2023年12月英语四级真题卷一及解析.doc
2023年12月英语四级真题(卷一)Part I Writing 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 than 180 words.Part II Listening Comprehension Directions: In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, you must read the four choices marked A), B), C) and D), and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Section A1.They admire the courage of space explorers.They enjoyed the movie on space exploration.They were going to watch a wonderful movie.They like doing scientific exploration very much.2.At a gift shop.At a graduation ceremony.In the office of a travel agency.In a school library.3.He used to work in the art gallery.He does not have a good memory.He declined a job offer form the art gallery.He is not interested in any part-time jobs.4.Susan has been invited to give a lecture tomorrow.He will go to the birthday party after the lecture.The woman should have informed him earlier.He will be unable to attend the birthday party.5.Reward those having made good progress.Set a deadline for the staff to meet.Assign more workers to the project.Encourage the staff to work in small groups.6.The way to the visitors parking.The rate for parking in Lot C.How far away the parking lot is.Where she can leave her car.7.He regrets missing the classes.He plans to take the fitness classes.He is looking forward to a better life.He has benefited form exercise.8.A. How to ? work efficiency.B. How to select secretaries.C. The responsibilities of secretaries.D. The secretaries in the mans company.Conversation 19.It is more difficult to learn than English.It is used by more people than English.It will be as commonly used as English.It will eventually become a world language.10.It has words words from many languages,Its popularity with the common people.The influence of the British Empire.The effect of the Industrial Revolution,11.It includes a lot of words form other languages.It has a growing number of newly coined words,It can be easily picked up by overseas travellers.It is the largest among all languages in the world.Conversation 212.To return some goods.To apply for a job.To place an order.To make a complaint.13. He has become somewhat impatient with the woman.He is not familiar with the exact details of goods.He has not worked in the sales department for long.He works on a part-time basis for the company.14.It is not his responsibility.It will be free for large orders.It costs 15 more for express delivery.It depends on a number of factors.15.Report the information to her superior.Pay a visit to the saleswoman in charge.Ring back when she comes to a decision.Make inquiries with some other companies.Section BDirections:In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some 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 I with a single line through the centre.Passage 116.No one knows exactly where they were ?No one knows for sure when thy came into being.No one knows for what purpose they were ?No one knows what they will ?17.Carry ropes across rivers.Measure the speed of wind.Pass on secret messages.Give warnings of danger.18.To protect houses against lightning.To test the effects of the lightning rod.To find out the strength of silk for kites.To prove the lightning is electricity.Passage 219.She enjoys teaching languages,She can speak several languages,She was trained to be an interpreter.She was born with a talent for languages.20.They acquire an immunity to culture shock.They would like to live abroad permanently.They want to learn as many foreign languages as possible.They have an intense interest in cross-cultural interactions.21.She became an expert in horse racing.She got a chance to visit several European countries.She was able to translate for a German sports judge.She learned to appreciate classical music.22.Taste the beef and give her comment.Take part in a cooking competition.Teach vocabulary for food in ?Give cooking lessons on ?Passage 323.He had only a third-grade education.He once threatened to kill his teacher.He grew up in a poor ?He often helped his ?24.Careless.Stupid.Brave.Active.25.Write two book reports a week.Keep a diary.Help with housework.Watch education?Section CDirections:In this section, you will hear a passage three times. When the passage is read for the first time, you should listen carefully for its general idea. When the passage is read for the second time, you are required to fill in the blanks with the exact words you have just heard. Finally, when the passage is read for the third time, you should check what you have written. When you look up at the night sky, what do you see? There are other besides the moon and stars. One of the most 27_ of the Comets were formed around the same time the Earth was formed. and other frozen liquids and gases. 29_ these “dirty snow” just as the planets do.As a comet get closer to the sun, some gases in it begin to unfreeze particles form the comet to form a huge cloud. As the comet gets wind blows the cloud behind the comet, thus forming its tail. The tail (模糊的) atmosphere around a comet are 32_ that can help in the night sky.In any given year, about a dozen known comets come close to average person cant see them all, of course. Usually there is only one to be seen with 34_ eye. Comet Hale-Bopp, discovered bright comet. Its orbit brought it 35_ close to the Earth, But Hale-Bopp came a long way an its earthly visit. It wont be backor so.Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.Children do not think the way adults do. For most of the first yearof life, if something is out of sight, its out of mind. if you cover a babys_36_toy with a piece of cloth, the baby thinks the toy has disappeared andstops looking for it. A 4-year-old man_37_, that a sister has more fruitjuice when it is only the shapes of the glasses that differ, not the _38_ ofthe juice.Yet children are smart in their own way. Like good little scientists,children are always testing their child-sized _39_ about how things work.When your child throws her spoon on the floor for the sixth time as you try tofeed her, and you say, “Thats enough! I will not pick up your spoon again!”the child will_40_ test your claim. Are you serious? Are you angry? What willhappen if she throws the spoon again? She is not doing this to drive you_41_;rather, she is learning that her desires and yours can differ, and thatsometimes those_42_ are important and sometimes they are not.How and why does childrens thinking change? In the 1920s, Swisspsychologist Jean Piaget proposed that childrens cognitive abilities unfold_43_,like the blooming of a flower, almost independent of what else is_44_ intheir lives. Although many of his specific conclusions have been_45_ ormodified over the years, his