温州大学621英语基础考研真题

2018 年硕士研究生招生考试试题
科目代码及名称: 621 英语基础 适用专业：英语语言文学
（请考生在答题纸上答题，在此试题纸上答题无效）
Part One Blank-filling (本节共 20 分)
For each blank in the following passage you are requested to fill in only ONE word.
Fast and Dirty
Food delivery is a booming business. Waste is piling up, too. Three couriers in hard helmets
cram into an office lift in Beijing—one clad in red, one in yellow and one in blue. The trios are
dispatching food that was purchased online through China’s most popular meal-ordering firms,
which (1) urban roads every midday with their colorful delivery people on electric bicycles.
Delivery fees as (2) as three yuan ($0.46) have helped to transform urban lunch-hours. But the
booming business is also fuelling concerns about everything from (3) to the abuse of workers.
Such services—which enable users of a single site to (4) food from a swathe of local
restaurants—are expanding around the world. But in China the industry is on a tear. By the end
of June, the number of registered users had risen to 295m, 40% more than at the end of last year,
according to government analysts. The value of meals bought (5) was about $25bn in 2016 and
could (6) to around $36bn by the end of next year, says iiMedia, a research firm. The market
leaders are Meituan and Ele.me. Both still make losses in food delivery, but they have backing
from Tencent and Alibaba (7) — tech giants eager to find ways of pushing customers to their
dueling online payment systems.
Such businesses first began to take (8) in student dormitories. In these days young
office-workers are by far the biggest market. But there is much hand-wringing about the
consequences of their popularity. Officials say the couriers threaten road (9). They ride electric
bikes which are cheap, need no license and are handy in cities like Beijing that (10) the use of
motorcycles. Delivery people often mount pavements or drive (11) the flow of traffic to
maximize earnings during the lunchtime (12). Last month officials in Nanjing said meal delivery
bikes in the eastern city had been involved in more than 3,000 accidents in the first six months of
the year. In one district of Shanghai police have (13) a penalty-points system. They order those
who acquire a certain number of points to perform community (14). The police can ask couriers’
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employers to fire them.
Another worry is the welfare of delivery people, many of whom are migrants from the
countryside. In several ways they have it easier than other types of courier: food boxes are easier
to (15) than bulky parcels, and the recipients are always there. But China Labor Bulletin, an
NGO in Hong Kong, says meal deliverers have been staging growing numbers of protests about
poor treatment by their employers (usually subcontractors), including wages (16) late. Linking
their pay to customer ratings has also made it easy for customers to demand more of them than
they should: the purchase of groceries en route (17) their destinations, for example, or the
disposal of household rubbish.
Most hotly debated of late is the impact the business is having on the environment. Each day
about 65m meal-containers are (18), by one estimate. Campaigners object to the unwanted
cutlery, napkins and chopsticks that restaurants selling through online platforms habitually
bundle with orders. The Green Volunteer League of Chongqing, a Chinese NGO, says that
food-delivery sites have not made it easy enough for customers to refuse such sundries (the big
companies deny this). In September a court in Beijing agreed to examine whether they have (19)
consumers’ rights. There would be much less reason to worry about the mountains of waste if
households and local governments did a better job of keeping recyclables separate from gunk.
This year the central government ordered 46 cities to come (20) with new systems for sorting
rubbish, which it talks of making mandatory by 2020. That is progress, but only if it is
unwavering: over the years officials have found several similar campaigns all too easy to throw
out.
Part Two Reading Comprehension （本节含两小部分，共 40 分）
Comics is a medium used to express ideas by images, often combined with text or other
visual information. Comics frequently takes the form of juxtaposed sequences（21）of panels of
images. Often textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia indicate
dialogue, narration, sound effects, or other information. Size and arrangement of panels
contribute to narrative pacing（22）. Cartooning and similar forms of illustration are the most
common image-making means in comics; fumetti is a form which uses photographic images.
Common forms of comics include comic strips, editorial and gag cartoons, and comic books.
Since the late 20th century, bound volumes such as graphic novels, comic albums, and tankōbon
have become increasingly common, and online web-comics have proliferated（23）in the 21st
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century.
The history of comics has followed different paths in different cultures. Scholars have
posited a pre-history as far back as the Lascaux cave paintings. By the mid-20th century, comics
flourished particularly in the United States, Western Europe (especially in France and Belgium),
and Japan. The history of European comics is often traced to Rodolphe Töpffer's cartoon strips
of the 1830s, and became popular following the success in the 1930s of strips and books such as
The Adventures of Tintin. American comics emerged as a mass medium in the early 20th century
with the advent of newspaper comic strips; magazine-style comic books followed in the 1930s,
in which the superhero genre became prominent after Superman appeared in 1938. Histories of
Japanese comics and cartooning propose origins as early as the 12th century. Modern comic
strips emerged in Japan in the early 20th century, and the output of comics magazines and books
rapidly expanded in the post-World War II era with the popularity of cartoonists such as Osamu
Tezuka. Comics has had a lowbrow（24）reputation for much of its history, but towards the end of
the 20th century began to find greater acceptance with the public and in academia（25）.
