考研英语阅读理解B型题(五) 英语, 考研, 阅读

幽幽草

Directions:　　In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A—G to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps.
　　Americans wear black for mourning. Chinese wear white. Westerners think of dragons as monsters. Chinese honor them as symbols of God. Chinese civilization has often shown such polarities with the West, as though each stands at extreme ends of a global string. 1）
　　His findings go far toward explaining why American cultures seem so contentious and Chinese cultures so passive, when compared to each other. More importantly, the research opens the way for the peoples of the East and the West to learn from each other in fundamental ways. 2）said Kaiping Peng, a former Beijing scholar, who is now a UC Borkeley assistant professor of psychology.
　　"Americans have a terrible need to find out who is right in an argument," said Peng. "The problem is that at the interpersonal level, you really don't need to find the truth, or may be there isn't any." "Chinese people," said Peng, "are far more content to think that both sides have flaws and virtues, because they have a holistic awareness that life is full of contradictions." "They do far less blaming of the individual than do Americans," he added.
　　In studies of interpersonal argument, for example, when subjects were asked to deal with contradictory information stemming from conflict between a mother and a daughter or a student and a school, Peng found that Americans were "non-compromising, blaming one side - usually the mother - for the causes of the problems, demanding changes from one side to attain a solution and offering no compromise" in dealing with the conflict.
　　3）
　　In tests of scientific thinking, however, the Chinese came up short. Asked to determine which statement was true-- whether, for instance, smoking makes people gain or lose weight-- Chinese respondents took the middle road, even when they believed one statement to be less true than another.
　　4）
　　He believes that this tendency to find the middle way has hampered Chinese efforts to seek out scientific truth through aggressive argumentation, the classic Western method for forging a linear path through contradictory information, which results in identifying right and wrong answers.
　　Dialectical thinking also has a Western version, which Americans often consider the highest, most sophisticated form of reasoning, said Peng. This type of reasoning allows people to proceed from thesis to antithesis, to synthesis.
　　5）
　　[A]In Chinese folk wisdom, by comparison, people do not attempt to work through the contradictions, following a cultural tradition which holds that reality is "multi-layered, unpredictable and contradictory," and is in a constant state of change, Peng said.
　　[B]"It can hardly be right to move to the middle when you have just read evidence for a less plausible view. Yet that is what the Chinese subjects did," said Peng.
　　[C]The Chinese could learn much from Western methods for determining scientific truth, and Americans could profit enormously from the Chinese tolerance for accepting contradictions in social and personal life.
　　[D]Compared to this angry, blaming American stance, the Chinese were paragons of compromise, finding fault on both sides and looking for solutions that moved both sides to the middle.
　　[E]The best way is to use both one style for science and another for relationships. Maybe that will be the real benefit of multi-culturalism.
　　[F]"They should stop blaming each other, poor people and immigrants, and talk about what we can do as a society to become more tolerant," said Peng.
　　[G] Now a University of California, Berkeley, Psychologist has discovered deeper polarities between Chinese and American cultures-- polarities that go to the heart of how we reason and discover truth.
　　答案及详解
　　1.G。文章开头即指明中、西文化宛如地球的两个端点，从第二段第二句以及第六段的“In tests of scientific … short”看，此处作者想更进一步表明中、西在“reason and discover truth”上的差异。
　　2.C。前文是两者的不同，这里指出应互相学习。
　　干扰项为E，但我们注意到，E过于笼统，而C句中的“scientific truth”与“social and personal life”与下面展开的段落直接相关，所以选C。
　　3.D。上一段举例表明美国人在人际关系中，互相指责，此段作为对比，显示了中国人的中庸之道，这一段是围绕第三段中“They do far less blaming of the individual than do Americans.”展开的。
　　4.B。在肯定中国人在处理人际关系中的优势后，作者随即指出其在 scientific thinking 上折中主义的劣势，从下文的“hamper”可以看出，作者对在科学问题上也采用折中主义这种方法是不赞成的，因此我们选B。
　　5.A。对比中西方辨证思维模式的不同。从上文中的西方的推理是由正题推出反题，进而推出合理看，此处应为论述中国人认为现实是“multilayered, contradictions”的思维方式。
　　中心思想
　　本文论述了中美文明在社会关系和科学问题上的差异，美国人在人际关系中比较好斗，而中国人倾向寻求折中的解决方案，在科学问题中，中国人也经常采用中间路线，美国人的直线前进的方法，往往可以辨明正确和错误的答案，作者主张生活中采用中国方式，科学上采用美国方式。