南昌大学研究生期末考试英语试题样卷

Final Test For Postgraduate Students of Grade 201X

Part L Vocabulary (20%)

a. Choose the word or phrase that is closer in meaning to the underlined one.

1. During the past decades, the international community usually under the auspices of the United

Nation, has struggled to negotiate global standards that can help us achieve many essential goals. A

・With the advanee of B・ with the addition of C・ with the view of D. with the help of

2. The mortality rate of children under five years old is an important indication of the situation of

children in a country.

A. growth B. birth C. death D. injury

3. The utilities contend that this reduced capacity will result in curtailed service and higher prices

some years down the road.

A. by the way B. along the street C. in the past D. in the future

4. Stability at that level angurs well for the market, analysts say, while a plunge through it could

B. hurdle

spark renewed selling of stocks・

C. leap

D. lead

organizatio n.

D・ formidable

cated B. confusing

C. recognizable

5. Most successful companies all over the world have well-established and identifiable lines of

have a less Dronounced taste of chocolate and they are sweeter than dark

6. Milk chocolates

chocolate and have a lighter color.

A. distinct B. spoken C・ articulated D. uttered

7. Prepare yourself for immersion into a diverse learning environment in which you'll be asked to

challenge your pre-conveived notions about your own identity and abilities.

A. rinsing B. drying C. shrinking D.

involvement

8. With the convenient online shopping services, customers can design and order npparel directly from

the virtual shops.

A. appliances B. merchandise C. utilities D. clothes

9. Meanwhile, a poll of Wall Street strategists found that not a single pundit was predicting that

American shares would fall this yea

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A. broker B. authority C. shareholder D. scholarship

10. The computer will play the pivotal role either in the basic medicine teaching or in the experimental

teaching.

ant B. crucial C. necessary D. irreplaceable

b・ Cloze

Choose an appropriate word from the box to fill in each of the following blanks. Change

the form where necessary. You may not use any of the words in the box more than once.

query

robotics

aerial

meld

cognition

cover

expression

vital

attest

arise

guideline deploy recapitulate endow collection

In the journal Science, Professor Starkey calls for ethical guidelines to (1) _____ all aspects

of robotic technology, not just in the home and workplace, but also on the battlefield, where lethal

robots such as the missile-armed Predator drones used in Iraq and Afghanistan are already (2) with

lethal effect. The US Future Combat System project aims to use robots as “force

multipliers^ ,with a single soldier initiating large-scale ground an (3) _______ attacks by a robot

droid army. “Robots for care and for war represent just two of many ethically problematic areas that

will soon (4) _________ from the rapid increase and spreading diversity of robotics applications,^

Professor Starkey said /'Scientists and engineers working in robotics must be mindful of the potential

dangers of their work, and public and international discussion is (5) ____________ in order to set

policy guidelines for ethical and safe application before the guidelines set themselves：

The call for controls over robots goes back to the 1940s when the science-fiction author Isaac

Asimov drew up his famous three laws of (6) ____ .The first rule stated that robots must not harm

people; the second that they must obey the commands of people provided them does not conflict with

the first law; and the third law was that robots must attempt to avoid harming themselves provided this

was not in conflict with the two other laws.

Asimov wrote a (7) ______ of science fiction series called I, Robot which exploited the issue

of machines and morality. He wanted to counter the long history of fictional accounts of dangerous

automatons—from the Jewish Golem to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein—and used his three laws as a

literary device to exploit the ethical issues arising from the human interaction with non-human,

intelligent beings. But late 20th-century predictions about the rise of machines (8) with superior

artificial intelligence have not been realized, although robot scientists

have given their mechanical proteges (l

、

J

客)

quasi・intelligent

(准智自

E

白勺)

traits such as simple

speech recognition, emotional (9) _____ and face recognition.

Professor Starkey believe that even dumb robots need to be controlled/Tm not suggesting like

Asimov to put ethical rules into robots, but to just to have (10) ____________ on how robots are

used

「

he said.^Current robots are not bright enough even to be called stupid. If I even thought they

would be superior in intelligence, I would not have these concerns. They are dumb machines not much

brighter than the average washing machine, and that's the problem.

Part II • Reading comprehension(20 %)

In this part, you will read four passages. You are required to choose the best answer to

each question according to the passage and then mark your answer on the Answer

Sheet by blacking the letter in the brackets.

Passage One

Archaeology

(考古学)

is a source of history, not just a humble auxiliary discipline.

Archaeological data are historical documents in their own right, not mere illustrations to written texts.

Just as much as any other historian, an archaeologist studies and tries to reconstitute the process that

has created the human world in which we live

一-

and us ourselves in so far as we are each creatures of

our age and social environment. Archaeological data are all changed in the material world resulting

from human action or, more succinctly, the fossilized results of human behavio

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The total sum of

these constitute what may be called the archaeological record・ This record exhibits peculiarities and

deficiencies the consequences of which produce a rather superficial contract between archaeological

history and the more familiar kind based upon written records.

