(2018)英语专业八级历年全真试题解析(2010-2017)
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2010年英语专业八级考试真题

TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS(2010)

——GRADE EIGHT——

PART I LISTENING COMPREHENSION [25 MIN]

SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

In this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the mini-lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening to the mini-lecture, please complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE and write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each gap. Make sure the word(s)you fill in is(are)both 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.

SECTION B INTERVIEW

In this section you will hear ONE interview. The interview will be divided into TWO parts. At the end of each part, five questions will be asked about what was said. Both the interview and the questions will be spoken ONCE 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 questions.

Now, listen to Part One of the interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on Part One of the interview.

1. A. Different religions.

B. Diversity in the US.

C. A melting pot.

D. American demography.

2. A. Being different.

B. Being popular.

C. Being a US citizen.

D. Being the same.

3. A. Merging of different cultural identities.

B. More emphasis on homogeneity.

C. Embracing of more ethnic differences.

D. Acceptance of more branches of Christianity.

4. A. Branches of Christianity.

B. Christianity and Catholicism.

C. Buddhism and Christianity.

D. Various religions.

5. A. Diversity can not be seen everywhere.

B. Towns are less diverse than large cities.

C. Diversity has become a cliché.

D. America is a truly diverse country.

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

6. A. Three.

B. Four.

C. Five.

D. Six.

7. A. Maine.

B. Selinsgrove.

C. Philadelphia.

D. California.

8. A. Greater racial diversity exists among younger populations.

B. Both older and younger populations are racially diverse.

C. Age diversity could lead to pension problems.

D. Older populations are more racially diverse.

9. A. It was most evident between 1990 and 2000.

B. It exists among Muslim immigrants.

C. It is restricted to certain places in the US.

D. It is spreading to more parts of the country.

10. A. Age gaps develop between states.

B. Some places are more diverse than others.

C. Asian immigrants increased the numbers of Buddhists.

D. There is no change in California’s Caucasian population over the next 20 or so years.

PART II READING COMPREHENSION [45 MIN]

SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS

In this section there are four 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 answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

PASSAGE ONE

(1) Among the great cities of the world, Kolkata(formerly spelt as Calcutta), the capital of India’s West Bengal, and the home of nearly 15 million people, is often mentioned as the only one that still has a large fleet of hand-pulled rickshaws.

(2) Rickshaws are not there to haul around tourists. (Actually, I saw almost no tourists in Kolkata, apart from the young backpackers on Sudder Street, in what used to be a red-light district and is now said to be the single place in the city where the services a rickshaw puller offers may include providing female company to a gentleman for the evening.)It’s the people in the lanes who most regularly use rickshaws—not the poor but people who are just a notch above the poor. They are people who tend to travel short distances, through lanes that are sometimes inaccessible to even the most daring taxi driver. An older woman with marketing to do, for instance, can arrive in a rickshaw, have the rickshaw puller wait until she comes back from various stalls to load her purchases, and then be taken home. People in the lanes use rickshaws as a 24-hour ambulance service. Proprietors of cafés or corner stores send rickshaws to collect their supplies. (One morning I saw a rickshaw puller take on a load of live chickens—tied in pairs by the feet so they could be draped over the shafts and the folded back canopy and even the axle. By the time he trotted off, he was carrying about a hundred upside-down chickens.)The rickshaw pullers told me their steadiest customers are schoolchildren. Middle-class families contract with a puller to take a child to school and pick him up; the puller essentially becomes a family retainer.

(3) From June to September Kolkata can get torrential rains, and its drainage system doesn’t need torrential rain to begin backing up. Residents who favor a touch of hyperbole say that in Kolkata“if a stray cat pees, there’s a flood.”During my stay it once rained for about 48 hours. Entire neighborhoods couldn’t be reached by motorized vehicles, and the newspapers showed pictures of rickshaws being pulled through water that was up to the pullers’waists. When it’s raining, the normal customer base for rickshaw pullers expands greatly, as does the price of a journey. A writer in Kolkata told me, “When it rains, even the governor takes rickshaws.”

