2013高考英语阅读理解（4月）训练（02）及答案
C
Bonus（奖金） culture has become the subject of many studies nowadays. Many people have been angered by the way some bankers and high officials seem to have been rewarded for failure. Others find the idea of offering many-million-dollar bonuses morally disgusting.
But few have asked whether performance-related bonuses really do improve performance. The answer seems so obvious that even to ask the question can appear ridiculous. Indeed, in spite of all the complaints about them, financial encouragements continue to be introduced in more and more areas, from healthcare and public services to teaching and universities.
So it may come as a shock to many to learn that paying for results can actually make people perform badly in many circumstances, and that the more you pay, the worse they perform.
No one is arguing that bonuses can help companies and institutions attract and keep the best staff. Nor does anyone argue against the idea that you can encourage people to do specific tasks by linking payments to those tasks. Rather, the point is about how to get the best out of people. Do employees really perform better if you promise to pay them more for getting results?
There are some obvious reasons why such payments can fail. It has been argued, for instance, that cash bonuses contributed to the financial crash, because traders had little enthusiasm to make sure that their companies enjoyed long-term survival.
Most bonus projects are poorly designed, says Professor Malcolm Higgs. He thinks the reason is that organisations try to keep bonus arrangements simple. Nevertheless, he thinks bonus projects can work as long as they link the interests of individual employees with the long-term goals of a business.
Bonuses can also encourage cheating. “Once you start making people’s rewards dependent on outcomes rather than behaviours, the evidence is people will do whatever they can to get those outcomes,” says Professor Edward Deci. “In many cases the high officials simply lied and cheated to make the stock (股票) price go up so they got huge bonuses.”
But the work of Deci and others suggests the problem with bonuses runs far deeper than poor design or cheating. In 1971, he asked students to solve puzzles, with some receiving cash prizes for doing well and others getting nothing. Deci found those offered cash were less likely to keep working on puzzles after they had done enough to get paid.
These studies suggest that offering rewards can stop people doing things for the pure joy of it. This was the basis for a series of books by Kohn in which he argues that rewarding children, students and workers with grades, scholarships and other “bribes” (贿赂) leads to low-quality work in the long run.
Those who believe in the power of bonuses fail to distinguish between inner drive and outside pressure — wanting to do something because you like it for itself in contrast to doing something because you want the reward, Kohn says. “It’s not just that these two are different, it’s often that the more you reward people for doing something, the more their inner drive tends to decline.”
A “do this and get that” approach might improve performance in the short term, but over longer periods it will always fail, Kohn says. People who receive bonus will naturally play safe, become less creative, cooperate less and feel less valued, he adds. What’s more, the studies also suggest that offering rewards can also stop people taking responsibility.
10. The effect of performance-related bonuses has not been well studied because people _______
A. take the function of bonuses for granted
B. see that bonus offering is done everywhere
C. think financial encouragement is disgusting
D. are shocked by the practice of rewarding for failures
11. According to Malcolm Higgs, designs that _________ are the good ones.
A. drive people to finish short-term tasks
B. help to attract and keep good employees
C. link financial rewards with the quality of the outcomes
D. connect individual interests with long-term business goals
12. If a person plays safe to get a bonus, he is probably being ________.
A. more enthusiastic B. more risk-taking
C. less daring D. less responsible
13. Which of the following do you think the author would most probably agree with?
A. Companies should make their bonus projects simple.
B. The benefit of bonus helps to get the best out of people.
C. The biggest problem with bonus is it creates cheating.
D. Bonus offering can stop people doing things for pure joy.
14. Which do you think is the best title of the passage?
A. What Is Bonus? B. Does Bonus Work?
C. Why Bonus Offered? D. How Bonus Works?
参考答案10. A 11. D 12. C 13. D 14. B
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D
Which is sillier: denying we ever went to the moon or trying to convince the true nonbelievers?
Once upon a time – July 20, 1969, to be specific – two men got out of their little spaceship and wandered around on the moon for a while. Ten more men walked on the moon over the next three and a half years. The end.
Unfortunately, not quite. A fair number of Americans think that this whole business of moon landings really is a fairy tale. They believe that the landings were a big hoax (骗局) staged in the Mojave Desert, to convince everyone that U.S. technology was the “bestest” in the whole wide world.
Which is the harder thing to do: Send men to the moon or make believe we did? The fact is the physics behind sending people to the moon is simple. You can do it with computers whose entire memory capacities can now fit on chips the size of postage stamps and that cost about as much as, well, a postage stamp. I know you can because we did.
However, last fall NASA considered spending $15,000 on a public-relations campaign to convince the unimpressed that Americans had in fact gone to the moon. That idea was mostly a reaction to a Fox television program, first aired in February 2001, that claimed to expose the hoax. The show’s creator is a publicity hound (猎狗) who has lived up to the name in more ways than one by hounding Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. Mr. X (as I will call him, thereby denying him the joyous sight of his name in print) recently followed Buzz Aldrin around and called him “a thief, liar and coward” until the 72-year-old astronaut finally lost it and hit the 37-year-old Mr. X in the face.
