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北京外国语大学

2007年硕士研究生入学考试基础英语试题

Please write all the answers on the answer sheets.

Time Limit：3 hours

The total points for this exam are 150 points

I. Reading Comprehension (50 points)

A Multiple Choice (24 points)

Please read the passages and choose A、B 、C or D to best complete the statements aboutthem.

The Quiet Crisis

Close games for the Americans were rare in previous Olympics, but now it appears to besomething the Americans should get used to.

You could find no better metaphor for the way the rest of the world can now competehead-to-head more effectively than ever with America than the struggles of the U.S. Olympicbasketball team in 2004. The American team, made up of NBA stars, limped home to a bronzemedal after losing to Puerto Rico, Lithuania, and Argentina. Previously, the United States Olympicbasketball team had lost only one game in the history of the modern Olympics. Remember whenAmerica sent only NCAA stars to the Olympic basketball events? For a long time these teamstotally dominated all corners. Then they started getting challenged. So we sent our pros. And theystarted getting challenged. Because the world keeps learning, the diffusion of knowledge happensfaste r; coaches in other countries now download American coaching methods off the Internet andwatch NBA games in their own living rooms on satellite TV. Many of them can even get ESPNand watch the highlight reels. And thanks to the triple convergence, there is a lot of new raw talentwalking onto the NBA courts from all over the world—including many new stars from China,Latin America, and Eastern Europe. They go back and play for their national teams in theOlympics, using the skills they honed in America. So the automatic American superiority oftwenty years ago is now gone in Olympic basketball. The NBA standard is increasingly becominga global commodity—pure vanilla. If the United States wants to continue to dominate in Olympicbasketball, we must, in that great sports cliché, step it up a notch. The old standard won’t dolike Lithuania or Puerto Rico still don't rank well versus the Americans, but when they play as ateam —when they collaborate better than we do, they are extremely competitive.”

There is something about post-world War ⅡAmerica that reminds me of the classic wealthyfamily that by the third generation starts to squander its wealth. The members of the firstgeneration are nose-to-the-grindstone innovators, the second generation holds it all together thentheir kids come along and get fat, dumb, and lazy and slowly squander it all. I know that is bothoverly harsh and a gross generalization, but there is, nevertheless, some truth in it. Americansociety started to coast in the 1990s, when our third postwar generation came of age. The dot-comboom left too many people with the impression that they could get rich without investing in hardwork. All it took was an MBA and a quick IPO, or one NBA contract, and you were set for life.