英语专业八级改错

2000 年-2011 年专八短文改错试题，参考答案以及答案分析以下答案以上外教师给出的答案为参考答案2011年专八真题改错部分From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knewthat when I grew I should be a writer. Between the ages of about 1__________ seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did sowith the conscience that I was outraging my true nature and that 2___________ soon or later I should have to settle down and write books. 3___________I was the child of three, but there was a gap of five years 4__________on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. Forthis and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developeddisagreeing mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my 5_____________ schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories andholding conversations with imaginative persons, and I think from 6_________the very start my literal ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of 7________being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with wordsand a power of facing in unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created 8________a sort of private world which I could get my own back for my failure 9________in everyday life. Therefore, the volume of serious — i.e. seriously 10________ intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood andboyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my firstpoem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation.2010年专八真题改错部分So far as we can tell, all human languages are equallycomplete and perfect as instruments of communication: that is,every language appears to be well equipped as any other to say 1________________ the things their speakers want to say. 2________________ There may or may not be appropriate to talk about primitive 3________________ peoples or cultures, but that is another matter. Certainly, not allgroups of people are equally competent in nuclear physics orpsychology or the cultivation of rice . Whereas this is not the 4_____________fault of their language. The Eskimos , it is said, can speak aboutsnow with further more precision and subtlety than we can in 5______________ English, but this is not because the Eskimo language (one of thosesometimes miscalled 'primitive') is inherently more precise andsubtle than English. This example does not come to light a defect 6______________in English, a show of unexpected 'primitiveness'. The position issimply and obviously that the Eskimos and the English live in similar 7____________ environments. The English language will be just as rich in terms 8____________for different kinds of snow, presumably, if the environments in whichEnglishwas habitually used made such distinction as important. 9_____________ Similarly, we have no reason to doubt that the Eskimo languagecould be as precise and subtle on the subject of motor manufactureor cricket if these topics formed the part of the Eskimos' life. 10____________09专八改错原题The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passesfrom one school child to the next and illustrates the further difference (1)___________ between school lore and nursery lore. In nursery lore a verse,learnt in early childhood, is not usually passed on again when the (2)___________ little listener has grown up, and has children of their own, or even (3)____________ grandchildren. The period between learning a nursery rhyme andtransmitting it may be something from twenty to seventy years. With (4)_____________ the playground lore, therefore, a rhyme may be excitedly passed (5)___________ on within the very hour it is learnt; and in the general, it passes (6)_____________ between children of the same age, or nearly so, since it is uncommonfor the difference in age between playmates to be more than fiveyears. If ,therefore, a playground rhyme can be shown to have beencurrently for a hundred years, or even just for fifty, it follows that it (7)__________ has been retransmitted over and over; very possibly it has passed (8)___________ along a chain of two or three hundred young hearers and tellers, andthe wonder is that it remains live after so much handling, (9)____________to let alone that it bears resemblance to the (10)____________2008年专八真题短文改错The desire to use language as a sign of national identity is avery natural one, and in result language has played a prominent ____1____part in national moves. Men have often felt the need to cultivate ____2____a given language to show that they are distinctive from another ____3____race whose hegemony they resent. At the time the United States ____4____split off from Britain, for example, there were proposals thatindependence should be linguistically accepted by the use of a ____5____different language from those of Britain. There was even one ____6____proposal that Americans should adopt Hebrew. Others favouredthe adoption of Greek, though, as one man put it, things wouldcertainly be simpler for Americans if they stuck on to English ____7____and made the British learn Greek. At the end, as everyone ____8____knows, the two countries adopted the practical and satisfactorysolution of carrying with the same language as before. ____9____Since nearly two hundred years now, they have shown the world ____10____that political independence and national identity can be completewithout sacrificing the enormous mutual advantages of a commonlanguage.07专八真题短文改错From what has been said, it must be clear that no one canmake very positive statements about how language originated.There is no material in any language today and in the earliest 1__________records