2015年全国硕士研究生招生考试英语（二）试题

In our contemporary culture, the prospect of communicating with – or even looking at – a stranger is virtually unbearable.

在当代文化中，与陌生人交流甚至注视他们的前景几乎无法忍受。

Everyone around us seems to agree by the way they cling to their phones, even without a 1 on a subway.

我们周围的人似乎都认同这种现象，即他们对手机的依赖，即使在地铁上没有1。

It’s a sad reality – our desire to avoid interacting with other human beings – because there’s 2 to be gained from talking to the stranger standing by you.

这是一个令人悲伤的现实——我们渴望避免与其他人互动——因为与站在你旁边的陌生人交谈可以带来 2 种好处。

But you wouldn’t know it, 3 into your phone.

但你不会知道，3输入到你的手机中。

This universal protection sends the 4 : “Please don’t approach me.

What is it that makes us feel we need to hide 5 our screens?

是什么让我们感到需要隐藏5我们的屏幕？

One answer is fear, according to Jon Wortmann, an executive mental coach.

据高管心理教练乔恩·沃特曼所说，其中一个答案是恐惧。

We fear rejection, or that our innocent social advances will be 6 as “weird.

我们害怕被拒绝，或我们的无害社交尝试会被6视为怪异。

We fear we’ll be 7.

我们害怕我们会成为7。

We fear we’ll be disruptive.

我们担心会造成破坏。

Strangers are inherently 8 to us, so we are more likely to feel 9 when communicating with them compared with our friends and acquaintances.

陌生人本质上8我们，因此与朋友和熟人相比，我们在与他们交流时更容易感到9。

To avoid this uneasiness, we 10 to our phones.

为了避免这种不安，我们10到手机上。

“Phones become our security blanket,” Wortmann says.

手机成了我们的安全毯。Wortmann说。

“They are our happy glasses that protect us from what we perceive is going to be more 11 .

它们是我们用来保护自己免受我们认为将会更加11的快乐眼镜。

But once we rip off the band-aid, tuck our smartphones in our pockets and look up, it doesn’t 12 so bad.

但一旦我们撕掉创可贴，把智能手机塞进口袋并抬头看，它看起来12那么糟糕。

In one 2011 experiment, behavioral scientists Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder asked commuters to do the unthinkable: Start a 13.

在一项2011年的实验中，行为科学家Nicholas Epley和Juliana Schroeder要求通勤者做一件难以想象的事：开始一个13。

They had Chicago train commuters talk to their fellow 14.

他们让芝加哥通勤火车的乘客与他们的同伴14交谈。

“When Dr. Epley and Ms. Schroeder asked other people in the same train station to 15 how they would feel after talking to a stranger, the commuters thought their 16 would be more pleasant if they sat on their own,” The New York Times summarizes.

当埃普利博士和施罗德女士在同一个火车站询问其他人15他们与陌生人交谈后会有什么感受时，通勤者认为如果独自坐着，他们的16会更愉快。

Though the participants didn’t expect a positive experience, after they 17 with the experiment, “not a single person reported having been embarrassed.

尽管参与者并未预期会有积极的体验，但他们在完成实验后，没有一个人报告自己感到尴尬。

18, these commutes were reportedly more enjoyable compared with those without communication, which makes absolute sense, 19 human beings thrive off of social connections.

18 这些通勤据说比没有交流的通勤更令人愉快，这完全说得通，19 人类依赖社交联系来生存。

It’s that 20: Talking to strangers can make you feel connected.

第 20 点：与陌生人交谈可以让你感到与他人有联系。

A new study suggests that contrary to most surveys, people are actually more stressed at home than at work.

一项新研究指出，与大多数调查结果相反，人们实际上在家中的压力比在工作时更大。

Researchers measured people’s cortisol, which is a stress marker, while they were at work and while they were at home and found it higher at what is supposed to be a place of refuge.

研究人员在人们工作和在家时测量了他们的皮质醇水平，这是一种压力指标，结果发现在家中的皮质醇水平比在所谓的避风港——工作场所更高。

“Further contradicting conventional wisdom, we found that women as well as men have lower levels of stress at work than at home,” writes one of the researchers, Sarah Damaske.

