1998年9月英语中级口译真题+音频+答案

SECTION 2: STUDY SKILLS (50 minutes)

Directions: In this section, you will read several passages. Each passage is followed by several questions based on  its  content. You  are to choose ONE best  answer, (A.), (B.), (C),or  (D.),to each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. http://tr.hjenglish.com

Questions 1～5
     An unexpectedly bitter dispute between the Royal Mail and the union of postal workers has kept Britain's postal service closed for two weeks. http://tr.hjenglish.com

      Street-comer  mail  boxes  are  sealed  and  international  mail  suspended  until  the  Union  of Communication Workers and post office management settle their differences over special pay for new recruits. 

     The strike began as a spotty, 24-hour work stoppage Aug. 31 but was extended last week to include most  of the  1,500 Royal Mail offices and more than  100,000 union members. It is the first  major  disruption of service since  1981,and has prompted discussion of further privatizing postal deliveries. British Prime Minister has said the Royal Mail is one public service that should remain  in  government  hands.  But  some  businessmen  have  pressed  British  Prime  Minister  to expand the market  for  private courier  services to include carrying large volumes of mail. The pay dispute concerns special bonuses of between ￡15 and ￡35 a week for workers in the London area where the cost of living is high and it is difficult to attract new recruits. The Royal Mail is offering the premiums to help alleviate an acute shortage of workers in London but union leader want the bonuses distributed equally across the country.

      The post  office has asked other  countries to hold all  mail  deliveries for  Britain  until  the strike is settled, because it is  difficult to  guarantee security  for  mail bags piling up  at  air  and seaports.

1. The passage suggests that a strike is happening _______. http://tr.hjenglish.com
   A. within the Union of Communication Workers
   B. within post-office management
   C. within the British government
   D. within the postal service of Great Britain
2. According to the passage, the postal strike_________.
   A. has been the second major strike since 1981
   B. has been settled by the British government
   C. has attracted many new recruits
   D. has already lasted for two weeks
3. Which of the following is NOOT true about the postal strike?
   A. The strike began as a spotty, 24 hour work stoppage Aug.31.
   B. The strike has included all the 1,500 Royal Mail offices.
   C. The strike has made the street-comer mail boxes sealed.
   D. The strike has been joined by more than 100,000 union members.
4. According to the passage, the purpose for the postal strike is________.
   A. to prompt discussion of further privatizing postal deliveries
   B. to expand the market for private courier services
   C. to have special pay for newly hired workers
   D. to offer the premiums to help workers in London.
5. What would be the best title for this passage?
   A. Britain's postal strike
   B. Britain's post-office management
   C. Britain's private courier services http://tr.hjenglish.com
   D. Britain's Royal Mail offices

Questions 6～10
      Hong Kong, where buildings rise and fall like mood swings, has never had much time for the  past.  Yet  even  by  those  normally  harried  standards,  authorities  face  a  remarkably  tight deadline for the transition between old and new airports. In the seven hours between  11:30 p.m. on  July  5, when  venerable Kai  Tak  shuts  down,  down,  and  6:30  a.m. on July  6 when HKIA opens,   a lumbering    menagerie    of  equipment    will  trek  the  39  km   from   one  to  the  other. Thousands of items have been logged and assigned a moving time.“The plan is a living thing, and it changes all the time,”says Michael Winarick, the ex-British Army colonel in charge of the  move.  The operation  actually  began    May   6,  when   the  first pieces  of  equipment   were transferred to the new site, and won't end until early August. But pressure will be greatest on the  critical night, when a parade of ungainly vehicles will take to the closed-off roads of“Kowloon — deck loaders”that equip planes, the tractors that nudgejumboj ets into position, the scuttling baggage trains and fire trucks and erect  moving staircases. Winarick admits to tense moments when  crews  discovered they  only  had  15cm to  spare under  some  overpasses:“We  looked  at letting out tire pressure.”Heaver items like the scaffolding used by maintenance crews will sail on  17 barges through Victoria Harbor. Thirty planes will take off from Kai Tak on a rare set of domestic flights, winging the  15 minutes to Chek Lap Kok. Some  1,000 police will watch over the move, which will be televised to discourage rubberneckers. But the greatest threat is beyond anyone's control: officials say that if a typhoon hits that night, they'll postpone HKLA'S opening for a week.

6. The word“trek”(paragraph 1) means__________.
   A. to go through wild country                    B. to walk slowly for pleasure
   C. to travel to a holy place                        D. to make a long hardjourney.
7. The passage suggests that authorities_________. http://tr.hjenglish.com
   A. nudgejumbojets into position before July 5
   B. watch over the move on July 6
   C. have a tight deadline for the transition
   D. look at letting out tire pressure
8. According to the passage, thirty planes will__________.
   A. trek the 39km from one to the other
   B. move along with tractors and fire trucks
   C. sail on 17 barges through Victoria Harbor
   D. fly from Kai Tak to Chek Lap Kok
9. According to the passage, the move will be televised to___________.
   A. discourage people who watch something with too much interest
   B. show to world the transition between old and new airports
   C. report the whole process of lumbering menagerie of equipment
   D. display the scuttling baggage trains, fire trucks and erect moving staircases
10.Which of the following can be the best title for this passage?
   A. Last Plane Out, Don't     Forget to Trek the 39km
   B. Last Plane Out, Don't Forget to Turn Off the Lights
   C. Last Plane Out, Don't Forget to Nudge Jumbo Jets into Position
   D. Last Plane Out, Don't Forget to Sail on 17 Barges through Victoria Harbor

