2013年12月英语四级真命题及答案解析(第二套).doc

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1、,2013.12 英语四级考试真题试卷（第二套）Part I Writing(30 minutes)听力音频地址：Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay. You should start your essay with a brief account of the increasing use of the mobile phone in peoples life and then explain the consequences of overusing it. You sho

2、uld write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.注意：此部分试题在答题卡1上 1. A) Go to a place he has visited.B) Make her own arrangements.C) Consult a travel agent.D) Join in a package tour.2. A) They are on a long trip by car.B) They are stuck in a traffic jam.C) They are used to getting up early.D) T

3、hey are tired of eating out at night.3. A) He is a person difficult to deal with.B) He dislikes any formal gathering.C) He is unwilling to speak in public.D) He often keeps a distance from others.4. A) Work in another department.B) Pursue further education.C) Recruit graduate students.D) Take an adm

4、inistrative job.5. A) He would not be available to start the job in time.B) He is not quite qualified for the art director position.C) He would like to leave some more time for himself.D) He will get his application letter ready before May 1.6. A) Cleaner. B) Mechanic. C) Porter. D) Salesman.7. A) R

5、equest one or two roommates to do the cleaning.B) Help Laura with her term paper due this weekend.C) Get Laura to clean the apartment herself this time.D) Ask Laura to put off the cleaning until another week.8. A) A problem caused by the construction.B) An accident that occurred on the bridge.C) The

6、 building project they are workingD) The public transportation conditions.Questions 9 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.9. A) To look for a job as a salesperson.B) To have a talk with Miss Thompson.C) To place an order for some products.D) To complain about a faulty appliance.1

7、0. A) The person in charge is not in the office.B) The supplies are out of stock for the moment.C) They failed to reach an agreement on the price.D) The company is re-cataloguing the items.11. A) 0743, 12536 extension 15.B) 0734, 21653 extension 51.C) 0734, 38750 extension 15.D) 0743, 62135 extensio

8、n 51.Questions 12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.12. A) Since he found a girlfriend.B) Since he took to heavy smoking.C) Since he began to exercise regularly.D) Since he started to live on his own.13. A) He is getting too fat.B) He smokes too much.C) He doesnt eat vegetables

9、.D) He doesnt look well at all.14. A) They are overweight for their age.B) They are respectful to their parents.C) They are still in their early twenties.D) They dislike doing physical exercise.15. A) To quit smoking.B) To reduce his weight.C) To find a girlfriend.D) To follow her advice.Passage One

10、Questions 16 to 19 are based on the conversation you have just heard.16. A) They have destroyed several small towns.B) They will soon spread to San Francisco.C) They have injured many residents.D) They are burning out of control.17. A) They have been hospitalized.B) They have got skin problems.C) Th

11、ey were choked by the thick smoke.D) They were poisoned by the burning chemicals.18. A) It failed because of a sudden rocket explosion.B) It has been re-scheduled for a midday takeoff.C) It has been canceled due to technical problems.D) It was delayed for eleven hours and thirty minutes.19. A) They

12、made frequent long-distance calls to each other.B) They illegally used government computers in New Jersey.C) They were found to be smarter than computer specialists.D) They were arrested for stealing government information.Passage TwoQuestions 20 to 22 are based on the passage you have just heard.20

13、. A) Peaceful.B) Considerate.C) Generous.D) Cooperative.21. A) Someone dumped the clothes left in the washer and dryer.B) Someone broke the washer and dryer by overloading them.C) Mindy Lances laundry blocked the way to the laundry room.D) Mindy Lance threatened to take revenge on her neighbors.22.

14、A) Asking the neighborhood committee for help.B.) Limiting the amount of laundry for each wash.C) Informing the building manager of the matter.D) Installing a few more washers and dryers.Passage ThreeQuestions 23 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.23. A) She is both a popular and hig

15、hly respected author.B) She is the most loved African novelist of all times.C) She is the most influential author since the 1930s.D) She is the first writer to focus on the fate of slaves.24. A) The Book Critics Circle Award.B) The Nobel Prize for literature.C) The Pulitzer Prize for fiction.D) The

16、National Book Award.25. A) She is a relative of Morrisons.B) She is a slave from Africa.C) She is a skilled storyteller.D) She is a black woman.Many college students today own personal computers that cost anywhere from $1000 to perhaps $5000 or more. (26) , it is not uncommon for them to purchase (2

17、7) costing another several hundred dollars. Twenty years ago, computers were (28) , but they were very large and extremely expensive. Few, if any. (29) purchased computers for home use. Over the years, the price of the guts of a computer-its memory-has declined to less than a thousandth of the price

18、 per unit of memory that prevailed twenty years ago. This is the main reason why computers cost so much less today than they used to. Moreover. (30) improvements have made it possible to (31) memory circuitry that is small enough to fit into the portable personal computers that many of us own and us

19、e.(32) , as the price of computation has declined the average consumer and business have spent more on purchasing computers.(33) improved agricultural technology, hybrid(杂交) seeds. (34) animal breeding, and so on have vastly increased the amount of output a typical farmer can produce. The prices of

20、goods such as meats and grains have fallen sharply relative to the prices of most other goods and services. As agricultural prices have fallen, many households have decreased their total expenses on food. Even though the (35) of a product purchased generally increases when its price falls, total exp

