2016年华南理工大学626英语综合水平测试考研真题

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2016年华南理工大学626英语综合水平测试考研真题

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华南理工大学
2016 年攻读硕士学位研究生入学考试试卷
（试卷上做答无效，请在答题纸上做答，试后本卷必须与答题纸一同交回）
科目名称：英语综合水平测试
适用专业：英语语言文学，外国语言学及应用语言学
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Part 1 Reading Comprehension (60 marks, 2 marks each)
Directions: Read the following passages and make ONE choice that best complete or
answer each of the statements or questions after the passages.
Passage 1
Fall is staggering in, right on schedule, with its baggage of chilly nights, spectacular,
heart-stoppingly beautiful leaves. People will travel up and down the East Coast just to
stare at it – a whole season of leaves.
Where do the colors come from? Sunlight rules most living things with its golden
edicts. When the days begin to shorten, a tree reconsiders its leaves. All summer it feeds
them so they can process sunlight, but in the dog days of summer the tree begins pulling
nutrients back into its trunk and roots, reduces and gradually chokes off its leaves. A dry
layer of cells forms at the leaves’ slender stems, then scars over. Undernourished, the
leaves stop producing the pigment chlorophyll, and photosynthesis ceases. Animals can
migrate, hibernate, or store food to prepare for winter. But where can a tree go? It survives
by dropping its leaves, and by the end of autumn only a few fragile threads of
fluid-carrying xylem hold leaves to their stems.
A turning leaf stays partly green at first, then reveals spots of yellow and red as the
chlorophyll gradually breaks down. Dark green seems to stay longest in the veins. During
the summer, chlorophyll dissolves in the heat and light, but it is also being steadily replaced.
In the fall, on the other hand, no new pigment is produced, and so we notice the other
colors that were always there, right in the leaf, although chlorophyll’s shocking green hid
them from view. With their camouflage gone, we see these colors for the first time all year,
but they were always there, hidden like a vivid secret beneath the hot glowing greens of
summer.
An odd feature of the colors is that they don’t seem to have any special purpose.
Animals and flowers color for a reason – adaptation to their environment – but there is no
adaptive reason for leaves to color so beautifully in the fall any more than there is for the
sky or ocean to be blue. It’s just one of the haphazard marvels the planet presents every
year. We find the sizzling colors thrilling, and in a sense they cheat us. Colored like living
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things, they signal death and disintegration. In time, they will become fragile and, like the
body, return to dust. They are as we hope our own fate will be when we die: Not to vanish,
just to sublime from one beautiful state into another. Though leaves lose their green life,
they bloom with urgent colors, as the woods grow mummified day by day, and Nature
becomes more carnal, mute, and radiant…
1. The signal for a tree to begin its preparation for winter is when ______.
A) nights feel chilly days become shorter
B) days become shorter
C) there is less nutrients
D) the weather turns drier
2. According to the passage, the leaves’ color changing process should be traced back to
______.
A) the blooming spring days
B) the dog days of summer
C) the late autumn days
D) the previous winter
3. We just see green in summer because _______.
A) trees can only produce chlorophyll
B) trees in green can easily get more nutrients
C) enough sunlight provides strong green colors
D) chlorophyll is strong enough to cover other colors
4. In the last paragraph, the beautifully colored leaves are compared to _______.
A) the fragile plants
B) the blooming flowers
C) the dying human body
D) the God-created wonder
5. Which of the following will the author agree?
A) The ocean chooses blue color to match the surroundings.
B) The spectacularly colored leaves signal the end of life.
C) Leaves change color in autumn for adaptive purpose.
D) People hope for a more beautiful world after death.
Passage 2
Imagine a world in which everyone uses all the energy they want, yet dependence on
oil, with its attendant smog and green-house-gas emissions, is a thing of the past. This
utopia is plausible – many would say probably. It is one in which hydrogen, rather than
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fossil fuels, is central to our energy economy.
Vehicles could use hydrogen in a variety of ways. Some researchers favor the
introduction of electric cars powered solely by fuel cells, which combine hydrogen and
oxygen to produce electricity. Others say that conventional car engines can be converted to
run on hydrogen with relatively minor modifications. Experts are also split over whether, as
a temporary step towards a full hydrogen economy, vehicles should initially use on-board
equipment to extract hydrogen from fossil fuels.
