2021考研：2020年MBA考研英语二阅读理解真题及答案解析
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2020年全国硕士研究生招生考试英语(二)全真模拟卷
section II Reading Comprehension
Part A
Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B,Cor D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)
Text 1
A decade ago, in suitably ironic fashion, Amazon reached into customers’ electronic shelves and deleted copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four which it had sold to them. Now another Big Tech firm is gearing up for a spate of digital text destruction. When Microsoft closes its ebook store later this month, every novel, biography, self-help guide and history book it sold will cease to work.
These stories of vanishing books reveal the unpleasant reality behind the convenience of online purchases. In the information age, consumers are often renters with limited control of digital products, even if these have apparently been “sold” to them. The case of the Microsoft store also demonstrates how systems for protecting copyright can penalise customers who have made legal purchases.
Microsoft is offering full refunds, plus $25 for users who have annotated their copies. Reimbursementscannot remove the feeling that retailers have been duplicitousin branding. They may point to small print showing they have loaned out books, but in many cases they have deliberately advertised them as being “sold” to users. Customers would be scandalisedif employees of a bricks-and-mortarstore pulled physical books from their nightstand on similar grounds.
The Microsoft case also shows how anti-piracy measures are not ready to deal with the closure of services. Digital Rights Management stops the copying of electronic content such as books, and music, and checks if they have been legally purchased. Microsoft’s decision to shut down its ebook DRM servers means that verification cannot take place. While there are ways to circumvent DRM, they remain illegal for most purposes in the US and EU. Given the speed at which tech companies and services rise and fall, the risk of DRM-induced disappearances will only grow.
A future in which retailers move to selling customers online products rather than in effect leasing them out — or one in which publishers drop DRM measures — is unlikely. Yet there are steps which can be taken to avoid repeating the errors of Microsoft and Amazon. Customers should be clearly presented with the truth about their ownership of products. Amazon, Microsoft and Apple all offer explicit digital rentals alongside “purchases”. They should clarify that the difference between those two categories is far smaller than their names might suggest. It is not enough to hide that fact in the small print, so that it is discovered only when content is yanked away.
Anti-privacy systems should also be future-proofed. Tech services and products are routinely killed off if they fail to meet expectations. Sellers should ensure that customers can migrate products they have paid for in those cases. To fail to do so will simply incentivise more illegal downloads.
Microsoft and Amazon’s motives have been apolitical. Yet their ability to destroy texts with ease and without consent remains slightly terrifying. The firefighters of Fahrenheit 451 and censors of Nineteen Eighty-Four look like rank amateurs in comparison. The revival of the physical bookshop and its paper-based products is no bad thing in that light. A book in hand could well be worth two on an ereader.21. In the opening paragraph, the author introduces the topic by
[A] unfolding a phenomenon
[B] raising an argument
[C] drawing an analogy
[D] making a contrast
22. The Microsoft case reveals the truth that
[A] customers tend not to make full use of what they buy
[B] online stores cannot ensure the quality of their products
[C] people are more attached to physical books than ebooks
[D] customers don't have true ownership of digital products
23. The word“duplicitous" (Line 2, Para. 3) is closest in meaning to
[A] cautious
[B] dishonest
[C] unanimous
[D] aggressive
24. We can learn from Paragraph 4 that DRM
[A] will quicken the innovation of tech companies
[B] was not designed to handle services' closure
[C] is often criticized by tech companies
[D] is effective in protecting ebooks from piracy
25. To avoid Microsoft's error, the author suggests that tech companies
[A] stop offering services for digital purchases
[B] ask publishers to abandon DRM measures
[C] enable legally purchased content to be migrated before closed
[D] try to compensate affected consumers with physical products
Text2
For the first time in history, the Earth has more people over the age of 65 than under the age of five. In another two decades the ratio will be two-to-one, according to a recent analysis by Torsten Sløk of Deutsche Bank.
Ageing slows growth in several ways. One is that there are fewer new workers to boost output. Workforces in some 40 countries are already shrinking because of demographic change. As the number of elderly people increases, governments may neglect growth-boosting public investment in education and infrastructure in favour of spending on pensions and health care. People in work, required to support ever more pensioners, must pay higher taxes. But the biggest hit to growth comes from weakening productivity. A study published in 2016, for example, examined economic performance across American states. It found that a rise of 10% in the share of a state’s population that is over 60 cuts the growth rate of output per person by roughly half a percentage point, with two-thirds of that decline due to weaker growth in productivity.
