2019年英语专业八级真题
发布时间:2020年07月10日
发布人:nanyuzi  

TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (2019)

GRADE EIGHT

 

TIME LIMIT: 150 MIN

 

PART I  LISTENING COMPREHENSION [25 MIN]

 

SECTION A  MINI-LECTURE

In this section you will hear a mini lecture. You will hear the min-lecture ONGE ONLY. While listening to mini-lecture, please complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE and write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each gap. Make sure what you fill in is both grammatically and semantically acceptable. You may use the blank sheet for note-taking.

You have THIRTY seconds to preview the gap-filling task.

Now listen to the mini-lecture. When it is over, you will be given Three minutes to check your work.

 

Body Language and Mind

Introduction

·Body language reveals who we are.

 

Nonverbal expressions of (1) ______

·feeling powerful: (2) ______

– e.g. athletes with arms up in a V sign

·feeling powerless: (3) ______

– e.g. refusing to bump into the person nearby.

·behavior tends to become (4) ______

– in a high- and low-power situation.

– people don’t mirror each other.

·MBA students exhibit the full range ef power nonverbals.

– e.g. students with power have strong desire for (5) ______

·power nonverbals are also related to (6) ______

 

Relationship between (7) ______

·the powerful are more (8) ______

·hormones differ with (9) ______

·an experiment:

– procedure:

– adopting high or low-power poses and completing items

– being given (10) ______

– having saliva tested

– recruits:

–(11) _____: much higher with high-power people

– an increase in (12) ______ in low-power people

– hormonal changes: making brain (13) ______

 

Conclusion

·behavior can (14) ______ our outcomes/change outcome

·before getting into stressful situations

– get your brain ready to (15) ______

 

SECTION B  INTERVIEW

In this section you will hear TWO interviews. At the end of each interview, five questions will be asked about what was said. Both the interviews and the questions will be spoken ONCE ONLY. After each question there will be a ten-second pause. During the pause, you should read the four choices of A, B, C, and D, and mark the best answer to each question on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

You have THIRTY seconds to preview the choices.

Now, listen to the first interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on the first interview.

 

1.

A. Environmental issues.

B. Endangered species.

C. Global warming.

D. Conservation.

 

2.

A. It is thoroughly proved.

B. It is definitely very serious.

C. It is just a temporary variation.

D. It is changing our ways of living.

 

3.

A. Protection of endangered animals’ habitats.

B. Negative human impact on the environment.

C. Frequent abnormal phenomena on the earth.

D. The woman’s indifferent attitude to the earth.

 

4.

A. Nature should take its course.

B. People take things for granted.

C. Humans are damaging the earth.

D. Animals should stay away from zoos.

 

5.

A. Objective.

B. Pessimistic.

C. Skeptical.

D. Subjective.

 

Now, listen to the second interview. Questions 6 to 10 are based on the second interview.

 

6.

A. Teachers’ resistance to change.

B. Students’ inadequate ability to read.

C. Teachers’ misunderstanding of such literacy.

D. Students’ indifference to the new method.

 

7.

A. Abilities to complete challenging tasks.

B. Abilities to learn subject matter knowledge.

C. Abilities to perform better in schoolwork.

D. Abilities to perform disciplinary work.

 

8.

A. Recalling specific information.

B. Understanding particular details.

C. Examining sources of information.

D. Retelling a historical event.

 

9.

A. Engaging literacy and disciplinary experts in the program.

B. Helping teachers understand what disciplinary literacy is.

C. Teaching disciplinary discourse practices by literacy teachers.

D. Designing learning strategies with experts from both sides.

 

10.

A. To argue for a case.

B. To discuss a dispute.

C. To explain a problem.

D. To present details.

 

PART Ⅱ READING COMPREHENSION [45 MIN]

 

SECTION A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

In this section there are three passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

 

PASSAGE ONE

(1) When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the next fellow. So at least he thought, and there was a certain amount of evidence to back him up. He had once been an actor – no, not quite, an extra – and he knew what acting should be. Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage; it is harder to find out how he feels. He came from the twenty-third floor down to the lobby on the mezzanine to collect his mail before breakfast, and he believed – he hoped – that he looked passably well: doing all right. It was a matter of sheer hope, because there was not much that he could add to his present effort. On the fourteenth floor he looked for his father to enter the elevator; they often met at this hour, on the way to breakfast. If he worried about his appearance it was mainly for his old father’s sake. But there was no stop on the fourteenth, and the elevator sank and sank. Then the smooth door opened and the great dark-red uneven carpet that covered the lobby billowed toward Wilhelm’s feet. In the foreground the lobby was dark, sleepy. French drapes like sails kept out the sun, but three high, narrow windows were open, and in the blue air Wilhelm saw a pigeon about to light on the great chain that supported the marquee of the movie house directly underneath the lobby. For one moment he heard the wings beating strongly.

