2016年考研英语二真题及答案解析

Write an essay based on the following chart. you should 

1） interpret the chart and

2） give your comments.

You should write about 150 words on the ANSWER SHEET.

Suppose you won a translation contest and your friend Jack wrote an email to congratulate you, and ask advice on translation. Write him a reply to

1)thank him;

2)give your advice.

You should write neatly on the ANWSER SHEET. 

Do not sign you own name at the end of the letter, use“Li Ming” instead. Do not write the address.

The supermarket is designed to lure customers into spending as much time as possible within its doors. The reason for this is simple:The longer you stay in the store, the more stuff you'll see, and the more stuff you see, the more you'll buy. And supermarkets contain a lot of stuff. The average supermarket, according to the Food Marketing Institute, carries some 44,00 different items, and many carry tens of thousands more. The sheer volume of available choice is enough to send shoppers into a state of information overload. According to brain-scan experiments, the demands of so much decision-making quickly become too much for us. After about 40 minutes of shopping, most people stop struggling to be rationally selective, and instead begin shopping emotionally - which is the point at which we accumulate the 50 percent of stuff in our cart that we never intended buying. 

44____________

45____________

43____________

A、Be silly 

B、Have fun 

C、Express your emotions 

D、Don't overthink it 

[E]Be easily pleased 

[F]Notice things 

[G]Ask for help 

 As adults,it seems that we are constantly pursuing happiness,often with mixed results.Yet children appear to have it down to an art-and for the most part they don't need self-help books or therapy.instead,they look after their wellbeing instinctively,and usually more effectively than we do as grownups.Perhaps it's time to learn a few lessons from them. 

41.______________ What does a child do when he's sad? He cries.When he's angry?He shouts.Scared?Probably a bit of both.As we grow up,we learn to control our emotions so they are manageable and don't dictate our behaviours,which is in many ways a good thing.But too often we take this process too far and end up suppressing emotions,especially negative ones.that's about as effective as brushing dirt under a carpet and can even make us ill.What we need to do is find a way to acknowledge and express what we feel appropriately, and then-again like children-move. 

42.____________ A couple of Christmases ago, my youngest stepdaughter, who was nine years old at the time, got a Superman T-shirt for Christmas. It cost less than a fiver but she was overjoyed, and couldn't stop talking about it.Too often we believe that a new job,bigger house or better car will be the magic silver bullet that will allow us to finally be content,but the reality is these things have very little lasting impact on our happiness levels. Instead, being grateful for small things every day is a much better way to improve wellbeing. 

43.______________________ Have you ever noticed how much children laugh? If we adults could indulge in a bit of silliness and giggling, we would reduce the stress hormones in our bodies , increase good hormones like endorphins, improve blood flow to our hearts and even have a greater chance of fighting off enfection. All of which, of course, have a positive effect on happiness levels. 

44.__________________ The problem with being a grown up is that there's an awful lot of serious stuff to deal with---work,mortgage payments,figuring out what to cook for dinner. But as adults we also have the luxury of being able to control our own diaries and it's important that we schedule in time to enjoy the things we love.Those things might be social,sporting,creative or completely random(dancing aroud the living room,anyone?)--it doesn't matter,so long as they're enjoyable, and not likely to have negative side effects,such as drinking too much alcohol or going on a wild spending spree if you're on a tight budget. 

45.___________________ Having said all of the above, it's important to add that we shouldn't try too hard to be happy.Scientists tell us this can backfire and actually have a negative impact on our wellbeing. As the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu is reported to have said:"Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness."And in that,once more,we need to look to the example of our children,to whom happiness is not a goal but a natural by product of the way they live.

41____________________

42____________

Which of the following is true about Schneider？

Both young and old agree that____.

Against a backdrop of drastic changes in economy and population structure, younger Americans are drawing a new 21st-century road map to success, a latest poll has found. 

The priorities and expectations defined by the young will____.

It can be learned from Paragraph 3 that young people tend to____.

The best title for this text could be?

“Carry a book with you at all times” can work if?

