昨天，2017年考研国家线正式公布，这也意味着本届考研英语学子的备考历程终于画上句号。那么，对于2018年考研英语学生而言，他们又该怎样开展复习呢？今天，针对很多人困惑的考研英语阅读题型，北外网课（北京外国语大学网络课堂）老师给出了一些中英文对照练习，一起来看看吧。
Passage 1
Few creations of big technology capture the imagination like giantdams. 1. Perhaps it is humankind's long suffering at the mercy of flood anddrought that makes the ideal of forcing the waters to do our bidding sofascinating. But to be fascinated is also, sometimes, to be blind. Severalgiant dam projects threaten to do more harm than good.
在重大技术所创造的东西中很少能像大型水坝这样让人痴迷的。可能正是因为人类长期遭受洪水和干旱灾害的摆布才迫使人们治理江河、供我驱策的理想如此令人痴迷。但让人着迷有时也就使人盲目。有几个巨型大坝项目就有弊大于利的危险。
The lesson from dams is that big is not always beautiful. 2. Itdoesn't help that building a big, powerful dam has become a symbol ofachievement for nations and people striving to assert themselves. Egypt'sleadership in the Arab world was cemented by the Aswan High Dam. Turkey's bidfor First World status includes the giant Ataturk Dam.
建造大坝的教训是：大的未必总是美的。但这个教训也无法阻止修建高大雄伟的大坝已成为那些力争得到自我肯定的国家和人民的伟大成就的象征。埃及由于建造了阿斯旺大坝而巩固了在阿拉伯世界的领导地位。土耳其在力争**世界的努力中也包括修建阿塔特克大坝。
But big dams tend not to work as intended. 3. The Aswan Dam, forexample, stopped the Nile flooding but deprived Egypt of the fertile silt thatfloods left — all in return for a giant reservoir of disease which is now sofull of silt that it barely generates electricity.
但大坝不会像预期的那样产生效果。以阿斯旺大坝为例，它阻止了尼罗河洪水泛滥，但也使埃及失去了洪水冲击过后留下的肥沃土壤，换回来的是这么一个疾病滋生的水库。现在这个水库积满了淤泥，几乎不能发电了。
And yet, the myth of controlling the waters persists. 4. This week,in the heart of civilized Europe, Slovaks and Hungarians stopped just short ofsending in the troops in their contention over a dam on the Danube. The hugecomplex will probably have all the usual problems of big dams. But Slovakia isbidding for independence from the Czechs, and now needs a dam to prove itself.
不过，控制水的神话还在继续。本周，在文明的欧洲腹地，斯洛伐克人和匈牙利人就为了多瑙河上的一处水坝引起争端，差点动用了军队。这个大型工程可能会出现大坝上所有的常见问题。但斯洛伐克正在要求脱离捷克而独立，现在他们需要建一个大坝来证明自己的实力。
Meanwhile, in India, the World Bank has given the go-ahead to theeven more wrong-headed Narmada Dam. And the bank has done this even though itsadvisors say the dam will cause hardship for the powerless and environmentaldestruction. The benefits are for the powerful, but they are far fromguaranteed.
与此同时，世界银行已经贷款给印度来建造问题很多的纳尔马达大坝。尽管世界银行的顾问说，该大坝将给平民带来苦难，而且也会破坏那里的环境，但世界银行已经这样做了。大坝会给有权有势者带来利益，但这种利益却没有保障
Proper, scientific study of the impacts of dams and of the cost andbenefits of controlling water can help to resolve these conflicts.Hydroelectric power and flood control and irrigation are possible withoutbuilding monster dams. But when you are dealing with myths, it is hard to beeither proper, or scientific. It is time that the world learned the lessons ofAswan. You don't need a dam to be saved.
对于水坝的影响作用、水坝控制水流的成本和收益进行恰当而科学的研究能够有助于解决这些冲突。水利发电，治理洪水以及灌溉即使不建大型水坝也是可能的，不一定非要建大坝。但当你相信神话时就很难做到合理或科学。现在是世界吸取阿斯旺大坝教训的时候了。我们不需要建一座将被拯救的大坝。
Passage 2
Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects ofculture. 1. Think of Galileo's 17th-century trial for his rebelling beliefbefore the Catholic Church or poet William Blake's harsh remarks against themechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The schism between science and thehumanities has, if anything, deepened in this century.
科学与文化的其他方面的关系一直都很紧张。想想看，17世纪伽利略为他叛逆性的信仰而遭受天主教会的审判，还有诗人威廉•布莱克对艾萨克•牛顿的机械的世界观所发表的尖锐批判。本世纪，（自然）科学与人文科学之间的分裂更深了
Until recently, the scientific community was so powerful that itcould afford to ignore its critics — but no longer. As funding for science hasdeclined, scientists have attacked "anti-science" in several books,notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R. Gross, a biologist at the University ofVirginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and TheDemon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan of Cornell University.
以前，科学界如此之强大以致可以对批评者置之不理——但现在不同了。由于科研经费减少了，科学家出了几本书来抨击“反科学”势力，其中值得注意的有弗吉尼亚大学生物学家保罗•R•格罗斯和拉特格斯大学的数学家诺曼•莱维特合著的《高级迷信》及康奈尔大学的卡尔•萨根著的《鬼怪世界》。
2. Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetingssuch as "The Flight from Science and Reason," held in New York Cityin 1995, and "Science in the Age of (Mis)information," whichassembled last June near Buffalo.
科学的捍卫者们也在一些会议上表示了他们的担忧。比如，1995年在纽约举行的“远离科学和理性”会议，以及去年6月在布法罗附近召开的“信息（迷信）时代的科学”会议。
Anti-science clearly means different things to different people.Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and otheracademics who have questioned science's objectivity. Sagan is more concernedwith those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena thatcontradict the scientific worldview.
