2013年 阅读及英美文学、语言学基础.docxVIP

第PAGE 机密 ★ 启用前和使用过程中 厦门大学2013年招收攻读硕士学位研究生 入 学 考 试 试 题 科目代码：814 科目名称：阅读及英美文学、语言学基础 招生专业：英语语言文学、外国语言学及应用语言 考生须知：答题书写须使用黑（蓝）色字迹钢笔、签字笔或圆珠笔；各类答案（包括选择题、填空题）均须写在答题纸上规定处，不得直接在试卷（试题纸）或草稿纸上作答；凡未按上述规定作答均不予评阅、判分，后果考生自负。 Part One Reading Comprehension 70 points Passage 1 In 1575—over 400 years ago—the French scholar Louis Le Roy published a leaned book in which he voiced despair over the changes caused by the social and technological innovations of his time, what we now call the Renaissance. We also feel that our times are out of joint; we even have reason to believe that our descendants will be worse off than we are. The earth will soon be overcrowded and its resources exhausted. Pollution will ruin the environment, upset he climate, damage human health. The gap in living standards between the rich and the poor will widen and lead the angry, hungry people of the world to acts of desperation including the use of nuclear weapons as blackmail. Such are the inevitable consequences of population and technological growth if present trends continue. The future is never a projection of the past. Animals probably have no choice to escape from the tyranny of biological evolution, but human beings are blessed with the freedom of social evolution. For us, trend is not destiny. The escape from existing trends is now facilitated by the fact that societies anticipate future dangers and take preventive steps against expected changes. Despite the widespread belief that the world has become too complex for comprehension by the human brain, modern societies have often responded effectively to critical situations. The decrease in birth rates, the partial prohibition of pesticides and the rethinking of technological of the production and use of energy are but a few examples illustrating a sudden reversal of trends caused not by political upsets or scientific breakthroughs, but by public awareness of consequences. Even more striking are the situations in which social attitu