全国2014年4月自考英语科技文选真题

绝密 ★ 考试结束前

全国2014年4月高等教育自学考试

英语科技文选试题

课程代码：00836

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选择题部分

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I. Directions: Read through the following passages. Choose the best answer and blacken the corresponding letter A,B,C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. (20%)

(A)

Babies living in bilingual homes get a perceptual boost by 8 months of age that may set the stage for more resilient thinking later in life,scientists reported on February 18 at the American Association of the Advancement of Science annual meeting. Infants raised bilingual from birth can distinguish not only between their two native tongues but between two languages they’ve never been exposed to,just by watching adults speak without hearing what they say,said psychologist Janet Werker of the University of British Columbia. Babies being raised to speak one language lack these visual discrimination skills,Werker and her colleagues have found. Given regular exposure to two languages,infants develop a general ability to track closely what they hear and see in decoding languages,Werker proposed. In the visual realm,such information may include lip movements,the rhythm of the jaw opening and closing,and the full ensemble of facial movements while talking. Her earlier studies found that newborn babies that had been exposed parentally to two languages prefer to listen to those languages over others and distinguish between sounds in the tongues that they regularly hear spoken. “Bilingual infants are able to keep their languages distinct from birth and may develop an increased sensitivity to voice and face cues for different languages,” Werker said. Early perceptual strides taken by infants in bilingual homes may represent the beginnings of an increased ability,relative to one-language speakers,to focus attention and think in complex ways later in life,suggested psychologist Ellen Bialystock of York

University in Toronto. Bialystock’s group has found that among more than 400 0lder adults diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease,those who speak two languages fluently are,on average,four to five years older than those who speak one language. “Bilingual adults are better able to cope with the disease’s effects on mental function,” Bialystock proposed. Werker’s team studied a total of 48 babies,all 8 months old,from families that spoke Spanish only,Catalan only or both Spanish and Catalan. Each infant sat on his or her mother’s lap and watched videos of three women,all bilingual in English and French,reading sentences in those languages without any sound. once babies got bored with clips in one language and began to look away and fidget,they were shown different clips of a woman reciting sentences either in the same language as before,or in a different tongue. Babies from bilingual Spanish/Catalan homes homed in on faces speaking a different language and largely kept ignoring a language that they had just heard,even though both English and French were new languages to them. Babies from Spanish-only and Catalan-only families paid little attention to switches between French and English.

1. What is the main theme of the passage?

A. Early perceptual progress is made by infants at home.

B. Two languages are better than one for infant perception.

C. How infants become bilingual.

D. Bilingual infants are perceptive.

2. The author states that infants raised bilingual ______.

A. always look at adults’ faces when they speak

B. seldom look away when adults speak

C. can distinguish between two languages they’ve never heard

D. have better hearing ability than one-language infants

3. According to the passage,why is some people’s mental function not much affected when they are ill?

A. Because they are strong-willed.

B. Because they speak two languages.

C. Because they do not know much about the disease.

D. Because they are mentally healthy.

4. The phrase “homed in” in line 4 from the bottom is closest in meaning to “______”.

A. looked at

B. chose

C. dwelt

D. lived

5. According to the passage,which of the following statements can be said as true?

A. Bilingual adults are generally less susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease.

B. Bilingual infants are more susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease.

C. Monolingual adults are less sensitive to voice and face cues for different languages.

D. Monolingual infants are more sensitive to voice and face cues for different languages.

(B)

Food prices offer a good proxy for agriculture’s health,notes Gerald Nelson,an economist with the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington,D.C. Rising prices signal increasing resource scarcity,he explains,which can be triggered by expanding populations,growing incomes and declining crop yields. Recent food-price shocks and yield shortfalls initially surprised analysts,note IFPRI’s Derek Headey and Shenggen Fan in a November 18 report. Government officials had been lulled into complacency by decades of falling food costs. But prices bottomed out around 2000 and have since begun climbing in response to commodities speculation and a string of poor harvests. Nelson and his colleagues have now used computer models to get some grasp on how crop yields and prices might respond,several decades out,to Earth’s continuing low-grade fever. The team considered three scenarios of income and population growth that might reasonably be expected to occur between 2020 and 2050. Then they applied four “plausible” climate scenarios with warmer temperatures and anywhere from slightly to substantially wetter weather. They also included an “implausible fifth scenario of perfect mitigation (a continuation of today’s climate into the future).” The resulting scenarios all indicated that in contrast to the 20th century,when food prices fell,the 21st century would see prices rise. Probably by a lot. Even with today’s climate,food prices would rise over the next 40 years in response to pressures from growing populations and incomes. Rice prices,for instance,would increase roughly 11 to 55 percent. Throwing in additional warming,prices can rise substantially more—a minimum of 31 percent for rice and perhaps a doubling for corn. The analyses clearly point to “climate change as a threat-multiplier,” concludes Nelson. Lighter wallets are hardly the most dire fallout of rising food costs. An analysis that Nelson’s group issued last year projected that food affordability by 2050 will likely trigger a decline in intake throughout the developing world. This could hike childhood malnutrition rates 20 percent above what would occur in the absence of climate change. Investments could be made to offset the negative impacts of climate on agriculture and childhood malnutrition. But they’d be high,IFPR I estimated: more than $7 billion annually. Last year’s greenhouse-gas releases have been fueling pessimism that nations will be able to brake their emission trajectories soon. Owing to the global recession,people had expected 2009 greenhouse-gas releases to drop precipitously,notes climate scientist Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter in England. “Global emissions did decrease 1.3 percent,but that was only equivalent to four days of emissions.” “The globe essentially faces a daunting task in terms of climate change,” notes Bruce Campbell,director of a climate and food program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Despite climate’s impacts on food production,agriculture remains largely ignored in international negotiations of climate and emissions policies. “What we’re hoping,” Campbell says,“is that agriculture gets to put on the agenda.”

6. The word “proxy” in line 1 is closest in meaning to “______”.

A. example

B. reason

C. signal

D. result

7. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a reason why the world’s resources are getting increasingly scarce?

A. Increasing populations.

B. Growing incomes.

C. Crop yield shortfalls.

D. Commodities speculation.

8. What would probably happen if today’s climate continued into the future?

A. There would be increasing population growth.

B. Food prices would rise.

C. Incomes would grow substantially.

D. Even the people in the developed countries would suffer malnutrition.

9. According to the passage,why did the 2009’s global emissions increase pessimism?

A. Because there would be more commodities speculation.

B. Because nations would be able to brake their emissions trajectories soon.

C. Because world greenhouse-gas releases were meager.

D. Because climate would change drastically.

10. What can be inferred from the passage about the government officials’ attitude toward food production?

A. Complacent.

B. Critical.

C. Indifferent.

D. Worried.

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