The “empty bottles” metaphor illustrates that people feel a pressure to?

Eberle would agree that scheduling regular times for reading helps?

That everyone’s too busy these days is a cliché. But one specific complaint is made especially mournfully： There’s never any time to read. 

What makes the problem thornier is that the usual time-management techniques don’t seem sufficient. The web’s full of articles offering tips on making time to read: “Give up TV” or “Carry a book with you at all times” But in my experience, using such methods to free up the odd 30 minutes doesn’t work. Sit down to read and the flywheel of work-related thoughts keeps spinning-or else you’re so exhausted that a challenging book’s the last thing you need. The modern mind, Tim Parks, a novelist and critic, writes, “is overwhelmingly inclined toward communication…It is not simply that one is interrupted; it is that one is actually inclined to interruption”. Deep reading requires not just time, but a special kind of time which can’t be obtained merely by becoming more efficient. 

In fact, “becoming more efficient” is part of the problem. Thinking of time as a resource to be maximised means you approach it instrumentally, judging any given moment as well spent only in so far as it advances progress toward some goal immersive reading, by contrast, depends on being willing to risk inefficiency, goallessness, even time-wasting. Try to slot it as a to-do list item and you’ll manage only goal-focused reading-useful, sometimes, but not the most fulfilling kind. “The future comes at us like empty bottles along an unstoppable and nearly infinite conveyor belt,” writes Gary Eberle in his book Sacred Time, and “we feel a pressure to fill these different-sized bottles (days, hours, minutes）as they pass, for if they get by without being filled, we will have wasted them”. No mind-set could be worse for losing yourself in a book. 

So what does work? Perhaps surprisingly, scheduling regular times for reading. You’d think this might fuel the efficiency mind-set, but in fact, Eberle notes, such ritualistic behaviour helps us “step outside time’s flow” into “soul time”. You could limit distractions by reading only physical books, or on single-purpose e-readers. “Carry a book with you at all times” can actually work, too-providing you dip in often enough, so that reading becomes the default state from which you temporarily surface to take care of business, before dropping back down. On a really good day, it no longer feels as if you’re “making time to read,” but just reading, and making time for everything else. 

The usual time-management techniques don’t work because?

Jay Lininger would most likely support_______

The “threatened” tag disappointed some environmentalists in that it_____

According to Ashe， the leading role in managing the species in______

It can be learned from Paragraph3 that unintentional harm-doers will not be prosecuted if they_____

The word “coax” (Line4, Para.6) is closest in meaning to____.

Biologists estimate that as many as 2 million lesser prairie chickens---a kind of bird living on stretching grasslands—once lent red to the often gray landscape of the midwestern and southwestern United States. But just some 22,000 birds remain today, occupying about 16% of the species’ historic range. 

The crash was a major reason the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service （USFWS）decided to formally list the bird as threatened. “The lesser prairie chicken is in a desperate situation,” said USFWS Director Daniel Ashe. Some environmentalists, however, were disappointed. They had pushed the agency to designate the bird as “endangered,” a status that gives federal officials greater regulatory power to crack down on threats. But Ashe and others argued that the“threatened” tag gave the federal government flexibility to try out new, potentially less confrontational conservations approaches. In particular, they called for forging closer collaborations with western state governments, which are often uneasy with federal action and with the private landowners who control an estimated 95% of the prairie chicken’s habitat. 

Under the plan, for example, the agency said it would not prosecute landowner or businesses that unintentionally kill, harm, or disturb the bird, as long as they had signed a range—wide management plan to restore prairie chicken habitat. Negotiated by USFWS and the states, the plan requires individuals and businesses that damage habitat as part of their operations to pay into a fund to replace every acre destroyed with 2 new acres of suitable habitat. The fund will also be used to compensate landowners who set aside habitat, USFWS also set an interim goal of restoring prairie chicken populations to an annual average of 67,000 birds over the next 10 years. And it gives the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA), a coalition of state agencies, the job of monitoring progress. Overall, the idea is to let “states” remain in the driver’s seat for managing the species，” Ashe said. 

