core to the periphery. Periphery nations are, thus, unwitting consumers of core values, ideology, and assumptions embedded in the information they receive. On the other hand, others argue that this theory is too simplistic because it does not account for internal dynamics within societies, and it views culture as deterministic and static. It assumes according to its critics, passivity and a lack of opposition on the part of the “dominated“ group or nation. In fact, many argue that rather than being dominated by US culture and media, people in other cultures tend to transform the intended meanings to ones which better suit their own cultural milieu. Thus, it is argued that rather than becoming “Americanized“ , for example, Asian societies have “Asianized“ US cultural exports such as McDonald’s. Other critics argue that although cultural imperialism may indeed be a factor in the exportation of certain US media products, the Internet is a different matter. It is argued that the Internet, unlike other media, has no central authority through which items are selected, written and produced. Instead, with the Internet information can be disseminated from anywhere and from anyone, meaning that information is transmitted multi-directionally. Contrary to being a tool for cultural imperialism , the Internet allows individuals to participate in their own languages and to engage in preserving and celebrating their own cultures. It is argued that the Internet, rather than promoting cultural imperialism, may in fact promote multiculturalism. In 2000, Christopher Hunter presented a paper at the International Institute of Communication Annual Conference in which he argued that although more “traditional“ types of US cultural exports may be open to reinterpretation and resistance, the values embedded in the software used in computer networks like the Internet are difficult to resist. Hunter explains that Microsoft’s Windows operating system, for example, although developed in the US, is used in over 90% of the world’s computers, Microsoft accepts cookies, which track users as they go online, without telling the user, thereby forcing the user to accept US cultural privacy norms. In fact, as Hunter points out issues of privacy invasion have been a major concern for European countries. Those who use computers may find it difficult to resist the values and beliefs embedded within their own software. Question 71 to 75 Complete the summary below with information from the passage, using three words or fewer for each blank. Cultural imperialism refers to the domination of other nations through the export of cultural products, and perhaps especially,【E1】______. It is argued that the ubiquity and popularity of 【E2】______puts too much pressure on periphery nations and communities to abandon their own cultural norms and embrace US culture. The Internet is believed by some scholars and leaders to be an example of US cultural domination because of its roots in the US and the perception that the 【E3】______has one source and moves in a uni-directional path. On the other hand, it is argued that the Internet has no centralized source of authority, and is an instrument which may【E4】______. Others, while believing that traditional types of media exports can indeed be open to re-interpretation and resistance by different societies, argue that the Internet and computer software have embedded certain US norms into their systems which make them【E5】______.

Eysenck’s research strategy begins by dividing the elements of personality into various units that can be arranged hierarchically. The basic structure in this scheme is the specific response level, which consists of specific behaviors. For example, if we watch a man spend the afternoon talking and laughing with friends, we would be observing a specific response. [*] If this man spends many afternoons each week having a good time with friends, we have evidence for the second level in Eysenck’s model, a habitual response. But it is likely that this man doesn’t limit himself to socializing just in the afternoon and just with these friends. Suppose this man also devotes a large part of his weekends and quite a few evenings to his social life. If you watch long e-nough, you might find that he lives for social gatherings, discussion groups, parties, and so on. You might conclude, in Eysenck’s terms, that this person exhibits the trait of sociability. Finally, Eysenck argues that traits such as sociability are part of a still larger dimension of personality. That is, people who are sociable also tend to be impulsive, active, lively, and excitable. All these traits combine to form the supertrait Eysenck calls extraversion. How many of these supertraits are there? Originally, Eysenck’s factor analytic research yielded evidence for two basic dimensions that could subsume all other traits: extraversion- introversion and neuroticism. Because the dimensions are independent of one another, people who score on the extraversion end of the first dimension can score either high or low on the second dimension. Further, someone who scores high on extraversion and low on neuroticism possesses different traits than does a person who scores high on both extraversion and neuroticism. Where do you suppose you fall in this model? If you are