2016年12月大学英语四级考试真题(第二套)
2016年12月大学英语四级考试真题（第二套）Part I Writing (30 minutes) Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay. Suppose you have two options upon graduation: One is to find a job somewhere andthe other to start a business of your own. You are to make a decision.Write an essay to explain the reasons for your decision. You should writeat least 120 words but no more than 180 words.Part ⅡListening Comprehension (25 minutes) Section ADirections:In this section, you will hear three news reports. At the end of each news report, you will hear two or three questions. Both the news report andthe questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, youmust choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) andD). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a singleline through the centre.Questions 1 and 2 are based on the news report you have just heard.1. A) To satisfy the curiosity of tourists.B) To replace two old stone bridges.C) To enable tourists to visit Goat Island.D) To improve utility services in the state.2. A) Countless tree limbs.B) A few skeletons.C) Lots of wrecked boats and ships.D) Millions of coins on the bottom.Questions 3 and 4 are based on the news report you have just heard.3. A) It suspended diplomatic relations with Libya.B) It urged tourists to leave Tunisia immediately.C) It shut down two border crossings with Libya.D) It launched a fierce attack against Islamic State.4. A) Advise Tunisian civilians on how to take safety precautions.B) Track down the organization responsible for the terrorist attack.C) Train qualified security personnel for the Tunisian government.D) Devise a monitoring system on the Tunisian border with Libya.Questions 5 to 7 are based on the news report you have just heard.5. A) An environment-friendly battery.B) An energy-saving mobile phone.C) A plant-powered mobile phone charger.D) A device to help plants absorb sunlight.6. A) While sitting in their schools courtyard.B) While playing games on their phones.C) While solving a mathematical problem.D) While doing a chemical experiment.7. A) It increases the applications of mobile phones.B) It speeds up the process of photosynthesis.C) It improves the reception of mobile phones.D) It collects the energy released by plants.Section BDirections:In this section, you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation, you will hear four questions. Both the conversation and thequestions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you mustchoose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single linethrough the centre.Questions 8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.8. A) He visited the workshops in the Grimsby plant.B) He called the woman and left her a message.C) He used stand-ins as replacements on all lines.D) He asked a technician to fix the broken production line.9. A) It is the most modern production line.B) It assembles super-intelligent robots.C) It has stopped working completely.D) It is going to be upgraded soon.10. A) To seek her permission.B) To place an order for robots.C) To request her to return at once.D) To ask for Tom’s phone number.11. A) She is on duty.B) She is having her day off.C) She is on sick leave.D) She is abroad on business.Questions 12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.12. A) He saved a baby boy’s life.B) He wanted to be a superhero.C) He prevented a train crash.D) He was a witness to an accident.13. A) He has a 9-month-old boy.B) He is currently unemployed.C) He enjoys the interview.D) He commutes by subway.14. A) A rock on the tracks.B) A misplaced pushchair.C) A strong wind.D) A speeding car.15. A) She stood motionless in shock.B) She cried bitterly.C) She called the police at once.D) She shouted for help.Section CDirections:In this section, you will hear three passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear three or four questions. Both the passage and the questionswill be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose thebest answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then markthe corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1with a single line throughthe centre.Questions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard.16. A) She inherited her family ice-cream business in Billings.B) She loved the ice-cream business more than teaching primary school.C) She started an ice-cream business to finance her daughter’s education.D) She wanted to have an ice-cream truck when she was a little girl.17. A) To preserve a tradition.B) To amuse her daughter.C) To help local education.D) To make some extra money.18. A) To raise money for business expansion.B) To make her truck attractive to children.C) To allow poor kids to have ice-cream too.D) To teach kids the value of mutual support.Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard.19. A) The reasons for imposing taxes.B) The various services money can buy.C) The various burdens on ordinary citizens.D) The function of money in the modern world.20. A) Educating and training citizens.B) Improving public transportation.C) Protecting people’s life and property.D) Building hospitals and public libraries.21. A) By asking for donations.B) By selling public lands.C) By selling government bonds.D) By exploiting natural resources.Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.22. A) It is located at the center of the European continent.B) It relies on tourism as its chief source of revenues.C) It contains less than a square mile of land.D) It is surrounded by France on three sides.23. A) Its beauty is frequently mentioned in American media.B) Its ruler Prince Rainier married an American actress.C) It is where many American movies are shot.D) It is a favorite place Americans like to visit.24. A) Tobacco.B) Potatoes.C) Machinery.D) Clothing.25. A) European history.B) European geography.C) Small countries in Europe.D) Tourist attractions in Europe.Part ⅢReading Comprehension (40 minutes) Section ADirections: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a wordbank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully beforemaking your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter.Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the wordsin the bank more than once.Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.The ocean is heating up. That’s the conclusion of a new study that finds that Earth’s oceans now 26 heat at twice the rate they did 18 years ago. Around half of ocean heat intake since 1865 has taken place since 1997, researchers report online in Nature Climate Change.Warming waters are known to 27 to coral bleaching(珊瑚白化) and they take up more space than cooler waters, raising sea 28 . While the top of the ocean is well studied, its depths are more difficult to 29 . The researchers gathered 150 years of ocean temperature data in order to get a better 30 of heat absorption from surface to seabed. They gathered together temperature readings collected by everything from a 19th century 31 of British naval ships to modern automated ocean probes. The extensive data sources, 32 with computer simulations (计算机模拟), created a timeline of ocean temperature changes, including cooling fromvolcanic outbreaks and warming from fossil fuel 33 .About 35 percent of the heat taken in by the oceans during the industrial era now resides at a 34 of more than 700 meters, the researchers found. They saySection BDirections: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of theparagraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information isderived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraphis marked with a letter. Answer the question by marking thecorresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.The Secret to Raising Smart Kids[A] I first began to investigate the basis of human motivation—and how peoplepersevere after setbacks—as a psychology graduate student at Yale University in the 1960s. Animal experiments by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania had shown that after repeated failures, most animals conclude that a situation is hopeless and beyond their control. After such an experience an animal often remains passive even when it can effect change—a state they called learned helplessness.[B] People can learn to be helpless, too. Why do some students give up when theyencounter difficulty, whereas others who are no more skilled continue to strive and learn? One answer, I soon discovered, lay in people’s beliefs about why they had failed.[C]In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depressesmotivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame. When I told a group of school children who displayed helpless behavior that a lack of effort led to their mistakes in math, they learned to keep trying when the problems got tough. Another group of helpless children who were simply rewarded for their success on easier problems did not improve their ability to solve hard math problems. These experiments indicated that a focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and generate success.[D]Later, I developed a broader theory of what separates the two general classes oflearners-helpless versus mastery-oriented. I realized these different types of students not only explain their failures differently, but they also hold different “theories” of intell igence. The helpless ones believe intelligence is a fixed characteristic: you have only a certain amount, and that’s that. I call this a “fixed mind-set (思维模式) .” Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. They avoid challenges because challenges make mistakes more likely. The mastery-oriented children, on the other hand, think intelligence is not fixed and can be developed through education and hard work. Such children believe challenges are energizing rather than intimidating(令人生畏); they offer opportunities to learn. Students with such a growth mind-set were destined (注定) for greater academic success and were quite likely to outperform their counterparts.[E] We validated these expectations in a study in which two other psychologists and Imonitored 373 students for two years during the transition to junior high school, when the work gets more difficult and the grading more strict, to determine how their mind-sets might affect their math grades. At the beginning of seventh grade, we assessed the students’mind-sets by asking them to agree or disagree with statements such as “Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t really change.” We then assessed their beliefs about other aspects of learning and looked to see what happened to their grades.[F] As predicted, the students with a growth mind-set felt that learning was a moreimportant goal than getting good grades. In addition, they held hard work in high regard. They understood that even geniuses have to work hard. Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy. The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with less regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.[G] Such different outlooks had a dramatic impact on performance. At the start ofjunior high, the math achievement test scores of the students with a growth mind-set were comparable to those of students who displayed a fixed mind-set.But as the work became more difficult, the students with a growth mind-set showed greater persistence. As a result, their math grades overtook those of the other students by the end of the first semester—and the gap between the two groups continued to widen during the two years we followed them.[H]A fixed mind-set can also hinder communication and progress in the workplaceand discourage or ignore constructive criticism and advice. Research shows that managers who have a fixed mind-set are less likely to seek or welcome feedback from their employees than are managers with a growth mind-set.[I] How do we transmit a growth mind-set to our children? One way is by tellingstories about achievements that result from hard work. For instance, talking about mathematical geniuses who were more or less born that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who fell in love with math and developed amazing skills produce a growth mind-set.[J] In addition, parents and teachers can help children by providing explicit instruction regarding the mind as a learning machine. I designed an eight-session workshop for 91 students whose math grades were declining in their first year of junior high.Forty-eight of the students received instruction in study skills only, whereas theothers attended a combination of study skills sessions and classes in which they learned about the growth mind-set and how to apply it to schoolwork. In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an art icle entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts the brain to grow new connections.From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Despite being unaware that there were two types of instruction, teachers reported significant motivational changes in 27% of the children in the growth mind-set workshop as compared with only 9% of students in the control group.[K] Research is converging (汇聚) on the conclusion that great accomplishment and even genius is typically the result of years of passion and dedication and not something that flows naturally from a gift.36. The author’s experiment shows that students with a fixed mind-set believe havingto work hard is an indication of low ability.37. Focusing on effort is effective in helping children overcome frustration andachieve success.38. We can cultivate a growth mind-set in children by telling success stories thatemphasize hard work and love of learning.39. Students’ belief about the cause of their failure explains the ir attitude towardsetbacks.40. In the author’s experiment, students with a growth mind-set showed greaterperseverance in solving difficult math problems.41. The author conducted an experiment to find out about the influence of students’mind-sets on math learning.42. After failing again and again, most animals give up hope.43. Informing students about the brain as a learning machine is a good strategy toenhance their motivation for learning.44. People with a fixed mind-set believe that one’s intelli gence is unchangeable.45. In the workplace, feedback may not be so welcome to managers with a fixedmind-set.Section CDirections:There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are fourchoices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choiceand mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single linethrough the centre.Passage OneQuestions 46 to 50 are based on following passage.“Sugar, alcohol and tobacco,” economist Adam Smith once wrote, “are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which have become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are, therefore, extremely popular subjects of taxation.”Two and a half centuries on, most countries impose some sort of tax on alcohol and tobacco. With surging obesity levels putting increasing strain on public health systems, governments around the world have begun to toy with the idea of taxing sugar as well.Whether such taxes work is a matter of debate. A preliminary review of Mexico’s taxation found a fall in purchases of taxed drinks as well as a rise in sales of untaxed and healthier drinks. By contrast, a Danish tax on foods high in fats was abandoned a year after its introduction, amid claims that consumers were avoiding it by crossing the border to Germany to satisfy their desire for cheaper, fattier fare.The food industry has, in general, been firmly opposed to such direct government action. Nonetheless, the renewed focus on waistlines means that industry groups are under pressure to demonstrate their products are healthy as well as tasty.Over the past three decades, the industry has made some efforts to improve the quality of its offerings. For example, some drink manufactures have cut the amount of sugar in their beverages.Many of the reductions over the past 30 years have been achieved either by reducing the amount of sugar, salt or fat in a product, or by finding an alternative ingredient. More recently, however, some companies have been investing money in a more ambitious undertaking: learning how to adjust the fundamental make-up of the food they sell. For example, having salt on the outside, but none on the inside, reduces the salt content without changing the taste.While reformulating recipes(配方) is one way to improve public health, it should be part of a multi-sided approach. The key is to remember that there is not just one solution. To deal with obesity, a mixture of approaches—including reformulation, taxation and adjusting portion sizes—will be needed. There is no silver bullet.46. What did Adam Smith say about sugar, alcohol and tobacco?A) They were profitable to manufacture.B) They were in ever-increasing demand.C) They were subject to taxation almost everywhere.D) They were no longer considered necessities of life.47. Why have many countries started to consider taxing sugar?A) They are under growing pressures to balance their national budgets.B) They find it ever harder to cope with sugar-induced health problems.C) They practice of taxing alcohol and tobacco has proved both popular andprofitable.D) The sugar industry is overtaking alcohol and tobacco business in generatingprofits.48. What do we learn about Danish taxation on fat-rich foods?A) It did not work out as well as was expected.B) It gave rise to a lot of problems on the border.C) It could not succeed without German cooperation.D) It met with firm opposition from the food industry.49. What is the more recent effort by food companies to make foods and drinks bothhealthy and tasty?A) Replacing sugar or salt with alternative ingredients.B) Setting a limit on the amount of sugar or salt in their products.C) Investing in research to find ways to adapt to consumers’ needs.D) Adjusting the physical composition of their products.50. What does the author mean by saying, at the end of the passage, “There is nosilver bullet” (Line 4, Para. 7)?A) There is no single easy quick solution to the problem.B) There is no hope of success without public cooperation.C) There is no hurry in finding ways to solve the obesity problem.D) There is no effective way to reduce people’s sugar consu mption.Passage TwoQuestions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.You may have heard some of the fashion industry horror stories: models eating tissues or cotton balls to hold off hunger, and models collapsing from hunger-induced heart attacks just seconds after they step off the runway.Excessively skinny models have been a point of controversy for decades, and two researchers say a model’s body mass should be a workplace health and safety issue. In an editorial released Monday in the American Journal of Public Health, Katherine Record and Bryn Austin made their case for government regulation of the fashion industry.The average international runway model has a body mass index (BMI) under 16-low enough to indicate starvation by the World Health Or ganization’s standard. And Record and Austin are worried not just about the models themselves, but about the vast number of girls and women their images influence.“Especially girls and teens”, says Record. “Seventy percent of girls aged 10 to 18 report th at they define perfect body image based on what they see in magazines.” That’s especially worrying, she says, given that anorexia(厌食症) results in more deaths than does any other mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.It’s co mmonly known that certain diseases are linked with occupations like lung disease in coal miners. Professional fashion models are particularly vulnerable to eating disorders resulting from occupational demands to maintain extreme thinness.Record’s suggesti on is to prohibit agents from hiring models with a BMI below 18.In April, France passed a law setting lower limits for a model’s w eight. Agents and fashion houses who hire models with BMI under 18 could pay $82,000 in fines and spend up to 6 months in jail. Regulating the fashion industry in the United States won’t be easy, Record says. But with the new rules in France, U.S. support could make a difference. “A designer can’t survive without participating in Paris Fashion Week,” she says, adding, “Our argument is that the same would be true of New York Fashion Week.”51. What do Record and Austin say about fashion models’ body mass?A) It has caused needless controversy.B) It is but a matter of personal taste.C) It is the focus of the modeling business.D) It affects models’ health and safety.52. What are Record and Austin advocating in the Monday editorial?A) A change in the public’s view of female beauty.B) Government legislation about models’ weight.C) Elimination of forced weight loss by models.D) Prohibition of models eating non-food stuff.53. Why are Record and Austin especially worried about the low body mass index ofmodels?A) It contributes to many mental illnesses.B) It defines the future of the fashion industry.C) It has great influence on numerous girls and women.D) It keeps many otherwise qualified women off the runaway.54. What do we learn about France’s fashion industry?A) It has difficulty hiring models.B) It has now a new law to follow.C) It allows girls under 18 on the runway.D) It has overtaken that of the United States.55. What does Record expect of New York Fashion Week?A) It will create a completely new set of rules.B) It will do better than Paris Fashion Week.C) It will differ from Paris Fashion Week.D) It will have models with a higher BMI.Part ⅣTranslation (30 minutes) Directions:For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2.随着中国的改革开放，如今很多年轻人都喜欢举行西式婚礼。
2022年12月大学英语四级考试真题(第2套)含答案
2022年12月大学英语四级考试真题（第2套）Part I Writing(30minutes) Directions:In this task,you are to write an essay on the necessity of developing social skills for college students.You will have30minutes for the task.You should write at least120 words but no more than180words.PartⅡListening Comprehension(25minutes) Section ADirections:In this section,you will hear three news reports.At the end of each news report, you will hear two or three questions.Both the news report and the questions will be spoken only once.After you hear a question,you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A）,B),C)and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet1with a single line through the centre.Questions1and2are based on the news report you have just heard.1.A)Part of its dam wall collapsed.B)It released a lot of harmful gases.C)It was destroyed by an earthquake.D)Some miners were trapped underground.2.A)It posed a safety threat to the miners.B)It caused damage too heavy to assess.C)It brought the mine’s operations to a halt.D)It was followed by two more earthquakes.Questions3and4are based on the news report you have just heard.3.A)It prepared beds for all the six new citizens.B)It assigned a team of doctors for each expected baby.C)It made ample preparations for various possibilities.D)It brought in the most advanced instruments.4.A)They had to undergo2-3physical checkups.B)They were all of normal size except the sixth.C)They could go home together with their mother a day later.D)They needed to stay in the hospital for a couple of months.Questions5to7are based on the news report you have just heard.5.A)It is owned by the local government.B)It has been turned into a public park.C)It has been bought by an American.D)It is a perfect tourist destination.6.A)Its seafood.B)Its unusual coastline.C)Its unspoiled beaches.D)Its architecture.7.A)It has an unmatched location.B)It is worth over18million euros.C)It has beautiful weather all year round.D)It is an ideal place to meet famous stars.Section BDirections:In this section,you will hear two long conversations.At the end of each conversation,you will hear four questions.Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once.After you hear a question,you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A），B），C)and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1with a single line through the centre.Questions8to11are based on the conversation you have just heard.8.A)She has been attending some group classes.B)She has registered for two new gym classes.C)She became a member of the gym two months ago.D)She is entitled to a discount on all the gym exercises.9.A)Considering the promotion of its regular classes.B)Taking measures to expand its exercise programs.C)Recruiting coaches for hot yoga and advanced spinning.D)Offering existing members a discount of two new classes.10.A)She missed the deadline for the10-week course.B)She missed out on the gym’s general discount.C)She didn’t sign up for membership in time.D)She wasn’t so much interested in hot yoga.11.A)She doesn’t want to reveal her card details over the phone.B)She doesn’t think it wise to pay before attending any class.C)She might have to cancel her registration any minute.D)She prefers to have the fee added to her monthly billQuestions12to15are based on the conversation you have just heard.12.A)To make investments.B)To sign a business contract.C)To research new markets.D)To open a new office.13.A)Dubai.B)Beijing.C)Amsterdam.D)Earl’s Court.14.A)Rent a bike for him to get around the town.B)Reserve a meeting room in the head office.C)Help him prepare his presentation.D)Send him a map of the hotel area.15.A)Bring his projector.B)Keep all his receipts.C)Submit his claims form.D)Pay with his credit card.Section CDirections:In this section,you will hear three passages.At the end of each passage,you will hear three or four questions.Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question,you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B),C)and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet1with a single line through the centre.Questions16to18are based on the passage you have just heard.16.A)Whether a country’s educational level is linked to women’s rights.B)Whether women’s rights are making good progress around the world.C)Whether a country’s protection of women’s rights is related to its public health.D)Whether women’s rights are more often overlooked in less-developed countries.17.A)Their people still have better health if women’s rights are respected.B)They must make efforts to increase women’s access to health care.C)Their people tend to attach importance to women’s rights.D)They need to invest more in hospital staff and facilities.18.A)Their link with a country’s public health.B)Their potential impact on social progress.C)Their value to a country’s international image.D)Their positive effect on economic development.Questions19to21are based on the passage you have just heard.19.A)It creates a wonderful setting for dating.B)It may cause strange physical reactions.C)It turns parks into picnic sites.D)It may result in a crowded beach.20.A)Breathing difficulty.B)Bad breath.C)Excessive sweating.D)High blood pressure.21.A)It protects people against bacteria.B)It enables people to build up endurance.C)It accelerates people’s blood circulation.D)It provides people with extra energy.Questions22to25are based on the passage you have just heard.22.A)They are more likely to win in combat sports.B)They are in the minority among the population.C)They have a higher chance of joining sports teams.D)They have more disadvantages in getting ahead.23.A)Their brain is more powerful than that of right-handed people.B)The left side of their brain is more powerful than its right side.C)They tend to be a lot more aggressive than right-handed people.D)Their brain has a stronger connection between its two sides.24.A)They have a larger brain.B)It still remains unknown.C)It is related to their genes.D)They are better at reasoning.25.A)Teach them how to perform tasks with their right hand.B)Help them fully develop their mathematical abilities.C)Encourage them to play fast-paced interactive sports.D)Advise them to choose jobs that require quick reactionsPart III Reading Comprehension(40minutes) Section ADirections:In this section,there is a passage with ten blanks.You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage.Read the passage through carefully before making your choices.Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter.Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2with a single line through the centre.You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once．Researchers,writing in the journal Heart,pooled data from23studies and found that social isolation or feelings of loneliness were tied to an increased risk of coronary heart disease(冠心病)and strokes.The studies included data from181,006men and women ages18and over.There were4,628 coronary events and3,002strokes in follow-up periods26from three to21years. Three of the papers27loneliness,18looked at social isolation and two included both. Social isolation and loneliness were determined with questionnaires;the researchers depended on medical records and death28for determining coronary events and strokes.The scientists found that loneliness and social isolation increased the29risk of having a heart attack or a death from heart disease by29percent,and the risk of stroke by32 percent.There were no30between men and women.“People have tended to focus from a policy point of view on31lonely people to make them more32,”said the lead author,Nicole K.Valtorta,a research fellow at the University of York in England.“Our study33that if this is a risk factor,then we should be trying to prevent the risk factor in the first place.”The authors34that this was a review of observational studies and did not35 cause and effect.A)acknowledge F)establish K)producesB)certificates G)formats L)rangingC)connected H)measured M)relativeD)demonstrates I)narrow N)submittingE)differences J)permanent O)targetingSection BDirections:In this section,you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs.Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived.You may choose a paragraph more than once.Each paragraph is marked with a letter.Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet2.The hidden costs colleges don’t want you to know aboutA)This fall,thousands of college students from across the country will begin theirundergraduate studies at colleges around the nation.They will inevitably pack too much to fit in their tiny dorm rooms.They will also carry with them a huge student loan debt,in addition to countless“hidden”out-of-pocket costs paid for by their bank accounts and the bank accounts of their families.B)At my well-respected,private,four-year university in Washington,D.C.,which boasts ayearly tuition of$44,046not including room and board,I receive over$57,000yearly in financial aid.As a student from a family that is struggling to make ends meet,my financial aid package is a combination of federal grants and federal work study,university merit scholarships and financial aid awards,and about$8,000yearly in federally subsidized(有补贴的)and unsubsidized loans.On paper,my expenses and my financial aid just about even out.Off paper,they don’t.C)Universities today are in the business of making money,and mine is no exception.Theyhit me right out of gate with a$160fee to attend my freshman orientation,a price which does not include the cost of travel to and from the District.Almost every class has an associated fee not included in the cost of tuition,most between$40and$100.Fees for lab science classes are the highest,and all students at my university are required to take at least one lab before they graduate.Buying a laptop proved a necessity and,thankfully,a relative bought me one as a gift.Renting a mini-fridge for my dorm room costs my roommates and me about$140a year.D)Schools will charge you whatever they can.The costs of any damage to the dorm,including elevators,bathrooms,and common areas,are billed to every person on a dorm floor,or even the entire building if they do not know who caused the damage.After I fell out of my bed twice during my freshman year,the university installed a railing—for$20, billed to my student account.My financial aid did not anticipate any of the costs and so it did not cover them.E)An Internet search of“hidden costs”of college turns up a host of articles on parent-centered websites on the college application process.These articles are almost always geared towards upper-and middle-class families.For students already struggling to pay tuition,these costs may be the least of their worries.F)So what hidden costs should low-income students really be paying attention to?My college experience offers a few examples.G)If you are a low-income student who will be attending school out-of-state,make sure youknow if you can use your state benefits,such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,or SNAP.It wasn’t until after I had accepted admission to an out-of-state school that I learned that I could not use my Ohio Medicaid on campus for anything other than emergency care.My benefits became invalid the second I moved out of Ohio.After my freshman year,I had to opt for the school’s insurance plan,which costs around$2,000a year.Even if your school offers a flat-rate fee for a doctor’s appointment at the student health center(mine is$20a visit),these fees often do not include extra fees for lab tests or prescription medications(药物).H)If you plan on paying off bills in your student account with a credit card,be aware of anyadditional costs.My school charges an additional fee for the use of a credit card to settle outstanding charges,which can add upwards of3%of the balance to your bill.I)There is another depressing reality hidden within even the largest financial aid packages:Colleges often offer the most generous packages during freshman year as a way to attract new students.My family was careful to ask about the chances of financial aid being taken away after my freshman year.We were assured that,except for low grades or a raise in family income,no money would be taken away.We did not know to ask—and the school did not readily point out—that even if tuition rises,my financial aid package will stay the same.So when my university voted to raise tuition costs3%at the end of my freshman year,my financial aid package remained the same and I was suddenly responsible for an additional$1,200for the next year.The university administration will likely vote to raise costs at least once more before my graduation.J)Yes,I chose to attend an expensive university far from my hometown.Yes,there were cheaper options.But there are promising students from struggling families across the nation who should not rule out their dream schools entirely.All things considered,I am paying significantly less than the ticket price of my university,and having an educational experience in Washington,D.C.,that I would not have had anywhere else.As a low-income student from a down-and-out Rust Belt community,these educational experiences have enormous potential to brighten my future—and my family’s future.K)The key is to make sure that students and their families understand that hidden costs exist, and that they may prove problematic.Fill out a more comprehensive checklist,and be wary of listed prices that seem too low.Understand just how complicated the financial aid process is.L)Students and families must also understand their ability to self-advocate.They should not pay student bills or excess fees blindly.If something does not look right,ask about it.If it still doesn’t look right,negotiate it.In cases where parents are working multiple jobs,are less knowledgeable about college bureaucracies,have limited English language skills,orare not contributing financially to their child’s education,the burden of self-advocacy will fall on the student.I understand the difficulty,and the embarrassment.But it is necessary. M)In the grand scheme of things,however,colleges also must come to understand that the hidden fees they ask for may prove unmanageable for the very kinds of low-income or first-generation students they are trying desperately to attract.36.Students’financial aid remains unchanged even when tuition rises.37.Students may not be able to enjoy their state benefits when they go to college out of the state.38.The financial aid the author receives is supposed to cover all her college expenses.39.When the person who damages dorm facilities is not identified,students are required to share the cost.40.Though it is difficult and embarrassing,students should make inquiries about what fees they have to pay and why.41.Today,many Americans have to go to college on student loans.42.Receiving education in a private university in the nation’s capital may change the author’s future life and that of her family’s.43.Students may no longer be qualified for financial aid if they perform poorly in school or if their family income has increased.44.In addition to tuition,college students have to pay extra fees for the courses they take.45.Some schools charge students a fee to their student accounts for using credit cards to pay billsSection CDirections:There are2passages in this section.Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements.For each of them there are four choices marked A),B),C)and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet2 with a single line through the centre.Passage OneQuestions46to50are based on the following passage.To write his2010book,The5-Factor World Diet,nutritionist Harley Pasternak traveled to the healthiest countries around the world to learn more about what made their meals extra nourishing.He noted that Japanese people ate a wonderful variety of seaweeds,and that Chinese people tried to include at least five different colors in every meal.Pasternak also came away with some valuable observations about how different the North American way of life was, compared with many other countries.For starters,Americans eat much bigger portions than people in other countries.“We don’t prioritize eating seasonally or locally,and we also add lots of salt,sugar and thickening agents to our foods,”explained Pasternak.Contrast that to the healthy Mediterranean,Nordicand Okinawan diets listed in Pasternak’s book.They all seem to stick to the ethos(特质)of regional,seasonal produce.For example,a traditional Mediterranean diet includes fruits,vegetables,whole grains, nuts and olive oil as the main components of nutritional intake.Fish,chicken and red wine make moderate appearances,while red meat,salt and sugar are used much less often.The benefits of a traditional Mediterranean diet have been studied since the1970s,and researchers have found that living that olive oil life can help people lose weight,lower their heart disease risk and reverse diabetes.Most other healthy eating cultures also make meals an event—say,multiple courses around the family table,or a glass or two of red wine at a long lunch—as opposed to hastily wolfing down handfuls of cereal above the kitchen sink and calling it dinner.Each of the healthy eating cultures has its own unique feature.But Pasternak did take note of one unifying factor in all of the healthy societies he observed.“The only overlapping feature in most of these healthy countries is that they all walk way more than the average American,”said Pasternak,“So really,regardless of what you’re eating,if someone’s walking four miles more than you each day,they’re going to be a lot thinner and live a lot longer than you.”46.What characterizes Japanese and Chinese foods?A)Variety.B)Flavor.C)Color.D)Naturalness.47.What is typical of Americans in the way of eating?A)They emphasize nutrition.B)They tend to eat quite a lot.C)They prioritize convenience.D)They care about flavors.48.What features in Mediterranean,Nordic and Okinawan diets?A)Fruits and vegetables.B)Olive oil and red wine.C)Seasonal local produce.D)Unprocessed ingredients.49.What do people in most healthy eating cultures have in common?A)They get the whole family to eat at a table.B)They eat their meals regularly and punctually.C)They consume plenty of cereal for breakfast.D)They attach great importance to their meals.pared with the average American,people in healthy societies______.A)walk at least4miles a dayB)do considerably more walkingC)pay more attention to body shapeD)consume a lot more organic foodPassage TwoQuestions51to55are based on the following passage.Recognizing when a friend or colleague feels sad,angry or surprised is key to getting along with others.But a new study suggests that being sensitive to people’s feelings may sometimes come with an extra dose of stress.This and other research challenge the prevailing view that emotional intelligence is uniformly beneficial to its bearer.In a study,psychologist Myriam Bechtoldt of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany asked166male university students a series of questions to measure their emotional intelligence.For example,they showed the students photographs of people’s faces and asked them to what extent feelings such as happiness or disgust were being expressed.The students then had to give job talks in front of judges who displayed serious facial expressions.The scientists measured concentrations of stress hormones in the students’saliva(唾液)before and after the talk.In students who were rated more emotionally intelligent,the stress measures increased more during the experiment and took longer to go back to baseline.The findings suggest that some people may be too emotionally clever for their own good,says Bechtoldt.“Sometimes you can be so good at something that it causes trouble,”she notes.Indeed,the study adds to previous research hinting at a dark side of emotional intelligence.A study published in2002in Personality and Individual Differences suggested that emotionally perceptive people might be particularly influenced by feelings of depression and hopelessness.Furthermore,several studies have implied that emotional intelligence can be used to manipulate others for personal gains.More research is needed to see how exactly the relation between emotional intelligence and stress would play out in women and in people of different ages and education levels. Nevertheless,emotional intelligence is a useful skill to have,as long as you learn to also properly cope with emotions—both others’and your own,says Bechtoldt.For example,some sensitive individuals may assume responsibility for other people’s sadness or anger,which ultimately stresses them out.Remember,as Bechtoldt says,“you are not responsible for how other people feel.”51.What is the finding of the new study?A)Emotional intelligence helps people get along with others.B)Emotional intelligence is generally beneficial to its bearer.C)People who are aware of others’feelings may experience more stress.D)People who are emotionally stressed may have trouble making friends.52.What was the purpose of psychologist Myriam Bechtoldt’s experiment?A)To define different types of human feelings.B)To assess the impacts of being emotionally clever.C)To demonstrate how to distinguish different feelings.D)To identify gender differences in emotional intelligence.53.What does the finding of Myriam Bechtoldt’s study indicate?A)Greater emotional cleverness means less trouble in one’s life.B)Emotional intelligence helps people succeed in job interviews.C)People’s psychological wellbeing is related to various factors.D)People may suffer from having a high emotional intelligence.54.What do we learn about emotional intelligence from a number of studies?A)People suffering from depression are emotionally immature.B)People who look at the dark side of life often feel depressed.C)Some people may take advantage of it and benefit themselves.D)Some people may lack it and are easily manipulated by others.55.What does the author suggest sensitive individuals do?A)Avoid burdening themselves with others’feelings.B)Rid themselves of worries over worldly affairs.C)Learn to cope with people’s negative feelings.D)Help people to deal with their troubles in life.PartⅣTranslation(30minutes) Directions:For this part,you are allowed30minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English.You should write your answer on Answer Sheet2.立春（Start of Spring）在中国农历中表示春天的开始。
2016年12月大学英语四级考试真题(第3套)及答案详解
2016年12月大学英语四级考试真题(第3套)Part IWriting(30 minutes)Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay. Suppose you have twooptions upon graduation: one is to work in a state-owned business and the other in ajoint venture. You are to make a choice between the two. Write an essay to explain thereasons for your choice.You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180words.Part IIListening Comprehension(25 minutes）说明：由于2016年12月四级考试全国共考了2套听力，本套真题听力与前2套内容完全一样，只是顺序不一样，因此在本套真题中再也不重复显现。
Part ⅢReading Comprehension(40 minutes）Section ADirections: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one wordfor each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read thepassage through carefully before making your choices.Each choice in the bank isidentified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on AnswerSheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in thebank more than once.Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.Many men and women have long bought into the idea that there are "male" and "female" brains,believing that explains just about every difference between the sexes. A new study26that belief,questioning whether brains really can be distinguished by gender.In the study, Tel Aviv University researchers27for sex differences throughout the entirehuman brain.And what did they find Not much. Rather than offer evidence for28brains as "male" or"female," research shows that brains fall into a wide range, with most people falling right in themiddle.Daphna Joel, who led the study, said her research found that while there are some gender-based29, many different types of brain can't always be distinguished by gender.While the "average" male and "average" female brains were30different, youcouldn't tell itby looking at individual brain scans. Only a small31of people had "all-male" or "all-female"characteristics.Larry Cahill, an American neuroscientist ( 神经科学家), said the study is an important addition toa growing body of research questioning32beliefs about gender and brain function. But hecautioned against concluding from this study that all brains are the same,33of gender."There's a mountain of evidence34the importance of sex influences at all levels of brainfunction," he told The Seattle Times.If anything, he said, the study35that gender plays a very important role in the brain--" evenwhen we are not clear exactly how. "A.abnormalB.appliedC.brieflyD.categorizingE.challengesF.figureG.percentageH.provingI.regardlessJ.searchedK.similaritiesL.slightlyM.suggestsN. tastes0.traditionalSection BDirections：In this section，you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Eachstatement contains information given in one of the paragraphs．Identify the paragraphfrom which the information is derived．You may choose a paragraph more than once．Each paragraph is marked with a letter．Answer the questions by marking thecorresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2．Can Burglars Jam Your Wireless Security System?A.Any product that promises to protect your home deserves careful examination．So it isn’t surprising thatyou’11 find plenty of strong opinions about the potential vulnerabilities of popular home—security systems．B.The most likely type of burglary(人室盗窃)by far is the unsophisticated crime of opportunity，usuallyinvolving a broken window or some forced entry．According to the FB1．crimes like these accounted forroughly two．thirds of all household burglaries in the US in 2021．The wide majority of the rest were illegal．unforced entries that resulted from something like a window being left open．The odds of a criminal usingtechnical means to bypass a security system are so small that the FBI doesn’t even track those statistics．C.One of the main theoretical home—security concerns is whether or not a given system is vulnerable to beingblocked from working altogether．With wired setups，the fear is that a burglar(人室盗贼)might be ableto shut your system down simply by cutting the right cable．With a wireless setup．you stick battery—powered sensors up around your home that keep an eye on windows。
201612月大学英语四级第一套真题和答案解析
完美WORD 格式2016年12月大学英语四级试题（第一套）。
