2012年浙江财经大学681综合英语考研真题考研试题硕士研究生入学考试试题

2012年攻读浙江财经学院硕士学位研究生入学考试试题科目代码：681 科目名称：综合英语

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Part I READING COMPREHENSION (50 MIN, 50 points)

In this section there are five reading passages followed by a total of 25 multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and finish the multiple choices. Text A

People do not analyze every problem they meet. Sometimes they try to remember a solution from the last time they had a similar problem. They often accept the opinions or ideas of other people. Other times they begin to act without thinking; they try to find a solution by trial and error. However, when all these methods fail, the person with a problem has to start analyzing.

There are six stages in analyzing a problem.

First the person must recognize that there is a problem. For example, Sam's bicycle is broken, and he cannot ride it to class as he usually does. Sam must see that there is a problem with his bicycle.

Next the thinker must define the problem. Before Sam can repair his bicycle, he must find the reason why it does not work. For instance, he must determine if the problem is with the gears, the brakes, or the frame. He must make his problem more specific.

Now the person must look for information that will make the problem clearer and lead to possible solutions. For instance, suppose Sam decides that his bike does not work because there is something wrong with the gear wheels. At this time, he can look in his bicycle repair book and read about gears. He can talk to his friends at the bike shop. He can look at his gears carefully.

After studying the problem, the person should have several suggestions for a possible solution. Take Sam as an illustration. His suggestions might be: put oil on the gear wheels; buy new gear wheels and replace the old ones; tighten or loosen the gear wheels.

Eventually one suggestion seems to be the solution to the problem. Sometimes the final idea comes very suddenly because the thinker suddenly sees something new or sees something in a new way. Sam, for example, suddenly sees that there is a piece of chewing gum between the gear wheels. He immediately realizes the solution to his problem: he must clean the gear wheels.

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Finally the solution is tested. Sam cleans the gear wheels and finds that afterwards his bicycle works perfectly. In short, he has solved the problem.

1.What is the best title for this passage?

A.Six Stages for Repairing Sam's Bicycle.

B.Possible Ways to Problem-solving.

C.Necessities of Problem Analysis.

D.Suggestions for Analyzing a Problem.

2.In analyzing a problem we should do all the following except_________.

A.recognize and define the problem

B.look for information to make the problem clearer

C.have suggestions for a possible solution

D.find a solution by trial or mistake

3. By referring to Sam' s broken bicycle, the author intends to_________.

A.illustrate the ways to repair his bicycle

B.discuss the problems of his bicycle

C.tell us how to solve a problem

D.show us how to analyze a problem

4.Which of the following is NOT true?

A.People do not analyze the problem they meet.

B.People often accept the opinions or ideas of other people.

C.People may learn from their past experience.

D.People can not solve some problems they meet.

5.As used in the last sentence, the phrase "in short" means________.

A.in the long run

B.in detail

C.in a word

D.in the end

Text B

Fast food, a mainstay of American eating for decades, may have reached a plateau in the United States as the maturing baby-boom generation looks for a more varied menu. Fast food still represents a $ 102 billion a year industry, but growth has turned sluggish recently amid tough competition from retail food stores and a more affluent population willing to try new things and spend more, analysts say. Signs of trouble in fast food include price-cutting by industry leaders, including efforts by McDonald's to attract customers with a 55 cent hamburger, and major players pulling out or selling. O'Pepsico, for example, is selling its fast-food restaurant division that includes Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC.

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"It's becoming harder and harder for these firms to grow," said Jim Brown, a professor of marketing at Virginia Tech University. "I think in the United States fast food has reached a saturation point because of the number of competitors and the number of outlets."

Fast-food restaurant revenues grew 2. 5 percent in 1996, according to industry figures, the slowest since the recession of 1991. That is for cry from the levels of the 1970s and 1980s. According to the Food Marketing Institute, consumers are using supermarkets for 21 percent of take-home food, nearly double the level of a year ago. While fast-food restaurants still lead, their share slipped significantly, from 48 percent in 1996 to 41 percent in 1997.

"Consumers have never been more demanding than they are today," said Michael Sansolo, senior vice president of the Supermarket Trade Group. "They are pressed for time. Money is still an issue…but their tastes are increasingly diverse--whether it's gourmet foods, ethnic foods or organic offerings."

