【下载】考研英语值得背诵的阅读真题整理

@9401
The American economic system is organized around a basically private-enterprise, market-oriented economy in which consumers largely determine what shall be produced by spending their money in the marketplace for those goods and services that they want most. Private businessmen, striving to make profits, produce these goods and services in competition with other businessmen; and the profit motive, operating under competitive pressures, largely determines how these goods and services are produced. Thus, in the American economic system it is the demand of individual consumers, coupled with the desire of businessmen to maximize profits and the desire of individuals to maximize their incomes, that together determine what shall be produced and how resources are used to produce it.
　　An important factor in a market-oriented economy is the mechanism by which consumer demands can be expressed and responded to by producers. In the American economy, this mechanism is provided by a price system, a process in which prices rise and fall in response to relative demands of consumers and supplies offered by seller-producers. If the products is in short supply relative to the demand, the price will be bid up and some consumers will be eliminated from the market. If, on the other hand, producing more of a commodity results in reducing its cost, this will tend to increase the supply offered by seller-producers, which in turn will lower the price and permit more consumers to buy the product. Thus, price is the regulating mechanism in the American economic system.
　　The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individuals are allowed to own productive resources (private property), and they are permitted to hire labor, gain control over natural resources, and produce goods and services for sale at a profit. In the American economy, the concept of private property embraces not only the ownership of productive resources but also certain rights, including the right to determine the price of a product or to make a free contract with another private individual.

@9403
　　Exceptional children are different in some significant way from others of the same age. For these children to develop to their full adult potential, their education must be adapted to those differences.
　　Although we focus on the needs of exceptional children, we find ourselves describing their environment as well. While the leading actor on the stage captures our attention, we are aware of the importance of the supporting players and the scenery of the play itself. Both the family and the society in which exceptional children live are often the key to their growth and development. And it is in the public schools that we find the full expression of society's understanding — the knowledge, hopes, and fears that are passed on to the next generation.
　　Education in any society is a mirror of that society. In that mirror we can see the strengths, the weaknesses, the hopes, the prejudices, and the central values of the culture itself. The great interest in exceptional children shown in public education over the past three decades indicates the strong feeling in our society that all citizens, whatever their special conditions, deserve the opportunity to fully develop their capabilities.
　　"All men are created equal." We've heard it many times, but it still has important meaning for education in a democratic society. Although the phrase was used by this country's founders to denote equality before the law, it has also been interpreted to mean equality of opportunity. That concept implies educational opportunity for all children — the right of each child to receive help in learning to the limits of his or her capacity, whether that capacity be small or great. Recent court decisions have confirmed the right of all children — disabled or not — to an appropriate education, and have ordered that public schools take the necessary steps to provide that education. In response, schools are modifying their programs, adapting instruction to children who are exceptional, to those who cannot profit substantially from regular programs.

@9405
　　Discoveries in science and technology are thought by "untaught minds" to come in blinding flashes or as the result of dramatic accidents. Sir Alexander Fleming did not, as legend would have it, look at the mold on a piece of cheese and get the idea for penicillin there and then. He experimented with antibacterial substances for nine years before he made his discovery. Inventions and innovations almost always come out of laborious trial and error. Innovation is like soccer; even the best players miss the goal and have their shots blocked much more frequently than they score.
　　The point is that the players who score most are the ones who take the most shots at the goal — and so it goes with innovation in any field of activity. The prime difference between innovators and others is one of approach. Everybody gets ideas, but innovators work consciously on theirs, and they follow them through until they prove practicable or otherwise. What ordinary people see as fanciful abstractions, professional innovators see as solid possibilities.
　　"Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there's no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done," wrote Rudolph Flesch, a language authority. This accounts for our reaction to seemingly simple innovations like plastic garbage bags and suitcases on wheels that make life more convenient: "How come nobody thought of that before?"
　　The creative approach begins with the proposition that nothing is as it appears. Innovators will not accept that there is only one way to do anything. Faced with getting from A to B, the average person will automatically set out on the best-known and apparently simplest route. The innovator will search for alternate courses, which may prove easier in the long run and are bound to be more interesting and challenging even if they lead to dead ends.
　　Highly creative individuals really do march to a different drummer.