the prototypic extravert, then Eysenck describes you as “ outgoing, impulsive and uninhibited, having many social contacts and frequently taking part in group activities“. An introvert is “a quiet, retiring sort of person, introspective, fond of books rather than people“. Of course, most people fall somewhere between these two extremes, but each of us is perhaps a little more of one than the other. Eysenck argues that extraverts and introverts differ not only in terms of behavior but also in their physiological makeup. Eysenck originally maintained that extraverts and introverts have different levels of cerebral cortex arousal when in a nonstimulating, resting state. Although it may sound backward at first, he proposed that extraverts generally have a lower level of cortical arousal than do introverts. Extraverts seek out highly arousing social behavior because their cortical arousal is well below their desired level when doing nothing. In a sense, highly extraverted people are simply trying to avoid unpleasant boredom. Their problem is feeding their need for stimulation. Introverts have the opposite problem. They typically operate at an above-optimal cortical arousal level. These people select solitude and nonstimulating environments in an effort to keep their already high arousal level from becoming too aversive. Unfortunately, a great deal of research has failed to uncover the different levels of base- rate cortical arousal proposed by Eysenck. For example, introverts and extraverts show no differences in brain-wave activity when at rest or when asleep. But this does not mean that Eysenck’s original theorizing was entirely off base. Rather, there is ample evidence that introverts are more sensitive to stimulation than extraverts are. Introverts are even more responsive than extraverts when exposed to chemical stimulants, such as caffeine or nicotine. Consequently, many researchers now describe extraverts and introverts in terms of their different sensitivity to stimulation, rather than the different base rate of cortical activity Eysenck proposed. However, the effect is essentially the same. Because of physiological differences, introverts are more quickly overwhelmed by the stimulation of a crowded social gathering, whereas extraverts are likely to find the same gathering rather pleasant. Questions 56 to 60 Mark each statement as either true(T)or false(F)according to the passage.

We’re in the midst of a global interconnection that is expected to have consequences at least as profound. What would happen if all the information stored on the world’s computers were accessible via the Internet to anyone? [*] Ask Dr. Denise Nagel, executive director of the National Coalition for Patient Rights, about medical privacy. “Small-scale privacy atrocities take place every day. The technology is getting a-head of our ethics,“ says Nagel. 【R1】______Then, even more than today, the citizenry instinctively loathed the computer and its injunctions against folding, spindling, and mutilating. The public rebelled, and Congress took up the question of how much the government and private companies should be permitted to know a-bout us. 【R2】______The first Fair Credit Reporting Act, passed in 1970, overhauled what had once been a secret, unregulated industry with no provisions for due process. The new law gave consumers the right to know what was in their credit files and to demand corrections. Other financial and health privacy acts followed, although to this day no federal law protects the confidentiality of medical records. The public and private sectors took two very different approaches. Congress passed legislation requiring that the government tell citizens what records it keeps on them while insisting that the information itself not be released unless required by law. The private sector responded by letting each industry—credit-card companies, banking, insurance, marketing, advertising—create its own guidelines. 【R3】______In the old days, information stored in government databases was relatively inaccessible. Now, however, with PCs on every desktop linked to office networks and then to the Internet, data that were once carefully hidden may be only a few keystrokes away. Kevin Kelly, executive editor of Wired magazine, says: “ We think that privacy is about information, but it’s not—it’s about relationships. “ There was no privacy in the traditional village or small town: everyone knew everyone else’s secrets. And that was comfortable. “What’s gone out of whack is we don’t know who knows about us anymore. Privacy has become asymmetrical. “ 【R4】______And not surprisingly, he and others points out that what technology has taken, technology can restore. The idea is to allow computer users to decide how much information they want to reveal while limiting their exposure to intrusive marketing techniques. Website entrepreneurs learn about their customers’ tastes without intruding on their privacy. 