Meanwhile, the aging of the baby-boom population--and the growth in the number of so-called "empty nesters" with grown children--has meant a surge in the number of people willing to spend more for upscale items. This generation "will have the luxury of being more discriminating" as their children leave home, notes Harry Balzer, vice president of the Chicago-based NPD consulting group. Balzer said some 18 million baby boomers will become empty-nesters in the next l 0 years, leaving them with more disposable income to spend on dining out. "Fast and cheap will still be driving factors..., but our definitions of fast and cheap may be changing."

Various reports suggest industry leader McDonald's is struggling, losing market share, with lower same-store sales while cutting back the number of new outlets in the United States, partly due to pressure from franchisers who don't want to be squeezed. The company replaced the head of its 12,000 US restaurant chain last October amid a slump in US market share.

6.What does the passage mainly tell about?

A.Fast food disappoints consumers.

B.People prefer less expensive food.

C.McDonald's dominates the market of fast food.

D.Fast food is losing its attraction.

7. What can we learn from the passage?

A.O'Pepsico goes bankrupt.

B.The number of supermarkets doubles.

C.Jim Brown takes a negative attitude towards the development of fast

food.

D. McDonald's survives from the competition with retail food stores.

8.What is NOT true about baby-boom generation?

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A.They seek a variety of food.

B.They have come of age.

C.They will spend more money on food.

D.They tend to have luxurious food.

9.Which of the following is not mentioned as an influence on people's choices

of food?

A.Speed and price of the food.

B.Diversity of the food.

C.Tastes of the consumers.

D.Age of the consumers.

10. What brings trouble to fast food industry?

A.Customers' demand and competition with retailers.

B.The aging baby-boomer and diversity of food.

C. Competition with retailers and diversity of food.

D. Customers' demand and the aging of baby-boomer.

Text C

It was going to have roughly the effect of a neutron bomb attack on high streets and shop ping malls. The buildings would be left standing but the people would vanish. Such was the superior efficiency of selling things via the Internet that brick-and-mortar stores would be unable to compete on price, choice or even service. Book and music sellers had already been "Amazoned". Soon web-based "category-killers", in everything from toys to pet supplies, would overwhelm their physical-world competitors. Shoppers would never be more than a mouse-click from the best deals. Traditional retailers, terrified of cannibalizing (同类相食) sales and destroying the value of their expensive properties, were already too late to meet the challenge. "In some categories," said Mary Meeker, a seer of the Internet at Morgan Stanley, "it's already game over."

These are convenient beliefs for anyone justifying some e-commerce share prices, but they are already mostly wrong. The reasons should surprise no one. The Internet is not a dominant technology but rather a network of people. It is a rich and highly flexible means of communicating that is rapidly achieving pervasiveness because more and more people find it easy and convenient to use. But it is those people's preferences that will count; and for most people, shopping is more than just a means to an end. Even if the Internet provided a perfectly efficient way to shop it would not provide a satisfactory alternative to the physical enjoyment of sniffing a ripe melon, say, or trying on a cashmere sweater.

Of course, some products, such as music and banking, can be distributed

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electronically with success and cost saving. But most purchases cannot be reduced to digital code. And distributing physical goods is cumbersome and expensive. Behind even the most exciting user interface there are old-fashioned warehouses and lorries, customers who decline to sit at home waiting for purchases to arrive, and goods that must be re-wrapped and expensively returned. No wonder that the cost of getting goods to customers' homes so often soaks up the notional price advantages of e-commerce.

What Internet shoppers have quickly realized is that the web is an addition to, and not a substitute for, their shopping habits. It is wonderful for gathering up-to-date information about products and prices. Cyber Dialogue, a research firm, estimates that in 1998 23m Americans sought information online, but then made their purchases offline, compared with only 17.7m who did the whole thing online.

11.The author compares ______ of the online sale to the effect of neutron bomb

attack.

A.the efficiency

B.the choice

C.the price

D.the service

12.According to Mary Meeker, ______.

A.traditional retailers can't compete with online ones on price, choice or

service

B.the battle between traditional retailers and online retailers is over

C.online retailers have prevailed over traditional ones in the market of

certain products

D.online retailers have destroyed the value of traditional retailers'

properties

13.According to the passage, shopping for most people ______.

