Part A: Reading Comprehension
Directions: Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)
Text 1
Come on—Everybody’s doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what most of us think of when we hear the words peer pressure. It usually leads to no good—drinking, drugs and casual sex. But in her new book Join the Club, Tina Rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in which organizations and officials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their lives and possibly the world.
Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, offers a host of examples of the social cure in action: In South Carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called Rage Against the Haze sets out to make cigarettes uncool. In South Africa, an HIV-prevention initiative known as loveLife recruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers.
The idea seems promising, and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lameness of many public-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to mobilize peer pressure for healthy habits, and they demonstrate a seriously flawed understanding of psychology. “Dare to be different, please don’t smoke!” pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers—teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in. Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure.
But on the general effectiveness of the social cure, Rosenberg is less persuasive. Join the Club is filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biological factors that make peer pressure so powerful. The most glaring flaw of the social cure as it’s presented here is that it doesn’t work very well for very long. Rage Against the Haze failed once state funding was cut. Evidence that the loveLife program produces lasting changes is limited and mixed.
There’s no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. An emerging body of research shows that positive health habits—as well as negative ones—spread through networks of friends via social communication. This is a subtle form of peer pressure: we unconsciously imitate the behavior we see every day.
Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. It’s like the teacher who breaks up the troublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. The tactic never really works. And that’s the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the real world, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.
21. According to the first paragraph, peer pressure often emerges as
22. Rosenberg holds that public-health advocates should
23. In the author’s view, Rosenberg’s book fails to
24. Paragraph 5 shows that our imitation of behaviors
25. The author suggests in the last paragraph that the effect of peer pressure is
Answers & Explanations (答案与深度解析)
试题精解
21. [D] a cause of undesirable behaviors.
【解析】细节题。第一段提到：它（同辈压力）通常导致没有好处的事情——饮酒、吸毒和随便的性行为。这些都属于“不良行为的起因（cause of undesirable behaviors）”。
22. [B] learn from advertisers’ experience.
【解析】细节题。第三段最后一句：Rosenberg 令人信服地指出，公共卫生倡导者应当“向广告商借鉴（take a page from advertisers）”，因为广告商非常擅长运用同辈压力。B选项“从广告商经验中学习”是对 take a page from 的同义替换。
23. [A] adequately probe social and biological factors.
【解析】细节题。第四段指出：Rosenberg 的书中充斥了太多无关的细节，而“对使同辈压力如此强大的社会和生物因素的探讨却不够”。A选项中的 adequately probe（充分探究）反义对应 not enough exploration。
24. [C] occurs without our realizing it.
【解析】细节题。第五段末尾指出：这是一种微妙的同辈压力形式：我们每天都在“无意识地（unconsciously）”模仿我们看到的行为。C选项“在没有意识到的情况下发生”正是 unconsciously 的同义解释。
25. [D] questionable.
【解析】态度题。最后一段首句就提出质疑：专家和官僚能否成功挑选同辈群体并引导其活动方向，“远不那么确定（Far less certain）”。因此，作者认为这种由外部策划的同辈压力效果是可疑的（questionable）。
考研核心句型与长难句
【长难句剖析】
1. 地道俚语与短语应用：
"Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure."
【解析】take a page from sb’s book 是一句非常地道的英语习语，意为“效仿某人/向某人借鉴经验”。句末的 so skilled... 是形容词短语作后置定语，修饰 advertisers。
"Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure."
【解析】take a page from sb’s book 是一句非常地道的英语习语，意为“效仿某人/向某人借鉴经验”。句末的 so skilled... 是形容词短语作后置定语，修饰 advertisers。
2. 倒装句增强语气：
"Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions."
【解析】这是一个完全倒装句，表语 Far less certain 被提前以强调不确定性，主语是由 how 引导的主语从句 how successfully...。正常语序应为：How successfully experts... can select... is far less certain.
"Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions."
【解析】这是一个完全倒装句，表语 Far less certain 被提前以强调不确定性，主语是由 how 引导的主语从句 how successfully...。正常语序应为：How successfully experts... can select... is far less certain.
3. 同位语与双重否定：
"“Dare to be different, please don’t smoke!” pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers—teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in."
【解析】破折号后的 teenagers 是对前文的重复和解释。who 引导定语从句，其中 desire nothing more than（没有比...更渴望的了，即极度渴望）利用双重否定表达了最强烈的肯定：青少年极度渴望融入群体（fitting in）。
"“Dare to be different, please don’t smoke!” pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers—teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in."
【解析】破折号后的 teenagers 是对前文的重复和解释。who 引导定语从句，其中 desire nothing more than（没有比...更渴望的了，即极度渴望）利用双重否定表达了最强烈的肯定：青少年极度渴望融入群体（fitting in）。