Part II              Reading Comprehension        (35 minutes)
Passage One
Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage:
     One day in January 1913. G.H. Hardy, a famous Cambridge University mathematician received a letter from an Indian named Srinivasa Ramanujan asking him for his opinion of 120
mathematical theorems(定理) that Ramanujan said he had discovered. To Hardy, many of the
theorems made no sense. Of the others, one or two were already well - known. Ramanjuan must
be some kind of trickplayer, Hardy decided, and put the letter aside. But all that day the letter
kept hanging round Hardy. Might there be something in those wild - looking theorems?
      That evening Hardy invited another brilliant Cambridge mathematician, J.E. Littlewood,
and the two men set out to assess the Indian's worth. That incident was a turning point in the
history of mathematics.
      At the time, Ramanujan was an obscure Madras Port Trust clerk. A little more than a year
later, he was at Cambridge University, and beginning to be recognized as one of the most amazing mathematicians the world has ever known. Though he died in 1920, much of his work was
so far in advance of his time that only in recent years is it beginning to be properly understood.
Indeed, his results are helping solve today' s problems in computer science and physics, problems
that he could have had no notion of.
      For Indians, moreover, Ramanujan has a special significance. Ramanujan, though born in
poor and ill - paid accountant' s family 100 years ago, has inspired many Indians to adopt math-
ematics as career.
      Much of Ramanujan' s work is in number theory, a branch of mathematics that deals with
the subtle(难以捉摸的) laws and relationships that govern numbers. Mathematicians describe
his results as elegant and beautiful but they are much too complex to be appreciated by laymen.
His life, though, is full of drama and sorrow. It is one of the great romantic stories of mathemat-
ics, a distressing reminder that genius can surface and rise in the most unpromising circum-
stances.
21. When Hardy received the 120 theorems from Ramanujan, his attitude at first might be best
     described as
     A) uninterested    B) unsympathetic     C) suspicious    D) curious
22. Ramanujan's position in Cambridge University owed much to
     A) the judgement of his work by Hardy and Littlewood
     B) his letter of application accepted by Hardy
     C) his work as a clerk at Madras Port Trust
     D) his being recognized by the world as a famous mathematician
23. It may be inferred from the passage that the author
     A) feels sorry for Ramanujan's early death
     B) is dissatisfied with the slow development of computer science
     C) is puzzled about the complexity of Ramanujan's theorems
     D) greatly appreciates Ramanujan's mathematical genius
24. In the last paragraph, the author points out that
     A) Ramanujan's mathematical theorems were not appreciated by other mathematicians
     B) extremely talented people can prove their worth despite difficult circumstances
     C) Ramanujan also wrote a number of stories about mathematics
D) Ramanujan had worked out an elegant but complicated method of solving problems
25. The word "laymen"( Last para, Lind 6) most probably means
     A) people who do not specialize in mathematical science
     B) people who are careless
     C) people who are not interested in mathematics
D) people who don't like to solve complicated problems

Passage Two
Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage:
     Even if all the technical and intellectual problems can be solved, there are major social
problems inherent in the computer revolution. The most obvious is unemployment, since the ba-
sic purpose of commercial computerization is to get more work done by fewer people. One
British study predicts that "automation induced unemployment" in Western Europe could reach
16~,6 in the next decade, but most analyses are more optimistic. The general rule seems to be
that new technology eventually creates as many jobs as it destroys, and often more. "People who
put in computers usually increase their staffs as well" says CPT's Scheff. "Of course," he adds,
"one industry may kill another industry. That' s tough on some people."
     Theoretically, all unemployed workers can be retrained, but retraining programs are not
high on the nation' s agenda(议事日程). Many new jobs, moreover, will require an ability in using
computers, and the retraining needed to use them will have to be repeated as the technology
keeps improving. Says a chilling report by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment:
"Lifelong retraining is expected to become the standard for many people. "There is a already
considerable evidence that the school children now being educated in the use of computers are
generally the children of the white middle class. Young blacks, whose unemployment rate stands
today at 50 96, will find another barrier in front of them.
     Such social problems are not the fault of the computer, of course, but a consequence of the
way the American society might use the computer. "Even in the days of the Big, main- frame
computers, when they were a machine for the few." says Katherine Davis Fishman, author of
The Computer Establishment, "it was a tool to help the rich get richer. It still is to a large ex-
tent. One of the great values of the personal computer is that smaller firms, smaller organizations
can now have some of the advantages of the bigger organizations."
26. The closest restatement of "one industry may kill another industry" ( Para. I Lind 11) is
     that
     A) industries tend to compete with one another
     B) one industry might be driven out of business by another industry
     C) one industry may increase its staff at the expense of another
     D) industries tend to combine into bigger ones
27. The word "chilling" (Para. 2, Line 5) most probably means
     A) misleading      B) convincing        C) discouraging  D) interesting
28. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage?
A) Computers are efficient in retraining unempleyed workers.
     B) Computers may offer more working opportunities than they destroy.
     C) Computers will increase the unemployment rate of young blacks.
     D) Computers can help smaller organizations to function more effectively.
29. From the passage it can be inferred that
     A) all school children are offered a course in the use of computers
     B) all unemployed workers are being retrained
     C) retraining programmes are considered very important by the government
     D) in reality only a certain portion of unemployed'workers will be retrained
30. The major problem discussed in the passage is
     A) the importance of lifelong retraining of the unemployed workers
     B) the social consequences of the widespread use of computers in the United States
     C) the barrier to the employment of young people
     D) the general rule of the advancement of technology
Passage Three
Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage:
      Mobility of individual members and family groups tends to split up family relationships.
