英语四级阅读训练.docx

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1、精品文档，仅供学习与交流，如有侵权请联系网站删除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 the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived.You may choose a paragraph more than once

2、. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.A University Degree No Longer Confers Financial SecurityAMillions of school-leavers in the rich world are about to bid a tearful goodbye to their parents and start a new life at unive

3、rsity. Some are inspired by a pure love of learning. But most also believe that spending three or four years at university-and accumulating huge debts in the process-will boost their chances of landing a well-paid and secure job.BTheir elders have always told them that education is the best way to e

4、quip themselves to thrive in a globalised world. Blue-collar workers will see their jobs outsourced and automated, the familiar argument goes. School dropouts will have to cope with a life of cash-strapped (资金紧张的) insecurity. But the graduate elite will have the world at its feet. There is some evid

5、ence to support this view. A recent study from Georgetown Universitys Centre on Education and the Workforce argues thatobtaining a post-secondary credential ( 证书) is almost always worth it. Educational qualifications are tightly correlated with earnings: an American with a professional degree can ex

6、pect to pocket $3.6m over a lifetime; one with merely a high- school diploma can expect only $1.3m. The gap between more- and less-educated earners may be widening. A study in 2002 found that someone with a bachelors degree could expect to earn 75% more over a lifetime than someone with only a high-

7、school diploma. Today the disparity is even greater.CBut is the past a reliable guide to the future? Or are we at the beginning of a new phase in the relationship between jobs and education? There are good reasons for thinking that old patterns are about to change-and that the current recession-driv

8、en downturn (衰退) in the demand for Western graduates will morph (改变) into something structural. The strong wind of creative destruction that has shaken so many blue-collar workers over the past few decades is beginning to shake the cognitive elite as well.DThe supply of university graduates is incre

9、asing rapidly. The Chronicle of Higher Education calculates that between 1990 and 2007 the number of students going to university increased by 22% in North America, 74% in Europe, 144% in Latin America and 203% in Asia. In 2007 150m people attended university around the world, including 70m in Asia.

10、 Emerging economiesspecially China-are pouring resources into building universities that can compete with the elite of America and Europe. They are also producing professional- services firms snch as Tata Consulting Services and Infosys that take fresh graduates and turn them into world-class comput

11、er programmers and consultants. The best and the brightest of the rich world must increasingly compete with the best and the brightest from poorer countries who are willing to work harder for less money.E. At the same time, the demand for educated labor is being reconfigured (重新配置) by technology, in

12、 much the same way that the demand for agricultural labor was reconfigured in the 19th century and that for factory labor in the 20th. Computers can not only perform repetitive mental tasks much faster than human beings. They can also empower amateurs to do what professionals once did: why hire a fl

13、esh-and-blood accountant to complete your tax return when Turbotax (a software package ) will do the job at a fraction of the cost? And the variety of jobs that computers can do is multiplying as programmers teach them to deal with tone and linguistic ambiguity.F.Several economists, including Paul K

14、rugman, have begun to argue that post-industrial societies will be characterized not by a relentless rise in demand for the educated but by a great hollowing out, as mid-level jobs are destroyed by smart machines and high-level job growth slows. David Autor, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol

15、ogy (MIT), points out that the main effect of automation in the computer era is not that it destroys blue-collar jobs but that it destroys any job that can be reduced to a routine. Alan Blinder of Princeton University, argues that the jobs graduates have traditionally performed are if anything more

16、offshorable than low-wage ones. A plumber or lorry-drivers job cannot be outsourced to India. A computer programmers can.G. A university education is still a prerequisite for entering some of the great industries, such as medicine, law and academia (学术界), that provide secure and well-paying jobs. Ov

17、er the 20th century these industries did a wonderful job of raising barriers to entry-sometimes for good reasons (nobody wants to be operated on by a barber) and sometimes for self-interested ones. But these industries are beginning to bend the roles. Newspapers are fighting a losing battle with the

18、 blogosphere. Universities are replacing tenure-track professors with non-tenured staff. Law firms are contracting out routine work such asdiscovery (digging up documents relevant to a lawsuit) to computerized-search specialists such as Blackstone Discovery. Even doctors are threatened, as patients

19、find advice online and treatment in Walmarts new health centers.H.Thomas Malone of MIT argues that these changes-automation, globalizafion and deregulation-may be part of a bigger change: the application of the division of labor to brain-work. Adam Smiths factory managers broke the production of pin

20、s into 18 components. In the same way, companies are increasingly breaking the production of brain-work into ever tinier slices. TopCoder chops up IT projects into bite-sized chunks and then serves them up to a worldwide workforce of freelance coders.I.These changes will undoubtedly improve the prod

21、uctivity of brain-workers. They will allow consumers to sidestep (规避 ) the professional industries that have extracted high rents for their services. And they will empower many brain-workers to focus on what they are best at and contract out more tedious tasks to others. But the reconfiguration of b

22、rain-work will also make life far less cozy and predictable for the next generation of graduates.46. The creative destruction that has happened to blue-collar workers in the past also starts to affect the cognitive elite.47. For the next generation of graduates, life will be far less comfortable and

23、 predictable with brain-work reconfigured.48. After computers are taught by programmers to deal with tone and linguistic ambiguity, the variety of jobs they can do will increase dramatically.49. Most school-leavers believe that, despite the huge debts they owe, going to university will increase thei

24、r chances of getting secure jobs with high salaries.50. Modern companies are more likely to break the production of intellectual work into ever tinier slices.51. A scholar of Princeton University claims that the jobs traditionally taken by graduates are more likely to be offshored than low-wage ones

