1、2018考研英语（一）真题及参考答案（完整版）Section I Use of EnglishDirections:Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)Trust is a tricky business. On the one hand, its a necessary condition 1 many worthwhile things: child care, frien
2、dships, etc. On the other hand, putting your 2 , in the wrong place often carries a high 3.4, why do we trust at all? Well, because it feels good. 5 people place their trust in an individual or an institution, their brains release oxytocin, a hormone that 6 pleasurable feelings and triggers the herd
3、ing instruct that prompts humans to 7 with one another. Scientists have found that exposure 8 this hormone puts us in a trusting 9: In a Swiss study, researchers sprayed oxytocin into the noses of half the subjects; those subjects were ready to lend significantly higher amounts of money to strangers
4、 than were their 10 who inhaled something else.11 for us, we also have a sixth sense for dishonesty that may 12 us. A Canadian study found that children as young as 14 months can differentiate 13 a credible person and a dishonest one. Sixty toddlers were each 14 to an adult tester holding a plastic
5、container. The tester would ask, “Whats in here?” before looking into the container, smiling, and exclaiming, “Wow!” Each subject was then invited to look 15. Half of them found a toy; the other half 16 the container was empty-and realized the tester had 17 them.Among the children who had not been t
6、ricked, the majority were 18 to cooperate with the tester in learning a new skill, demonstrating that they trusted his leadership. 19, only five of the 30 children paired with the “20”tester participated in a follow-up activity.Section II Reading ComprehensionPart ADirections:Read the following four
7、 texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)Text 1Among the annoying challenges facing the middle class is one that will probably go unmentioned in the next presidential campaign: What happens when the robots come for their
8、 jobs?Dont dismiss that possibility entirely. About half of U.S. jobs are at high risk of being automated, according to a University of Oxford study, with the middle class disproportionately squeezed. Lower-income jobs like gardening or day care dont appeal to robots. But many middle-class occupatio
9、ns-trucking, financial advice, software engineering have aroused their interest, or soon will. The rich own the robots, so they will be fine.This isnt to be alarmist. Optimists point out that technological upheaval has benefited workers in the past. The Industrial Revolution didnt go so well for Lud
10、dites whose jobs were displaced by mechanized looms, but it eventually raised living standards and created more jobs than it destroyed. Likewise, automation should eventually boost productivity, stimulate demand by driving down prices, and free workers from hard, boring work. But in the medium term,
11、 middle-class workers may need a lot of help adjusting.The first step, as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue in The Second Machine Age, should be rethinking education and job training. Curriculums from grammar school to college- should evolve to focus less on memorizing facts and more on crea
12、tivity and complex communication. Vocational schools should do a better job of fostering problem-solving skills and helping students work alongside robots. Online education can supplement the traditional kind. It could make extra training and instruction affordable. Professionals trying to acquire n
13、ew skills will be able to do so without going into debt.The challenge of coping with automation underlines the need for the U.S. to revive its fading business dynamism: Starting new companies must be made easier. In previous eras of drastic technological change, entrepreneurs smoothed the transition
14、 by dreaming up ways to combine labor and machines. The best uses of 3D printers and virtual reality havent been invented yet. The U.S. needs the new companies that will invent them.Finally, because automation threatens to widen the gap between capital income and labor income, taxes and the safety n
15、et will have to be rethought. Taxes on low-wage labor need to be cut, and wage subsidies such as the earned income tax credit should be expanded: This would boost incomes, encourage work, reward companies for job creation, and reduce inequality.Technology will improve society in ways big and small o
16、ver the next few years, yet this will be little comfort to those who find their lives and careers upended by automation.Destroying the machines that are coming for our jobs would be nuts. But policies to help workers adapt will be indispensable.Text 2A new survey by Harvard University finds more tha
17、n two-thirds of young Americans disapprove of President Trumps use of Twitter. The implication is that Millennials prefer news from the White House to be filtered through other source, Not a presidents social media platform.Most Americans rely on social media to check daily headlines. Yet as distrus
18、t has risen toward all media, people may be starting to beef up their media literacy skills. Such a trend is badly needed. During the 2016 presidential campaign, nearly a quarter of web content shared by Twitter users in the politically critical state of Michigan was fake news, according to the Univ
19、ersity of Oxford. And a survey conducted for BuzzFeed News found 44 percent of Facebook users rarely or never trust news from the media giant.Young people who are digital natives are indeed becoming more skillful at separating fact from fiction in cyberspace. A Knight Foundation focus-group survey o
20、f young people between ages 14and24 found they use “distributed trust” to verify stories. They cross-check sources and prefer news from different perspectivesespecially those that are open about any bias. “Many young people assume a great deal of personal responsibility for educating themselves and
21、actively seeking out opposing viewpoints,” the survey concluded.Such active research can have another effect. A 2014 survey conducted in Australia, Britain, and the United States by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that young peoples reliance on social media led to greater political engagem
22、ent.Social media allows users to experience news events more intimately and immediately while also permitting them to re-share news as a projection of their values and interests. This forces users to be more conscious of their role in passing along information. A survey by Barna research group found