(4) While I was in Kolkata, a magazine called India Today published its annual ranking of Indian states, according to such measurements as prosperity and infrastructure. Among India’s 20 largest states, Bihar finished dead last, as it has for four of the past five years. Bihar, a couple hundred miles north of Kolkata, is where the vast majority of rickshaw pullers come from. Once in Kolkata, they sleep on the street or in their rickshaws or in a dera—a combination of garage and repair shop and dormitory managed by someone called a sardar. For sleeping privileges in a dera, pullers pay 100 rupees(about$2.50)a month, which sounds like a pretty good deal until you’ve visited a dera. They gross between 100 and 150 rupees a day, out of which they have to pay 20 rupees for the use of the rickshaw and an occasional 75 or more for a payoff if a policeman stops them for, say, crossing a street where rickshaws are prohibited. A 2003 study found that rickshaw pullers are near the bottom of Kolkata occupations in income, doing better than only the ragpickers and the beggars. For someone without land or education, that still beats trying to make a living in Bihar.

(5) There are people in Kolkata, particularly educated and politically aware people, who will not ride in a rickshaw, because they are offended by the idea of being pulled by another human being or because they consider it not the sort of thing people of their station do or because they regard the hand-pulled rickshaw as a relic of colonialism. Ironically, some of those people are not enthusiastic about banning rickshaws. The editor of the editorial pages of Kolkata’s Telegraph—Rudrangshu Mukherjee, a former academic who still writes history books—told me, for instance, that he sees humanitarian considerations as coming down on the side of keeping hand-pulled rickshaws on the road. “I refuse to be carried by another human being myself,”he said, “but I question whether we have the right to take away their livelihood.”Rickshaw supporters point out that when it comes to demeaning occupations, rickshaw pullers are hardly unique in Kolkata.

(6) When I asked one rickshaw puller if he thought the government’s plan to rid the city of rickshaws was based on a genuine interest in his welfare, he smiled, with a quick shake of his head—a gesture I interpreted to mean, “If you are so naive as to ask such a question, I will answer it, but it is not worth wasting words on.”Some rickshaw pullers I met were resigned to the imminent end of their livelihood and pin their hopes on being offered something in its place. As migrant workers, they don’t have the political clout enjoyed by, say, Kolkata’s sidewalk hawkers, who, after supposedly being scaled back at the beginning of the modernization drive, still clog the sidewalks, selling absolutely everything—or, as I found during the 48 hours of rain, absolutely everything but umbrellas. “The government was the government of the poor people,”one sardar told me. “Now they shake hands with the capitalists and try to get rid of poor people.”

(7) But others in Kolkata believe that rickshaws will simply be confined more strictly to certain neighborhoods, out of the view of World Bank traffic consultants and California investment delegations—or that they will be allowed to die out naturally as they’re supplanted by more modern conveyances. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, after all, is not the first high West Bengal official to say that rickshaws would be off the streets of Kolkata in a matter of months. Similar statements have been made as far back as 1976. The ban decreed by Bhattacharjee has been delayed by a court case and by a widely held belief that some retraining or social security settlement ought to be offered to rickshaw drivers. It may also have been delayed by a quiet reluctance to give up something that has been part of the fabric of the city for more than a century. Kolkata, a resident told me, “has difficulty letting go.”One day a city official handed me a report from the municipal government laying out options for how rickshaw pullers might be rehabilitated.

(8) “Which option has been chosen?”I asked, noting that the report was dated almost exactly a year before my visit.

(9) “That hasn’t been decided,”he said.

(10) “When will it be decided?”

(11) “That hasn’t been decided,”he said.

