2009年英语真题（1/1）

Part A Dires:

Read the following four texts. Ahe questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (40points)

Text 1

Habits are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and rexing into the unscious fort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unrefleg herd,” William Wordsworth said ih tury. In the ever-ging 21st tury, even the word “habit” carries a ive implication.

So it seems paradoxical to talk about habits in the same text as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we sciously develop new habits, we create parallel paths, and eveirely new brain cells, that jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as ungeable creatures of habit, we instead direct our own ge by sciously developing new habits. In fact, the more hings we try – the more we step outside our fort zohe more ilycreativewebee,bothintheworkpdinourpersonallives.

But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; ohose rutsof procedure are worn into the brain, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately press into ourselves create parallel pathways that bypass those oldroads.

“The first thing needed for innovation is a fasation with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of The Open Mind. “But we are taught io ‘decide’ , just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider’. ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always expl the many otherpossibilities.”

All of us work through problems in ways of which we’re unaware, she says. Researchers ie 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, retionally (or colboratively) and innovatively. At the end of adolesce, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.

The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us ily use our innovative and colborative modes of thought. “This breaks the major rule in the Ameri belief system – that anyone do anything,” expins M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book This Year I Will... and Ms. Markova’s business partner. “That’s a lie that erpetuated, and it fosters onness. Knowing what yood at and doing even more of it creates excellehis is where developing new habits es in.

21、In Wordsworth’s view, “habits” is characterized bybeing

A casual.

B familiar.

C meical.

D geable.

22、Brain researchers have discovered that the formation of new habits be

A predicted.

B reguted.

C traced.

D guided.

23、The word “ruts” (Para. 4) is closest in meaningto

A tracks.

B series.

C characteristics.

D es.

24、Dawna Markova would most probably agreethat

A ideas are born of a rexingmind.

B innovativeness could betaught.

C decisiveness derives from fantasticideas.

D curiosity activates creativeminds.

25、Ryas suggest that the practice of standardizedtesting

A prevents new habits from beingformed.

B no longer emphasizesonness.

C maintains the i Ameri thinkingmode.

D plies with the Ameri beliefsystem.

Text 2

It is a wise father that knows his own child, but today a man boost his paternal (fatherly) wisdom – or at least firm that he’s the kid’s dad. All he o do is shell out 30 for a paternity testing kit (PTK) at his local drugstore – andanother120 to get the results.

More than 60, 000 people have purchased the PTKs sihey first became avaible without prescriptions st year, acc to Doug Fogg, chief operating officer of Identigene, which makes the over-the-ter kits. More than two dozen panies sell Ds directly to the public, ranging in price from a few hundred dolrs to more than 2, 500.

Among the most popur: paternity and kinship testing, which adopted childreo find their biological retives and families use to track down kids put up for adoption. Ding is also the test rage among passionate genealogists – and supports busihat offer to search for a family’s geographicroots.

Most tests require colleg cells by swabbing saliva in the mouth and sending it to the pany for testing. All tests require a potential didate with whom to pare DNA.

But some observers are skeptical. “There’s a kind of false precision being hawked by people g they are doing ary testing,” says Troy Duster, a New York Uy sociologist. He hat eadividual has many aors – numbering in the hundreds just a few turies back. Yet most ary testing only siders a single lineage, either the Y osome ied through men in a father’s line or mitodrial DNA, which is passed down only from mothers. This DNA reveal geiformation about only one or two aors, even though, for example, just three geions back people also have six reat-grandparents or, feions back, 14 reat-great-grandparents.

Critics alsue that ercial geic testing is only as good as the reference colles to which a sample is pared. Databases used by some panies don’t rely on data collected systematically but rather lump together information from different research projects. This means that a DNA database may have a lot of data from sions and not others, so a person’s test results may differ depending on the pany that processes the results. In addition, the puter programs a pany uses to estimate retionships may be patented and not subject to peer review or outsideevaluation.