北京新东方考研名师 周雷 唐静 王江涛 李玉技
2011年考研英语的考试刚刚结束，就拿到的真题分析，整体难度与2010年相比，有所下降，但是各部分的题目难度增减不一。完型填空部分，难度基本上没有变化，但是对词汇的考察有所加强，阅读理解Part A部分不论是从文章的选取和题目的设计，比去年的难度都有一定程度的降低。阅读理解的PART B部分，第一次出现了排序题，虽然排序在几种题型中算是难度比较低的，但是命题者通过文章的选择，避免了一些明显的标志词的出现，成功地增加了难度，但是整体而言，此部分难度比去年有所降低。这次考试，难度降低比较明显的是作文部分。2010年的文化火锅确实使不少同学在构思和用词上煞费苦心，而今年关于旅游区爱护环境的话题，其文章审题的难度，仅限于高一语文作文的水平，加之环保是考研英语作文的大热点，相信很多同学在考前也有目的地记忆了一些这方面的词汇和句型，写起来一定是更加得心应手。
完型填空
题目的文章来自于 2009年4月号Scientific American, 作者 Steve Ayan, 原文题目为
How Humor Makes You Friendlier, Sexier：幽默如何使你更加有人缘且性感
Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle viewed laughter as “a bodily exercise precious to health。” But 1despite some claims to the contrary, chuckling probably has little influence on physical fitness. Laughter does 2 produce short-term changes in cardiovascular function and respiration, 3 boosting heart rate, respiratory rate and depth, as well as oxygen consumption. But because hard laughter is difficult to 4 sustain, a good guffaw is unlikely to have 5 measurable cardiovascular benefits the way, say, walking or jogging does。
6 In fact, instead of straining muscles to build them, as exercise does, laughter apparently accomplishes the 7 opposite. Studies dating back to the 1930s indicate that laughter 8 relaxes muscles, decreasing muscle tone for up to 45 minutes after the guffaw subsides。
Such physical relaxation might conceivably help 9 moderate the effects of psychological stress. After all, the act of laughing probably does produce other types of 10 physical feedback that improve an individual’s emotional state. 11 According to one classical theory of emotion, our feelings are partially rooted 12 in physical reactions. American psychologist William James and Danish physiologist Carl Lange argued at the end of the 19th century that humans do not cry 13 because they are sad but that they become sad when the tears begin to flow。
Although sadness also 14 precedes tears, evidence suggests that emotions can flow 15 from muscular responses. In an experiment published in 1988, social psychologist Fritz Strack of the University of Würzburg in Germany and his colleagues asked volunteers to 16 hold a pen either with their teeth—thereby creating an artificial smile—or with their lips, which would produce a 17 disappointed expression. Those forced to exercise their smiling muscles 18 reacted more exuberantly to funny cartoons than did those whose mouths were contracted in a frown, 19 suggesting that expressions may influence emotions rather than just the other way around. 20 Similarly, the physical act of laughter could improve mood。
1.[A]among [B]except [C]despite [D]like C
2.[A]reflect [B]demand [C]indicate [D]produce D
3.[A]stabilizing [B]boosting [C]impairing [D]determining B
4.[A]transmit [B]sustain [C]evaluate [D]observe B
5.[A]measurable [B]manageable [C]affordable [D]renewable A
6.[A]In turn [B]In fact [C]In addition [D]In brief B
7.[A]opposite [B]impossible [C]average [D]expected A
8.[A]hardens [B]weakens [C]tightens [D]relaxes D
9.[A]aggravate [B]generate [C]moderate [D]enhance C
10.[A]physical [B]mental [C]subconscious [D]internal A
11.[A]Except for [B]According to [C]Due to [D]As for B
12.[A]with [B]on [C]in [D]at C
13.[A]unless [B]until [C]if [D]because D
14.[A]exhausts [B]follows [C]precedes [D]suppresses C
15.[A]into [B]from [C]towards [D]beyond B
16.[A]fetch [B]bite [C]pick [D]hold D
17.[A]disappointed [B]excited [C]joyful [D]indifferent A
18.[A]adapted [B]catered [C]turned [D]reacted D
19.[A]suggesting [B]requiring [C]mentioning [D]supposing A
20.[A]Eventually [B]Consequently [C]Similarly [D]Conversely C
阅读理解 Part A
Text 1
文章选自不是很热门的一本杂志“Commentary” 2007年9月号，原文作者 TERRY TEACHOUT 题目为 Selling Classical Music。作者从纽约爱乐乐团任命Alan Gilbert为新音乐总监一事谈起，分析了交响乐团现在面临的困境，并给出了自己的解释和解决途径。文章难度一般，后面题目也比较简单
Text 2
文章选自Business Week 商业周刊 2009年11月5日，原文作者Jena McGregor 原文的题目是Top Managers Are Quitting, Without a New Job：顶级经理人在离职，新工作还没着落。讲在西方经济逐渐摆脱金融危机影响后，工作机会也渐渐多了起来，许多高级经理人不等和下家谈好，就先辞职，即现在所谓的“裸辞”或“裸跳”。作者分析了这种情况的利弊和产生的原因。文章难度一般，题目也不难
Text 3
文章选自麦肯锡季刊，讲的是媒体最新的变化，因为涉及到一些大众传播学的原理和理论知识，文章难度较难，题目也不容易
