全国硕士研究生入学考试英语阅读理解专项练习

Passage1

In 1939 two brothers, Mac and Dick McDonald, started a drive-in restaurant in San Bernadino, California. They carefully chose a busy corner for their location. They had run their own businesses for years, first a theater, then a barbecue（烤肉）restaurant., then another drive-in. But in their new operation, they offered a new, shortened menu: French fries, hamburgers, and sodas. To this small selection they added one new concept: quick service, no waiters or waitresses, and no tips.

Their hamburgers sold for fifteen cents. Cheese was another four cents. Their French fries and hamburgers had a remarkable uniformity, for the brothers had developed a strict routine for the preparation of their food, and they insisted on their cooks’ sticking to their routine. Their new drive-in became incredibly popular, particularly for lunch. People drove up by the hundreds during the busy noontime. The self-service restaurant was so popular that the brothers had allowed ten copies of their restaurant to be opened. They were content with this modest success until they met Ray Kroc.

Kroc was a salesman who met the McDonald brothers in 1954, when he was selling milkshake-mixing machines. He quickly saw the unique appeal of the brothers’ fast-food restaurants and bought the right to franchise（特许经营）other copies of their restaurants. The agreement struck included the right to duplicate the menu. The equipment, even their red and white buildings with the golden arches（拱门）.

Today McDonald’s is really a household name. Its names for its sandwiches have come to mean hamburger in the decades since the day Ray Kroc watched people rush up to order fifteen-cent hamburgers. In 1976, McDonald’s had over $ 1 billion in total sales. Its first twenty-two years is one of the most incredible success stories in modern American business history.



1. This passage mainly talks abort　　　　 .

A)　　 the development of fast food services

B)　　　how McDonald’s became a billion-dollar business

C)　　 the business careers of Mac and Dick McDonald

D)　　 Ray Kroc’s business talent



2. Mac and Dick managed all of the following businesses except　　　 .

　A) a drive-in　　 C) a theater

　B) a cinema　　 D) a barbecue restaurant



3. We may infer from this passage that　　　　　.

A)　　 Mac and Dick McDonald never became wealthy for they sold their idea to Kroc

B)　　　The location the McDonalds chose was the only source of the great popularity of their drive-in

C)　　 Forty years ago there were numerous fast-food restaurants

D)　　 Ray Kroc was a good businessman



4. The passage suggests that　　　 .

A)　　 creativity is an important element of business success

B)　　　Ray Kroc was the close partner of the McDonald brothers

C)　　 Mac and Dick McDonald became broken after they sold their ideas to Ray Kroc

D)　　 California is the best place to go into business



5. As used in the second sentence of the third paragraph, the word ”unique” means　　 .

　A) special　C) financial

　B) attractiveD) peculiar



Passage2

You’re busy filling out the application form for a position you really need; let’s assume you once actually completed a couple of years of college work or even that you completed your degree. Isn’t it tempting to lie just a little, to claim on the form that your diploma represents a Harvard degree? Or that you finished an extra couple of years back at State University?

More and more people are turning to utter deception like this to land their job or to move ahead in their careers, for personnel officers, like most Americans, value degrees from famous schools. A job applicant may have a good education anyway, but he or she assumes that chances of being hired are better with a diploma from a well-known university. Registrars at most well-known colleges say they deal with deceitful claims like these at the rate of about one per week.

Personnel officers do check up on degrees listed on application forms, then . If it turns out that an applicant is lying, most colleges are reluctant to accuse the applicant directly. One Ivy League school calls them “impostors 骗子”; another refers to them as “special cases.” one well-known West Coast school, in perhaps the most delicate phrase of all, says that these claims are made by “no such people.”

To avoid outright (彻底的) lies, some job-seekers claim that they “attended” or “were associated with” a college or university. After carefully checking, a personnel officer may discover that “attending” means being dismissed after one semester. It may be that “being associated with” a college means that the job – seeker visited his younger brother for a football weekend. One school that keeps records of false claims says that the practice dates back at least to the turn of the century – that’s when they began keeping records, anyhow.

If you don’t want to lie or even stretch the truth, there are companies that will sell you a phony （假的）diploma. One company, with offices in New York and on the West Coast, w