Anyway, NASA’s publicity campaign began to slow down. The nonbelievers took the campaign as NASA’s effort to hide something while the believers said that $15,000 to convince people that the world was round — I mean, that we had gone to the moon — was simply a waste of money. (Actually, the $15,000 was supposed to pay for an article by James E. Oberg, an astronomy writer who, with Aldrin, has contributed to Scientific American.)
If NASA’s not paying Oberg, perhaps it could put the money to good use by hiring two big guys to drag Neil Armstrong out of the house. Armstrong is an extremely private man, but he is also the first man on the moon, so maybe he has a duty to be a bit more outspoken about the experience. Or NASA could just buy Aldrin a commemorate plaque (纪念匾) for his recent touch on the face of Mr. X.
15. We can learn from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that some Americans believe _______.
A. moon landings were invented ]
B. U.S. technology was the best
C. moon landing ended successfully
D. the Mojave Desert was the launching base
16. According to the writer, which of the following is to blame for the story about the hoax?
A. NASA’s publicity campaign. B. The Fox television program.
C. Buzz Aldrin. D. James E. Oberg.
17. According to the writer, Mr. X _______.
A. told a faithful story B. was not treated properly
C. was a talented creator D. had a bad reputation
18. The believers think that NASA’s publicity campaign is ________.
A. proof to hide the truth
B. stupid and unnecessary
C. needed to convince the non-believers
D. important to develop space technology
19. What is implied in the last paragraph?
A. NASA should not bother with the non-believers.
B. Armstrong was a very private and determined person.
C. Armstrong should be as outspoken as Buzz Aldrin.
D. NASA should send more astronauts to outer space.
20. The tone of the article is _______.
A. angry B. conversational C. humorous D. matter-of-fact
参考答案 15. A 16. B 17. D 18. B 19. A 20. C
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1.（2011·安徽卷）D
Ireland has had a very difficult history. The problems started in the 16th century when English rulers tried to conquer(征服) Ireland. For hundreds of years, the Irish people fought against the English. Finally, in 1921, the British government was forced to give independence to the south of Ireland. The result is that today there are two “Irelands”. Northern Ireland, in the north, is part of the united kingdom. The Republic of Ireland, in the south, is an independent country.
In the 1840s the main crop, potatoes, was affected by disease and about 750,000 people died of hunger. This, and a shortage (短缺) of work , forced many people to leave Ireland and live in the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada. As a result of these problems, the population fell from 8.2 million in 1841 to 6.6 million in 1851.
For many years, the majority of Irish people earned their living as farmers. Today, many people still work on the land but more and more people are moving to the cities to work in factories and offices. Life in the cities is very different from life in the countryside, where things move at a quieter and slower pace.
The Irish are famous for being warm-hearted and friendly. Oscar Wilde, a famous Irish writer, once said that the Irish were “the greatest talkers since the Greeks”. Since independence, Ireland has revived(复兴) its own culture of music, language, literature and singing. Different areas have different styles of old Irish song which are sung without instruments. Other kinds of Irish music use many different instruments such as the violin, whistles, etc.
【文章大意】本文从地理状况、人口发展、经济情况以及社会生活等方面介绍了爱尔兰共和国，让我们对这个美丽的国家有更进一步的了解。
68. What does the author tell us in paragraph 1?
A. How the Irish fought against the English.
B. How Ireland gained independence.
C. How English rulers tried to conquer Ireland.
D. How two “Irelands” came into being.
【解析】选D。主旨大意题。通读第一段可知，本段介绍了爱尔兰共和国(The Republic of Ireland)及北爱尔兰(Northern Ireland)的由来，故D项正确。
69. We learn from the text that in Ireland .
A. food shortages in the 1840s led to a decline in population
B. people are moving to the cities for lack of work in the countryside
C. it is harder to make a living as a farmer than as a factory worker
D. different kinds of old Irish songs are all sung with instruments
【解析】选A。细节理解题。通读第二段可知，十九世纪四十年代，由于主要农作物土豆受病害影响及本国工作机会缺乏，大量爱尔兰人移往其它国家，使爱尔兰人口下降，故A项正确。B项中人们移往城市并非是由于农村缺少工作机会；文章中并没有对比城市和乡村生活的难易；D项错误在于all，并非全部的爱尔兰歌谣都使用乐器。
70. The last paragraph is mainly about .
A. the Irish character B. Irish culture
C. Irish musical instruments D. a famous Irish writer
【解析】选B。主旨大意题。文章末段从爱尔兰民族习性、音乐、语言及文学等方面介绍了爱尔兰民族文化，故B项正确。A、C、D各项虽都提及，但都是细节。
71. What can be the best title for the text?
A. Life in Ireland
B. A Very Difficult History
C. Ireland, Past and Present
D. The Independence of Ireland
【解析】选C。文章标题题。通读全文可知，本文从地理状况、人口发展、经济情况以及社会生活等方面介绍了爱尔兰共和国的过去及现在，故C项最为全面。
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