Infrastructure issues play a big role in the debate over which approach should be taken.
The lack of an existing system for storing and distributing hydrogen presents a dilemma.
Car manufacturers do not want to sell vehicles that people cannot fuel, and energy
companies do not want to spend money developing a hydrogen distribution infrastructure
when there are no hydrogen cars on the road. The equation becomes more complicated
with fuel cells because they have yet to be produced in large numbers and their long-term
reliability has not been proven.
This deadlock could be broken by “reformers”, which would allow hydrogen cars to
run on fossil fuels. Reformers can break down the hydrocarbons in fossil fuels and so
liberate hydrogen. Natural gas, for example, can be reformed by heating it together with
water and a nickel-based catalyst. The result is a series of reactions whose products are
carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Other fossil fuels, including petrol or gasoline, can be
reformed in a similar way.
Hydrogen cars fitted with reformers would still run on petrol, but would reform it into
hydrogen. Advocates of the technology say that this would give car companies the
confidence to produce the vehicles, and so provide a fresh impetus for fuel-cell
development. Several car manufacturers, including General Motors and DaimlerChrysler,
are now working with Ballard Power Systems, a fuel-cell producer based in Burnaby, near
Vancouver, to develop vehicles that are powered by fuel cells fed by reformers.
But reformers still produce carbon dioxide, and for many environmentalists, this is
enough to rule them out. In addition, it has to be taken into account that hydrogen vehicles
with reformers are also technologically more complex and costly to build than straight
fuel-cell cars.
6. In this article, what is introduced as the most promising substitute for fossil fuels?
A) Fuel cells.
B) Reformers.
C) Hydrogen.
D) Hydrocarbons.
7. Car manufacturers and energy companies are reluctant in the energy reform campaign
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mainly because ______.
A) They don’t believe applying the new technology will be profitable.
B) The infrastructure system is not ready to support hydrogen-fed cars.
C) Mass production of fuel cells is still difficult in terms of technology.
D) Consumers do not have belief in the long-term reliability of new fuels.
8. Which is NOT included as the problems with the “reformers”?
A) Fossil fuels are used in the hydrogen-fed cars.
B) Reformers promote the fuel-cell development.
C) Burning reformers will release carbon dioxide.
D) Building vehicles with reformers is expensive.
9. Why did General Motors and DaimlerChrysler favor reformers?
A) Because they have confidence in fuel cells.
B) Because they want to protect the environment.
C) Because cars can still store fossil fuels to produce hydrogen.
D) Because reformers are the necessary step towards a better economy.
10. The main idea of this article is _______.
A) How to have cars run on hydrogen remains a problem.
B) Experts still argue whether hydrogen is the best substitute.
C) The long-talked-about energy utopia will be realized in near future.
D) Car manufacturers and energy companies can’t come to an agreement.
Passage 3
Dr. Joseph Bell, the eminent surgeon and medical instructor, had all people wide-eyed
with his deductive acrobatics.
“A patient walked into the room where I was instructing the students, and his case
seemed to be a very simple one. I was talking about what was wrong with him. ‘He has
been a soldier in a Highland regiment, and probably a bandsman.’ I pointed out the
swagger in his walk, suggestive of the Highland piper; while his shortness told me that if
he had been a soldier, it was probably as a bandsman. But the man insisted he was nothing
but a shoemaker and had never been in the army in his life. This was rather a floorer, but
being absolutely certain, I told two of the strongest clerks to remove the man to a side room
and strip him. Under his left breast I instantly detected a little blue D branded on his skin.
He was an army deserter. That was how they used to mark them in the Crimean days. He
confessed having played in the band of a Highland regiment in the war against the
Russians.”
Of all the Edinburgh undergraduates, it was Conan Doyle who was the most deeply
impressed by his incredible mentor. One time when the young Doyle was working as Dr.
