2021年考研英语二真题及答案.docx

1、2021 年全国硕士研究生入学统一考试英语（二）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)Its not difficult to set targets for staff. It is much harder, 1 ,to understand their negative consequences. Most

2、 work-related behaviors have multiple components. 2 one and the others become distorted.Travel on a London bus and youll 3 see how this works with drivers. Watch people get on and show their tickets. Are they carefully inspected? Never. Do people get on without paying?Of course! Are there inspectors

3、 to4that people have paid? Possibly, but very few. And peoplewho run for the bus? They areas cyclists.5.How about jumping lights? Buses do so almost as frequentlyWhy? Because the target is6.People complained that buses were late and infrequent.7, the number of buses and bus lanes were increased, and

4、 drivers were8or punishedaccording to the time they took. And drivers hit these targets. But they9hit cyclists. If thetarget was changed to10 ,you would have more inspectors and more sensitive pricing. If thecriterion changed to safety, you would get morethese criteria would be at the expense of tim

5、e.11drivers who obeyed traftic laws. But bothThere is another12: people became immensely inventive in hitting targets. Have you 13that you can leave on a flight an hour late but still arrive on time? Tailwinds? Of course not!Airlines have simply changed the time aas a two-hour flight.14is meant to t

6、ake. A one-hour flight is now balladThe15of the story is simple. Most jobs are multidimensional, with multiple criteria.Choose one criterion and you may well16others.Everything Can be done faster and madecheaper,but there is a 17 . Setting targets can and does have unforeseen negative consequences.1

7、.A. thereforeB. howeverC. againD. moreover2.A. EmphasizeB. IdentifyC. AssessD. Explain3.A. nearlyB. curiouslyC. eagerlyD. quickly4.A.claimB. proveC. checkD. recall5.A. threatenedB. ignoredC. mockedD. blamed6.A. punctualityB. hospitalityC. competitionD. innovation7.A. YetB. SoC. BesidesD. Still8.A. h

8、iredB. trainedC. rewardedD. grouped9.A. onlyB. ratherC. OnceD. Also10. A. comfortB. revenueC. efficiencyD. security11. A. friendlyB. quietC. cautiousD. diligent12. A. purposeB. problemC. prejudiceD. policy13. A. interestingB. revealedC. abmittedD. noticed14. A. breakB. tripC. departureD. transfer15.

9、 A. moralB. backgroundC. styleD. form16. A.interpretB. criticizeC. sacrificeD. tolerate17. A. taskB. secretC. productD. cost18. A. leading toB. calling forC.relating toD. accounting for19. A. specifyB. predictC. restoreD. createThis is not an argument against target-setting. But it is an argument fo

10、r exploring consequences first. All good targets should have multiple criteria 18 critical factors such as time,money, quality and customer feedback. The trick is not only to 19 just one or even twodimensions of the objective, but also to understand how to help people better20the objective.20. A. mo

11、dify参考答案：1-5：BADCB6-10：ABCDB11-15：CBDBA16-20：CDCADB. reviewC. presentD. achieveSection II Reading ComprehensionPart A Directions:Read the following four texts. Answer the questions after each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)Text 1Reskilling is somethi

12、ng 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.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. Research by the WEF deta

13、iled in the Harvard Business Review, finds that on average 42 per cent of the “core skill” within job roles will change by 2022. That is a very short timeline, so we can only imagine what the changes will be further in the future.The question of who should pay for reskilling is a thorny one. For ind

14、ividual companies, the temptation is always to let go of workers whose skills are no longer demand and replace them with those whose skills are. That does not always happen. 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 fir

15、e-and-hirestrategy ultimately retraining 18,000 employees. Prepandemic, other companies including Amazon and Disney had also pledged to create their own plans. When the skills mismatch is in the broader economy though, the focus usually turns to government to handle. Efforts in Canada and elsewhere

16、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.With the pandemic, unemployment is very high indeed. In February, at 3.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent respectively, unemplo

17、yment rates in Canada and the United States were at generational lows and worker shortages were everywhere. 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. In the medical field, to take an obvious examp

18、le, the pandemic meant that there were still clear shortages of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel.Of course, it is not like you can take an unemployed waiter and train him to be doctor in few weeks, no matter who pays for it. But even if you cannot close that gap, maybe you can close other

19、s, and doing so would be to the benefit of all concerned. That seems to be the case in Sweden, where the pandemic kick-started a retraining program where business as well as government had a role.Reskilling in this way would be challenging in a North American context. You can easily imagine a chorus

20、 of you cant do that because teachers or nurses or whoever have special skills, and using any support staff who has been quickly trained is bound to end in disaster. Maybe. Or maybe it is something that can work well in Sweden, with its history of co-operation between business, labour and government

21、, but not in North America where our history is very different. Then again, maybe it is akin to wartime, when extraordinary things take place, but it is business as usual after the fact. And yet, as in war the pandemic is teaching us that many things, including rapid reskilling, can be done if there

22、 is a will to do them. In any case, Swedens work force is now more skilled, in more things, and more flexible than it was before.Of course, reskilling programs, whether for pandemic needs or the postpandemic world, are expensive and at a time when everyones budgets are lean this may not be the time

23、to implement them. Then again, extending income support programs to get us through the next months is expensive, too, to say nothing of the cost of having a swath of long-term unemployed in the POST-COVID years Given that, perhaps we should think hard about whether the pandemic canjump-start us to a