23、 the top reason given by Americans for the fake news phenomenon is “reader error,” more so than made-up stories or factual mistakes in reporting. About a third say the problem of fake news lies in “misinterpretation or exaggeration of actual news” via social media. In other words, the choice to shar
24、e news on social media may be the heart of the issue. “This indicates there is a real personal responsibility in counteracting this problem,” says Roxanne Stone, editor in chief at Barna Group.So when young people are critical of an over-tweeting president, they reveal a mental discipline in thinkin
25、g skills and in their choices on when to share on social media.Text 3Any fair-minded assessment of the dangers of the deal between Britains National Health Service (NHS) and DeepMind must start by acknowledging that both sides mean well. DeepMind is one of the leading artificial intelligence (AI) co
26、mpanies in the world. The potential of this work applied to healthcare is very great, but it could also lead to further concentration of power in the tech giants. It Is against that background that the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, has issued her damning verdict against the Royal Free
27、hospital trust under the NHS, which handed over to DeepMind the records of 1.6 million patients In 2015 on the basis of a vague agreement which took far too little account of the patients rights and their expectations of privacy.DeepMind has almost apologized. The NHS trust has mended its ways. Furt
28、her arrangements- and there may be many-between the NHS and DeepMind will be carefully scrutinised to ensure that all necessary permissions have been asked of patients and all unnecessary data has been cleaned. There are lessons about informed patient consent to learn. But privacy is not the only an
29、gle in this case and not even the most important. Ms Denham chose to concentrate the blame on the NHS trust, since under existing law it “controlled” the data and DeepMind merely “processed“ it. But this distinction misses the point that it is processing and aggregation, not the mere possession of b
30、its, that gives the data value.The great question is who should benefit from the analysis of all the data that our lives now generate. Privacy law builds on the concept of damage to an individual from identifiable knowledge about them. That misses the way the surveillance economy works. The data of
31、an individual there gains its value only when it is compared with the data of countless millions more.The use of privacy law to curb the tech giants in this instance feels slightly maladapted. This practice does not address the real worry. It is not enough to say that the algorithms DeepMind develop
32、s will benefit patients and save lives. What matters is that they will belong to a private monopoly which developed them using public resources. If software promises to save lives on the scale that dugs now can, big data may be expected to behave as a big pharm has done. We are still at the beginnin
33、g of this revolution and small choices now may turn out to have gigantic consequences later. A long struggle will be needed to avoid a future of digital feudalism. Ms Denhams report is a welcome start.Text 4The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) continues to bleed red ink. It reported a net loss of $5.6 bil
34、lion for fiscal 2016, the 10th straight year its expenses have exceeded revenue. Meanwhile, it has more than $120 billion in unfunded liabilities, mostly for employee health and retirement costs. There are many bankruptcies. Fundamentally, the USPS is in a historic squeeze between technological chan
35、ge that has permanently decreased demand for its bread-and-butter product, first-class mail, and a regulatory structure that denies management the flexibility to adjust its operations to the new realityAnd interest groups ranging from postal unions to greeting-card makers exert self-interested press
36、ure on the USPSs ultimate overseer-Congress-insisting that whatever else happens to the Postal Service, aspects of the status quo they depend on get protected. This is why repeated attempts at reform legislation have failed in recent years, leaving the Postal Service unable to pay its bills except b
37、y deferring vital modernization.Now comes word that everyone involved-Democrats, Republicans, the Postal Service, the unions and the systems heaviest usershas finally agreed on a plan to fix the system. Legislation is moving through the House that would save USPS an estimated $28.6 billion over five
38、 years, which could help pay for new vehicles, among other survival measures. Most of the money would come from a penny-per-letter permanent rate increase and from shifting postal retirees into Medicare. The latter step would largely offset the financial burden of annually pre-funding retiree health
39、 care, thus addressing a long-standing complaint by the USPS and its union.If it clears the House, this measure would still have to get through the Senate where someone is bound to point out that it amounts to the bare, bare minimum necessary to keep the Postal Service afloat, not comprehensive refo
40、rm. Theres no change to collective bargaining at the USPS, a major omission considering that personnel accounts for 80 percent of the agencys costs. Also missing is any discussion of eliminating Saturday letter delivery. That common-sense change enjoys wide public support and would save the USPS $2
41、billion per year. But postal special-interest groups seem to have killed it, at least in the House. The emerging consensus around the bill is a sign that legislators are getting frightened about a politically embarrassing short-term collapse at the USPS. It is not, however, a sign that theyre gettin
42、g serious about transforming the postal system for the 21st century.Part BDirections:The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G and filling them into the numbered boxe
43、s. Paragraphs C and F have been correctly placed. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)A. In December of 1869, Congress appointed a commission to select a site and prepare plans and cost estimates for a new State Department Building. The commission was also to consider possible arrangements for the War and Navy Departments. To the horror of some who expected a Greek Revival twin of the Treasury Building to be