11. According to the passage, rickshaws are used in Kolkata mainly for the following EXCEPT______.

A. taking foreign tourists around the city

B. providing transport to school children

C. carrying store supplies and purchases

D. carrying people over short distances

12. Which of the following statements BEST describes the rickshaw pullers from Bihar?

A. They come from a relatively poor area.

B. They are provided with decent accommodation.

C. Their living standards are very low in Kolkata.

D. They are often caught by policemen in the streets.

13. It can be inferred from Para. 5 that some educated and politically aware people______.

A. hold mixed feelings towards rickshaws

B. strongly support the ban on rickshaws

C. call for humanitarian actions for rickshaw pullers

D. keep quiet on the issue of banning rickshaws

PASSAGE TWO

(1) Depending on whom you believe, the average American will, over a lifetime, wait in lines for two years(says National Public Radio)or five years(according to customer-loyalty experts).

(2) The crucial word is average, as wealthy Americans routinely avoid lines altogether. Once the most democratic of institutions, lines are rapidly becoming the exclusive province of suckers(people who still believe in and practice waiting in lines). Poor suckers, mostly.

(3) Airports resemble France before the Revolution: first-class passengers enjoy“élite”security lines and priority boarding, and disembark before the unwashed in coach, held at bay by a flight attendant, are allowed to foul the jetway.

(4) At amusement parks, too, you can now buy your way out of line. This summer I haplessly watched kids use a$52 Gold Flash Pass to jump the lines at Six Flags New England, and similar systems are in use in most major American theme parks, from Universal Orlando to Walt Disney World, where the haves get to watch the have-mores breeze past on their way to their seats.

(5) Flash Pass teaches children a valuable lesson in real-world economics: that the rich are more important than you, especially when it comes to waiting. An NBA player once said to me, with a bemused chuckle of disbelief, that when playing in Canada—get this—“we have to wait in the same customs line as everybody else.”

(6) Almost every line can be breached for a price. In several U.S. cities this summer, early arrivers among the early adopters waiting to buy iPhones offered to sell their spots in the lines. On Craigslist, prospective iPhone purchasers offered to pay“waiters”or“placeholders”to wait in line for them outside Apple stores.

(7) Inevitably, some semi-populist politicians have seen the value of sort of waiting in lines with the ordinary people. This summer Philadelphia mayor John Street waited outside an AT&T store from 3:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. before a stand-in from his office literally stood in for the mayor while he conducted official business. And billionaire New York mayor Michael Bloomberg often waits for the subway with his fellow citizens, though he’s first driven by motorcade past the stop nearest his house to a station 22 blocks away, where the wait, or at least the ride, is shorter.

(8) As early as elementary school, we’re told that jumping the line is an unethical act, which is why so many U.S. lawmakers have framed the immigration debate as a kind of fundamental sin of the school lunch line. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, to cite just one legislator, said amnesty would allow illegal immigrants“to cut in line ahead of millions of people.”

(9) Nothing annoys a national lawmaker more than a person who will not wait in line, unless that line is in front of an elevator at the U.S. Capitol, where Senators and Representatives use private elevators, lest they have to queue with their constituents.

(10) But compromising the integrity of the line is not just antidemocratic, it’s out-of-date. There was something about the orderly boarding of Noah’s Ark, two by two, that seemed to restore not just civilization but civility during the Great Flood.

(11) How civil was your last flight? Southwest Airlines has first-come, first-served festival seating. But for$5 per flight, an unaffiliated company called BoardFirst.com will secure you a coveted“A”boarding pass when that airline opens for online check-in 24 hours before departure. Thus, the savvy traveler doesn’t even wait in line when he or she is online.

(12) Some cultures are not renowned for lining up. Then again, some cultures are too adept at lining up: a citizen of the former Soviet Union would join a queue just so he could get to the head of that queue and see what everyone was queuing for.

(13) And then there is the U.S., where society seems to be cleaving into two groups: Very Important Persons, who don’t wait, and Very Impatient Persons, who do—unhappily.

