CHINA UNIVERSITY OF GEOSCIENCES }!\ZJo a
PhD Entrance Examination in English /a%5!)NE%
11 May 1994 Us'm9 J
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Hello! You are about to take the English test for people who wish to enter the doctoral program in the earth sciences at this school. The test may be rather different from any exam you’ve taken in the past. The first part is a timed listening exercise. The second part will assess your reading comprehension, you will probably be most familiar with the format of this section of the exam. The last part tests your ability to produce good, grammatical English in simple, ordinary situations. ZD] ^Y}
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Make sure you read and follow the directions for each part of the test! .N8AkQ(Ok
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The results of this exam will enable us to compare your preparation in English with that of the other candidates. The “passing” grade is relative; in other words, it will depend on the scores for the whole body of test-takers .You should just relax and do as well as you can. Only the first part is timed ; for parts 2 and 3 you will have plenty of time. F_=RY]
We shall now begin. Turn the page to part 1. Good Luck! 5C/W_H+9iK
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PART 1. On your paper you see a list of 48 objects (=things) from everyday life. You will hear short descriptions of 20 of these objects. After listening to each description, decide which object is being described. Then write your answer in the appropriate space on your answer sheet. JS r& S[
For example, suppose you hear this: “Object U is a device for cleaning clothes. You fill it with water, add soap, then the dirty clothes, and turn the control dial. The clothes will be swirled round and round in the soapy water, first in one direction, then in the other. Usually there is also a compartment that you can use to spin the excess water out of the clothes.” You decide the object U is a washing machine. You look for WASHING MACHINE on your list. You see that the number next to WASHING MACHINE is 46. You then write “46” next to U on your answer sheet. (Of course, your actual answer sheet only goes as far as the letter T.) ^!-*xH.dK
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You will now have three minutes to look over the list of objects. ppjd.
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1 AIR CONDITIONER 17 FORK 33 SCISSORS D(D:/L8T,
2 ALARM CLOCK 18 GUITAR 34 SCREWDRIVER u?Jw) `
3 ARMCHAIR 19 HAMMER 35 SPOON tgH@|Kg
4 BED 20 LIGHTBULB 36 STOVE 6wx;grt'Z
5 BICYCLE 21 MIRROR 37 TABLE LAMP F6R+E;"4R'
6 CAMERA 22 MOP 38 TAPE RECORDER W/9dT^1y4'
7 CANDLE 23 MOTORCYCLE 39 TELEPHONE e.jrX;;$!&
8 CAR 24 PAGER 34 TELEVISION +0\BI<aG
9 CARPET 25 PERSONAL COMPUTER 41 THERMOMETER %Kx:'m%U
10 CHOPSTICKS 26 PHONEGRAPH 42 THERMOS BOTTLE PXG)?`^NX
11 COMB 27 PHOTOCOPIER 43 TYPEWRITER f4)fa yAVp
12 DESK 28 PIANO 44 VACUUM CLEANER 9 o6ig>C
13 DOORKNOB 29 RADIATOR 45 VCR %719h>$
14 ELECTRIC FAN 30 RADIO 46 WASHING MACHINE .'JO7of
15 FAX MACHINE 31 RAZOR 47 WATER HEATER j'FSd*5m
16 FLASHLIGHT 32 REFRIGERATOR 48 WRISTWATCH _0ki19rs
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ANSWERS 0>Iy`>]
A _____________ H _____________ O _____________ S
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B _____________ I _____________ P _____________ |l)SX\Qf`@
C _____________ J _____________ Q _____________ fTd=}zY
D _____________ K _____________ R _____________ "/[xak!g
E _____________ L _____________ S _____________ chk1tFV
F _____________ M _____________ T _____________ 69ZGdN
G _____________ N _____________ S?ELFq(g
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PART 2. Carefully read the passage below and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer by drawing a small circle around the letter of the response you have chosen. 1"tyxAo\
There are 15 questions in all, but each question is worth two points on this test. Thus the total value of Part 2 is 30 points out of 100 for the test as a whole. OQ>8Q`
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The woman, 69 years old and still active as a professor at Harvard University, told a research team that she had begun to find it hard to recall the names of never faculty members. Not long ago she had forgotten her classroom number when asking for a slide projector to be sent up. She had one anxious question for the research team, assembled to study the normal course of mental aging: “Am I losing my ability to remember, and perhaps even to think clearly?” B8A-|S!,U
That question is the principal focus of a new wave of scientific inquiry on the decline in mental ability with age. The finings are challenging some basic assumptions, like the belief that such decline is a natural part of the aging process, irrespective of general health. %gUf
