装备指挥技术学院2010年博士研究生招生考博英语真题

　　Passage 4

　　It’s a brand new world --- a world built around brands. Hard-charging, noise-making, culture-shaping brands are everywhere. They’re on supermarket shelves, of course, but also in business plans for .com startups and in the names of sports complexes. Brands are infiltrating people’s everyday lives --- by sticking their logoes on clothes, in concert programs, on subway –station walls, even in elementary school classrooms. We live in an age in which CBS newscasters wear Nike jackets on the air, in which Burger King and McDonald’s open kiosks. in elementary school lunchrooms, in which schools like Stanford University are endowed with a Yahoo! Founders Chair. But as brands reach (and then overreach) into every aspects of our lives, the companies behind them invite more questions, deeper scrutiny—and an inevitable backlash by consumers.

　　“Our intellectual lives and our public spaces are being taken over by marketing ---and that has real implications for citizenship,” says author and activists Naomi Klien. “It’s important for any healthy culture to have public space--- a place where people are treated as citizens instead of as consumers. We’ve completely lost that space.

　　Since the mid-1980s, as more and more companies have shifted from being about products to being about ideas ----- Starbucks isn’t selling coffee; It’s selling community!----those companies have poured more and more resources into marketing campaigns.

　　To pay for those campaigns, those same companies figured out ways to cut costs elsewhere, for example, by using contract labor at home and low-wage labor in developing countries. Contract laborers are hired on a temporary, per-assignment basis, and employers have no obligation to provide any benefits (such as health insurance) or long-term job security. This saves companies money but obviously puts workers in vulnerable situations. In the United States, contract labor has given rise to so-called McJobs, which employers and workers alike pretend are temporary----even though these jobs are usually held by adults who are trying to support families.

　　The massive expansion of marketing campaigns in the 1980s coincided with the reduction of government spending for schools and for museums. This made those institutions much too willing, even eager, to partner with private companies. But companies took advantage of the needs of those institutions, reaching too far, and overwhelming the civic space with their marketing agendas.

　　51. Which of the following does the author state as a factor in the increasing presence of brands in people’s lives?

　　A. the aggressive nature of corporate marketing

　　B. the lack of government funding for schools and museums

　　C. the lack of government regulations of marketing methods

　　D. the corporate funding of public spaces

　　52. Naomi Klein’s attitude towards the infiltration of brands into spaces is one of _____.

　　A concern B ambition C outrage D acceptance

　　53. The passage suggests that most contract laborers in the U.S. _____.

　　A. pretend to be temporary workers

　　B. may have trouble supporting their families financially

　　C .have work conditions comparable to those of low-wage workers overseas .

　　D. are likely to receive health benefits from their employers

　　54. This passage is mainly about _____.

　　A. the problems with current corporate practices

　　B. the nature of current marketing campaigns and strategies

　　C. the importance of brands in American culture

　　D. the excessive presence of brand and marketing in people’s lives.

　　55. The last paragraph tells us that _____.

　　A. inadequate federal funding facilitated the privatization of schools and museums

　　B. public institutions were too quick to accept corporate marketing as a source of funding

　　C. companies manipulated schools through sophisticated ad campaigns

　　D. by the 1980s, very few public institutions were not funding by corporations

　　Section B (10 points, 2 points each)

　　Directions: In this section, there is a passage with five questions. After you have read the passage, answer each question in English with no more than 15 words. Write down your answer on the Answer Sheet.

　　Passage 5

　　Europe’s Gypsies, Are They a Nation?

　　The striving of countries in Central Europe to enter the European Union may offer an unprecedented chance to the continent’s Gypsies (吉普赛人) (or Romany) to be recognized as a nation, albeit one without a defined territory. And if they were to achieve that they might even seek some kind of formal place----at least a total population outnumbers that of many of the Union’s present and future countries. Some experts put the figure at 4m-plus; some proponents of Gypsy rights go as high as 15m.

