[外语类试卷]2017年12月大学英语四级真题试卷（三）及答案与解析.doc

1、2017年 12月大学英语四级真题试卷（三）及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on how to best handle the relationship between doctors and patients. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. Section A （ A） It tries to entertain its

2、audience. （ B） It tries to look into the distance. （ C） It wants to catch peoples attention. （ D） It has got one of its limbs injured. （ 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

3、won a photography prize. （ A） The distance travelled. （ B） The incidence of road accidents. （ C） The spending on gas. （ D） The number of people travelling. （ A） Fewer people are commuting. （ B） Gas consumption is soaring. （ C） Job growth is slowing down. （ D） Rush-hour traffic is worsening. （ A） He

4、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 strangers car in return for some food. （ A） He ordered a lot of food for his family. （ B） He gave him a job at his own compa

5、ny. （ C） He raised a large sum of money for him. （ D） He offered him a scholarship for college. （ A） He works hard to support his family. （ B） He is an excellent student at school. （ C） He is very good at making up stories. （ D） He has been disabled since boyhood. Section B （ A） Attended an economic

6、s lecture. （ B） Taken a walk on Charles Street. （ C） Had a drink at Queen Victoria. （ D） Had dinner at a new restaurant. （ A） Treat a college friend to dinner. （ B） Make preparations for a seminar. （ C） Attend his brothers birthday party. （ D） Visit some of his high school friends. （ A） Gather stati

7、stics for his lecture. （ B） Throw a surprise birthday party. （ C） Meet with Jonathans friends on the weekend. （ D） Join him in his brothers birthday celebration. （ A） By car. （ B） By train. （ C） By taxi. （ D） By bus. （ A） Taking a vacation abroad. （ B） Reviewing for his last exam. （ C） Saving enough

8、 money for a rainy day. （ D） Finding a better way to earn money. （ A） Preparing for his final exams. （ B） Negotiating with his boss for a raise. （ C） Working part time as a waiter. （ D） Helping the woman with her courses. （ A） Finish her term paper. （ B） Save enough money. （ C） Learn a little bit of

9、 Spanish. （ D） Ask her parents permission. （ A） He has rich sailing experience. （ B） He speaks Spanish fluently. （ C） He is also eager to go to Spain. （ D） He is easy to get along with. Section C （ A） She went to the same university as her mother. （ B） She worked as a nurse in the First World War. （

10、 C） She won the Nobel Prize two times. （ D） She was also a Nobel Prize winner. （ 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 soldier

11、s. （ A） Both died of blood cancer. （ B） Both fought in World War I. （ C） Both won military medals. （ D） Both married their assistants. （ 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

12、 island north of England. （ A） It was some five hundred miles west of Norway. （ 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. （ A） The Vikings ocean explorations. （ B） The making of European na

13、tions. （ C） The Vikings everyday life. （ D） The Europeans Arctic discoveries. （ A） Work hard for a better life. （ B） Make mistakes now and then. （ C） Dream about the future. （ D） Save against a rainy day. （ A） Teach foreign languages for the rest of his life. （ B） Change what he has for his past ima

14、ginary world. （ C） Exchange his two-story house for a beach cottage. （ D） Dwell on the dreams he had dreamed when young. （ A） Criminal law. （ B） City planning. （ C） Oriental architecture. （ D） International business. （ A） Dream and make plans. （ B） Take things easy in life. （ C） Be content with what

15、 you have. （ D） Enjoy whatever you are doing. Section A 26 We all know there exists a great void (空白 ) in the public educational system when it comes to【 C1】 _ to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) courses. One educator named Dori Roberts decided to do something to change this s

16、ystem. Dori taught high school engineering for 11 years. She noticed there was a real void in quality STEM education at all【 C2】 _ of the public educational system. She said, “I started Engineering For Kids (EFK) after noticing a real lack of math, science and engineering programs to【 C3】 _ my own k

17、ids in.“ She decided to start an afterschool program where children【 C4】 _ in STEM-based competitions. The club grew quickly and when it reached 180 members and the kids in the program won several state【 C5】 _, she decided to devote all her time to cultivating and【 C6】 _ it. The global business EFK