A.is a flexible means of communicating

B.is not just a means to gaining an end

C.does not provide an alternative to physical enjoyment

D.provides a perfectly easy and efficient way of living

14. The cost of goods delivery brings about the result that ______.

A.distributing goods becomes troublesome and expensive

B.the notional price advantages of e-commerce are eliminated

C.old-fashioned warehouses and lorries have to be still in use

D.goods must be wrapped again and expensively returned

15.According to Cyber Dialogue, ______.

A.online shopping will not replace the traditional shopping habits

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B.customers seek information via the Internet more often than via any

other means

C. Internet users prefer to seek information online without making real

purchases

D.fewer and fewer people purchase what they want via the Internet

Text D

London's Heathrow Airport is notorious for queues and delays. Why is this happening and what can you do to avoid the frustration?

In the film Catch Me If You Can, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a dashing young con artist who fools an airline into believing he is one of their captains. He strolls through a sleek and futuristic air terminal flanked by a gaggle of stewardesses, his progress serene. The message is clear: Air travel is glamorous, sexy and a total breeze.

Cut to Heathrow, 2007, and what is still the world's largest airport (by passenger numbers) is stretched to breaking point, beset by delays and hampered by a creaking infrastructure. Ken Livingstone, London's garrulous Mayor, says the airport is "shaming London". How did it come to this?

In a sense, Heathrow's key role in the development of Britain's (and the world's) aviation industry has been its undoing. First opened to commercial flights in 1946, Heathrow has always been there first; consequently, it has inherited a legacy of aging terminal buildings. Then September 11 happened, and security protocols went through the roof. The 2005 London bombings didn't help matters.

The queues to clear Heathrow's security can take hours to clear, especially when not all the x-ray machines are open. At the other end of the process, passengers have faced seemingly never-ending waits for luggage. A recent Association of European Airlines report showed that between April and June this year the luggage system at Heathrow broke down 11 times.

The British government, spurred on by angry airlines, passenger groups and an increasingly vocal media, has announced an enquiry into how the airport is run. Heathrow, like seven other major airports in the UK, is run by the British Airports Authority (BAA), who has been accused of putting the profits from the vast shopping malls in each terminal before investment in security and staff. Ryanair, British Airways and the head of the International Air Transport Association have all criticized the running of the airport, blaming under-investment.

A spokesman for Heathrow notes that all may not be lost quite yet. Ninety-seven per cent of passengers get through security after less than 10 minutes of queuing. The baggage rules for using UK airports have been the

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same for a while now, so travelers should be getting used to the plastic bags and one item of hand-luggage rule. And BAA is recommending that people don't turn up earlier than they should--three hours for long-haul, two for short haul and 90 minutes for domestic should be fine. Heathrow has also employed 500 new security staff and opened nine new security lanes this year.

And then there's Terminal Five, the gleaming, light-filled Richard Rodgers creation, complete with a landscaped civic space, due to open in March 2008. It will be British Airways' new home and should take the pressure off the rest of the airport. Far more suitable for a Leonardo-style sashay.

16.Leonardo's performance conveys the idea that air travel is ________

A.dangerous.

B.enchanting.

C.frustrating.

D.time-consuming.

17.Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A.Heathrow Airport has the largest surface area in the world.

B.Heathrow Airport is about to collapse as a result of huge passenger

numbers.

C.The significant position of the airport in history has become the main

cause for its present situation.

D.The airport is determined to renovate its old terminal buildings.

18. It can take hours to pass the airport security, especially when

A.all the X-rays machines are shut down.

B.luggage checked over and over again.

C.the luggage system breaks down.

D.only some of the X-ray machines arc open.

19.Who's to blame for the under-investment in British airports?

A.British Airports Authority.

B.Association of European Airlines.

C.Heathrow Airport.

D.International Air Transport Association.

20.According to BAA, when should domestic passengers arrive at the airport?

A. 1 hour before boarding.

B. 1.5 hours before boarding.

C. 2 hours before boarding.

D. 3 hours before boarding.

Text E

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Every minute of every day, what ecologist James Carlton calls a global "conveyor belt" redistributes ocean organisms. It's planet wide biological disruption that scientists have barely begun to understand.

Dr Carlton -- an oceanographer at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. -- explains that, at any given moment, "there are several thousand (marine) species (traveling)... in the ballast water of ships." These creatures move from coastal waters where they fit into the local web of life to places where some of them could tear that web apart. This is the larger dimension of the infamous invasion of fish-destroying, pipe- clogging zebra mussels.

