武汉大学2003-2004-2008年博士研究生入学考试英语试题.docVIP

武汉大学2003年博士研究生入学考试英语试题 Part Ⅰ 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 your answer on the ANSWER SHEET by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets. Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage. We are told that the mass media are the greatest organs for enlightenment that the world has yet seen; that in Britain, for instance, several million people see each issue of the current affairs program, Panorama. It is true that never in human history were so many people so often and so much exposed to many intimations about societies, forms of life, attitudes other than those which obtain in their local societies. This kind of exposure may well be a point of departure for acquiring certain important intellectual and imaginative qualities; width of judgment, a sense of the variety of possible attitudes. Yet in itself such exposure does not bring intellectual or imaginative development. It is no more than the masses of stone which lie around in a quarry (采石场) and which may, conceivably, go to the making of a cathedral. The mass media cannot build the cathedral, and their way of showing the stones does not always prompt others to build. For the stones are presented within a sell-contained and self-sufficient world in which, it is implied, simply to look at them, to observe-fleetingly-individually interesting points of difference between them, is sufficient in itself. Life is indeed full of problems on which we have to— or feel we should try to— make decisions, as citizens or as private individuals. But neither the real difficulty of these decisions, nor their true and disturbing challenge to each individual, can often be communicated through the mass media. The distinction to suggest real choice, individual decision, which is to be found in the