Text 4
文章选自2010年9月7日的新闻周刊，文章作者Jennie Yabroff 文章的题目是 Not On Board With Baby (孩子不能登机登船)，副标题是Parenthood—the condition, not the TV show—sucks. Or so everyone keeps saying。文章讨论的是美国社会中的一个热点话题，是否要孩子。作者直言不讳地指出，美国流行文化中对养育孩子的好处比较渲染，而养育孩子的艰苦则提的较少。这篇文章的难度主要体现在考生对作者的态度把握上比较困难。
阅读理解 Part B
文章自于2010年2月25日的Economist 经济学人杂志，原文题目为University education in America 美国的大学教育
The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. By Louis Menand. Norton; 174 pages; $24.95 and £17.99. Buy from Amazon.com,Amazon.co.uk
THIS subtle and intelligent little book should be read by every student thinking of applying to take a doctorate. They may then decide to go elsewhere. For something curious has been happening in American universities, and Louis Menand, a professor of English at Harvard University, captures it deftly。
His concern is mainly with the humanities: literature, languages, philosophy and so on. These are disciplines that are going out of style: 22% of American college graduates now major in business compared with only 2% in history and 4% in English. However, many leading American universities want their undergraduates to have a grounding in the basic canon of ideas that every educated person should possess. But most find it difficult to agree on what a “general education” should look like. At Harvard, Mr Menand notes, “The great books are read because they have been read”—they form a sort of social glue。
One reason why it is hard to design and teach such courses is that they cut across the insistence by top American universities that liberal-arts education and professional education should be kept separate, taught in different schools. Many students experience both varieties. Although more than half of Harvard undergraduates end up in law, medicine or business, future doctors and lawyers must study a non-specialist liberal-arts degree before embarking on a professional qualification。
Besides professionalising the professions by this separation, top American universities have professionalised the professor. The growth in public money for academic research has speeded the process: federal research grants rose fourfold between 1960 and 1990, but faculty teaching hours fell by half as research took its toll. Professionalism has turned the acquisition of a doctorate into a prerequisite for a successful academic career: as late as 1969 a third of American professors did not possess one. But the key idea behind professionalisation, argues Mr Menand, is that “the knowledge and skills needed for a particular specialisation are transmissible but not transferable。” So disciplines acquire a monopoly not just over the production of knowledge, but also over the production of the producers of knowledge。
No disciplines have seized on professionalism with as much enthusiasm as the humanities. You can, Mr Menand points out, become a lawyer in three years and a medical doctor in four. But the median time—median!—to a doctoral degree in the humanities is nine years. (Advertising note to American students: you can get a perfectly good PhD at a top British university in under four years。) Not surprisingly, up to half of all doctoral students in English drop out before getting their degrees。
Equally unsurprisingly, only about half end up with the jobs they entered graduate school to get: tenured professorships. There are simply too few posts. This is partly because universities continue to churn out ever more PhDs. But fewer students want to study humanities subjects: English departments awarded more bachelor’s degrees in 1970-71 than they did 20 years later. Fewer students require fewer teachers. So, at the end of a decade of thesis-writing, many humanities students leave the profession to do something for which they have not been trained。