Such voracious invaders at least make their presence known. What concerns Carlton and his fellow marine ecologists is the lack of knowledge about the hundreds of alien invaders that quietly enter coastal waters around the world every day. Many of them probably just die out. Some benignly -- or even beneficially -- join the local scene. But some will make trouble.

In one sense, this is an old story. Organisms have ridden ships for centuries. They have clung to hulls and come along with cargo. What's new is the scale and speed of the migrations made possible by the massive volume of ship-ballast water -- taken in to provide ship stability -- continuously moving around the world...

Ships load up with ballast water and its inhabitants in coastal waters of one port and dump the ballast in another port that may be thousands of kilometers away. A single load can run to hundreds of gallons. Some larger ships take on as much as 40 million gallons. The creatures that come along tend to be in their larva free-floating stage. When discharged in alien waters they can mature into crabs, jellyfish, slugs, and many other forms.

Since the problem involves coastal species, simply banning ballast dumps in coastal waters would, in theory, solve it. Coastal organisms in ballast water that is flushed into midocean would not survive. Such a ban has worked for North American Inland Waterway. But it would be hard to enforce it worldwide. Heating ballast water or straining it should also halt the species spread. But before any such worldwide regulations were imposed, scientists would need a clearer view of what is going on.

The continuous shuffling of marine organisms has changed the biology of the sea on a global scale. It can have devastating effects as in the case of the American comb jellyfish that recently invaded the Black Se[A]. It has destroyed that sea's anchovy fishery by eating anchovy eggs. It may soon spread to western and northern European waters.

The maritime nations that created the biological "conveyor belt" should support a coordinated international effort to find out what is going on and what should be done about it.

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21.According to Dr. Carlton, ocean organisms are_________.

A.being moved to new environments

B.destroying the planet

C.succumbing to the zebra mussel

D.developing alien characteristics

22. Oceanographers are concerned because________.

A.their knowledge of this phenomenon is limited

B.they believe the oceans are dying

C.they fear an invasion from outer space

D.they have identified thousands of alien webs

23.According to marine ecologists, transplanted marine species_________.

A.may upset the ecosystems of coastal waters

B.are all compatible with one another

C.can only survive in their home waters

D.sometimes disrupt shipping lanes

24. The identified cause of the problem is___________.

A.the rapidity with which larvae mature

B. a common practice of the shipping industry

C. a century-old species

D. the worldwide movement of ocean currents

25.The article suggests that a solution to the problem________.

A.is unlikely to be identified

B. must precede further research

C.is hypothetically easy

D.will limit global shipping

Part II GENERAL KNOWLEDGE (10 MIN，20 Points) There are ten multiple-choice questions in this section. Choose the best answer to each question. Mark your answers on your answer sheet.

1.Which of the following is the world's smallest continent?

1c9a8e3a1eb91a37f0115c2a.

B.Australia.

C. Europe.

D.Africa.

2.Ronald Reagan used to be a ______.

A.basketball player

B.sports radio announcer

C.conservative political columnist

D. sports writer

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3.What is the generation with a sudden, large increase in birthrate called in the

United States after World War Ⅱ from 1947 to 1961?

A.Baby Boomer.

B. Last Generation.

C.Yuppies.

D. Dinks.

4. The celebration of Thanksgiving Day has been observed to thank ______.

A.God

B.their ancestors

C.their parents

D.the Pilgrims

5. Nathaniel Hawthorne was most famous for ______.

A.Annabel Lee

B.The Scarlet Letter

C.The Raven

D.Moby Dick

6.Who was the "father of English poetry"?

A.Francis Bacon.

B. John Milton.

C.Robert Burns.

D.Geoffrey Chaucer.

7.Bunyan's most important work is ______, written in the old-fashioned,

medieval form of allegory and dream.

A.The Footprint

B.On His Blindness

C.Vanity Fair

D.The Pilgrim's Progress

8. ______ can be simply defined as the study of meaning.

A.Syntax

B.Semantics

C.Pragmatics

D.Linguistics

9.Which of the following is NOT one of the major branches of linguistics?

A.Phonetics.

B.Syntax.

C.Synchronic.

D. Semantics.

10.Which of the following words has most morphemes?

A.undertake.

B.undesirablity.