【R5】______ Many office electronic-mail systems warn users that the employer reserves the right to monitor their e-mail. “Technology has outpaced law,“ says Marc Rotenberg, director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. Rotenberg advocates protecting the privacy of e-mail by encrypting it with secret codes so powerful that even the National Security Agency’s supercomputers would have a hard time cracking it. Such codes are legal within the United States but cannot be used abroad——where terrorists might use them to protect their secrets—without violating U. S. export laws. Rotenberg thinks we need a new government agency——a privacy agency——to sort out the issues. “We need new legal protections,“ he says, “to enforce the privacy act, and to act on behalf of privacy interests. “ Wired’s Kelly disagrees. “A federal privacy agency would be disastrous! The answer to the whole privacy question is more knowledge,“ he says. “More knowledge about who’s watching you. More knowledge about the information that flows between us. “ Questions 61 to 65 Choose from the sentences A - G the one which best fits each gap of 61 -65. There are two extra sentences which you do not need to use. A. But worse things may already be happening. B. Our culture is undergoing a kind of mass identity crisis, trying to hang on to a sense of privacy and intimacy in a global village of tens of millions. C. The result was a flurry of new legislation that clarified and defined consumer and citizen rights. D. That approach worked—to a point, when mainframes started giving way to desktop computers. E. Many online consumers, however, are skittish about leaving any footprints in cyberspace. F. It all started in the 1950s, when the US government began entering records on big mainframe computers, using nine-digit identification numbers as data points. G. The trick, says Kelly, is too restore that balance.

Laughter is a fundamental part of everyday life. It is so common that we forget how strange— and important—it is. Indeed, laughter is a “speaking in tongues“ in which we’re moved by an unconscious response to social and linguistic cues. Stripped of its variation and nuance, laughter is a regular series of short vowel-like syllables usually transcribed as “ha-ha“ , “ho-ho“ or “hee-hee“. These syllables are part of the universal human vocabulary, produced and recognized by people of all cultures. Given the universality of the sound, our ignorance about the purpose and meaning of laughter is remarkable. We somehow laugh at just the right times, without consciously knowing why we do it. Most people think of laughter as a simple response to comedy, or a cathartic mood-lifter. Instead , after ten years of research on this little-studied topic, I concluded that laughter is primarily a social vocalization that binds people together. Students in my classes confirmed the social nature of laughter by recording the circumstances of their laughter in diaries. After excluding the effects of media, the fact was striking: Laughter was thirty times more frequent in social than solitary situation and it’s a signal we send to others and it virtually disappears when we lack an audience. As anyone who has ever laughed at the sight of someone doubled over can attest, laughter is contagious. Because our laughter is under minimal conscious control, it is spontaneous and relatively uncensored. Contagious laughter is a compelling display of Homo sapiens, a social mammal. It strips away our outer layer of culture and challenges the hypothesis that we are in full control of our behavior. From these synchronized vocal outbursts come insights into the neurological roots of human social behavior and speech. The irresistibility of others’ laughter has its roots in the neurological mechanism of laugh detection. The fact that laughter is contagious raises the intriguing possibility that humans have an auditory laugh detector—a neural circuit in the brain that responds exclusively to laughter. Once triggered , the laugh detector activates a laugh generator, a neural circuit that causes us in turn to produce laughter. Furthermore, laughter is not randomly speech. There is evidence of “ the punctuation effect“ , the tendency to laugh almost exclusively at phrase breaks in speech. The pattern requires that speech has priority over laughter. Pain reduction is one of laughter’s promising applications. Rosemary Cogan, Ph. D. , a professor of psychology at Texas Tech University, found that subjects who laughed at a funny video or underwent a relaxation procedure tolerated more discomfort than other subjects. Humor may help soften intense pain and it may also help us cope with stress. In a study by Michelle Newman, Ph. D. , an assistant professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University, subjects viewed a film a-bout three grisly accidents and had to narrate it either in a humorous or serious style. Those who used the humorous tone had the lowest negative effect and tension. However, a problem with these studies is that none of them separate the effects of laughter from those of humor. None allow for the possibility that presumed effects of laughter or humor may come from the playful setting associated with these behaviors. And none evaluate the uniqueness of laughter by contrasting it with other vocalizations such as shouting. Rigorous proof that we can reduce stress and pain through laughter remains an unrealized but reasonable prospect. While we wait for definitive evidence, it can’t hurt—and it’s certainly enjoyable—to laugh. Questions 66 to 70 Answer the following questions with the information given in the passage.

