2020年全国硕士研究生招生考试英语一预测题（一）

Section I Use of English

Directions :

Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and markA, B, Cor D on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)

People often say that “failure is the mother of success.”This cliche might have some 1____to it,but it does not tell us how to 2____turn a loss into a win, says Emmanuel Manalo,a professor of educational psychology at Kyoto University in Japan.3____,he says,“we know we shouldn't give up when we fail- -but in reality, we do.”

Manalo and his co-authors conducted a study focused on 4____one fundamental,everyday form of failure: not 5____a task. They asked 131 undergraduates to write an essay about their school experiences. Half of the students received 6___for structuring their writing, and half were 7___to their own devices;8___，however, were stopped prior to finishing. Afterward the researchers found that those in the structured group were more motivated to complete their essays, compared with those who lacked guidance-9____the latter were closer to being done.10____how to finish , 11 ____，was more important than being close to finishing.

The researchers called this finding“the Hemingway effect,"12____the author's self-reported 13____to stop writing only 14____he knew what would happen next in the story-so as to avoid writer's block when he returned to the page.Manalo believes that learning how to fail 15____can help people 16____becoming permanent failures at many tasks,such as completing a dissertation,learning a language or inventing a new technology.

Demystifying failure and teaching students not to.17____it make goals more attainable,says Stephanie Couch,executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and supporting inventors. Couch 18____ that we“should really be thinking of failure_ 19 part of a process of iterating 20____success.

1.[A] problem  [B] relation  [C] truth  [D] use

2.[A] particularly  [B] actually  [C] easily  [D] hardly

3.[A] Even so  [B] After all  [C] As a result  [D] On the contrary

4.[A] embracing  [B] experiencing  [C] recalling  [D] overcoming

5.[A] completing  [B] performing[C] giving up[D] putting off

6.[A] results  [B] pretests[C] instructions[D] rewards

7.[A] devoted   [B]left[C] used[D] limited

8.[A] all  [B]half   [C]none  [D]most

9.[A] even if  [B]asif  [C]if only  [D]only if

10.[A] Discussing   [B]Knowing  [C]Considering  [D]Asking

11.[A] in other words [B]on the other hand  [C]moreover  [D]however

12.[A] for  [B] in  [C]by  [D] like

13.[A] failure  [B] reluctance  [C] tendency  [D]freedom

14.[A] until  [B] when  [C] that  [D] all

15.[A] occasionally  [B] theoretically  [C] regularly  [D] temporarily

16.[A] avoid  [B] accept  [C] practice  [D] delay

17.[A] repeat  [B] take  [C] fear  [D] ignore

18.[A] expects  [B]adds  [C]finds  [D]admits

19.[A] about  [B]through  [C]with  [D]as

20.[A] from  [B]toward  [C]against  [D]of

Section II Reading Comprehension

Part A

Directions: !

Read the following four texts.Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B,C or D.Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)

Text 1

News of affluent parents scamming to get their kids into top universities. has again stoked complaints about college admissions. To level the socieconomic field, the College Board now plans to assign students an“adversity score”on their SAT admissions tests.The score will include 15 variables such as a student's neighborhood crime rate,housing values and poverty.These variables will feed into an algorithm with weights assigned to each variable.Out will pop a score that students won't be able to see or challenge before it goes to colleges.

Some schools have been seeking ways to quantify student socioeconomic challenges,and the adversity score would be superior to the use of race.It could also help them compare similarly situated students. High-performing low- and middle- income students could likewise benefit from being compared to peers with similar means.

Yet the new score will make college admissions even less transparent.Notably, the variables that go into the score will be based on census and proprietary College Board data.So the scores won't take into account individual circumstances and character, which is supposed to be the purpose of“holistic" admission assessments.

Middleclass kids whose parents sacrifice to send them to private schools or move to neighborhoods with better public schools would score as relatively privileged. Regardless of their own resources and opportunities, they might be compared to more affluent peers who have access to AT prep and summer camps. The score could thus prompt families to make perverse decisions.For instance, parents may refrain from moving to marginally wealthier neighborhoods.Perhaps the College Board is trying to avoid complaints that the SAT is biased against less privileged folks. White students on average score 133 points higher than Hispanics and 177 points higher than blacks. Students whose parents earn more than $ 200, 000 score roughly 170 points higher than those from households with income between $ 40,000 and $60,000.But these areaverages, and the SAT is still the best objective measure of student aptitude and has proven to be a good predictor of college performance.Test preparation can modestly boost scores, but plenty of affluent kids perform poorly and many less privileged students do well.