C.pickpocket.

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D.announcement.

PART III PROOFREADING & ERROR CORRECTION

(20 MIN, 20 points)

The passage contains TEN errors. Each indicated line contains ONE error. In each case, only ONE word is involved. You should proofread the passage, correct them and write your answer on the answer sheet in the following way:

EXAMPLE

When art museum wants a new exhibit, it 1. When an art

museum …never buys things in finished form and hangs 2. …it never buys

things in…

them on the wall. When a natural history museum

wants an exhibition, it must often build it. 3. …wants an exhibit,

it …

A newly published 2010 report on Chinese people’s

physical health sent a warning: if you don’t move you will

get old faster. The report called everyone’s attention to the

fact that the nation is premature aged. The physiological 1.

ages of people aged from 35 to 50 are 10 years ahead of

their chronological ages, 54 percent of people aged 45 to

54 considered themselves young. 2.

In urban areas the vast majority of people now work

in sedentary occupations and works under more pressure. 3. Meanwhile the fast change from famine to feast has also been

dangerous to our health. China, a nation once considered to

have one of the fattest populations, now has an obesity 4.

epidemic due to changes to the traditional diet, high levels 5.

of physical activity and sedentary lifestyles.

The number of obese people has risen from 18 million in

2005 to 100 million last year. They’re prime candidates for

diabetes and heart disease. Perhaps even more worried 6.

is that the physical constitution of people aged from 25 to

29 was found to be deteriorating the fastest.

We also have the world’s largest army of couch potatoes.

It is said that more than half of Chinese citizens above the age of

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16 did manage to participate in any form of sporting activity 7.

last year.

While China’s obesity rate is still less t han that in the US,

Britain and Australia, it has led to a worrying rise in chronicly 8.

non-communicable diseases such as cancer, strokes, heart disease

and diabetes.

Experts are predicting that the number of overweight and

obese people in China could double in the next two decades,

posing a serious threats to China’s health system and putting a 9.

brake on the country’s economic growth.

The government has yet to take serious action to address the

problem and many people still lack the aware to recognize 10.

obesity as a problem. The country needs a comprehensive

initiative to let the whole nation move so it has healthier citizens.

PART IV CLOZE (20 MIN, 20 points)

The passage contains TWENTY blanks. Read the whole passage and fill in the missing word for each blank. Then write your answers on the Answer Sheet.

The Constitution makes clear that a child born in the United States is a citizen of the United States. But it is silent on the subject of children born to Americans outside the country. This month, the Supreme Court heard arguments about a tiny subset of this group—children born to an American____1____ not only out of the country but also ____2____ of wedlock—and the conditions under which they may become ____3____.

The problem ____4____ the court is that existing law blatantly discriminates against men, making it substantially more difficult for____5____ fathers to pass along their citizenship to children born abroad than it is for unmarried mothers to do ____6____. But there’s no reason—other than outdated gender stereotypes—for an American mother to____7____ stronger rights than an American father. The court should strike ____8____ this unfair law.

Ruben Flores-Villar, born out of wedlock in Mexico but ____9____ in San Diego by his American father, faced deportation after ____10____ the United States illegally. He insisted that he couldn’t be deported because he was a U.S. citizen. But federal law at the time of his birth granted citizenship to foreign-born, out-of-wedlock children of male U.S. citizens ____11____ if the father had resided ____12____ the United States for 10 years before the child’s birth, including five years after the father’s 14th birthday—a requirement Flores-Villars’ father failed to ____13____.

By contrast, a female U.S. citizen hoping to pass along citizenship to an

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out-of-wedlock child born abroad needed only to have lived in the United States continuously for one year any time before the child’s ____14____. This disparity is a relic of a time when it was assumed that mothers always had a closer connection than fathers ____15____ their children.

The Obama administration argued to the Supreme Court in ____16____ of preferential treatment for unwed mothers, saying it serves the purpose of reducing the number of “stateless”children because other countries would be ____17____ to grant citizenship to out-of-wedlock children. But the same argument supports making it easier for unwed fathers to be able to pass along citizenship to their children.

Some justices seemed inclined to uphold the law because of Congress’traditional discretion over matters of immigration and naturalization. But ____18____ the law involved in Flores-Villar’s ____19____ nor the current version can be reconciled with the constitutional guarantee of “equal protection of the laws.” The court should rule that unwed mothers and unwed fathers be treated ____20____. Then Congress should go further and abolish all distinctions in the law, treating children born out of wedlock and children of

married couples the same.