(14) For those of us in the latter group—consigned to coach, bereft of Flash Pass, too poor or proper to pay a placeholder—what do we do? We do what Vladimir and Estragon did in Waiting for Godot: “We wait. We are bored.”

14. Which of the following is NOT cited as an example of breaching the line?

A. Going through the customs at a Canadian airport.

B. Using Gold Flash Passes in amusement parks.

C. First-class passenger status at airports.

D. Purchase of a place in a line from a placeholder.

15. It can be inferred from Para. 7 that politicians(including mayors and Congressmen)______.

A. prefer to stand in lines with ordinary people

B. advocate the value of waiting in lines

C. believe in and practice waiting in lines

D. exploit waiting in lines for their own good

16. According to the author, what do the people in the latter group do?

A. Jumping the line.

B. Paying“placeholders”.

C. Nothing but to wait.

D. Shopping online.

17. What is the tone of the passage?

A. Instructive.

B. Humorous.

C. Serious.

D. Teasing.

PASSAGE THREE

(1) A bus took him to the West End, where, among the crazy coloured fountains of illumination, shattering the blue dusk with green and crimson fire, he found the caféof his choice, a tea-shop that had gone mad and turned Babylonian, a white palace with ten thousand lights. It towered above the other building like a citadel, which indeed it was, the outpost of a new age, perhaps a new civilization, perhaps a new barbarism; and behind the thin marble front were concrete and steel, just as behind the careless profusion of luxury were millions of pence, balanced to the last halfpenny. Somewhere in the background, hidden away, behind the ten thousand lights and acres of white napery and bewildering glittering rows of teapots, behind the thousand waitresses and cash-box girls and black-coated floor managers and temperamental long-haired violinists, behind the mounds of cauldrons of stewed steak, the vanloads of ices, were a few men who went to work juggling with fractions of a farthing, who knew how many units of electricity it took to finish a steak-and-kidney pudding and how many minutes and seconds a waitress(five feet four in height and in average health)would need to carry a tray of given weight from the kitchen lift to the table in the far corner. In short, there was a warm, sensuous, vulgar life flowering in the upper storeys, and a cold science working in the basement. Such was the gigantic tea-shop into which Turgis marched, in search not of mere refreshment but of all the enchantment of unfamiliar luxury. Perhaps he knew in his heart that men have conquered half the known world, looted whole kingdoms, and never arrived in such luxury. The place was built for him.

(2) It was built for a great many other people too, and, as usual, they were all there. It steamed with humanity. The marble entrance hall, piled dizzily with bonbons and cakes, was as crowded and bustling as a railway station. The gloom and grime of the streets, the raw air, all November, were at once left behind, forgotten: the atmosphere inside was golden, tropical, belonging to some high mid-summer of confectionery. Disdaining the lifts, Turgis, once more excited by the sight, sound, and smell of it all, climbed the wide staircase until he reached his favourite floor, where an orchestra, led by a young Jewish violinist with wandering lustrous eyes and a passion for tremolo effects, acted as a magnet to a thousand girls. The door was swung open for him by a page; there burst, like a sugary bomb, the clatter of cups, the shrill chatter of white-and-vermilion girls, and, cleaving the golden, scented air, the sensuous clamour of the strings; and, as he stood hesitating a moment, half dazed, there came, bowing, a sleek grave man, older than he was and far more distinguished than he could ever hope to be, who murmured deferentially: “For one, sir? This way, please,”Shyly, yet proudly, Turgis followed him.

