2011年英语专业八级考试真题及答案解析

(1)Whenever we could, Joan and I took refuge in the streets of Gibraltar. The Englishman's home is his castle because he has no much choice. There is nowhere to sit in the streets of England, not even, after twilight, in the public gardens. The climate, very often, does not even permit him to walk outside. Naturally, he stays indoors and creates a cocoon of comfort. That was the way we lived in Leeds. (2)These southern people, on the other hand, look outwards. The Gibraltarian home is, typically, a small and crowded apartment up several flights of dark and dirty stairs. In it, one, two or even three old people share a few ill-lit rooms with the young family. Once he has eaten, changed his clothes, embraced his wife, kissed his children and his parents, there is nothing to keep the southem man at home. He hurries out, taking even his breakfast coffee at his local bar. He comes home late for his afternoon meal after an appetitive hour at his café. He sleeps for an hour, dresses, goes out again and stays out until late at night. His wife does not miss him, for she is out, too—at the market in the morning and in the afternoon sitting with other mothers, baby-minding in the sun. (3)The usual Gibraltarian home has no sitting-room, living-room or lounge. The parlour of our working-class houses would be an intolerable waste of space. Easy-chairs, sofas and such-like furniture are unknown. There are no bookshelves, because there are no books. Talking and drinking, as well as eating, are done on hard chairs round the dining-table, between a sideboard decorated with the best glasses and an inevitable display cabinet full of family treasures, photographs and souvenirs. The elaborate chandelier over this table proclaims it as the hub of the household and of the family.“Hearth and home”makes very little ense in Gibraltar. One's home is one's town or village, and one's hearth is the sunshine. (4)Our northen towns are dormitories with cubicles, by comparison. When we congregate—in the churches it used to be, now in the cinema, say, impersonally, or at public meetings, formally—we are scarcely ever man to man. Only in our pubs can you find the truly gregarious and communal spirit surviving, and in England even the pubs are divided along class lines. (5)Along this Mediterranean coast, home is only a refuge and a retreat. The people live together in the open air—in the street, market-place. Down here, there is a far stronger feeling of community than we had ever known. In crowded and circumscribed Gibraltar, with its complicated inter-marriages, its identity of interests, its surviving sense of siege, one can see and feel an integrated society. (6)To live in a tiny town with all the organization of a state, with Viceroy( 总 督 ) , Premier, Parliament, Press and Pentagon, all in miniature, all within arm's reach, is an intensive course in civics. In such an environment, nothing can be hidden, for better or for worse. One's successes are seen and recognized; one's failures are immediately exposed. Social consciousness is at its strongest, with the result that there is a constant and firm pressure towards good social behaviour, towards courtesy and kindness. Gibraltar, with all its faults, is the friendliest and most tolerant of places. Straight from the cynical anonymity of a big city, we luxuriated in its happy personalism. We look back on it, like all its exiled sons and daughters, with true affection.

(1)For office innovators, the unrealized dream of the"paperless"office is a classic example of high-tech hubris (傲慢) . Today's office drone is drowning in more paper than ever before. (2)But after decades of hype, American offices may finally be losing their paper obsession. The demand for paper used to outstrip the growth of the U.S.economy, but the past two or three years have seen a marked slowdown in sales—despite a healthy economic scene. (3)Analysts attribute the decline to such factors as advances in digital databases and communication systems. Escaping our craving for paper, however, will be anything but an easy affair. (4)“Old habits are hard to break,”says Merilyn Dunn, a communications supplies director.“There are some functions that paper serves where a screen display doesn't work. Those functions are both its strength and its weakness." (5)In the early to mid-'90s, a booming economy and improved desktop printers helped boost paper sales by 6 to 7 percent each year. The convenience of desktop printing allowed office workers to indulge in printing anything and everything at very little effort or cost. (6)But now, the growth rate of paper sales in the United States is flattening by about half a percent each year. Between 2004 and 2005, Ms. Dunn says, plain white office paper will see less than a 4 percent growth rate, despite the strong overall economy. A primary reason for the change, says Dunn, is that for the first time ever, some 47 percent of the workforce entered the job market after computers had already been introduced to offices. (7)“We're finally seeing a reduction in the amount of paper being used per worker in the workplace,” says John Maine, vice president of a pulp and paper economic consulting firm.“More information is being transmitted electronically, and more and more people are comfortable with the information residing only in electronic form without printing multiple backups." (8)In addition, Mr. Maine points to the lackluster employment market for white-collar workers—the primary driver of office paper consumption—for the shift in paper usage. (9)The real paradigm shift may be in the way paper is used. Since the advent of advanced and reliable office-network systems, data storage has moved away from paper archives. The secretarial art of"filing"is disappearing from job descriptions. Much of today's data may never leave its original digital format. (10)The changing attitudes toward paper have finally caught the attention of paper companies, says Richard Harper, a researcher at Microsoft.