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Bell’s assistant, a patient entered and sat down. “Did you like your walk over the golf links
today, as you came in from the south of the town?” inquired Dr. Bell. The patient replied:
“Why, yes, did Your Honor see me?” Dr. Bell had not seen him.
“Conan Doyle could not understand how I knew,” Dr. Bell related later, “but on a
showery day such as that had been, the reddish clay at bare parts of the golf links adheres
to the boot, and a tiny part is bound to remain. There is no such clay anywhere else.”
Thus, Conan Doyle’s five years as a struggling medical student – and his months
serving his uncanny Scotch instructor – gave him both the idea for the character and much
of the material that helped make him a world-famous author. But actually, when he
graduated from Edinburgh University in 1881, Doyle intended to be a doctor. He nailed up
his oculist’s shingle in a suburb of Portsmouth and waited for patients. Six years later he
was still waiting. Lacking a practice, desperate for any kind of income, Doyle turned to
writing. He decided to try a detective story. And for it he wanted a new kind of detective.
Perhaps he looked at the photograph of Dr. Bell which he kept on the mantelpiece of his
study. At any rate, he thought of Bell, and, thinking of him, hit upon his detective.
He called him Sherlock Holmes after an English cricketer and Oliver Wendell
Holmes.
11. Dr. Bell decided that the patient (in the 2nd paragraph) was a soldier mainly because
of ______.
A) his being short
B) his way of walking
C) his refusal to be stripped
D) the mark under his breast
12. What did Conan Doyle learn in Edinburgh University?
A) Writing.
B) Surgery.
C) Deduction.
D) Medicine.
13. What is true about Conan Doyle?
A) He began writing stories to make a living.
B) He had been one of Dr. Bell’s best students.
C) He had always dreamed to be a famous writer.
D) He had learned much from Dr. Bell about deduction.
14. Which contributed to Conan Dolye’s finally becoming a famous author?
A) His intimate relationship with Dr. Bell.
B) His good memory and deductive capability
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C) His interest in detective stories and his skills with words.
D) His medical knowledge and working experience with Dr. Bell.
15. Which of the following is NOT true about Dr. Bell and his deductive ability?
A) Seeing the patient was not tall, Dr. Bell could tell with certainty he was a solider.
B) From the clay attached to the boot, Dr. Bell knew where the person came from.
C) By observing how people walked, he could tell what profession they were probably in.
D) Conan Doyle was much impressed by Dr. Bell’s deductive feats while working
together.
Passage 4
A few months before, as I was visiting Texas, I heard the taped voice used to guide
passengers to their connections at the Dallas Airport announcing items in both Spanish and
English. This trend is likely to continue; after all, for some southwestern states like Texas,
where the largest minority is now Mexican-American, Spanish was the first written
language and the Spanish style lives on in the western way of life.
Shortly after my Texas trip, I sat in a campus auditorium at the University of
Wisconsin at Milwaukee as a Yale professor ― whose original work on the influence of
African cultures upon those of the Americas has led to his ostracism from some intellectual
circles ― walked up and down the aisle like an old-time Southern evangelist, dancing and
drumming the top of the lectern, illustrating his points before some Afro-American
intellectuals and artists who cheered and applauded his performance. The professor was
"white." After his lecture, he conversed with a group of Milwaukeeans ― all of whom
spoke Yoruban, though only the professor had ever traveled to Africa.
Such blurring of cultural styles occurs in everyday life in the United States to a greater
extent than anyone can imagine. Yet members of the nation's present educational and
cultural elite still cling to the notion that the United States belongs to some vaguely defined
entity they refer to as "Western civilization," by which they mean, presumably, a
civilization created by people of Europe, as if Europe can even be viewed as completely
uninfluenced by the rest of the world. Is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which includes
Turkish marches, a part of Western civilization? Or the late-nineteenth- and
twentieth-century French paintings, whose creators were influenced by Japanese art? And
what of the cubists, through whom the influence of African art changed modem painting?
Or the surrealists, who were so impressed with the art of the Pacific Northwest Indians that,
in their map of North America, Alaska dwarfs the lower forty-eight states in size?
