Text 3文章取自The Times(时代)，原文标题为：When Less Was More。文章主要讲述的是二战后美国人在房屋设计方面观点的一些转变和趋势。
点击查看原文：
When Less Was More
We tend to think of the decades immediately following World War II as a time of exuberance and growth, with soldiers returning home by the millions, going off to college on the G.I. Bill and lining up at the marriage bureaus。
But when it came to their houses, it was a time of common sense and a belief that less truly could be more. During the Depression and the war, Americans had learned to live with less, and that restraint, in combination with the postwar confidence in the future, made small, efficient housing positively stylish。
As we find ourselves in an era of diminishing resources, could “less” become “more” again? If so, the mid-20th-century building boom might provide some inspiration。
They were recently renovated. Economic austerity was only one of the catalysts for the trend toward efficient living. The phrase “less is more” was actually first popularized by a German, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who like other people associated with the Bauhaus emigrated to the United States before World War II and took up posts at American architecture schools. These designers, including Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, came to exert enormous influence on the course of American architecture, but none more so than Mies。
Mies’s signature phrase means that less decoration, properly deployed, has more impact than a lot. Elegance, he believed, did not derive from abundance. Like other modern architects, he employed metal, glass and laminated wood — materials that we take for granted today but that in the 1940s symbolized the future. Mies’s sophisticated presentation masked the fact that the spaces he designed were small and efficient, rather than big and often empty。
The apartments in the elegant towers Mies built on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, for example, were smaller — two-bedroom units under 1,000 square feet — than those in their older neighbors along the city’s Gold Coast. But they were popular because of their airy glass walls, the views they afforded and the elegance of the buildings’ details and proportions, the architectural equivalent of the abstract art so popular at the time。
Tom Wolfe’s “From Bauhaus to Our House” aside, the trend toward “less” was not entirely foreign. In the 1930s Frank Lloyd Wright started building more modest and efficient houses — usually around 1,200 square feet — than the sprawling two-story ones he had designed in the 1890s and the early 20th century。
Even the consciously trend-setting Museum of Modern Art promoted restraint in the early postwar years. In 1945, it held an exhibition entitled “Tomorrow’s Small House: Models and Plans,” and the pioneering model houses that Marcel Breuer and Gregory Ain erected in the museum garden were small and sparsely detailed。
The “Case Study Houses” commissioned from talented modern architects by California Arts & Architecture magazine between 1945 and 1962 were yet another homegrown influence on the “less is more” trend. Aesthetic effect came from the landscape, new materials and forthright detailing. In his Case Study House, Ralph Rapson may have mispredicted just how the mechanical revolution would impact everyday life — few American families acquired helicopters, though most eventually got clothes dryers — but his belief that self-sufficiency was both desirable and inevitable was widely shared。
“Less is more” wasn’t for everyone; modernism was popular mainly with the so-called “Progressives,” the professionals and intellectuals who commissioned modern houses. But these trend-setters were not alone in assuming there would be fewer servants in the future and that modern conveniences would make housework easier to do, especially in smaller quarters。
The popularity of simpler living made it possible for one American developer, William Levitt, to realize the prewar dream of the European modern architects to use industrialization for housing. During the war, Levitt had become an expert in mass-producing homes for shipyard workers in Virginia. When it ended, Levitt and his sons created a prototype 750-square-foot, one-floor house—with a living room, kitchen/dining area, two small bedrooms, a bathroom and an unfinished “expansion attic”—to fit on a 60 x 100 foot lot. Set on concrete slabs like those at the shipyards, the new houses were built quickly and cheaply on a sort of assembly line, with pre-cut lumber and nails shipped from the Levitts’ factories in California。
Eventually, the Levitts built 140,000 houses, clustered in Levittowns on Long Island and near Philadelphia for some of the 16 million returning veterans. In the 1950s, the houses grew slightly, to 800 square feet, and came equipped with carports and built-in 12.5-inch Admiral TVs. Clearly no one considered multiple televisions, or that they would be frequently replaced。
The Levittown houses were concentrated on the East Coast, but they influenced suburban development throughout the United States, though elsewhere houses were built manually, as they would be after the postwar building boom. The standard two-bedroom house with an expandable attic became the norm for more than a decade, even as family size mushrooomed。
But like much of American society, the middle-class home began to grow over time. The average size of an American house in 1950 was 983 square feet. Slowly, though, both more square footage and more amenities became part of the American dream, so that by 2004 the average home topped 2,300 square feet。
What does all that space bring? Small, out-of-the-way bedrooms like those in the Levittown houses’ “expandable attics” can be used when children are at home or guests arrive, and the open plan of their main living spaces has become the kitchen/family room that is the center of the American home today. But many of the “must-have” elements in 2010, like formal living and dining rooms, are redundant. In an era of economic austerity and a seemingly permanent energy crisis, can “less is more” become popular again?