Not all human behavior fossilizes. The words I utter and you hear as vibrations in the air are

certainly human changes in the material world and may be of great historical significance. Yet they

have no sort of trace in the archaeological records unless they are captured by a Dictaphone or written

down by a clerk. The movement of troops on the battlefield may “change the course of history^ but this

is equally ephemeral from the archaeologist^ standpoint. What is perhaps worse, most organic material

are perishable・ Everything made of wood, hide, wool, linen, grass, hair, and similar material

conditions. In a relatively brief period the archaeological record is reduced to more scraps of stone,

bone, glass, metal, and earthenware. Still modern archaeology, by applying appropriate techniques and

comparative methods, aided by a few lucky finds from peat bogs deserts, and frozen soil is able to fill

a good deal of the gap.

L What is the author^ main purpose in the passage?

A. To point out the importance of recent advances in archaeology.

B. To describe an archaeologist's education.

C・ To explain how archaeology is a source of history.

D. To encourage more people to become archaeologists・

2. The word “succinctly” in line 6 is closest in meaning to ___ •

A. concisely B. briefly C. clearly D. appropriately

3. According to the passage, the archaeological record consists of ____ •

A. spoken words of great historical significance

B. the fossilized results of human activity

C・ organic materials

D・ ephemeral ideas

4. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as an example of an organic material?

A. stone B. wool C. grass D. hair

5. The paragraph following the passage most probably discusses ____ •

A. techniques for recording oral histories

B・ certain battlefield excavation methods

C. some specific archaeological discoveries

D. building materials of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Passage Two

The modern age is age of electricity. People are so used to electric lights,radio,televisions, and

televisions that it is hard to imagine what life would be like without them. When there is a power

failure,people grope about in flicking can dielight,cars hesitate in the streets because there are no

traffic light to guide them,and food spoils in silent refrigerators・

Yet,people began to understand how electricity works only a little more than two centuries

has apparently been experimenting in this field for millions of ists are

discovering more and more that the living world may hold many interesting secrets of electricity that

could ben efit humanit y.

All living cells send out tiny pulses of the heart beats,it sends out pulses of

recorded,they form an electroencephalogram,which a doctor can study to determine how well the heart

is brain,too,sends out brain waves of electricity,which can be recorded in an

electric currents generated by most living cells are extremely small-often

so small that sensitive instruments are needed to record them. But in some animals, certain muscle

cells have become so specialized as electrical generators that they do not work as muscle cells at

large numbers of these cells are linked effects can be aston ishing ・

The electric eel is an amazing storage can send a jolt of as much as eight hundred volts

of electricity through the water in which it lives (An electric house current is only one hundred twenty

volts).As many as four-fifth of all the cells in the electric eel's body are specialized for generating

electricity,and the strength of the shock it can deliver corresponds roughly to the length of its body・

1.

What is the main idea of the passage?

A. Electric eels are potentially dangerous・

B. Biology and electricity appear to be closely related.

C. People would be at a loss without electricity.

D・ Scientists still have much to discover about electricity.

2.

The phrase "grope about"in line 3 could best be replaced by ____ •

A. feel about B. move about r away

3・ The author mentions all of the following as results of a blackout EXCEPT ____ ・

A. refrigerated food items may go bad

B・ traffic light do not work

C. people must rely on candlelight

D. elevators and escalators do not function

4.

Why does the author mention electric eels?

A. To warn the reader to stay away from them.

B. To compare their voltage to that used in houses.

C. To give an example of a living electrical generato

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D. To describe a new source of electrical powe

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5.

It can be inferred from the passage that the longer an eel is the ____ •

A. more beneficial it will be to science

B・ more powerful will be its electrical charge

C・ easier it will be to find

D. tougher it will be to eat

Passage Three

The difference between a liquid and a gas is obvious under the conditions of temperature and

pressure commonly found at the surface of the Earth. A liquid can be kept in an open container and fills

it to the level of a free surface. A gas forms no free surface but tends to diffuse throughout the space

available must therefor be kept in a closed container or held by a gravitational field,as in the case of a

planet's atmosphere. The distinction was a prominent feature of early theories describing the phase of

matte

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In the nineteenth example, one theory maintained that a liquid could be

"dissolved" in a vapor without losing its identity,and another theory held that the two phases are made

up of different kids of molecules:liquidons and gasons・ The theories now prevailing take a quite

different approach by emphasizing what liquids and gases have in common. They are both forms of

matter that have no permanent structure and they both flow are fluids.

The fundamental similarity of liquids and gases becomes clearly apparent when the temperature