Part I Writing （30minutes）（请于正式开考后半小时内完成该部分，之后将进行听力考试）Directions：For this part， you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay .Suppose you are two options upon graduation：one is to find a job somewhere and the other to start a business of your own. You are to make a choice between the two. Write an essay to explain the reasons for your choice. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.Part II Listening Comprehension （25 minutes）Section ADirections：In this section， you will hear three news reports. At the end of each news report， you will hear two or three questions. Both the news report and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question， you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A）， B）， C）. Then mark the corresponding letter on the Answer sheet1with a single line through the centre.Questions 1and 2 are based on the news report you have just the heard.1. A） It was dangerous to live in.C） He could no longer pay the rent.B） It was going to be renovated. D）He had sold it to the royal family.2. A） A strike. B） A storm. C） A forest fire. D） A Terroristattack.Questions 3and 4 are based on the news report you have just heard.3. A） They lost contact with the emergency department.B）They were trapped in an underground elevator.C） They were injured by suddenly falling rocks.D） They sent calls for help via a portable radio.4. A） They tried hard to repair the accident.B） They released the details of the accident.C） They sent supplies to keep the miners warm.D） They provided the miner with food and water.Question5 to7 are based on the news report you have just heard.5. A） Raise postage rates. C） Redesign delivery routes.B） Improve its services. D） Close some of its post offices.6. A） Shortening business hours. C）Stopping mail delivery on Saturdays.B） Closing offices on holidays. D） Computerizing mail sorting processes.7. A） Many post office staff will lose their jobsB） Many people will begin to complainC） Taxpayers will be very pleasedD）A lot of controversy will ariseSection BDirections：In this section，you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation，you will hear four questions. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question， you must choose the best answer from four choice marked A），B），C） and D）.Then mark the corresponding letter an Answer sheet1with a single line though the centre. Question8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.8. A）He will be kept from promotion. C）He will be given a warning.B）He will go through retraining. D）He will lose part of his pay.9. A）He is always on time. C）He is an experienced press operator.B）He is trustworthy guy. D）He is on good terms with his workmates.10. A）She is a trade union representative.C）She is a senior manager of the shop.B）She is in charge of public relation. D）She is better at handing such matters.11. A）He is skilled and experienced. C）He is always trying to stir up trouble.B）He is very close to the manager. D）He is always complaining about low wages.Question12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.12. A）Open. B）Friendly. C）Selfish. D）Reserved.13. A）They stay quiet. C）They talk about the weatherB）They read a book. D）They chat with fellow passengers. 14. A）She was always treated as a foreigner.B）She was eager to visit an English castle.C）She was never invited to a colleague’s home.D）She was unwilling to make friends with workmates.15. A） House are much more quiet. C） They want to have more space.B） Houses provide more privacy.D） They want a garden of their own. Section CDirections：In this section，you will hear three passages. At the end of each passage，you will hear three or four questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question，you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A），B），C） and D）.Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Questions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard.16. A） They don’t have much choice of jobs.B） They are likely to get much higher pay.C） They don’t have to go through job interviews.D） They will automatically be given hiring priority.17. A） Ask their professors for help. C）Visit the school careers services.B） Look at school bulletin boards. D） Go through campus newspapers.18. A） Helping students find the books and journals they need.B） Supervising study spaces to ensure a quiet atmosphere.C） Helping students arrange appointments with librarians.D） Providing students with information about the library.Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard.19. A） It tastes better. C） It may be sold at a higher price .B） It is easier to grow. D）It can better survive extreme weathers.20. A） It is healthier than green tea. C） It will replace green tea one day.B） It can grow in drier soil. D） It is immune to various diseases.21. A） It has been well received by many tea drinkers.B） It does not bring the promised health benefits.C）It has made tea farmers’ life easi er.D） It does not have a stable market.Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.22. A）They need decorations to show their status.B） They prefer unique objects of high quality.C） They decorate their homes themselves.D） They care more about environment.23. A） They were proud of their creations.B） They could only try to create at night.C） They made great contributions to society.D） They focused on the quality of their products.24. A） Make wise choices. C） Design handicrafts themselves.B） Identify fake crafts. D） Learn the importance of creation. 25. A） To boost the local economy. C） To arouse public interest in crafts.B） To attract foreign investments. D）To preserve the traditional culture.PARTⅢ Reading Comprehension （40 minutes）Section ADirections： In this section， there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.When someone commits a criminal act, we always hope the punishment will match the offense. But when it comes to one of the cruelest crimes —animal fighting —things 26 work out that way. Dog fighting victims are 27 and killed for profit and “sport,” yet t heir criminal abusers often receive a 28sentence for causing a lifetime of pain. Roughly half of all federally-convicted animal fighters only get probation(缓刑).Some progress has been made in the prosecution(起诉) of animal fighters. But federal judges often rely heavily on the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines whenthey 29penalties, and in the case of animal fighting, those guidelines are outdated and extremely30.The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which 31these sentencing guidelines, is revisiting them, proposing to raise the minimum sentence from 6-12 to 21-27 months. This is a step in the right 32, but we’d like to see the U.S. Sentencing Commission make further guidelines.Simultaneous to this effort, we’re working with animal advocates and state and federal lawmakers to 33 anti-cruelty laws across the country, as well as supporting laws and policies that assist overburdened animal 34 that care for animal fighting victims. This help is35 important because the high cost of caring for animal victims is a major deterrent to intervening in cruelty cases in the first place.Section BDirections：In this section， you are gonging to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. Youmay choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer sheet 2.When Work Becomes a Game[A]What motivates employees to do their jobs well? Competition with coworkers, for some. The promise of rewards, for others. Pure enjoyment of problem-solving, for a lucky few.[B]Increasingly, companies are tapping into these desires directly through what’s come to be known as “gamification:” essentially, turning work into a game. “Gamifica tion is about understanding what it is that makes games engaging and what game designers do to create a great experience in games, and taking those learnings and applying them to other contexts such as the workplace and education,” explains Kevin Werbach, a gamification expert who teaches at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States..[C]It might mean monitoring employee productivity on a digital leaderboard and offering prizes to the winners, or giving employees digital badges or stars for completing certain activities. It could also mean training employees how to do their jobs through video game platforms. Companies from Google to IBM to Wells Fargo are known to use some degree of gamification in their workplaces. And more and more companies are joining them. A recent report suggests that the global gamification market will grow from $1.65 billion in 2015 to $11.1 billion by 2020.[D]The concept of gamification is not entirely new, Werbach says. Companies, markete rs and teachers have long looked for fun ways to engage people’s reward-seeking or competitive spirits. Cracker Jacks has been “gamifying” its snack food by putting a small prize inside for more than 100 years, he adds, and the turn-of-the-century steel magnate Charles Schwab is said to have often come into his factory and written the number of tons of steel produced on the past shift on the factory floor, thus motivating the next shift of workers to beat the previous one.[E]But the word “gamification” and the widespread, conscious application of the concept only began in earnest about five years ago, Werbach says. Thanks in part to video games, the generation now entering the workforce is especially open to the idea of having their work gamified. “We’re at a point where in much of the developed world the vast majority of young people grew up playing [video] games, and an increasingly high percentage of adults play these video games too,” Werbach says.[F]A number of companies have sprung up—GamEffective, Bunchball and Badgeville, to name a few—in recent years offering gamification platforms for businesses. The platforms that are most effective turn employees’ ordinary job tasks into part of a rich adventure narrative. “What makes a game game-like is that the player actually cares about the outcome,” Werbach says. “The principle is understanding what is motivating to this group of players, which requires some understanding of psychology.”[G]Some people, Werbach says, are motivated by competition. Sales people often fall into this category. For them, the right kind of gamification might be turning their sales pitches into a competition with other team members, complete with a digital leaderboard showing who’s winning at all times.Others are more motivated by collaboration and social experiences. One company Werbach has studied uses gamification to create a sense of community and boost employee morale. When employees log in to their computers, they’re shown a picture of one of their coworkers and asked to guess t hat person’s name.[H]Gamification does not have to be digital. Monica Cornetti runs a company that gamifies employee trainings. Sometimes this involves technology, but often it does not. She recently designed a gamification strategy for a sales training company with a storm-chasing theme. Employees formed “storm chaser teams” and competed in storm-themed educational exercises to earn various rewards.“Rewards don’t have to be stuff,” Cornetti says. “Rewards can be flextime. Rewards can be extension time.”An other training, this one for pay roll law, used a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs theme. Snow White is public domain, but the dwarfs are still under copyright, so Cornetti invented sound-alike characters (Grumpy Gus, Dopey Dan) to illustrate specific pay roll law principles.[I]Some people don’t take as naturally to gamified work environments, Cornetti says. In her experience, people in positions of power or people in finance or engineering don’t tend to like the sound of the word.“If we’re designing foren gineers, I’m not talking about a ‘game’ at all,” Cornetti says. “I’m talking about a ‘simulation,’ I’m talking about ‘be ing able to solve this problem.”[J]Gamification is “not a magic bullet,” Werbach cautions. A gamification strategy that’s not sufficien tly thought through or tailored to its players may engage people for a little while, but it won’t motivate in the long term. It can also be exploitative, especially when used with vulnerable populations. For workers, especially low-paid workers, who desperately need their jobs yet know they can be easily replaced, gamification may feel more like the Hunger Games. Werbach gives the example of several Disneyland hotels in Anaheim, California, which used large digital leaderboards to display how efficiently laundry workers were working compared to one another. Some employees found the board motivating. To others, it was the opposite of fun. Some began to skip bathroom breaks, worried that if their productivity fell they would be fired. Pregnant employees struggled to keep up. In a Los Angeles Times article, one employee referred to the board as a “digital whip.”“It actually had a very negative effect on morale and performance,” Werbach says.[K]Still, gamification only stands to become more popular, he says, “as more and more people come into the workforce who are intuitively familiar with the structures and expressions of digital games.” “We are way ahead of the tipping point,” Cornetti agrees. “There’s no reason this will go away.”36.some famous companies are already using gamification and more are trying todo the same.37.Gamification is not a miracle cure for all workplaces as it may have negative results.38.To enhance morale, one company asks its employees to identify their fellow works when starting their computers.39.The idea of gamification was practiced by some businesses more than a century ago.40.There is a reason to believe that gamification will be here to stay.41.Video games contributed in some ways to the wide application of gamification.42.When turning work into a game, it is necessary to understand what makes games interesting.43.Gamification in employee training does not always need technology.44.The most successful gamification platforms transform daily work assignments into fun experiences.45.It is necessary to use terms other than “gamification”for some professions. Section CDirections：There are 2 passages in this section .Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices maked A），B），C）and D）.You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet2 with a single line through the centre. Passage OneQuestions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.Recently I attended several meetings where we talked about ways to retain students and keep younger faculty members from going elsewhere.It seems higher education has become an industry of meeting-holders whose task it is to " solve" problems-real or imagined. And in my position as a professor at three different colleges, the actual problems in educating our young people and older students have deepened, while the number of people hired-not to teach but to hold meetings-has increased significantly. Every new problem creates a new job for an administrative fixer. Take our Center for Teaching Excellence. Contrary to its title, the center is a clearing house (信息交流中心)for using technology in classrooms and in online courses. It's an administrative sham (欺诈) of the kind that has multiplied over the last 30 years.I offer a simple proposition in response: Many of our problems-class attendance, educationalsuccess, student happiness and well-being-might be improved by cutting down the bureaucratic (官僚的) mechanisms and meetings and instead hiring an army of good teachers. lf we replaced half of our administrative staff with classroom teachers, we might actually get a majority of our classes back to 20 or fewer students per teacher This would be an environment in which teachers and students actually knew each other.The teachers must be free to teach in their own way-the curriculum should be flexible enough so that they can use their individual talents to achieve the goals of the course. Additionally; they should be allowed to teach, and berewarded for doing it well. Teachers are not people who are great at and consumed by research and happen to appear in a classroom. Good teaching and research are not exclusive, but they are also not automatic companions. Teaching is an art and a craft, talent and practice; it is not something that just anyone can be good at. It is utterly confusing to me that people do not recognize this, despite the fact that pretty much anyone who has been a student can tell the difference between their best and worst teachers.46.What does the author say about present-day universities?A)They are effectively tackling real or imagined problems.B)They often fail to combine teaching with research.C)They are over-burdened with administrative staff.D)They lack talent to fix their deepening problems.47.According to the author, what kind of people do universities lack most?A)Good classroom teachers. C) Talented researchers.B)Efficient administrators. D) Motivated students.48.What does the author imply about the classes at present?A)They facilitate students independent learning.B)They help students form closer relationships.C)They have more older students than before.D)They are much bigger than is desirable.49.What does the author think of teaching ability?A)It requires talent and practice.B)It is closely related to research.C)It is a chief factor affecting students 'learning.D)It can be acquired through persistent practice.50.What is the author’s suggestion for improving university teaching?A)Creating an environment for teachers to share 'their teaching experiences.B)Hiring more classroom teachers and allowing them to teach in their own way.C)Using high technology in classrooms and promoting exchange of information.D)Cutting down meetings and encouraging administrative staff to go to classrooms.Passage TwoQuestions 51to 55 are based on the following passage.The secret to eating less and being happy about it may have been cracked years ago-by McDonald's. According to a new study from Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab, small non-food rewards-like the toys in McDonald's Happy Meals-stimulate the same reward centers in the brain as food does.The researchers, led by Martin Reimann, carried out a series of experiments to see if people would choose a smaller meal if it was paired with a non-food items.They found that the majority of both kids and adults opted for a half-sized portion when combined with a prize. Both options were priced the same.Even more interesting is that the promise of a future reward was enough to make adults choose the smaller portion.\One of the prizes used was a lotteryticket（彩票）, with a $ 10, $ 50 or $ 100 payout, and this was as effective as a tangible gift in persuading people to eat less."The fact that participants were willing to substitute part of a food item for the mere prospect of a relatively small monetary award is interesting.”says Reimann.He theorizes that it is the emotional component of these intangible prizes that make them effective. In fact, vaguely-stated possibilities of winning a prize were more effective than options with hard odds included.“One explanation for this finding is that possible awards may be more emotionally provoking than certainty awards," says Reimann. " The uncertainty of winning provides added attraction and desirability through emotional ‘thrills.' The possibility of receiving an award also produces a state of hope 一a state that is in itself psychologically rewarding·"In other words, there’s a reason why people like to gambleHow might it’s knowledge be used to help people eat more healthily?One possibility is a healthy that offers the chance to win a spa (温泉疗养) weekend. Or maybe the reward of a half-sized portion could be a half-sized dessert to be claimed only on a future date. That would get you back in the restaurant-and make you eat a little less.51.What do we learn about McDonald’s inclusion of toys in its Happy Meals?A)It may shed light on people’s desire to crack a secret.B)It has proved to be key to McDonald’s business success.C)It appeals to kid’s curiosity to find out what is hidden inside.D)It may be a pleasant way for kids to reduce their food intake.52. What is the finding of the researchers led by Martin Reimann?A)Reducing food intake is not that difficult if people go to McDonald’s more.B)Most kids and adults don’t actually feel hungry when they eat half of their meal.C)Eating a smaller does good to the health of kids and adults alike.D)Most kids and adults would choose a smaller meal that came with a non-food item.53.What is most interesting in Martin Reimann’s finding?A)Kids preferred an award in the form of money to one in the form of a toy.B)Adults chose the smaller portion on the mere promise of a future awardC)Both kids and adults felt satisfied with only half of their meal portions.D)Neither children nor adults could resist the temptation of a free toy.54.How does Martin Reimann interpret his finding?A)The emotional component of the prizes is at work.B)People now care more about quality than quantity.C)People prefer certainty awards to possible awards.D) The desire for a future reward is overwhelming.55.What can we infer from Martin Reimann’s finding?A)·People should eat much less if they ·wish to stay healthy and happy.B)More fast food restaurants are likely to follow McDonald’s example.C)We can lead people to eat less while helping the restaurant business.D)More studies are needed to find out the impact of emotion on behavior.Part IV Translation （30 minutes）Directions： For this part， you are allowed 30minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English .You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2.在中国文化中，红色通常象征着好运、长寿和幸福.在春节和其他喜庆场合，红色到处可见.人们把现金作为礼物送给家人或亲密朋友时，通常放在红色信封里.红色在中国流行的另一个原因是人们把它与中国革命和共产党相联系.然而，红色并不总是代表好运和快乐.因为从死前者名字通常用红色书写，用红墨水书写中国人名被看成是一种冒犯行为.2016年12月大学英语四级答案（第一套）Part1 writing (30 minutes)破题思路：第一段：话题描述. 第二段：表明观点+阐述原因. 第三段：观点结论.参考范文：(选择就业还是创业)Finding a Job FirstUpon graduation， virtually all college students will confront the problem of the career choice，which is truly a tough choice. Students’ opinions differ greatly on this issue. Some hold that priority should be given to start a business of your own， but others take the attitude that finding a job is the best choice influencing their future.As to myself， I prefer the latter view. An opportunity to start a business exerts a tremendous fascination on a great number of people， with no exception to me. In my view， With the competition in the job market becoming increasingly fierce for college graduates， some ambitious students have tried their hands at launching their own businesses. Over the years，there have been many successful cases of student entrepreneurship and such attempts should be encouraged and promoted by both the universities and the society at large. What’s more ，College students who start businesses are pioneers，among whom will be born China’s future business leaders. Faced with unknown challenges， they are audacious enough to embark on a perilous journey while most of their peers enjoy stable salaries by working as white-collars at high-end office buildings.All in all， the essential difference between the students who find a jobor those students who create their own businesses is that the former are docile followers whereas the latter are aggressive trailblazers. For this reason，business-launching college graduates are more admirable， and thus they command our deep respect.Part II Listening Comprehension （25 minutes）【英语四级听力真题解析】听力作为一种考试题型，目的在于考查应试者对英语语言的把握，自从英语四级题型改革后，所选题材侧重新闻稿和演讲稿，比如这次英语四级考试的Section A 部分，主要是关于采盐工人的相关新闻报导，文章稍难，我们在作答之前，一定要快速浏览各题目的选项，先把核心关键词划出来，比如重要的名词，名词性短语等，这样可以帮助我们预知要听的重点，提高捕捉信息的准确度，降低听力材料的难度.在听录音的过程中，快速作标记，锁定正确答案.1.(A)It was dangerous to live in.2.(B)A storm3.(B)They were trapped in an underground elevator.4.(C)They sent supplies to keep the miners warm.5.(D)Close some of its post office.6.(C)Stopping mail delivery on Saturdays.7.(A)Many post office staff will lose their jobs.Section B8.(D)He will lose part of his pay.9.(B)He is a trustworthy guy. 10.(D)She is better at handling such matters.11.(C)He is always trying to stir up trouble. 12.(D)Reserved13.(A)They stay quiet 14.(C)She was never invited to a colleague’s home. 15.(B)Houses provide more privacySection C16.(D)They will automatically be given hiring priority.17.(C)Visit the school careers service.18.(B)Supervising study spaces to ensure a quiet atmosphere.19.(C)It may be sold at a higher price. 20.(A)It is healthier than green tee.21.(D)It does not have a stable market.22.(B)They prefer unique objects of high quality.23.(B)They could only try to create at night.24.(A)Make wise choices.25.(A)To boost the local economy.Section AA 16th century castle in Scotland is close to collapsing after lumps of soils were washed away by floods, threatening its foundations.On Sunday, the castle’s owner John Gordon, 76, was forced to move out his property after the River Dee swept away about 60 feet of land, leaving the castle dangerous close to the river. According to the Scottish Daily Record. Abergeldie castle located in Aberdeenshire, Scotland was built by Sir Alexander Gordon of Midmar who later became the Earl of Huntly.The castle which is located on 11,700 acres was leased to members of the royalfamily between 1848 and 1970, including King Edward VII and George V.The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has issued more than 35 flood warnings covering several regions, as Scotland continues to clean up the after Storm Frank hit the country last Wednesday.“This means that rivers will rise more slowly, but then stay high for much longer.” the environmental agency said.Q1. Why did John Gordon move out of Abergeldie castle?Q2. What happened in Scotland last Wednesday?Section A - 2Rescue efforts were underway Thursday morning for 17 miners who were stuck in an elevator below ground at a Cargill rock salt mine near Lansing, New York, according to Marcia Lynch.Public information officer with Tompkins County’s emergency response department, emergency workers have made contact with the miners via a radio. And they all appear to be uninjured, said Jessica Verfuss, the emergency department’s assistant director.Crews have managed to provide heat packs and blankets to the miners so that they can keep warm during the rescue operation, Verfuss said. Details about what led to the workers’ being trapped in the elevator went immediately available. The mine, along New York’s Cayuga Lake, processes salt used for road treatment. It produces about 2 million tons of salt that is shipped to more than 1,500 places in the northeastern United States, the rock salt mine is one of three operated。
2016年12月大学英语四级第一套真题和答案
2016年12月大学英语四级试题（第一套）。