18. That“behind the thin marble front were concrete and steel”suggests that______.

A. modern realistic commercialism existed behind the luxurious appearance

B. there was a fundamental falseness in the style and the appeal of the café

C. the architect had made a sensible blend of old and new building materials

D. the caféwas based on physical foundations and real economic strength

19. The following words or phrases are somewhat critical of the tea-shop EXCEPT______.

A. “…turned Babylonian”

B. “perhaps a new barbarism”

C. “acres of white napery”

D. “balanced to the last halfpenny”

20. In its context the statement that“the place was built for him”means that the caféwas intended to______.

A. please simple people in a simple way

B. exploit gullible people like him

C. satisfy a demand that already existed

D. provide relaxation for tired young men

21. The author’s attitude to the caféis______.

A. fundamentally critical

B. slightly admiring

C. quite undecided

D. completely neutral

PASSAGE FOUR

(1) Now elsewhere in the world, Iceland may be spoken of, somewhat breathlessly, as western Europe’s last pristine wilderness. But the environmental awareness that is sweeping the world had bypassed the majority of Icelanders. Certainly they were connected to their land, the way one is complicatedly connected to, or encumbered by, family one can’t do anything about. But the truth is, once you’re off the beaten paths of the low-lying coastal areas where everyone lives, the roads are few, and they’re all bad, so Iceland’s natural wonders have been out of reach and unknown even to its own inhabitants. For them the land has always just been there, something that had to be dealt with and, if possible, exploited—the mind-set being one of land as commodity rather than land as, well, priceless art on the scale of the“Mona Lisa.”

(2) When the opportunity arose in 2003 for the national power company to enter into a 40-year contract with the American aluminum company Alcoa to supply hydroelectric power for a new smelter, those who had been dreaming of something like this for decades jumped at it and never looked back. Iceland may at the moment be one of the world’s richest countries, with a 99 percent literacy rate and long life expectancy. But the project’s advocates, some of them getting on in years, were more emotionally attuned to the country’s century upon century of want, hardship, and colonial servitude to Denmark, which officially had ended only in 1944 and whose psychological imprint remained relatively fresh. For the longest time, life here had meant little more than a sod hut, dark all winter, cold, no hope, children dying left and right, earthquakes, plagues, starvation, volcanoes erupting and destroying all vegetation and livestock, all spirit—a world revolving almost entirely around the welfare of one’s sheep and, later, on how good the cod catch was. In the outlying regions, it still largely does.

(3) Ostensibly, the Alcoa project was intended to save one of these dying regions—the remote and sparsely populated east—where the way of life had steadily declined to a point of desperation and gloom. After fishing quotas were imposed in the early 1980s to protect fish stocks, many individual boat owners sold their allotments or gave them away, fishing rights ended up mostly in the hands of a few companies, and small fishermen were virtually wiped out. Technological advances drained away even more jobs previously done by human hands, and the people were seeing everything they had worked for all their lives turn up worthless and their children move away. With the old way of life doomed, aluminum projects like this one had come to be perceived, wisely or not, as a last chance. “Smelter or death.”

(4) The contract with Alcoa would infuse the region with foreign capital, an estimated 400 jobs, and spin-off service industries. It also was a way for Iceland to develop expertise that potentially could be sold to the rest of the world; diversify an economy historically dependent on fish; and, in an appealing display of Icelandic can-do verve, perhaps even protect all of Iceland, once and for all, from the unpredictability of life itself.

(5) “We have to live,”HalldórÁsgrímsson said in his sad, sonorous voice. Halldór, a former prime minister and longtime member of parliament from the region, was a driving force behind the project. “We have a right to live.”

22. The disappearance of the old way of life was due to all the following EXCEPT______.

A. fewer fishing companies

B. fewer jobs available

C. migration of young people

D. imposition of fishing quotas

23. In Para. 3, the phrase“Smelter or death”probably mean______.

A. the last straw

B. the Alcoa project

C. human rights

D. fishing indusries

24. The 4th paragraph in the passage______.

A. sums up the main points of the passage

B. starts to discuss an entirely new point

C. elaborates on the last part of the 3rd paragraph

D. continues to depict the bleak economic situation

SECTION B SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS

In this section there are eight short answer questions based on the passages in SECTION A. Answer each question in NO more than 10 words in the space provided on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

