2024年考研英语阅读理解及答案
在现实的学习、工作中，我们总免不了要接触或使用试题，借助试题可以检测考试者对某方面知识或技能的掌握程度。那么一般好的试题都具备什么特点呢？以下是小编为大家整理的2024年考研英语阅读理解及答案，仅供参考，欢迎大家阅读。
Section I Use of English
Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on ANSWERSHEET. (10 points)
Theres nothing more welcoming than opening a door for you. 1 the need to be touched to open or close, automatic doors are essential in 2 disabled access to buildings and helping provide general 3 to commercial buildings.
Self-sliding doors began to emerge as a commercial product in 1960 after being invented six years 4 by two Americans Dee Horton and Lew Hewitt. They 5 as a novelty feature, but as their use has grown, their 6 have extended within our technologically advanced world. Particularly 7 in busy locations and during times of emergency, the doors 8 crowd management by reducing the obstacles put in peoples way.
9 making access both in and out buildings easier for people, the difference in the way many of these doors open helps to reduce the total area 10 by them. Automatic doors often open to the side, with the panels sliding across one another. Replacing swing doors, these 11 smaller buildings to maximise the usable space inside without having to 12 the way for a large, sticking-out door. There are many different types of automatic door, with each 13 specific signals to tell them when to open. 14 these methods differ, the main 15 remain the same. Each automatic door system 16 the light, sound, weight or movement in their vicinity as a signal. Sensor-types are chosen to 17 the different environments they are needed in. 18, a busy road might not 19 a motion-sensored door, as it would constantly be opening for passers-by. A pressure-sensitive mat would be more 20 to limit the surveyed area.
1. A. Through B. Despite C. Besides D. Without
2. A. revealing B. demanding C. improving D. tracing
3. A. experience B. convenience C. guidance D. reference
4. A. previously B. temporarily C. successively D. eventually
5. A. held on B. started out C. settled down D. went by
6. A. relations B. volumes C. benefits D. sources
7. A. useful B. simple C. flexible D. stable
8. A. call for B. yield to C. insist on D. act as
9. A. As well as B. In terms of C. Thanks to D. Rather than
10. A. connected B. shared C. represented D. occupied
11. A. allow B. expect C. require D. direct
12. A. adopt B. lead C. clear D. change
13. A. adapting to B. deriving from C. relying on D. pointing at
14. A. Once B. Since C. Unless D. Although
15. A. records B. positions C. principles D. reasons
16. A. controls B. analyses C. produces D. mixes
17. A. decorate B. compare C. protect D. complement
18. A. In conclusion B. By contrast C. For example D. Above all
19. A. identify B. suit C. secure D. include
20. A. appropriate B. obvious C. impressive D. delicate
Section II Reading Comprehension
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions after each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)
Text 1
Nearly 2000 years ago, as the Romans began to pull out of Scotland, they left behind a curious treasure:10 tons of nails, nearly a million of the things. The nail hoard was discovered in 1960 in a four-metre-deep pit covered by two metres of gravel.Why had the Romans buried a million nails? The likely explanation is that the withdrawal was rushed, and they didnt want the local Caledonians getting their hands on 10 tons of weapon-grade iron. The Romans buried the nails so deep that they would not be discovered for almost two millennia.Later civilisations would value the skilled blacksmiths labour in a nail even more than the raw material.
As Roma Agrawal explains in her new delightful book Nuts and Bolts, early 17th-century Virginians would sometimes burn down their homes if they were planning to relocate. This was an attempt to recover the valuable nails, which could be reused after sifting the ashes. The idea that one might burn down an entire house just to reclaim the nails underlines how scarce, costly and valuable the simple-seeming technology was.
The price of nails fell by 90% between the late 1700s and mid-1900s, as economist Daniel Sichel points out in a research paper. According to Sichel, although the falling price of nails was driven partly by cheaper iron and cheaper energy, most of the credit goes to nail manufactures who simply found more efficient ways to turn steel into nails.Nails themselves have changed over the years, but Sichel studied them because they havent changed much. Roman lamps and Roman chariots are very different from LED strips and sports cars, but Roman nails are still clearly nails. It would be absurd to try to track the changing price of sports cars since 1695, but to ask the same question of nails makes perfect sense.I make no apology for being obsessed by a particular feature of these objects: their price.