The key to reforming higher education, concludes Mr Menand, is to alter the way in which “the producers of knowledge are produced”. Otherwise, academics will continue to think dangerously alike, increasingly detached from the societies which they study, investigate and criticise. “Academic inquiry, at least in some fields, may need to become less exclusionary and more holistic。” Yet quite how that happens, Mr Menand does not say. In reality, baby and bathwater may go out together. Public exasperation with academic introversion may lead to a loss of some independence, the most precious right of academics in a free society。
此部分的标准答案为
G → 41. B→42. D→ E →43.A →44.C →45. F
阅读理解Part C 翻译
原文选自一本非常著名的书Fifty Self-help Classics(见图)，主要选自这本书的第11页和12页，经过命题专家改写，有些变了模样。该书是一本励志类的读物，是一部书评，所以翻译起来并不轻松，甚至还有一些哲理性的语言，颇费思量。
With its theme that “Mind is the master weaver,” creating our inner character and outer circumstances, the book As a Man Thinking by James Allen is an in-depth exploration of the central idea of self-help writing。
(46) Allen’s contribution was to take an assumption we all share--that because we are not robots we therefore control our thoughts-and reveal its erroneous nature. 我们每个人都认为：自己不是机器人，因此能够控制自己的思想；爱伦的贡献在于他研究了这一假说，并揭示其错误的本质。Because most of us believe that mind is separate from matter, we think that thoughts can be hidden and made powerless; this allows us to think one way and act another. However, Allen believed that the unconscious mind generates as much action as the conscious mind, and (47) while we may be able to sustain the illusion of control through the conscious mind alone, in reality we are continually faced with a question: “Why cannot I make myself do this or achieve that? ”
我们或许只通过意识就能维持这种控制的幻觉，但事实上，我们却总是面临一个问题：我们为什么不能让自己去做这件事情，实现那个目标呢？
Since desire and will are damaged by the presence of thoughts that do not accord with desire, Allen concluded : “ We do not attract what we want, but what we are。” Achievement happens because you as a person embody the external achievement; you don’t “ get” success but become it. There is no gap between mind and matter。
Part of the fame of Allen’s book is its contention that “Circumstances do not make a person, they reveal him。” (48) This seems a justification for neglect of those in need, and a rationalization of exploitation, of the superiority of those at the top and the inferiority of those at the bottom。
这种说法似乎为忽视需要帮助的人找到了借口，使剥削合理化，令上层人优越，底层人卑微。
This, however, would be a knee-jerk reaction to a subtle argument. Each set of circumstances, however bad, offers a unique opportunity for growth. If circumstances always determined the life and prospects of people, then humanity would never have progressed. In fat, (49)circumstances seem to be designed to bring out the best in us and if we feel that we have been “wronged” then we are unlikely to begin a conscious effort to escape from our situation. 环境似乎旨在激发我们的最大潜能，如果我们总感觉“上天不公”，那么不太可能会自觉地努力脱离现状。Nevertheless, as any biographer knows, a person’s early life and its conditions are often the greatest gift to an individual。
The sobering aspect of Allen’s book is that we have no one else to blame for our present condition except ourselves. (50) The upside is the possibilities contained in knowing that everything is up to us; where before we were experts in the array of limitations, now we become authorities of what is possible。
积极的一面是，既然万事都取决于我们，那么就有无限可能。以前，我们能够熟练应对种种局限；现在，我们把握着未来的可能。
写作
2011年考研英语已经尘埃落定，写作部分比起2010年超纲的“告示”和“变态”的火锅，难度大为降低，现解析如下。
Part A: 小作文
Directions:
Write a letter to a friend of yours to
1) recommend one of your favorite movies and
2) give reasons for your recommendation。
You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2.
Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use”Li Ming”instead。
Do not write the address。(10 points)
题目译文
给你的一位朋友写一封信
1)推荐你最喜欢的一部电影并
2)给出推荐的原因。
真题详解
令广大考生欣慰的是，2011年小作文并未考察大纲中已提到六年但并未考察过的摘要题型，也未考察2010年刚刚考察过的告示题型，而是考察了广大考生最为熟悉、从2005到2009已经连续五年考察的书信。
回顾刚刚过去的2010年，中国内地电影票房成功突破100亿元，成为旭日初升的朝阳产业。从年中的《唐山大地震》、《盗梦空间》、《山楂树之恋》到年底的三大贺岁片《赵氏孤儿》、《让子弹飞》、《非诚勿扰2》，电影已经重新成为全民关注的话题。今年的考研小作文即考察了“电影”这一热点话题。
本题属于推荐信，在拙著《2011考研英语高分写作》第64-65页详细讲解了推荐信的注意事项、写作方法，提供了经典范文及十大万能句型。同时，该书76页提供的关于《八十天环游地球》的读书报告范文完全可以用于本文写作，下面的参考范文即由该文改写而成。
需要注意的是，写给朋友的称呼应该直呼其名，不应写某某先生或女士。本题属于半正式文体中的私人书信，文中最好使用3-5次缩写、省略句或口语表达。两点提纲可以各写一段，第三段进行结尾。首段无需进行自我介绍，开门见山表明写作目的即可；第二段应该分析两到三点原因。
参考范文
Dear Bob,
