2021年全国硕士研究生招生考试英语（二）试题

It’s not difficult to set targets for staff.

为员工设定目标并不困难。

It is much harder, 1,to understand their negative consequences.

这要困难得多，1，理解它们的负面影响。

Most work-related behaviors have multiple components.

大多数与工作相关的行为包含多个组成部分。

2 one and the others become distorted.

2 一个变得清晰，而另一个则变得扭曲。

Travel on a London bus and you’ll 3 see how this works with drivers.

乘坐伦敦巴士，你将 3看到这种机制如何与司机配合。

Watch people get on and show their tickets.

观看人们上车并出示车票。

Are they carefully inspected?

它们是否被仔细检查？

Never.

绝不。

Do people get on without paying?

人们能不付钱就上车吗？

Of course!

当然！

Are there inspectors to 4 that people have paid?

是否有检查员来 4 人们是否已付款？

Possibly, but very few.

可能，但很少。

And people who run for the bus?

那么那些为了赶公交车而奔跑的人呢

They are 5 .

他们是5。

How about jumping lights?

闪烁的灯光

Buses do so almost as frequently as cyclists.

公交车几乎和骑自行车的人一样频繁地这样做。

Why?

为什么？

Because the target is 6 .

因为目标是6。

People complained that buses were late and infrequent.

人们抱怨公交车经常迟到且班次稀少。

7 , the number of buses and bus lanes were increased, and drivers were 8 or punished according to the time they took.

And drivers hit these targets.

驾驶员们达到了这些目标。

But they 9 hit cyclists.

但它们9撞到骑自行车的人。

If the target was changed to 10, you would have more inspectors and more sensitive pricing.

如果将目标值调整为10，您将拥有更多的质检员和更敏感的价格机制。

If the criterion changed to safety, you would get more 11 drivers who obeyed traffic laws.

如果标准改为安全，你将获得更多遵守交通法规的11号司机。

But both these criteria would be at the expense of time.

但这两个标准都需要以时间为代价。

There is another 12: people became immensely inventive in hitting targets.

还有第 12 点：人们在达成目标方面变得极具创造力。

Have you 13 that you can leave on a flight an hour late but still arrive on time?

你是否知道13，晚一小时登机仍能准时到达？

Tailwinds?

顺风？

Of course not!

当然不是！

Airlines have simply changed the time a 14 is meant to take.

航空公司只是改变了 14原本需要的时间。

A one-hour flight is now billed as a two-hour flight.

一小时的航班现在被计费为两小时的航班。

The 15 of the story is simple.

故事的第 15 部分很简单。

Most jobs are multidimensional, with multiple criteria.

大多数工作具有多维性，涉及多个标准。

Choose one criterion and you may well 16 others.

选择一个标准，你可能忽略其他标准。

Everything can be done faster and made cheaper, but there is a 17.

一切都可以做得更快、成本更低，但存在一个 17 。

Setting targets can and does have unforeseen negative consequences.

设定目标可能会并且确实会带来不可预见的负面影响。

This is not an argument against target-setting.

这并非反对设定目标的论点。

But it is an argument for exploring consequences first.

但这是一个先探讨后果的论点。

All good targets should have multiple criteria 18 critical factors such as time, money, quality and customer feedback.

所有好的目标都应有多个标准 18 关键因素，如时间、金钱、质量和客户反馈。

The trick is not only to 19 just one or even two dimensions of the objective, but also to understand how to help people better 20 the objective.

诀窍不仅是要 19 仅仅 一个或甚至两个维度的目标，还要理解如何帮助人们更好地 20 实现 目标。

“Reskilling” is something that sounds like a buzzword but is actually a requirement if we plan to have a future where a lot of would-be workers do not get left behind.

“再培训”听起来像是一个流行术语，但如果我们要实现一个不让大量潜在工人落后的未来，它实际上是一项必要措施。

We know we are moving into a period where the jobs in demand will change rapidly, as will the requirements of the jobs that remain.

我们知道我们正进入一个需求量大的工作将迅速变化的时期，同样，那些仍存在的职位的要求也会迅速变化。

Research by the World Economic Forum finds that on average 42 per cent of the“core skills”within job roles will change by 2022.That is a very short timeline.