25、.52. The income gap between an American professional degree holder and an American high-school graduate shows income is closely related to educational qualifications.53. The changes in the division of brain-work will save consumers some high service fees the professional organizations charge.54. Som

26、e students have always been told that. to achieve success in a globalised world, it is most advisable to equip themselves with education.55. Emerging economies are providing a lot of resources to build universities to compete with the elite of America and Europe.Section CDirections: There are 2 pass

27、ages in this section. Each is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A ),B, Cand D ). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.Section BDirections: In th

28、is 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 t

29、he questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.Addicted, Really?A Mental-health specialists disagree over whether to classify compulsive online behaviour as addiction-and how to treat it. Craig Smallwood, a disabled American war veteran, spent more than 20,000 hours over five yea

30、rs playing an online role-playing game called Lineage II. When NCsoft, the South Korean firm behind the game, accused him of breaking the games rules and banned him, he was plunged into depression, severe paranoia (偏执) and hallucinations (幻想). He spent three weeks in hospital. After that, he sued NC

31、soft for fraud and negligence (过失 ), demanding over $ 9m in damages and claiming that the company acted negligently by failing to warn him of the danger that he would become addicted to the game.B. But does it make sense to talk of addiction to online activity? Mental-health specialists say three on

32、line behaviors can become problematic for many people: video games, pornography ( 色情作品 ) and messaging via e-mail and social networks. But there is far less agreement about whether any of this should be called Internet addiction-or how to treat it.C Some mental-health specialists wanted Internet add

33、iction to be included in the fifth version of psychiatrys bible, theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as DSM-V, which is currently being overhauled (全面修订). The American Medical Association endorsed (赞成) the idea in 2007, only to backtrack( 放弃) days later. The American Jour

34、nal of Psychiatry called Internet addiction a common disorder and supported its recognition. Last year the DSM-V drafting group made its decision: lnteruet addiction would not be included as a behavioral addiction-only gambling made the cut-but it said further study was necessary.D Skeptics say ther

35、e is nothing uniquely addictive about the Internet. Back in 2000, Joseph Walther, a communications professor at Michigan State University, co-wrote an article in which he suggested, tongue in cheek, that the criteria used to call someone an Internet addict might also show that most professors were a

36、ddicted to academia (学术活动). He argued that other factors, such as depression, are the real problem.He stands by that view today. No scientific evidence has emerged to suggest that lnternet use is a cause rather than a consequence of some other sort of issue, he says. Focusing on and treating people

37、for Internet addiction, rather than looking for underlying clinical issues, is definitely unwise.E. Others disagree. That would be wrong, says Kimberly Young, a researcher and therapist who has worked on Interact addiction since 1994. She insists that the Internet, with its powerfully immersive envi

38、ronments, creates new problems that people must learn to navigate(应对). Otherwise, the changing lifestyle will affect the development of the society.F.No one disputes that online habits can turn toxic. Take South Korea, where widespread broadband means that the average high-school student plays video

39、 games for 23 hours each week. In 2007 the government estimated that around 210,000 children needed treatment for Internet addiction. In 2010 newspapers around the globe carried the story of a South Korean couple who fed their infant daughter so little that she starved to death. Instead of caring fo

40、r the child, the couple spent most nights at an Internet cafe, sinking hours into a role- playing game in which they raised, fed and cared for a virtual daughter. And several South Korean men have died from exhaustion after marathon, multi-day gaming sessions.G. The South Korean government has since

41、 asked game developers to adopt a gaming curfew (宵禁) for children, to prevent them playing between midnight and 8 a.m. At the same time, it has also opened more than 100 clinics for Internet addiction and sponsored an Internet rescue camp for serious cases.H. But compulsive behaviour is not limited

42、to garners. E-mail or web-use behaviours can also show signs of addiction. Getting through a business lunch in which no one pulls out a phone to check their messages now counts as a minor miracle in many quarters. A deluge (泛滥) of self-help books, most recently Alone Together by Sherry Turlde, a soc

43、ial scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offer advice on how to unplug (去除障碍).I.Pornography is hardly new, either, but the Internet makes accessing it much easier than ever before. When something can be summoned in an instant via broadband, whether it is a game world, an e-mail in

44、box or pornographic material, it is harder to resist. New services lead to new complaints. When online auction sites first became popular, talk of eBay addiction soon followed. Dr. Young says women complain to her now about addiction to Facebook-or even to FarmVille, a game playable only within Face

45、book.J.Treatment centres have popped up around the world with the popularity of online games. In 2006 Amsterdams Smith & Jones facility billed itself as the first and, currently, the only residential video-game treatment program in the world. In America the reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Progra

46、m claims to treat Internet addiction, gaming addiction, and even texting addiction. In China, meanwhile, military-style boot camps are the preferred way to treat Internet problems.K. Yet many people like feeling permanently connected. As Arikia Millikan, an American blogger, once put it, If I could

47、be jacked in at every waking hour of the day, I would, and I think a lot of my peers would do the, same. Bob LaRose, an Internet specialist at Michigan State University, doesnt believe her. In his research on college students, he found that most sense when they are going overboard and restore self-c

48、ontrol. Less than1% have a pathological(病态的) problem, he adds. For most people, Internet use is just a habit-and one that brings us pleasure.46. According to Joseph Walther, it is unwise to emphasize the treatment of Internet addiction instead of seeking for potential clinical issues.47. As online g

49、ames become popular, treatment centres have sprung up all over the world.48. After playing online games continuously for days, several South Korean men were exhausted to death.49. Smallwood sued NCsoft and claimed a huge compensation for fraud and its negligence of warning him of the danger of game addiction.50. In South Korea, a gaming curfew for children was adopted