PART V WRITING (70 MIN, 40 points)

Section A

To summarize an essay, you should not include your own thoughts on the matter, but describe the essay as objectively as possible, whether you agree with it or not. Try to use pertinent quotations by the author, working them in gracefully where appropriate. Also, any important or conspicuous words, phrases, or terms should be put in quotation marks.

Write a 150-word summary based on the following passage.

Why do some of us reject consensus on a whole range of scientific findings? As Professor Stephan Lewandowsky explains, it often comes down to the way we look at the world. What does Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity have to do with the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV)? What does acid rain have to do with the fact tobacco smoking causes lung cancer? What does Reye’s syndrome have in common with the CFCs that caused the hole in the ozone layer? And what do all those issues have to do with the fact our climate is rapidly changing due to human greenhouse gas emissions?

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The answer is that in all those cases, solid scientific evidence was met with vociferous opposition. The historical evidence is overwhelming that some of that opposition has been organized by vested interests, often successfully delaying political and regulatory action that posed a perceived threat to corporate profits. The peer-reviewed literature has clearly identified the subterfuge, distortion and manufacture of doubt with which vested interests delayed the control of tobacco, CFCs and sulphur emissions. Even relatively small threats to profits can cause vested interests to spring into obfuscatory action as is revealed by the case involving the makers of aspirin. Aspirin consumption by children with viral illnesses increases the risk of Reye’s syndrome—fatal in one third of all patients—by 4,000 per cent.

When this evidence became known, the aspirin industry geared up a counter-campaign that delayed the introduction of simple warning labels on their products about the risk of Reye’s syndrome by more than five years.

Before the warning labels became mandatory in the US, some 500 cases were reported annually; today, less than a handful of cases are reported each year.

The unnecessary death toll is readily obtained by multiplication. The death toll from inaction on climate change, currently estimated by the World Health Organisation to be at 150,000 annually, is incomparably greater. Sadly, this is set to rise further in light of the organised manufacture of doubt by vested interests and their enablers in the media.

Much has been written about those “merchants of doubt”and the mendacious media malpractice, which has created a chimerical public “debate”about issues were long ago resolved in the scientific literature.

However, although those powerful factors must not be underestimated, they are only part of the story and two other issues must be considered. First, organised opposition to science can arise for reasons other than a perceived threat to corporate profits. Second, forestalling political action requires more than just organised opposition to scientific evidence—that opposition must also fall on fertile ground in the public. No disinformation campaign can succeed without a “market” of consumers willing to buy into it. So what makes average citizens receptive to such a campaign?

To illustrate the first point, examination of the opposition to Einstein’s theory of relativity reveals no obvious involvement of financial interests (which is not to minimise a political component involving nationalism and anti-semitism).

Intriguingly, a primary factor behind the opposition to Einstein within the scientific community arguably arose out of the thwarted career aspirations of physicists unable to cope with his revolutionary ideas.

Relativity threatened the “knowledge systems”of Einstein’s opponents;

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dearly-held ideas such as the ephemeral “ether” presumed to occupy outer space or the invariance of time were destined for the dustbin if relativity proved to be correct—as of course it has. Those threats were sufficient for Einstein’s scientific opponents to hold a rambunctious rally in Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall during which he was denounced as a fraud. Threat is the key word here. Threats to financial interests. Threats to one’s career or to one’s ability to keep pace with rapidly evolving revolutionary knowledge.

The notion of threat is key to understanding the rejection of evidence; whether it’s by vested interests, by mediocre scientists fearful of becoming outdated, or by the public at large when confronted by inconvenient science. The public can feel threatened by scientific issues at many levels and for many reasons.

Perhaps most relevant to present public debate are threats to people’s “worldviews”—the very fundamental beliefs people hold about how the world should be organised. Worldviews come in many shades and forms, but one prominent distinction— popularised by Professor Dan Kahan at Yale University - is between people whose worldview is “hierarchical-individualistic” and those whose worldview is “egalitarian-communitarian”. Hierarchical-individualistic people (HI from here on) believe rights, duties, goods, and offices should be distributed differentially and on the basis of people’s own decisions without collective interference or assistance.