Not everyone buys the win-win rhetoric Some Congress members are trying to block the plan, and at least a dozen industry groups, four states, and three environmental groups are challenging it in federal court Not surprisingly, doesn’t go far enough “The federal government is giving responsibility for managing the bird to the same industries that are pushing it to extinction,” says biologist Jay Lininger. 

The major reason for listing the lesser prairie as threatened is____

Deborah Seehorn believes that the skills learned at Flatiron will____.

According to the last paragraph, Flatiron students are expected to____.

It’s true that high-school coding classes aren’t essential for learning computer science in college. Students without experience can catch up after a few introductory courses, said Tom Cortina, the assistant dean at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science. 

However, Cortina said, early exposure is beneficial. When younger kids learn computer science, they learn that it’s not just a confusing, endless string of letters and numbers — but a tool to build apps, or create artwork, or test hypotheses. It’s not as hard for them to transform. their thought processes as it is for older students. Breaking down problems into bite-sized chunks and using code to solve them becomes normal. Giving more children this training could increase the number of people interested in the field and help fill the jobs gap, Cortina said. Students also benefit from learning something about coding before they get to college, where introductory computer-science classes are packed to the brim, which can drive the less-experienced or-determined students away. 

The Flatiron School, where people pay to learn programming, started as one of the many coding bootcamps that’s become popular for adults looking for a career change. The high-schoolers get the same curriculum, but “we try to gear lessons toward things they’re interested in,” said Victoria Friedman, an instructor. For instance, one of the apps the students are developing suggests movies based on your mood. 

The students in the Flatiron class probably won’t drop out of high school and build the next Facebook. Programming languages have a quick turnover, so the “Ruby on Rails” language they learned may not even be relevant by the time they enter the job market. But the skills they learn — how to think logically through a problem and organize the results — apply to any coding language, said Deborah Seehorn, an education consultant for the state of North Carolina. 

Indeed, the Flatiron students might not go into IT at all. But creating a future army of coders is not the sole purpose of the classes. These kids are going to be surrounded by computers — in their pockets, in their offices, in their homes — for the rest of their lives. The younger they learn how computers think, how to coax the machine into producing what they want — the earlier they learn that they have the power to do that — the better. 

Cortina holds that early exposure to computer science makes it easier to____.

In delivering lessons for high-schoolers, Flatiron has considered their____.

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Happy people work differently. They’re more productive, more creative, and willing to take greater risks. And new research suggests that happiness might influence__1__firm’s work, too. Companies located in places with happier people invest more, according to a recent research paper.

__2__, firms in happy places spend more on R&D (research and development). That’s because happiness is linked to the kind of longer-term thinking__3__for making investments for the future. 

The researchers wanted to know if the__4__and inclination for risk-taking that come with happiness would__5__the way companies invested. So they compared U.S. cities’ average happiness__6__by Gallup polling with the investment activity of publicly traded firms in those areas. 

__7__enough, firms’ investment and R&D intensity were correlated with the happiness of the area in which they were__8__.But is it really happiness that’s linked to investment, or could something else about happier cities__9__why firms there spend more on R&D? To find out, the researchers controlled for various__10__that might make firms more likely to invest – like size, industry, and sales – and for indicators that a place was__11__to live in, like growth in wages or population. The link between happiness and investment generally__12__even after accounting for these things. 

The correlation between happiness and investment was particularly strong for younger firms, which the authors__13__to “less codified decision making process” and the possible presence of “younger and less__14__managers who are more likely to be influenced by sentiment.” The relationship was__15__stronger in places where happiness was spread more__16__.Firms seem to invest more in places where most people are relatively happy, rather than in places with happiness inequality. 

__17__ this doesn’t prove that happiness causes firms to invest more or to take a longer-term view, the authors believe it at least__18__at that possibility. It’s not hard to imagine that local culture and sentiment would help__19__how executives think about the future. “It surely seems plausible that happy people would be more forward-thinking and creative and__20__R&D more than the average,” said one researcher.

1______