I am an economist, after all. After writing two books about the history of inventions, one thing Ive learnt is that while it is the enchantingly sophisticated technologies that get all the hype, its the cheap technologies that change the world.The Gutenberg printing press transformed civilisation not by changing the nature of writing but by changing its cost-and it would have achieved little without a parallel collapse in the price of surfaces to write on, thanks to an often-overlooked technology called paper. Solar panels had few niche uses until they became cheap; now they are transforming the global energy system.
21. The Romans buried the nails probably for the sake of ________.
A. saving them for future use
B. keeping them from rusting
D. hiding them from the locals
C. letting them grow in value
22. The example of early 17th-century Virginians is used to ________.
A. highlight the thriftiness of early American colonists
B. illustrate the high status of blacksmiths in that period
C. contrast the attitudes of different civilisations toward nails
D. show the preciousness of nail-making technology at that time
23. What played the major role in lowering the price of nails after the late 1700s?
A. Increased productivity.
B. Wider use of new energies.
C. Fiercer market competition.
D. Reduced cost of raw materials.
24. It can be learned from Paragraph 5 that nails ________.
A. have undergone many technological improvements
B. have remained basically the same since Roman times
C. are less studied than other everyday products
D. are one of the worlds most significant inventions
25. Which of the following best summaries the last two paragraphs?
A. Cheap technologies bring about revolutionary change.
B. Technological innovation is integral to economic success.
C. Technology defines peoples understanding of the world.
D. Sophisticated technologies develop from small inventions.
Text 2
Parenting tips obtained from hunter-gatherers in Africa may be the key to bringing up more contented children, researchers have suggested. The idea is based on studies of communities such as the Kung of Botswana, where each child is cared for by many adults. Kung children as young as four will help to look after younger ones and “baby-wearing”, in which infants are carried in slings, is considered the norm.
According to Dr Nikhil Chaudhary, an evolutionary anthropologist at Cambridge University, these practices, Known as alloparenting, could lead to less anxiety for children and parents.
Dr Annie Swanepoel, a child psychiatrist, believes that there are ways to incorporate them into western life. In Germany, one scheme has paired an old peoples home with a nursery. The residents help to look after the children, an arrangement akin to alloparenting. Another measure could be encouraging friendships between children indifferent school years to mirror the unsupervised mixed-age playgroups in hunter-gatherer communities.In a paper published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, researchers said that the western nuclear family was a recent invention which family broke with evolutionary history. This abrupt shift to an “intensive mothering narrative”, which suggests that mothers should manage childcare alone, was likely to have been harmful.
“Such narratives can lead to maternal exhaustion and have dangerous consequences,” they wrote.By contrast, in hunter-gatherer societies adults other than the parents can provide almost half of a childs care. One previous study looked at the Efe people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It found that infants had an average of 14 alloparents a day by the time they were 18 weeks old and were passed between caregivers eight times an hour.Chaudhary said that parents now had less childcare support from family and social networks than during most of humans evolutionary history, but introducing additional caregivers could reduce stress and maternal depression, which could have a “knock-on” benefit to a childs wellbeing.
An infant born to a hunter-gatherer society could have more than ten caregivers — this contrasts starkly to nursery settings in the UK where regulations call for a ratio of one carer to four children aged two to three.While hunter-gatherer children learnt from observation and imitation in mixed-age playgroups, researchers said that western “instructive teaching”, where pupils are asked to sit still, may contribute to conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Chaudhary said that Britain should explore the possibility that older siblings helping their parents “might also enhance their own social development.”