Most colleges, especially the higher ranked, already discount student privilege and handicap for race and socioeconomic status. In 2009 a Princeton sociologist studied 10 highly selective colleges and found that white applicants would have to score 310 points higher than blacks and 130 points higher than Hispanics to have the same odds of admission.

Schools should provide opportunity for kids of modest means or tough backgrounds,but those kids must still be able to succeed once they re admitted. The adversity score looks like a way to undermine one of the last objective measures of academic merit.No wonder people are cynical aboutcollege admissions.

21. The College Board now intends to______

[A] promote admission equality.

[B] automate admission process.

[C] replace SAT tests with the adversity score.

[D] reduce cheating on college admissions exams.

22. What is true of the adversity score?______

[A] It can assess students' ability to meet challenges.

[B] It fails to quantify the effect of race on performance.

[C] It may benefit low-income high-achieving students.

[D] It can reflect students' individual character.

23. The adversity score harms middle income kids because it______

[A] forces them to get into better public schools.

[B] compels them to move to wealthier neighborhoods.

[C] makes their investment in education get just the opposite effect.

[D] requires them to compete for SAT preps with affluent peers.

24. The author holds that the SAT______

[A] discriminates against less privileged students.

[B] overemphasizes test preparation.

[C] can measure academic merit effectively.

[D] can boost college performance greatly.

25. The Princeton study is cited to show that_____

[A] white students get higher scores because they make sound preparation.

[B] top colleges have stricter admission criteria than lower -ranked ones.

[C] schools have made efforts in reducing the effect of socioeconomic status.

[D] colleges should provide more opprtunities for kids of tough backgrounds.

Text2

The privacy wars have begun in earnest.On January 2lst France's data-protection

regulator CNIL announced that it had found Google's data-collection practices to be in breach of the European Union's new privacy law,the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).CNIL hit Google with a e 50m fine, the biggest yet levied under GDPR.

Google's fault, said the regulator, had been its failure to be clear and transparent when gathering data from users.Signing up for a Google account on an Android phone means navigating a sea of document eight-clicks-deepto understand what data about you Google is clllecting.

So far,so technical,but the bigger picture is what matters.The fine represents the first volley fired by European regulators at the heart of the business model on which Google and many other online services are based,one which revolves around the frictionless collection of personal data about customers to create personalised advertising. It is the first time that the data practices behind Google's advertising business, and thus those of a whole industry, have

been deemed ilegal.

Google says it will appeal against the ruling. a Its argument will not be over whether consent is required to clle personal data- it agrees that it is-but what quality of consent counts as sufficient. It will be an argument about the placement of tick boxes on web pages and the size of fonts in terms and conditions documents.This ntty-gritty of GDPR, the legal semantics of phrases like “informed consent”， will be decided through the courts,where GDPR will go from theoretical legislation to practical rules for running a digital empire.

This wrangling will be important enough to the digital economy's operation that the CNIL's decision is likely to end up at the EU's top court, the Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

All European regulators will need to tread carefully. For one thing，they face accusations of using GDPR to bash American technology companies parly out of envy at not having created any such giants themselves. Criticism along those lines was slung at the CNIL dcision as soon as it was announced. An obvious way to avoid it would be to apply the same level of scrutiny to European ad tech companies, of which there are plenty.

They must also avoid chasing only the biggest firms, despite the headline generating potential.There are questions for the entire ad tech ecosystem under GDPR, not just the Silicon Valley giants. The CNIL signalled that it will apply its regulatory power broadly when it fined an obscure French ad tech company called Vectaury in October.Up to now the rules that underpin the digital economy have been written by Google, Facebook et al. But with this week's fine that is starting to change.

[A] employed new methods to protect user data._____

[B] was heavily fined for violating GDPR.

[C] made its datacollection practices transparent.

[D] was required to limit the number of user accounts.

27.“The bigger picture"(Line 1, Para. 3)refers to the possible scenario that___

[A] personalised advertising will be used at large scale.

[B] European Union's privacy law will be globally adopted.

[C] American companies in Europe will be extensively investigated.

[D] the data practices of online services will be dramatically changed.