(2) Most of the guests at the Hotel Gloriana were past the age of retirement. Along Broadway in the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties, a great part of New York’s vast population of old men and women lives. Unless the weather is too cold or wet they fill the benches about the tiny railed parks and along the subway gratings from Verdi Square to Columbia University, they crowd the shops and cafeterias, the dime stores, the tearooms, the bakeries, the beauty parlors, the reading rooms and club rooms. Among these old people at the Gloriana, Wilhelm felt out of place. He was comparatively young, in his middle forties, large and blond, with big shoulders; his back was heavy and strong, if already a little stooped or thickened. After breakfast the old guests sat down on the green leather armchairs and sofas in the lobby and began to gossip and look into the papers; they had nothing to do but wait out the day. But Wilhelm was used to an active life and liked to go out energetically in the morning. And for several months, because he had no position, he had kept up his morale by rising early; he was shaved and in the lobby by eight o’clock. He bought the paper and some cigars and drank a Coca-Cola or two before he went in to breakfast with his father. After breakfast – out, out, out to attend to business. The getting out had in itself become the chief business. But he had realized that he could not keep this up much longer, and today he was afraid. He was aware that his routine was about to break up and he sensed that a huge trouble long presaged (预感) but till now formless was due. Before evening, he’d know.

(3) Nevertheless he followed his daily course and crossed the lobby.

(4) Rubin, the man at the newsstand, had poor eyes. They may not have been actually weak but they were poor in expression, with lacy lids that furled down at the corners. He dressed well. It didn't seem necessary – he was behind the counter most of the time – but he dressed very well. He had on a rich brown suit; the cuffs embarrassed the hairs on his small hands. He wore a Countess Mara painted necktie. As Wilhelm approached, Rubin did not see him; he was looking out dreamily at the Hotel Ansonia, which was visible from his corner, several blocks away. The Ansonia, the neighborhood’s great landmark, was built by Stanford White. It looks like a baroque palace from Prague or Munich enlarged a hundred times, with towers, domes, huge swells and bubbles of metal gone green from exposure, iron fretwork and festoons. Black television antennae are densely planted on its round summits. Under the changes of weather it may look like marble or like sea water, black as slate in the fog, white as tufa in sunlight. This morning it looked like the image of itself reflected in deep water, white and cumulous above, with cavernous distortions underneath. Together, the two men gazed at it.

(5) Then Rubin said, “Your dad is in to breakfast already, the old gentleman.” “Oh, yes? Ahead of me today?” “That’s a real knocked-out shirt you got on,” said Rubin. “Where’s it from, Saks?” “No, it’s a Jack Fagman – Chicago.”

(6) Even when his spirits were low, Wilhelm could still wrinkle his forehead in a pleasing way. Some of the slow, silent movements of his face were very attractive. He went back a step, as if to stand away from himself and get a better look at his shirt. His glance was comic, a comment upon his untidiness. He liked to wear good clothes, but once he had put it on each article appeared to go its own way. Wilhelm, laughing, panted a little; his teeth were small; his cheeks when he laughed and puffed grew round, and he looked much younger than his years. In the old days when he was a college freshman and wore a beanie (无檐小帽) on his large blonde head his father used to say that, big as he was, he could charm a bird out of a tree. Wilhelm had great charm still.

(7) “I like this dove-gray color,” he said in his sociable, good-natured way. “It isn’t washable. You have to send it to the cleaner. It never smells as good as washed. But it’s a nice shirt. It cost sixteen, eighteen bucks.”