PASSAGE ONE

25. What can be inferred from the dialogue between the author and a city official in Kolkata at the end of the passage?

PASSAGE TWO

26. How do the poor Americans differ from the rich according to Para. 2?

PASSAGE THREE

27. What does the author mean by saying“Turgis, once more excited by the sight, sound, smell of it all”?

28. According to the passage, what is the orchestra compared to?

29. For what purpose is railway station in Para. 2 used?

PASSAGE FOUR

30. What does“Mona Lisa”in Para. 1 mean?

31. What is Iceland’s old-aged advocates’feeling towards the Alcoa project?

32. What would diversify the economy of Iceland?

PART III LANGUAGE USAGE [15 MIN]

The passage contains TEN errors. Each indicated line contains a maximum of ONE error. In each case, only ONE word is involved. You should proof-read the passage and correct it in the following way:

For a wrong word, underline the wrong word and write the correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line.

For a missing word, mark the position of the missing word with a“^”sign and write the word you believe to be missing in the blank provided at the end of the line.

For an unnecessary word, cross the unnecessary word with a slash“/”and put the word in the blank provided at the end of the line.

Example

When^art museum wants a new exhibit, it never buys things in finished form and hangs them on the wall. When a natural history museum wants an exhibition, it must often build it.

(1)an

(2)never

(3)exhibit

Proofread the given passage on ANSWER SHEET THREE as instructed.

So far as we can tell, all human languages are equally complete and perfect as instruments of communication: that is, every language appears to be well equipped as any other to say the things their speakers want to say.

(1)__________

(2)__________

(3)__________

There may or may not be appropriate to talk about primitive peoples or cultures, but that is another matter. Certainly, not all groups of people are equally competent in nuclear physics or psychology or the cultivation of rice or the engraving of Benares brass. Whereas this is not the fault of their language. The Eskimos can speak about snow with further more precision and subtlety than we can in English, but this is not because the Eskimo language(one of those sometimes miscalled“primitive”)is inherently more precise and subtle than English. This example does not come to light a defect in English, a show of unexpected“primitiveness”. The position is simply and obviously that the Eskimos and the English live in similar environments. The English language will be just as rich in terms for different kinds of snow, presumably, if the environments in which English was habitually used made such distinctions as important.

(4)__________

(5)__________

(6)__________

(7)__________

(8)__________

(9)__________

Similarly, we have no reason to doubt that the Eskimo language could be as precise and subtle on the subject of motor manufacture or cricket if these topics formed the part of the Eskimos’life.

(10)__________

PART IV TRANSLATION [20 MIN]

Translate the underlined part of the following text from Chinese into English. Write your translation on ANSWER SHEET THREE.

朋友关系的存续是以相互尊重为前提的,容不得半点强求、干涉和控制。朋友之间,情趣相投、脾气对味则合、则交;反之,则离、则绝。朋友之间再熟悉,再亲密,也不能随便过头,不恭不敬。不然,默契和平衡将被打破,友好关系将不复存在。每个人都希望拥有自己的私密空间,朋友之间过于随便,就容易侵入这片禁区,从而引起冲突,造成隔阂。待友不敬,或许只是一件小事,却可能已埋下了破坏性的种子。维持朋友亲密关系的最好办法是往来有节,互不干涉。

PART V WRITING [45 MIN]

Recently newspapers have reported that officials in a little-known mountainous area near Guiyang, Guizhou Province wanted to turn the area into a“central business district”for Guiyang and invited a foreign design company to give it an entirely new look. The design company came up with a blueprint for unconventional, super-futuristic buildings. This triggered off different responses. Read the excerpts carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should:

1. summarize briefly the opinions from both sides;

2. give your comment.

Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.

Write your article on ANSWER SHEET FOUR.

Excerpt 1

A professor

Every culture has its special features. Buildings, as symbol of architectural heritage, are an important part of the history of any country or city. Moreover, they could help us find the answers to many questions about the historical development of our society. Therefore, I truly believe that every city-administration should try to preserve the old, historic buildings.