28. Google's appeal will be an argument____

[A] about whether consent is required to cllet user data.

[B] about what kind of personal data can be collected.

[C] that strengthens GDPR's theoretical foundation.

[D] that improves GDPR's practial significance.

29. The author suggests that European tech regulators should____

[A] encourage the creation of European tech giants.

[B] learn from their American counterparts.

[C] ignore the accusations and go ahead.

[D] monitor both big companies and small ones.

30. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

[A] The French fine against Google: the start of a war____

[B] EU' new privacy law: sill heavy with problems

[C] European regulators: a leading role in data protection

[D] CNIL' ruling: intended to restructure the digital economy

Text3

Criticism of Big Tech is intensifying. At Congressional hearings last week, politicians from across the aisle gave a rough ride to executives of some of the world's.most valuable companies. Amid the hubbub, the resignation of Google's Meredith Whittaker was less leader of protests inside the company last year. In an internal note to fellow employees,she warned that developers have a“short window in which to act"to stop increasingly dangerous uses of artificial intelligence.

Ms Whittaker' s resignation reflects a growing tendency for tech companies' own staff to try to serve as the moral compass and conscience of their businesses. In companies whose value relies so much on human and intellectual capital 一and in being able to attract the sharpest minds- employees have considerable potential leverage,especially collectively.

The Google Walkouts of which Ms Whittaker was a leader began in response to the

search group's treatment of sexual harassment complaints.They snowballed to encompass suggests many Big Tech companies are still not doing enough to attend to employees' concerns over corporate culture. Yet responding to internal calls to action should be an obvious choice.Threats of strikes or resignations by the talented staf who build systems risk undermining technology companies' competitiveness.Employee action can act to strengthen measures by regulators who are increasingly proactive in dealing with the excesses of Big Tech.

The rise of collective action for social good is encouraging.Traditional labour focuses such as workers' rights around pay and hours 一remain important in a sector which still also behaving ethically have more often been driven by single employees.Avenues are needed to ensure that workers can discuss potentially unethical practices without risking revenge.

Ms Whittaker' s proposal for unionisation is part of a broader chorus demanding greater employee oversight. Alphabet, Google s parent, has already faced calls from union-sponsored pension funds to add a non-executiveemployee representative to its board.While not successful this year, the move showed that stakeholders such as investors are pressing for culture change within Big Tech companies.

Workers outside the tech setor, too, are forcing companies to grapple with nterational problems. A global climate strike is planned for September，encouraging workers to join the thousands of school students who have protested over the past year.In the advertising industry, workers at over 20 agencies refused to work on fossil fuel briefs in solidarity,inspired by the Extinction Rellion protests. Big Tech, facing ever more opprobrium,should see the message is clear. To regain trust, it will have to engage not just with regulators, but

with its own employees and stakeholders.

31. We can learn from the first paragraph that Ms Whittaker_______

[B] opposed Google's risky uses of AL.

[C] disagreed with her colleagues on the future of AI.

[D] resigned because her talent in AI was not recognized.

32. The author argues in Paragraph 2 that tech companies' staff_______

[A] can serve as the moral models for traditional labour.

[B] should keep sharpening their minds.

[C] can pressure companies into behaving ethically.

[D] should improve internal collaboration.

[A] damage a company's reputation.

[B] threaten a company's competitivess.

[C] impair a company' s corporate culture.

[D] strengthen a company 's management system.

34. The author's attitude toward Ms Whittaker's proposal for unionisation is_______

[A] ambiguous.

[B] cautious.

[C] appreciative.

[D] contemptuous.

35. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?_______

[A] Employees Can Help to Make Big Tech Moral

[B] Big Tech Staff Are Diferent from Traditional Labour

[C] The Tech Sector Is Facing Ever More Criticism

[D] The Tech Sector Is in a Wave of Resignations

Text 4

When you like it, you're also exposing them to that story. And they, in turn, can expose others,and so on. We are interconnected in ways we can hardly imagine, and our little online actions can have big consequences. That can be a good thing, if the stories we share contain valuable information or ideas. But falsehoods are dangerous, and when they spread they can cause real harm. Yet we seem blindly willing to share stories whose truth we are not sure of.

