2011年考研英语模拟预测题

1.

Sport psychology research has documented the important rote of significant adults such as parents and coaches in youth participants' psychosocial development and achievement motivation. However, the situation concerning parents and coaches in youth sport is somewhat of a conundrum—the roles of coach and parent are often synonymous, suggesting not simply an independent relationship with the child participant.

In recent years, a growing body of literature has emerged on parent influence in youth sport based on these and other theories. First, research shows that parents who are more supportive and less pressuring of their children are associated with youth participants who report higher perceived competence, enjoyment, and intrinsic motivation toward sport. Second, parents who encourage their child's participation and exhibit enjoyment of physical activity are related to children who report higher perceived competence and attraction toward physical activity. Finally, parents who hold stronger positive beliefs about their child's physical competence are associated with children who report higher self-perceptions, value toward sport, and physical activity levels.

A prevalent phenomenon of North American culture is the parent-coach dual role. Most coaches in competitive youth sport are parents of one or more of their players. Brown estimated that about 90% of the volunteer coaches in a given community are a parent of one or more team members. Although one can forward several positive aspects of the parent-coach phenomenon, there is also the potential for youth to perceive stress from this parent-child relationship. Several researchers reported that adolescent athletes felt pressure from their coaches and parents to perform well, and desired that parents be sources of social support and leave skill and strategy instruction to the coach's domain. Collectively, anecdotal accounts and empirical data suggest that exploring the benefits and costs of parents coaching their children is a worthy topic from both theoretical and applied perspectives.

Therefore, based on previous research on the role of parents and coaches in youth development, the purpose of the present study was to gain knowledge about the parent-coach phenomenon in competitive youth sport. We accomplished this purpose by interviewing youth soccer players who were coached by their parent, the child's teammates, and the parent-coach. We expect that child participants would identify both positive and negative aspects of having a parent as their coach, in line with previous research, but we were most curious to know if different issues would be raised about the unique parent-coach/child-athlete relationship.

1）. What does the word "conundrum" (Line 4, Para. 1) most probably mean?

   A. Contradictory; with many disagreement

   B. A difficult problem

   C. Indistinct or not clear in definition

   D. Not yet having been ascertained or determine

正确答案：B

答案解析：词义题；该词在原文的位置非常关键，所以要推断这个词的意思，我们需要对整个段落的含义有很好的把握。conundrum出现在这个以however引导的句子中，这个句子之前的句子表达的意思是“运动心理学的很多研究都记录了父母和教练在青少年的心理发展和成就动机中的作用”。而破折号之后的内容给我们的提示更加直接，说父母和教练的情况并没有那么简单。那我们需要的就是在选项中寻找一个“简单”的反义词，比较阅读4个选项，B选项所表示的“难题”符合上下文的要求，是我们需要的正确答案。

2）. What is the main idea of paragraph 2?

A. The influences from parents to children's competence can be either positive or negative

B. Parents' beliefs and behaviors are strongly related to children's psychological and behavioral outcome

C. Parents who give less pressuring can raise more competitive athlete

D. With the encouragement from parents, children can have inner motivations themselves

正确答案：B

答案解析：段落主旨题；提问方式很直接，我们通读第二段之后进行总结，段落中的3个层次非常清楚，考生在阅读中要首先关注“First Second和Finally”这样的结构标志词。在这样清楚的结构中，我们再比较阅读4个选项，A选项是不对的，原文的3个层次所论述的都是家长对孩子积极的影响，A选项所说的negative是原文没有的，排除A选项。B选项的概括是全面而正确的。C选项和D选项的错误类型一样，都是片面的选项，请考生比较全面的正确选项和片面的干扰选项，体会命题思路。

3）. What does the author mean when he talked about the "dual role" of parent-coach in North American?

A. Some coaches are also parents of the young athlete

B. The parent-coach can give the athletes both positive aspects and pressure

C. The negative influence of a parent-coach can outweigh the positive one

D. A parent-coach may have different influences on individual athletes and collective one

正确答案：A

答案解析：细节题；在考研的阅读理解命题中，越来越多的题目开始和主旨相关，以这个题目为例，我们将它归类为细节题，但实际上要正确解答这个题目，仍然需要我们对于段落的大意有清晰的把握。按照题目中的定位线索dual role我们找到原文的第三段，要理解这里所说的dual role究竟是怎样的角色，从段落中我们可以看到“Most coaches in competitive youth sport are parents of one or more of their players”，也就是说在北美，很多教练同时也是青少年运动员的父母，这就是双重角色在文章中的含义。比较阅读4个选项，我们可以知道A选项是正确答案。

4）. What are the researchers most interested to know about in their current study?

A. To make sure about the positive or negative aspects of having a parent as a coach

B. To interview young athletes face-to-face instead of just review the previous studies

C. To find out some new perspectives to address the parent-coach/child-athlete relationship

D. To include the teammates of the young athletes, not just their parents/coaches in the stud

正确答案：C

答案解析：细节题；我们在原文仅剩下的最后一段中寻找，看到倒数第二行这样一个表达“most curious to know”，和题目中要求我们回答的“most interested to know about”属于同义表达，所以原文中的“if different issues would be raised about the unique parent-coach/child athlete relationship”就是我们需要寻找的答题信息，比较阅读4个选项，我们可以看到C选项的表达和这里的信息是符合的，是我们需要的正确答案。

5）. Which one of the following is the best title for the passage?