Are the Russians, who are often criticized for their adoption of "Western" ways by
Tsarist dissidents in exile, members of Western civilization? And what of the millions of
Europeans who have black African and Asian ancestry, black Africans having occupied
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several European countries for hundreds of years? Are these "Europeans" a part of Western
civilization? Or the Hungarians, who originated across the Urals in a place called Greater
Hungary? Or the Irish, who came from the Iberian Peninsula?
Even the notion that North America is part of Western civilization because our
"system of government" is derived from Europe is being challenged by Native American
historians who say that the founding fathers Benjamin Franklin especially, were actually
influenced by the system of government that had been adopted by Iroqois hundreds of
years prior to the arrival of Europeans.
16. Why did the Dallas airport announcement speak both Spanish and English?
A) The majority people living there is Mexican.
B) The airport announcer was of Spanish origin.
C) Spanish and English are official languages there.
D) Spanish is a required second language for Texas residents.
17. We can learn from the second paragraph that _____.
A) the author of the passage was an Afro-American
B) the language spoken in Milwaukee was Yoruban
C) the Yale professor lectured on African cultures
D) the audience came from some Southern states
18. What does “Western civilization” mean according to some American educational and
cultural elite?
A) European culture without the influence of other civilizations.
B) American culture which originated from mainland Europe.
C) The European cultural courses taught in high schools.
D) Western ways of living by Russian dissidents in exile.
19. According to the passage, which of the following is pure without other cultural
influence?
A) Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
B) Late 19th and 20th century French paintings.
C) American system of government.
D) The art of Pacific Northwest Indians.
20. According to the author, which of the following has an Indian contribution?
A) Yoruban dancing.
B) Festival marches.
C) Eighteenth century paintings.
D) Government system.
Passage 5
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Many people find New York an unattractive city to inhabit because of the physical
filth, and while, God knows, the city is filthy, I doubt that that element plays an important
role in our decision to leave. Naples is far dirtier, and so are Bombay and countless other
cities, but a tolerance for dirt seems to grow where some fondness exists. Tangiers is one of
the dirtiest cities in the world, yet a friend of mine who possesses flawless taste lives in the
casbah there and would live nowhere else. A few days ago in Central Park I saw a man
leaning on a litter can drinking a carton of orange juice, and when he finished he tossed the
container not in the receptacle but on the ground.
I don't understand this, but there is a lot about New York I don't understand. Mainly, I
don't understand why the city has no soul, no detectable heartbeat, why the chief element in
the city's emotional economy is indifference. I think that's what sent me on my way. Vienna
almost suffocates the Viennese with care, Paris manages to imbue her own with an
obsession for their fulfillment, San Francisco exudes a pride that even gathers to her heart
total strangers; but the key to New York's character is that it doesn't really care about
anything. Across the court from the Manhattan apartment that I have occupied for the past
few years is a dog that quite often hurls insults into the darkness, a few of which my dog
refuses to accept service on and makes a tart reply. I think I yearn for the people of New
York to do somewhat the same thing; I would like to think they possess a nature that could
be stimulated by something.
A number of New Yorkers have been driven from the city by fear; by the feeling that
they are besieged and that if they venture too far from their neighborhoods they will be
mugged or, worse, murdered. I have never been mugged or physically molested in any way,
possibly because my large build does not make me an ideal prospect for a hoodlum. Yet I
recall the lady who was buying a magazine in the Port Authority Bus Terminal one evening
when a stranger walked up and disemboweled her with a butcher knife. Later arrested, he
told police that he didn't know the lady but "just felt like killing somebody." It's impossible
to protect oneself from such madness, and I think it is the fool in New York who is not a
coward at heart.
I recall, too, the New Year's Eve when, after a dinner party, a friend of mine went
down to the street to get a taxicab and the cab veered too quickly and hit him. His wife and
I took him in the cab to Lenox Hill Hospital, and while we were trying to get emergency
treatment for him the cabdriver was screaming at us for his fare. A few weeks ago a
fifteen-year-old girl was raped on a subway train. The next day the police expressed the
opinion that the girl was partially responsible for the act because she had entered a car in
which there were no other passengers. All of these things may happen in other large cities,
and undoubtedly do, but they reflect a lack of caring, a sickness of the soul, that I find
difficult to accept and impossible to forget.