18、was born. Dori began operating EFK out of her Virginia home, which she then expanded to【 C7】 _ recreation centers. Today, the EFK program【 C8】 _ over 144 branches in 32 states within the United States and in 21 countries. Sales have doubled from $ 5 million in 2014 to $ 10 million in 2015, with 25 n

19、ew branches planned for 2016. The EFK website states, “Our nation is not【 C9】 _ enough engineers. Our philosophy is to inspire kids at a young age to understand that engineering is a great【 C10】 _. “ A) attracted I) feeding B) career J) graduating C) championships K) interest D) degrees L) levels E)

20、 developing M) local F) enroll N) operates G) exposure O) participated H) feasible 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 Why arent you curious about what happened? A) “You suspended Ray Rice after our video,“ a reporter from TMZ chall

21、enged National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell the other day. “Why didnt you have the curiosity to go to the casino (赌场 ) yourself?“ The implication of the question is that a more curious commissioner would have found a way to get the tape. B) The accusation of incuriosity is one that we

22、hear often, carrying the suggestion that there is something wrong with not wanting to search out the truth. “I have been bothered for a long time about the curious lack of curiosity,“ said a Democratic member of the New Jersey legislature back in July, referring to an insufficiently inquiring attitu

23、de on the part of an assistant to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who chose not to ask hard questions about the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal. “Isnt the mainstream media the least bit curious about what happened?“ wrote conservative writer Jennifer Rubin earlier this year, referring to

24、 the attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya. C) The implication, in each case, is that curiosity is a good thing, and a lack of curiosity is a problem. Are such accusations simply efforts to score political points for ones party? Or is there something of particular value about curiosity in and of it

25、self? D) The journalist Ian Leslie, in his new and enjoyable book Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It, insists that the answer to that last question is Yes. Leslie argues that curiosity is a much-overlooked human virtue, crucial to our success, and that we are losing it. E)

26、 We are suffering, he writes, from a “serendipity deficit.“ The word “serendipity“ was coined by Horace Walpole in an 1854 letter, from a tale of three princes who “were always making discoveries, by accident, of things they were not in search of. “ Leslie worries that the rise of the Internet, amon

27、g other social and technological changes, has reduced our appetite for aimless adventures. No longer have we the inclination to let ourselves wander through fields of knowledge, ready to be surprised. Instead, we seek only the information we want. F) Why is this a problem? Because without curiosity

28、we will lose the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. We will see unimaginative governments and dying corporations make disastrous decisions. We will lose a vital part of what has made humanity as a whole so successful as a species. G) Leslie presents considerable evidence for the proposition

29、that the society as a whole is growing less curious. In the U. S. and Europe, for example, the rise of the Internet has led to a declining consumption of news from outside the readers borders. But not everything is to be blamed on technology. The decline in interest in literary fiction is also one o

30、f the causes identified by Leslie. Reading literary fiction, he says, makes us more curious. H) Moreover, in order to be curious, “you have to be aware of a gap in your knowledge in the first place.“ Although Leslie perhaps paints a bit broadly in contending that most of us are unaware of how much w

31、e dont know, hes surely right to point out that the problem is growing: “Google can give us the powerful illusion that all questions have definite answers.“ I) Indeed, Google, for which Leslie expresses admiration, is also his frequent whipping boy (替罪羊 ). He quotes Google co-founder Larry Page to t

32、he effect that the “perfect search engine“ will “understand exactly what I mean and give me back exactly what I want.“ Elsewhere in the book, Leslie writes:“ Google aims to save you from the thirst of curiosity altogether. “ J) Somewhat nostalgically (怀旧地 ), he quotes John Maynard Keyness justly fam

33、ous words of praise to the bookstore: “One should enter it vaguely, almost in a dream, and allow what is there freely to attract and influence the eye. To walk the rounds of the bookshops, dipping in as curiosity dictates, should be an afternoons entertainment.“ If only! K) Citing the work of psycho