Questions 11～15
Don't be Bashful
     Listening in on the CB (Citizens Band two-way radio\receiver) channels can be a lot of fun However, it is even more fun to take part in the conversations. But, don't be bashful. All of those on the air were also newcomers once. Now they are more experienced than you, they should not make fun of you if you make a boo-boo.      http://tr.hjenglish.com

     What is the most common boo-boo made by CB beginners? It's failing to release the PTT (push-to-talk)  button   on  the  microphone    when   they  stop  transmitting   (stop  talking). Just remember to push to talk and then release the PTT switch so you can listen to the reply. The PTT switch, when pushed in, turns the transmitter  on and then, when released, turns the transmitter off and reactivates the receiver.

     Brevity   (keep  it  short)  You  can  get  more  benefit  out  of  your  CB  radio,  and  so  can
everyone else, if you keep your transmissions short. You can make transmissions“crystal clear”
if you use abbreviations. The Ten-Signals Listed below are the most commonly used; however,
you may encounter local variations.

11.According to the passage, CB beginners _________.
    A. don't wait long enough between transmissions
    B. don't release the PTT Button while transmitting
    C. don't use the equipment correctly
    D. don't know when to stop talking
12. A CB user hasjust given you what you think is a very confused account of a road accident in
    your vicinity. Which Ten-Signal would you send him?
    A. 10—1                                                      B.10—9
    C. 10—11                                                    D. 10—26
13.You want to tell someone briefly where there is a package for him. You begin________.
    A.10—17                                                     B. 10—25
    C.10—16                                                     D. 10—22
14. You are due to leave the motorway five miles ahead for a secondary road, but you have heard the words “traffic jam”at the tail end of a local radio broadcast. Which Ten-Signal would you transmit? http://tr.hjenglish.com
    A.10—27                                                       B.10—30
    C.10—20                                                       D.10—13
15.You  have just  delivered  a  small  box  would  like  a  break  before  returning  to base. Which Ten-Signal would you send?
   A.10—10                                                            B10—24
   C.10—18                                                            D.10—7

Questions 16～20
      When my first  child was born, my mother-in-law said to me：“Motherhood is wonderful just  as long as you remember that A Mother’s Place is in the Wrong. No matter what you do, your children will blame you.

      Since  that  time,  almost  nine  years  ago,  I  have  carefully   monitored  mothers  and  their growing offspring to verify this maxim, and found that indeed it contains much truth.

      For  example, if a mother  stints herself to the point  of starvation to send her  darling to a good boarding school, the darling will turn round years later and accuse her of being a snob who deprived her of everyday family life. 

      If, on the other hand, a mother sends her little lamb to the local neighbourhood school; the little lamb will grumble years later that his parents didn’t give a fig for education and that is why he is illiterate and on the dole. http://tr.hjenglish.com

      If  a  women  has  a  job,  her  children  will  speak  mournfully  of  the  experience  of  being latchkey  kids who never  knew  what  it  was to  come  home to the j oy  and  security  of  a  mum baking bread in the kitchen.

      If  a  women   does  not  work,  her   daughter   will  afterwards  describe  her   old  mum    as  a
“suburban cabbage” who never “fulfilled herself”.

      If a women endures a painful and difficult marriage for the sake of the children, she will be told by those children, when grow-up, that she was an absolute fool to put up with it and should have walked out years ago.

      If  she  considers  it  to be best  to  end the  marriage, they  will  accuse her  of  causing them “paternal deprivation syndrome ”and obliging them to grow up in “a one-parent situation”.

      If you try to shield your  children from the weary realities of life, they will  say you were absurdly overprotective. http://tr.hjenglish.com

      If you try to share your troubles with them, they will say that you overburdened them with responsibilities and cheated them of their childhood.

      If you have but a single child, the child will say afterwards that you selfishly deprived it of siblings, and will tell sad stories about the loneliness of its childhood.

      If you have two children, they will describe their family background as typical, stereotyped, neurotic, introverted-a nuclear  family. Truly, a mother’s place is in the wrong-and, yea, it goes on even unto the third generation.

      When your children encounter trouble or difficulties as adults, in their own marriages or in their personalities, whom do they blame? You’ve got it in one: mother!