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21. What’s the meaning of the word “filthy” in the first sentence?
A) Flawy.
B) Dirty.
C) Unattractive.
D) Important.
22. According to the author, ______ is the key character of the city New York.
A) suffocation
B) obsession
C) pride
D) indifference
23. The man killed the lady with a butcher knife because _____.
A) the lady didn’t pay for the magazine
B) the lady was the only person he didn’t know
C) the man was a new butcher
D) the man just wanted to kill
24. Why was the cabdriver screaming at the author and his friends?
A) He was hit by the taxicab.
B) He didn’t want any emergency treatment.
C) He was asking for the money.
D) He refused to take the responsibility.
25. Which of the following was not the reason why the author left New York?
A) Physical filth.
B) Lack of caring.
C) Madness.
D) Indifference.
Passage 6
My grandmother in Bacon County, Georgia, raised biddies: tiny cheeping bits of fluff
that city folk allow their children to squeeze to death at Easter. But city children are not the
only ones who love biddies; hawks love them, too. Hawks like to swoop into the yard and
carry off one impaled on their curved talons. Perhaps my grandmother, in her secret heart,
knew that hawks even then were approaching the time when they would be on the
endangered species list. Whether she did or not, I'm sure she often felt she and her kind
were already on the list. It would not do.
I'll never forget the first time I saw her get rid of a hawk. Chickens, as everybody
knows, are cannibals. Let a biddy get a spot of blood on it from a scrap or a raw place and
the other biddies will simply eat it alive. My grandmother penned up all the biddies except
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the puniest one, already half pecked to death by the other cute little bits of fluff, and she set
it out in the open yard by itself. First, though, she put arsenic on its head. I ― about five
years old and sucking on a sugar-tit ― saw the hawk come in low over the fence, its red
tail fanned, talons stretched, and nail the poisoned biddy where it squatted in the dust. The
biddy never made a sound as it was carried away. My gentle grandmother watched it all
with satisfaction before she let her other biddies out of the pen.
Another moment from my childhood that comes instantly to mind was about a chicken,
too; a rooster. He was boss cock of the whole farm, a magnificent bird nearly two feet tall.
At the base of a chicken's throat is its craw, a kind of pouch into which the bird swallows
food, as well as such things as grit, bits of rock and shell. For reasons I don't understand
they sometimes become craw-bound. The stuff in the craw does not move; it remains in the
craw and swells and will ultimately cause death. That's what would have happened to the
rooster if the uncle who practically raised me hadn't said one day: "Son, we got to fix him."
He tied the rooster's feet so we wouldn't be spurred and took out his castrating knife,
honed to a razor's edge, and sterilized it over a little fire. He soaked a piece of fine fishing
line and a needle in alcohol. I held the rooster on its back, a wing in each hand. With the
knife my uncle split open the craw, cleaned it out, then sewed it up with the fishing line.
The rooster screamed and screamed. But it lived to be cock of the walk again.
26. What’s the possible meaning of the word “biddies” (Paragraph 1)?
A) Baby hawks.
B) Baby chickens.
C) Baby birds.
D) Baby boys.
27. How did the author’s grandmother get rid of a hawk?
A) By penning up all the biddies.
B) By pecking her biddies to death.
C) By giving it a poisoned biddy.
D) By putting arsenic on its head.
28. According to the passage, what’s the organ for a chicken to digest food?
A) Craw.
B) Grit.
C) Rock.
D) Shell.
29. Being “cock of the walk” means being a _____.
A) weak rooster
B) lovely cock
C) boss rooster
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D) crippled cock
30. From the passage, we can infer _____.
A) The author’s relatives were very kind.
B) Life on a farm was not very romantic.
C) The author liked his childhood very much.
D) Farmers had to treat sick chickens by themselves.
Part 2 Critical Reading (40 marks, 4 marks each)
Directions: Read the following passages and answer the question.