Why are older economies less productive? The answer is not, as one might suppose, that older workers are. Though some capabilities，notably physical ones, deteriorate with age, the overall effect is not dramatic.Companies can tweak employees' roles as they get older in order to make best use of the advantages of age,such as extensive experience and professional connections.
Furthermore,if weak productivity growth was caused by older workers producing less, pay patterns should reflect that. Wages would tend to rise at the beginning of a career and fall towards its end. But that is not what usually happens. Rather, according to a recent paper by Moody' s Analytics, wages are lower for everyone in companies with lots of older workers.It is not older workers' falling productivity that seems to hold back the economy,but their influence on those around them.
How this influence makes itself felt is unclear. But the authors suggest that companies with more older workers might be less eager to embrace new technologies.That might be because they are reluctant to make investments that would require employees to be retrained,given the shorter period over which they could hope to make a return on that training for those near the end of their careers.
If the evidence suggested that ageing economies struggled primarily because of slow-growing labour forces and fast- growing pension costs, it would make sense to focus policy efforts on keeping people in work longer. But if, as seems to be the case, reluctance to embrace new technologies is a bigger issue, other goals should take priority- in particular,boosting competition. In America, increasing industrial concentration and persistently high profits are spurring renewed interest in antitrust rules. The benefits of breaking up powerful firms and increasing competition might be even bigger than thought,if conservative old firms are thereby spurred to make better use of newer technologies.
26. According to Paragraph 2, ageing slows growth by diminishing_______.
[A] economic returns on education investment
[ B] governments' tax revenues
[C] motivation in the workplace
[D] the growth rate of output per person
27. Which of the following is true about older workers?_______.
[A] Their productivity falls due to physical decline.
[B] Their wages drop towards the end of their careers.
[C] They may block career opprtunities for young workers.
[D]They may drag down the wages of their colleagues.
28. It can be learned from paragraph 4 that companies with more older workers_______.
[A] invest less in new technologies
[B] spend more on retraining employees
[C] focus more on short term profits
[D] have a harder time learning new skills
29. The author suggests that ageing economies should_______.
[A] keep elderly people in the workforce longer
[B] make new technologies affordable to all firms
[C] increase competition among companies
[D] promote industrial concentration persistently
30. The author examines the issue of population ageing by_______.
[A] predicting its development trend
[B] correcting public opinions on it
[C] justifying the concerns about it
[D] presenting opportunities brought by it
Text 3
Human-induced climate change is a moral wrong. It involves one group of humans harming others. People of this generation harming those in future generations. People in the developed world harming those in the developing world. Each of us is emitting carbon that is harming those caught in climate driven superstorms, floods, droughts and conflicts. And there's the greatest moral wrong of all- the mass extinction event we have triggered that harms all life on Earth.
Yet until recently, climate change has not been argued as a moral issue. Rather, it has been presented as a technocratic problem, a cost-benefit problem, where the costs of action must be weighed against the benefits of avoiding disaster. The debates have been around taxes, jobs, growth and technologies. While such debates are important- there are better and worse ways to tackle the climate crisis- the effect has been decades of inaction, denial and delay. When something is a moral wrong,particularly a deep, systemic moral wrong,we don't wait around debating the optimum path or policy; we stop it.
Looking back in history, the climate movement can draw inspiration from another effort to right a deep moral wrong: the slavery abolition movement.Those who fought against slavery did not agonise over the costs and benefits.Their goal was morally righteous and powerfully clear: abolish slavery, make it llgal. It is time to do this for climate change: to make human carbon pollution illegal in every country in the world. It is time for a“carbon abolition" movement.
Getting every country in the world to enact carbon abolition laws seems a distant dream today. However, what set the cascade of change going was the development of abolition as a mass social movement. History tells us that mass social movements such as civil rights have always used moral arguments to change politics.I can think of no mass movement that was sparked by a cost-benefit analysis.
To catch fire this campaign needs a clear, simple demand, a rallying cry that everyone can share.“Stop climate change”is too vague and abstract,while the mixture of narrower demands“Build more solar"," Eat less meat”is too confusing. These are all crucial issues,but many people are unsure of what to make of it all.Instead, by clearly showing the immorality of carbon pollution, we can activate people's moral emotions and then focus those emotions on a specific action:making it illegal.