24、 place where reskilling becomes much more than a buzzword.21. Research by the World Economic Forum suggestsA. an increase in full-time employmentB. an urgent demand for new job skillsC. a steady growth of job opportunitiesD. a controversy about the “core skills”22. AT&T is cited to showA. an alterna

25、tive to the fire-and-hire strategyB. an immediate need for government supportC. the importance of staff appraisal standardsD. the characteristics of reskilling program23. Efforts to resolve the skills mismatch in CanadaA. have driven up labour costsB. have proved to be inconsistentC. have met with f

26、ierce oppositionD. have appeared to be insufficient24. We can learn from Paragraph 3 that there wasA. a call for policy adjustment.B. a change in hiring practices.C. a lack of medical workers.D. a sign of economic recovery.25. Scandinavian Airlines decided toA. Great job vacancies for the unemployed

27、.B. Prepare their laid-off workers for other jobs.C. Retrain their cabin staff for better services.D. finance their staff s college education.Text 2With the global population predicted to hit close to 10 billion by 2050, and forecasts thatagricultural production in some regions will need to nearly d

28、ouble to keep pace, food security is increasingly making headlines. In the UK, it has become a big talking point recently too, for a rather particular reason: Brexit.Brexit is seen by some as an opportunity to reverse a recent trend towards the UK importing food. The country produces only about 60 p

29、er cent of the food it eats, down from almost three-quarters in the late 1980s. A move back to self-sufficiency, the argument goes, would boost the farming industry, political sovereignty and even the nations health. Sounds great- but how feasible is this vision?According to a report on UK food prod

30、uction from the University of Leeds, UK, 85 percent of the countrys total land area is associated with meat and dairy production. That supplies 80 percent of what is consumed, so even covering the whole country in livestock farms wouldnt allow us to cover all our meat and dairy needs.There are many

31、caveats to those figures, but they are still grave. 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.But switching to a mainly plant-based

32、 diet wouldnt help. There is a good reason why the UK is dominated by animal husbandry: most of its terrain doesnt have the right soil or climate to grow crops on commercial basis. Just 25 per cent of the countrys land is suitable for crop-growing, most of which is already occupied by arable fields.

33、 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 homeswe would achieve only a 30 percent boost in crop production.Just 23 per cent of the fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK

34、are currently home-grown, so even with the most extreme measures we could meet only 30 per cent of our fresh produce needs. 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.26. Some people argue that food

35、 self-sufficiency in the UK would . Aa be hindered by its population growthB contribute to the nations well-beingC become a priority of the government Dpost a challenge to its farming industry27. The report by the University of Leeds showed that in the UKA farmland has been inefficiently utilisedB f

36、actory style production needs reformingC most land is used for meat and dairy productionD more green fields will be converted for farming28. Crop-growing in the UK is restricted due to .A its farming technologyB its dietary traditionC its natural conditionsD its commercial interests29. It can be lea

37、rned from the last paragraph that British people .A rely largely on imports for fresh produceB enjoy a steady rise in fruit consumptionC are seeking effective ways to cut calorie intake D are trying to grow new varieties of grains30. The authors attitude to food self-efficiency in the UK is .A defen

38、siveB doubtfulC tolerantD optimisticText 3When Microsoft bought task management app Wunerlist and mobile calendar Sunrise in 2015, it picked up two newcomers that were attracting considerable buzz in Silicon Valley.Microsoft s own Office dominates the market for “ productivity” software, but the sta

39、rt-ups represented a new wave of technology designed from the ground up for the smartphone world.Both apps, however, were later scrapped, after Microsoft said it had used their best features in its own products. Their teams of engineers stayed on, making them two of the many “acqui-hires” that the b

40、iggest companies have used to feed their insatiable hunger for tech talent.To Microsofts 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. “ They bought the seedlings and closed them down,” complai

41、ned Paul Arnold, a partner at San Francisco-based Switch Ventures, putting paid to businesses that might one day turn into competitors. Microsoft declined to comment.Like other start-up investors, Mr Arnolds own business often depends on sellingstart-ups to larger tech companies, though he admits to

42、 mixed feelings about the result: “ I think these things are good for me, if I put my selfish hat on. But are they good for the American economy? I dont know.”The US Federal Trade Commission says it wants to find the answer to that question. This week, it asked the five most valuable US tech compani

43、es for information about their many small acquisitions over the past decade. 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.Given their combined market value of more th

44、an $5.5tm, rifling through such small deals-many of them much less prominent than Wunderlist and Sunrise-might seem beside thepoint. Between them, the five companies(Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook) have spent an average of only $3.4bn a year on sub-$1bn acquisitions over the past five

45、 years-a drop in the ocean compared with their massive financial reserves, and the more than $130bn of venture capital that was invested in the US last year.However, critics say that the big companies use such deals to buy their most threatening potential competitors before their businesses have a c

46、hance to gain momentum, in some cases as part of a “buy and kill” tactic to simply close them down.31. What is true about Wuderlist and Sunrise after their acquisitions?A. Their market values declined.B. Their tech features improved.C. Their engineers were retained.D. Their products were re-priced.3

47、2. Microsofts critics believe that the big tech companies tend to A. ignore public optionsB. treat new tech talent unfairlyC. exaggerate their product qualityD. eliminate their potential competitors33. Paul Arnold is concerned that small acquisitions might A. harm the national economyB. worsen market competitionC. discourage start-up investorsD. weaken big tech companies34. The US Federal Trade Commission intend to A. examine sm