试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-考博英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

解放军信息工程大学

In science, a theory is a reasonable explanation of observed events that are related. A theory often involves an imaginary model that helps scientists picture the way an observed event could be produced. A good example of this is found in the kinetic molecular theory, in which gases are pictured as being made up of many small particles that are in constant motion.A useful theory, in addition to explaining past observations, helps to predict events that have not as yet been observed. After a theory has been publicized, scientist design experiments to test the theory. If observations confirm the scientists’ predictions, the theory is supported. If observations do not confirm the predictions, the scientists must search further. There may be a fault in the experiment, or the theory may have to be revised or rejected.Science involves imagination and creative thinking as well as collecting information and performing experiments. Facts by themselves are not science. As the mathematician Jules Henri Poincare said: “Science is built with facts just as a house is built with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called science any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house.”Most scientists start an investigation by finding out what other scientists have learned about a particular problem. After known facts have been gathered, the scientist comes to the part of the investigation that requires considerable imagination. Possible solutions to the problem are formulated. These possible solutions are called hypotheses.In a way, any hypothesis is a leap into the unknown. It extends the scientist’s thinking beyond the known facts. The scientist plans experiments, performs calculations, and makes observations to test hypotheses. For without hypotheses, further investigation lacks purpose and direction. When hypotheses are conformed, they are incorporated into theories.1. According to the passage, a useful theory is one that helps scientists to ______.2. Bricks are mentioned in the third paragraph to indicate how ______.3. The author implies that imagination is most important to scientists when they ______.4. What does the author imply is a major function of hypotheses?5. Which of the following statements is supported by the passage?

The world has become a world of cities. With the present rate of urban growth, the majority of the population of the world will be living in cities by the year 2000. This will transform the rural-urban equation which has marked the history of mankind up to now and will call for new paradigms (范式) and a great deal of innovation to face this phenomenon.This being so, one must accept the fact that for some years to come, no policy will be capable of stopping or reversing the present migratory trends from the rural areas to the cities in the Third World. In Africa, the urban population will reach 330 million people by the end of the century as against 150 million on 1985.The number of people living in shantytowns will inevitably increase in spite of the efforts to improve housing conditions. Africa alone needs to build 12 million housing units between now and the year 2000 to meet its most basic needs. In an ILO study, M.S.V. Sethuraman estimates that in 70 Third World cities the proportion of people living in shanty-towns varies from 15% to 70% and that about US $112 billion are required to give minimum comfort to these people by the turn of the century—about US $10 billion per year.The world population is growing at a rate of about 90 million people per year, with the Third World accounting for 80 million of them. The pressure on cities can only go on increasing. The urban population of developing countries will exceed 2 billion people by the year 2000 and since the main reason for the high demographic (人口统计的) growth is poverty, the additional population will be mostly made of people of very limited means.1. Up till now, a greater percentage of the world population has lived in ______.2. In spite of the efforts to improve housing condition, the number of people living in shantytowns will increase because ______.3. According to the passage, which of the following is true?4. If the urban population of the developing countries grows at the present rate, the additional people will face the problem of ______.5. According to the passage, the urbanization would result to ______.

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent (堕落的) and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism (拟古), like preferring candles to electric light or handsome cabs to airplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.Now it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political revival: so that the fight against bad English is not foolish and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.1. Many people believe that nothing can be done about the English language because ______.2. The word “slovenliness” in the second paragraph most probably means ______.3. The author believes that ______.4. The author believes the first stage towards the political revival of the language would be ______.5. Which of the following statement is true?

Directions: The passage contains ten errors. Each indicated line contains a maximum of one error. In each case, only one word is involved. You should proofread the passage, try to detect the errors and write down your corrections on the answer sheet.

A great deal of attention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide—the division of the world into the info (information) rich and the info poor. And that (1) does exist today. My wife and I lectured about this looming danger twenty years ago. What was less (2) then, however, were the new, positive (3) that work against the digital divide. (4), there are reasons to be (5).There are technological reasons to hope the digital divide will narrow. As the Internet becomes more and more (6), it is in the interest of business to universalize access—after all, the more people online, the more potential (7) there are. More and more (8), afraid their countries will be left (9), want to spread Internet access. Within the next decade or two, one to two billion people on the planet will be (10) together. As a result, I now believe the digital divide will (11) rather than widen in the years ahead. And that is very good news because the Internet may well be the most powerful tool for (12) world poverty that we’ve ever had.Of course, the use of the Internet isn’t the only way to (13) poverty. And the Internet is not the only tool we have. But it has (14) potential.To (15) advantage of this tool, some poor countries will have to get over their outdated anti-colonial prejudices (16) respect to foreign investment. Countries that still think foreign investment is a/an (17) of their sovereignty might well study the history of (18) (the basic structural foundations of a society) in the United States. When the United States built its industrial infrastructure, it didn’t have the capital to do so. And that is (19) America’s Second Wave infrastructure—(20) roads, harbors, highways, ports and so on—were built with foreign investment.

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