 

11. Wilhelm hoped he looked all right on his way to the lobby because he wanted to ______.

A. leave a good impression

B. give his father a surprise

C. show his acting potential

D. disguise his low spirit

 

12. Wilhelm had something in common with the old guests, they all _____.

A. lived a luxurious life

B. liked to swap gossips

C. idled their time away

D. liked to get up early

 

13. How did Wilhelm feel when he was crossing the lobby (Para. 2)?

A. He felt something ominous was coming.

B. He was worried that his father was late.

C. He was feeling at ease among the old.

D. He was excited about a possible job offer.

 

14. Which part of Rubin’s clothes made him look particularly awkward (Para. 4)?

A. The necktie.

B. The cuffs.

C. The suit.

D. The shirt.

 

15. What can we learn from the author’s description of Wilhelm’s clothes?

A. His shirt made him look better.

B. He cared much about his clothes.

C. He looked like a comedian in his shirt.

D. The clothes he wore never quite matched.

 

PASSAGE TWO

(1) By the 1840s New York was the leading commercial city of the United States. It had long since outpaced Philadelphia as the largest city in the country, and even though Boston continued to be venerated as the cultural capital of the nation, its image had become somewhat languid; it had not kept up with the implications of the newly industrialized economy, of a diversified ethnic population, or of the rapidly rising middle class. New York was the place where the “new” America was coming into being, so it is hardly surprising that the modern newspaper had its birth there.

(2) The penny paper had found its first success in New York. By the mid-1830s Ben Day’s Sun was drawing readers from all walks of life. On the other hand, the Sun was a scanty sheet providing little more than minor diversions; few today would call it a newspaper at all. Day himself was an editor of limited vision, and he did not possess the ability or the imagination to climb the slopes to loftier heights. If real newspapers were to emerge from the public’s demand for more and better coverage, it would have to come from a youthful generation of editors for whom journalism was a totally absorbing profession, an exacting vocational ideal rather than a mere offshoot of job printing.

(3) By the 1840s two giants burst into the field, editors who would revolutionize journalism, would bring the newspaper into the modern age, and show how it could be influential in the national life. These two giants, neither of whom has been treated kindly by history, were James Gordon Bennett and Horace Greeley. Bennett founded his New York Herald in 1835, less than two years after the appearance of the Sun. Horace Greeley founded his Tribune in 1841. Bennett and Greeley were the most innovative editors in New York until after the Civil War. Their newspapers were the leading American papers of the day, although for completely different reasons. The two men despised each other, although not in the ways that newspaper editors had despised one another a few years before. Neither was a political hack bonded to a political party. Greeley fancied himself a public intellectual. He had strong political views, and he wanted to run for office himself, but party factotum he could never be; he bristled with ideals and causes of his own devising. Officially he was a Whig (and later a Republican), but he seldom gave comfort to his chosen party. Bennett, on the other hand, had long since cut his political ties, and although his paper covered local and national politics fully and he went after politicians with hammer and tongs, Bennett was a cynic, a distruster of all settled values. He did not regard himself as an intellectual, although in fact he was better educated than Greeley. He thought himself only a hard-boiled newspaperman. Greeley was interested in ideas and in what was happening to the country. Bennett was only interested in his newspaper. He wanted to find out what the news was, what people wanted to read. And when he found out he gave it to them.

(4) As different as Bennett and Greeley were from each other they were also curiously alike. Both stood outside the circle of polite society, even when they became prosperous, and in Bennett's case, wealthy. Both were incurable eccentrics. Neither was a gentleman. Neither conjured up the picture of a successful editor. Greeley was unkempt, always looking like an unmade bed. Even when he was nationally famous in the 1850s he resembled a clerk in a third-rate brokerage house, with slips of paper – marked-up proofs perhaps – hanging out of his pockets or stuck in his hat. He became fat, was always nearsighted, always peering over spectacles. He spoke in a high-pitched whine (哀号). Not a few people suggested that he looked exactly like the illustrations of Charles Dickens’s Mr. Pickwick. Greeley provided a humorous description of himself, written under the pretense that it had been the work of his long-time adversary James Fenimore Cooper. The editor was, according to the description, a half-bald, long-legged, slouching individual “so rocking in gait (步态) that he walks down both sides of the street at once.”

(5) The appearance of Bennett was somewhat different but hardly more reassuring. A shrewd, wiry (瘦而结实的) Scotsman, who seemed to repel intimacy, Bennett looked around at the world with a squinty glare of suspicion. His eyes did not focus right. They seemed to fix themselves on nothing and everything at the same time. He was as solitary as an oyster, the classic loner. He seldom made close friendships and few people trusted him, although nobody who had dealings with him, however brief, doubted his abilities. He, too, could have come out of a book of Dickensian eccentrics, although perhaps Ebenezer Scrooge or Thomas Gradgrind comes to mind rather than the kindly old Mr. Pickwick. Greeley was laughed at but admired; Bennett was seldom laughed at but never admired; on the other hand, he had a hard professional competence and an encyclopedic knowledge of his adopted country, an in-depth learning uncorrupted by vague idealisms. All of this perfectly suited him for the journalism of this confusing age.

