整理自：学长小谭

2015 考研真题单词（英语二）
（例句来源于考研英语二真题）
说明：1. (pl.)代表复数形式。2.考研词汇的意思大部分比较抽象，建议结合短语例句理解
记忆。

完形填空

contemporary adj
In our contemporary culture, the pro-
prospect n spect of communicating with - or even
looking at - a stranger is virtually un-
virtually adv bearable.

unbearable adj
Everyone around us seems to agree by
cling v the way they cling to their phones, even
without a signal on a subway.
It's a sad reality - our desire to avoid in-
teracting with other human beings - be-
interact v
cause there's much to be gained from
talking to the stranger standing by you.
rejection n
We fear rejection, or that our innocent
social advances will be misinterpreted
advance n as “weird."
We fear we'll be disruptive.
disruptive adj
Strangers are inherently unfamiliar to
inherently adj
us, so we are more likely to feel anxious
when communicating with them com-
acquaintance n pared with our friends and acquaint-
ances.
“Phones become our security blanket,”
blanket n
Wortmann says
“They are our happy glasses that pro-
perceive v tect us from what we perceive is going
to be more dangerous.”
But once we rip off(扯掉，撕掉) the
band-aid n
band-aid, tuck our smartphones in our
pockets and look up, it doesn't hurt so
tuck v bad.
In one 2011 experiment, behavioral sci-
commuter n
entists Nicholas Epley and Juliana

公众号【学长小谭考研】免费分享
 整理自：学长小谭

Schroeder asked commuters to do the

unthinkable adj
unthinkable: Start a conversation.
Though the participants didn't expect a
positive experience, after they went
embarrassed adj through with the experiment，“not a sin-
gle person reported having been embar-
rassed.

阅读理解 Text1
A new study suggests that contrary to
stressed adj most surveys, people are actually
more stressed at home than at work.
Rese archers measured people's corti-
cortisol n
sol, which is a stress marker, while
they were at work and while they
were at home and found it higher at
marker n what is suppose d to be a place of ref-
uge.
“Further contradicting conventional
wisdom, we found that women as
well as men have lower levels of
contradict v
stress at work than at home," writes
one of the researchers, Sarah Dam-
aske.
Another surprise is that the findings
hold true for both those with children
nonparents n
and without, but more so for non-
parents.
What the study doesn't measure is
whether people are still doing work
household adj when they're at home, whether it is
household work or work brought
home from the office.
With the blurring of roles, and the fact
that the home front lags well behind
the workplace in making adjustments
blurring n
for working women, it's not surpris-
ing that women are more stressed at
home.
But it's not just a gender thing.
gender n

公众号【学长小谭考研】免费分享
 整理自：学长小谭

At work, people pretty much know

what they're supposed to be doing:
draw v working, making money, doing the
tasks they have to do in order to draw
an income.
The bargain is very pure: Employee
bargain n
puts in hours of physical or mental la-
bor and employee draws out life-sus-
life-sustaining adj taining moola.

division n
Rare is the household in which the di-
clinically adv vision of labor is so clinically and me-
thodically laid out.
methodically adv
There are a lot of tasks to be done,
inadequate adj there are inadequate rewards for most
of them.
Your home colleagues-your family -
have no clear rewards for their labor;
they need to be talked into it, or if
removal n
they're teenagers, threatened with
complete removal of all electronic
devices.
apparently adv
Not only are the tasks apparently in-
infinite adj finite, the co-workers are much
harder to motivate.
motivate v

阅读理解 Text2
For years，studies have found that
first-generation college students-
those who do not have a parent with a
lag v
college degree-lag other students on a
range of education achievement fac-
tors.
Their grades are lower and their drop-
dropout n
out rates are higher.
This has created “a paradox” in that
paradox n
recruiting first-generation students,
but then watching many of them fail,
recruit v means that higher education has

公众号【学长小谭考研】免费分享
 整理自：学长小谭

“continued to reproduce and widen,

rather than close” an achievement
gap based on social class, according
forthcoming adj
to the depressing beginning of a paper
forthcoming in the journal Psycho-
logical Science.
But the article is actually quite opti-
optimistic adj
mistic, as it outlines a potential solu-
tion to this problem, suggesting that
outline v an approach (which involves a one-
hour, next-to-no-cost program) can
close 63 percent of the achievement
potential adj gap (measured by such factors as
grades) between first-generation and
other students.
The authors of the paper are from dif-
ferent universities, and their findings
finding n are based on a study involving 147
students (who completed the project)
at an unnamed private university.
Most of the first-generation students
recipients n
(59.1 percent) were recipients of Pell
Grants, a federal grant for undergrad-
uates with financial need, while this
grant n was true only for 8.6 percent of the
students with at least one parent with
a four-year degree.
Their thesis-that a relatively modest
thesis n
intervention could have a big impact-
was based on the view that first-gen-
modest adj eration students may be most lacking
not in potential but in practical
intervention n knowledge about how to deal with the
issues that face most college students.
They cite past research by several au-
thors to show that this is the gap that
cite v
must be narrowed to close the
achievement gap.
Many first-generation students
“struggle to navigate the middle-class
culture of higher education, learn the
navigate v
'rules of the game,' and take ad-
vantage of college resources,” they
write.