世界经济论坛的研究发现，平均而言，职位要求中的 42%的核心技能到 2022年将发生改变。这是一段非常短的时间。

The question of who should pay for reskilling is a thorny one.

谁应为再培训付费的问题十分棘手。

For individual companies, the temptation is always to let go of workers whose skills are no longer in demand and replace them with those whose skills are.

对于个别公司而言，诱惑始终是解雇那些技能不再被需要的员工，并用那些技能仍被需要的员工来替代他们。

That does not always happen.

这并不总是发生。

AT&T is often given as the gold standard of a company who decided to do a massive reskilling program rather than go with a fire-and-hire strategy.

AT&T 通常被视为一家选择实施大规模再培训计划而非采用裁员再招聘策略的公司的典范。

Other companies including Amazon and Disney had also pledged to create their own plans.

包括亚马逊和迪士尼在内的其他公司也承诺制定自己的计划。

When the skills mismatch is in the broader economy though, the focus usually turns to government to handle.

尽管技能错配存在于更广泛的经济中，焦点通常会转向政府来处理。

Efforts in Canada and elsewhere have been arguably languid at best, and have given us a situation where we frequently hear of employers begging for workers, even at times and in regions where unemployment is high.

加拿大及其他地方的努力可以说至多是迟缓的，这使我们经常听到雇主恳求工人，甚至在失业率高的时期和地区。

With the pandemic, unemployment is very high indeed.

随着疫情的爆发，失业率确实非常高。

In February, at 3.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent respectively, unemployment rates in Canada and the United States were at generational lows and worker shortages were everywhere.

二月，加拿大和美国的失业率分别为 3.5%和 5.5%，处于代际低点，工人短缺现象随处可见。

As of May, those rates had spiked up to 13.3 per cent and 13.7 per cent, and although many worker shortages had disappeared, not all had done so.

截至 5月，这些比率已飙升至 13.3%和 13.7%，尽管许多劳动力短缺已消失，但并非所有都已消失。

In the medical field, to take an obvious example, the pandemic meant that there were still clear shortages of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel.

在医疗领域，以显而易见的例子而言，疫情意味着医生、护士和其他医护人员仍存在明显的短缺。

Of course, it is not like you can take an unemployed waiter and train him to be a doctor in a few weeks, no matter who pays for it.

当然，你不能像几周内就能把一个失业的服务员训练成医生那样，不管谁来支付费用。

But even if you cannot close that gap, maybe you can close others, and doing so would be to the benefit of all concerned.

但即使你无法弥补那个差距，也许可以弥补其他差距，这样做将使所有相关方受益。

That seems to be the case in Sweden: When forced to furlough 90 per cent of their cabin staff, Scandinavian Airlines decided to start up a short retraining program that reskilled the laid-off workers to support hospital staff.

这似乎在瑞典是这种情况：当被迫暂时解雇 90%的客舱员工时，斯堪的纳维亚航空公司决定启动一个短期再培训计划，将被裁员的员工重新培训以支持医院工作人员。

The effort was a collective one and involved other companies as well as a Swedish university.

这次努力是集体的，还涉及其他公司以及瑞典的一所大学。

With the global population predicted to hit close to 10 billion by 2050, and forecasts that agricultural production in some regions will need to nearly double to keep pace, food security is increasingly making headlines.

随着全球人口预计到 2050年将达到近 100亿，以及一些地区农业产量需要几乎翻倍以保持同步的预测，粮食安全问题正日益受到关注。

In the UK, it has become a big talking point recently too, for a rather particular reason: Brexit.

在英国，最近这也成为了一个热门话题，原因相当特殊：脱欧。

Brexit is seen by some as an opportunity to reverse a recent trend towards the UK importing food.

一些人将脱欧视为一个机会，可以扭转英国近期越来越依赖进口食品的趋势。

The country produces only about 60 per cent of the food it eats, down from almost three-quarters in the late 1980s.

该国仅生产其消耗食物的约百分之六十，较 1980年代末期的几乎四分之三有所下降。

A move back to self-sufficiency ， the argument goes, would boost the farming industry, political sovereignty and even the nation’s health.