26. According to the first two paragraph, alloparenting refers to the practice of _________.
A. sharing child care among community members
B. assigning babies to specific adult caregivers
C. teaching parenting details to older children
D. carrying infants around by their parent
27. The scheme in Germany is mentioned to illustrate _________.
A. an attempt to facilitate intergenerational communication
B. an approach to integrating alloparenting into western culture
C. the conventional parenting style in western culture
D. the differences between western African ways of living
28. According to Paragraph 4, the “intensive mothering narrative” _________.
A. alleviate parenting pressure
B. considerate family relationships
C. results in the child-centered family
D. departs from the course of evolution
29. According to paragraph 6, what can we learn about nursery in the UK?
A. They tend to fall short of official requirements.
B. They have difficulty finding enough caregivers.
C. They ought to improve their carer-to-child ratio.
D. They should try to prevent parental depression.
30. Which of the following would be the best title?
A. Instructive teaching: a dilemma for anxious parents.
B. For a happier family, learn from the hunter-gatherers.
C. Mix-aged playgroup, a better choice for lonely children.
D. Tracing the history of parenting: from Africa to Europe.
Text 3
Rutkowski is a Polish digital artist who uses classical painting styles to create dreamy fantasy landscapes. He has made illustrations for games such as Sonys Horizon Forbidden West, Ubisofts Anno, Dungeons & Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering.
And hes become a sudden hit in the new world of text-to-image AI generation.His distinctive style is now one of the most commonly used prompts in the new open-source AI art generator Stable Diffusion, which was launched late last month. The tool, along with other popular image-generation AI models, allows anyone to create impressive images based on text prompts. For example, type in “Wizard with sword and a glowing orb of magic fire fights a fierce dragon Greg Rutkowski,” and the system will produce something that looks not a million miles away from works in Rutkowskis style.But these open-source programs are built by scraping images from the Internet, often without permission and proper attribution to artists. As a result, they are raising tricky questions about ethics and copyright.
And artists like Rutkowski have had enough.According to the website Lexica, which tracks over 10 million images and prompts generated by Stable Diffusion, Rutkowskis name has been used as a prompt around 93,000 times. Some of the worlds most famous artists, such as Michelangelo, Pablo Picasso, and Leonardo da Vinci, brought up around 2,000 prompts each or less. Rutkowskis name also features as a prompt thousands of times in the Discord of another text-to-image generator, Midjourney. Rutkowski was initially surprised but thought it might be a good way to reach new audiences.
Then he tried searching for his name to see if a piece he had worked on had been published. The online search brought back work that had his name attached to it but wasnt his.“Its been just a month. What about in a year? I probably wont be able to find my work out there because [the internet] will be flooded with AI art,” Rutkowski says. “Thats concerning.”“There is a coalition growing within artist industries to figure out how to tackle or mitigate this,” says Ortiz. The group is in its early days of mobilization, which could involve pushing for new policies or regulation. One suggestion is that AI models could be trained on images in the public domain, and AI companies could forge partnerships with museums and artists, Ortiz says.
31. What can be learned about Rutkowski from the first two paragraphs?
A. He is enthusiastic about AI generation painting.
B. He is popular with the users of an AI art generator.
C. He attracts admiration from other illustrators.
D. He specializes in classical painting digitalization.
32. The problem with open-source AI art generators is that they _________.
A. lack flexibility in responding to prompts
B. produce artworks in unpredictable styles
C. make unauthorized use of online images
D. collect user information without consent
33. After searching online, Rutkowski found _________.
A. a unique way to reach audiences
B. a new method to identify AI images
C. AI-generated work bearing his name
D. heated disputes regarding his copyright
34. According to Ortiz, AI companies are advised to _________.
A. campaign for new policies or regulations
B. offer their services to public institutions
C. strengthen their relationships with AI users
D. adopt a different strategy for AI model training
35. What is the text mainly about?
A. Artists responses to Al art generation.
B. AIs expanded role in artistic creation.
C. Privacy issues in the application of Al.
D. Opposing views on AI development.
Text 4
The miracle of the Chesapeake Bay lies not in its depths, but in the complexity of its natural construction, the interaction of fresh and saline water and the mix of land and water. The shallows provide homes for hundreds of species while storing floodwaters, filtering pollutants from water, and protecting nearby communities from potentially destructive storm surges.All this was put at great risk late last month, when the US Supreme Court issued a ruling in an Idaho case that provides the EPA far less authority to regulate wetlands and waterways. Specifically, a 5-4 majority decided that wetlands protected by the EPA under it Clean Water Act authority must have a “continuous surface connection” to bodies of water. This narrowing of the regulatory scope was a victory for builders, mining operators and other commercial interests often at odds with environmental rules. And it carries “significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the US,” as Justice Brett Kavanaugh observed.
