| 考博易错题（2019/10/14） |
| 第1题：You were ______ by your absence yesterday.
A．merciful B．conscientious C．conspicuous D. impartial |
| 【单选题】： |
| 第2题： One aspect ofAmerican education too seldom challenged is the lecture system. Professors continue to lecture and students to take notes much as they did in the 13th century. This time is long overdue for us to abandon the lecture system and mru to methods that really work. One problem with lectures is that listening intelligently is hard work.Even simply payirig attention is difficult. Many students believe years of watching TV has sabotaged their attention span, but their real problem is that listening attentively is much harder than they think. Worse still, attending lectures is passive learning, at least for inexperienced listeners.Active learning, in which students write essays or perform experiments and then have their work evaluated by an instructor, is far more beneficial for those who have net yet fully learned how to learn. While it’s true that techniques of active listening, such as trying to anticipate the speaker’ s next point or taking notes selectively, can enhance the value of a lecture, few students possess such skills at the beginning of their college career. More commonly, students try to write everything down and even bring tape recorders to class in a clumsy effort to capture every worD、 The lecture system ultimately harms professors as well. It reduces feedback to a minimum, so that the lecturer can neither judge how well students understand the material nor benefit from their questions or comments. If lectures make no sense, why have they been allowed to continueAdministrators love them, of course. They can cram far more students into a lecture hall than a discussion class.But the truth is that faculty members, and even students, conspire with them to keep the lecture sys- tem alive and well. Professors can pretend to teach by lecturing just as the students can pretend to learn by attending lectures. Moreover, if lectures afford some students an opportunity to sit back and let the professor run the show, they offer some professors an irresistible forum for showing off. Smaller classes in which students are required to involve themselves in discussion put an end to students’ passivity. Students become actively involved when forced to question their own ideas as well as their instructor’s. Such interchanges help professors do their job better because they allow them to discover who knows what--before final exam, not after. When exams are given in this type of course, they can require analysis and synthesis from the students, not empty memorization.Classes like this require energy, imagination, and commitment from professors, all of which can be exhausting.But they compel students to share responsibility for their own intellectual growth. Lectures will never entirely disappear from the university scene both because they seem to be economically necessary and because they spring from a long tradition in a setting that values tradition for its own sake.But the lectures too frequently come at the wrong end of the students educational career--during the first 2 years, when they most need close, even individual, instruction. If lecture classes were restricted to junior and senior undergraduates an 【单选题】： | |
| 第3题：Among the more common scenes are those in the courtyards of apartment buildings where the children play, while their elders gossip on benches, and young people congregate to listen to musiC、
A. assemble B．captivate C．engage D．fascinate |
| 【单选题】： |
| 第4题：A．runners
B．exercises C．patients D．cases |
| 【单选题】： |
| 第5题： That would precipitate the biggest pension default in history, more than twice the size of theBethlehem SteelCorporation default in 2002. The move is expected to destabilize the already struggling airline industry, prompting other old-line carriers likeDelta to eventually follow suit to maintain competitiveness. It would also put additional pressure on the PensionBenefit GuarantyCorporation (PBGC、, the federal agency that insures traditional pensions in case companies go belly up. It’s already facing more than a $9 billion shortfall.A、default by United would saddle it with an additional $ 8.4 billion in unfunded obligations. If other airlines follow, the PBGC、may have to go toCongress and plead for a bailout that some experts say would be bigger than the Savings and Loan debacle of the 1980s. More broadly, what all this means is that retirement for US workers just isn’t what it used to be. Forget the gold watch and reliable pension check after 30 years of service. The impact of globalization and competition from low-wage companies that don’t provide benefits has shifted the onus of retirement security from larger firms onto individuals. Twenty years ago, 40 percent ofAmerican workers were covered by traditional pensions known as defined-benefit plans. Today that number’s dropped to 20 percent.As theBethlehem Steel and United examples show, even that 20 percent may not be able to count on what they’ve been promiseD、Currently, about 75 percent of those corporate plazas are underfundeD、"There are numerous threats to retirement in the future," saysBradBelt, executive director of the PBGC、"So it’s incumbent on individuals to be well informed, prudent about their investments, and to save accordingly." To get a sense of the impact of the pension crisis on individuals, look at what United employees can expect. Pilots, who by law must retire at 60, could see their retirement income cut by 75 percent. Betty, who asked that her name not be used, has been flying for United for 26 years. She was expecting to retire with ＄140,000 a year.After the recent round of give-backs, that was cut to ＄90,000.But if United defaults as expected, she’d receive only ＄28,000 from the PBGC、If she waits until 65 to start collecting, she could be eligible for as much ＄44,500 a year. Either way, once pilots are forced to leave the cockpit at 60, most will probably look for another job rather than lounge on the golf course.Betty has already started a mediation business on the side. "All of the benefits that I’ d been promised during those 26 years have been erased by corporateAmerican greed," she says. "And yet I can see the big picture. I’ve said for three years that our pensions are history. No matter how many promises, they make us, if the money isn’t there, it isn’t there." For the pilots union, which negotiated the pension benefits over the years, often giving up wage increases for better retirement packages, the current situation is infuriating. They see pensions as benefits that are earned, like employee paychecks, not a bonus to be given as long as a company can afford it. "It seems immoral that just because they happen to be in a legal situation, they can walk away from those obligations, "says SteveDerebey, spokesman forAir Line PilotsAssociation." Why this isn’t a burning, blazing campaign issue is beyond me." |