2021 考研英语（二）真题

Section I Use of English

Directions：Read the following text Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)

It's not difficult to set targets for staff. It is much harder,（1）to understand their

negative harder,consequences. Most work-related behaviors have multiple

components. （2） one and the others become distorted.

Travel on a London bus and you'll （3） see how this works with drivers. Watch people get on and show their tickets. Are they carefully inspected? Never. Do people get on without paying? Of course! Are there inspectors to（4） that people have paid? Possibly, but very few.And people who run for the bus? They are（5）. How about jumping lights? Buses do so almost as frequently as cyclists.

Why? Because the target is（6）. People complained that buses were late and

infrequent. （7）,the number of buses and bus lanes were increased, and drivers were

（8）or punished according to the time they took.And drivers hit these targets. But

they （9） hit cyclists. If the target was changed to （10）you would have more

inspectors and more sensitive pricing.If the criterion changed to safety, you would get

more（11）drivers who obeyed traffic laws.But both these criteria would be at the

expense of time.

There is another（12）: people became immensely inventive in hitting targets.

Have you（13）that you can leave on a flight an hour late but still arrive on time?

Tailwinds? Of course not! Airlines have simply changed the time a（14）is meant to

take. A one-hour flight is now billed as a two-hour flight.

The（15）of the story is simple. Most jobs are multidimensional, with multiple

criteria. Choose one criterion and you may well（16）others. Everything can be done

faster and made cheaper, but there is a（17） Setting targets can and does have

unforeseen negative consequences.

This is not an argument against target-setting. But it is an argument for exploring consequences first. All good targets should have multiple criteria （18）critical factors such as time, money,, quality and customer feedback. The trick is not only to（19） just one or even two dimensions of the objective, but also to understand how to help people better（20）the objective.

Section II Reading Comprehension

Part A

Directions:

Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing [A],

[B], [C] or [D]. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)

Text 1

Reskilling is something that sounds like a buzzword but is actually a requirement

if we plan to have a future where a lot of would-be workers do not get left behind.

We know we are moving into a period where the jobs in demand will change

rapidly, as will the requirements of the jobs that remain. Research by the WEF

detailed in the Harvard Business Review, finds that on average 42 per cent of the core

skills " within job roles will change by 2022. That is a very short timeline, so we can

only imagine what the changes will be further in the future.

The question of who should pay for reskilling is a thorny one For individual

companies, the temptation is always to let go of workers whose skills are no longer

demand and replace them with those whose skills are.That does not always

happen.AT&T is often given as the gold standard of a company who decided to do a

massive reskilling program rather than go with a fire-and-hire strategy,ultimately

retraining 18,000 employees. Prepandemic, other companies including Amazon and

Disney had also pledged to create their own plans. When the skills mismatch is in the

broader economy though, the focus usually turns to government to handle.Efforts in

Canada and elsewhere have been arguably languid at best, and have given us a

situation where we frequently hear of employers begging for workers even at times

and In regions where unemployment is high.

With the pandemic, unemployment is very high indeed. In February.at 3.5 per

cent and 5.5 per cent respectively, unemployment rates in Canada and the United

States were at generational lows and worker shortages were everywhere. As of May,

those rates had spiked up to 13.3 per cent and 13.7 per cent, and although many

worker shortages had disappeared, not all had done so. In the medical field, to take an

obvious example, the pandemic meant that there were still clear shortages of doctors,nurses and other medical personnel

Of course, it is not like you can take an unemployed waiter and train him to be a

doctor in a few weeks,no matter who pays for it. But even if you cannot close that

gap,maybe you can close others, and doing so would be to the benefit of all concerned

That seems to be the case in Sweden, where the pandemic kick-started a retraining

program where business as well as government had a role.

Reskilling in this way would be challenging in a North American context. You

can easily imagine a chorus of "you cant do that," because teachers or nurses or

whoever have special skills, and using any support staff who has been quickly trained

is bound to end in disaster. Maybe. Or maybe it is something that can work 'ell in

Sweden, with its history of co-operation between business, labour and government,

but not in North America where our history is very different.Then again, maybe it is

akin to wartime, when extraordinary things take place, but it is business as usual after

the fact. And yet, as in war the pandemic is teaching us that many things, including

rapid reskilling, can be done if there is a will to do them. In any case Swedens work

force is now more skilled, in more things,and more flexible than it was before.