(6) Both Greeley and Bennett had served long, humiliating and disappointing apprenticeships in the newspaper business. They took a long time getting to the top, the only reward for the long years of waiting being that when they had their own newspapers, both knew what they wanted and firmly set about getting it. When Greeley founded the Tribune in 1841 he had the strong support of the Whig party and had already had a short period of modest success as an editor. Bennett, older by sixteen years, found solid commercial success first, but he had no one behind him except himself when he started up the Herald in 1835 in a dingy cellar room at 20 Wall Street. Fortunately this turned out to be quite enough.

 

16. Which of the following is NOT the author’s opinion on Ben Day and Sun?

A. Sun had once been a popular newspaper.

B. Sun failed to be a high-quality newspaper.

C. Ben Day lacked innovation and imagination.

D. Ben Day had striven for better coverage.

 

17. Which of the following statements is CORRECT about Greeley’s or Bennett’s political stance (Para. 3)?

A. Greeley and Bennett were both strong supporters of their party.

B. Greeley, as a Whig member, believed in his party’s ideals.

C. Bennett, as an independent, loathed established values.

D. Greeley and Bennett possessed different political values.

 

18. Which of the following figures of speech was used to describe Greeley’s manner of walking (Para. 4)?

A. Exaggeration.

B. Paradox.

C. Analogy.

D. Personification.

 

19. In Para. 5 Bennett was depicted as a man who ______.

A. had stronger capabilities than Greeley

B. possessed a great aptitude for journalism

C. was in pursuit of idealism in journalism

D. was knowledgeable about his home country

 

20. How was Greeley different from Bennett according to Para. 6?

A. He had achieved business success first.

B. He started his career earlier than Bennett.

C. He got initial support from a political party.

D. He had a more humiliating apprenticeship.

 

PASSAGE THREE

(1) Why make a film about Ned Kelly? More ingenious crimes than those committed by the reckless Australian bandit are reported every day. What is there in Ned Kelly to justify dragging the mesmeric Mick Jagger so far into the Australian bush and away from his natural haunts? The answer is that the film makers know we always fall for a bandit, and Jagger is set to do for bold Ned Kelly what Brando once did for the arrogant Emiliano Zapata.

(2) A bandit inhabits a special realm of legend where his deeds are embroidered by others; where his death rather than his life is considered beyond belief; where the men who bring him to “justice” are afflicted with doubts about their role.

(3) The bandits had a role to play as definite as that of the authorities who condemned them. These were men in conflict with authority, and, in the absence of strong law or the idea of loyal opposition, they took to the hills. Even there, however, many of them obeyed certain unwritten Dales.

(4) These robbers, who claimed to be something more than mere thieves, had in common, firstly, a sense of loyalty and identity with the peasants they came from. They didn’t steal the peasant’s harvest; they did steal the lord’s.

(5) And certain characteristics seem to apply to “social bandits” whether they were in Sicily or Peru. They were generally young men under the age of marriage, predictably the best age for dissidence. Some were simply the surplus male population who had to look for another source of income; others were run away serfs or ex-soldiers; a minority, though the most interesting, were outstanding men who were unwilling to accept the meek and passive role of peasant.

(6) They usually operated in bands between ten and twenty strong and relied for survival on difficult terrain and bad transport. And bandits prospered best where authority was merely local – over the next hill and they were free. Unlike the general run of peasantry they had a taste for flamboyant dress and gesture; but they usually shared the peasants’ religious beliefs and superstitions.

(7) The first sign of a man caught up in the Robin Hood syndrome was when he started out, forced into outlawry as a victim of injustice; and when he then set out to “right wrongs”, first his own and then other people’s. The classic bandit then “takes from the rich and gives to the poor” in conformity with his own sense of social injustice; he never kills except in self-defense or justifiable revenge; he stays within his community and even returns to it if he can to take up an honorable place; his people admire and help to protect him; he dies through the treason of one of them; he behaves as if invisible and invulnerable; he is a “loyalist”, never the enemy of the king but only of the local oppressors.

