北京理工大學2007年博士研究生入學考試英語試題

北京理工大學2007年博士研究生入學考試英語試題

Part I Reading Comprehension (40 points)

Directions: In this part there are four passages for you to read. After each passage there are five questions, below each of whom there are four answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and mark the corresponding letter with a pencil on the MA CHINE-SCORING ANSWER SHEET with a single line through the center.

Passage One

The aroma of chocolate perfumes the air of the Rue d'Assas in Paris. Entering Christian Constant's state-of-the-art boutique, you find yourself in the kingdom of Paris's king of chocolate, where the humble cocoa bean is turned into mouth-watering chocolate Easter eggs.
Constant, who is a chef, admits that chocolate is his passion and main interest in life. He first developed a fascination with chocolate when he was working for Gaston Len

tre, a famous French pastry chef.
Every year he has a theme for decorating Easter eggs: this year his decorations are inspired by “Art Nouveau”. Tonight he has a dinner for 130 to organize and he has to prepare a three-foot-high Art Nouveau-style Easter egg by noon tomorrow. This, for Constant, is a normal schedule.
Constant believes that his chocolate creations are as much of a work of art as other sculptures. It is, therefore, understandable that the restaurant, which he opened last month, is situated in the National Monuments Museum in Paris. During the day the restaurant is a tearoom and offers chocolate in every imaginable form. Customers can choose from a selection of sweet chocolate desserts or try the more exotic spicy chocolates. Constant is also a professional “nose”, working closely with the French Institute of Taste. He is capable of identifying 450 different tastes and flavors. Constant explains that the mouth, which can only taste four things—salt, sweet, acid and bitter—is “stupid” in comparison to the nose. He believes that the nose is everything.
In his book The Taste of Chocolate, he explains how in 1502 Christopher Columbus came across an island and went ashore. He was greeted by an Indian chief bearing gifts，among which were huge sacks of beans which Columbus thought was local currency. To his surprise, they prepared a drink for him. But Columbus, who disliked the odd bitter taste, continued on his travels, ignorant of the fact that he had just tasted cocoa. Like Columbus, Constant travels the cocoa countries where he checks quality and works with local experts. Quality can vary depending on the region, year, and method of preparation. According to Constant, Venezuela and Trinidad have the best cocoa beans, which they export all over the world either as beans or as cocoa.
Constant, who is a hard worker, only sleeps three hours a night. He talks long into the night with members of a club he has formed. The club is called “The Chocolate Munchers”. Their main official activity is to get together for monthly dinners where they eat a very tiny dinner and tons of chocolate desserts.
“I am an addict,” Constant admits, “and I don't want to be cured!”
1．Which of the following is the most inclusive title for the passage?
A．Chocolate — The Passion of a Lifetime.
B．The Chocolate Munchers Club.
C．Chocolate—A New Art Form.
D．The Last Word in Good Taste.
2．What does Constant do now?
A．He works for a French pastry chef.
B．He owns his own restaurant and tearoom.
C．He is a sculptor for a museum in Paris.
D．He is a chef in the Institute of Taste.
3．Constant's newly-opened business ______.
A．provides chocolates with various flavors
B．exhibits all of his chocolate sculptures
C．often needs to prepare a big Easter dinner
D．serves as a national monument in Paris
4．The underlined part “Constant is also a... ‘nose’” means ______.
A．he believes he has the best nose in the world
B．his nose can taste salt, sweet, acid and bitter
C．his nose can identify various tastes and flavors
D．he is capable of smelling flavors from a long distance
5．According to Constant, ______.
A．ancient Indians used cocoa beans as local currency
B．Columbus checked, the quality of cocoa beans in different places
C．chocolate addiction makes people sleep less
D．the quality of cocoa beans varies from region to region

Passage Two

French are elegant people. They are artists in everyday life, having a very good taste in everything. They don't like American tourists wearing jeans to go into their luxurious and exquisite five-star restaurants. So one of the restaurants put a notice outside its front door. It read “No trousers, please!”
A gourmet coffee was sold in Tokyo as an antidote to stress. Its name supposedly meant to people that it would smooth the troubled breast. Yet when it was printed in English, it turned out to be “Ease Your Bosoms”.
Swedes started a promotion stunt to promote the sales of their vacuum cleaner named Electro. Their original ad slogan was translated as “Nothing sucks Like Electro”.
The General Motors' selling of Chevrolet was very bad in South America. And the reason? The translation of this brand sounds like “nova”, which means “It doesn't go” in Spanish.
When Pepsi-cola invaded the huge Chinese and German markets, the efforts initially fizzled. The product's slogan, “Come alive with the Pepsi generation,” was rendered into German as “come out of the grave with Pepsi.” Coca-Cola also discovered something had gone wrong in Taiwan. The Chinese characters chosen for the world-famous product sound like “Bite the Wax Tadpole.”
A beer company's slogan “Turn it loose” became, in Spanish, equivalent to “suffer from diarrhea.”
A company translated its sticky tape slogan into Japanese and came up with a sticky problem. The slogan “Sticks like crazy” became literally “it sticks foolishly” in Japanese.
A tonic produced in China is made of royal jelly and is supposed to be very effective for some chronic diseases. Yet it was translated as “oral liquid”, which means “saliva” in English. In the brochure, it was described in this way: “it tastes like medicine”, when the language in the original meant to use it as a food therapy.