北京师范大学考博英语历年真题及详解.pdf

2015年北京师范大学考博英语真题及详解Part I Reading Comprehe
ion (45%) Directio
: Read the following passages carefully and then select the best a
wer from the four choices marked A, B, C and D by marking the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET with a single line through the center. 1 　 The Pacific Northwest coast of north America is temperate rain forest, where trees like the red cedar grow straight trunks more than two mete
thick at the base and sixty mete
high. Western red cedar is often called the canoe cedar because it supplied the native people of the region with the raw material for their seagoing dugout canoes. These extraordinary crafts, as much as twenty mete
in length, were fashioned from a single tree trunk and carried as many as forty on fishing and whaling expeditio
into the open ocean. The Haida people from the Queen Charlottes Islands off British Columbia were noted for their skill in canoe building. After felling a giant tree with controlled burning, the canoe make
split the log into lengthwise sectio
with stone wedges. They burned away some of the heartwood, leaving a rough but strong cedar shell. They then carved away wood from the i
ide, keeping the sectio
below the waterline thickest and heaviest to help keep the canoe upright in stormy seas. To further enhance the canoe’s stability, they filled the hull with water and heated it to boiling by dropping in hot stones. This rendered the wood temporarily flexible, so the sides of the hull could be forced apart and held with sturdy wooden thwarts, which served as both cross braces and seats. The canoes were often painted with elaborate desig
of cultural significance to the tribe. The Haida raised canoe building to a high art, designing boats of such beauty and utility that neighboring tribes were willing to exchange quantities of hides, meats, and oils for a Haida canoe. These graceful vessels became the tribe’s chief item of export. In their swift and staunch canoes, the fi
t people of the Northwest w