Why do we transmit false information? One reason is that we too easily believe that it's actually true. We all suffer from confirmation bias, the readiness to accept evidence that confirms our views,and to rejeet evidence that contradicts them. Another reason we transmit falsehoods is that we often don't care if a story is true or not. If we treat information as more entertanment than news, then we share what pleases us, without considering what might happen if others believe it is true.

It reveals a fundamental lack of care in how we handle information. This is particularly troubling in the social media age. We have suddenly acquired unprecedented powers to transmit information in an instant to millions of others. But we have yet to learn how to handle that power mindfully and ethically.

Compare this to the history of infection disease.Changes in living conditions throungh population explosions and urbanisation introduced drastic new risks of infection. With no knowledge of how diseases actually spread, people actively contributed to the crisis with dangerous behaviour such as poor sanitation. But in time, scientific breakthroughs in our understanding of how diseases spread not only revolutionised our day to day practices from washing our hands to vaccinating our children- they set new standards of accountability in our individual behaviour. As it became commonly known that germs carry disease, we learned that sneezing on to people could be harmful to their health, And as it became known that vaccination works, we learned that it protects our kids and ourselves as well as the broader population.

We need to apply the same ethical reason in our handling of information in this age of truth decay. In his article“The Ethics of Belief”, philosopher William Clifford argued that“it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone,to believe anything upon insufficient evidence". Among his reasons for saying this were that it compromised our shared culture of respect for evidence and reason:“The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things,though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose thehabit of testing and inquiring into them".

What we urgently need now are advances in information literacy. This must start with a true appreciation of our susceptibility to falsehood and its dangers, and it must lead to an individual sense of duty to pause,think,and check before passing on information.

36. According to Paragraph 1, online users' liking behavior can

[A] build up their social connections.

[B] improve their social media influence.

[C] do harm to their originality.

[D] bring real damage to society.

37. People share false information online partly because

[A] they are easily swayed by mistaken ideas.

[B] they tend to misinterpret the actual news.

[C] they take news authenticity lightly.

[D] they get news from unreliable sources.

38. The history of infectious disease is mentioned to illustrate

[A] the importance of vaccination for health care.

[B] the power of scientific knowledge in disease control.

[C] the significance of acting for the public interests.

[D] the prevalence of truth decay in the digital world.

39. According to William Cifford, believing without evidence

[A] can be morally justifiable.

[B] is found in most cultures.

[C] encourages dishonesty in society.

[D] weakens the habit of reasoning.

Regarding information sharing, what the author tries to suggest may best be

interpreted as an ;

[A]“It's no use cerying over spilt milk".

[B]“More haste, less speed" .

[C] "Look before you leap”.

[D]“Be just to al, but trust not al".

Part B

Directions:

most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. Mark you answers on the ANSWER SHEET.(10 points)

University libraries are seeing steady, and in many cases sharp,declines in the use of the books on their shelves. The University of Virginia, one of our great public universities and an institution that openly shares detailed library circulation statistics from the prior 20 years,is a good case study. 41.______Before you criticize today's kids for their lack of bookishness, note that the trend lines are sliding southward for graduate students and faculty members, too: down 61 percent and 46 percent, respectively, at UVA.

Unlike most public libraries, the libraries of colleges and universities have always been filld with an incredibly wide variety of books, including works of literature and nonfiction, but also bound scientific journals and other highly specialized periodicals, detailed reference works,and government documents- different books for different purposes. Although many of these volumes stand ready for immersive, cover to-cover reading, others await rarer and often brief

This is as it should be: Research libraries exist to collect and preserve consulations,as part of a larger network of knowledge 42.__________This is as it should be:Research libraries exist to collect and preserve knowledge for the future as well as for the present,not to house just the latest and most popular works.

43_______As the historian Michael O' Malley humorously summarized the nature of much scholarly reading and writing,“We learn to read books and articles quickly,under pressure,for the key points or for what we can use.But we write as if a learned gentleman of leisure sits in a paneled study,savoring every word.”

With the rapidly growing number of books available online,that mode of reading has largely become digital.44.________With each of these clicks,a print circulation or in-house use of a book is lost.UVA'S ebook downloads totaled 1.7 million in 2016, an order of magnitude larger than e-circulations a decade ago.

The decline in print circulation also coincides with the increasing dominance of the article over the monograph, and the availability of most articles online. In many fields, we now have the equivalent of Spotify for research: vast databases that help scholars search millions of articles and connect them instantly to digital copies.Very few natural and social scientists continue to consult bound volumes of journals in their field, especially issues that are more and growing number that is typical of most universities.

