2011年12月英语三级考试最后冲刺试题及答案(第十一套).docVIP

外语考试频道  HYPERLINK /waiyu/ /waiyu/ 　Part II Reading Comprehension (30%) 　　Directions: There are 4 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center. 　　Passage I 　　Questions 1 to 4 are based on the following passages: 　　 These days there are so many stories about the criminal activities of athletes that sports pages are beginning to look like police reports. What’s going on? American sports fans ask over their morning toast and coffee, What’s happening to our heroes? 　　It’s not difficult to understand our desire for athletes to be heroes. On the surface, at least, athletes display a vital and indomitable spirit; they are gloriously alive inside their bodies. And sports do allow us to witness acts that can legitimately be described as courageous, thrilling, beautiful, even noble. In an increasingly complicated and disorderly world, sports are still an arena in which we can regularly witness a certain kind of greatness. 　　Yet there’s something of a paradox here, for the very qualities a society tends to seek in its heroes – selflessness, social consciousness, and the like – are precisely the opposite of those needed to transform a talented but otherwise unremarkable neighborhood kid into a Michael Jordan. To become a star athlete, you have to have an extremely competitive outlook and you have to be totally focused on the development of our own physical skills. These qualities may well make a great athlete, but they don’t necessarily make a great person. On top of this, our society reinforces these traits by the system it has created to produce athletes – a system characterized by limited responsibility and enormous privilege. 　　The athletes themselves suffer the costs of this system. Trained to measure themselves per