We have a starting point: Britain recently joined the Nordic countries, France, New Zealand, the US state of California and 19 cities around the world in adopting net zero targets.The next step is to shift these soft targets into hard carbon abolition laws.
31. Climate change has long been argued as ______.
[A] an inevitable natural disaster
[B] a most important moral issue
[C] an unforgivable human mistake
[D] a matter of costs and benefits
32. The author criticizes climate debates for ______.
[A] ignoring the benefits of climate change
[B] underestimating the costs of climate campaigns
[C] delaying the actions on climate change
[D] forming a wrong policy to tackle the crisis
33. The author's idea of a“carbon abolition”movement is inspired by ______.
[A] the efforts of climate activists
[B] the practices of civil rights leaders
[C] the fight against slavery
[D] a cost-benefit analysis
34. The slogan for ilgalizing human carbon pollution needs to be ______.
[A] calm and though-provoking
[B] simple and concrete
[C] detailed and science based
[D] passionate and radical
35. To ilgalize human carbon pollution around the world, we need to______.
[A] prove carbon pollution is the primary cause of climate change
[B] trigger widespread social movements with moral arguments
[C] change the minds of leaders through cost-benefit analysis
[D] force major carbon emitters to set carbon-reduction targets
Text 4
The rise of data analytics has made journalists and their editors confident that they know what people want.And for good reason: with a large share of news consumed on the Internet,media platforms know exactly which stories readers open,how much they read before getting bored,what they share with their friends,and the type of content that attracts them to sign up for a subscription.
Such data indicate,for example, that audiences are interested in extraordinary investigative journalism,diet and personal-finance advice, and essays about relationships and family.They prefer stories with a personal angle rather than reports on ongoing conflicts in the Middle East or city hall coverage.And they are drawn to sensational stories under“clickbait" headlines.
But if newsrooms were really giving audiences what they wanted,it seems unlikely that almost one-third of respondents in the Digital News Report,the world's largest ongoing survey of online news consumption, would report that they regularly avoid news altogether.But they did,and that figure is up three percentage points from two years ago.The most common explanation for avoiding the news media, given by 58% of those who do, is that following it has a negative effect on their mood.Many respondents also cited a sense of powerlessness.
If people are to be motivated to confront challenges that are shaping their lives,they should not be made to feel powerless.This is where so-called solutions journalism comes in.By balancing information about what needs changing with true stories about positive change,news organizations can fulfill their responsibility both to inform and to spur progress.
Reconnecting with audiences will also require media organizations to broaden their perspectives.In much of the West, it is largely white, male, middle-class journalists who decide what to cover and how. This limits news media's ability to represent diverse societies fairly and accurately.
At the same time, news media need to do a better job of contextualizing and otherwise explaining the news.While 62% of Digital News Report respondents feel that media keep them apprised of events,only half believe news outlets are doing enough to help them understand what is happening. At a time when nearly one-third of people think that there is simply too much news being reported, the solution seems clear: do less, better.
This means listening to readers, not just studying the data analytics. It means balancing good news with bad news, and offering clarifying information when needed.It also means representing diverse perspectives. Media organizations that do not make these changes will continue to lose trust and relevance.That is hardly a sound strategy for convincing consumers that their work is worth paying for.
36. Data analysis shows that readers prefer_____.
[A] news shared by their friends
[B] sensational news stories
[C] reports on local policies
[D] reports on ongoing conlicts
37. The survey from Digital News Report indicates that_____.
[A] news agencies were publishing fake data
[B] people's general interest in news is on the rise
[C] more than half of people avoid news media
[D] many people avoid reading negative news
38. Which of the following is true about solutions journalism?_____.
[A] It appeals to the public to help the powerless people.
00 [B] It emphasizes the gap between problems and solutions.
[C] It encourages readers to be positive about challenges.
[D] It reveals the society's dark side that needs changing.
39. According to paragraph 5, newsrooms in the west_____.
[A] lack racial and gender diversity
[B] are slow in deciding what to cover
[C] avoid reporting the lives of the poor
[D] are in shortage of journalists
40. To reconnect with audience, news organizations should_____.
[A] study big data analytics
[B] make news easily understood
[C] offer more news reports
[D] lower subscription prices