公众号【学长小谭考研】免费分享
 整理自：学长小谭

“Because US colleges and universi-

ties seldom acknowledge how social
class can affect students' educational
experience, many first-generation
seldom adv
students lack insight about why they
are struggling and do not understand
how students 'like them’ can im-
prove.”

阅读理解 Text3
Even in traditional offices, “the lin-
gua franca[（母语不同的人之间使
用的）通用语、交际语]of corporate
America has gotten much more emo-
right-brained adj
tional and much more right-brained
than it was 20 years ago, "said Har-
vard Business School professor
Nancy Koehn.
She started spinning off examples.
spin v
“ If you and I parachuted back to
Fortune 500 companies in 1990,we
parachute v
would see much less frequent use of
terms like journey, mission, passion.
Koehn pointed out that this new era
of corporate vocabulary is very
era n
“team”-oriented-and not by coinci-
dence.
“ Let's not forget sports-in male-
male-domi-
adj dominated corporate America, it's
nated
still a big deal.
It's not explicitly conscious; it's the
explicitly adv idea that I'm a coach, and you're my
team, and we're in this together.
These terms are also intended to in-
infuse v
fuse work with meaning-and, as
Rakesh Khurana, another professor,
allegiance n points out, increase allegiance to the
firm.
“You have the importation of termi-
importation n
nology that historically used to be

公众号【学长小谭考研】免费分享
 整理自：学长小谭

associated with non-profit organiza-

tions and religious organizations:
terminology n
terms like vision, values, passion, and
purpose,” said Khurana.
This new focus on personal fulfill-
ment can help keep employees moti-
amid prep.
vated amid increasingly loud debates
over work-life balance.
The “mommy wars” of the 1990s are
prompt v
still going on today, prompting argu-
ments about why women still can't
have it all and books like Sheryl
buzzword n Sandberg's Lean In, whose title has
become a buzzword in its own right.

linguist n
As a linguist once said, “You can get
people to think it's nonsense at the
nonsense n same time that you buy into it.”

阅读理解 Text4
For now it appears the economy is
decent adj
creating jobs at a decent pace.
However, there is another important
largely adv
part of the jobs picture that was
largely overlooked.
overlook v
There was a big jump in the number
voluntarily adv of people who report voluntarily
working part-time.
Before explaining the connection to
the
distinction n
Obamacare, it is worth making an im-
portant distinction.
An increase in involuntary part-time
work is evidence of weakness in the
evidence n labor market and it means that many
people will be having a very hard
time making ends meet.
Involuntary part-time employment is
still far higher than before the reces-
recession n sion, but it is down by
640,000(7.9percent) from its year ago
level.

公众号【学长小谭考研】免费分享
 整理自：学长小谭

The survey used by the Labor Depart-

survey n
ment asks people if they worked less
than 35 hours in the reference week.
reference n
The issue of voluntary part-time re-
issue n
lates to Obamacare because one of
the main purposes was to allow peo-
insurance n ple to get insurance outside of em-
ployment.
These are people who may previ-
previously adv
ously have felt the need to get a full-
time job that provided insurance in
cover v order to cover themselves and their
families.

新题型
Moreover, we are grieving various
grieve v kinds of loss: a friendship, a romantic
relationship or a house.
Hard times may hold you down it what
usually seems like the most inopportune
inopportune adj
time, but you should remember that
they won't last forever.
When our time of mourning is over, we
mourn v press forward, stronger with a greater
understanding and respect for life.
This normal human reaction issed to
signal v protect us by signaling danger and pre-
paring us to deal with it.
Unfortunately, people create inner bar-
inner adj
riers with a help of exaggerating fears.
barrier n
I do completely agree that fears are just
luxuriant adj the product of our luxuriant imagina-
tion.
You may feel guilt over your past, but
you are poisoning the present with the
poison v
things and circumstances you cannot
change.
Happiness is not a point of future and
mindset n
not a moment from the past, but a

公众号【学长小谭考研】免费分享
 整理自：学长小谭

mindset that can be designed into the

design v
present.
You can be easily caught up by life
pause v problems that you forget to pause and
appreciate the things you have.
No matter how isolated you might feel
and how serious the situation is, you
isolated adj
should always remember that you are
not alone.
You may have a circle of friends who
companionship n provide constant good hu mor, help and
companionship.
Today many people find it difficult to
objectivity n
trust their own opinion and seek balance
by gaining objectivity from external
external adj sources.
This way you devalue your opinion and
devalue v show that you are incapable of manag-
ing your own life.

翻译
Think about driving a route that's very
route n
familiar.
The consequence is that you perceive
perceive v that the trip has taken less time than it
actually has.
well-travelled adj
This is the well-travelled road effect:
people tend to underestimate the time it
underestimate v takes to travel a familiar route.
The effect is caused by the way we allo-
allocate v
cate our attention.
assume v
So we assume it was shorter.

公众号【学长小谭考研】免费分享