2018~2019年英语专业四级真题及详解【圣才出品】

2018年英语专业四级真题及详解

TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (2018)

-GRADE FOUR-

TIME LIMIT: 130 MIN

PART ⅠDICTATION [10 MIN]

Listen to the following passage. Altogether the passage will be read to you four times. During the first reading, which will be done at normal speed, listen and try to understand the meaning. For the second and third readings, the passage will be read sentence by sentence, or phrase by phrase, with intervals of 15 seconds. The last reading will be done at normal speed again and during this time you should check your work. You will then be given ONE minute to check through your work once more.

Please write the whole passage on ANSWER SHEET ONE.

【答案与解析】

Emotional Reaction to Music

①No matter who you are, where you live, or what your cultural background is, people get some pleasure from listening to their favorite music. ②However, some

people are simply not capable of enjoying music. ③This is not because they can’t experience pleasure at all. ④They don’ have trouble hearing music properly, either. ⑤Instead, they’re just indifferent to music. ⑥Researchers have conducted studies to find out why some people have no emotional reaction to music. ⑦However, despite their efforts, the mystery remains.

【难点点评】

（1）句②中，capable意为“能干的”，与“of”连用“表示能……的”，注意“of”不要遗漏。

（2）句③中，注意“not”不要遗漏。

（3）句⑥中，时态为现在完成时，注意动词用现在分词形式；conduct意为“实施，执行”。（4）句⑦中，注意“mystery”的拼写，其意思为“谜团”。

PART Ⅱ LISTENING COMPREHENSION [20 MIN]

SECTION A TALK

In this section you will hear a talk. You will hear the talk ONCE ONLY. While listening, you may look at the 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 talk. When it is over, you will be given TWO minutes to check your work.

The Linguistic Gift of Babies

Critical age

Decline of bab ies’ lang uage learning ability occurs at the age of (1) _____. (1) _____ Lab work

Research focus:

?How babies learn (2) _____ in the first critical period (2) _____ Research aims:

?developing a model for babies in their critical periods of

—language acquisition

—social, emotional and (3) _____ development (3) _____ Research process:

?Babies need to listen.

?They are trained to turn their heads when (4) _____. (4) _____ ?A panda bear pounds a drum if babies are correct.

Participants:

?(5) _____ babies (5) _____ Results:

?Babies can (6) _____ of all languages. (6) _____ ?Babies become language-bound before (7) _____. (7) _____ —sound reaction between American and Japanese babies

-6 to 8 months old: (8) _____ (8) _____ -two months later: (9) _____ (9) _____ ?Two events during the critical two months

—(10) _____ when listening to a language

—change of babies, brains when distributions grow (10) _____ Conclusion

Language learning may slow down when sound distributions become stable.

【答案与解析】

1. seven

(录音提到“Babies and children are geniuses until they turn seven”，即婴儿和孩子在七岁前一直都是天才，故本题填入seven。)

2. sounds

(录音提到“that is the period in which babies try to master which sounds are used in their language”即这个时期是关于婴儿试着掌握他们语言中的声音，故本题填入sounds。)

3. cognitive

(录音提到“perhaps for critical periods that ... and cognitive development”，即或许关键期也出现在孩童期……也为了研究社会，情感和认知发展，故本题填入cognitive。)

4. a sound changes

(录音提到“and we train them to turn their heads when a sound changes”，即我们训练他们当听到一个声音就转头，故本题填入a sound changes。)

5. six-month-old

(录音提到“usually six-monther”，即6个月大的婴儿，故本题填入six-month-old。)

6. discriminate the sounds

(录音提到“They can discriminate all the sounds of all languages”，即他们能区分所有语言的所有声音，故本题填入discriminate the sounds。)

7. their first birthdays

(录音提到“And the answer: before their first birthdays”，即答案是一岁之前，故本题填入their first birthdays。)

8. totally equivalent

(录音提到“So at six to eight months, the babies are totally equivalent”，即对于6到8个月的婴儿，他们的测试结果完全相似，故本题填入totally equivalent。)

9. incredible difference occurs

(录音提到“Two months later, something incredible occurs”，即2个月之后便产生明显变化，故本题填入incredible difference occurs。)

10. taking statistics

(录音提到“they’re taking statistics as they listen to us talk”，即他们听我们说话

的同时在做统计，故本题填入taking statistics。)

【录音原文】

The Linguistic Gift of Babies

Good morning, everyone. In today’s lecture, I’m going to talk about something you can’t see. That is, what’s going on in the little brain of a baby, for example, how babies learn a language. It is always a question people show great interest in. [1]Babies and children are geniuses until they turn seven, and then there’s a systematic decline.

Work in my lab is focused on the first critical period in development, [2]and that is the period in which babies try to master which sounds are used in their language. We think, b y studying how the sounds are learned, we’ll have a model for the rest of language, [3]and perhaps for critical periods that may exist in childhood for social, emotional and cognitive development.

So we’ve been studying the babies by conducting an experiment. During our experiment, the baby, [5]usually six-monther, sits on a parent’s lap,[4]and we train them to turn their heads when a sound changes—like from “ah” to “ee”. If they do so at the appropriate time, the black box lights up and a panda bear pounds a drum.

What have we learned? Well, babies all over the world are what I like to descr ibe as “citizens of the world”. [6]They can discriminate all the sounds of all languages, no matter what country we’re testing and what language we’re using a nd that’s remarkable because you know I can’t do that. We’re culture-bound

listeners. We can discriminate the sounds of our own language, but not those of foreign languages.

So the question arises: When do those citizens of the world turn into the language-bound listeners that we are? [7]And the answer: before their first birthdays. What you see here is performance on that head-turn task for babies tested in Tokyo and the United States, here in Seattle, a s they listened to the “ra” and “la”-sounds important to English, but not to Japanese. [8]So at six to eight months, the babies are totally equivalent. [9]Two months later, something incredible occurs. The babies in the United States are getting a lot better while babies in Japan are getting a lot worse.

So the question is: What’s happening during this critical two month period? We know this is the crit ical period for sound developments but what’s going on up there? Maybe there are two things going on. The first is that the babies are listening intently to us, [10]and they’re taking statistics as they listen to us talk-they’re taking statistics. That is to say the two babies listen to their own mother speaking motherese—the universal language we use when we talk to kids. During the production of speech when babies listen what they’re doing is taking statistics that is sound distribution on the language that they hear. And those sound distributions grow and babies absorb more. And what we’ve learned is that babies are sensitive to the statistics, and the statistics of Japanese and English are very, very different. I mean, the sound distribution of both languages is different. So babies absorb the statistics of the language and it changes their brains; it