Part I Writing （30minutes）（请于正式开考后半小时内完成该部分，之后将进行听力考试）Directions：For this part，you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay .Suppose you are two options upon graduation：one is to find a job somewhere and the other to start a business of your own. You are to make a choice between the two. Write an essay to explain the reasons for your choice. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.Part II Listening Comprehension （25 minutes）Section ADirections：In this section，you will hear three news reports. At the end of each news report，you will hear two or three questions. Both the news report and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question，you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A），B），C）. Then mark the corresponding letter on the Answer sheet1with a single line through the centre.Questions 1and 2 are based on the news report you have just the heard.1. A）It was dangerous to live in.C）He could no longer pay the rent.B）It was going to be renovated. D）He had sold it to the royal family.2. A）A strike. B）A storm. C）A forest fire. D）A Terrorist attack. Questions 3and 4 are based on the news report you have just heard.3. A）They lost contact with the emergency department.B）They were trapped in an underground elevator.C）They were injured by suddenly falling rocks.D）They sent calls for help via a portable radio.4. A）They tried hard to repair the accident.B）They released the details of the accident.C）They sent supplies to keep the miners warm.D）They provided the miner with food and water.Question5 to7 are based on the news report you have just heard.5. A）Raise postage rates. C）Redesign delivery routes.B）Improve its services. D）Close some of its post offices.6. A）Shortening business hours. C）Stopping mail delivery on Saturdays.B）Closing offices on holidays. D）Computerizing mail sorting processes. 7. A）Many post office staff will lose their jobsB）Many people will begin to complainC）Taxpayers will be very pleasedD）A lot of controversy will ariseSection BDirections：In this section，you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation，you will hear four questions. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question，you must choose the best answer from fourchoice marked A），B），C）and D）.Then mark the corresponding letter an Answer sheet1 with a single line though the centre.Question8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.8. A）He will be kept from promotion. C）He will be given a warning.B）He will go through retraining. D）He will lose part of his pay.9. A）He is always on time. C）He is an experienced press operator.B）He is trustworthy guy. D）He is on good terms with his workmates. 10. A）She is a trade union representative.C）She is a senior manager of the shop.B）She is in charge of public relation. D）She is better at handing such matters. 11. A）He is skilled and experienced. C）He is always trying to stir up trouble.B）He is very close to the manager. D）He is always complaining about low wages. Question12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.12. A）Open. B）Friendly. C）Selfish. D）Reserved.13. A）They stay quiet. C）They talk about the weatherB）They read a book. D）They chat with fellow passengers.14. A）She was always treated as a foreigner.B）She was eager to visit an English castle.C）She was never invited to a colleague’s home.D）She was unwilling to make friends with workmates.15. A）House are much more quiet. C）They want to have more space.B）Houses provide more privacy.D）They want a garden of their own.Section CDirections：In this section，you will hear three passages. At the end of each passage，you will hear three or four questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question，you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A），B），C）and D）.Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Questions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard.16. A）They don’t have much choice of jobs.B）They are likely to get much higher pay.C）They don’t have to go through job interviews.D）They will automatically be given hiring priority.17. A）Ask their professors for help. C）Visit the school careers services.B）Look at school bulletin boards. D）Go through campus newspapers.18. A）Helping students find the books and journals they need.B）Supervising study spaces to ensure a quiet atmosphere.C）Helping students arrange appointments with librarians.D）Providing students with information about the library.Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard.19. A）It tastes better. C）It may be sold at a higher price .B）It is easier to grow. D）It can better survive extreme weathers.20. A）It is healthier than green tea. C）It will replace green tea one day.B）It can grow in drier soil. D）It is immune to various diseases.21. A）It has been well received by many tea drinkers.B）It does not bring the promised health benefits.C）It has made tea farmers’ life easier.D）It does not have a stable market.Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.22. A）They need decorations to show their status.B）They prefer unique objects of high quality.C）They decorate their homes themselves.D）They care more about environment.23. A）They were proud of their creations.B）They could only try to create at night.C）They made great contributions to society.D）They focused on the quality of their products.24. A）Make wise choices. C）Design handicrafts themselves.B）Identify fake crafts. D）Learn the importance of creation.25. A）To boost the local economy. C）To arouse public interest in crafts.B）To attract foreign investments. D）To preserve the traditional culture.PARTⅢReading Comprehension （40 minutes）Section ADirections：In this section，there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.When someone commits a criminal act, we always hope the punishment will match the offense. But when it comes to one of the cruelest crimes —animal fighting —things 26 work out that way. Dog fighting victims are 27 and killed for profit and “sport,” yet their criminal abusers often receive a 28 sentence for causing a lifetime of pain. Roughly half of all federally-convicted animal fighters only get probation(缓刑).Some progress has been made in the prosecution(起诉) of animal fighters. But federal judges often rely heavily on the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines when they 29penalties, and in the case of animal fighting, those guidelines are outdated and extremely30.The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which31these sentencing guidelines, is revisiting them, proposing to raise the minimum sentence from 6-12 to 21-27 months. This is a step in the right 32, but we’d like to see the U.S. Sentencing Commission make further guidelines.Simultaneous to this effort, we’re working with animal advocates and state and federal lawmakers to 33 anti-cruelty laws across the country, as well as supporting laws and policies that assist overburdened animal34that care for animal fighting victims. This help is35 important because the high cost of caring for animal victims is a major deterrent to intervening in cruelty cases in the first place.Directions：In this section，you are gonging to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer sheet 2.When Work Becomes a Game[A]What motivates employees to do their jobs well? Competition with coworkers, for some. The promise of rewards, for others. Pure enjoyment of problem-solving, for a lucky few. [B]Increasingly, companies are tapping into these desires directly through what’s come to be known as “gamification:” essentially, turning work into a game. “Gamification is about understanding what it is that makes games engaging and what game designers do to create a great experience in games, and taking those learnings and applying them to other contexts such as the workplace and education,” explains Kevin Werbach, a gamification expe rt who teaches at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States..[C]It might mean monitoring employee productivity on a digital leaderboard and offering prizes to the winners, or giving employees digital badges or stars for completing certain activities. It could also mean training employees how to do their jobs through video game platforms. Companies from Google to IBM to Wells Fargo are known to use some degree of gamification in their workplaces. And more and more companies are joining them. A recent report suggests that the global gamification market will grow from $1.65 billion in 2015 to $11.1 billion by 2020.[D]The concept of gamification is not entirely new, Werbach says. Companies, marketers and teachers hav e long looked for fun ways to engage people’s reward-seeking or competitive spirits. Cracker Jacks has been “gamifying” its snack food by putting a small prize inside for more than 100 years, he adds, and the turn-of-the-century steel magnate Charles Schwab is said to have often come into his factory and written the number of tons of steel produced on the past shift on the factory floor, thus motivating the next shift of workers to beat the previous one.[E]But the word “gamification” and the widespread, co nscious application of the concept only began in earnest about five years ago, Werbach says. Thanks in part to video games, the generation now entering the workforce is especially open to the idea of having their work gamified. “We’re at a point where in m uch of the developed world the vast majority of young people grew up playing [video] games, and an increasingly high percentage of adults play these video games too,” Werbach says.[F]A number of companies have sprung up—GamEffective, Bunchball and Badgeville, to name a few—in recent years offering gamification platforms for businesses. The platforms that are most effective turn employees’ ordinary job tasks into part of a rich adventurenarrative. “What makes a game game-like is that the player actually ca res about the outcome,” Werbach says. “The principle is understanding what is motivating to this group of players, which requires some understanding of psychology.”[G]Some people, Werbach says, are motivated by competition. Sales people often fall into this category. For them, the right kind of gamification might be turning their sales pitches into a competition with other team members, complete with a digital leaderboard showing who’s winning at all times.Others are more motivated by collaboration and social experiences. One company Werbach has studied uses gamification to create a sense of community and boost employee morale. When employees log in to their computers, they’re shown a picture of one of their coworkers and asked to guess that person’s name.[H]Gamification does not have to be digital. Monica Cornetti runs a company that gamifies employee trainings. Sometimes this involves technology, but often it does not. She recently designed a gamification strategy for a sales training company with a storm-chasing theme. Employees formed “storm chaser teams” and competed in storm-themed educational exercises to earn various rewards.“Rewards don’t have to be stuff,” Cornetti says. “Rewards can be flextime. Rewards can be extension time.”Another training, thi s one for pay roll law, used a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs theme. Snow White is public domain, but the dwarfs are still under copyright, so Cornetti invented sound-alike characters (Grumpy Gus, Dopey Dan) to illustrate specific pay roll law principles.[I]Some people don’t take as naturally to gamified work environments, Cornetti says. In her experience, people in positions of power or people in finance or engineering don’t tend to like the sound of the word.“If we’re designing for engineers, I’m not talking about a ‘game’ at all,” Cornetti says. “I’m talking about a ‘simulation,’ I’m talking about ‘be ing able to solve this problem.”[J]Gamification is “not a magic bullet,” Werbach cautions. A gamification strategy that’s not sufficiently thought through or tailored to its players may engage people for a little while, but it won’t motivate in the long term. It can also be exploitative, especially when used with vulnerable populations. For workers, especially low-paid workers, who desperately need their jobs yet know they can be easily replaced, gamification may feel more like the Hunger Games. Werbach gives the example of several Disneyland hotels in Anaheim, California, which used large digital leaderboards to display how efficiently laundry workers were working compared to one another. Some employees found the board motivating. To others, it was the opposite of fun. Some began to skip bathroom breaks, worried that if their productivity fell they would be fired. Pregnant employees struggled to keep up. In a Los Angeles Times article, one employee referred to the board as a “digital whip.”“It actually had a very negative effect on morale and performance,” Werbach says.[K]Still, gamification only stands to become more popular, he says, “as more and more people come into the workforce who are intuitively familiar with the structures and expressions of digital games.” “We are way ahead of the tipping point,” Cornetti agrees. “There’s no reason this will go away.”36.some famous companies are already using gamification and more are trying to do the same.37.Gamification is not a miracle cure for all workplaces as it may have negative results.38.To enhance morale, one company asks its employees to identify their fellow works whenstarting their computers.39.The idea of gamification was practiced by some businesses more than a century ago.40.There is a reason to believe that gamification will be here to stay.41.Video games contributed in some ways to the wide application of gamification.42.When turning work into a game, it is necessary to understand what makes games interesting.43.Gamification in employee training does not always need technology.44.The most successful gamification platforms transform daily work assignments into fun experiences.45.It is necessary to use terms other than “gamification” for some professions.Section CDirections：There are 2 passages in this section .Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices maked A），B），C）and D）.You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet2 with a single line through the centre.Passage OneQuestions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.Recently I attended several meetings where we talked about ways to retain students and keep younger faculty members from going elsewhere.It seems higher education has become an industry of meeting-holders whose task it is to " solve" problems-real or imagined. And in my position as a professor at three different colleges, the actual problems in educating our young people and older students have deepened, while the number of people hired-not to teach but to hold meetings-has increased significantly. Every new problem creates a new job for an administrative fixer. Take our Center for Teaching Excellence. Contrary to its title, the center is a clearing house (信息交流中心)for using technology in classrooms and in online courses. It's an administrative sham (欺诈) of the kind that has multiplied over the last 30 years.I offer a simple proposition in response: Many of our problems-class attendance, educationalsuccess, student happiness and well-being-might be improved by cutting down the bureaucratic (官僚的) mechanisms and meetings and instead hiring an army of good teachers. lf we replaced half of our administrative staff with classroom teachers, we might actually get a majority of our classes back to 20 or fewer students per teacher This would be an environment in which teachers and students actually knew each other.The teachers must be free to teach in their own way-the curriculum should be flexible enough so that they can use their individual talents to achieve the goals of the course. Additionally; they should be allowed to teach, and be rewarded for doing it well. Teachers are not people who are great at and consumed by research and happen to appear in a classroom. Good teaching and research are not exclusive, but they are also not automatic companions. Teaching is an art and a craft, talent and practice; it is not something that just anyone can be good at. It is utterly confusing to me that people do not recognize this, despite the fact that pretty much anyone who has been a student can tell the difference between their best and worst teachers.46.What does the author say about present-day universities?A)They are effectively tackling real or imagined problems.B)They often fail to combine teaching with research.C)They are over-burdened with administrative staff.D)They lack talent to fix their deepening problems.47.According to the author, what kind of people do universities lack most?A)Good classroom teachers. C) Talented researchers.B)Efficient administrators. D) Motivated students.48.What does the author imply about the classes at present?A)They facilitate students independent learning.B)They help students form closer relationships.C)They have more older students than before.D)They are much bigger than is desirable.49.What does the author think of teaching ability?A)It requires talent and practice.B)It is closely related to research.C)It is a chief factor affecting students 'learning.D)It can be acquired through persistent practice.50.What is the author’s suggestion for improving university teaching?A)Creating an environment for teachers to share 'their teaching experiences.B)Hiring more classroom teachers and allowing them to teach in their own way.C)Using high technology in classrooms and promoting exchange of information.D)Cutting down meetings and encouraging administrative staff to go to classrooms. Passage TwoQuestions 51to 55 are based on the following passage.The secret to eating less and being happy about it may have been cracked years ago-by McDonald's. According to a new study from Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab, small non-food rewards-like the toys in McDonald's Happy Meals-stimulate the same reward centers in the brain as food does.The researchers, led by Martin Reimann, carried out a series of experiments to see if people would choose a smaller meal if it was paired with a non-food items.They found that the majority of both kids and adults opted for a half-sized portion when combined with a prize. Both options were priced the same.Even more interesting is that the promise of a future reward was enough to make adults choose the smaller portion.\One of the prizes used was a lottery ticket（彩票）, with a $ 10, $ 50 or $ 100 payout, and this was as effective as a tangible gift in persuading people to eat less."The fact that participants were willing to substitute part of a food item for the mere prospect of a relatively small monetary award is interesting.”says Reimann.He theorizes that it is the emotional component of these intangible prizes that make them effective. In fact, vaguely-stated possibilities of winning a prize were more effective than options with hard odds included.“One explanation for this finding is that possible awards may be more emotionally provoking than certainty awards," says Reimann. " The uncertainty of winning provides added attraction and desirability through emotional ‘thrills.' The possibility of receiving an awardalso produces a state of hope一a state that is in itself psychologically rewarding·"In other words, there’s a reason why people like to gambleHow might it’s knowledge be used to help people eat more healthily?One possibility is a healthy that offers the chance to win a spa (温泉疗养) weekend. Or maybe the reward of a half-sized portion could be a half-sized dessert to be claimed only on a future date. That would get you back in the restaurant-and make you eat a little less.51.What do we learn about McDonald’s inclusion of toys in its Happy Meals?A)It may shed light on people’s desire to crack a secret.B)It has proved to be key to McDonald’s business success.C)It appeals to kid’s curiosity to find out what is hidden inside.D)It may be a pleasant way for kids to reduce their food intake.52. What is the finding of the researchers led by Martin Reimann?A)Reducing food intake is not that difficult if people go to McDonald’s more.B)Most kids and adults don’t actually feel hungry when they eat half of their meal.C)Eating a smaller does good to the health of kids and adults alike.D)Most kids and adults would choose a smaller meal that came with a non-food item.53.What is most interesting in Martin Reimann’s finding?A)Kids preferred an award in the form of money to one in the form of a toy.B)Adults chose the smaller portion on the mere promise of a future awardC)Both kids and adults felt satisfied with only half of their meal portions.D)Neither children nor adults could resist the temptation of a free toy.54.How does Martin Reimann interpret his finding?A)The emotional component of the prizes is at work.B)People now care more about quality than quantity.C)People prefer certainty awards to possible awards.D) The desire for a future reward is overwhelming.55.What can we infer from Martin Reimann’s finding?A)·People should eat much less if they ·wish to stay healthy and happy.B)More fast food restaurants are likely to follow McDonald’s example.C)We can lead people to eat less while helping the restaurant business.D)More studies are needed to find out the impact of emotion on behavior.Part IV Translation （30 minutes）Directions：For this part，you are allowed 30minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English .You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2.在中国文化中，红色通常象征着好运、长寿和幸福.在春节和其他喜庆场合，红色到处可见.人们把现金作为礼物送给家人或亲密朋友时，通常放在红色信封里.红色在中国流行的另一个原因是人们把它与中国革命和共产党相联系.然而，红色并不总是代表好运和快乐.因为从死前者名字通常用红色书写，用红墨水书写中国人名被看成是一种冒犯行为.2016年12月大学英语四级答案（第一套）Part1 writing (30 minutes)破题思路：第一段：话题描述. 第二段：表明观点+阐述原因. 第三段：观点结论.参考范文：(选择就业还是创业)Finding a Job FirstUpon graduation，virtually all college students will confront the problem of the career choice，which is truly a tough choice. Students’ opinions differ greatly on this issue. Some hold that priority should be given to start a business of your own，but others take the attitude that finding a job is the best choice influencing their future.As to myself，I prefer the latter view. An opportunity to start a business exerts a tremendous fascination on a great number of people，with no exception to me. In my view，With the competition in the job market becoming increasingly fierce for college graduates，some ambitious students have tried their hands at launching their own businesses. Over the years，there have been many successful cases of student entrepreneurship and such attempts should be encouraged and promoted by both the universities and the society at large. What’s more ，College students who start businesses are pioneers，among wh om will be born China’s future business leaders. Faced with unknown challenges，they are audacious enough to embark on a perilous journey while most of their peers enjoy stable salaries by working as white-collars at high-end office buildings.All in all，the essential difference between the students who find a job or those students who create their own businesses is that the former are docile followers whereas the latter are aggressive trailblazers. For this reason，business-launching college graduates are more admirable，and thus they command our deep respect.Part II Listening Comprehension （25 minutes）【英语四级听力真题解析】听力作为一种考试题型，目的在于考查应试者对英语语言的把握，自从英语四级题型改革后，所选题材侧重新闻稿和演讲稿，比如这次英语四级考试的Section A 部分，主要是关于采盐工人的相关新闻报导，文章稍难，我们在作答之前，一定要快速浏览各题目的选项，先把核心关键词划出来，比如重要的名词，名词性短语等，这样可以帮助我们预知要听的重点，提高捕捉信息的准确度，降低听力材料的难度.在听录音的过程中，快速作标记，锁定正确答案.1.(A)It was dangerous to live in.2.(B)A storm3.(B)They were trapped in an underground elevator.4.(C)They sent supplies to keep the miners warm.5.(D)Close some of its post office.6.(C)Stopping mail delivery on Saturdays.7.(A)Many post office staff will lose their jobs.Section B8.(D)He will lose part of his pay.9.(B)He is a trustworthy guy. 10.(D)She is better at handling such matters.11.(C)He is always trying to stir up trouble. 12.(D)Reserved13.(A)They stay quiet14.(C)She was never invited to a colleague’s home.15.(B)Houses provide more privacySection C16.(D)They will automatically be given hiring priority.17.(C)Visit the school careers service.18.(B)Supervising study spaces to ensure a quiet atmosphere.19.(C)It may be sold at a higher price. 20.(A)It is healthier than green tee.21.(D)It does not have a stable market.22.(B)They prefer unique objects of high quality.23.(B)They could only try to create at night.24.(A)Make wise choices.25.(A)To boost the local economy.Section AA 16th century castle in Scotland is close to collapsing after lumps of soils were washed away by floods, threatening its foundations.On Sunday, the castle’s owner John Gordon, 76, was forced to move out his property after the River Dee swept away about 60 feet of land, leaving the castle dangerous close to the river. According to the Scottish Daily Record.Abergeldie castle located in Aberdeenshire, Scotland was built by Sir Alexander Gordon of Midmar who later became the Earl of Huntly.The castle which is located on 11,700 acres was leased to members of the royal family between 1848 and 1970, including King Edward VII and George V.The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has issued more than 35 flood warnings covering several regions, as Scotland continues to clean up the after Storm Frank hit the country last Wednesday.“This means that rivers will rise more slowly, but then stay high for much longer.” the environmental agency said.Q1. Why did John Gordon move out of Abergeldie castle?Q2. What happened in Scotland last Wednesday?Section A - 2Rescue efforts were underway Thursday morning for 17 miners who were stuck in an elevator below ground at a Cargill rock salt mine near Lansing, New York, according to Marcia Lynch. Public information officer with Tompkins County’s emergency response department, emergency workers have made contact with the miners via a radio. And they all appear to be uninjured, said Jessica Verfuss, the emergency department’s assistant director.Crews have managed to provide heat packs and blankets to the miners so that they can keep warm during the rescue operation, Verfuss said. Details about what led to the workers’ being trapped in the elevator went immediately available. The mine, along New Yo rk’s Cayuga Lake, processes salt used for road treatment. It produces about 2 million tons of salt that is shipped to more than 1,500 places in the northeastern United States, the rock salt mine is one of three operated by Cargill with the other two in Louisiana and Ohio.。
2017年12月英语四级真题和答案解析（第二套）