The English term comics is used as a singular noun when it refers to the medium and a plural
when referring to particular instances, such as individual strips or comic books. Though the term
derives from the humorous (or comic) work that predominated in early American newspaper
comic strips, it has become standard also for non-humorous works. It is common in English to
refer to the comics of different cultures by the terms used in their original languages, such as
manga for Japanese comics, or bandes dessinées for French-language comics. There is no
consensus amongst theorists and historians on a definition of comics; some emphasize the
combination of images and text, some sequentiality（26） or other image relations, and others
historical aspects such as mass reproduction or the use of recurring characters. The increasing
cross-pollination of concepts from different comics cultures and eras has further made definition
difficult.
The European, American, and Japanese comics traditions have followed different paths.
Europeans have seen their tradition as beginning with the Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer from as early
as 1827 and Americans have seen the origin of theirs in Richard F. Outcault's 1890s newspaper
strip The Yellow Kid, though many Americans have come to recognize Töpffer's precedence（27）.
Japan had a long prehistory of satirical cartoons and comics leading up to the World War II era.
The ukiyo-e artist Hokusai popularized the Japanese term for comics and cartooning, manga, in
the early 19th century. In the post-war era modern Japanese comics began to flourish when
Osamu Tezuka produced a prolific（28）body of work. Towards the close of the 20th century,
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these three traditions converged（29）in a trend towards book-length comics: the comic album in
Europe, the tankōbon in Japan, and the graphic novel in the English-speaking countries.
Outside of these genealogies, comics theorists and historians have seen precedents for
comics in the Lascaux cave paintings in France (some of which appear to be chronological
sequences of images), Egyptian hieroglyphs, Trajan's Column in Rome, the 11th-century
Norman Bayeux Tapestry, the 1370 bois Protat woodcut, the 15th-century Ars moriendi and
block books, Michelangelo's The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, and William Hogarth's
18th-century sequential engravings（30）, amongst others.
Language Work Based on the above Passage
(I) Explain the underlined parts (number 21--30) above on the Answer Sheet
(第 1 节每题 2 分，共 20 分)（题号：21-30 请答在答题纸上）
21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.
(II) Answer the following two questions according to the article and write your
interpretation. (第 2 节每题 10 分，共 20 分)
31. What is the essential element concerning the definition of comics?
32. Why was the comics popular in Japan in the modern era?
Part Three Translation work (本节共 40 分)
Put the following passages into English.
（A）
我想，其实谁都有一个小小花园，这便是我们的内心世界。人的智力需要开发，人的内心世界也是需
要开发的。人和动物的区别，除了众所周知的诸多方面，恐怕还在于人有内心世界。心不过是人的一
个重要脏器，而内心世界是一种景观，它是由外部世界不断地作用于内心渐渐形成的。每个人都无比
关注自己及至亲至爱之人心脏的渐损，以至于稍有微疾便惶惶不可终日。但并非每个人都关注自己及
至亲至爱之人的内心世界的阴晴。
（B）
大自然对人的恩赐，无论贫富，一律平等。所以人们对于大自然，全都一致并深深地依赖着。尤其在
乡间，上千年来人们一直以不变的方式生活着。种植庄稼和葡萄，酿酒和饮酒，喂牛和挤奶，锄草和
载花；在周末去教堂祈祷和做礼拜，在节日到广场拉琴、跳舞和唱歌；往日的田园依旧是今日的温馨
家园。这样，每个地方都有自己的传说，风俗也就衍传了下来。
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Part Four Essay-writing (本节共 50 分)
Read the passage below and then name a title for your interpretation on it in an
essay-form. Word limit: 450-500.
(Please write your essay on the Answer Sheet)
Estimating Offshore Wealth
“Buried treasure” (October 7th) reports on the latest work by Gabriel Zucman and colleagues
on wealth held in offshore financial centres. But Mr. Zucman’s figure for the amount of wealth
held offshore, while lower than some of the more exaggerated estimates, does not hold water. In
my opinion, looking at both his latest work and his 2015 book, “The Hidden Wealth of Nations”,
Mr. Zucman’s analysis is misleading and flawed. For example, he claims that the difference
between IMF data on total global assets held across borders and data on cross-border liabilities
accounts for the amount held in secretive tax havens. In fact, any such discrepancy is the result
of a systematic underreporting of foreign assets because of a lack of information from big,
asset-rich countries, such as China and many in the Middle East. These places do not report in
detail to the international statistics-collecting agencies.
Furthermore, the bold assumption in his book that 80% of all wealth offshore is undeclared
to the relevant tax authorities is based on one piece of evidence: the declarations of EU residents
with Swiss bank accounts seeking amnesty for historical deposits made while Switzerland
upheld its secrecy laws. This is hardly a sound basis for calculating offshore wealth and is
certainly not representative of other international finance centres, most of which have never had
banking secrecy and have adopted transparency and anti-money laundering rules faster and more
deeply than the G7.
Mr. Zucman makes no mention of the many benefits that international finance centres bring
to the development of global wealth. These centres boost cross border trade and financial
intermediation and play a critical part in facilitating growth around the world. Investment
through Jersey, for instance, can have a positive effect for vital public services in other countries.
By creating a clear and safe environment for investors, we contribute to a more promising future
where everyone benefits, including those who need it most. I look forward to reading a report
which considers all the facts. Only then can a constructive discussion be held.
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