Occasionally the movement of a family away from a situation which has been the source of friction results in greater family organization, but on the whole mobility is disorganizing.
Individuals and families are involved in three types of mobility: movement in space,
movement up or down in social status, and the movement of ideas. These are termed respectively spatial, vertical, and ideational mobility.
      A great increase in spatial mobility has gone along with improvements in rail and water
transportation, the invention and use of the automobile, and the availability of airplane passenger
service. Spatial mobility results in a decline in the importance of the traditional home with its
emphasis on family continuity and stability. It also means that when individual family members
or the family as a whole move away from a community, the person or the family is removed
 from the pressures of relatives, friends, and community institutions for conventionality and stability. Even more important is the fact that spatial mobility permits some members of a family
 to come in contact with and possibly adopt attitudes, values, and ways of thinking different from
 those held by other family members. The presence of different attitudes, values, and ways of
 thinking with in a family may, and often does, result in conflict and family disorganization. Potential disorganization is present in those families in which the husband, wife, and children are
 spatially separated over a long period, or are living together but see each other only briefly be-
 cause of different work schedules.
       One index of the increase in vertical mobility is the great increase in the proportion of
 sons, and to some extent daughters, who engage in occupations other than those of the parents.
 Another index of vertical mobility is the degree of intermarrigae between racial classes. This occurs almost exclusively between classes which are adjacent to each other. Engaging in a different occupation, or intermarriage, like spatial mobility, allows one to come in contact with ways of
behavior different from those of the parental home, and tends to separate parents and their
children.
     The increase in ideational mobility is measured by the increase in publications, such as
newspapers, periodicals, and books, the increase in the percentage of the population owning radios,
and the increase in television sets. All these tend to introduce new ideas into the home.
When individual family members are exposed to and adopt the new ideas, the tendency is for
conflict to arise and for those in conflict to become psychologically separated from each other.
31. What the passage tells us can be summarized by the statement:
     A) social development results in a decline in the impotance of traditional families
     B) potential disorganization is present in the American family
     C) family disorganization is more or less the result of mobility
     D) the movement of a family is one of the factors in raising its social status
32. According to the passage, those who live in a traditional family
     A) are less likely to quarrel with others because of conventionality and stability
     B) have to depend on their relatives and friends if they do not move away from it
     C) can get more help from their family members if they are in trouble
     D) will have more freedom of action and thought if they move away from it.
33. Potential disorganization exists in those families in which
     A) the husband, wife, and children work too hard
     B) the husband, wife, and children seldom get together
     C) both parents have to work full time
     D) the family members are subject to social pressures
34. Intermarriage and different occupations play an important role in family disorganization be-
     cause
     A) they enable the children to travel around without their parents' permission
     B) they allow one to find a good job and improve one's social status
     C) they enable the children to better understand the ways of behavior of their parents
     D) they permit one to come into contact with different ways of behavior and thinking
35. This passage suggests that a well - organized family is a family whose members
     A) are not psychologically withdrawn from one another
     B) never quarrel with each other even when they disagree
     C) often help each other with true love and affection
D) are exposed to the same new ideas introduced by books, radios, and TV sets

Passage Four
Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage:
     To call someone bird - brained in English means you think that person is silly or stupid.
But will this description soon disappear from use in the light of recent research? It seems the
English may have been unfair in association bird's brains with stupidity.
In an attempt to find out how different creatures see the world, psychologists at Brown U-
niversity in the USA have been comparing the behaviour of birds and humans. One experiment
has involved teaching pigeons to recognize letters of the English alphabet. The birds study in
"classrooms", which are boxes equipped with a computer. After about four days of studying a
particular letter, the pigeon has to pick out that letter from several displayed on the computer
screen. Three male pigeons have learnt to distinguish all twenty - six letters of the alphabet in
this way.
      A computer record of the birds's fourmonth study period has shown surprising similarities
between the pigeons' and human performance. Pigeons and people find the same letters easy, or
hard, to tell apart. For example, 92 per cent of the time the pigeons could tell the letter D from
the letter Z. But when faced with U and V(often confused by English children), the pigeons
were right only 34 per cent of the time.
      The results of the experiments so far have led psychologists to conclude that pigeons and
humans observe things in similar ways. This suggests that there is something fundamental about
the recognition process. If scientists could only discover just what this recognition process is it
could be very useful for computer designers. The disadvantage of a presen computer is that it
can only do what a human being has programmed it to do and the programmer must give the
computer precise, logical instructions. Maybe in the future, though, computers will be able to
think like human beings.
36. The writer suggests that the expression "bird - brained" might be out of use soon because it
     is
     A) silly            B) impolite          C) unnecessary  D) inappropriate
37. Psychologists have been experimenting with pigeons to find out whether the brids
      A) are really silly or stupid
      B) can learn to make ideas known to people
      C) see the world as human beings do
      D) learn more quickly than children
38. U and V are confused by
     A) 92 per cent of pigeons
     B) many English children
      C) most people learning English
     D) 34 per cent of English children
39. There are similarities in observing things by pigeons and humans
      A) because pigeons are taught by humans
      B) because pigeons have brains more developed than other birds
      C) because their basic ways to know the world are the same
      D) because pigeons and humans have similar brains
40. The research may help
A) computer designers                   B) computer salesmen
     C) psychologists                           D) teachers