　　Unlike Jews, Gypsies have had no known ancestral land to hark back to. Though their language is related to Hindi, their territorial origins are misty. Romanian peasants held them to be born on the moon. Other Europeans (wrongly) thought them migrant Egyptians, hence the derivative Gypsy. Most people believed that they drifted west probably from India in the 7th century.

　　However, since communism in Central Europe collapsed a decade ago, the notion of Romanestan (吉普赛语) as a landless nation founded on Gypsy culture has gained ground. The International Romany Union, which says it stands for 10m Gypsies in more than 30 countries, is fostering the idea of “self-rallying”. It is trying to promote a standard and written form of the language; it waves a Gypsy flag (green with a wheel) when it lobbies in such places as the United Nations; and in July it held a congress in Prague, The Czech capital. Where President Vaclav Havel said that Gypsies in his own country and elsewhere should have a better deal.

　　At the congress a Slovak-born lawyer, Emil Scuka, was elected president of the International Tomany Union. Later this month a group of elected Gypsy politicians, including members of parliament, mayors and local councilors from all over Europe (OSCE), to discuss how to persuade more Gypsies to get involved in politics.

　　The International Romany Union is probably the most representative of the outfits that speak for Gypsies, but that is not saying a lot. Of the several hundred delegates who gathered at its congress, few were democratically elected; oddly, none came from Hungary, whose Gypsies are perhaps the world’s best organized, with some 450 Gypsy bodies advising local councils there. The union did, however, announce its ambition to set up a parliament, but how it would actually be elected was left undecided.

　　The idea that the Gypsies should win some kind of special recognition as Europe’s largest continent wide minority, and one with a terrible history of persecution, is catching on. Gypsies have suffered many pogroms over the centuries. In Romania, the country that still has the largest number of them (more than 1m), in the 19th century they were actually enslaved. Hitler tried to wipe them out, along with the Jews.

　　56. What is the main idea of this passage?

　　57. Where are the most probable Gypsy territory origins?

　　58. What does The International Romany Union say it stands for?

　　59. According to the passage, in which country are the Gypsies the world’s best organized?

　　60. What happened to the Gypsies in the 19th century in Romania?

　　Part IV Error Detection and Correction (10 points, 1 point each)

　　Directions: Each of the following sentences has four underlined parts. These parts are labeled A, B, C and D. Identify the part of the sentence that is incorrect and mark out your choice on the Answer Sheet. Then, without altering the meaning of the sentence, write down your correction on the Answer Sheet.

　　61. Generally speaking (A), the Account Department is responsible for calculations of pay, while the Personal (B) Department is interested in discussions (C) with the employees (D) about pay.

　　62. If a firm wants to adapt (A) a new wage and salary structure, it is essential (B) that the firm should decide on a method (C) of job evaluation and ways of measuring (D) the performance of its employees.

　　63. Each of those requirements are (A) given a value (B), usually in "points", which are added (C) together to give a total (D) value for the job.

　　64. For middle and higher management (A), a special method is used for (B) evaluate managers on (C) their knowledge of the job, their responsibility (D), and their ability to solve problems.

　　65. Because of (A) the difficulty in (B) measuring management work, job grades for managers are often decided without reference of (C) an evaluation system based on (D) points.

　　66. It should also consider economic (A) factor (B) such as the cost of living (C) and the labor supply (D).

　　67. This (A) is necessary that (B) payment for a job should vary with (C) any differences in the way that (D) job is performed.

　　68. Water on the earth is being (A) recycled continuously (B) in a process knows (C) as the hydrologic cycle (D).

　　69. This groundwater is extremely important to life on earth (A), since 95 percent of the earth's (B) water is in the oceans and is too salt (C) for human beings or (D) plants.

　　70. In the future, with (A) a growing (B) population and more poisonous waste, the hydrologic cycle we depend (C) on could become dangerously unbalance (D).

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