2013年英语专八模拟题2.docVIP

英语专业八级全真模拟冲刺卷（2） TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS GRADE EIGHT TIME LIMIT: 195 MIN PART I LISTENING COMPREHENSION (35 MIN) (见PDF文件“模拟题2听力部分”) PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN) In this section there are several reading passage followed by a total of twenty multiple-choice questions. Read the passage and then mark your answers on your answer sheet. TEXT A When I decided to quit my full time employment it never occurred to me that I might become a part of a new international trend. A lateral move that hurt my pride and blocked my professional progress prompted me to abandon my relatively high profile career although, in the manner of a disgraced government minister, I covered my exit by claiming “I wanted to spend more time with my family”. Curiously, some two-and-a-half years and two novels later, my experiment in what the Americans term “downshifting” has turned my tired excuse into an absolute reality. I have been transformed from a passionate advocate of the philosophy of “having it all”, preached by Linda Kelsey for the past seven years in the page of She magazine, into a woman who is happy to settle for a bit of everything. I have discovered, as perhaps Kelsey will after her much-publicized resignation from the editorship of She after a build-up of stress, that abandoning the doctrine of “juggling your life”, and making the alternative move into “downshifting” brings with it far greater rewards than financial success and social status. Nothing could persuade me to return to the kind of life Kelsey used to advocate and I once enjoyed: 12 hour working days, pressured deadlines, the fearful strain of office politics and the limitations of being a parent on “quality time”. In America, the move away from juggling to a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle is a well-established trend. Downshifting — also known in America as “voluntary simplicity”— has, ironically, even bred a new area of what might be termed