进一步与传统观念相悖，研究人员写道：‘我们发现，无论是女性还是男性，在工作中的压力水平都比在家中的压力水平低。’研究人员之一莎拉·达马斯基说道。

In fact women even say they feel better at work, she notes.

事实上，女性甚至表示她们在工作中感觉更好，她指出。

“It is men, not women, who report being happier at home than at work.

是男性，而不是女性，报告称在家比在工作中更幸福。

Another surprise is that the findings hold true for both those with children and without, but more so for nonparents.

另一个意外发现是，这些发现对有孩子和没有孩子的人都适用，但尤以非父母群体更为明显。

This is why people who work outside the home have better health.

这就是为什么在家外工作的人拥有更好的健康状况的原因。

What the study doesn’t measure is whether people are still doing work when they’re at home, whether it is household work or work brought home from the office.

这项研究没有测量的是，人们在家中是否仍在工作，无论是家务劳动还是从办公室带回来的工作。

For many men, the end of the workday is a time to kick back.

对许多男性来说，工作日结束是他们放松休息的时间。

For women who stay home, they never get to leave the office.

对于那些待在家里的女性来说，她们从未真正离开过办公室。

And for women who work outside the home, they often are playing catch-up-with-household tasks.

而对于那些在外工作的女性来说，她们常常要追赶家务任务。

With the blurring of roles, and the fact that the home front lags well behind the workplace in making adjustments for working women, it’s not surprising that women are more stressed at home.

随着角色界限的模糊，以及家庭方面在为职业女性做出调整时远远落后于职场，女性在家中的压力更大也就不足为奇了。

But it’s not just a gender thing.

但这不仅仅是一个性别问题。

At work, people pretty much know what they’re supposed to be doing: working, making money, doing the tasks they have to do in order to draw an income.

在工作中，人们基本上知道自己应该做什么：工作、赚钱、完成那些为了获得收入而必须完成的任务。

The bargain is very pure: Employee puts in hours of physical or mental labor and employee draws out life-sustaining moola.

这个交易非常纯粹：员工付出大量的体力或脑力劳动，员工则从中获取维持生活的金钱。

On the home front, however, people have no such clarity.

然而，在家庭内部，人们却没有这样的清晰度。

Rare is the household in which the division of labor is so clinically and methodically laid out.

很少有家庭会如此临床且有条不紊地安排劳动分工。

There are a lot of tasks to be done, there are inadequate rewards for most of them.

有很多任务需要完成，但其中大部分任务的回报却很有限。

Your home colleagues – your family – have no clear rewards for their labor; they need to be talked into it, or if they’re teenagers, threatened with complete removal of all electronic devices.

你的家庭成员——你的家人——对他们所付出的劳动并没有明确的回报；你需要说服他们去做，如果他们是青少年，可能还需要以完全没收所有电子设备来威胁他们。

Plus, they’re your family.

此外，他们是你家人。

You cannot fire your family.

你不能解雇你的家人。

You never really get to go home from home.

你永远无法真正从家这个环境中‘下班’回家。

So it’s not surprising that people are more stressed at home.

因此，人们在家中的压力更大也就不足为奇了。

Not only are the tasks apparently infinite, the co-workers are much harder to motivate.

不仅任务看起来是无限的，而且同事也更难激励。

For years, studies have found that first-generation college students – those who do not have a parent with a college degree – lag other students on a range of education achievement factors.

多年来，研究发现，第一代大学生——即父母中没有大学学历的学生——在一系列教育成就因素上都落后于其他学生。

Their grades are lower and their dropout rates are higher.

他们的成绩较低，退学率也更高。

But since such students are most likely to advance economically if they succeed in higher education, colleges and universities have pushed for decades to recruit more of them.

但由于这类学生如果在高等教育中取得成功，最有可能在经济上取得进步，因此大学和学院几十年来一直致力于招收更多这样的学生。

This has created “a paradox” in that recruiting first-generation students, but then watching many of them fail, means that higher education has “continued to reproduce and widen, rather than close” an achievement gap based on social class, according to the depressing beginning of a paper forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science.