34、logists and cognitive (认知的 ) scientists, Leslie criticizes the received wisdom that academic success is the result of a combination of intellectual talent and hard work. Curiosity, he argues, is the third key factor and a difficult one to preserve. If not cultivated, it will not survive:“ Childhood

35、curiosity is a collaboration between child and adult. The surest way to kill it is to leave it alone. “ L) School education, he warns, is often conducted in a way that makes children incurious. Children of educated and upper-middle-class parents turn out to be far more curious, even at early ages, t

36、han children of working class and lower class families. That lack of curiosity produces a relative lack of knowledge, and the lack of knowledge is difficult if not impossible to compensate for later on. M) Although Leslies book isnt about politics, he doesnt entirely shy away from the problem. Polit

37、ical leaders, like leaders of other organizations, should be curious. They should ask questions at crucial moments. There are serious consequences, he warns, in not wanting to know. N) He presents as an example the failure of the George W. Bush administration to prepare properly for the after-effect

38、s of the invasion of Iraq. According to Leslie, those who ridiculed former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his 2002 remark that we have to be wary of the “unknown unknowns“ were mistaken. Rumsfelds idea, Leslie writes, “wasnt absurd it was smart.“ He adds, “The tragedy is that he didnt follow

39、his own advice.“ O) All of which brings us back to Goodell and the Christie case and Benghazi. Each critic in those examples is charging, in a different way, that someone in authority is intentionally being incurious. I leave it to the readers political preference to decide which, if any, charges sh

40、ould stick. But lets be careful about demanding curiosity about the other sides weaknesses and remaining determinedly incurious about our own. We should be delighted to pursue knowledge for its own sake even when what we find out is something we didnt particularly want to know. 37 To be curious, we

41、need to realize first of all that there are many things we dont know. 38 According to Leslie, curiosity is essential to ones success. 39 We should feel happy when we pursue knowledge for knowledges sake. 40 Political leaders lack of curiosity will result in bad consequences. 41 There are often accus

42、ations about politicians and the medias lack of curiosity to find out the truth. 42 The less curious a child is, the less knowledge the child may turn out to have. 43 It is widely accepted that academic accomplishment lies in both intelligence and diligence. 44 Visiting a bookshop as curiosity leads

43、 us can be a good way to entertain ourselves. 45 Both the rise of the Internet and reduced appetite for literary fiction contribute to peoples declining curiosity. 46 Mankind wouldnt be so innovative without curiosity. Section C 46 Aging happens to all of us, and is generally thought of as a natural

44、 part of life. It would seem silly to call such a thing a “disease.“ On the other hand, scientists are increasingly learning that aging and biological age are two different things, and that the former is a key risk factor for conditions such as heart disease, cancer and many more. In that light, agi

45、ng itself might be seen as something treatable, the way you would treat high blood pressure or a vitamin deficiency. Biophysicist Alex Zhavoronkov believes that aging should be considered a disease. He said that describing aging as a disease creates incentives to develop treatments. “It unties the h

46、ands of the pharmaceutical (制药的 ) industry so that they can begin treating the disease and not just the side effects,“ he said. “Right now, people think of aging as natural and something you cant control,“ he said. “In academic circles, people take aging research as just an interest area where they

47、can try to develop interventions. The medical community also takes aging for granted, and can do nothing about it except keep people within a certain health range. “ But if aging were recognized as a disease, he said, “It would attract funding and change the way we do health care. What matters is un

48、derstanding that aging is curable. “ “It was always known that the body accumulates damage,“ he added. “The only way to cure aging is to find ways to repair that damage. I think of it as preventive medicine for age-related conditions.“ Leonard Hayflick, a professor at the University of California, S

49、an Francisco, said the idea that aging can be cured implies the human lifespan can be increased, which some researchers suggest is possible. Hayflick is not among them. “Therere many people who recover from cancer, stroke, or heart disease. But they continue to age, because aging is separate from their disease,“ Hayflick said. “Even if those causes of death were eliminated, life expectancy would still not go much beyond 92 years.“ 47 What do people generally believe about aging? （ A） It shoul