ideas inspired thousands of studies byinvestigators all over the world.A) advocate B) amount C) confirmed D) crazy E) definite F) differences G) favorite H) happening I) immediately J) naturally K) obtaining L) primarily M) protest N) rejected O) theoriesSection 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 question by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.The Perfect Essay A) Looking back on too many yearsof education, I can identify one truly impossible teacher. She cared about me,and my intellectual life, even when I didnt. Her expectations were highimpossibly so. She was an English teacher. She was also my mother. B) When good students turn in anessay, they dream of their instructor returning it to them in exactly the samecondition, save for a single word added in the margin of the final page:”Flawless.” This dream came true for me one afternoon in the ninth grade. Ofcourse, I had heard that genius could show itself at an early age, so I wasonly slightly taken aback that I had achieved perfection at the tender age of14. Obviously, I did what any professional writer would do; I hurried off tospread the good news. I didnt get very far. The first person I told was mymother. C) My mother, who is just shy offive feet tall, is normally incredibly soft-spoken, but on the rare occasionwhen she got angry, she was terrifying. I am not sure if she was more upset bymy hubris(得意忘形) or by the fact that my Englishteacher had let my ego get so out of hand. In any event, my mother and her redpen showed me how deeply flawed a flawless essay could be. At the time, I amsure she thought she was teaching me about mechanics, transitions(过渡), structure, style and voice. But what I learned, and what stuckwith me through my time teaching writing at Harvard, was a deeper lesson aboutthe nature of creative criticism. D) Fist off, it hurts. Genuinecriticism, the type that leaves a lasting mark on you as a writer, also leavesan existential imprint(印记) on you asa person. I have heard people say that a writer should never take criticismpersonally. I say that we should never listen to these people. E) Criticism, at its best, isdeeply personal, and gets to the heart of why we write the way we do. Theintimate nature of genuine criticism implies something about who is able togive it, namely, someone who knows you well enough to show you how your mentallife is getting in the way of good writing. Conveniently, they are also thepeople who care enough to see you through this painful realization. For me ittook the form of my first, and I hope only, encounter with writers blockI wasnot able to produce anything for three years. F) Franz Kafka once said:” Writingis utter solitude(独处), the descentinto the cold abyss(深渊) ofoneself. “My mothers criticism had shown me that Kafka is right about the coldabyss, and when you make the introspective (内省的) decent that writing requires you are out always pleased by whatyou find.” But, in the years that followed, her sustained tutoring suggestedthat Kafka might be wrong about the solitude. I was lucky enough to find acritic and teacher who was willing to make the journey of writing with me. “Itis a thing of no great difficulty,” according to Plutarch, “to raise objectionsagainst another mans speech, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a betterin its place is a work extremely troublesome.” I am sure I wrote essays in thelater years of high school without my mothers guidance, but I cant recallthem. What I remember, however, is how we took up the “extremely troublesome”work of ongoing criticism. G) There are two ways to interpretPlutarch when he suggests that a critic should be able to produce “a better inits place.” In a straightforward sense, he could mean that a critic must bemore talented than the artist she critiques(评论). My mother was well covered on this count. But perhaps Plutarch issuggesting something slightly different, something a bit closer to MarcusCiceros claim that one should “criticize by creation, not by finding fault.”Genuine criticism creates a precious opening for an author to become better onthis own termsa process that is often extremely painful, but also almostalways meaningful. H) My mother said she would helpme with my writing, but fist I had myself. For each assignment, I was write thebest essay I could. Real criticism is not meant to find obvious mistakes, so ifshe found anythe type I could have found on my ownI had to start fromscratch. From scratch. Once the essay was “flawless,” she would take an eveningto walk me through my errors. That was when true criticism, the type thatchanged me as a person, began. I) She criticized me when Iincluded little-known references and professional jargon(行话). She had no patience for brilliant but irrelevant figures ofspeech. “Writers cant bluff(虚张声势) theirway through ignorance.” That was news to meI would need to find another way tostructure my daily existence. J) She trimmed back my flowerylanguage, drew lines through my exclamation marks and argued for the value ofrestraint in expression. “John,” she almost whispered. I learned in to hearher:”I cant hear you when you shout at me.” So I stopped shouting andbluffing, and slowly my writing improved. K) Somewhere along the way I setaside my hopes of writing that flawless essay. But perhaps I missed somethingimportant in my mothers lessons about creativity and perfection. Perhaps thepoint of writing the flawless essay was not to give up, but to never willinglyfinish. Whitman repeatedly reworded “Song of Myself” between 1855 and 1891.Repeatedly. We do our absolute best wiry a piece of writing, and come as closeas we can to the ideal. And, for the time being, we settle. In critique,however, we are forced to depart, to give up the perfection we thought we hadachieved for the chance of being even a little bit better. This is the lesson Itook from my mother. If perfection were possible, it would not be motivating.46. The author was advised against theimproper use of figures of speech. 47. The authors mother taught him avaluable lesson by pointing out lots of flaws in his seemingly perfect essay. 48. A writer should polish his writingrepeatedly so as to get closer to perfection. 49. Writers may experience periods of timein their life when they just cant produce anything. 50. The author was not much surprised whenhis school teacher marked his essay as “flawless”. 51. Criticizing someones speech is said tobe easier than coming up with a better one. 52. The author looks upon his mother as hismost demanding and caring instructor. 53. The criticism the author received fromhis mother changed him as a person. 54. The author gradually improved hiswriting by avoiding fact language. 55. Cons