“All of a sudden, the paper industry has started thinking,'We need to learn more about the behavioural aspects of paper use,'"he says.“They had never asked, they'd just assumed that 70 million sheets would be bought per year as a literal function of economic growth.” (11)To reduce paper use, some companies are working to combine digital and paper capabilities. For example, Xerox Corp.is developing electronic paper: thin digital displays that respond to a stylus, like a pen on paper. Notations can be erased or saved digitally. (12)Another idea, intelligent paper, comes from Anoto Group. It would allow notations made with a stylus on a page printed with a special magnetic ink to simultaneously appear on a computer screen. (13)Even with such technological advances, the improved capabilities of digital storage continue to act against"paperlessness,"argues Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster. In his prophetic and metaphorical 1989 essay,"The Electronic Pinata(彩罐),"he suggests that the increasing amounts of electronic data necessarily require more paper. (14)“The information industry today is like a huge electronic pinata, composed of a thin paper crust surrounding an electronic core,"Mr. Saffo wrote. The growing paper crust“is most noticeable, but the hidden electronic core that produces the crust is far larger—and growing more rapidly. The result is that we are becoming paperless, but we hardly notice at all.” (15)In the same way that digital innovations have increased paper consumption, Saffo says, so has video conferencing—with its promise of fewer in-person meetings—boosting business travel. (16)“That's one of the great ironies of the information age,"Saffo says.“It's just common sense that the more you talk to someone by phone or computer, it inevitably leads to a face-to-face meeting. The best thing for the aviation industry was the Internet.”

(1)When George Orwell wrote in 1941 that England was “the most class-ridden country under the sun”, he was only partly right. Societies have always had their hierarchies, with some group perched at the top. In the Indian state of Bihar the Ranveer Sena, an upper-caste private army, even killed to stay there. (2)By that measure class in Britain hardly seems entrenched(根深蒂固的) .But in another way Orwell was right, and continues to be. As a new YouGov poll shows, Britons are surprisingly alert to class—both their own and that of others. And they still think class is sticky. According to the poll,48%of people aged 30 or over say they expect to end up better off than their parents. But only 28%expect to end up in a different class. More than two-thirds think neither they nor their children will leave the class they were born into. (3)What does this thing that people cannot escape consist of these days?And what do people look at when decoding which class someone belongs to?The most useful identifying markers, according to the poll, are occupation, address, accent and income, in that order. The fact that income comes fourth is revealing: though some of the habits and attitudes that class used to define are more widely spread than they were, class still indicates something less blunt than mere wealth. (4)Occupation is the most trusted guide to class, but changes in the labour market have made that harder to read than when Orwell was writing. Manual workers have shrunk along with farming and heavy industry as a proportion of the workforce, while the number of people in white-collar jobs has surged. Despite this striking change, when they were asked to place themselves in a class, Brits in 2006 huddled in much the same categories as they did when they were asked in 1949.So, jobs, which were once a fairly reliable guide to class, have become misleading. (5)A survey conducted earlier this year by Expertian shows how this convergence on similar types of work has blurred class boundaries. Expertian asked people in a number of different jobs to place themselves in the working class or the middle class. Secretaries, waiters and journalists were significantly more likely to think themselves middle-class than accountants, computer programmers or civil servants. Many new white-collar jobs offer no more autonomy or better prospects than old blue-collar ones. Yet despite the muddle over what the markers of class are these days,71%of those polled by YouGov still said they found it very or fairly easy to figure out which class others belong to. (6)In addition to changes in the labour market, two other things have smudged the borders on the class map. First, since 1945 Britain has received large numbers of immigrants who do not fit easily into existing notions of class and may have their own pyramids to scramble up. The flow of new arivals has increased since the late 1990s, multiplying this effect. (7)Second, barriers to fame have been lowered. Britain's fast-growing ranks of celebrities—like David Beckham and his wife Victoria—form a kind of parallel aristocracy open to talent, or at least to those who are uninhibited enough to meet the requests of television producers. This too has made definitions more complicated. (8)But many Brits, given the choice, still prefer to identify with the class they were born into rather than that which their jobs or income would suggest. This often entails pretending to be more humble than is actually the case:22%of white-collar workers told YouGov that they consider themselves working class. Likewise, the Expertian survey found that one in ten adults who callthemselves working class are among the richest asset- owners, and that over half a million households which earn more than $191,000 a year say they are working class. Pretending to be grander than income and occupation suggest is rarer, though it happens too. (9)If class no longer describes a clear social, economic or even political status, is it worth paying any attention to?Possibly, yes. It is still in most cases closely correlated with educational attainment and career expectations.