2017年12⽉英语四级真题和答案解析（第⼆套）2017年12⽉⼤学英语四级考试真题(第2套)Part I Writing (30 minutes) Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on how to best handle the relationship between teachers and students. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.Part II Listening Comprehension (25 minutes) Section ADirections: In this section, you will hear three news reports. At the end of each news report, you will hear two or three questions. Both the news report and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1with a single line through the centre.Questions 1 and 2 are based on the news report you have just heard.1. A) It tries to entertain its audience. C) It wants to catch people’s attention.B) It tries to look into the distance. D) It has got one of its limbs injured.2. A) It was spotted by animal protection officials.B) It was filmed by a local television reporter.C) Its videos were posted on social media.D) Its picture won a photography prize.Questions 3 and 4 are based on the news report you have just heard.3. A) The distance travelled C) The spending on gas.B) The incidence of road accidents. D) The number of people travelling.4. A) Fewer people are commuting. C) Job growth is slowing down.B) Gas consumption is soaring. D) Rush-hour traffic is worsening.Questions 5 to 7 are based on the news report you have just heard.5. A) He told a stranger the sad story about himself.B) He helped a stranger to carry groceries to his car.C) He went up to a stranger and pulled at his sleeves.D) He washed a stranger’s ca r in return for some food.6. A) He ordered a lot of food for his family. C) He raised a large sum of money for him.B) He gave him a job at his own company. D) He offered him a scholarship for college.7. A) He works hard to support his family. C) He is very good at making up stories.B) He is an excellent student at school. D) He has been disabled since boyhood.Section BDirections:In this section, you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation, you will hear four questions. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Questions 8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.8. A) Attended an economics lecture. C) Had a drink at Queen Victoria.9. A) Treat a college friend to dinner. C) Attend his brother’s birthday party.B) Make preparations for a seminar. D) Visit some of his high school friends.10. A) Gather statistics for his lecture.B) Throw a surprise birthday party.C) Meet with Jonathan’s friends on the weekend.D) Join him in his brother’s birthday celebration.11. A) By car. B) By train. C) By taxi. D) By bus.Questions 12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.12. A) Taking a vacation abroad. C) Saving enough money for a rainy day.B) Reviewing for his last exam. D) Finding a better way to earn money.13. A) Preparing for his final exams. C) Working part time as a waiter.B) Negotiating with his boss for a raise. D) Helping the woman with her courses.14. A) Finish her term paper. C) Learn a little bit of Spanish.B) Save enough money. D) Ask her parent’s permission.15. A) He has rich sailing experience. C) He is also eager to go to Spain.B) He speaks Spanish fluently. D) He is easy to get along with.Section CDirections:In this section, you will hear three passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear three or four questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you mast choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre. Questions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard.16. A) She went to the same university as her mother.B) She worked as a nurse in the First World War.C) She won the Nobel Prize two times.D) She was also a Nobel Prize winner.17. A) She fought bravely in a series of military operations.B) She developed X-ray facilities for military hospitals.C) She helped to set up several military hospitals.D) She made donations to save wounded soldiers.18. A) Both died of blood cancer. C) Both won military medals.B) Both fought in World War I. D) Both married their assistants.Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard.19. A) They were the first settlers in Europe.B) They were the conquerors of Norway.C) They discovered Iceland in the ninth century.D) They settled on a small island north of England.B) It was covered with green most time of the year.C) It was the Vikings’ most important discovery.D) It was a rocky mass of land covered with ice.21. A) The Vikings, ocean explorations. C) The Vikings’ everyday life.B) The making of European nations. D) The Europeans’ Arcti c discoveries. Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.22. A) Work hard for a better life. C) Dream about the future.B) Make mistakes now and then. D) Save against a rainy day.23. A) Teach foreign languages for the rest of his life.B) Change what he has for his past imaginary world.C) Exchange his two-story house for a beach cottage.D) Dwell on the dreams he had dreamed when young.24. A) Criminal law. C) Oriental architecture.B) City planning. D) International business.25. A) Dream and make plans. C) Be content with what you have.B) Take things easy in life, D) Enjoy whatever you are doing.Part III Reading Comprehension (40 minutes) Section ADirections: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.Technological changes brought dramatic new options to Americans living in the 1990s. During this decade new forms of entertainment, commerce, research, and communication became commonplace in the U. S. The driving force behind much of this change was a (n) 26 popularly known as the Internet.The Internet was developed during the 1970s by the Department of Defense. In the case of an attack, military advisers suggested the 27 of being able to operate one computer from another terminal. In the early days, the Internet was used mainly by scientists to communicate with other scientists. The Internet 28 under government control until 1984.One early problem faced by Internet users was speed. Phone lines could only transmit information at a 29 rate. The development of fiber-optic (光纤)cables allowed for billions of bits of information to be received every minute. Companies like Intel developed faster microprocessors, so personal computers could process the 30 signals at a more rapid rate.In the early 1990s, the World Wide Web was developed, in large part, for 31 purposes. Corporations created home pages where they could place text and graphics to sell products. Soon airline tickets, hotel 32 , and even cars and homes could be purchased online. Universities 33 research data on the Internet, so students could find 34 information without leaving their dormitories. Companies soon discovered that work could be done at home and 35 online, so a whole new class of telecommuters began to earn a living from home offices unshavenSection BDirections:In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.The Health Benefits of KnittingA) About 15 years ago, I was invited to join a knitting group. I agreed to give it a try.B) My mother had taught me to knit at 15, and I knitted in class throughout college and for a few years thereafter. Then decades passed without my touching a knitting needle. But within two Mondays in the group, I was hooked, not only on knitting but also on crocheting (钩织), and I was on my way to becoming a highly productive crafter.C) I’ve made countless baby blankets, sweaters, scarves, hats, caps for newborns. I take a knitting project with me everywhere, especially when I have to sit still and listen. As I discovered in college, when my hands are busy, my mind stays focused on the here and now.D) It seems, too, that I’m part of a national renewal of interest in needle and other handicrafts (⼿⼯艺).The Craft Yam Council reports that a third of women ages 25-35 now knit or crochet. Ev en men and schoolchildren are swelling the ranks, among them my Mend’s three small grandsons. Last April, the council created a Stitch Away Stress” campaign in honor of National Stress Awareness Month. Dr. Herbert Benson, a pioneer in mind/body medicine and author of The Relaxation Response, says that the repetitive action of needlework can induce a relaxed state like that associated with meditation (沉思) and yoga. Once you get beyond the initial learning curve, knitting and crocheting can lower heart rate and blood pressure.E) But unlike meditation, craft activities result in tangible and often useful products that can enhance self-esteem. I keep photos of my singular accomplishments on my cellphone to boost my spirits when needed.F) Since the 1990s, the council has surveyed hundreds of thousands of knitters and crocheters, who routinely list stress relief and creative fulfillment as the activities’ main benefits. Among them is the father of a prematurely born daughter who reported that during the baby’s fi ve weeks in the intensive care unit, “learning how to knit infant hats gave me a sense of purpose during a time that I felt very helpless. It’s a hobby that I’ve stuck with, and it continues to help me cope with stress at work, provide a sense of order in hectic (忙乱的) days, and allow my brain time to solve problems.”G) A recent email from the yam (纺纱) company Red Heart titled “Health Benefits of Crocheting and Knitting” prompted me to explore what else might be known about the health value of activities like knitting. My research revealed that the rewards go well beyond replacing stress and anxiety with the satisfaction of creation.H) For example, Karen Hayes, a life coach in Toronto, conducts knitting therapy programs,including Knit to Quit to help smokers give up the habit, and Knit to Heal for people coping with health crises, like a cancer diagnosis or serious illness of a family member. Schools and prisons with craft programs report that they have a calming effect and enhance social skills. And having to follow instructions on complex craft projects can improve children’s math skills.I) Some people find that craftwork helps them control their weight. Just as it’s challenging to smoke while knitting, when hands are holding needles and hooks, there’s le ss snacking and mindless eating out of boredom.J) I’ve found that my handiwork with yam has helped my arthritic (患关节炎的)fingers remain more dexterous (灵巧的) as I age. A woman encouraged to try knitting and crocheting after developing an autoimmune disease that caused a lot of hand pain reported on the Craft Yam Council site that her hands are now less stiff and painful.K) A 2009 University of British Columbia study of 38 women with an eating disorder who were taught to knit found that learning the craft led to significant improvements. Seventy-four percent of the women said the activity lessened their fears and kept them from thinking about their problem.who were clinically depressed said that knitting made them feel happy or very happy. In a study of 60 self-selected people with persistent pain, Ms. Corkhill and colleagues reported that knitting enabled them to redirect their focus, reducing their awareness of pain. She suggested that the brain can process just so much at once, and that activities like knitting and crocheting make it harder for the brain to register pain signals. Perhaps most exciting is research that suggests that crafts like knitting and crocheting may help to keep off a decline in brain function with age. In a 2011 study, researchers led by Dr. Yonas Geda at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester interviewed a random (随机的) sample of 1,321 people ages 70-89, most of whom were cognitively (在认知⽅⾯) normal, about the cognitive activities they engaged in late in life. The study, published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences, found that those who engaged in crafts like knitting and crocheting had a diminished chance of developing mild cognitive disorder and memory loss.M) Although it is possible that only people who are cognitively healthy would pursue such activities, those who read newspapers or magazines or played music did not show similar benefits. The researchers speculate that craft activities promote the development of nerve pathways in the brain that help to maintain cognitive health.N) In support of that suggestion, a 2014 study by Denise C. Park of the University of Texas at Dallas and colleagues demonstrated that learning to knit or do digital photography enhanced memory function in older adults. Those who engaged in activities that were not intellectually challenging, either in a social group or alone, did not show such improvements.O) Given that sustained social contacts have been shown to support health and a long life, those wishing to maximize the health value of crafts might consider joining a group of like-minded folks.I for one try not to miss a single weekly meeting of my knitting group.36. When the author was a college student, she found that knitting helped her concentrate.37. Knitting can help people stay away from tobacco.38. Even men and children are now joining the army of knitters.39. Being a member of a crafts group enhances one’s health and prolongs one’s life.40. Knitting diverts people’s attention from their pain.41. The author learnt to knit as a teenager, but it was not until she was much older that she became keenly interested.42. When people are knitting, they tend to eat fewer snacks.43. Survey findings show that knitting can help people relieve stress.44. According to a study, knitters and crocheters are less likely to suffer mild cognitive damage.45. The products of knitting can increase one’s sense of self-respect.Section CDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2with a single line through the centre.Passage OneQuestions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.Nobody really knows how big Lagos is. What’s indisputable is that it’s growing very quickly. Between now and 2050, the urban population of Africa could triple. Yet cities in sub-Saharan Africa are not getting richer the way cities in the rest of the world have. Most urban Africans live in slums (贫民窟); migrants are often not much better off than they were in the countryside. Why?The immediate problem is poverty. Most of Africa is urbanising at a lower level of income than other regions of the worl d did. That means there’s little money around for investment that would make cities liveable and more productive. Without upgrades and new capacity, bridges, roads and power systems are unable to cope with expanding populations. With the exception of South Africa, the only light rail metro system in sub-Saharan Africa is in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Traffic jam leads to expense and unpredictability, things that keep investors away.In other parts of the world, increasing agricultural productivity and industrialization went together. More productive farmersmoney. Most urban Africans work for a small minority of the rich, who tend to be involved in either cronyish (有裙带关系的)businesses or politics. Since African agriculture is still broadly unproductive, food is imported, consuming a portion of revenue.So what can be done? Though African countries are poor, not all African cities are. In Lagos, foreign oil workers can pay as much as $65,000 per year in rent for a modest apartment in a safe part of town. If that income were better taxed, it might provide the revenue for better infrastructure. If city leaders were more accountable to their residents, they might favour projects designed to help them more. Yet even as new roads are built, new people arrive. When a city’s popul ation grows by 5% a year, it is difficult to keep up.46. What do we learn from the passage about cities in sub-Saharan Africa?A) They have more slums than other cities in the world.B) They are growing fast without becoming richer.C) They are as modernised as many cities elsewhere.D) They attract migrants who want to be better off.47. What does the author imply about urbanisation in other parts of the world?A) It benefited from the contribution of immigrants.B) It started when people’s income was relatively high.C) It benefited from the accelerated rise in productivity.D) It started with the improvement of people’s livelihood.48. Why is sub-Saharan Africa unappealing to investors?A) It lacks adequate transport facilities.B) The living expenses there are too high.C) It is on the whole too densely populated.D) The local governments are corrupted.49. In what way does the author say African cities are different?A) They have attracted huge numbers of farm labourers.B) They still rely heavily on agricultural productivity.C) They have developed at the expense of nature.D) They depend far more on foreign investment.50. What might be a solution to the problems facing African cities?A) Lowering of apartment rent. C) More rational overall planning.B) Better education for residents. D) A more responsible government.Passage TwoQuestions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.For the past several decades, it seems there’s been a general consensus on how to get ahead in America: Get a college education, find a reliable job, and buy your own home. But do Americans still believe in that path, and if they do, is it attainable?The most recent National Journal poll asked respondents about the American dream, what it takes to achieve their goals, and whether or not they felt a significant amount of control over their ability to be successful. Overwhelmingly, the results show that today, the idea of the American dream—and what it takes to achieve it—looks quite different than it did in the lateBy and large, people felt that their actions and hard work—not outside forces—were the deciding factor in how their lives turned out. But respondents had decidedly mixed feelings about what actions make for a better life in the current economy.In the last seven years, Americans have grown more pessimistic about the power of education to lead to success. Even though they see going to college as a fairly achievable goal, a majority—52 percent—think that young people do not need a four-year college education in order to be successful.Miguel Maeda, 42, who has a master’s degree and works in public health, was the first in his family to go to college, which has allowed him to achieve a sense of financial stability his parents and grandparents never did.While some, like Maeda, emphasized the value of the degree rather than the education itself, others still see college as a way to gain new perspectives and life experiences.Sixty-year-old Will Fendley, who had a successful career in the military and never earned a college degree, thinks “personal drive” is far more important than just going to college. To Fendley, a sense of drive and purpose, as well as an effective high-school education, and basic life skills, like balancing a checkbook, are the necessary ingredients for a successful life in America.51. It used to be commonly acknowledged that to succeed in America, one had to have ______.A) an advanced academic degree C) a firm belief in their dreamB) an ambition to get ahead D) a sense of drive and purpose52. What is the finding of the latest National Journal poll concerning the American dream?A) More and more Americans are finding it hard to realize.B) It remains alive among the majority of American people.C) Americans’ idea of it has changed over the past few decades.D) An increasing number of young Americans are abandoning it.53. What do Americans now think of the role of college education in achieving success?A) It still remains open to debate.B) It has proved to be beyond doubt.C) It is no longer as important as it used to be.D) It is much better understood now than ever.54. How do some people view college education these days?A) It promotes gender equality. C) It adds to cultural diversity.B) It needs to be strengthened. D) It helps broaden their minds.55. What is one factor essential to success in America, according to Will Fendley?A) A desire to learn and to adapt. C) A willingness to commit oneself.B) A strong sense of responsibility. D) A clear aim and high motivation.Part IV Translation (30 minutes) Directions: For this part, you are allowed SO minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2.华⼭位于华阴市，距西安120公⾥。
2016年12月英语四级真题及答案第一套
2016年12月英语四级真题及答案第一套Part I Writing （30minutes）（请于正式开考后半小时内完成该部分，之后将进行听力考试）Directions：For this part， you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay .Suppose you are two options upon graduation：one is to find a job somewhere and the other to start a business of your own. You are to make a choice between the two. Write an essay to explain the reasons for your choice. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.Part II Listening Comprehension （25 minutes）Section ADirections：In this section， you will hear three news reports. At the end of each news report， you will hear two or three questions. Both the news report and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question， you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A）， B）， C）. Then mark the corresponding letter on the Answer sheet1with a single line through the centre.Questions 1and 2 are based on the news report you have just the heard.1. A） It was dangerous to live in. C） He could no longer pay the rent.B） It was going to be renovated. D） He had sold it to the royal family. 2. A） A strike. B） A storm. C） A forest fire. D） A Terrorist attack. Questions 3and 4 are based on the news report you have just heard.3. A） They lost contact with the emergency department.B）They were trapped in an underground elevator.C） They were injured by suddenly falling rocks.D） They sent calls for help via a portable radio.4. A） They tried hard to repair the accident.B） They released the details of the accident.C） They sent supplies to keep the miners warm.D） They provided the miner with food and water.Question5 to7 are based on the news report you have just heard.5. A） Raise postage rates. C） Redesign delivery routes.B） Improve its services. D） Close some of its post offices.6. A） Shortening business hours. C） Stopping mail delivery on Saturdays.B） Closing offices on holidays. D）Computerizing mail sorting processes.7. A） Many post office staff will lose their jobsB） Many people will begin to complainC） Taxpayers will be very pleasedD）A lot of controversy will ariseSection BDirections：In this section，you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation，you will hear four questions. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question， you must choose the best answer from four choice marked A），B），C）and D）.Then mark the corresponding letter an Answer sheet1with a single line though the centre.Question8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.8. A）He will be kept from promotion. C）He will be given a warning.B）He will go through retraining. D）He will lose part of his pay.9. A）He is always on time. C）He is an experienced press operator.B）He is trustworthy guy. D）He is on good terms with his workmates. 10. A）She is a trade union representative. C）She is a senior manager of the shop.B）She is in charge of public relation. D）She is better at handing such matters.11. A）He is skilled and experienced. C）He is always trying to stir up trouble.B）He is very close to the manager. D）He is always complaining about low wages. Question12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.12. A）Open. B）Friendly. C）Selfish. D）Reserved. 13. A）They stay quiet. C）They talk about the weatherB）They read a book. D）They chat with fellow passengers.14. A）She was always treated as a foreigner.B）She was eager to visit an English castle.C）She was never invited to a colleague’s home.D）She was unwilling to make friends with workmates.15. A） House are much more quiet. C） They want to have more space.B） Houses provide more privacy. D） They want a garden of their own.Section CDirections：In this section，you will hear three passages. At the end of each passage，you will hear three or four questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question，you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A），B），C）and D）.Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1with a single line through the centre.Questions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard.16. A） They don’t have much choice of jobs.B） They are likely to get much higher pay.C） They don’t have to go through job interviews.D） They will automatically be given hiring priority.17. A） Ask their professors for help. C） Visit the school careers services.B） Look at school bulletin boards. D） Go through campus newspapers.18. A） Helping students find the books and journals they need.B） Supervising study spaces to ensure a quiet atmosphere.C） Helping students arrange appointments with librarians.D） Providing students with information about the library.Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard.19. A） It tastes better. C） It may be sold at a higher price .B） It is easier to grow. D） It can better survive extreme weathers. 20. A） It is healthier than green tea. C） It will replace green tea one day.B） It can grow in drier soil. D） It is immune to various diseases. 21. A） It has been well received by many tea drinkers.B） It does not bring the promised health benefits.C） It has made tea farmers’ life easier.D） It does not have a stable market.Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.22. A）They need decorations to show their status.B） They prefer unique objects of high quality.C） They decorate their homes themselves.D） They care more about environment.23. A） They were proud of their creations.B） They could only try to create at night.C） They made great contributions to society.D） They focused on the quality of their products.24. A） Make wise choices. C） Design handicrafts themselves.B） Identify fake crafts. D） Learn the importance of creation.25. A） To boost the local economy. C） To arouse public interest in crafts.B） To attract foreign investments. D） To preserve the traditional culture. PARTⅢ Reading Comprehension （40 minutes）Section ADirections：In this section，there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.When someone commits a criminal act, we always hope the punishment will match the offense. But when it comes to one of the cruelest crimes — animal fighting — things 26 work out that way. Dog fighting victims are 27 and killed for profit and “sport,” yet their criminal abusers often receive a 28 sentence for causing a lifetime of pain. Roughly half of all federally-convicted animal fighters only get probation(缓刑).Some progress has been made in the prosecution(起诉) of animal fighters. But federal judges often rely heavily on the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines when they 29penalties, and in the case of animal fighting, those guidelines are outdated and extremely30.The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which31these sentencing guidelines, is revisiting them,proposing to raise the minimum sentence from 6-12 to 21-27 months. This is a step in the right 32, but we’d like to see the U.S. Sentencing Commission make further guidelines.Simultaneous to this effort, we’re working with animal advocates and state and federal lawmakers to 33anti-cruelty laws across the country, as well as supporting laws and policies that assist overburdened animal 34 that care for animal fighting victims. This help is35 important because the high cost of caring for animal victims is a major deterrent to intervening in cruelty cases in the first place.A) convenient B) creates C) critically D) determine E) directionF) hesitate G) inadequate H)inspired I) method J) minimalK) rarely L) shelters M) strengthen N) sufferings O)torturedSection BDirections：In this section，you are gonging to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer sheet 2.When Work Becomes a Game[A]What motivates employees to do their jobs well? Competition with coworkers, for some. The promise of rewards, for others. Pure enjoyment of problem-solving, for a lucky few.