In Maryland, the good news is that there are many state laws in place that provide wetlands protections. But thats a very shortsighted view, particularly when it comes to the Chesapeake Bay. The reality is that water and the pollutants that so often come with it, dont respect state boundaries. The Chesapeake draws from a 64000-square-mile watershed that extends to Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, the District of Columbia and Delaware. Will those jurisdictions extend the same protections now denied under Sackett V. EPA? Perhaps some, but all? That seems unlikely.
It is too easy, and misleading, to see such court rulings as merely standing up for the rights of land owners when the consequences can be so dire for their neighbors. And its reminder that they EPAs involvement in the Chesapeake Bay program has long been crucial as the means to transcend the influence of deep-pocketed special interests in neighboring states. Pennsylvania farmers, to use one telling example, arent thinking about next years blue crab harvest in Maryland when they decide whether to spread animal waste on their fields, yet the runoff into nearby creeks can have enormous impacts downstream.And so we would also call on state lawmakers from Richmond to Albany to consider reviewing their own wetlands protections and see for themselves the enormous stakes involved. We cant offer them a trip to the Chesapeake Bay model. Its been gone since the 1980s but perhaps a visit to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Dorchester County where American bald eagles fly over tidal marshes so shallow you could not paddle a boat across them but teaming with aquatic life. Its worth the scenic drive.
36. The Chesapeake Bay is described in Paragraph 1 as _________.
A. a valuable natural environment
B. a controversial conservation area
C. a place with commercial potential
D. a headache for nearby communities
37. The U.S. Supreme Courts ruling in the Idaho case _________.
A. reinforces water pollution control
B. weakens the EPAs regulatory power
C. will end conflicts among local residents
D. may face opposition from mining operators
38. How does the author feel about the future of the Chesapeake Bay?
A. Worried.
B. Puzzled.
C. Relieved.
D. Encouraged.
39. What can be inferred about the EPAs involvement in the Chesapeake Bay Program?
A. It has restored the balance among neighboring jurisdictions.
B. It has triggered a radical reform in commercial fisheries.
C. It has set a fine example of respecting state authorities.
D. It has ensured the coordination of protection efforts.
40. The author holds that the state lawmakers should _________.
A. be cautious about the influence of landowners
B. attach due importance to wetlands protections
C. recognize the need to expand wildlife refuges
D. improve the wellbeing of endangered species
参考答案
1. D. Without
2. C. improving
3. B. convenience
4. A. previously
5. B. started out
6. C. benefits
7. A. useful
8. D. act as
9. A. As well as
10. D. occupied
11. A. allow
12. C. clear
13. C. relying on
14. D. Although
15. C. principles
16. B. analyses
17. D. complement
18. C. For example
19. B. suit
20. A. appropriate
Section II Reading Comprehension
Part A
Text 1
21. D. hiding them from local
22. D. show the preciousness of nail-making technology at that time
23. A. Increased productivity
24. B. have remained basically the same since Roman times
25. A. cheap technologies bring about revolutionary change
Text 2
26. A. sharing child care among community members
27. B. an approach to integrating alloparenting into western culture
28. D. departs from the course of evolution
29. C. They ought to improve their carer-to-child ratio.
30. B. For a happier family,learn from the hunter-gatherers
Text 3
31. B. He is popular with the users of an AI art generator.
32. C. make unauthortized use of online images
33. C. AI-generated work bearing his name
34. C. strengthen their relationships with Al users
35. A. Artists responses to Al art generation.
Text 4
36. A. a valuable natural environment
37. B. weakens the EPAs regulatory power
38. A. worried
39. D. It has ensured the coordination of protection efforts.
40. B. attach due importance to wetlands protections
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