of ancient languages show us language in a new and 2__________emerging state. It is often said, of course, that the language 3_________originated in cries of anger, fear, pain and pleasure, and the 4__________necessary evidence is entirely lacking: there are no remotetribes, no ancient records, providing evidence ofa language with a large proportion of such cries5__________than we find in English. It is true that the absenceof such evidence does not disprove the theory, but in6__________other grounds too the theory is not very attractive.People of all races and languages make rather similarnoises in return to pain or pleasure. The fact that 7___________such noises are similar on the lips of Frenchmenand Malaysians whose languages are utterly different,serves to emphasize on the fundamental difference 8___________between these noises and language proper. We maysay that the cries of pain or chortles of amusementare largely reflex actions, instinctive to large extent, 9____________whereas language proper does not consist of signsbut of these that have to be learnt and that are 10___________wholly conventional.2006专八短文改错We use language primarily as a means of communication withother human beings. Each of us shares with the community in which welive a store of words and meanings as well as agreeing conventions as 1_______to the way in which words should be arranged to convey a particular 2_______message: the English speaker has in his disposal vocabulary and a 3_______set of grammatical rules which enables him to communicate his 4_______thoughts and feelings, in a variety of styles, to the other English 5_______speakers. His vocabulary, in particular, both that which he uses active-ly and that which he recognises, increases in size as he growsold as a result of education and experience. 6_________But, whether the language store is relatively small or large, the systemremains no more than a psychological reality for the individual, unlesshe has a means of expressing it in terms able to be seen by another 7_________member of his linguistic community; he bas to give the system aconcrete transmission form. We take it for granted the two most 8____________common forms of transmission-by means of sounds produced by ourvocal organs (speech) or by visual signs (writing). And these are 9_____________ among most striking of human achievements. 10____________2005年专八真题短文改错The University as BusinesA number of colleges and universities have announced steeptuition increases for next year much steeper than the current,very low rate of inflation. They say the increases are needed becauseof a loss in value of university endowments heavily investing in common 1 ________ stock. I am skeptical. A business firm chooses the price that maximizesits net revenues, irrespective fluctuations in income; and increasingly the 2 _________ outlook of universities in the United States is indistinguishable from those of 3 ___________ business firms. The rise in tuitions may reflect the fact economic uncertainty 4__________ increases the demand for education. The biggest cost of beingin the school is foregoing income from a job (this is primarily a factor in 5 __________ graduate and professional-school tuition); the poor one's job prospects, 6 ___________ the more sense it makes to reallocate time from the job market to education,in order to make oneself more marketable.The ways which universities make themselves attractive to students 7 ___________ include soft majors, student evaluations of teachers, giving studentsa governance role, and eliminate required courses. 8 _________ Sky-high tuitions have caused universities to regard their students ascustomers. Just as business firms sometimes collude to shorten the 9 ___________ rigors of competition, universities collude to minimize the cost to them of theathletes whom they recruit in order to stimulate alumni donations, so the bestathletes now often bypass higher education in order to obtain salaries earlierfrom professional teams. And until they were stopped by the antitrust authorities,the Ivy League schools colluded to limit competition for the best students, byagreeing not to award scholarships on the basis of merit rather than purelyof need-just like business firms agreeing not to give discounts on their best 10 ____________ customer.2004改错One of the most important non-legislative functions of the U.S Congressis the power to investigate. This power is usually delegated to committees - eitherstanding committees, special committees set for a specific (1)____ purpose, or joint committees consisted of members of both houses. (2)____ Investigations are held to gather information on the need forfuture legislation, to test the effectiveness of laws already passed,to inquire into the qualifications and performance of members andofficials of the other branches, and in rare occasions, to lay the (3)____ groundwork for impeachment proceedings. Frequently, committeesrely outside experts to assist in conducting investigative hearings (4)____and to make out detailed studies of issues. (5)____There are important corollaries to the investigative power. Oneis the power to publicize investigations and its results. Most (6)____ committee hearings are open to public and are reported (7)____widely in the mass media. Congressional investigationsnevertheless represent one important tool available to lawmakers (8)____to inform the citizenry and to arouse public interests in national issues.