向自给自足的回归，论点认为，会提升农业产业、政治主权和甚至国家的健康。

Sounds great — but how feasible is this vision?

听起来不错——但这个愿景有多可行？

According to a report on UK food production from the University of Leeds,UK,

根据利兹大学关于英国食品生产的报告，

85 per cent of the country’s total land area is associated with meat and dairy production.

该国百分之八十五的国土面积关联于肉类和乳制品生产。

That supplies 80 per cent of what is consumed, so even covering the whole country in livestock farms wouldn’t allow us to cover all our meat and dairy needs.

这供应了 80%的消费量，因此即使将整个国家都覆盖成畜牧场也无法满足我们所有的肉类和乳制品需求。

There are many caveats to those figures, but they are still grave.

这些数据有许多注意事项，但它们仍然非常严重。

To become much more self-sufficient, the UK would need to drastically reduce its consumption of animal foods, and probably also farm more intensively — meaning fewer green fields and more factory-style production.

要变得更加自给自足，英国需要大幅减少动物食品的消费，1 可能也需要更集约化地耕种——这意味着更少的绿色田野和更多的工厂化生产。

But switching to a mainly plant-based diet wouldn’t help.

但转向以植物为主的饮食并无帮助。

There is a good reason why the UK is dominated by animal husbandry: most of its terrain doesn’t have the right soil or climate to grow crops on a commercial basis.

英国之所以以畜牧业为主，是有充分理由的：其大部分地形缺乏适合商业种植作物的土壤和气候。

Just 25 per cent of the country’s land is suitable for crop-growing, most of which is already occupied by arable fields.

仅有 25%的国土适合种植作物，其中大部分已被可耕地占据。

Even if we converted all the suitable land to fields of fruit and veg — which would involve taking out all the nature reserves and removing thousands of people from their homes — we would achieve only a 30 per cent boost in crop production.

即使我们将所有适合的土地都改造成水果和蔬菜种植区——这将涉及清除所有自然保护区并迫使成千上万的人离开家园——我们也只能实现作物产量 30 的提升。

Just 23 per cent of the fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK are currently home-grown, so even with the most extreme measures we could meet only 30 per cent of our fresh produce needs.

目前英国消费的水果和蔬菜中只有 23 是本地种植的，因此即使采取最极端的措施，我们也只能满足 30 的新鲜农产品需求。

That is before we look for the space to grow the grains, sugars, seeds and oils that provide us with the vast bulk of our current calorie intake.

这在我们寻找种植谷物、糖类、种子和油脂的空间之前，这些物质为我们当前大部分热量摄入提供来源。

When Microsoft bought task management app Wunderlist and mobile calendar Sunrise in 2015,it picked two newcomers that were attracting considerable buzz in Silicon Valley.

当微软于 2015年收购任务管理应用Wunderlist和移动日历应用Sunrise时，它选择了两家当时正引起硅谷相当大关注的新晋公司。

Microsoft’s own Office dominates the market for “productivity” software, but the start-ups represented a new wave of technology designed from the ground up for the smartphone world.

微软自家的Office在“生产力”软件市场占据主导地位，但这些初创公司代表了专为智能手机世界从头设计的新一轮技术。

Both apps, however, were later scrapped, after Microsoft said it had used their best features in its own products.

然而，这两款应用后来都被取消，微软表示已将其最佳功能整合到自家产品中。

Their teams of engineers stayed on, making them two of the many “ acqui-hires”that the biggest companies have used to feed their great hunger for tech talent.

他们的工程师团队继续留任，使他们成为众多"acqui-hires"中的两家，这是最大的公司用来满足他们对科技人才的巨大需求的方式。

To Microsoft’s critics, the fates of Wunderlist and Sunrise are examples of a remorseless drive by Big Tech to chew up any innovative companies that lie in their path.

对微软的批评者而言，Wunderlist和Sunrise的命运是大科技公司无情扩张过程中吞并任何挡路创新企业的典型案例。

“They bought the seedlings and closed them down,” complained Paul Arnold, a partner at San Francisco-based Switch Ventures, putting an end to businesses that might one day turn into competitors.