21、enses on it may decline.Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.To get a sense of how women have progressed in science, take a quick tour of the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley. This is a storied place, the(36) of some of the most important discoveries in m

22、odern science-starting with Ernest Lawrences invention of the cyclotron (回旋加速器) in 1931. A generation ago, female faces were (37 ) and, even today, visitors walking through the first floor of LeConte Hall will see a full corridor of exhibits (38) the many distinguished physicists who made history he

23、re. (39) all of them white males.But climb up to the third floor and youll see a (40) display. There, among the photos of current faculty members and students, are portraits of the (41) head of the department, Marjorie Shapiro, and four other women whose research (42) everything from the mechanics o

24、f the universe to the smallest particles of matter. A sixth woman was hired just two weeks ago. Although theyre still only about 10 percent of the physics faculty, women are clearly a presence here. And the real (43) may be in the smaller photos to the right: graduate and undergraduate students, abo

25、ut 20 percent of them female. Every year Berkeley sends its fresh female physics PhDs to the countrys top universities. That makes Shapiro optimistic, but also (44) . I believe things are getting better, she says, but theyre not getting better as (45) as I would like.Is College a Worthy Investment?A

26、) Why are we spending so much money on college? And why are we so unhappy about it? We all seem to agree that a college education is wonderful, and yet strangely we worry when we see families investing so much in this supposedly essential good. Maybe its time to ask a question that seems almost sacr

27、ilegious (大不敬的): is all this investment in college education really worth it?B) The answer, I fear, is no. For an increasing number of kids, the extra time and money spent pursuing a college diploma will leave them worse off than they were before they set foot on campus.C) For my entire adult life,

28、a good education has been the most important thing for middle-class households. My parents spent more educating my sister and me than they spent on their house, and theyre not the only ones. and, of course, for an increasing number of families, most of the cost of their house is actually the cost of

29、 living in a good school district. Questioning the value of a college education seems a bit like questioning the value of happiness, or fun.D) The average price of all goods and services has risen about 50 percent. But the price of a college education has nearly doubled in that time. Is the educatio

30、n that todays students are getting twice as good? Are new workers twice as smart? Have they become somehow massively more expensive to educate?E) Perhaps a bit. Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor, says, I look at the data, and I see college costs rising faster than inflation up t

31、o the mid-1980s by 1 percent a year. Now I see them rising 3 to 4 percent a year over inflation. What has happened? The federal government has started dropping money out of airplanes. Aid has increased, subsidized(补贴的) loans have become available, and the universities have gotten the money. Economis

32、t Bryan Caplan, who is writing a book about education, agrees: Its a giant waste of resources that will continue as long as the subsidies continue.F) Promotional literature for colleges and student loans often speaks of debt as an investment in yourself. But an investment is supposed to generate inc

33、ome to pay off the loans. More than half of all recent graduates are unemployed or in jobs that do not require a degree, and the amount of student-loan debt carried by households has increased more than five times since 1999. These graduates were told that a diploma was all they needed to succeed, b

34、ut it wont even get them out of the spare bedroom at Mom and Dads. For many, the most visible result of their four years is the loan payments, which now average hundreds of dollars a month on loan balances in the tens of thousands.G) Its true about the money-sort of. College graduates now make 80 pe

35、rcent more than people who have only a high-school diploma, and though there are no precise estimates, the wage premium (高出的部分) for an outstanding school seems to be even higher. But thats not true of every student. Its very easy to spend four years majoring in English literature and come out no mor

36、e employable than you were before you went in. Conversely, chemical engineers straight out of school can easily make almost four times the wages of an entry-level high-school graduate.H) James Heckman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, has examined how the returns on education break down for indivi

37、duals with different backgrounds and levels of ability. Even with these high prices, youre still finding a high return for individuals who are bright and motivated, he says. On the other hand, if youre not college ready, then the answer is no, its not worth it. Experts tend to agree that for the ave

38、rage student, college is still worth it today, but they also agree that the rapid increase in price is eating up more and more of the potential return. For borderline students, tuition(学费) rise can push those returns into negative territory.I) Everyone seems to agree that the government, and parents

39、, should be rethinking how we invest in higher education and that employers need to rethink the increasing use of college degrees as crude screening tools for jobs that dont really require college skills. Employers seeing a surplus of college graduates and looking to fill jobs are just adding that r

40、equirement. says Vedder. In fact, a college degree becomes a job requirement for becoming a bar-tender.J) We have started to see some change on the finance side. A law passed in 2007 allows many students to cap their loan payment at 10 percent of their income and forgives any balance after 25 years.

41、 But of course, that doesnt control the cost of education! it just shifts it to taxpayers. It also encourages graduates to choose lower-paying careers, which reduces the financial return to education still further. Youre subsidizing people to become priests and poets and so forth, says Heckman. You

42、may think thats a good thing, or you may not. Either way it will be expensive for the government.K) What might be a lot cheaper is putting more kids to work. Caplan notes that work also builds valuable skills- probably more valuable for kids who dont naturally love sitting in a classroom. Heckman ag

43、rees wholeheartedly: People are different, and those abilities can be shaped. Thats what weve learned, and public policy should recognize that.L) Heckman would like to see more apprenticeship-style(学徒式) programs, where kids can learn in the workplace-learn not just specific job skills, but the kind of soft skills, like getting