Of course, reskilling programs, whether for pandemic needs or the post

pandemic world, are expensive and at a time when every ones budgets are lean this

may not be the time to implement them. Then again,extending income support

programs to get us through the next months is expensive, too, to say nothing of the

cost of having a swath of long-term unemployed in the POST-COVID years Given

that, perhaps we should think hard about whether the pandemic can jump-start us to a

place where res killing becomes much more than a buzzword.

21. Research by the World Economic Forum suggests

A. an increase in full-time employment

B. an urgent demand for new job skills

C. a steady growth of job opportunities

D. a controversy about the “core skills”

22.AT&T is cited to show

A. an alternative to the fire-and-hire strategy

B.an immediate need for government support

C. the importance of staff appraisal standards

D.the characteristics of reskilling program

23. Efforts to resolve the skills mismatch in Canada

A. have driven up labour costs

B. have proved to be inconsistent

C. have met with fierce opposition

D. have appeared to be insufficient

24. We can learn from Paragraph 3 that there was

A. a call for policy adjustment

B. a change in hiring practices

C. a lack of medical workers

D.a sign of economic recovery

25.Scandinavian Airlines decided to______.

A. Great job vacancies for the unemployed

B. Prepare their laid-off workers for other jobs

C.Retrain their cabin staff for better services

D. finance their staff' s college education

Text 2

With the global population predicted to hit close to 10 billion by 2050, and

forecasts that agricultural production in, some regions will need to nearly double to

keep pace, food security is increasingly making headlines. In the UK, it has become a

big talking point recently too, for rather particular reason: Brexit.

Brexit is seen by some as an opportunity to reverse a recent trend towards the

UK importing food. The country produces only about 60 percent of the food it

eats,down from almost three-quarters in the late 1980s.A move back to

self-sufficiency, the argument goes, would boost the farming industry, political

sovereignty and even the nation's health. Sounds great—but bow feasible is this

vision?

According to a report on UK food production from the University of Leeds,

UK,85 per cent of the country's total land area is associated with meat and dairy

production. That supplies 80 per cent of what is consumed, so even covering the

whole country in livestock farms wouldn't allow us to cover all our meat and dairy

needs.

There are many caveats to those figures, but they are still grave. To become

much more self- sufficient, the UK would need to drastically reduce its consumption

of animal foods,and probably also farm more intensively—meaning fewer green

fields, and more factory-style production.

But switching to a mainly plant-based diet wouldn't help. There is a good reason

why the UK is dominated by animal husbandry: most of its terrain doesn't have the

right soil or climate to grow crops on a commercial basis. Just 25 percent of the

county's land is suitable for crop-growing, most of which is already occupied by

arable fields. Even if we converted all the suitable land to fields of fruit and

veg—which would involve taking out all the nature reserves and removing thousands

of people from their homes—we would achieve only a 30 percent boost in crop

production.

Just 23 percent of the fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK are currently

home-grown, so even with the most extreme measures we could meet only 30 percent

of our fresh produce needs. That is before we look for the space to grow the grains,

sugars,seeds and oils that provide us with the vast bulk of our current calorie intake.

26.Some people argue that food self-sufficient in UK would

A. be hindered by its population ground

B. become a priority of government

C. pose a challenge to its farming industry

D. contribute to the nation's well-being

27.The report by the University of Leeds shows that in the UK

A. farmland has been inefficiently utilized

B. factory-style production needs reforming

C. most land is used for meat and dairy production

D.more green fields will be converted for farming

28.Crop-growing in he UK is restricted due to_

A. its farming technology

B. its dietary tradition

C. its natural conditions

D. its commercial interests

29.It can be learned from the last paragraph that British people

A.rely largely on imports for fresh produce

B.enjoy a steady rise in fruit consumption

C.are seeking effective ways to cut calorie intake

D. are trying to grow new varieties of grains

30.The author's attitude to food self-sufficient in the UK is

A. defensive

B. doubtful

C. tolerant

D. optimistic

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