研究生基础英语期末考试样卷

1. The Information Marketplace will make of us urban villagers—half urban sophisticated,

roaming the virtual globe, and half villager, spending more time at home and tending to family, friends, and the routines of the neighborhood. If our psyches tilt toward the crowded urban info-city, we will become more jaded, more oriented toward the self, and more indifferent, fickle, and casual in our relationships with others, as well as less tightly connected to our families and friends.

2. Perhaps the most difficult thing to accept in our profession permanent criticism directed at

our work. It is the background of our daily activity—and it is as necessary for us as is the plane to the carpenter. In the technological and scientific community, everyone criticizes everyone, continuously and sometimes sharply, irrespective of age or status.

3. Complicating things further, the traits a culture values most are not fixed. If cloning had

existed a few centuries ago, men with strong backs and women with broad pelvises would have been the first ones society would have wanted to reproduce. During the industrial age, however, brainpower began to count for more than muscle power.

4. Entrepreneurs are sometimes suspicious of venture capitalists for two other reasons. The

first is that they have, for richer or poorer, married a meddlesome outsider. Once a venture firm has taken a stake, it usually sticks around either until it has made the money it wants or until the company fails. Either way, it is deeply involved for five years or more. During that time it will often demand management changes and may even sack the founder for the greater good of the firm.

5. We need only consult Aldous Huxley’s prophetic novel Brave New World for a likely

answer to these questions. There we encounter a society dedicated to homogeneity and stability, administered by means of instant gratifications, and peopled by creatures of human shape but of stunted humanity that makes it all possible. They do not read, write, think, love or govern themselves. Creativity and curiosity, reason and passion exist only in a rudimentary and mutilated form. In short, they are not men at all.

Part IV Writing (20 points)

Directions:

Is it possible to replace dialects with Putonghua in the future? Is it necessary to protect dialects from being restricted?

What is your opinion on the issue? Give reasons for your answer.