显然，反科学对不同的人有不同的含义。格罗斯和莱维特主要挑那些质疑科学客观性的社会学家、哲学家和其他学者的毛病。而萨根则更关注那些相信鬼怪、上帝造物论和其他与科学世界观相左的人。
3. A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the anti-sciencetag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities whoadvocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus toRepublicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.
1996年对新闻报道的调查表明，反科学的标签也贴在了许多其他群体上，从提倡消灭所有现存的天花病毒的官方人士到倡议削减基础研究基金的共和党人。
4. Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, whosemanifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to apretechnological utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalistsconcerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are anti-science, as an essay inUS News & World Report last May seemed to suggest.
将该词用在仇视现代文明的恐怖主义者身上，也不会引起多大争议，它在1995年公开发表蔑视科学、渴望回到前技术时代理想社会的声明。当然，这并不意味着，对不加控制的工业发展表示担忧的环境主义者也是反科学的，而去年5月份刊登在《美国新闻和世界报导》的一篇文章似乎有此暗示。
The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. 5. Thetrue enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneerof environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting globalwarming, the depletion of the ozone layer and other consequences of industrialgrowth.
毫无疑问，环境主义者要对这些批评做出反应。作为环境研究的先驱者，斯坦福大学的保罗•埃利希认为，科学的真正的敌人是那些对支持全球变暖、臭氧层稀薄和工业增长带来的其他后果的证据提出质疑的人。
Indeed, some observers fear that the anti-science epithet is indanger of becoming meaningless. "The term 'anti-science' can lump togethertoo many, quite different things," notes Harvard University philosopherGerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti-Science, "They have incommon only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those who regardthemselves as more enlightened."
的确，一些观察者担心反科学这个词会失去意义。“‘反科学’这个词可以涵盖很多截然不同的东西”，哈佛大学的哲学家杰拉尔德•霍尔顿在其1993年的著作《科学和反科学》中写道：“它们惟一的共同点就是会激怒或威胁那些自以为更有见识的人。
Passage 3
Scattered around the globe are more than 100 small regions ofisolated volcanic activity known to geologists as hot spots. 1. Unlike most ofthe world's volcanoes, they are not always found at the boundaries of the greatdrifting plates that make up the earth's surface; on the contrary, many of themlie deep in the interior of a plate. Most of the hot spots move only slowly,and in some cases the movement of the plates past them has left trails of deadvolcanoes. The hot spots and their volcanic trails are milestones that mark thepassage of the plates.
地球上散落分布着100多个互不相连的小火山活动区，被地质学家称为热点。和世界上大多数火山不同的是，它们并不总是在构成地球表面的巨大漂流的板块之间的边界上出现；相反，许多热点处于板块较深的内部。大多数热点移动非常缓慢，有时，板块滑过这些热点便留下了死火山的痕迹。热点及其火山痕迹是板块移动的标志。
That the plates are moving is now beyond dispute. Africa and SouthAmerica, for example, are moving away from each other as new material isinjected into the sea floor between them. The complementary coastlines andcertain geological features that seem to span the ocean are reminders of wherethe two continents were once joined. The relative motion of the plates carryingthese continents has been constructed in detail, but the motion of one platewith respect to another cannot readily be translated into motion with respectto the earth's interior. It is not possible to determine whether bothcontinents are moving in opposite directions or whether one continent isstationary and the other is drifting away from it. Hot spots, anchored in thedeeper layers of the earth, provide the measuring instruments needed to resolvethe question. From an analysis of the hot-spot population it appears that theAfrican plate is stationary and that it has not moved during the past 30million years.
板块漂移这一理论现在是毋庸置疑的。例如，以非洲和南美洲为例，由于有新的物质注入二者之间的海底，两大洲距离越来越远。但互相吻合的海岸线和某些似乎跨越海洋的地质特征会使人想到这两个大陆曾经是连接在一起的。携带这些大陆的板块的相对运动已经能够被详细地构想出来，但一个板块相对另一板块的运动还不能轻易地解释为它们相对于地球内部的运动。人们不能确定两个大陆是在朝相反的方向运动，还是一个大陆静止不动而另一个从它身边漂移开去。位于地球更深层的热点提供了解决该问题的测量仪器。从热点地区的人口情况分析来看，非洲板块似乎是固定的，在过去3000万年里也没有移动过。
The significance of hot spots is not confined to their role as aframe of reference. It now appears that they also have an important influenceon the geophysical processes that propel the plates across the globe. When acontinental plate come to rest over a hot spot, the material rising from deeperlayer creates a broad dome. 2. As the dome grows, it develops deepfissures(cracks); in at least a few cases the continent may break entirelyalong some of these fissures, so that the hot spot initiates the formation of anew ocean. Thus just as earlier theories have explained the mobility of thecontinents, so hot spots may explain their mutability (inconstancy).
热点的重要性不仅限于它们作为参照体系的作用。现在看来，它们还对推动板块在地球表面漂移这一地球物理过程有重要影响。当大陆板块漂移到热点上方，来自地球深层的物质便形成了广阔的圆顶状隆起物。随着这个圆顶的增长，板块出现深深的裂缝。至少有几次，大陆可能会沿着其中的一些裂缝完全裂开了，因此这个热点就引发了一个新的海洋的形成。这样，正像早期的理论解释了大陆的移动性一样，热点理论或许能解释大陆板块的易变性。关于更多考研英语的学习技巧，北外网课也携优质全明星教师团队，打造了一系列精品网络课程，给你最实用的考研英语备考经验及**效的提分技巧，详情点击：http://www.beiwaiclass.com/got?uqQ3ee。
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