All over the world many buildings are preserved in their authentic appearances. Furthermore, many of them have unique constructions and are really beautiful and impressive. A lot of old buildings belonging to the historical heritage of the world are protected by UNESCO.

It is a fact that cities, where there are many old, historic buildings, are favorite places for holiday and tourism. The reason is that these cities keep their special atmosphere and could offer us a magnificent journey through their cultural and architectural history.

Nowadays people are more impressed by old architecture than modern one. For example, if the Great Wall and Tian’anmen Square are not in China, would there be as many as thousand of foreign visitors coming there just to taste the dim-sum and listen to Chinese? If Paris doesn’t have the Eiffel Tower, would there be even more traveling couples coming to this romantic city?

Excerpt 2

A journalist

It is only natural that people are comfortable with architectural designs that are tried and true. In China or overseas, you never see a public protest against blandness and mediocrity. It is the“outrageous”buildings that are the targets of malcontent.

In hindsight, we all see many of these structures eventually become icons of the places where they were erected.

The Sydney Opera House is a well-known case in point. Now, it is the symbol of the city.

The Eiffel Tower was considered“useless and monstrous”in its day, and many of the biggest names in French arts and literature attempted to stop it from being constructed.

Likewise, calls to boycott the“giant egg”in Beijing were loud and clear. But since its 2007 opening, the eggshell of a theater has been wowing both spectators and patrons alike. No doubt it is on a fast track to becoming a new wonder in the ancient capital city’s landscape.

If examined closely, “outrageous”buildings usually fall into two categories: extremely good or extremely bad.

They provoke your sensibility. Depending on your aesthetics, you’ll either love or hate them.

But even if the majority of the current population demonstrates an aversion to it, by no means does it exclude the possibility that future generation may embrace it—or even exalt it to iconic stature.

China’s urban planners are acutely aware of the power of architectural landmarks.

One building, smartly and presciently designed, may spread the reputation and even the spirit of a locale more efficiently than marketing campaigns of a massive scale. Think of Dubai’s Burj al Arab and of all the advertising dollars it may have saved the country.

It’s safe to say every Chinese city wants its equivalent of the Burj al Arab.

To achieve a higher likeliness of global fame, municipal officials have turned to international firms for designs. Almost all high-profile public projects in recent years, including Suzhou’s Gate of the Orient, got their blueprints from big-name Western architects.

I’d derive more gratification from a building that is annoying than one that is utterly forgettable.

ANSWER SHEET ONE

PART I LISTENING COMPREHENSION

SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

Paralinguistic Features of Language

In face-to-face communication speakers often alter their tones of voice or change their physical postures in order to convey messages. These means are called paralinguistic features of language, which fall into two categories.

I. First category: vocal paralinguistic features

A. (1)______: to express attitude or intention

B. examples

1. whispering: need for secrecy

2. breathiness: (2)______

3. (3)______: unimportance

4. nasality: (4)______

5. (5)______: greater intimacy

II. Second category: physical paralinguistic features

A. facial expressions

1. (6)______

—smiling: signal of pleasure or welcome

2. less common expressions

—eyebrow raising: (7)______

—lip biting: (8)______

B. gesture

Gestures are related to culture.

1. British culture

—shrugging shoulders: (9)______

—scratching head: (10)______

2. other cultures

—placing hand upon heart: (11)______

—pointing at nose: secret

C. proximity, posture and echoing

1. proximity: physical distance between speakers

—closeness: intimacy or threat

—(12)______: formality or absence of interest

Proximity is person-, culture-and(13)______-specific.

2. posture

—hunched shoulders or hanging head: to indicate(14)______

—direct level eye contact: to express an open or challenging attitude

3. echoing

—definition: imitation of similar posture

—(15)______: aid in communication

—conscious imitation: mockery