(8) None of the bandits lived up fully to this image of the “noble robber” and for many the claim of larger motives was often a delusion.

(9) Yet amazingly, many of these violent men did behave at least half the time in accordance with this idealist pattern. Pancho Villa in Mexico and Salvatore Giuliano in Italy began their careers harshly victimized. Many of their charitable acts later became legends.

(10) Far from being defeated in death, bandits’ reputation for invincibility was often strengthened by the manner of their dying. The “dirty little coward” who shot Jesse James in the back is in every ballad about him, and the implication is that nothing else could have brought Jesse down. Even when the police claimed the credit, as they tried to do at first with Giuliano’s death, the local people refused to believe it. And not just the bandit’s vitality prompts the people to refuse to believe that their hero has died; his death would be in some way the death of hope.

(11) For the traditional “noble robber” represents an extremely primitive form of social protest, perhaps the most primitive there is. He is an individual who refuses to bend his back, that is all. Most protesters will eventually be bought over and persuaded to come to terms with the official power. That is why the few who do not, or who are believed to have remained uncontaminated, have so great and passionate a burden of admiration and longing laid upon them. They cannot abolish oppression. But they do prove that justice is possible, that poor men need not be humble, helpless and meek.

(12) The bandit in the real world is rooted in peasant society and when its simple agricultural system is left behind so is he. But the tales and legends, the books and films continue to appear for an audience that is neither peasant nor bandit. In some ways the characters and deeds of the great bandits could so readily be the stuff of grand opera – Don Jose in “Carmen” is based on the Andalusian bandit El Empranillo. But they are perhaps more at home in folk songs, in popular tales and the ritual dramas of films. When we sit in the darkness of the cinema to watch the bold deeds of Ned Kelly we are caught up in admiration for their strong individuality, their simple gesture of protest, their passion for justice and their confidence that they cannot be beaten. This sustains us nearly as much as it did the almost hopeless people from whom they sprang.

 

21. Which of the following words is NOT intended to suggest approval of bandits?

A. Bold (Para. 1).

B. Claimed (Para. 4).

C. Legend (Para. 2).

D. Loyalty (Para. 4).

 

22. Of the following reasons which is the LEAST likely one for becoming bandits?

A. They liked theatrical clothes and behavior.

B. They wanted to help the poor country folk.

C. They were unwilling to accept injustice.

D. They had very few careers open to them.

 

23. “… began their careers harshly victimized” (Para. 9) means that they ______.

A. had received excessive ill-treatment

B. were severely punished for their crimes

C. took to violence through a sense of justice

D. were misunderstood by their parents and friends

 

24. What has made bandits suitable as film heroes is that they _____.

A. are sure they are invincible

B. possess a theatrical quality

C. retain the virtues of a peasant society

D. protest against injustice and inequality

 

SECTION B  SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS

In this section there are eight short answer questions based on the passages in Section A. Answer each question in NO MORE THAN TEN WORDS in the space provided on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

 

Passage One

25. In “…, and there was a certain amount of evidence to back him up (Para. 1), what does “evidence” refer to?

26. What is Wilhelm’s characteristic that has never changed all those years according to Para. 6?

 

Passage Two

27. Summarize in your own words the meaning of the italicized part in the last sentence of Para.

28. What does “..., but he seldom gave comfort to his chosen party” mean according to the context (Para 3)?

29. What is the similarity between Bennett and Greeley according to Paras. 4 and 5?

 

Passage Three

30. Write down TWO features of the idealist pattern (Para. 9).

31. What does “hope” mean according to the context (Para. 10)?

32. What does “He is an individual who refuses to bend his back” mean (Para. 11)?

 

PART Ⅲ  LANGUAGE USAGE [15 MIN]

The passage contains TEN errors. Each indicated line contains a maximum of ONE error. In each case, only ONE word is involved. You should proofread the passage and correct it in the following way:

For a wrong word, underline the wrong word and write the correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line.

For a missing word, mark the position of the missing word with a “^” sign and write the word you believe to be missing in the blank provided at the end of the line.

For an unnecessary word, cross the unnecessary word with a slash “–” and put the word in the blank provided at the end of the line.

 

Example

When∧art museum wants a new exhibit, (1) an

it never buys things in finished form and hangs (2) never

them on the wall. When a natural history museum

wants an exhibition, it must often build it. (3) exhibit

 

Proofread the given passage on ANSWER SHEET THREE as instructed.

