全国2010年1月高等教育自学考试高级英语试题

请将答案填在答题纸相应位置上，全部题目用英文作答（英译汉题目除外）

Ⅰ. The following paragraphs are taken from the textbooks, followed by a list of words or expressions marked A to X. Choose the one that best completes each of the sentences and write the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet. One word or expression for each blank only. (12 points, 0.5 point for each)

Many doctors working on the battlefield of terminal suffering think that only squeamishness demands a   1   difference between passive and active euthanasia on request. Their   2   for killing goes like this: one of a doctor’s   3   is to prevent suffering; sometimes that is all there is left for him to do, and killing is the only way to do it. There is nothing new in this view. When Hippocrates   4   his oath for doctors, which explicitly rules   5   active killing, most other Greek doctors and thinkers disagreed with his   6  .

The women’s magazines are about one third   7   to clothes, one third to mild comment   8   sex, and the   9   third to recipes and pictures of handsome salads, desserts, and main   10   . “Institutes” exist to experiment and tell housewives how to cook attractive meals and how to turn leftovers into   11   of art. The food thus pictured looks   12   famous paintings of still life. The only trouble is it’s tasteless.

One of the greatest and most   13   criticisms of television has been that in   14   to the largest audience possible, it neglects minority audiences and minority tastes. This is still   15   true. But there is, perhaps, one program a day and many, of course, on Sunday which an intelligent man or woman can enjoy and   16   interest from. In my trips east or west or north or south, I pick up the   17   paper to find this enjoyment or interest—  18   vain.

American individualism, on the   19   of it an admirable philosophy, wishes to manifest itself in independence of the community. You don’t share things in   20  ; you have your own things. A family’s strength is signalized by its possessions. Herein lies a   21  . For the desire for possessions must eventually mean dependence on possessions. Freedom is slavery. Once let the   22   instinct burgeon, and there are ruggedly individual forces   23   too ready to make it come to full and monstrous   24  . New appetites are invented; what to the European are bizarre luxuries become, to the American, plain necessities.

II. In this section, there are fifteen sentences taken from the textbooks with a blank in each, followed by a list of words or expressions marked A to X. Choose the one that best completes each of the sentences and write the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet. One word or expression for each blank only. (15 points, 1 point for each )

25. More than any other generation, our generation views the adult world with great ______. There is also an increased tendency to reject completely the world.

26. The need for laws on euthanasia cannot be ______ for much longer.

27. He stood in front of us for a moment and then ______ us to go into the living room.

28. My imagination boggled at the punishment I would ______ if in fact I did abuse a book of Mrs. Flowers’. Death would be too kind and brief.

29. The odds seemed to move toward Chavel with a dreadful ______: nine to one, eight to one: they were like a pointing finger.

30. Writing a book is a horrible, ______ struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

31. We are asking for the support of all sections of the peace movement because we do not feel that this is a time to be ______.

32. I ______ at several schools and was accepted everywhere. Harvard offered more financial assistance.

33. On the days when I’m especially melancholy, I began constructing tables of organization ... ______ people in the company on the basis of envy, hope, fear, ambition, frustration, rivalry, hatred, or disappointment.

34. No sooner did his car touch the boulevard heading home than Ace ______ on the radio.

35. I was convinced that some ______ changes had been wrought for all Negroes, not just those in the ghetto.

36. In Australia, where people are few and rabbits are many, I watched a whole populace satisfying the primitive ______ in the primitive manner by the skilful slaughter of many thousands of rabbits.

37. If we regard activity as being in itself a good, then we must count all snobberies as good; for all ______ activity.

38. I ask the reader to note that I, an Englishman who no longer lives in England and can’t spend more than six months at a ______ in any other European country, home to America as to a country more stimulating than depressing.

39. Strangely enough, the salesmen react very well to the constant pressure and rigid supervision to which they are ______.