他们收购了这些幼苗并将其关闭，1总部位于旧金山的Switch Ventures合伙人保罗·阿诺德抱怨道，此举终结了可能未来成为竞争对手的企业。

Microsoft declined to comment.

微软拒绝评论。

Like other start-up investors, Mr. Arnold’s own business often depends on selling start-ups to larger tech companies, though he admits to mixed feelings about the result: “I think these things are good for me, if I put my selfish hat on.

与其他初创企业投资者一样，阿诺德先生自己的业务通常依赖于将初创企业出售给更大的科技公司，尽管他承认对结果感到矛盾：如果从自私的角度来看，我认为这些事对我有好处。

But are they good for the American economy?

但它们对美国经济有好处吗？

I don’t know.

我不知道。

The US Federal Trade Commission says it wants to find the answer to that question.

美国联邦贸易委员会表示它想要找到这个问题的答案。

This week, it asked the five most valuable US tech companies for information about their many small acquisitions over the past decade.

本周，它要求美国五大最有价值的科技公司提供过去十年中他们众多小型收购的相关信息。

Although only a research project at this stage, the request has raised the prospect of regulators wading into early-stage tech markets that until now have been beyond their reach.

尽管目前只是一个研究项目，该请求引发了监管机构介入早期科技市场的前景，这些市场迄今为止一直超出他们的掌控范围。

Given their combined market value of more than $5.5 trillion, rifling through such small deals—many of them much less prominent than Wunderlist and Sunrise—might seem beside the point.

鉴于它们合计市值超过 5.5万亿美元，翻找这些小交易——其中许多都不如Wunderlist和Sunrise知名——似乎有些偏离重点。

Between them, the five biggest tech companies have spent an average of only $3.4 billion a year on sub- $ 1 billion acquisitions over the past five years—a drop in the ocean compared with their massive financial reserves, and the more than $130 billion of venture capital that was invested in the US last year.

在它们之间，五大科技公司过去五年平均每年仅花费 34亿美元用于低于 10亿美元的收购——与它们庞大的财务储备相比，这不过是九牛一毛，而去年在美国投入的风险投资就超过了 1300亿美元。

However, critics say the big companies use such deals to buy their most threatening potential competitors before their businesses have a chance to gain momentum, in some cases as part of a“ buy and kill”tactic to simply close them down.

然而，批评者认为，这些大公司利用这些交易在这些企业有机会获得发展势头之前，就买下最具威胁的潜在竞争对手，有时甚至采用‘收购并关闭’的策略，直接将它们关闭。

We’re fairly good at judging people based on first impressions, thin slices of experience ranging from a glimpse of a photo to five-minute interaction, and deliberation can be not only extraneous but intrusive.

我们相当擅长基于第一印象来评判他人，这些短暂经验片段从瞥见一张照片到五分钟的互动不等，而深思熟虑不仅可能是多余的，甚至可能带有侵入性。

In one study of the ability she called“thin slicing,” the late psychologist Nalini Ambady asked participants to watch silent 10-second video clips of professors and to rate the instructor’s overall effectiveness.

在一项关于她所称的“薄切片”能力的研究中，已故心理学家纳莉妮·安巴迪要求参与者观看教授的无声 10秒视频片段，并评价该讲师的整体教学效果。

Their ratings correlated strongly with students’ end-of-semester ratings.

他们的评分与学生期末评分高度相关。

Another set of participants had to count backward from 1,000 by nines as they watched the clips, occupying their conscious working memory.

另一组参与者必须从 1000开始以九为单位倒数，当他们观看这些片段时，占据他们的意识工作记忆。

Their ratings were just as accurate, demonstrating the intuitive nature of the social processing.

他们的评分同样准确，证明了社会处理的直觉性。

Critically, another group was asked to spend a minute writing down reasons for their judgment, before giving the rating.

关键的是，另一组人被要求花一分钟写下他们判断的理由，然后给出评分。

Accuracy dropped dramatically.

准确性急剧下降。

Ambady suspected that deliberation focused them on vivid but misleading cues, such as certain gestures or utterances, rather than letting the complex interplay of subtle signals form a holistic impression.

