2023年英语专业八级真题.docx

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TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (2023)
-GRADE EIGHT-

TIME LIMIIT：150 MIN

PART I LISTENING COMPREHENSION [25 MIN]

SECTION A MINI-LECTURE

In this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening to mini-lecture, please complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE and write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each gap. Make sure you fill in is both grammatically and semantically acceptable. You may use the blank sheet for note-taking.
You have THIRTY seconds to preview the gap-filling task.
Now listen to the mini-lecture. When it is over, you will be given THREE minutes to check your work.

SECTION B INTERVIEW

In this section you will hear ONE interview. The interview will be divided into TWO parts. At the end of each part, five questions will be asked about what was said. Both the interview and the questions will be spoken ONCE ONLY. After each question there will be a ten-second pause. During the pause, you should read the four choices of A), B), C) and D), and mark the best answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

You have THIRTY seconds to preview the choices.

Now, listen to the first interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on Part One of the interview.
Now listen to the interview.

1. A. Announcement of results.
B. Lack of a time schedule.
C. Slowness in ballots counting.
D. Direction of the electoral events.

2. A. Other voices within Afghanistan wanted so.
B. The date had been set previously.
C. All the ballots had been counted.
D. The UN advised them to do so.

3. A. To calm the voters.
B. To speed up the process.
C. To stick to the election rules.
D. To stop complaints from the labor.

4. A. Unacceptable.
B. Unreasonable.
C. Insensible.
D. Ill considered.

5. A. Supportive.
B. Ambivalent.
C. Opposed.
D. Neutral.

Now listening to Part Two of the interview. Questions 6 to 10 are based on Part Two of the interview.

6. A. Ensure the government includes all parties.
B. Discuss who is going to be the winner.
C. Supervise the counting of votes.
D. Seek support from important sectors.

7. A. 36%-24%.
B. 46%-34%.
C. 56%-44%.
D. 66%-54%.

8. A. Both candidates.
B. Electoral institutions.
C. The United Nations.
D. Not specified.

9. A. It was unheard of.
B. It was on a small scale.
C. It was insignificant.
D. It occurred elsewhere.

10. A. Problems in the electoral process.
B. Formation of a new government.
C. Premature announcement of results.
D. Democracy in Afghanistan.

PART Ⅱ READING COMPREHENSION [25 MIN]

SECTION A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

In this section there are three passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answer on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

PASSAGE ONE

(1) “Britain’s best export,” I was told by the Department of Immigration in Canberra, “is people.” Close on 100,000 people have applied for assisted passages in the first five months of the year, and half of these are eventually expected to migrate to Australia.
(2) The Australian are delighted. They are keenly ware that without a strong flow of immigrants into the workforce the development of the Australian economy is unlikely to proceed at the ambitious pace currently envisaged. The new mineral discoveries promise a splendid future, and the injection of huge amounts of American and British capital should help to ensure that they are properly exploited, but with unemployment in Australia down to less than 1.3 per cent, the government is understandably anxious to attract more skilled labor.
(3) Australia is roughly the same size as the continental United States, but has only twelve million inhabitants. Migration has accounted for half the population increase in the last four years, and has contributed greatly to the country’s impressive economic development. Britain has always been the principal source – ninety per cent of Australians are of British descent, and Britain has provided one million migrants since the Second World War.
(4) Australia has also given great attention to recruiting people elsewhere. Australians decided they had an excellent potential source of applicants among the so-called “guest workers” who have crossed their own frontiers to work in other arts of Europe. There were estimated to be more than four million of them, and a large number were offered subsidized passages and guaranteed jobs in Australia. Italy has for some years been the second biggest source of migrants, and the Australians have also managed to attract a large number of Greeks and Germans.
(5) One drawback with them, so far as the Australians are concerned, is that integration tends to be more difficult. Unlike the British, continental migrants have to struggle with an unfamiliar language and new customs. Many naturally gravitate towards the Italian or Greek communities which have grown up in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne. These colonies have their own newspapers, their own shops, and their own clubs. Their habitants are not Australians, but Europeans.
(6) The government’s avowed aim, however, is to maintain “a substantially homogeneous society into which newcomers, from whatever sources, will merge themselves”. By and large, therefore, Australia still prefers British migrants, and tends to be rather less selective in their case than it is with others.
(7) A far bigger cause of concerns than the growth of national groups, however, is the increasing number of migrants who return to their countries of origin. One reason is that people nowadays tend to be more mobile, and that it is easier than in the past to save the return fare, but economic conditions also have something to do with it. A slower rate of growth invariably produces discontent – and if this coincides with greater prosperity in Europe, a lot of people tend to feel that perhaps they were wrong to come here after all.
(8) Several surveys have been conducted recently into the reasons why people go home. One noted that “flies, dirt, and outside lavatories” were on the list of complaints from British immigrants, and added that many people also complained about “the crudity, bad manners, and unfriendliness of the Australians”. Another survey gave climate conditions, homesickness, and “the stark appearance of the Australian countryside” as the main reasons for leaving.
(9) Most British migrants miss council housing the National Health scheme, and their relatives and former neighbor. Loneliness is a big factor, especially among housewives. The men soon make new friends at work, but wives tend to find it much harder to get used to a different way of life. Many are housebound because of inadequate public transport in most outlying suburbs, and regular correspondence with their old friends at home only serves to increase their discontent. One housewife was quoted recently as saying: “I even find I miss the people I used to hate at home.”
(10) Rent are high, and there are long waiting lists for Housing Commission homes. Sickness can be an expensive business and the climate can be unexpectedly rough. The gap between Australian and British wage packets is no longer big, and people are generally expected to work harder here than they do at home. Professional men over forty often have difficulty in finding a decent job. Above all, perhaps, skilled immigrants often finds a considerable reluctance to accept their qualifications.
(11) According to the journal Australian Manufacturer, the attitude of many employers and fellow workers is anything but friendly. “We Australians,” it stated in a recent issue, “are just too fond of painting the rosy picture of the big, warm-hearted Aussie. As a matter of fact, we are so busy blowing our own trumpets that we have not not time to be warm-hearted and considerate. Go down “heart-break alley” among some of the migrants and find out just how expansive the Aussie is to his immigrants.”