Ⅲ. Each of the following sentences is given two choices of words or expressions. Choose the right one to complete the sentence and write the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet. (15 points, 1 point for each)

40. Justice to all, regardless of race, sect or class, is the ______ right and the inescapable obligation of all.

 A. inalienable                                B. unbelievable

41. My uncle remained ______ of stories about flying saucers.

 A. incredible                                 B. incredulous

42. Although the main characters in the novel are so true to life, they are ______.

 A. imaginary                                  B. imaginative

43. In spite of the financial crisis, the manager will pay the bonus ______ the job is completed on time.

 A. unless                                     B. provided

44. The adverse criticism the book received didn’t ______ the author one way or another.

 A. affect                                     B. effect

45. It is a ______ fact that when we grow older, we tend to become weaker and weaker.

 A. regretful                                  B. regrettable

46. The ______ of a full stop at the end of the sentence is a deliberate act by the writer.

 A. exclusion                                  B. omission

47. He ______ the rope with both hands and pulled it with all his strength.

 A. grasped                                    B. grabbed

48. The leaflet was written in jargon that would have been totally ______ to anyone outside the profession.

 A. incomprehensive                            B. incomprehensible

49. After driving for so long on the gravel I was glad to get on an ______ stretch of road.

 A. even                                       B. equal

50. Many of the more ______ forms of cancer can be treated successfully if detected early.

 A. common                                     B. ordinary

51. Even a ______ translation is not always faithful to the original.

 A. literal                                    B. literary

52. She asks him to remember her, and he replies that he is more ______ to forget anything else.

 A. able                                       B. apt

53. The experts disliked the acting but enjoyed the play ______.

 A. as a whole                                 B. on the whole

54. How can you be so ______ to the sufferings of these children?

 A. indifferential                             B. indifferent

Read the following passage carefully and complete the succeeding three items Ⅳ, V and Ⅵ.

(1) Freedom’s challenge in the Atomic Age is a sobering topic. We are facing today a strange new world and we are all wondering what we are going to do with it. What are we going to do with one of our most precious possessions, freedom? The world we know, our Western world, began with something as new as the conquest of space.

(2) Some 2,500 years ago Greece discovered freedom. Before that there was no freedom. There were great civilizations, splendid empires, but no freedom anywhere. Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, were all tyrannies, one immensely powerful man ruling over helpless masses. In Greece, in Athens, a little city in a little country, there were no helpless masses, and a time came when the Athenians were led by a great man who did not want to be powerful. Absolute obedience to the ruler was what the leaders of the empires insisted on. Athens said no, there must never be absolute obedience to a man except in war. There must be willing obedience to what is good for all. Pericles, the great Athenian statesman, said: “We are a free government, but we obey the laws, more especially those which protect the oppressed, and the unwritten laws which, if broken, bring shame.”

(3) Athenians willingly obeyed the written laws which they themselves passed, and the unwritten, which must be obeyed if free men live together. They must show each other kindness and pity and the many qualities without which life would be intolerable except to a hermit in the desert. The Athenians never thought that a man was free if he could do what he wanted. A man was free if he was self-controlled. To make yourself obey what you approved was freedom. They were saved from looking at their lives as their own private affair. Each one felt responsible for the welfare of Athens, not because it was imposed on him from the outside, but because the city was his pride and his safety. The creed of the first free government in the world was liberty for all men who could control themselves and would take responsibility for the state. This was the conception that underlay the lofty reach of Greek genius.

(4) But discovering freedom is not like discovering atomic bombs. It cannot be discovered once for all. If people do not prize it, and work for it, it will depart. Eternal vigilance is its price. Athens changed. It was a change that took place unnoticed though it was of the utmost importance, a spiritual change which penetrated the whole state. It had been the Athenians’ pride and joy to give to their city. That they could get material benefits from her never entered their minds. There had to be a complete change of attitude before they could look at the city as an employer who paid her citizens for doing her work. Now instead of men giving to their state, the state was to give to them. What the people wanted was a government which would provide a comfortable life for them; and with this as the foremost object, ideas of freedom and self-reliance and responsibility were obscured to the point of disappearing. Athens was more and more looked on as a cooperative business possessed of great wealth in which all citizens had a right to share.

(5) She reached the point when the freedom she really wanted was freedom from responsibility. There could be only one result. If men insisted on being free from the burden of self-dependence and responsibility for the common good, they would cease to be free. Responsibility is the price every man must pay for freedom. It is to be had on no other terms. Athens, the Athens of Ancient Greece, refused responsibility, she reached the end of freedom and was never to have it again.

(6) But, “the excellent becomes the permanent,” Aristotle said. Athens lost freedom forever, but freedom was not lost forever for the world. A great American statesman, James Madison, in or near the year