(1)The train was whirling onward with such dignity of motion that a glance from the window seemed simply to prove that plains of Texas were pouring eastward. Vast flats of green grass, dull-hued spaces of mesquite and cactus, little groups of frame houses, woods of light and tender trees, all were sweeping into the east, sweeping over the horizon, a precipice. (2)A newly married pair had boarded this coach at San Antonio. The man's face was reddened from many days in the wind and sun, and a direct result of his new black clothes was that his brick-coloured hands were constantly performing in a most conscious fashion. From time to time he looked down respectfully at his attire. He sat with a hand on each knee, like a man waiting in a barber's shop. The glances he devoted to other passengers were furtive and shy. (3)The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress of blue cashmere, with small reservations of velvet here and there, and with steel buttons abounding. She continually twisted her head to regard her puff sleeves, very stiff, and high. They embarrassed her. It was quite apparent that she had cooked, and that she expected to cook, dutifully. The blushes caused by the careless scrutiny of some passengers as she had entered the car were strange to see upon this plain, under-class countenance, which was drawn in placid, almost emotionless lines. (4)They were evidently very happy.“Ever been in a parlor-car before?”he asked, smiling with delight. (5)"No,"she answered,"I never was. It's fine, ain't it?" (6)“Great!And then after a while we'll go forward to the dinner, and get a big lay-out. Fresh meal in the world. Charge a dollar.” (7)“Oh, do they?”cried the bride.“Charge a dollar?Why, that's too much—for us—ain't it, Jack?” (8)"Not this trip, anyhow,"he answered bravely."We're going to go the whole thing." (9)Later he explained to her about the trains.“You see, it's a thousand miles from one end of Texas to the other; and this runs right across it, and never stops but four times.”He had the pride of an owner. He pointed out to her the dazzling fittings of the coach; and in truth her eyes opened wider and she contemplated the sea-green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver, and glass, the wood that gleamed as darkly brilliant as the surface of a pool of oil. At one end a bronze figure sturdily held a support for a separated chamber, and at convenient places on the ceiling were frescos in olive and silver. (10)To the minds of the pair, their surroundings reflected the glory of their marriage that moming in San Antonio; this was the environment of their new estate; and the man's face in particular beamed with an elation that made him appear ridiculous to the Negro porter. This individual at times surveyed them from afar with an amused and superior grin. On other occasions he bullied them with skill in ways that did not make it exactly plain to them that they were being bullied. He subtly used all the manners of the most unconquerable kind of snobbery. He oppressed them. But of this oppression they had small knowledge, and they speedily forgot that infrequently a number of travelers covered them with stares of derisive enjoyment. Historically there was supposed to be something infinitely humorous in their situation. (11)“We are due in Yellow Sky at 3:42,”he said, looking tenderly into her eyes. (12)“Oh, are we?”she said, as if she had not been aware of it. To evince( 表 现 出 )surprise at her husband's statement was part of her wifely amiability. She took from a pocket a little silver watch; and as she held it before her, and stared at it with a frown of attention, the new husband's face shone. (13)"I bought it in San Anton'from a friend of mine,"he told her gleefully. (14)“It's seventeen minutes past twelve,”she said, looking up at him with a kind of shy and clumsy coquetry (调情；卖俏) .A passenger, noting this play, grew excessively sardonic, and winked at himself in one of the numerous mirrors. (15)At last they went to the dining-car. Two rows of Negro waiters, in glowing white suits, surveyed their entrance with the interest, and also the equanimity ( 平 静 ) , of men who had been forewarned. The pair fell to the lot of a waiter who happened to feel pleasure in steering them through their meal. He viewed them with the manner of a fatherly pilot, his countenance radiant with benevolence. The patronage, entwined with the ordinary deference, was not plain to them. And yet, as they returned to their coach, they showed in their faces a sense of escape.