Passage 7
I dated a woman for a while ― a literary type, well-read, lots of books in her
place ― whom I admired a bit too extravagantly, and one Christmas I decided to give her
something unusually nice and, I'm afraid, unusually expensive. I bought her a set of Swift's
Works ― not just any set but a scarce early-eighteenth-century edition; then I wrapped
each leather-bound volume separately and made a card for each volume, each card
containing a carefully chosen quotation from Swift himself. I thought it was terribly
romantic; I had visions of her opening the set, volume by volume, while we sat by the fire
Christmas Eve sipping cognac and listening to the Brandenburg Concertos.
How stupid I am sometimes! She, practical woman that should have known she was,
had bought me two pairs of socks and a shirt, plus a small volume of poems by A. R.
Ammons. She cried when she opened the Swift. I thought they were tears of joy, but they
weren't. "I can't accept this," she said. "It's totally out of proportion." She insisted that I
take the books back or sell them or keep them for myself. When I protested she just got
more upset, and finally she asked me to leave and to take the books with me. Hurt and
perplexed, I did. We stopped seeing each other soon after that. It took me weeks to figure
out what I had done wrong. "There's a goat in all of us," R. P. Blackmur wrote somewhere,
"a stupid, stubborn goat."
To my credit, I'm normally more perspicacious about the gifts I give, and less of a
show-off, But I have it in me, obviously, to be, as my ex-girlfriend said, totally out of
proportion: to give people things I can't afford, or things that betoken an intimacy that
doesn't exist, or things that bear no relation to the interests or desires of the person I'm
giving them to. I've kicked myself too often not to know it's there, this insensitivity to the
niceties of gift-giving.
The niceties, of course, not the raw act of giving (and certainly not the thought) are
what count. In most cultures, most of them more sensible than our own, the giving of gifts
is highly ritualistic ― that is, it is governed by rules and regulations; it is under strict
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social control. It is also, more or less explicitly, an exchange. None of this giving with no
thought of receiving; on the contrary, you give somebody something and you expect
something back in return ― maybe not right away but soon enough. And it is expected to
be of more or less equivalent value; you can be fairly certain that nobody is going to
one-up you with something really extravagant like a scarce set of Swift, or else turn greedy
on you and give you a penny whistle in return for a canoe. And once that's under control,
the giving and receiving of gifts is free to become ceremonious, an occasion for feasting
and celebration. You can finish your cognacs, in other words, and get down to the real
business of the evening.
31. What kind of a Christmas Eve did the author expect when he bought his date a set of
Swift’s Works?
32. Why did the author’s date cry when she opened the Swift?
33. What’s the basic rule for gift giving?
.
Passage 8
Not so long ago, for most people, listening to radio was a single task activity. Now it
is rare for a person to listen to the radio and do nothing else.
Even TV has lost its command of our foreground. In so many households the TV just
stays on, like a noisy light bulb, while the life of the family passes back and forth in its
shimmering glow.
A sense of well-being comes with this saturation of parallel pathways in the brain. We
choose mania over boredom every time. “Humans have never, ever opted for slower,”
points out the historian Stephen Kent.
We catch the fever ― and the fever feels good. We live in the buzz. "It has gotten to
the point where my days, crammed with all sorts of activities, feel like an Olympic
endurance event: the everydayathon," confesses Jay Walljasper in the Utne Reader.
All humanity has not succumbed equally, of course. If you make haste, you probably
make it in the technology-driven world. Sociologists have also found that increasing wealth
and increasing education bring a sense of tension about time. We believe that we possess
too little of it. No wonder Ivan Seidenberg, an American telecommunications executive,
jokes about the mythical DayDoubler program his customers seem to want: "Using
sophisticated time-mapping and compression techniques, DayDoubler gives you access to
48 hours each and every day. At the higher numbers DayDoubler becomes less stable, and
you run the risk of a temporal crash in which everything from the beginning of time to the
present could crash down around you, sucking you into a suspended time zone."
Our culture views time as a thing to hoard and protect. Timesaving is the subject to
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scores of books with titles like Streamlining Your Life; Take Your Time; More Hours in My
Day. Marketers anticipate our desire to save time, and respond with fast ovens, quick
playback, quick freezing and fast credit.