根据即将发表在《心理科学》期刊上的一篇论文令人沮丧的开头，这种做法创造了一个‘悖论’：招收第一代大学生，但随后却看到其中许多人失败，这意味着高等教育‘继续复制并扩大，而非缩小’了基于社会阶层的成就差距。

But the article is actually quite optimistic, as it outlines a potential solution to this problem, suggesting that an approach (which involves a one-hour, next-to-no-cost program) can close 63 percent of the achievement gap (measured by such factors as grades) between first-generation and other students.

但这篇文章实际上相当乐观，因为它概述了解决这一问题的潜在方案，提出一种方法（涉及一个几乎不花成本的一小时项目）可以缩小第一代大学生与其他学生之间63%的成就差距（以成绩等因素衡量）。

The authors of the paper are from different universities, and their findings are based on a study involving 147 students (who completed the project) at an unnamed private university.

这篇论文的作者来自不同的大学，他们的研究结果基于一项涉及一所未具名的私立大学中147名完成该项目的学生的研究。

First generation was defined as not having a parent with a four-year college degree.

第一代学生被定义为父母中没有人拥有四年制大学学位的学生。

Most of the first-generation students (59.1 percent) were recipients of Pell Grants, a federal grant for undergraduates with financial need, while this was true only for 8.6 percent of the students with at least one parent with a four-year degree.

大多数第一代学生（占59.1%）是佩尔助学金的获得者，这是一种针对经济上有需要的本科生的联邦助学金，而至少有一位父母拥有四年制大学学位的学生中，只有8.6%的人获得了这种助学金。

Their thesis – that a relatively modest intervention could have a big impact – was based on the view that first-generation students may be most lacking not in potential but in practical knowledge about how to deal with the issues that face most college students.

他们的论文认为，相对适度的干预措施可能会产生重大影响，这一观点基于这样的看法：第一代学生最缺乏的可能不是潜力，而是应对大多数大学生所面临问题的实用知识。

They cite past research by several authors to show that this is the gap that must be narrowed to close the achievement gap.

他们引用多位作者过去的研究，指出必须缩小这一差距，才能弥合成就差距。

Many first-generation students “struggle to navigate the middle-class culture of higher education, learn the ‘rules of the game,’ and take advantage of college resources,” they write.

他们写道，许多第一代学生‘难以适应高等教育中的中产阶级文化，学习‘游戏规则’，并充分利用大学资源’。

And this becomes more of a problem when colleges don’t talk about the class advantages and disadvantages of different groups of students.

当大学不谈论不同学生群体在阶级上的优势和劣势时，这个问题会变得更加严重。

“Because US colleges and universities seldom acknowledge how social class can affect students’ educational experiences, many first-generation students lack insight about why they are struggling and do not understand how students ‘like them’ can improve.

由于美国的大学和学院很少承认社会阶级如何影响学生的教育经历，许多第一代学生缺乏对自己为何挣扎的洞察力，也不了解‘像他们这样’的学生该如何提高。

Even in traditional offices, “the lingua franca of corporate America has gotten much more emotional and much more right-brained than it was 20 years ago,” said Harvard Business School professor Nancy Koehn.

甚至在传统办公室中，哈佛商学院教授南希·科恩也表示：‘美国企业界的通用语言在20年前已经变得更加情感化和更加依赖右脑思维了。’

She started spinning off examples.

她开始不断举出例子。

“If you and I parachuted back to Fortune 500 companies in 1990, we would see much less frequent use of terms like journey, mission, passion.

如果我们和现在一样，回到1990年的财富500强企业，我们会看到像‘旅程’、‘使命’、‘热情’这样的词汇使用频率要低得多。

There were goals, there were strategies, there were objectives, but we didn’t talk about energy; we didn’t talk about passion.

那时有目标，有战略，有具体任务，但我们不会谈论能量；我们也不会谈论热情。

Koehn pointed out that this new era of corporate vocabulary is very “team”-oriented – and not by coincidence.

科恩指出，这种新的企业用语时代非常强调‘团队’——这并非偶然。

“Let’s not forget sports – in male-dominated corporate America, it’s still a big deal.

