2004年武汉大学博士研究生入学考试英语阅读理解试题
阅读理解
Opponents of affirmative action say the battle over the use of race in college
admissions is hardly over, despite the Supreme Court's ruling Monday upholding the goal of a diverse student body. Higher education leaders overwhelmingly hailed the decision, saying it reaffirmed policies used by most selective colleges and universities. But some critics raised the possibility of more lawsuits, and promised to continue pressuring the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights to investigate
questionable policies.“We're talking about admissions programs, scholarships, any program...only for minorities or in which the standards used to judge admissions are substantially different,” says Linda Chavez, founder and president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative non- Others say they'll take their case to voters. “We have to seriously contest all this at the ballot box,” says University of California regent Ward Cannerly, who helped win voter approval of California's Proposition 209, which prohibits considering race or gender in public education, hiring and contracting. Because of that law, Monday's ruling had no practical impact in the state. “It may be time for us to...let the (Michigan) voters decide if they want to use race as a factor in admissions,”
Meanwhile, U. S. Education Secretary Rod Paige, consistent with President Bush's stance opposing affirmative action, said the Department of Education will “continue examining and highlighting effective race-neutral approaches to ensure broad access to and diversity within our public institutions”. Even Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O' Connor, in one of the opinions, recommended that states look for lessons in race-neutral programs being tried in California and elsewhere. While the ruling said admissions officials may consider race in the selection process, colleges and universities are not obligated to do so. “Ultimately in the debate, diversity is a choice, not a legal mandate,” says Arthur Coleman, a former
Department of Education official who now helps colleges and universities ensure The public, too, remains conflicted, largely along racial lines. According to a january poll by the non-profit research organization Public Agenda, 79% of Americans said it is important for colleges to have a racially diverse student body, while just 54% said affirmative action programs should continue. In a Gallup poll conducted days before the ruling, 49% of adults said they favor affirmative action and 43% did not, with blacks and Hispanics far more likely to favor the practice than whites. And some educators doubt that with Monday's ruling, those opposing
For now, admissions officials and university lawyers are poring over the ruling to determine how or whether to adjust policies. While most tend to be closed-mouthed
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2. What the critics said in the first paragraph amounts to the idea that ________.
D. selective colleges and universities should be punished for their discriminatory policies.
3. Connerly insists that the Court's ruling should ________. B. be contested by the Michigan voters with a
D. produce the intended practical effect before it is widely accepted
4. What is the attitude of the Department of Education towards affirmative action?
D. Indifference
5. Which of the following is True about affirmative action according to the text?
C. The minority students
6. It can be inferred from the text that one of the major objectives of affirmative action is to ________. A. ensure race-neutral programs are set up
7. Questions 11 to 15 are based
Whenever two or more unusual traits or situations are found in the same place, it is tempting to look for more than a coincidental relationship between them. The high Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau certainly have extraordinary physical
characteristics and the cultures which are found there are also unusual, though not unique. However there is no intention of adopting Montesquieu's view of climate and soil as cultural determinants. The ecology of a region merely poses some of the problems faced by the inhabitants of the region, and while the problems facing a
The appearance of the Himalayas during the late Tertiary Period and the
accompanying further raising of the previously established rages had a marked effect
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on the climate of the region. Primarily, of course, it blocked the Indian monsoon (季风) from reaching Central Asia at all. Secondarily, air and moisture from other
Prior to the raising of the Himalayas, the land now forming the Tibetan uplands had a dry, continental climate with vegetation and animal life similar to that of much of the rest of the region on the same parallel, but somewhat differen than that of the areas farther north, which were already drier. With the coming of the Himalayas and the relatively sudden drying out of the region, there was a severe thinning out of the animal and plant population. The ensuing incomplete Pleistocene glaciations (冰蚀) had a further thinning effect, but significantly did not wipe out life in the area. Thus after the end of the glaciation there were only a few varieties of life extant from the original continental species. Isolated by the Kunlun range from the Tarim basin and Turfan depression, species which had already adapted to the dry steppe climate, and would otherwise have been expected to flourish in Tibetan, the remaining native fauna and flora (动植物)multiplied. Armand describes the Tibetan fauna as not having great variety, but being “striking” in the abundance of the particular species that are present. The plant life is similarly limited in variety, with some observers finding no more than seventy varieties of plants in even the relatively fertile Eastern Tibetan valleys. with fewer than ten food crops. Tibetan “tea” is a major staple, The difficulties of living in an environment at once dry and cold. and populated with species more usually found in more hospitable climates, are great. These difficulties may well have influenced the unusual polyandrous (一妻多夫制) societies typical of the region. Lattimore sees the maintenance of multiple-husband households as being preserved from earlier forms by the harsh conditions of the Tibetan uplands, which permitted no experimentation and “froze” the cultures which came there. Kawakita, on the other hand, sees the polyandry as a way of easily permitting the best householder to become the head husband regardless of age. His detailed studies of the Bhotea village of Tsumje do seem to support this idea of polyandry as a method of talent mobility is a situation where even the best talent is barely enought for survival.
In sum, though arguments can be made that a pre-existing polyandrous system was strengthened and preserved (insofar as it has been) by the rigors of the land, it would certainly be an overstatement to lay causative factors of any stronger nature to the ecological influences in this case.
C. Social and familial organizD. All of the above.
9. The purpose of the passage is to ________.
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C. describe
10. The author 's knowledge of Tibet is probably ________.
D. limited to geological history
11. According to the passage, which of the following would probably be the most agreeable to Montesquieu?
B. some regions with similar climates will have sim
D. The plants of a country, by being the food of its people, cause the people to have 12. The species of fauna and flora remaining in Tibet after the Pleistocene glaciation can properly be called continental because they ________.
C. have been found in o
Auctions are public sales of goods, conducted by an officially approved auctioneer. He asks the crowd assembled in the auction-room to make offers, or “bids”, for the various items on sale. He encourages buyers to bid higher figures, and finally names the highest bidder as the buyer of the goods. This is called “knocking down” the goods, for the bidding ends when the auctioneer bangs a small hammer on a table at ancient Romans probably invented sales by auction, and the English word comes from the Latin auctio, meaning “increase”. The Romans usually sold in this way the spoils taken in war; these sales were called sub basra, meaning “under the spear”, a spear being stuck in the ground as a signal for a crowd to gather. In England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries goods were often sold “by the candle”: a short
Practically all goods whose qualities vary are sold by auction. Among these are coffee, hides, skins, wool, tea, cocoa, furs, spices, fruit and vegetables and wines. Auction sales are also usual for land and property, antique furniture, pictures, rare books, old china and similar works of art. The auction rooms at Christie's and Sotheby's in London and New York are world famous.
An auction is usually advertised beforehand with full particulars of the articles to be sold and where and when they can be viewed by prospective buyers. If the advertisement cannot give full details, catalogues are printed, and each group of goods to be sold together, called a “lot”, is usually given a number. The auctioneer need not begin with Lot 1 and continue in numerical order; he may wait until he registers the fact that certain dealers are in the room and then produce the lots they are likely to be interested in. The auctioneer's services are paid for in the form of a percentage of the price tha goods are sold for. The auctioneer therefore has a direct
The auctioneer must know fairly accurately the current market values of the goods
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