(9)____ Congressional committees also have the power to compeltestimony from unwilling witnesses, and to cite for contemptof Congress witnesses who refuse to testify and for perjury ofthese who give false testimony. (10)____2003改错Demographic indicators show that Americans in the postwarperiod were more eager than ever to establish families. They quicklybrought down the age at marriage for both men and women and broughtthe birth rate to a twentieth century height after more than a hundred (1)__years of a steady decline, producing the “baby boom.” These young (2)__adults established a trend of early marriage and relatively largefamilies that went for more than two decades and caused a major (3)__but temporary reversal of long-term demographic patterns. Fromthe 1940s through the early 1960s, Americans married at a high rate (4)__and at a younger age than their Europe counterparts. (5)__Less noted but equally more significant, the men and women who (6)__formed families between 1940 and 1960 nevertheless reduced the (7)__divorce rate after a postwar peak; their marriages remained intact toa greater extent than did that of couples who married in earlier as well (8)__as later decades. Since the United States maintained its dubious (9)__distinction of having the highest divorce rate in the world, thetemporary decline in divorce did not occur in the same extent in (10)__Europe. Contrary to fears of the experts, the role of breadwinner andhomemaker was not abandoned.2002改错There are great impediments to the general use of a standard in pronunciationcomparable to that existing in spelling (orthography). One is the fact thatpronunciation is learnt…naturally‟ and unconsciously, and orthography is learnt 1._____deliberately and consciously. Large numbers of us, in fact, remainthroughout our lives quite unconscious with what our speech sounds 2______like when we speak out, and it often comes as a shock when 3______we firstly hear a recording of ourselves. It is not a voice we recognize at once, 4_______whereas our own handwriting is something which we almost always know. 5_____We begin the …natural‟ learning of pronunciation long before we start learningto read or write, and in our early years we went on unconsciously 6.___imitating and practicing the pronunciation of those around usfor many more hours per every day than we ever have to spend 7.___learning even our difficult English spelling. This is …natural‟, 8.___therefore, that our speech-sounds should be those of our immediate circle;after all, as we have seen, speech operates as a means of holding a community 9.___and giving a sense of'belonging'. We learn quite early to recognize a …stranger‟,someone who speaks with an accent of a different community-perhaps only a few miles far. 10.___2001改错During the early years of this century, wheat was seen as thevery lifeblood of Western Canada. People on city streets watchedthe yields and the price of wheat in almost as much feeling as if 1.___they were growers. The marketing of wheat became an increasing 2.___favorite topic of conversation.War set the stage for the most dramatic events in marketingthe western crop. For years, farmers mistrusted speculative grainselling as carried on through the Winnipeg Grain Exchange.Wheat prices were generally low in the autumn, so farmers could 3.___ not wait for markets to improve. It had happened too often thatthey sold their wheat soon shortly after harvest when farm debts 4.___ were coming due, just to see prices rising and speculators getting rich. 5.___ On various occasions, producer groups, asked firmer control, 6.___ but the government had no wish to become involving, at 7.___ least not until wartime when wheat prices threatened to runwild.Anxious to check inflation and rising life costs, the federal 8.___ government appointed a board of grain supervisors to deal withdeliveries from the crops of 1917 and 1918. Grain Exchangetrading was suspended, and farmers sold at prices fixed by theboard. To handle with the crop of 1919, the government 9.___ appointed the first Canadian Wheat Board, with total authority to 10.___ buy, sell, and set prices.2000改错The grammatical words which play so large a part in Englishgrammar are for the most part sharply and obviously differentfrom the lexical words. A rough and ready difference which mayseem the most obvious is that grammatical words have“ less 1.___ meaning”, but in fact some grammarians have called them 2.___ “empty” words as opposed in the “full” words of vocabulary. 3.___ But this is a rather misled way of expressing the distinction. 4.___ Although a word like the is not the name of something as man is,it is very far away from being meaningless; there is a sharp 5.___ difference in meaning between “man is vile and” “the man isvile”, yet the is the single vehicle of this difference in meaning. 6.___ Moreover, grammatical words differ considerably amongthemselves as the amount of meaning they have, even in the 7.___ lexical sense. Another name for the grammatical words has been“little words”. But size is by no mean a good criterion for 8.___ distinguishing the grammatical words of English, when weconsider that we have lexical words as go, man, say, car. Apart 9.___ from this, however, there is a good deal of truth in what somepeople say: we certainly do create a great number of obscurity 10.___ when we omit them. This is illustrated not only in the poetry ofRobert Browning but in the prose of telegrams and newspaper headlines.1，在grow后加up, 考固定短语2，改consience为consciousness 考词语区别，consience翻译为“良心，道德心”, consiousness翻译为“意识”3，改soon为sooner，sooner or later是固定短语4，在child前加middle, 考上下文理解。