2023年英语专八真题及答案.docx

TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (2023) GRADE EIGHT

PART I LISTENING COMPREHENSION (35 MIN) SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

In this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture. When the lecture is over, you will be given two minutes to check your notes, and another ten minutes to complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE, using no more than three words in each gap. Make sure the word(s) you fill in is (are) both grammatically and semantically acceptable. You may refer to your notes while completing the task Use the blank sheet for note-taking.

Now, listen to the mini-lecture.

How to Reduce Stress
Life is full of things that cause us sress. Though we may not like stress, we have to live with it.
I. Definition of stress A. (1) reaction
i. e.force exerted between two touching bodies
B. human reaction
i.e. response to (2) on someone
e.g. increase in breathing, heart rate, (3) , or muscle tension II. (4) , A. positive stress where it occurs: Christmas, wedding, (5) B. negative stress where it occurs: test-taking situations, friend’s death
III. Ways to cope with stress
A. recoginition of stress signals
—monitor for (6) of stress
—find ways to protect oneself
B. attention to body demand
—effect of (7)
C. planning and acting appropriately
—reason for planning
—(8) of planning
D. learning to (9)
—e.g. dlay caused by traffic
E. pacing activities
—manageable task
—(10)

SECTION B INTERVIEW
In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the best answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO.
Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.

1. According to the interviewer, which of the following best indicates the relationship between choice and mobility?
A. Better education→ greater mobility→more choices.
B. Better education→more choices→greater mobility.
C. Greater mobility→better education→more choices.
D. Greater mobility→more choices→better education.

2. According to the interview, which of the following details about the first poll is INCORRECT? A. Shorter work hours was least chosen for being most important.
B. Chances for advancement might have been favoured by young people.
C. High income failed to come on top for being most important.
D. Job security came second according to the poll results.

3. According to the interviewee, which is the main difference between the first and the second poll? A. The type of respondents who were invited.
B. The way in which the questions were designed.
C. The content area of the questions.
D. The number of poll questions.

4. What can we learn from the respondents' answers to items 2, 4 and 7 in the second poll? A. Recognition from colleagues should be given less importance.
B. Workers are always willing and ready to learn more new skills.
C. Psychological reward is more important than material one.
D. Work will have to be made interesting to raise efficiency.

5. According to the interviewee, which of the following can offer both psychological and monetary benefits? A. Contact with many people.
B. Chances for advancement.
C. Appreciation from coworkers.
D. Chances to learn new skills.

SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the best answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO.
Questions 6 and 7 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news.

6. According to the news item, "sleepboxes" are designed to solve the problems of A. airports.
B. passengers.
C. architects.
D. companies.

7. Which of the following is NOT true with reference to the news? A. Sleepboxes can be rented for different lengths of time.
B. Renters of normal height can stand up inside.
C. Bedding can be automatically changed.
D. Renters can take a shower inside the box.

Question 8 is based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the question.
Now listen to the news.

8. What is the news item mainly about?
A. London's preparations for the Notting Hill Carnival.
B. Main features of the Notting Hill Carnival.
C. Police's preventive measures for the carnival.
D. Police participation in the carnival.

Questions 9 and 10 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the questions.
Now listen to the news.

9. The news item reports on a research finding about A. the Dutch famine and the Dutch women.
B. early malnutrition and heart health.
C. the causes of death during the famine.
D. nutrition in childhood and adolescence.

10. When did the research team carry out the study? A. At the end of World War II.
B. Between 1944 and 1945.
C. In the 1950s.
D. In 2023.

PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN) TEXT A
My class at Harvard Business School helps students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. In each session, we look at one company through the lenses of different theories, using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what action will yield the needed results. On the last day of class, I asked my class to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves to find answers to two questions: First, How can I be sure I’ ll be happy in my career? Second, How can I be sure my relationships with my spouse and my family will become an enduring source of happiness? Here are some management tools that can be used to help you lead a purposeful life.
1. Use Your Resources Wisely. Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent shape your life’s strategy. I have a bunch of “businesses” that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise great kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, and contribute to my church. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time, energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?
Allocation choices can make your life turn out to very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: opportunities that you have never planned for emerge. But if you don’ t invest your resources wisely, the outcome can be bad. As I think about my former classmates who inadvertently invested in lives of hollow unhappiness, I can’ t help believing that their troubles related right back to a short-term perspective.
When people with a high need for achievement have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. Our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationships with your spouse and children typically doesn’ t offer the same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’ s really not until 20 years down the road that you can say, “ I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse and on a daily basis it doesn’t seem as if thing are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to under invest in their families and overinvest in their careers, even though intimate and loving family relationships are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.
If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ ll see that same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.
2. Create A Family Culture. It’s one thing to see into the foggy future with a acuity and chart the course corrections a company must make. But it’s quite another to persuade employees to line up and work cooperatively to take the company in that new direction.
When there is little agreement, you have to use “ power tools” – coercion, threats, punishments and so on, to secure cooperation. But if employee’ s ways of working together succeed over and over, consensus begins to form. Ultimately, people don’t even think about whether their way yields success. They embrace priorities and follow procedures by instinct and assumption rather than by explicit decision, which means that they’ ve created a culture. Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, acceptable methods by which member s of a group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool.
I use this model to address the question, How can I be my family becomes an enduring source of happiness? My students quickly see that the simplest way parents can elicit cooperation from children is to wield power tools. But there comes a point during the teen years when power tools no longer work. At that point, parents start wishing they had begun working with their children at a very young age to build a culture in which children instinctively behave respectfully toward one another, obey their parents, and choose the right thing to do. Families have cultures, just a companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously.
If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and the confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into family’s culture and you have think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.

11. According to the author, the key to successful allocation of resources in your life depends on whether you
A. can manage your time well B. have long-term planning
C. are lucky enough to have new opportunities D. can solve both company and family problems

12. What is the role of the statement “ Our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward” with reference to the previous statement in the paragraph?
A. To offer further explanation B. To provide a definition
C. To present a contrast D. To illustrate career development

13. According to the author, a common cause of failure in business and family relationships is
A. lack of planning B. short-sightedness C. shortage of resources D. decision by instinct

14. According to the author, when does culture begin to emerge
A. When people decide what and how to do by instinct
B. When people realize the importance of consensus
C. When people as a group decide how to succeed
D. When people use “ power tools” to reach agreement

15. One of the similarities between company culture and family culture is that
A. problem-solving ability is essential B. cooperation is the foundation
C. respect and obedience are key elements D. culture needs to be nurtured

Text B
It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a wound that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to settle down quietly at Apia (阿皮亚，西萨摩亚首都) for twelve months at least, and he felt already better for the journey. Since some of the passengers were leaving the ship next day at Pago-Pago they had had a little dance that evening and in his ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical piano. But the deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a long chair talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he had very red hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled skin which accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face, precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very low, quiet voice.
Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there had arisen the intimacy of shipboard, which is due to propinquity rather than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval they shared of the men who spent their days and nights in the smoking-room playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs. Macphail was not a little flattered to think that she and her husband were the only people on board with whom the Davidsons were willing to associate, and even the doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciously acknowledged the compliment. It was only because he was of an argumentative mind that in their cabin at night he permitted himself to carp (唠叨).
‘Mrs. Davidson was saying she didn’t know how they’d have got through the journey if it hadn’t been for us,’ said Mrs. Macphail, as she neatly brushed out her transformation (假发). ‘She said we were really the only people on the ship they cared to know.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought a missionary was such a big bug (要人、名士) that he could afford to put on frills
(摆架子).’
‘It’s not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn’t have been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot in the smoking-room.’
‘ The founder of their religion wasn’ t so exclusive,’ said Dr. Macphail with a chuckle.
‘ I’ ve asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,’ answered his wife. ‘ I shouldn’ t like to have a nature like yours, Alec. You never look for the best in people.’
He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not reply. After many years of married life he had learned that it was more conducive to peace to leave his wife with the last word. He was undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled down to read himself to sleep.
When he came on deck next morning they were close to land. He looked at it with greedy eyes. There was a thin strip of silver beach rising quickly to hills covered to the top with luxuriant vegetation. The coconut trees, thick and green, came nearly to the water’ s edge, and among them you saw the grass hous