[B]Increasingly, companies are tapping into these desires directly through what’s come to be known as “gamification:” essentially, turning work into a game. “Gamification is about understanding what it is that makes games engaging and what game designers do to create a great experience in games, and taking those learnings and applying them to other contexts such as the workplace and education,” explains Kevin Werbach, a gamification expert who teaches at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States..[C]It might mean monitoring employee productivity on a digital leaderboard and offering prizes to the winners, or giving employees digital badges or stars for completing certain activities. It could also mean training employees how to do their jobs through video gameplatforms. Companies from Google to IBM to Wells Fargo are known to use some degree of gamification in their workplaces. And more and more companies are joining them. A recent report suggests that the global gamification market will grow from $1.65 billion in 2015 to $11.1 billion by 2020.[D]The concept of gamification is not entirely new, Werbach says. Companies, marketers and teachers have long looked for fun ways to engage people’s reward-seeking or competitive spirits. Cracker Jacks has been “gamifying” its snack food by putting a small prize inside for more than 100 years, he adds, and the turn-of-the-century steel magnate Charles Schwab is said to have often come into his factory and written the number of tons of steel produced on the past shift on the factory floor, thus motivating the next shift of workers to beat the previous one.[E]But the word “gamification” and the widespread, conscious application of the concept only began in earnest about five years ago, Werbach says. Thanks in part to video games, the generation now entering the workforce is especially open to the idea of having their work gamified. “We’re at a point where in much of the developed world the vast majority of young people grew up playing [video] games, and an increasingly high percentage of adults play these video games too,” Werbach says.[F]A number of companies have sprung up—GamEffective, Bunchball and Badgeville, to name a few—in recent years offering gamification platforms for businesses. The platforms that are most effective turn employees’ ordinary job tasks into part of a rich adventure narrative. “What makes a game game-like is that the player actually cares about the outcome,” Werbach says. “The principle is understanding what is motivating to this group of players, which requires some understanding of psychology.”[G]Some people, Werbach says, are motivated by competition. Sales people often fall into this category. For them, the right kind of gamification might be turning their sales pitches into a competition with other team members, complete with a digital leaderboard showing who’s winning at all times.Others are more motivated by collaboration and social experiences. One company Werbach has studied uses gamification to create a sense of community and boost employee morale. When employees log in to their computers, they’re shown a picture of one of their coworkers and asked to guess that person’s name.[H]Gamification does not have to be digital. Monica Cornetti runs a company that gamifies employee trainings. Sometimes this involves technology, but often it does not. She recently designed a gamification strategy for a sales training company with a storm-chasing theme. Employees formed “storm chaser teams” and competed in storm-themed educational exercises to earn various rewards.“Rewards don’t have to be stuff,” Cornetti says. “Rewards can be flextime. Rewards can be extension time.”Another training, this one for pay roll law, used a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs theme. Snow White is public domain, but the dwarfs are still under copyright, so Cornetti invented sound-alike characters (Grumpy Gus, Dopey Dan) to illustrate specific pay roll law principles.[I]Some people don’t take as naturally to gamified work environments, Cornetti says. In her experience, people in positions of power or people in finance or engineering don’t tend to like the sound of the word.“If we’re designing for engineers, I’m not talking about a ‘game’ at all,” Cornetti says. “I’m talking about a ‘simulation,’ I’m talking about ‘being able to solve this problem.”[J]Gamification is “not a magic bullet,” Werbach cautions. A gamification strategy that’s not sufficiently thought through or tailored to its players may engage people for a little while, but it won’t motivate in the long term. It can also be exploitative, especially when used with vulnerable populations. For workers, especially low-paid workers, who desperately need their jobs yet know they can be easily replaced, gamification may feel more like the Hunger Games. Werbach gives the example of several Disneyland hotels in Anaheim, California, which used large digital leaderboards to display how efficiently laundry workers were working compared to one another. Some employees found the board motivating. To others, it was the opposite of fun. Some began to skip bathroom breaks, worried that if their productivity fell they would be fired. Pregnant employees struggled to keep up. In a Los Angeles Times article, one employee referred to the board as a “digital whip.”“It actually had a very negative effect on morale and performance,” Werbach says.[K]Still, gamification only stands to become more popular, he says, “as more and more people come into the workforce who are intuitively familiar with the structures and expressions of digital games.” “We are way ahead of the tipping point,” Cornetti agrees. “There’s no reason this will go away.”36.some famous companies are already using gamification and more are trying to do the same.37.Gamification is not a miracle cure for all workplaces as it may have negative results.38.To enhance morale, one company asks its employees to identify their fellow works when starting their computers.39.The idea of gamification was practiced by some businesses more than a century ago.40.There is a reason to believe that gamification will be here to stay.41.Video games contributed in some ways to the wide application of gamification.42.When turning work into a game, it is necessary to understand what makes games interesting.43.Gamification in employee training does not always need technology.44.The most successful gamification platforms transform daily work assignments into fun experiences.45.It is necessary to use terms other than “gamification” for some professions. Section CDirections：There are 2 passages in this section .Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices maked A），B），C）and D）.You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet2 with a single line through the centre.Passage OneQuestions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.Recently I attended several meetings where we talked about ways to retain students and keep younger faculty members from going elsewhere.It seems higher education has become an industry of meeting-holders whose task it is to " solve" problems-real or imagined. And in my position as a professor at three different colleges, the actual problems in educating our young people and older students have deepened, while the number of people hired-not to teach but to hold meetings-has increased significantly. Every new problem creates a new job for an administrative fixer. Take our Center for Teaching Excellence. Contrary to its title, the center is a clearing house (信息交流中心)for using technology in classrooms and in online courses. It's an administrative sham (欺诈) of the kind that has multiplied over the last 30 years.I offer a simple proposition in response: Many of our problems-class attendance,educationalsuccess, student happiness and well-being-might be improved by cutting down the bureaucratic (官僚的) mechanisms and meetings and instead hiring an army of good teachers. lf we replaced half of our administrative staff with classroom teachers, we might actually get a majority of our classes back to 20 or fewer students per teacher This would be an environment in which teachers and students actually knew each other.The teachers must be free to teach in their own way-the curriculum should be flexible enough so that they can use their individual talents to achieve the goals of the course. Additionally; they should be allowed to teach, and be rewarded for doing it well. Teachers are not people who are great at and consumed by research and happen to appear in a classroom. Good teaching and research are not exclusive, but they are also not automatic companions. Teaching is an art and a craft, talent and practice; it is not something that just anyone can be good at. It is utterly confusing to me that people do not recognize this, despite the fact that pretty much anyone who has been a student can tell the difference between their best and worst teachers.46.What does the author say about present-day universities?A)They are effectively tackling real or imagined problems.B)They often fail to combine teaching with research.C)They are over-burdened with administrative staff.D)They lack talent to fix their deepening problems.47.According to the author, what kind of people do universities lack most?A)Good classroom teachers. C) Talented researchers.B)Efficient administrators. D) Motivated students.48.What does the author imply about the classes at present?A)They facilitate students independent learning.B)They help students form closer relationships.C)They have more older students than before.D)They are much bigger than is desirable.49.What does the author think of teaching ability?A)It requires talent and practice.B)It is closely related to research.C)It is a chief factor affecting students 'learning.D)It can be acquired through persistent practice.50.What is the author’s suggestion for improving university teaching?A)Creating an environment for teachers to share 'their teaching experiences.B)Hiring more classroom teachers and allowing them to teach in their own way.C)Using high technology in classrooms and promoting exchange of information.D)Cutting down meetings and encouraging administrative staff to go to classrooms.Passage TwoQuestions 51to 55 are based on the following passage.The secret to eating less and being happy about it may have been cracked years ago-by McDonald's. According to a new study from Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab, small non-food rewards-like the toys in McDonald's Happy Meals-stimulate the same reward centers in the brain as food does.The researchers, led by Martin Reimann, carried out a series of experiments to see if people would choose a smaller meal if it was paired with a non-food items.They found that the majority of both kids and adults opted for a half-sized portion when combined with a prize. Both options were priced the same.Even more interesting is that the promise of a future reward was enough to make adults choose the smaller portion.\One of the prizes used was a lottery ticket（彩票）, with a $ 10, $ 50 or $ 100 payout, and this was as effective as a tangible gift in persuading people to eat less."The fact that participants were willing to substitute part of a food item for the mere prospect of a relatively small monetary award is interesting.”says Reimann.He theorizes that it is the emotional component of these intangible prizes that make them effective. In fact, vaguely-stated possibilities of winning a prize were more effective than options with hard odds included.“One explanation for this finding is that possible awards may be more emotionally provoking than certainty awards," says Reimann. " The uncertainty of winning provides added attraction and desirability through emotional ‘thrills.' The possibility of receiving anaward also produces a state of hope一a state that is in itself psychologically rewarding·"In other words, there’s a reason why people like to gamble How might it’s knowledge be used to help people eat more healthily?One possibility is a healthy that offers the chance to win a spa (温泉疗养) weekend. Or maybe the reward of a half-sized portion could be a half-sized dessert to be claimed only on a future date. That would get you back in the restaurant-and make you eat a little less.51.What do we learn about McDonald’s inclusion of toys in its Happy Meals?A)It may shed light on people’s desire to crack a secret.B)It has proved to be key to McDonald’s business success.C)It appeals to kid’s curiosity to find out what is hidden inside.D)It may be a pleasant way for kids to reduce their food intake.52. What is the finding of the researchers led by Martin Reimann?A)Reducing food intake is not that difficult if people go to McDonald’s more.B)Most kids and adults don’t actually feel hungry when they eat half of their meal.C)Eating a smaller does good to the health of kids and adults alike.D)Most kids and adults would choose a smaller meal that came with a non-food item.53.What is most interesting in Martin Reimann’s finding?A)Kids preferred an award in the form of money to one in the form of a toy.B)Adults chose the smaller portion on the mere promise of a future awardC)Both kids and adults felt satisfied with only half of their meal portions.D)Neither children nor adults could resist the temptation of a free toy.54.How does Martin Reimann interpret his finding?A)The emotional component of the prizes is at work.B)People now care more about quality than quantity.C)People prefer certainty awards to possible awards.D) The desire for a future reward is overwhelming.55.What can we infer from Martin Reimann’s finding?A)·People should eat much less if they ·wish to stay healthy and happy.B)More fast food restaurants are likely to follow McDonald’s example.C)We can lead people to eat less while helping the restaurant business.D)More studies are needed to find out the impact of emotion on behavior.Part IV Translation （30 minutes）Directions：For this part，you are allowed 30minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English .You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2. 在中国文化中，红色通常象征着好运、长寿和幸福.在春节和其他喜庆场合，红色到处可见.人们把现金作为礼物送给家人或亲密朋友时，通常放在红色信封里.红色在中国流行的另一个原因是人们把它与中国革命和共产党相联系.然而，红色并不总是代表好运和快乐.因为从死前者名字通常用红色书写，用红墨水书写中国人名被看成是一种冒犯行为.2016年12月大学英语四级答案（第一套）Part1 writing (30 minutes)破题思路：第一段：话题描述. 第二段：表明观点+阐述原因. 第三段：观点结论.参考范文：(选择就业还是创业)Finding a Job FirstUpon graduation，virtually all college students will confront the problem of the career choice，which is truly a tough choice. Students’ opinions differ greatly on this issue. Some hold that priority should be given to start a business of your own， but others take the attitude that finding a job is the best choice influencing their future.As to myself， I prefer the latter view. An opportunity to start a business exerts a tremendous fascination on a great number of people，with no exception to me. In my view，With the competition in the job market becoming increasingly fierce for college graduates，some ambitious students have tried their hands at launching their own businesses. Over the years，there have been many successful cases of student entrepreneurship and such attempts should be encouraged and promoted by both the universities and the society at large. What’s more ，College students who start businesses are pioneers，among whom will be born China’s future business leaders. Faced with unknown challenges，they are audacious enough to embark on a perilous journey while most of their peers enjoy stable salaries by working as white-collars at high-end office buildings.All in all， the essential difference between the students who find a job or those students who create their own businesses is that the former are docile followers whereas the latter are aggressive trailblazers. For this reason， business-launching college graduates are more admirable， and thus they command our deep respect.Part II Listening Comprehension （25 minutes）【英语四级听力真题解析】听力作为一种考试题型，目的在于考查应试者对英语语言的把握，自从英语四级题型改革后，所选题材侧重新闻稿和演讲稿，比如这次英语四级考试的Section A 部分，主要是关于采盐工人的相关新闻报导，文章稍难，我们在作答之前，一定要快速浏览各题目的选项，先把核心关键词划出来，比如重要的名词，名词性短语等，这样可以帮助我们预知要听的重点，提高捕捉信息的准确度，降低听力材料的难度.在听录音的过程中，快速作标记，锁定正确答案.1.(A)It was dangerous to live in.2.(B)A storm3.(B)They were trapped in an underground elevator.4.(C)They sent supplies to keep the miners warm.5.(D)Close some of its post office.6.(C)Stopping mail delivery on Saturdays.7.(A)Many post office staff will lose their jobs.Section B8.(D)He will lose part of his pay.9.(B)He is a trustworthy guy. 10.(D)She is better at handling such matters.11.(C)He is always trying to stir up trouble. 12.(D)Reserved13.(A)They stay quiet 14.(C)She was never invited to a colleague’s home.15.(B)Houses provide more privacySection C16.(D)They will automatically be given hiring priority.17.(C)Visit the school careers service.18.(B)Supervising study spaces to ensure a quiet atmosphere.19.(C)It may be sold at a higher price. 20.(A)It is healthier than green tee.21.(D)It does not have a stable market.22.(B)They prefer unique objects of high quality.23.(B)They could only try to create at night.24.(A)Make wise choices.25.(A)To boost the local economy.Section AA 16th century castle in Scotland is close to collapsing after lumps of soils were washed away by floods, threatening its foundations.On Sunday, the castle’s owner John Gordon, 76, was forced to move out his property after the River Dee swept away about 60 feet of land, leaving the castle dangerous close to the river. According to the Scottish Daily Record.Abergeldie castle located in Aberdeenshire, Scotland was built by Sir Alexander Gordon ofMidmar who later became the Earl of Huntly.The castle which is located on 11,700 acres was leased to members of the royal family between 1848 and 1970, including King Edward VII and George V.The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has issued more than 35 flood warnings covering several regions, as Scotland continues to clean up the after Storm Frank hit the country last Wednesday.“This means that rivers will rise more slowly, but then stay high for much longer.” the environmental agency said.Q1. Why did John Gordon move out of Abergeldie castle?Q2. What happened in Scotland last Wednesday?Section A - 2Rescue efforts were underway Thursday morning for 17 miners who were stuck in an elevator below ground at a Cargill rock salt mine near Lansing, New York, according to Marcia Lynch. Public information officer with Tompkins County’s emergency response department, emergency workers have made contact with the miners via a radio. And they all appear to be uninjured, said Jessica Verfuss, the emergency department’s assistant director. Crews have managed to provide heat packs and blankets to the miners so that they can keep warm during the rescue operation, Verfuss said. Details about what led to the workers’ being trapped in the elevator went immediately available. The mine, along New York’s Cayuga Lake, processes salt used for road treatment. It produces about 2 million tons of salt that is shipped to more than 1,500 places in the northeastern United States, the rock salt mine is one of three operated by Cargill with the other two in Louisiana and Ohio.Q3. What does the news report say about the salt miners?Q4.What did the rescue team do?Section A - 3The U.S. Postal Service announced today that it is considering closing about 3,700 post offices over the next year because of falling revenues.Facing an $8.3 billion budget deficit this year, closing post officers is one of several proposals the Postal Service has put forth recently to cut costs. Last week, for example, Postmaster General Pat Donahoe announced plans to stop mail delivery on Saturdays, a move。
【英语真题】2021年12月大学英语四级考试真题(第二套)
2021年12月大学英语四级考试真题（第二 套）PartⅠWriting(30 minutes)Directions:Suppose you have just participated in a school project of collecting used books on campus.You are now to write a report about the project,which may include its aim,organizers, participants and activities.You will have30minutes to write the report.You should write at least 120words but no more than180words.PartⅡListening Comprehension(30minutes) Section ADirections:In this section,you will hear three news reports.At the end of each news report,you will hear two or three questions.Both the news report and questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question,you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A),B),C) and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet1with a single line through the centre.Questions1and2are based on the news report you have just heard.1.A)It found a pet dog on board a plane to a city in Texas.B)It had one of its cargo planes land at a wrong airportC)It sent two dogs to the wrong destinations.D)It had two of its domestic flights mixed up2.A)Correct their mistake as soon as possible.B)Give the two pets a physical checkup.C)Hire a charter jet to bring the pets back.D)Send another plane to continue the flight.Questions3and4are based on the news report you have just heard.3.A)She weighs130kilograms B)She has had babies beforeC)She was brought from Africa.D)She has a big family of six.4.A)It took22hours.B)It had some complicationsC)It was smooth.D)It was monitored by Dr.Sue Tygielski Questions5to7are based on the news report you have just heard.5.A)It enjoyed great popularity.B)It started business three years ago.C)It was frequented by newly-weds D)It was built above the sea-water.6.A)Expand his business on the beach.B)Replace the restaurant’s wooden deck.C)Post a picture of his restaurant online.D)Celebrate his silver wedding anniversary.7.A)She sold it for two thousand dollarsB)She took it to the restaurant managerC)She posted its picture on FacebookD)she returned it to its owner right awaySection BDirections:In this section,you will hear two long conversations.At the end of each conversation, you will hear four questions.Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question,you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A),B),C) and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet1with a single line through the centre.Questions8to11are based on the conversation you have just heard.8.A)The number of ducks has declined sharply in recent years.B)Climate change has little effect on the lives of wild ducks.C)Duck meat is not eaten in Australia,Canada and the U.S.D)Duck hunting remains legal in many parts of the world.9.A)Droughts.B)Bushfires.C)Farming.D)Hunting.10.A)They are not easy to domesticate.B)Their meat is not that popular.C)It is not environmentally friendly D)It is not considered cost-effective11A)They hunted ducks as a traditional sport.B)They killed wild ducks and geese for food.C)They raised ducks and geese for their eggs.D)They poisoned wild ducks in large numbers Questions12to15are based on the conversation you have just heard.12.A)Have her house repainted B)Replace some of her old furnitureC)Move into a newly-painted house D)Calculate the cost of the paint job13.A)How long the work will take B)How much the work will cost.C)How the paint job is to be done.D)How many workers are needed14.A)Cover up her furniture B)Ask some friends for helpC)Stay somewhere else D)Oversee the work herself15.A)She could have asked a friend for help with the paint jobB)Painting a house involves more trouble than she thoughtC)she should have repainted her house much earlierD)Moving her furniture is harder than the paint jobSection CDirections:In this section,you will hear three passages.At the end of each passage,you will hear three or four questions.Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once.After you hear a question,you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A),B),C)and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet1with a single line through the centre. Questions16to18are based on the passage you have just heard.16.A)To cultivate good habits.B)To prepare for secondary school.C)To review what is learned in classD)To stimulate interest in learning.17.A)Discuss their academic achievements with themB)Create an ideal study environment for themC)Allow them to learn independentlyD)Check their homework promptly18.A)Finish them before they get tiredB)Tackle the most difficult task firstC)Start with something they enjoyD)Focus on the most important onesQuestions19to21are based on the passage you have just heard.19.A)Workers who meet its body weight standardsB)Workers who can lose30pounds in a yearC)Workers who try the hardest to lose weightD)Workers who are in the top10%of the slimmest20.A)ImpracticalB)InconsistentC)UnmanageableD)Unfair21.A)Offer them much fatter bonuses.B)Improve working environment.C)Encourage healthy behaviorsD)Provide free lunch and snacksQuestions22to25are based on the passage you have just heard.22.A)It has not done enough to help left-handed children.B)It has treated left-handed children as being disabled.C)It has not built facilities specially for the left-handed.D)It has ignored campaigns on behalf of the left-handed.23.A)They are as intelligent as other children.B)They have a distinctive style of handwritingC)They sometimes have psychological problems.D)They tend to have more difficulties in learning.24.A)Punish teachers discriminating against left-handed studentsB)Lay more emphasis on improving children’s mental healthC)Encourage students to develop various professional skillsD)Keep track of left-handed children’s school performance,25.A)How they can be reduced in number.B)Why their numbers are so highC)What percentage they account forD)If their percentage keeps increasingPartⅢReading Comprehension(40minutes) Section ADirections:In this section,there is a passage with ten blanks.You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage.Read the passage through carefully before making your choices.Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter:Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet2with a single line through the centre.You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.It is commonly believed that the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon on April23,1564.But it is impossible to know the26day on which he was born.Church records show he was baptized(施洗礼)on April26,and three days was a customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newly born baby.Shakespeare’s date of death is27known,however:it was April23,1616.He was52and had retired to Stratford three years before.Although few plays have been performed or analyzed as extensively as the38plays Shakespeare wrote,there are few surviving details about his life.This28of biographical information is due primarily to his social29;he was not a noble,but the son of a leather trader.Shakespeare30attended the grammar school in Stratford,where he would have studied Latin and read31literature.He did not go to university and at age18married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his32.They had four children,including the twins,Hamnet and Judith. Nothing is known of the period between the birth of the twins and Shakespeare’s33as a dramatist in London in the early1590sIn a million words written over20years,he34the full range of human emotions and conflicts with a35that remains sharp today.As his great contemporary the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson said,“He was not of an age,but for all time.”A)captured I)precisionB)classical J)probablyC)conclusively K)qualityD)emergence L)scarcityE)exact M)seniorF)generated N)separatedG)particular O)systematicallyH)positionSection BDirections:In this section,you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs.Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived.You may choose a paragraph more than once.Each paragraph is marked with a letter.Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet2.How to not be boring[A]Humans are creatures of habit.We love to establish a routine and stick with it.Then we often put ourselves on auto-pilot.Routines can be incredibly useful in helping you get things done. However,too much of a routine can also make you incredibly boring.Nevertheless,many people live lives that are boringly predictable,or live a life where everything is outlined or planned. [B]To tell the truth,interesting people are more popular among their friends.If you don’t arouse someone's curiosity or brighten someone’s day,you probably come across as being a little bit dull. But that doesn’t mean your life has ended and you can't do anything to change it.If you find yourself searching for something to say beyond small talk,try these tactics to find more interesting approaches to conversation.[C]Recently,I was at a gathering of colleagues when someone turned to me and asked,"So, what's new with you?”Ordinarily,I think I’m a good conversationalist.After all,it's literally my job to talk to people and tell their stories or share their advice.And that's not exactly an unexpected question.Still,the only“new-lo-me”topics that came to mind were my daughter’s basketball tournament（锦标赛）and my feelings about that morning’s political headlines----neither amusing nor appropriate topics at that moment.[D]Oh,no,I thought.Have I become boring?But sharing our experiences in an authentic way to connect with other people is what makes us interesting,says associate professor Michael Pirson.The hesitation I felt in not sharing the ordinary things that were happening in my life,and the wild mental search for something more interesting,may have backfired and made me seem less interesting.[E]“If someone is making up some conversation that might be interesting,it’s probably not going to land well,”says Pirson,whose expertise includes trust and well-being,mindfulness,and humanistic management.“It’s going to feel like a made-up conversation that people don’t necessarily want to tune in to.”[F]The most interesting people aren’t those who've gone on some Eat,Pray,Love journey to find themselves.Instead,Pirson says,they’re those who examine the ordinary.”Often,the‘boring things’may not be boring at all.Maybe they are actually little miracles,"he says.Share yourobservations about the world around you---interesting stories you heard or things you noticed---and you may be surprised by the universal connection they inspire.[G]This is essentially how Jessica Hagy starts her day.The author of How to Be Interesting:An Instruction Manual,Hagy spends a lot of time thinking about what's interesting to her.People who are interesting are persistently curious,she says.[H]Think about the everyday things around you and ask questions about them.What is that roadside monument I sec on my way to work every day?Who built that interesting building in my city?What nearby attractions haven’t I visited?Why do people do things that way?Use what you find to ask more questions and learn more about the world around you.“Having that sort of curiosity is almost like a protective gear from getting into boredom,”she says.And when you find things that are truly interesting to you,share them.[I]Television veteran Audrey Morrissey,executive producer of NBC’s The Voice,is always looking for what will make a person or story interesting to viewers.It’s usually a matter of individuality.“Having a strong point of'view,signature style,or being a super-enthusiast in a particular field makes someone interesting,"she says.That means embracing what is truly interesting or unique about yourself.“Many people are‘not boring’in the way that they can carry a conversation or can be good at a social gathering,etc.To be interesting means that you have lived life,taken risks,traveled,sought out experience to learn for yourself and share with others," she says.[J]Of course,it’s possible to be a fountain of knowledge and a boring person,says public relations consultant Andrea Pass,Paying attention to the listener is an important part of having a conversation that’s interesting to both parties.Talking on and on about what’s interesting to you isn’t going to make you an interesting person,she says.[K]“If the listener is not paying attention,it’s your sign to shorten the story or change direction. Make sure to bring the audience into the conversation so that it is not one-sided,”Pass says.Be a better listener yourself,and give others opportunities to participate in the conversation by inviting them with questions or requests to share their own experiences or thoughts.(e.g.,“Now,tell me about your favorite book,”or“Have you ever been to that attraction?”)Questions are a powerful tool,especially when they encourage others to disclose information about themselves.A2012 study from the University of California,Santa Barbara,found that roughly40%of the time we are talking,we’re disclosing subjective information about our experience.And when we’re doing so, our brains are more engaged.So one strategy to leave others with the impression that you’re a sparkling conversation partner is to get others to talk.about themselves.[L]Being relatable is also essential,Morrissey says."The best entertainment and storytelling comes from people who are relatable---those who don’t shy away from opening up but freely share who they are and what they care about.These are the people viewers most relate to and find interesting.Being authentic,honest,and vulnerable is always interesting."[M]I have now come to realize that being boring,in actuality,is not only about who you are as aperson,but also how you present yourself.No matter what,make sure you are having fun in life. Because when you are enjoying,people around you will begin to enjoy as well.Show some interest in them and they will definitely show some in you.If'you are a very reserved person,this could be a little difficult at first.But with a little effort,you can definitely improve.36.Pirson claims that some ordinary things may often prove to be miraculously interesting.37.To make a conversation interesting,it is important that you listen to the other party attentively.38.A person who is unable to stimulate others’curiosity or make their life enjoyable may appear somewhat boring.39.Interesting people usually possess certain unique qualities,according to a TV program producer.40.Be interested in others and they are sure to be interested in you.41.The author considers himself usually good at conducting conversations.42.Interesting people are always full of curiosity.43.Falling into a routine can turn a person into an utter bore.44.One strategy to be a good conversationalist is to morivate your partner to tell their own stories.45.lnteresting as it might appear,a made-up conversation will probably turn out to be dull. Section CDirections:There are2passages in this section.Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements.For each of them there are four choices marked A),B),C)and D).You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet2with a single line through the centre.Passage OneQuestions46to50are based on the following passage.With obesity now affecting2%of the population in England,and expected to rise to35%by 2030,should we now recognise if as a disease?Obesity,in which excess body fat has accumulated to such an extent that health may be adversely affected,meets the dictionary definition of disease, argues Professor John Wilding.He points out that more than200genes influence weight.“Thus body weight is strongly influenced by biology----it is not an individual’s fault if they develop obesity."Yet the widespread view is that obesity is self-induced and that it is entirely the individual's responsibility to do something about it.Recognising obesity as a chronic disease with severe complications rather than a lifestyle choice“should help reduce the stigma(耻辱）and discrimination experienced by many people with obesity.”he adds.Professor Wilding disagrees that labelling a high proportion of the population as having a disease removes personal responsibility or may overwhelm health services,pointing out that other common diseases,such as high blood pressure and diabetes,require people to take action to manage their condition.He suggests that most people with obesity will eventually develop complications.“But unless we accept that obesity is a disease,we are not going to be able to tackle it.”he concludes.But Dr.Richard Pile,a physician with a special interest in diabetes,argues that adopting this approach"could actually result in worse outcomes for individuals and society.”He believes that he dictionary definition of disease“is so vague that we can classify almost anything as a disease”and says the question is not whether we can,but whether we should,and to what end.If labelling obesity as a disease was harmless then it wouldn’t really matter,he writes.But labelling obesity as a disease“risks reducing autonomy,disempowering and robbing people of the intrinsic(内在的)motivation that is such an important enabler of change.”What’s more,making obesity a disease“may not benefit patients,but it will benefit healthcare providers and the pharmaceutical(制药的)industry when health insurance and clinical guidelines promote treatment with drugs and surgery,”he warns.46.What does Professor John Wilding argue about obesity?A)Its impact on society is expected to rise.B)It is now too widespread to be neglected.C)It should be regarded as a genetic disease.D)Its dictionary definition should be updated.47.What is the popular view of obesity?A)It is difficult to define.B)It is a modem disease.C)It has much to do with one’s genes.D)It results from a lack of self-control.48.Why are some people opposed to labelling obesity as a disease?A)Obese people would not feel responsible to take any action.B)Obese people would not be able to afford the medical costs.C)Obese people would be overwhelmed with anxiety.D)Obese people would be discriminated against.49.What does Dr.Richard Pile think of the dictionary definition of disease?A)It is of no use in understanding obesity.B)It is too inclusive and thus lacks clarity.C)It helps little to solve patients’problems.D)It matters little to the debate over obesity.50.What is Dr.Richard Pile's concern about classifying obesity as a disease?A)It may affect obese people’s quality of life.B)It may accelerate the spread of obesity.C)It may cause a shortage of doctors.D)It may do little good to patients.Passage TwoQuestions51to55are based on the following passage.Nationwide,only about three percent of early childhood teachers are male in the U.S.Expertssay this can have an impact on young children whose understanding of gender roles and identity are rapidly forming.Research has found that having access to diverse teachers is beneficial for children.For the youngest learners,it means they are more likely to get exposed to different varieties of play and communication.It also helps them develop healthy ideas around gender.“In our world and our society,we have very specific stereotypes（模式化形象）of gender roles,”said Mindi Reich-Shapiro,an assistant professor in the teacher education department of the Borough of Manhattan Community College,and one of the authors of a recent study.”It’s important for children to see other possibilities and other paths they can take.”Despite mostly feeling supported by colleagues and family members,many of the male educators surveyed in the study reported facing social or cultural resistance in their careers as early education teachers.Some also reported that there were parents surprised or concerned that their child had a male teacher.And they had been advised by colleagues or other staff not to hug children.Reich-Shapiro and fellow researchers made several recommendations lo increase male representation in the field.Low pay has long been acknowledged as a major issue in the early childhood field.Over70%of male educators who said they intended to stay in the early education workforce noted an increased salary was a major motivating factor for them to commit to the career long-term.The report suggests paying all early childhood educators the way elementary school teachers are paid.Cities and programs should establish support groups for male early childhood educators and provide mentoring and professional development advice for male educators and their program leaders.The authors also suggest that traditional recruitment approaches for early childhood educators“do not address the gender gap in the field.”They recommend providing young men opportunities to work with children through training and volunteer programs,targeting groups of men who are considering a career change,such as fathers.51.What do we learn from the first paragraph about early childhood education in the U.S.?A)It helps raise children’s awareness of gender roles.B)It exposes children to different ways of interaction.C)It is negatively impacted by a lack of male teachers.D)It clearly aims to form children’s identity through play.52.What does Mindi Reich-Shapiro emphasize in her comment on childhood education?A)The importance of broadening children’s horizons.B)The responsibilities of fathers for children’s growth.C)The urgency of creating teacher education programs.D)The role of teachers in motivating children to learn.53.What do we learn about male teachers from their responses in the study?A)Some of them find it awkward when hugging children.B)They feel pressured to keep up with female colleagues.C)They find it hard to meet the expectations of kids’parents.D)Many of them feel prejudiced against socially and culturally.54.What is needed for men to commit to early childhood education?A)Higher pay.B)Job security.C)Social recognition.D)Better working conditions.55.What do the authors of the study recommend to bridge the gender gap in early childhood education?A)Recruiting young men who have a passion for educating young children.B)Taking measures to attract prospective male teachers to work in the field.C)Persuading prospective fathers to consider a change in their career.D)Providing male teachers with more opportunities for advancement.PartⅣTranslation(30minutes)Directions:For this part,you are allowed30minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English.You should write your answer on Answer Sheet2.大运河(Grand Canal)是世界上最长的人工河，北起北京，南至杭州。
大学英语2019年12月四级真题第2套(2)
2019年12月大学英语四级考试真题（第二套）Part I Writing (30 minutes) Directions:For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the saying “Learning is a daily experience and a lifetime mission.”You can cite examples to illustrate the importance of lifelong learning.You should write at least 120 words but no more than180 words.Part ⅡListening Comprehension (25 minutes) Section ADirections: In this section, you will hear three news reports. At the end of each news report, you will hear two or three questions. Both the news report and thequestions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you mustchoose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C).and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single linethrough the centre.Questions 1 and 2 will be based on the following news item.1. A) A celebration held for the US military history.B) A new museum being built for the history of American diplomacy.C) An enormous collection displayed in Washington D.C.D) A lecture hall under construction by American diplomats.2. A) It occupies an area of 20,000 square kilometers.B) It is expected to take about three years’ constru ction.C) It will serve as an education area for diplomats.D) It will be featured in American military history.Questions 3 and 4 will be based on the following news item.3. A) $20,000 every year.B) $5,100 every two yearsC) $ 510 every year.D) $ 200 every two years.4. A) Too many conflicts occur on New York streets.B) It takes little to get an illegal food vending license.C) Vendors are allowed to work the street unlicensed.D) The number of legal permits is too limited.Questions 5 and 7 will be based on the following news item.5. A) Buying machines.B) Removing manually.C) Applying poisons.D) Using animals.6. A) To improve the weeding efficiency.B) To reduce manpower costs.C) To protect the environment.D) To help local farmers.7. A) She is a company owner.B) She is a cemetery official.C) She works for an insurance company.D) She works in an environmental sector.Section BDirections: In this section, you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation, you will hear four questions. Both the conversation and thequestions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you mustchoose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C), and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single linethrough the centre.Conversation OneQuestions 8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.8. A) From the wanted column.B) From some of her friends.C) From a telephone directory.D) From a television commercial.9. A) She received full-time education abroad.B) She graduated from an open university.C) She finished her secondary school.D) She studied in a vocational college.10. A) She is a shorthand-typist.B) She works as a tour guide.C) She is a policewoman.D) She teaches an evening class.11.A) Persuade the woman to be a policewoman.B) Find a suitable job for the woman.C) Help the woman to be a tour guide.D) Provide the woman with some formal education.Conversation TwoQuestions 12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.12. A) It provides him with career opportunities.B) It helps enlarge his customer network.C) It has been off and on for ten yearsD) It was interrupted for four years.13. A) Individualized service.B) Traditional setting.C) Home-made beer.D) Social games.14. A) The quality of beer.B) The atmosphere.C) The owner's attitude.D) The right location.15. A) It is a rather tough job.B) It is a profitable business.C) It helps old people kill time.D) It makes retirees feel useful.Section CDirections: In this section, you will hear three passage. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will bespoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the bestanswer from the four choices marked A), B), C), and D). Then mark thecorresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1with a single line through thecentre.Passage OneQuestions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard.16.A) It is becoming increasingly popular.B) It helps the user to escape reality.C) It gives rise to serious social instability.D) It hurts a person and those around them.17.A) They use drugs just for fun.B) They take drugs to get high.C) They use drugs as medicine.D) They keep drug use a secret.18. A) It is quite common in entertainment circles.B) It is the cause of various social problems.C) It is hard to get rid of.D) It is fatal to the user.Passage TwoQuestions 19 to 22 are based on the passage you have just heard.19.A) Taking up exercises after recovery.B) Producing tasty healthy frozen food.C) Finding new ways to cure heart disease.D) Going on a diet upon leaving the hospital.20.A) It was carefully tested with consumers.B) It was promoted by health organizations.C) It was disapproved by many diet experts.D) It was highly expected by the general public.21.A) Competitive price.B) Low expectations.C) Vigorous promotion.D) Unique ingredients.22. A) It was suggested by the firm’s vice-president.B) It matches the food’s dark green packaging.C) It has a positive implication for consumers.D) It tricks the elders into impulse purchasing.Passage ThreeQuestions 23 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.23.A) It is practiced in most of the states.B) It will be abolished sooner or later.C) It has drawn a lot of criticism from overseas.D) It has to be approved by the Supreme Court.24. A) Whether the practice should be allowed to continue in future.B) Whether there should be a minimum age limit for execution.C) What type of criminals should receive it.D) What effect it might have on youngsters.25. A) The court sentenced him to life in prison for killing two friends.B) The governor changed his death sentence to life in prison.C) He was the first minor to be executed in South Carolina.D) He was sentenced to death for a crime he committed as a minor.Part ⅢReading Comprehension (40 minutes) Section ADirections: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bankfollowing the passage. Read the passage through carefully before makingyour choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Pleasemark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2with asingle line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in thebank more than once.Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.For many Americans, 2019 ended with an unusually bitter cold spell. Late November and December 26 early snow and bone-chilling temperatures in much of the country, part of a year when, for the first time in two 27 , record-cold days will likely turn out to have outnumbered record-warm ones. But the U.S. was the exception: November was the warmest ever 28 , and current data indicates that 2019 is likely to have been the fourth hottest year on record.Enjoy the snow now, because 29 are good that 2019 will be even hotter, perhaps the hottest year since records have been kept. That’s because, scientists are predicting, 2019 will be an El Niños Year.El Niños, Spanish for “the child”,30 when surface ocean waters in the southern Pacific become abnormally warm. So large is the Pacific, covering 30% of the planet’s surface, that the31 energy generated by its warming is enough to touch off a series of weather changes around the world. El Niños are 32 with abnormally dry conditions in Southeast Asia and Australia. They can lead to extreme rain in parts of North and South America, even as southern Africa 33 dry weather. Marine life may be affected too: E1 Niños can 34 the rising of the cold,Section BDirections:In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of theparagraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived.You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is markedwith a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letteron Answer Sheet 2.How to Eat Well[A] Why do so many Americans eat tons of processed food, the stuff that is correctlycalled junk (垃圾) and should really carry warning labels?[B] It’s not because fresh ingredients are hard to come by. Supermarkets offer morevariety than ever, and there are over four times as many farmers’ markets in the U.S. as there were 20 years ago. Nor is it for lack of available information. There are plenty of recipes (食谱), how-to videos and cooking classes available to anyone who has a computer, smartphone or television. If anything, the information is overwhelming.[C] And yet we aren’t cooking. If you eat three meals a day and behave like mostAmericans, you probably get at least a third of your dally calories(卡路里) outside the home. Nearly two-thirds of us grab fast food once a week, and we get almost 25% of our dally calories from snacks. So we’re eating out or taking in, and we don't sit down—or we do, but we hurry.[D] Shouldn’t preparing—and consuming—food be a source of comfort, pride, health,well-being, relaxation, sociability? Something that connects us to other humans?Why would we want to outsource (外包) this basic task, especially when outsourcing it is so harmful?[E] When I talk about cooking, I’m not talking about creating elaborate dinner partiesor three-day science projects. I’m talking about simple, easy, everyday meals. My mission is to encourage green hands and those lacking time or money to feed themselves. That means we need modest, realistic expectations, and we need to teach people to cook food that’s good enough to share with family and friends.[F] Perhaps a return to real cooking needn’t be far off. A recent Harris poll r evealedthat 79% of Americans say they enjoy cooking and 30% “love it”; 14% admit to not enjoying kitchen work and just 7% won’t go near the stove at all. But this doesn’t necessarily translate to real cooking, and the result of this survey shouldn’t surprise anyone: 52% of those 65 or older cook at home five or more times per week; only a third of young people do.