A. Helping youth in understanding the meaning of sport

B. The parent-coach/child-athlete relationship in youth sport

C. Coaches' encouragement of athletes' imagery us

D. The relationship between school education and sports coaching

正确答案：B

答案解析：标题选择题，是文章主旨的变形命题方式；回顾全文信息，尤其是我们在解答前面4个题目的过程中所重点阅读的部分，我们可以将全文的信息归纳为：对于同时为人父母并兼作教练对于孩子的心理发展和运动成绩等方面的影响。在4个选项之中，我们可以看到B选项的概括是切题并且正确的。

2.

According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008. According to Alexa, the website's ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in terms of worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is currently 5th. Quantcast ranks the website 15th in U.S. in terms of traffic, and Compete. com ranks it 14th in U.S.

The Internet phenomenon, which boasts 80 million users worldwide, exploded in popularity over the past year as a convenient way for Web users to communicate and share personal details with selected groups of friends or acquaintances. But grammatical errors in the automated messages Facebook uses to personalize pronouns when members share information with their friends have proliferated since the site expanded from English-only into 15 new languages in recent months.

And now, Facebook will press members to declare whether they are male or female, seeking to end the grammatical device that leads the site to refer to individual users as "they" or "themself." "We've gotten feedback from translators and users in other countries that translations wind up being too confusing when people have not specified a sex on their profiles," Facebook product manager Naomi Gleit said in a company statement.

In English, when users fail to specify what gender they are, Facebook defaults to some form of the gender neutral, plural pronoun "they." That option is unavailable when the plural is always masculine or feminine in other languages. "People who haven't selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex," Gleit wrote.

Unless the gender of the user is clear, Facebook does not know which pronoun to use to notify other members add information to the site. This common English problem is multiplied in languages where masculine and feminine distinctions are grammatically ingrained.

The site will now ask users to specify whether they are male or female on their basic member- ship profile. It will prompt existing users to define themselves. Facebook has an opt-out option for members who choose not to specify their gender or do not consider gender to be clear cut. Members can remove mention of gender from messages about their activities. "We've received pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting," Gleit said.

1）. What does the word "traffic" (Line3, Paragraph1) most probably mean?

A. The number of visits to a certain website

B. The change of website ranking

C. The amount of profit a website able to generate annually

D. The trend in communication industry

正确答案：A

答案解析：词义题；我们首先查看目标词汇在原文出现的语言环境，原文中“the website's ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in terms of worldwide traffic”这样的表达以及整个段落所讨论的facebook这个网站越来越流行的种种迹象，我们知道这里的traffic是在讨论和网络有关的问题，结合上下文，这里的traffic作为访问量来解释是最符合要求的，而比较4个选项，A选项表达了这样的意思，是正确答案。

2）. Which one of the following is true about Facebook?

A. The websites are losing their popularity in a gradual way

B. Registered user's profiles are open to anyone on the internet

C. Only friends and acquaintances of the users have access to their profiles

D. The website is in English only since English is a universal language now

正确答案：C

答案解析：细节题；比较4个选项我们看到4个选项分别在论述这个网站的不同方面，所以我们需要结合每个选项，和原文的相关信息进行比对，来寻找正确答案。A选项的说法和原文的“exploded in popularity”冲突，需要排除。B选项和原文的“share personal details with selected groups of friends or acquaintances”相矛盾，也需要排除。而C选项则是对这一点的正确表述，是正确答案。D选项则和原文中“the site expanded from English-only into 15 new languages in recent months”的表述不一致，也需要排除。

3）. From the passage, we know that Facebook is now faced with the problem that ______.

A. less and less people are paying visits to it

B. people are cheating about their real gender on it

C. it is difficult to tell whether an user is male or female

D. users are using impropriate language there

正确答案：C

答案解析：归纳总结题；在原文的第二段，我们看到Facebook准备强制性地要求用户明确自己的性别，而作者更是通过引用语的方式“when people have not specified a sex on their profiles”来直接点明了网站面对的问题，也就是用户不明确自己的性别这样一个问题，在4个选项中，C选项的表述是正确的。

4）. From the passage, we know that in some other language than English, ______.

A. there is no difference between male and female in pronouns

B. it is very rude to ask about the gender question on internet

C. even plural form of pronouns have gender tendencies

D. the singular form and plural form is the same

正确答案：C

答案解析：细节题；要求我们选择的是在其他语言中存在的一个具体的情况，根据题目的要求我们确定原文中的“in other languages”这一点，而我们需要的答案就是对于“when the plural is always masculine or feminine”的正确解读。在4个选项中，C选项是这一表述的同义转述，是正确答案。

5）. Which one of the following is true under the new regulations of Facebook?

A. The users are encouraged to include their gender information in their extended profiles

B. Only the new registrations are influenced by this new regulation

C. Users can still choose not to specify their gender

D. Everyone is welcoming this new regulation since it brings about clarity and convenience

正确答案：C

答案解析：细节题；我们把4个选项和原文最后一段的相关信息进行比较阅读发现，A选项

和原文的“on their basic membership profile”这样的表述不符合。B选项和原文的“It will prompt existing users to define themselves”相互冲突。而C选项可以在原文中找到“Facebook has an opt-out option for members who choose not to specify their gender”这样的信息来支持。而D选项则被原文中“We've received pushback in the past”这样的信息否定。