我们不要忘记体育——在男性主导的企业界，它仍然是个大事情。

It’s not explicitly conscious; it’s the idea that I’m a coach, and you’re my team, and we’re in this together.

这并不是一种明确的自觉意识；这是一种‘我是教练，你是我的团队，我们共同面对这一切’的想法。

There are lots and lots of CEOs in very different companies, but most think of themselves as coaches and this is their team and they want to win. ”

有很多来自不同公司的CEO，但大多数人把自己看作教练，认为这是他们的团队，他们想要赢。

These terms are also intended to infuse work with meaning – and, as Rakesh Khurana, another professor, points out, increase allegiance to the firm.

这些术语也旨在赋予工作以意义——正如另一位教授拉凯什·库拉纳所指出的，还能增强员工对公司的忠诚度。

“You have the importation of terminology that historically used to be associated with non-profit organizations and religious organizations: terms like vision, values, passion, and purpose,” said Khurana.

库尔纳纳说："你们引入了那些历史上与非营利组织和宗教组织相关的术语，比如愿景、价值观、激情和使命。"

This new focus on personal fulfillment can help keep employees motivated amid increasingly loud debates over work-life balance.

这种对个人实现的新关注可以帮助员工在工作与生活平衡的激烈争论中保持积极性。

The “mommy wars” of the 1990s are still going on today, prompting arguments about why women still can’t have it all and books like Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, whose title has become a buzzword in its own right.

20世纪90年代的"妈妈之战"至今仍在继续，引发了关于为什么女性仍然无法兼顾一切的争论，也催生了像谢丽尔·桑德伯格的《向前一步》这样的书籍，其书名本身已成为一个流行语。

Terms like unplug, offline, life-hack, bandwidth, and capacity are all about setting boundaries between the office and the home.

像"断开连接"、"离线"、"生活技巧"、"带宽"和"容量"这样的术语，都是在办公室与家庭之间设定界限的表现。

But if your work is your “passion,” you’ll be more likely to devote yourself to it, even if that means going home for dinner and then working long after the kids are in bed.

但如果你的工作是你所热爱的"激情"，你更有可能全身心投入其中，即使这意味着吃完晚饭回家后，孩子睡觉后你还要继续工作很长时间。

But this seems to be the irony of office speak: Everyone makes fun of it, but managers love it, companies depend on it, and regular people willingly absorb it.

但办公室术语似乎存在一种讽刺：每个人都嘲笑它，但管理者却喜欢它，公司依赖它，普通人也自愿接受它。

As a linguist once said, “You can get people to think it’s nonsense at the same time that you buy into it.

一位语言学家曾说，你可以让人们认为这是无稽之谈，同时你自己却接受它。

In a workplace that’s fundamentally indifferent to your life and its meaning, office speak can help you figure out how you relate to your work – and how your work defines who you are.

在一个对你的生活及其意义根本漠不关心的工作场所，办公室用语可以帮助你弄清楚自己如何与工作产生关联，以及工作如何定义你是谁。

Many people talked of the 288,000 new jobs the Labor Department reported for June, along with the drop in the unemployment rate to 6.1 percent, as good news.

许多人谈到劳工部报告的6月份新增288,000个就业岗位，以及失业率降至6.1%的这一数据，认为这是好消息。

And they were right.

他们是对的。

For now it appears the economy is creating jobs at a decent pace.

目前看来，经济正在以相当不错的速度创造就业机会。

We still have a long way to go to get back to full employment, but at least we are now finally moving forward at a faster pace.

我们距离实现充分就业还有很长的路要走，但至少我们现在终于开始以更快的速度向前推进了。

However, there is another important part of the jobs picture that was largely overlooked.

然而，就业图景中还有另一个重要方面被很大程度地忽视了。

There was a big jump in the number of people who report voluntarily working part-time.

自愿从事兼职工作的人数出现了大幅增长。

This figure is now 830,000（4.4 percent）above its year ago level.

这一数字目前比去年同期高出83万人（4.4%）。

Before explaining the connection to the Obamacare, it is worth making an important distinction.

在解释与奥巴马医改的联系之前，有必要先做出一个重要区分。

Many people who work part-time jobs actually want full-time jobs.