[G] Back in the 1950s most of us grew up in households where Morn cooked virtuallyevery night. The intention to put a home-cooked meal on the table was pretty much universal. Most people couldn’t afford to do otherwise.[H] Although frozen dinners were invented in the 40s, their popularity didn’t boomuntil televisions became popular a decade or so later. Since then, packaged, pre-prepared meal s have been what’s for dinner. The microwave and fast-food chains were the biggest catalysts (催化剂), but the big food companies—which want to sell anything except the raw ingredients that go into cooking—made the home cook an endangered species.[I] Still, I find it strange that only a third of young people report preparing meals athome regularly. Isn’t this the same crowd that rails against processed junk and champions craft cooking? And isn’t this the generation who say they’re concerned about their health and the well—being of the planet? If these are truly the values of many young people, then their behavior doesn’t match their beliefs.[J] There have been half-hearted but well-publicized efforts by some food companies to reduce calories in their processed foods, but the Standard American Diet is still the polar opposite of the healthy, mostly plant—based diet that just about every expert says we should be eating. Considering that the government’s standards are not nearly ambitious enough, the picture i s clear: by not cooking at home, we’re not eating the right things, and the consequences are hard to overstate.[K] To help quantify (量化) the costs of a poor diet, I recently tried to estimate thisimpact in terms of a most famous food, the burger (汉堡包). I concluded that the profit from burgers is more than offset (抵消) by the damage they cause in health problems and environmental harm.[L] Cooking real food is the best defense—not to mention that any meal you’re likely to eat at home contains about 200 fewer calories than one you would eat in a restaurant.[M] To those Americans for whom money is a concern, my advice is simple: Buy what you can afford, and cook it yourself. The common prescription is to primarily shop the grocery store, since that’s where fresh produce, meat and seafood, and dairy are. And to save money and still eat well you don’t need local, organic ingredients; all you need is real food. I’m not saying local food is n’t better; it is. But there is plenty of decent food in the grocery stores.[N] The other sections you should get to know are the frozen foods and the canned goods. Frozen produce is still produce; canned tomatoes are still tomatoes. Just make sure you’re getting real food without tons of added salt or sugar. Ask yourself, would Grandma consider this food? Does it look like something that might occur in nature? It’s pretty much common sense: you want to buy food, not unidentifiable food like objects.[O] You don’t have to hit the grocery store daily, nor do you need an abund ance of skill. Since fewer than haft of Americans say they cook at an intermediate level and only 20% describe their cooking skills as advanced, the crisis is one of confidence. And the only remedy for that is practice. There’s nothing mysterious about cooking the evening meal. You just have to do a little thinking ahead and redefine what qualifies as dinner. Like any skill, cooking gets easier as you do it more; every time you cook, you advance your level of skills. Someday you won’t even need recipes. My advice is that you not pay attention to the number of steps and ingredients, because they can be deceiving.[P] Time, I realize, is the biggest obstacle to cooking for most people. You must adjust your priorities to find time to cook. For instance, you can move a TV to the kitchen and watch your favorite shows while you’re standing at the sink. No one is asking you to give up activities you like, but if you’re watching food shows on TV, try cooking instead.36. Cooking benefits people in many ways and enables them to connect with oneanother.37. Abundant information about cooking is available either online or on TV.38. Young people do less cooking at home than the elderly these days.39. Cooking skills can be improved with practice.40. In the mid-20th century, most families ate dinner at home instead of eating out.41. Even those short of time or money should be encouraged to cook for themselvesand their family.42. Eating food not cooked by ourselves can cause serious consequences.43. To eat well and still save money, people should buy fresh food and cook itthemselves.44. We get a fairly large portion of calories from fast food and snacks.45. The popularity of TV led to the popularity of frozen food.Section CDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are fourchoices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choiceand mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single linethrough the centre.Passage OneQuestions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.The wallet is heading for extinction. As a day-to-day essential, it will die off with the generation who read print newspapers. The kind of shopping—where you hand over notes and count out change in return—now happens only in the most minor of our retail encounters, like buying a bar of chocolate or a pint of milk from a comer shop. At the shops where you spend any real money, that money is increasingly abstracted. And this is more and more true, the higher up the scale you go. At the most cutting-edge retail stores—Victoria Beckham on Dover Street, for instance—you don’t go and stand at any kind of cash register when you decide to pay. The staff are equipped with iPads to take your payment while you relax on a sofa.Which is nothing more or less than excellent service, if you have the money. But across society, the abstraction of the idea of cash makes me uneasy. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned. But earning money isn’t quick or easy for most of us. Isn’t it a bit weird that spending it should happen in haft a blink (眨眼) of an eye? Doesn’t a wallet—that time-honored Friday-night feeling of pleasing, promising fatness—representsomething that matters?But I’ll leave the economic s to the experts. What bothers me about the death of the wallet is the change it represents in our physical environment. Everything about the look and feel of a wallet—the way the fastenings and materials wear and tear and loosen with age, the plastic and paper and gold and silver, and handwritten phone numbers and printed cinema tickets—is the very opposite of what our world is becoming. The opposite of a wallet is a smart phone or an iPad. The rounded edges, cool glass, smooth and unknowable as a pebble (鹅卵石). Instead of digging through pieces of paper and peering into corners, we move our fingers left and right. No more counting out coins. Show your wallet, if you still have one. It may not be here much longer.46. What is happening to the wallet?A) It is disappearing.B) It is being fattened.C) It is becoming costly.D) It is changing in style.47. How are business transactions done in big modern stores?A) Individually.B) Electronically.C) In the abstract.D) Via a cash register.48. What makes the author feel uncomfortable nowadays?A) Saving money is becoming a thing of the past.B) The pleasing Friday-night feeling is fading.C) Earning money is getting more difficult.D) Spending money is so fast and easy.49. Why does the author choose to write about what’s happening to the wallet?A) It represents a change in the modern world.B) It has something to do with everybody’s life.C) It marks the end of a time-honored tradition.D) It is the concern of contemporary economists.50. What can we infer from the passage about the author?A) He is resistant to social changes.B) He is against technological progress.C) He feels reluctant to part with the traditional wallet.D) He feels insecure in the ever-changing modern world.Passage TwoQuestions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.Everybody sleeps, but what people stay up late to catch—or wake up early in order not to miss—varies by culture.From data collected, it seems the things that cause us to lose the most sleep, on average, are sporting events, time changes, and holidays.Around the world, people changed sleep patterns thanks to the start or end of daylight savings time. Russians, for example, began to wake up about a half-hour later each day after President Vladimir Putin shifted the cou ntry permanently to “winter time” starting on October 26.Russia’s other late nights and early mornings generally correspond to public holidays. On New Year’s Eve, Russians have the world’s latest bedtime, hitting the hay at around 3:30 am.Russians also get up an hour later on International Women’s Day, the day for treating and celebrating female relatives.Similarly, Americans’ late nights, late mornings, and longest sleeps fall on three-day weekends.Canada got the least sleep of the year the night it beat Sweden in the Olympic hockey (冰球) final.The World Cup is also chiefly responsible for sleep deprivation (剥夺). The worst night for sleep in the U. K. was the night of the England-Italy match on June 14. Brits stayed up a half-hour later to watch it, and then they woke up earlier than usual the next morning thanks to summer nights, the phenomenon in which the sun barely sets in northern countries in the summertime. That was nothing, though, compared to Germans, Italians, and the French, who stayed up around an hour and a haft later on various days throughout the summer to watch the Cup.It should be made clear that not everyone has a device to record their sleep patterns; in some of these nations, it’s likely that only the richest people do. And people who elect to track their sleep may try to get more sleep than the average person. Even if that’s the case, though, the above findings are still striking. If the most health-conscious among us have such deep swings in our shut-eye levels throughout the year, how much sleep are the rest of us losing?51. What does the author say about people’s sleeping habits?A) They are culture-related.B) They affect people’s health.C) They change with the seasons.D) They vary from person to person.52. What do we learn about the Russians regarding sleep?A) They don’t fall asleep until very late.B) They don’t sleep much on weekends.C) They get less sleep on public holidays.D) They sleep longer than people elsewhere.53. W hat is the major cause for Europeans’ loss of sleep?A) The daylight savings time.B) The colorful night life.C) The World Cup.D) The summertime.54. What is the most probable reason for some rich people to use a device to recordtheir sleep patterns?A) They have trouble falling asleep.B) They want to get sufficient sleep.C) They are involved in a sleep research.D) They want to go to bed on regular hours.55. What does the author imply in the last paragraph?A) Sleeplessness does harm to people’s health.B) Few people really know the importance of sleep.C) It is important to study our sleep patterns.D) Average people probably sleep less than the rich.Part ⅣTranslation (30 minutes) Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2.云南省的丽江古镇是中国著名的旅游目的地之一。
2020年12月大学英语四级考试真题(第二套)含答案
Part I Writing ( 30 minutes)Directions: Fo r this part, you are allowe d80 minutes to write on the topic Changes in the Way of Transportation. You should wr:ite at least 120 wonds but no more than 180 wa-ds.Part ll Listening Comprehension ( 25 minutes)Section ADirections: In this section, yo.u will hear three news reports. At the end of each news report, you w.i ll hear two or three questions. Both the news report and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question , you t choo-.w! the best answer from the four choices marked A) , B) , 'C) and D) . Then mark the correspo nd ing letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Questions 1 and 2 are based on the news report you have Just heanl.1.A) He wanted to buy a home.C)He lost a huge sum of money.B)He suffered from a shock.D)He did an unusual good deed.2.A) Invite the waiter to a fancy dinner.C)Give some money to the waiter.B)Tell her story to the Daily News.D)Pay the waiter's school tuition.Questions 3 and 4 are based on the news report yo11 have Just heanl3.A) Whether or not to move •t o the state's mainland.B)How to keep the village from sinking into the sea.C)Where to get the funds for rebuilding their village.D)What to do about the rising level of the seawater.4.A) It takes too long a time.C)It has to wait for the state's fina l approval.B)It costs too much money.D)It faces strong opposition from many villagers. Questions S to 7 are based on the news report you have Just heard.5.A) To investigate whether people are grateful for help.B)To see whether people hold doors open for strangers.C)To explore ways of inducing gratitude in people.D)To find out how people express gratitude.6.A) They induced strangers to talk with them.B)They helped 15 to 20 people in a bad mood.C)They held doors open for people at various places.D)They interviewed people who didn't say thank you.7.A) People can be educated to be grateful.C)Most people have bad days now and then.B)Most people express gratitude for help.D)People are ungrateful when in a bad mood.Section BDirections: In this section, )OU will hear two long convers a tions. At the,end of each conver:sa tion, )OU will hear four que.stions. Both the conver:sa tion and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the ro"esponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Questions 8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have Jus t heard.8.A) To order a solar panel installation.C)To enquire about solar pai;iel installations.B)To report a serious leak in his roof.. D) To complain about the faulty: solar panels.9.A) He plans to install solar pc1nels.C)He saves $ 300 a year.B)He owns a four-bedroom house.D)He has a large family._10.A) Th.e service of the solar panel company.C)The maintenance of the solar panels.B)The cost of a solar panel installation.D)The quality of the solar panels.. '11.A) One year and a half.C)Roughly six years.B)Less than four years.D)About five years. Questions 12 to 15 are based on the conversatim you have just heard.12.A) At a travel agency.C)At an airline transfer service.B)At an Australian airport.D)At a local transportation authority.13.A) She would be able to visit more scenic spots.B)She wanted to save as much money as possible.C)She would like to have everything taken care of.D)She wanted to spend more time with her family.14.A) Four days.C)One week.B)Five days.D)Two weeks.15.A) Choosing some activities herself.C)Driving along the Great Ocean Road.. .j • . .B)Spending Christmas with Australians.D)Leaming more about wine making. Section CDirections: In this section , )OU w.i ll hear thnee JXlssages. At the end of each passage , you will hear three or four questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After )'lU hear a question , )OU must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A ) , B ) , C ) and D ) . Then mark the co"esponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre .Questions 16 to 18 are based on the p1m&ge you have just heard.16.A) Bring their own bags when shopping.C)Dis� .of their trash properly.B)Use public transport when traveling.D)Pay a green tax upon arrival.17.A) It has not been doing a good job in recycling.B)It has witnessed a rise i� accidental drowning.C)It has not attracted many tourists in recent years.D)It has experienced an overall decline in air quality.18.A) To charge a small fee on plastic products in supermarkets.B)To ban single-use plastic bags and straws on Bali Island.C) • To promote the use of paper bags for shopping.D)To impose a penalty on anyone caught littering.Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard.19.A) It gives birth to several babies at a time.C)Its·breeding grounds are now better preserved.B)It is the least protected mammal species.D)Its population is.now showing signs of increase.20.A) Global warming.C)Commercial hunting.B)Polluted seawaters.D)Decreasing birthrates.21.A) To mate.C)To escape hunters.B)To look for food.D)To seek breeding grounds.Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.22.A) They prefer to drink low-fat milk.B)They think milk is good for health.23.A) It is not as healthy as once thought.B)It is not easy to stay fresh for long.24.A) They drink too many pints every da r·.B)They are sensitive to certain minerals.25.A) It is easier for sick people to digest.B)It provides.some necessary nut�ents.Part ]I[ Section A Reading ComprehensionC)They consume less milk these days.D)They buy more milk than the British.C)It benefits the elderly more.D)It tends to make people fat.C)They lack the necessary proteins to digest it.D)They have eaten f oo d incompatible with milk.C)It is healthier than other animal products.D)It supplies the body with enough calories.( 40 minutes)Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a w o rd bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making )VUr choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answe,r Sheet 2·with a single line through the centre. You may not ll.l? any of the words in the bank more than once.When my son completes a task, I can't help but praise him. It's only natural to give praise where praise is due, right? But is there ·s uch a thing as too much praise?According to psychologist Katherine Phillip, children don't-benefit from 26 'praise as much as we'd like to think. "Parents' often praise, believing they are building their child's self-confidence. However, over-praising can have a 27 effect," says Phillip. " W hen we use the same praise28 , it may become empty and no longer valued·by the child. �t can also become an expectation that anything they do must be �-with praise. This may lead to the child avoiding taking risks due to' .fear of -� their parents. "Does this mean we should do away with all the praise? Phillip says no. "The key to healthy praise is to focus on the process rather than the 31 . It is the recognition of a child's attempt, or the process in which they achieved something, that is essential," she says. "Parents should encourage their c�ild to take the risks needed to learn and grow. "So how do we break the 32 of praise we're all so accustomed to? Phillip says it's important to33 between "person praise" and "process praise". " Person praise is �-saying how great someone is. It's a form of personal approval. Process praise is acknowledgement of the efforts the personhas just 35 . Children who receive person praise are more likely to feel shame after losing," ·says ----Phillip.A)chooseB)constantC)disappointingD)distinguishE)exhausting Section B F)experiencedG) n egativeH)outcomeI)patternJ)pluralK)repeatedlyL)rewardedM) s eparatelyN)simply0)undertakeriDirections: In this section, yo;u are going to read a passage with ten· statements aitached to it. Each statement contains information given in o.n e of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph· more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corr.espondi g •l etter on Answer Sheet 2.Poverty is a story about us, not themA)Too often still, we think we know what poverty looks like. 'I t's the way we've been taught, the imageswe've been force-fed for decades. The chronically hoineless. The undocumented immigrant. The urban poor, usually personified as a woman of color, the "welfare queen" politicians stil l too often reference.B)But as income inequality rises to record levels in the United States, even in the midst of a recordeconomic expansion, those familiar images are outdated, hurtful, and counterproductive to focusing attention on solutions and building ladders of opportunity.C)Today's faces of income inequality an d lack of opportunity-look like all of us. It's Anna Landre, adisabled Georgetown University student fighting to keep health benefits that allow her the freedom to live her life. It's Tiffanie Standard, a counselor for young women of color in·Philadelphia·who want to be tech entrepreneurs-but who must work multiple jobs to·stay afloat. It's Ken Outlaw, a welder in rural North Carolina whose dream of going back to school at a local community·college was dashed by Hurricane Florence-just one of' t he extreme weather events that have tipped the balance for struggling Americans across the nation.D)If these are the central characters of our story about poverty, what layers of perceptions, myths, andrealities must we unearth to find meaningful solutions and support? In pursuit of revealing this complicated reality, Mothering Justice, led by women of color, went last year to the·state capital in Lansing, Michigan, to lobby on issues that affect working mothers. One of the Mothering Justice • organizers went to the office of a state representative to talk about the lack of affordable childcarethe vestiges ( #.�) of a system that expected mothers to stay home with their children while their husbands worked. A legislative staffer dismissed the activist's concerns, telling her "my husband took care of that-I stayed home."E)That comment, says Mothering Justice director Danielle Atkinson, '"was meant to shame" and reliedon the familiar notion that a woman of color concerned about income inequality and programs that promote mobility must by definition be a-single·morn, probably with multiple kids. In this case, the Mothering Justice activist happened to be married. And in ·most cases in the America of 2019, the images that come to mind when we hear the words poverty or income i n equality fail miserably inreflecting a complicated reality: poverty touches virt u ally all of us. The face of income inequality, for all but a very few of us, is the one we each see in the mirror.F)How many of us are poor in the U.S.? It depends on who you ask. According to the Census Bureau,' '38 million people in the U. S. are living below the official poverty thresholds. Taking into accounteconomic need beyond that absolute measure, the Institute for Policy Studies found that 140 million people are poor or low-income. That's almost half the U.S. population.G)Whatever the measure, within that massive group, poverty is extremely diverse. We know that somepeople are more affected than others, like children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and people of color.H)But the fact that 4 in 10 ;Americans can't come up with $.400 in an emergency is a commonly citedstatistic for g� reason: economic ins�bility stre�ches across race, gender, and geography._ It even reaches into the middle classes, as real wages �ave �agnated (�JI*) for all but the very wealthy and temporary spells of financial i�stability are not uncommon.I)Negative images remain of who is living in poverty as well as what is needed to move out of it. The bigAmerican myth is that yoµ can pull yourself up by your own efforts and change a bad situation into a good one. The reality is that finding opportunity without help from families, friends, schools, and community is virtually impossible. And the playing field is nothing close to level.J)The Frame W orks Institute, a research group that focuses on public framing of issues, has studied what sustains stereotypes an� narratives of poverty in the United Kingdom. "People view economic success and well be ing in life as a product 9f choice, willpower, and drive," says Nat Kendall-Taylor, CEO of Frame W orks. "When we see people who are struggling," he says, those assumptions '.'lead us to the perception that.people in poverty are lazy, they don't care, and they haven't made the right decisions. "K)Does this sound familiar? S imilar i<leas surround poverty in the U ..S.. And these assumptions give a false picture of reality. "When people enter into that pattern of thinking," says Kendall-Taylor, "it's cognitively comfortable to make sense of issues of poverty in that way. It creates a kind of cognitive blindness-all of the factors external to a person's drive and choices that they've made become invisibleIand fade from view. "L)Those ex.t emal factors include the difficulties accompanying low-wage work or structural discrimination based on race, gender, or ability. Assumptions get worse when people who are poor use government benefits to help them surviye. There is a great tension between "the poor" and those who are receiving what has become a dirty word: "welfare. "M)According to the General Social Sqrvey, 71 percent of re s pondents believe the country is spending too ·little on "assistance to the.poor/' On the other hand, 22 percent think we are spending too little on "welfare": 37 percent -believe we are spending too much.N)" Poverty has been interchangeable with people of color-specifically black women and black mothers," says Atkinson of Mothering Justice. It's true that black mothers are more affected by poverty than many other groups, yet they are. disproportionately the face of poverty. For example, Americans routinely overestimate the share of black recipients-of public assistance programs.0)In reality, most people. will experience some form of financial hardship at some point in their lives.Indeed, people tendto.dip in and out of poverty, perhaps due to unexpected obstacles like losing a job,。
2016年12月大学英语四级考试真题及解析第一套(1)
through the centre.
(25 minutes)
Questions 1 and 2 are based on the news report you have just heard.
1. A) It was going to be renovated.
C) It was dangerous to live in.
Questions 8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
8. A) He will be kept from promotion.
C) He will be given a warning.
B) He will go through retraining.
D) He will lose part of his pay.
9. A) He is an experienced press operator. C) He is always on time.
B) He is trustworthy guy.
D) He is on good terms with his workmates.
Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard.
19. A) It tastes better.
C) It is easier to grow.
B) It may be sold at a higher price. D) It can better survive extreme weathers.
Part II
Listening Comprehension