The 1990s set a record for disasters worldwide. During the decade, more than $608 billion in economic losses were chalked to natural catastrophes, an amount greater than during the previous four decades combined. [*] Around the planet, a growing share of the devastation triggered by natural disasters stems from ecologically destructive practices and from putting people in harm’s way. Many ecosystems have been worn down to the point where they are no longer resilient or able to withstand natural disturbances, setting the stage for “unnatural disasters“—those made more frequent or more severe due to human actions. By degrading forests, engineering rivers, filling in wetlands, and destabilizing the climate, we are unraveling the strands of a complex ecological safety net. The enormous expansion of the human population and the built-up environment in the 20th and 21st centuries means that more people and economic activities are vulnerable. The migration of people to cities and coasts increases our vulnerability to the full array of natural hazards. The explosive growth of shantytowns in the cities of the developing world puts untold numbers of people at risk. These human-exacerbated disasters often take their heaviest toll on those who can least afford it— the poor. To date, much of the response to disasters has focused on improving weather predictions before the events and providing cleanup and humanitarian relief afterward, both of which have helped save many lives. Yet, much more can be done. Mitigation measures are far more effective when integrated into sustainable development efforts. Meanwhile, nature provides many valuable services to curb natural disasters. Healthy and resilient ecosystems are shock absorbers that protect against coastal storms and sponges that soak up floodwaters , for instance. In order to stem the ever-rising social and economic costs of disasters, we need to focus on how to mitigate them by understanding our culpability, taking steps to reduce our vulnerability. There is an important distinction between natural and unnatural disasters. Just as not every natural disturbance is a disaster, not every disaster is completely natural. We have altered many natural systems so dramatically that their ability to bounce back from disturbance has been greatly diminished. Deforestation damages watersheds, contributes to climate change, and raises the risk of fires. Destruction of coastal areas eliminates nature’s shock absorbers for coastal storms. Such human-made changes end up making naturally vulnerable areas even more vulnerable to extreme weather events. Droughts, and the famines that often follow, may be the most widely understood examples of unnatural disasters. They are triggered partly by global climate variability and partly by resource mismanagement such as deforestation, overgrazing, and the over-tapping of rivers and wells for irrigation. In contrast to human-made unnatural disasters that should be prevented, considerable effort is spent trying to stop natural disturbances that are actually beneficial. Our usual approach to natural disturbances is to try to prevent them using methods that all too often exacerbate them. In the United States, for instance, fire suppression has long been the policy, even in fire-dependent forest and grassland ecosystems. The result has been the buildup of debris that fuels very hot fires capable of destroying these ecosystems, as well as the homes that are increasingly built there. The record-setting expense of fires and fire suppression in the United States—nearly $ 1. 4 billion in federal a-gency costs in 2000—is a telling reminder of the consequences of such wrongheaded policies. In the future, climate change is expected to bring about rising sea levels and increased rainfall and cyclone activity. Unless something is done soon, countries will become even more vulnerable, with possibly twenty percent of the nation’s land area becoming submerged. It doesn’t help that large expanses of stabilizing mangroves have been removed from shores in recent years to make way for shrimp ponds, exposing the coast to additional inundation. Questions 71 to 75 Complete the summary below with information from the passage, using three words or fewer for each blank. The increase of natural disasters has alarmed human beings in recent decades. As for the reasons, unnatural disasters due to human actions take up a certain proportion. Concerning the【E1】______to disasters, the improvement of weather predictions, the offer of humanitarian relief, and most importantly,【E2】______ are especially suggested. Valuable services provided by nature should be protected to【E3】______.【E4】______, such as deforestation and destruction of coastal areas lead to unnatural disasters. In the meantime, beneficial natural disturbances are stopped guided by【E5】______.