We have all these ways to "save time," but what does that concept really mean? Does
timesaving mean getting more done? If so, does talking on a cellular phone at the beach
save time or waste it? If you can choose between a 30-minute train ride, during which you
can read, and a 20-minute drive, during which you cannot, does the drive save ten minutes?
Does it make sense to say that driving saves ten minutes from your travel budget while
removing ten minutes from your reading budget? "
These questions have no answer. They depend on a concept that is ill formed: the very
idea of timesaving. Some of us say we want to save time when really we just want to do
more and faster. It might be simplest to recognize that there is time and we make choices
about how to spend it, how to spare it, how to use it and how to fill it.
Time is not a thing we have lost. It is not a thing we ever had. It is what we live in."
34. What’s the main idea of the first two paragraphs?
35. What’s the purpose of the DayDoubler program?
36. According to the author, what’s the real meaning of timesaving?
Passage 9
Now, Alexander was in Corinth to take command of the League of Greek States which,
after conquering them, his father Philip had created as a disguise for the New Macedonian
Order. He was welcomed and honored and flattered. He was the man of the hour, of the
century: he was unanimously appointed commander-in-chief of a new expedition against
old, rich, corrupt Asia. Nearly everyone crowded to Corinth in order to congratulate him, to
seek employment with him, even simply to see him: soldiers and statesmen, artists and
merchants, poets and philosophers. He received their compliments graciously. Only
Diogenes, although he lived in Corinth, did not visit the new monarch. With that generosity
which Aristotle had taught him was a quality of the truly magnanimous man, Alexander
determined to call upon Diogenes. Surely Diogenes, the God-born, would acknowledge the
conqueror's power by some gift of hoarded wisdom.
With his handsome face, his fiery glance, his strong supple body, his purple and gold
cloak and his air of destiny, he moved through the parting crowd, toward the Dog's kennel.
When a king approaches, all rise in respect. Diogenes did not rise, he merely sat up on one
elbow. When a monarch enters a precinct, all greet him with a bow or an acclamation.
Diogenes said nothing.
There was a silence. Some years later Alexander speared his best friend to the wall,
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for objecting to the exaggerated honors paid to His Majesty; but now he was still young
and civil. He spoke first, with a kindly greeting. Looking at the poor broken cask, the single
ragged garment, and the rough figure lying on the ground, he said: "Is there anything I can
do for you, Diogenes?"
"Yes," said the Dog, "Stand to one side. You' re blocking the sunlight."
There was silence, not the ominous silence preceding a burst of fury, but a hush of
amazement. Slowly, Alexander turned away. A titter broke out from the elegant Greeks,
who were already beginning to make jokes about the Cur that looked at the King. The
Macedonian officers, after deciding that Diogenes was not worth the trouble of kicking,
were starting to guffaw and nudge one another. Alexander was still silent. To those nearest
him he said quietly, "If I were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes." They took it as a
paradox, designed to close the awkward little scene with a polite curtain line. But
Alexander meant it. He understood Cynicism as the others could not. Later he took one of
Diogenes' pupils with him to India as a philosophical interpreter. He was what Diogenes
called himself, a cosmopolites, "citizen of the world." Like Diogenes, he admired the
heroic figure of Hercules, the mighty conqueror who labors to help mankind while all
others toil and sweat only for themselves. He knew that all men then alive in the world only
Alexander the conqueror and Diogenes the beggar were truly free.
37. Who had created the League of Greek States?
38. How did people feel when Diogenes asked Alexander to stand to one side?
39. Why didn’t Alexander lose temper?
40. What might be the meaning of Cynicism?
.
Part 3 Composition (50 marks)
Directions: College students are being encouraged to do volunteer work in western China.
Is it really worthwhile to spend a year or two volunteering in an underdeveloped region?
Write an essay of about 400 words to state your view. In the first part of your essay you
should state clearly your main argument, and in the second part you should support your
argument with appropriate details. In the last part you should bring what you have written
to a natural conclusion or make a summary. You should supply an appropriate title for your
essay. Marks will be awarded for content(30%), organization(20%), vocabulary(20%),
language use(20%) and mechanics(10%). Failure to follow the above instructions may
result in a loss of marks.

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2016年华南理工大学626英语综合水平测试考研真题