Egalitarian-communitarian (EC) people, by contrast, believe rights and goods should be distributed more equally and society should bear partial responsibility for securing the conditions of individual flourishing.

Like all binary classifications, the distinction between HI and EC worldviews lacks nuance and oversimplifies the complexity of human worldviews. Nonetheless, the distinction is extremely powerful and permits prediction of people’s attitudes towards numerous scientific issues.

Perhaps not surprisingly, HI individuals are more likely to resist acceptance of climate science than EC individuals.

Why?

Because implicit in the message we get from climate science is the need to alter the way we currently do business. The spectre of regulation looms large, and so does the (imaginary) World Government or other interventions—such as multilateral agreements—that are anathema to the notion that individuals, not governments or societies, determine their own fate.

To manage that threat to an HI worldview, the fundamental laws of physics underlying climate science must be denied. The greenhouse properties of CO2 may have been known for 150 years, but those indubitable physical facts cannot compete with the need to protect free enterprise from the threats posed by socialism, communism, Nazism, Green “watermelons”, a corrupt IPCC,

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Greenpeace, the all-powerful solar-energy lobby, to name but a few of the imaginary monsters and enemies that are awakened by the peer-reviewed evidence.

Lest one think it is only climate change that elicits such emotion and seemingly irrational behaviour, similar effects arise with issues such as mandatory HPV vaccinations.

Although at first glance one might think protecting young women from cervical cancer is a worthwhile goal, HPV vaccinations have turned into an emotive and highly politicised issue.

Why?

Because mandatory vaccinations give control to the state over parental decisions. Because the protection afforded by the vaccine may encourage young women to engage in sex. The resulting perceived threat to an HI worldview outweighs, for those individuals, the threat posed by cervical cancer itself.

Worldview is crucial to understanding people’s risk perception. And it is not only HI individuals who respond to threats to their worldviews; for EC individuals there are mirror images involving nuclear power or nanotechnology. It is revealing to analyse how far people are prepared to go when they are exposed to belief-threatening scientific evidence. In one study, people dismissed the scientific method itself when confronted with threatening information. People will rather declare that an issue cannot be resolved scientifically than accept evidence that’s in opposition to their threatened beliefs.

In light of these data it’s not surprising there can be yawning gaps between scientific knowledge and public acceptance of that knowledge. Those situations necessarily cause immense frustration to the scientific community because, after all, the scientists believe they know, whereas segments of the public seem to deny.

The historical record largely affirms that view. Relativity is true, CFCs did cause the ozone hole, HIV causes AIDS, tobacco is bad for you, and yes, greenhouse gas emissions do cause climate change.

Are there ways in which such gaps between scientific knowledge and public acceptance can be bridged?

Potentially, yes.

There is much evidence that the framing of information facilitates its acceptance when it no longer threatens people’s worldview. HI individuals are more likely to accept climate science when the proposed solution involves nuclear power than when it involves emission cuts.

Similarly, the messenger matters. HPV vaccination is more likely to be found acceptable by HI individuals if arguments in its favour are presented by someone clearly identified as hierarchical-individualistic.

Conversely, acceptance of HPV vaccination collapses if the exact same

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information is presented by a bearded, latte-sipping academic with long hair and short pants. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s strong support for action against climate change is thus of considerable import.

Finally, people are more likely to accept inconvenient evidence after their worldviews have been affirmed. In a nutshell, if people are given an opportunity to take pride in their embrace of free markets and unregulated enterprise, they are subsequently more likely to accept scientific evidence that would otherwise be deemed too threatening to their worldview.

Luckily—and somewhat ironically—science has some of the best tools needed to understand why people sometimes resist science.

Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.

Write your summary on the ANSWER SHEET.

Section B

Many Chinese students emerge from higher education with limited understanding and experience of wider society. Independent and critical thinking is unfamiliar territory for a majority of Chinese students, hindering their ability to gain a thorough understanding of China's economic, social and political challenges. You are to write an essay of about 400 words on the topic given below. And you are in favor of this idea and have therefore decided to write to your university campus radio a passage entitled:

GRADUATES NEED TO DEVELOP ALL-ROUND SKILLS

In the first part of your writing you should present your thesis statement, and in the second part you should support the thesis statement with appropriate details. In the last part you should bring what you have written to a natural conclusion or a summary.

Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.

Write your composition on the ANSWER SHEET.

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