From 20 to 30 percent of people in their 80s who volunteer for cognitive testing perform as well as volunteers in their 30s and 40s, who are presumably in their mental prime. The intellectual and creative productivity in later life of certain artists and intellectuals may represent not so much an exception as an ideal, some experts now say. %
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Dr KW Schaie, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University, is the director of a major study of normal mental decline in the elderly. For over 35 years, his study has been following more than 5000 men and women who have been tested regularly. Dr Schaie’s investigations seek to fill a gap in gerontological research, which, according to Dr Jack Rowe, president of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a leading expert in the field, has focused on disease and disability, and neglected the prospects of maintaining high functioning in old age. Dr Rowe heads a research network on successful aging sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. In an interview he pointed out that gerontologists have focused on “ the 6 to 15 percent of the elderly who are frail and then lumped everyone else together as normal. But there is a huge variation from person to person among older people: the older a group gets, the less like each other people in it become.” cW%QKdTQY0
Dr Schaie’s most recent findings were reported this month in The American Psychologist. Although the study’s results abilities begins gradually in the middle to late 60s and accelerates in the late 70s,the rate of decline differs for various mental faculties and differs in men and women. The sharpest declines are seen in basic mathematics. By their late 80s, both men and women were only about half as adept in basic math as they had been in their 50s. For men, the least decline shown is in spatial orientation, used, for example, in reading a map correctly. By the late 80s,it had dropped by only about one-eighth on average. Wk<he F
For women, the most enduring mental skill is inductive reasoning, assessing the information in a timetable, for instance. As women reached their late 80s, it had dropped just over one-eighth from its height in middle age. One of the drastic declines for women proved to be in verbal comprehension, while that ability dropped relatively little into the 70s, it plummeted by about one-quarter during the 80s. For men, the decline was slight in those years. LF6PKS
Another study, this one by Dr Richard Mons, a psychologist at Mount Sinai Medical School who is the acting director of a research consortium on normal memory loss and aging sponsored by the Charles A. Dana Foundation, has found that different kinds of memory differ in their vulnerability to aging. “Crystallized” memory, i.e. vocabulary or other knowledge accumulated over the years, holds up very well into old age. “Fluid” memory, on the other hand, the ability to add new information to memory or to recall something that happened recently is more prone to decline, beginning in the 60s. He found little decline in very short-term memory, like remembering a telephone number just looked up. v'3.`aZ!
A pair of Harvard psychologists, Douglas Powell and Kean Whitla, have designed a computerized test of mental skills like long-term and short-term memory, attention, reasoning and calculation, they reported the test in the February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science. They are the researchers whom the 69-year-old professor spoke with. Their test compares a person’s score with norms for others of the same age, for people who are still in middle age and for others in their own professional group. VPOzt7:
Dr Schaie’s study has found certain predictors for good mental function in old age. These include a high level of ability in reading comprehension and verbal fluency, a successful career or some other involvement through life and continuing keen mental interests after retirement. Having a flexible attitude in middle age was also a promising indicator. “There is less mental decline in people who adapt easily to change, who like learning new things and enjoy going to new places,” Dr Schaie observed. The study also found that simply living with someone with these characteristics is beneficial. “It helps to have a high-functioning spouse, since this is your major immediate social environment and support,” Dr Schaie stated. HK}br!?
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1. The 69-year-old woman mentioned at the beginning of the passage is finding it increasingly. ctg U
A difficult to remember who her colleagues are G-7!|&
B difficult to recall some of her colleagues’ faces >-S? rXO
C difficult to remember what some of her colleagues are called *LuR
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