Ambady怀疑深思熟虑使他们关注生动但具有误导性的线索，比如某些手势或言语，而不是让微妙信号的复杂互动形成整体印象。

She found similar interference when participants watched 15-second clips of pairs of people and judged whether they were strangers, friends, or dating partners.

她发现当参与者观看 15秒的两人片段并判断他们是否是陌生人、朋友或恋爱伴侣时，出现了类似的干扰。

Other research shows we’re better at detecting deception from thin slices when we rely on intuition instead of reflection.

其他研究表明，当我们依赖直觉而不是反思时，更能从短暂的片段中检测出欺骗行为。

“It’s as if you’re driving a stick shift,” says Judith Hall, a psychologist at Northeastern University, “and if you start thinking about it too much, you can’t remember what you’re doing.

东北大学的心理学家Judith Hall说："这就像你在驾驶手动挡汽车，如果你过度思考，就会忘记自己在做什么。"

But if you go on automatic pilot, you’re fine.

但如果你进入自动驾驶状态，你就会没事。

Much of our social life is like that.

我们的社会生活大多如此。

Thinking too much can also harm our ability to form preferences.

过度思考也会损害我们形成偏好的能力。

College students’ ratings of strawberry jams and college courses aligned better with experts’ opinions when the students weren’t asked to analyze their rationale.

当学生未被要求分析其理由时，大学生对草莓果酱和大学课程的评分更符合专家意见。

And people made car-buying decisions that were both objectively better and more personally satisfying when asked to focus on their feelings rather than on details, but only if the decision was complex—when they had a lot of information to process.

人们在买车时做出的决定既客观上更好又更令人满意，当被要求关注感受而非细节时，但仅当这个决定是复杂的——当他们需要处理大量信息时。

Intuition’s special powers are unleashed only in certain circumstances.

直觉的特殊能力只有在特定情况下才会被释放。

In one study, participants completed a battery of eight tasks, including four that tapped reflective thinking (discerning rules, comprehending vocabulary) and four that tapped intuition and creativity (generating new products or figures of speech).

在一项研究中，参与者完成了一组八个任务，包括四个涉及反思性思维（辨别规则、理解词汇）的任务和四个涉及直觉与创造力（生成新产品或修辞手法）的任务。

Then they rated the degree to which they had used intuition (“gut feelings,” “ hunches,” “my heart”).

然后他们对自己使用直觉的程度进行了评分（“直觉感受”，“预感”，“我的内心”）。

Use of their gut hurt their performance on the first four tasks, as expected, and helped them on the rest.

他们依赖直觉在前四个任务中表现受损，正如预期的那样，却在其余任务中得到了帮助。

Sometimes the heart is smarter than the head.

有时候，心比头脑更聪明。

We tend to think that friends and family members are our biggest sources of connection, laughter, and warmth.

我们倾向于认为朋友和家人是我们联系、欢笑和温暖的最大来源。

While that may well be true, researchers have also recently found that interacting with strangers actually brings a boost in mood and feelings of belonging that we didn’t expect.

虽然这可能确实如此，研究人员最近还发现与陌生人互动实际上会带来我们没想到的情绪提升和归属感。

In one series of studies, researchers instructed Chicago-area commuters using public transportation to strike up a conversation with someone near them.

在一系列研究中，研究人员指示芝加哥地区使用公共交通的通勤者与附近的人开始交谈。

On average, participants who followed this instruction felt better than those who had been told to stand or sit in silence.

平均而言，遵循该指示的参与者感觉比那些被要求站立或静坐的参与者更好。

The researchers also argued that when we shy away from casual interactions with strangers, it is often due to a misplaced anxiety that they might not want to talk to us.

研究人员还指出，当我们回避与陌生人的随意互动时，通常是因为存在一种错误的焦虑，担心他们可能不想与我们交谈。

Much of the time, however, this belief is false.

然而，很多时候这个信念是错误的。

As it turns out, many people are actually perfectly willing to talk — and may even be flattered to receive your attention.

结果证明，许多人其实非常愿意交谈——甚至可能因为受到你的关注而感到荣幸。