16. Having thought about her mother-in-law’s advice, the author_________.
   A. was inclined to doubt the advice
   B. interviewed women whose children had grown up
   C. decided to put the advice to the test
   D. asked adults about their childhood
17. The passage suggests that local schools______________.
   A. make children feel insecure
   B. have a poor educational record
   C. allow children too much freedom
   D. are for the children of “suburban cabbages
18.According to the passage, a women who divorces her husband will___________.
   A. be backed by her children
   B. be blamed by her children
   C. usually blame her husband
   D. soon lose the children’s affection
19. It can be concluded from the passage that mother________.
   A. are willing to take the blame
   B. are blamed unfairly
   C. can not be blameless
   D. cannot avoid blame
20. What would be the best title for this passage?
   A. A Great Mother Should Fulfill Herself
   B. A Typical And Stereotyped Family
   C. The Generation Gap
   D. Motherhood Is A No-Win Situation

Questions 6～10
     A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in identically the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as sacred texts. It is always much better to tell a story than to read it out of a book and, if a parent can produce an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

     A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or arousing his sadistic impulses. To prove the latter, one would have to show in controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often guilty of cruelty than those who had not. On   the  whole,  their symbolic  verbal  discharge  seems   to  be  rather a  safety valve  than  an incitement  to  overt  action. As to  fears, there are, I think, well-authenticated cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having been told the story on only one occasion. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.               

      There are also people who obj ect to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not obj ectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that instead of indulging his  fantasies in  fairy tales, the child  should be taught  how to adapt  to reality by studying  history  and   mechanics.  I  find  such  people,  I  must    confess,  so  unsympathetic  and peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of madmen attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a broomstick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their enchanted girl-friend. 

      No fairy story ever claimed to be a description of the external world and no sane child has ever believed that it was.

21. The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is_________.
    A. repeated without variation                           B. treated with reverence
    C. adapted by the parent                                 D. set in the past
22. The word“overt”(paragraph 2) means__________.
    A. acute                                                 B. authentic
    C. apparent                                           D. artificial
23. According to the passage, great fear can be stimulated in a child when a story is_______.
    A. filled with excitement                                B. heard only once
    C. repeated too often                                   D. read out of a book
24. According to the passage, the advantage claimed for repeating fairy stories to young children
    is that it_______.
    A. makes them come to terms with their fears
    B. develops their power of memory
    C. convinces them there is something to be afraid of
    D. encourages them not to have ridiculous beliefs
25. The author's mention of broomsticks and telephones is meant to suggest that_______.
    A. fairy stories are still being vividly made up
    B. children do not easily accept fairy tales as they are
    C. people try their best to modernise old fairy stories
    D. there is more concern for children's fears nowadays

Questions 26～30
      What are we? To the biologist we are member of a sub-species called Homo sapiens sapiens, which represents a division of the species known as Homo sapiens. Every species is unique and distinct: that is part of the definition of a species. But what is particularly interesting about out species? For a star, we walk upright on our hindlegs at all times, which is an extremely unusual way of getting around for a mammal. There are also several unusual features about our head, not least  of  which  is  the  very  large  brain  it  contains. A  second  unusual  feature  is  our  strangely flattened face with its prominent, down-turned nose. Apes and monkeys have faces that protrude forwards  as  a  muzzle  and  have       “squashed”noses  on  top  of  this  muzzle.  There  are  many mysteries about human evolution, and the reason for our unusually shaped nose is one of them.             

       Another  mystery  is  our  nakedness,  or  rather  apparent  nakedness. Unlike the apes, we are not covered by a coat of thick hair. Human body hair is very plentiful, but it is extremely fine and short so that, for  all practical purposes, we are naked. Very probably this has something to do with  the  second  interesting  feature  of  our  body;  the  skin  is  richly  covered  with  millions  of microscopic sweat glands. The human ability to sweat is unmatched in the primate world.

      So much for  our  appearance: what about  our behaviour? Our  forelimbs, being freed from helping us to get about, possess a very high degree of manipulative skill. Part of this skill lies in the anatomical structure of the hands, but the crucial element is, of course, the power of the brain. No matter how suitable the limbs are for  detailed manipulation, they are useless in the absence of  finely  tuned  instructions  delivered through  nerve  fibres. The  most  obvious  product  of  our hands  and brains  is technology. No  other  animal  manipulates the  world  in  the  extensive  and arbitrary  way  that  humans  do.  The termites  are  capable  of  constructing  intricately  structured mounds which create their own“air-conditioned”environment inside. But the termites cannot choose to build a cathedral instead. Humans unique because they have the capacity to choose what they do.

26. According to the author, biologists see us as_________.
    A. exactly the same as Homo sapiens
    B. totally different from Homo sapiens
    C. a divided species
    D. an interesting sub-division of Homo sapiens
27.  Which of the  following is not  an  indication  as  being  particularly interesting  about  our species?
    A. The fact that we walk.                        B The size of our hindlegs.
    C. The shape of our faces.                      D. The way our noses evolved.
28. According to the passage, other primates__________.
    A. do not sweat
    B. sweat more than human beings
    C. have larger sweat glands than humans
    D. do not sweat as much as humans
29. According to the passage, what is most important about our hands?
    A. The way they are made.                       B. They are very naked.
    C. Our control over them.                         D. Their muscular power.
30. Which of the following can be the best title of the passage?
    A. What are Human Beings:Appearance and Behaviour
    B. What are Primates: the Ability to Sweat
    C. What are Termites:Architects of the Animal World
    D. What are Human Hands Capable of: the Ability to Choose