许多从事兼职工作的人实际上希望获得全职工作。

They take part-time work because this is all they can get.

他们从事兼职工作，因为这就是他们能获得的全部工作机会。

An increase in involuntary part-time work is evidence of weakness in the labor market and it means that many people will be having a very hard time making ends meet.

非自愿兼职工作增加是劳动力市场疲软的证据，并意味着许多人将面临巨大的维持生计困难。

There was an increase in involuntary part-time in June, but the general direction has been down.

六月份非自愿兼职工作有所增加，但总体趋势是下降的。

Involuntary part-time employment is still far higher than before the recession, but it is down by 640,000 (7.9 percent) from its year ago level.

非自愿兼职就业人数仍远高于经济衰退前的水平，但与去年同期相比减少了64万人（7.9%）。

We know the difference between voluntary and involuntary part-time employment because people tell us.

我们知道自愿兼职和非自愿兼职之间的区别，因为人们会告诉我们。

The survey used by the Labor Department asks people if they worked less than 35 hours in the reference week.

劳工部使用的调查会询问人们在参考周内是否工作了少于35个小时。

If the answer is “yes,” they are classified as working part-time.

如果回答是“是”，那么他们就被归类为兼职工作。

The survey then asks whether they worked less than 35 hours in that week because they wanted to work less than full time or because they had no choice.

随后，调查询问他们是否在那周工作少于35小时，是因为他们想做兼职工作，还是因为别无选择。

They are only classified as voluntary part-time workers if they tell the survey taker they chose to work less than 35 hours a week.

只有当他们告诉调查员自己是出于自愿而每周工作少于35小时时，才会被归类为自愿兼职工人。

The issue of voluntary part-time relates to Obamacare because one of the main purposes was to allow people to get insurance outside of employment.

自愿兼职的问题与奥巴马医改相关，因为奥巴马医改的主要目的之一就是让人们能够通过非就业途径获得医疗保险。

For many people, especially those with serious health conditions or family members with serious health conditions, before Obamacare the only way to get insurance was through a job that provided health insurance.

对许多人来说，尤其是那些自己或家人有严重健康问题的人，在奥巴马医改之前，获得保险的唯一途径就是通过提供医疗保险的工作。

However, Obamacare has allowed more than 12 million people to either get insurance through Medicaid or the exchanges.

然而，奥巴马医改已经使超过1200万人能够通过医疗补助计划或医保交易所获得保险。

These are people who may previously have felt the need to get a full-time job that provided insurance in order to cover themselves and their families.

这些人以前可能觉得有必要找一份提供保险的全职工作，以保障自己和家人的医疗需求。

With Obamacare there is no longer a link between employment and insurance.

有了奥巴马医改之后，就业与保险之间不再存在必然联系。

Think about driving a route that’s very familiar.

想想驾驶一条非常熟悉的路线。

It could be your commute to work, a trip into town or the way home.

可能是你上班的通勤，也可能是进城的行程，或者是回家的路。

Whichever it is, you know every twist and turn like the back of your hand.

不管是什么，你都对每一个曲折和转折了如指掌。

On these sorts of trips it’s easy to lose concentration on the driving and pay little attention to the passing scenery.

在这些类型的旅行中，很容易在驾驶时分心，对沿途风景也关注甚少。

The consequence is that you perceive that the trip has taken less time than it actually has.

结果是你觉得这次旅行所花的时间比实际所花的时间要少。

This is the well-travelled road effect: People tend to underestimate the time it takes to travel a familiar route.

这是熟路效应：人们倾向于低估走熟悉路线所需的时间。

The effect is caused by the way we allocate our attention.

这种效果源于我们分配注意力的方式。

When we travel down a well-known route, because we don’t have to concentrate much, time seems to flow more quickly.

当我们沿着熟悉的路线旅行时，由于不需要集中太多注意力，时间似乎过得更快。

And afterwards, when we come to think back on it, we can’t remember the journey well because we didn’t pay much attention to it.

之后当我们回想起来时，我们无法很好地记住这段旅程，因为我们当时没有给予太多关注。

So we assume it was shorter.

因此我们假设它更短。