In addition, the nature of scholarship is also changing, still with significant reading and writing, of course, but also involving the use and processing of data in a wide array of disciplines.45.________

[A] Even many monographs,carefully and slowly written by scholars,see only veryintermittent consultation, and it is not uncommon for the majority of collegecollections to be unused for a decade or more.

[B]To serve these emerging needs, Northeastern University Library has added full-time specialists in data visualization and systematic review (the process of synthesizing,statistically,exhaustive research from multiple studies)，and an entire division dedicated to new forms of digital scholarship.

[C]But there is a dfference between preservation and access, and a significantdifference, often unacknowledged, in the way we read books for research instead of pleasure.

[D]Learning to read and write academicallyis a different intellectual exercise from reading literary texts or writing everyday forms of texts.

[E]Where students or faculty once pulled volumes off the shelf to scan a table of contents or index,grasp a thesis by reading an introduction,check a reference,or trace a footnote,today they consult the library's swifly expanding ebook clletionn Google Books,or Amazon's Look Inside.

[F]College students at UVA checked out 238,000 books during the school year a decade ago;last year,that number had shrunk to just 60,000.

[G]What's even more remarkable is that ebooks seem to be supplementing regularbooks. About seven in ten adults reported that they read print books and ebookssimultaneously. Only 4 percent of people reported to be“ebook only”readers.

Part C

Directions:

Read the following text carefully and then translate underlined segments into Chinese.Your translation should be written neatly on the ANSWER SHEET.(10 points)

In the midst of uncertainty, opinions on the human prospect have tended to fall loosely into two schools. (46) The first, exceptionalism( 例外论)，holds that since humankind is unrivalled in intelligence and spirit, our species has been released from the iron laws of ecology that bind all other species. However serious the problem, cilized human beings,by ingenuity and force of will, will find a solution.

Population growth? Good for the economy,claim some of the exceptionalists,and in any case a basic human right,so let it run. Land shortages?Try fusion energy to power the desaling of sea way.Think of humankind as only the latest in a long line of exterminating agents in geological time.In any case, because our species has pulled free of old-style,mindless Nature,we have begun a different order of life.Evolution should now be alowed to proceed along this new trajectory.Finally,resources?(47)The planet has more than enough resources to last indefinitely,if human genius is allowed to address each new problem in turn, without alarmist and unreasonable restrictions imposed on economic development.

The opposing idea of reality is environmentalism, which sees humanity as a biological species tightly dependent on the natural world.(48)However formidable our intellect may be and however fierce our spirit, the argument goes, those qualities are not enough to free us from the constraints of the natural environment in which our human ancestors evolved.We cannot draw confidence from successful solutions to the smaller problems of the past.

At the heart of the environmentalist world view is the conviction that human physical and spiritual health depends on sustaining the planet in a relatively unaltered state.Natural ecosystems maintain the world exactly as we would wish it to be maintained.(49)When we pollute the global environment and extinguish the variety of life, we are breaking apart a life support system that is too complex to understand, let alone replace, in the foreseeable future.

If my tone here has not already made my position clear, I now explicitly place myself in the envionmentalist school. 1 am not so radical as to wish for a turning back of the clock.But I am radical enough to take seriously the question heard with increasing frequency:Is humanity suicidal? Is the drive to environmental conquest and self-propagation embedded so deeply in our genes as to be unstoppable?

My short answer is that humanity is not suicidal.We are smart enough and have time enough to avoid an environmental catastrophe of civlzation threatening dimensions.(50) But the technical problems are sufficiently formidable to require a redirection of much of science and technology,and the ethical ssues are so basic as to force a reconsideration of our sel-image as a species.

Section III Writing

Part A

51.Directions:

As the Spring Festival is approaching,your city is planning to run a volunteer program named“Warm Winter”to provide help for passengers at railway stations. Write a letter to apply for a volunteer position. You should specify what kind of services you would like to provide and why.

You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET.

Do not sign your name at the end of the ltter. Use“Li Ming”instead.

Do not write the address. (10 points)

Part B

52.Diretions:

Write an essay of ! 160-200 words based on the following picture. In your essay,you should

1) describe the picture briely,

2) interpret the meaning, and

3) give your comments.

Your should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (20 points)

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