2009年英语真题
part a directions:
read the following four texts answer the questions below each text by choosing a, b, c or d mark your answers on answer sheet 1 (40points)
text 1
habits are a funny thing we reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious fort of familiar routine “not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,” william wordsworth said in the 19th century in the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative implication
so it seems paradoxical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation but brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks
rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits in fact, the more new things we try – the more we step outside our fort zone – the more inherentlycreativewebee,bothintheworkplaceandinourpersonallives
but don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those rutsof procedure are worn into the brain, they’re there to stay instead, the new habits we deliberately press into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those oldroads
“the first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says dawna markova, author of the open mind “but we are taught instead to ‘decide’ , just as our president calls himself ‘the decider’ ” she adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one a good innovational thinker is always exploring the many otherpossibilities”
all of us work through problems in ways of which we’re unaware, she says researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively at the end of adolescence, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life
the current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought “this breaks the major rule in the american belief system – that anyone can do anything,” explains m j ryan, author of the 2006 book this year i will and ms markova’s business partner “that’s a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters monness knowing what you’re good at and doing even more of it creates excellence” this is where developing new habits es in
21、in wordsworth’s view, “habits” is characterized bybeing
a casual
b familiar
c mechanical
d changeable
22、brain researchers have discovered that the formation of new habits canbe
a predicted
b regulated
c traced
d guided
23、the word “ruts” (para 4) is closest in meaningto
a tracks
b series
c characteristics
d connections
24、dawna markova would most probably agreethat
a ideas are born of a relaxingmind
b innovativeness could betaught
c decisiveness derives from fantasticideas
d curiosity activates creativeminds
25、ryan’s ments suggest that the practice of standardizedtesting
a prevents new habits from beingformed
b no longer emphasizesmonness
c maintains the inherent american thinkingmode
d plies with the american beliefsystem
text 2
it is a wise father that knows his own child, but today a man can boost his paternal (fatherly) wisdom – or at least confirm that he’s the kid’s dad all he needs to do is shell out 30 for a paternity testing kit (ptk) at his local drugstore – andanother120 to get the results
more than 60, 000 people have purchased the ptks since they first became available without prescriptions last year, according to doug fogg, chief operating officer of identigene, which makes the over-the-counter kits more than two dozen panies sell dna tests directly to the public, ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to more than 2, 500
among the most popular: paternity and kinship testing, which adopted children can use to find their biological relatives and families can use to track down kids put up for adoption dna testing is also the latest rage among passionate genealogists – and supports businesses that offer to search for a family’s geographicroots
most tests require collecting cells by swabbing saliva in the mouth and sending it to the pany for testing all tests require a potential candidate with whom to pare dna
but some observers are skeptical “there’s a kind of false precision being hawked by people claiming they are doing ancestry testing,” says troy duster, a new york university sociologist he notes that each individual has many ancestors – numbering in the hundreds just a few centuries back yet most ancestry testing only considers a single lineage, either the y chromosome inherited through men in a father’s line or mitochondrial dna, which is passed down only from mothers this dna can reveal geic information about only one or two ancestors, even though, for example, just three generations back people also have six other great-grandparents or, four generations back, 14 othergreat-great-grandparents
critics also argue that mercial geic testing is only as good as the reference collections to which a sample is pared databases used by some panies don’t rely on data collected systematically but rather lump together information from different research projects this means that a dna database may have a lot of data from some regions and not others, so a person’s test results may differ depending on the pany that processes the results in addition, the puter programs a pany uses to estimate relationships may be patented and not subject to peer review or outsideevaluation