@9504
　　Personality is to a large extent inherent — A-type parents usually bring about A-type offspring. But the environment must also have a profound effect, since if competition is important to the parents, it is likely to become a major factor in the lives of their children.
　　One place where children soak up A characteristics is school, which is, by its very nature, a highly competitive institution. Too many schools adopt the "win at all costs" moral standard and measure their success by sporting achievements. The current passion for making children compete against their classmates or against the clock produces a two-layer system, in which competitive A-types seem in some way better than their B-type fellows. Being too keen to win can have dangerous consequences: remember that Pheidippides, the first marathon runner, dropped dead seconds after saying: "Rejoice, we conquer!"
　　By far the worst form of competition in schools is the disproportionate emphasis on examinations. It is a rare school that allows pupils to concentrate on those things they do well. The merits of competition by examination are somewhat questionable, but competition in the certain knowledge of failure is positively harmful.
　　Obviously, it is neither practical nor desirable that all A youngsters change into B's. The world needs types, and schools have an important duty to try to fit a child's personality to his possible future employment. It is top management.
　　If the preoccupation of schools with academic work was lessened, more time might be spent teaching children surer values. Perhaps selection for the caring professions, especially medicine, could be made less by good grades in chemistry and more by such considerations as sensitivity and sympathy. It is surely a mistake to choose our doctors exclusively from A- type stock. B's are important and should be encouraged.

@9505
　　That experiences influence subsequent behaviour is evidence of an obvious but nevertheless remarkable activity called remembering. Learning could not occur without the function popularly named memory. Constant practice has such as effect on memory as to lead to skilful performance on the piano, to recitation of a poem, and even to reading and understanding these words. So-called intelligent behaviour demands memory, remembering being a primary requirement for reasoning. The ability to solve any problem or even to recognize that a problem exists depends on memory. Typically, the decision to cross a street is based on remembering many earlier experiences.
　　Practice (or review) tends to build and maintain memory for a task or for any learned material. Over a period of no practice what has been learned tends to be forgotten; and the adaptive consequences may not seem obvious. Yet, dramatic instances of sudden forgetting can be seen to be adaptive. In this sense, the ability to forget can be interpreted to have survived through a process of natural selection in animals. Indeed, when one's memory of an emotionally painful experience lead to serious anxiety, forgetting may produce relief. Nevertheless, an evolutionary interpretation might make it difficult to understand how the commonly gradual process of forgetting survived natural selection.
　　In thinking about the evolution of memory together with all its possible aspects, it is helpful to consider what would happen if memories failed to fade. Forgetting clearly aids orientation in time, since old memories weaken and the new tend to stand out, providing clues for inferring duration. Without forgetting, adaptive ability would suffer, for example, learned behaviour that might have been correct a decade ago may no longer be. Cases are recorded of people who (by ordinary standards) forgot so little that their everyday activities were full of confusion. This forgetting seems to serve that survival of the individual and the species.
　　Another line of thought assumes a memory storage system of limited capacity that provides adaptive flexibility specifically through forgetting. In this view, continual adjustments are made between learning or memory storage (input) and forgetting (output). Indeed, there is evidence that the rate at which individuals forget is directly related to how much they have learned. Such data offers gross support of contemporary models of memory that assume an input-output balance.

@9602
　　With the start of BBC World Service Television, millions of viewers in Asia and America can now watch the Corporation's news coverage, as well as listen to it.
　　And of course in Britain listeners and viewers can tune in to two BBC television channels, five BBC national radio services and dozens of local radio station. They are brought sport, comedy, drama, music, news and current affairs, education, religion, parliamentary coverage, children's programmes and films for an annual licence fee of ￡83 per household.
　　It is a remarkable record, stretching back over 70 years — yet the BBC's future is now in doubt. The Corporation will survive as a publicly-funded broadcasting organisation, at least for the time being, but its role, its size and its programmes are now the subject of a nation-wide debate in Britain.
　　The debate was launched by the Government, which invited anyone with an opinion of the BBC — including ordinary listeners and viewers — to say what was good or bad about the Corporation, and even whether they thought it was worth keeping. The reason for its inquiry is that the BBC's royal charter runs out in 1996 and it must decide whether to keep the organisation as it is, or to make changes.
　　Defenders of the Corporation — of whom there are many — are fond of quoting the American slogan. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The BBC "ain't broke", they say, by which they mean it is not broken (as distinct from the word "broke", meaning having no money), so why bother to change it?
　　Yet the BBC will have to change, because the broadcasting world around it is changing. The commercial TV channels — ITV and Channel 4 — were required by the Thatcher Government's Broadcasting Act to become more commercial, competing with each other for advertisers, and cutting costs and jobs. But it is the arrival of new satellite channels — funded partly by advertising and partly by viewers' subscriptions — which will bring about the biggest changes in the long term.

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