11. The Australians want a strong flow of immigrants because .
A. Immigrants speed up economic expansion
B. unemployment is down to a low figure
C. immigrants attract foreign capital
D. Australia is as large as the United States

12. Australia prefers immigrants from Britain because .
A. they are selected carefully before entry
B. they are likely to form national groups
C. they easily merge into local communities
D. they are fond of living in small towns

13. In explaining why some migrants return to Europe the author .
A. stresses their economic motives
B. emphasizes the variety of their motives
C. stresses loneliness and homesickness
D. emphasizes the difficulties of men over forty

14. which of the following words is used literally, not metaphorically?
A. “flow” (Para. 2).
B. “injection” (Para. 2).
C. “gravitate” (Para. 5).
D. “selective” (Para. 6).

15. Para. 11 pictures the Australians as .
A. unsympathetic
B. ungenerous
C. undemonstrative
D. unreliable

PASSAGE TWO

(1) Some of the advantages of bilingualism include better performance at tasks involving “executive function” (which involves the brain’s ability to plan and prioritize), better defense against dementia in old age and—the obvious—the ability to speak a second language. One purported advantage was not mentioned, though. Many multilinguals report different personalities, or even different worldviews, when they speak their different languages.
(2) It’s an exciting notion, the idea that one’s very self could be broadened by the mastery of two or more languages. In obvious ways (exposure to new friends, literature and so forth) the self really is broadened. Yet it is different to claim—as many people do—to have a different personality when using a different language. A former Economist colleague, for example, reported being ruder in Hebrew than in English. So what is going on here?
(3) Benjamin Lee Whorf, an American linguist who died in 1941, held that each language encodes a worldview that significantly influences its speakers. Often called “Whorfianism”, this idea has its sceptics, but there are still good reasons to believe language shapes thought.
(4) This influence is not necessarily linked to the vocabulary or grammar of a second language. Significantly, most people are not symmetrically bilingual. Many have learned one language at home from parents, and another later in life, usually at school. So bilinguals usually have different strengths and weaknesses in their different languages—and they are not always best in their first language. For example, when tested in a foreign language, people are less likely to fall into a cognitive trap (answering a test question with an obvious-seeming but wrong answer) than when tested in their native language. In part this is because working in a second language slows down the thinking. No wonder people feel different when speaking them. And no wonder they feel looser, more spontaneous, perhaps more assertive or funnier or blunter, in the language they were reared in from childhood.
(5) What of “crib” bilinguals, raised in two languages? Even they do not usually have perfectly symmetrical competence in their two languages. But even for a speaker whose two languages are very nearly the same in ability, there is another big reason that person will feel different in the two languages. This is because there is an important distinction between bilingualism and biculturalism.
(6) Many bilinguals are not bicultural. But some are. And of those bicultural bilinguals, we should be little surprised that they feel different in their two languages. Experiments in psychology have shown the power of “priming”—small unnoticed factors that can affect behavior in big ways. Asking people to tell a happy story, for example, will put them in a better mood. The choice between two languages is a huge prime. Speaking Spanish rather than English, for a bilingual and bicultural Puerto Rican in New York, might conjure feelings of family and home. Switching to English might prime the same person to think of school and work.
(7) So there are two very good reasons (asymmetrical ability, and priming) that make people feel different speaking their different languages. We are still left with a third kind of argument, though. An economist recently interviewed here at Prospero, Athanasia Chalari, said for example that:
Greeks are very loud and they interrupt each other very often. The reason for that is the Greek grammar and syntax. When Greeks talk they begin their sentences with verbs and the form of the verb includes a lot of information so you already know what they are talking about after the first word and can interrupt more easily.
(8) Is there something intrinsic to the Greek language that encourages Greeks to interrupt? People seem to enjoy telling tales about their languages' inherent properties, and how they influence their speakers. A group of French intellectual worthies once proposed, rather self-flatteringly, that French be the sole legal language of the EU, because of its supposedly unmatchable rigor and precision. Some Germans believe that frequently putting the verb at the end of a sentence makes the language especially logical. But language myths are not always self-flattering: many speakers think their languages are unusually illogical or difficult—witness the plethora of books along the lines of "Only in English do you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway; English must be the craziest language in the world!" We also see some unsurprising overlap with national stereotypes and self-stereotypes: French, rigorous; German, logical; English, playful. Of course.
(9) In this case, Ms Chalari, a scholar, at least proposed a specific and plausible line of causation from grammar to personality: in Greek, the verb comes first, and it carries a lot of information, hence easy interrupting. The problem is that many unrelated languages all around the world put the verb at the beginning of sentences. Many languages all around the world are heavily inflected, encoding lots of information in verbs. It would be a striking finding if all of these unrelated languages had speakers more prone to interrupting each other. Welsh, for example, is also both verb-first and about as heavily inflected as Greek, but the Welsh are not known as pushy conversationalists.

16. According to the author, which of the following advantages of bilingua