Sadly, many of the small, architect-designed houses of the postwar period have been demolished to make way for McMansions. But those that remain, and those we know about from blueprints and photographs, have much to teach us — about the efficient use of space for storage, integrated indoor and outdoor space and the way careful design can facilitate natural ventilation. When you think about how many rooms you actually use, it seems obvious that various ideas from that optimistic era could make the next decade a happier, saner one than the overstuffed times we’ve just lived through。
Text 4文章取自The Economist(经济学家)2010年7月10日，原文标题为Staring into the abyss; The future of Europe.。文章属于经济类题材，讲的是欧盟统一的货币体系，它的现状，各国对其的看法以及评价。文章涉及到一些专业词汇和文化背景知识，在做题时还是有一定的难度。
点击查看原文：
Staring into the abyss; The future of Europe
As the euro-zone crisis spooks governments, opinions are diverging dramatically about what the union is for
WILL the European Union make it? The question would have sounded outlandish not long ago. Now even the project's greatest cheerleaders talk of a continent facing a "Bermuda triangle" of debt, demographic decline and lower growth。
As well as those chronic problems, the EU faces an acute crisis in its economic core, the 16 countries that use the single currency. Markets have lost faith that the euro zone's economies, weaker or stronger, will one day converge thanks to the discipline of sharing a single currency, which denies uncompetitive stragglers the quick fix of devaluation。
Yet the debate about how to save Europe's single currency from disintegration is stuck. It is stuck because the euro zone's dominant powers, France and Germany, agree on the need for greater harmonisation within the euro zone, but disagree about what to harmonise。
Germany thinks the euro must be saved by stricter rules on borrowing, spending and competitiveness, backed by quasi-automatic sanctions for governments that stray. These might include threats to freeze EU funds for poorer regions and EU mega-projects, and even the suspension of a country's voting rights in EU ministerial councils. It insists that economic co-ordination should involve all 27 members of the EU club, among whom there is a small majority for free-market liberalism and economic rigour; in the inner core alone, Germany fears, a small majority favour French dirigisme。
A "southern" camp headed by France wants something different: "European economic government" within an inner core of euro-zone members. Translated, that means politicians meddling in monetary policy and a system of redistribution from richer to poorer members, via cheaper borrowing for governments through common Eurobonds or outright fiscal transfers. Finally, figures close to the French government have murmured, euro-zone members should agree to some fiscal and social harmonisation: eg, curbing competition in corporate-tax rates or labour costs。
It is too soon to write off the EU. It remains the world's largest trading block. At its best, the European project is remarkably liberal: built around a single market of 27 rich and poor countries, its internal borders are far more porous to goods, capital and labour than any comparable trading area. It is an ambitious attempt to blunt the sharpest edges of globalisation, and make capitalism benign。
The problem is that the "European social model" has become, too often, a synonym for a very expensive way of doing things. It has also become an end in itself, with some EU …
从今年考研英语二的文章来看，阅读部分文章均是摘自美国专业刊物，特别是The Economist(经济学家)，如果平时没有一定的阅读积累，做起来还是比较困难的。所以对于后面的考生来说，在平时多阅读一些这样的期刊杂志，积累一些经济、文化方面的专业词汇还是很有必要的。
B部分
文章取自The Observer(观察家报)，文章标题为UK doctors declare war on junk food(英医学界号召打击垃圾食品)。选的是大纲中第一种备选题型：多项对应。背景知识：英国两家皇家医学院的院长敦促政府对不健康食物的广告和赞助宣传进行限制。他们建议英国政府对垃圾食品征收“脂肪税”，同时向儿童发出同“吸烟有害健康”同等级的垃圾食物食用警告。
点击查看原文：
UK doctors declare war on junk food
Leading doctors in Britain will today demand tough government action to curb the nation's addiction to unhealthy food, and so help halt spiralling rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease。
Senior medical figures want to stop fast-food outlets opening near schools, restrict the advertising of products high in fat, salt or sugar and limit sponsorship of sports events by fast-food producers such as McDonald's。
They also want "fat taxes" to be imposed on foods that cause the most dietary harm and introduce cigarette-style warnings for schoolchildren about the dangers of a bad diet。
Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the consumption of unhealthy food should be seen to be just as damaging as smoking or binge drinking。
"Thirty years ago, it would have been inconceivable to have imagined a ban on smoking in the workplace or in pubs, and yet that is what we have now. Are we willing to be just as courageous in respect of obesity? I would suggest that we should be."。
Professor Stephenson's comments will reignite the debate over the role of regulation in tackling public health problems。
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said last week that "no Government campaign or programme can force people to make healthy choices. We want to free business from the burden of regulation, but we don't want, in doing that, to sacrifice public health outcomes"。
Mr Lansley has alarmed health campaigners by saying manufacturers of potato crisps and sweets could play a central role in the Change4Life campaign, the centrepiece of government efforts to boost healthy eating and fitness。
He has also criticised chef Jamie Oliver's high-profile attempt to improve the quality of school lunches in England as an example of how "lecturing" people was not the best way to change their behaviour。
Professor Stephenson suggested potential curbs could include banning TV ads for foods high in fat, salt or sugar before the 9pm watershed and limiting them on billboards or in cinemas。
"If we were really bold, we might even begin to think of high-calorie fast food in the same way as cigarettes - by setting stringent limits on advertising, product placement and sponsorship of sports events."
Professor Dinesh Bhugra, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: "Some types of processed foods are harmful to the physical, and consequently mental, health of individuals。
"There ought to be serious consideration given to banning advertising of certain foods and certain processed foods and to levying tax on fatty, unhealthy foods."
He said school pupils needed to be told more about the effects of bad diet. He also urged councils to impose "fast-food free zones" around schools and hospitals。
Mr Lansley received unexpected support from Professor Stephenson and Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, who said he was right to stress the importance of personal responsibility, as well as government action, in ending the country's dysfunctional relationship with food。
Both strongly criticised parents for setting their children a bad example by overeating, serving poor-quality food and exercising too little。
"Parents are role models for their children. It's crucial that they set the tone for what the children eat and their physical activity," said Professor Stephenson。
"The fact that one-third of our children are now overweight ... must mean their parents are allowing them to eat excessive amounts of food and not ensuring they take enough exercise."
Professor Field, a family doctor in Birmingham, said: "Too many parents show too little responsibility in the vital business of passing on good eating and drinking habits to their children."
A Health Department spokesperson said: "We need to create a new vision for public health where all of society works together to get healthy and live longer. This includes creating a new 'responsibility deal' with business, built on social responsibility, not state regulation."