 

Learning about Cognitive Grammar (CG), an approach to the analysis and

description of language structure, is not easy.

One reason is vast literature that now exists in CG and in cognitive linguistics (1) _____

more generally; thanks to limited accessibility, and its being situated (2) ______

in the Western linguistic tradition, this poses special problems for Chinese scholars.

Another factor is that CG, though is not implemented (3) _______

computationally or presented as a formal model, nonetheless involves

considerable technical detail. Understanding it at depth, or with any (4) ________

degree of accuracy, required precision of thought and analysis as well (5) ________

as the mastering of many terms and notations. The final source of difficulty (6) ________

is that CG results from non-standard ways of thinking language (7) ______

and linguistic investigation. In particular, it departs away from tradition (8) ________

by viewing meaning as the starting point for analyzing grammar, and

conceptualization as the basis for describing meaning.

This book is hardly sufficient for a thorough knowledge of CG

but may at least contribute to the process of learning about it. As (9) ________

it only introduces the basic notions, its main purpose is to illustrate

the framework’s descriptive and explanatory potential through

extensive discussions of their application to diverse facets of language structure (10) _______

 

PART Ⅳ  TRANSLATION [20 MIN]

Translate the following text from Chinese into English. Write your translation on ANSWER SHEET THREE.

 

白洋淀曾有“北国江南”的说法,但村舍的形制自具特色,与江南截然不同。南方多雨,屋顶是坡顶;这里的村舍则不同,屋顶是晒粮食的地方,而且历史上每逢水大洪泛,村民就得把屋里的东西搬到屋顶上。房屋彼此挨得很近,有些屋顶几科相连。

 

PART Ⅴ  WRITING [45 MIN]

Read carefully the following two excerpts on consumption, and then write your response in NO LESS THAN 300 WORDS, in which you should:

1. summarize the main message of the two excerpts, and then

2. comment on the role of consumption in human society, especially on whether consumption may lead to desirable or undesirable results.

You can support yourself with information from the excerpts.

Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Write your response on ANSWER SHEET FOUR.

 

Excerpt 1:

Consequences of consumerism

In Human Development Report 1998 Overview by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), “World consumption has expanded at an unprecedented pace over the 20th century, with private and public consumption expenditures reaching $24 trillion in 1998, twice the level of 1975 and six times that of 1950. In 1900 real consumption expenditure was barely $1.5 trillion.” In September 2001, the BBC aired a documentary called “Shopology,” where psychologists looked into the psychology of shopping and consumerism in countries like Britain, USA and Japan and asked if it was healthy for consumers. Of the many points they raised, they observed that:

Consumption now helps to define who we are;

We essentially “buy” a lifestyle;

Consumerism can increase stress for various reasons;

To deal with social and consumerism pressures and their effects, people may on occasion consume even more to feel better;

Rising consumer debt puts pressure on families.

Two years later, the BBC aired another documentary called “Spend, Spend, Spend.” It looked at the issues of whether or not the increased wealth and consumerism had led to more content and satisfied individuals. The documentary observed that research evidence seemed to suggest that increased wealth did not necessarily lead to more satisfaction in Britain. When interviewed in the program, Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University said that the key reason for this was because as we get wealthier there is often a tendency to compare more with others, which contributes to more anxiety. The “keeping up with the Joneses” syndrome. The implications of this are profound. As Oswald suggested, it is “hard to make society happier as they get richer and richer because human beings look constantly over their shoulders. That’s the curse of human beings; making comparisons.”

 

Excerpt 2:

Consumption as a path to cultivation

Consumption, for George Simmel, German sociologist and philosopher, lies at the heart of the process through which people become cultivated, that is, grow to become participating, reflective members of society. This is because consumption provides an excellent site for the interaction between subject and object, which Simmel believed to be the key to cultivation. Subjectivity, the uniquely human capacity for self-reflection, which allows for the self-conscious construction of action and identity, is not naturally endowed; it only develops through the creative tension provided by interaction with objects (including people) existing in the world. For Simmel, consumption provides a vital forum for this subject-object interaction. Through consumption, people come to understand, instill meaning in, and act upon objects encountered in the world. Consumption provides people with the opportunity to refine themselves through interaction with objects in the world. In addition, by confronting, adapting, and integrating various world-views directly or indirectly demonstrated in consumption objects, people not only realize their potential as unique human beings, they also become well-socialized members of a society.