1、大学英语四级阅读-15 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Part Reading Compr(总题数：0，分数：0.00)二、Section A(总题数：2，分数：20.00)For many people in the U.S., sports are not just for fun. They are almost a religion. Thousands of sports fans buy expensive tickets to watch their favorite teams and athletes play in (1) . Other fan
2、s watch the games at home, not leaving their TV sets a minute. The most (2) sports fans never miss a game. Many a wife becomes a “sports widow“ during her husbands favorite season. Americas devotion to athletics has created a new class of (3) people: professional athletes. Sports stars often receive
3、 million-dollar salaries. Some even make big money appearing in (4) for soft drinks, shoes and so on.Not all Americans (5) sports, but athletics are an important part of their culture. Throughout their school life, Americans learn to play many sports. All students take physical education classes in
4、school. Athletic events at universities attract many fans and (6) the whole community. Many people also enjoy non-competitive (7) like hiking, biking, horseback riding, camping or hunting. To communicate with American, it helps if you can talk sports.Sports in America represent the international (8)
5、 of the people who play. Many sports were (9) from other countries. European immigrants (移民) brought tennis, golf, bowling and boxing to America. Football and baseball came from other Old World games. Only basketball has a truly American origin. Even today some (10) “foreign“ sports like soccer are
6、gaining American fans. In 1994 the U.S. hosted the World Cup for the first time ever.A. wealthy B. benefit C. duration D. constantE. imported F. activities G. devoted H. necessarilyI. worship J. person K. comprised L. advertisementsM. heritage N. sufficient O. formerly（分数：10.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_
7、填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_Better think twice before choosing a password for emails, online bank accounts and airline tickets.Passwords that show no imagination or (1) are easy prey (捕获物) for information pirates (劫掠者), a new US study says.A(n) (2) analysis of 28,000 passwords r
8、ecently stolen from a popular US website and posted on the Internet (3) that people often do the easy thing. It found that 16 percent took a first name as a password, (4) their own or one of their childrens, according to the study published by Information Week.Another 14 percent relied on the easies
9、t keyboard (5) to remember such as “1234“ or “12345678.“ For those using English keyboards, “QWERTY“, was popular. Likewise, “AZERTY“ (6) with people with European keyboards.Five percent of the stolen passwords were names of television shows or stars popular with young people like “hannah,“ (7) by s
10、inger Hannah Montana. “Pokemon,“ “Matrix,“ and “Ironman“ were others.The word “password,“ or easy to guess variations like “password1,“ accounted for four percent.Three percent of the passwords expressed (8) like “I dont care,“ “Whatever,“ “Yes“ or “No.“There were (9) choices“Iloveyou“and their oppo
11、site“Ihateyou.“Robert Graham, of the company Errata Security, which did the analysis and published the conclusions, advises that to better protect against cyber (10) : “choose a password that is longer than eight characters with one capital letter and one symbol.“A. invasion B. critical C. combinati
12、ons D. attitudesE. furnished F. uniqueness G. reveals H. scoredI. generally J. liberates K. emotional L. statisticalM. conversely N. principle O. inspired（分数：10.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_三、Section B(总题数：2，分数：40.00)Of the millions of inventions, what are
13、 the eight greatest?A. Ive drawn up a list. And theres one thing I know about this list: You wont agree with it. Some of you will write to tell me I forgot the gun, the airplane, or whatever. Which is fine: A top eight list is all about starting a good argument. But to draw up such a list, you have
14、to set some guidelines, and here are mine: Im starting at the year zero. Otherwise, wed never get out of prehistory. And Im limiting inventions to physical devices. The scientific method, the university and electricity dont countthey are, respectively, a concept, a social system, and something we di
15、scovered but which existed all along.B. This is a list of end products. That is, Im excluding components with no independent function. Take the gear, for example. A groundbreaking bit of technology to be sure. Without it, wed scarcely have any machines at all. But we never say, “Oh, damn, Im out of
16、gears!“ Ditto microchips, transistors, and ball bearings. Here, then, in no particular order, are my nominees as the eight greatest inventions.1. The Mechanical ClockC. Before this invention, time was inseparable from events, the main one being the Sun crossing the sky. Only local time existed, no u
17、niversal river of time. If you agreed to meet someone at sunset, you had to say where, because the Sun is always setting somewhere. Then, mechanical clocks came around. Gradually, as these clocks all came to be coordinated, they created public time, a thing in itself: one single, universal current f
18、lowing everywhere throughout the universe, always at the same pace. People could now communicate with each other by coordinating to this universal frame of reference. Thus, clocks made factories, offices, schools, meetings, and appointments possible.2. The Printing PressD. Unoriginal, I know, but st
19、ill its true. Gutenbergs press, with its movable type, launched publishing. In the short term, this made the Reformation possible by putting a Bible in the hands of anybody who wanted one. The Church lost its lock on truth, and the sovereign individual soon emerged as the key unit of Western society
20、. In the longer term, publishing universalized literacy. Before this invention, so few could read that, effectively, even those few lived in a world of oral tradition and memory. Humanitys consensual picture of reality was shaped by stories, told and retold. In this fluid world, ff the big picture s
21、hifted, no one knew, because they had nothing to check it against. The proliferation of text fixed objective reality. Now, when two people disagree about what happened yesterday, they can look it up. Our modern collective picture of reality is founded on facts archived as text.3. Immunization and An
22、tibioticsE. Three centuries ago, almost everyone died of infectious diseases. When the plague broke out in 1347, it killed nearly haft of Europein about two years. When diseases such as smallpox reached North America, they reduced the indigenous population by about 90 percent within a century. As la
23、te as 1800, the leading cause of death in the West was tuberculosis. Hardly anyone died of old age back then, one reason why elders were revered. Today, elders are a dime a dozen: nothing unusual about surviving past 70. In the United States, 73 percent of people die of heart failure, cancer, and st
24、roke. Its a different world, folks.4. The TelephoneF. Lots of people imagined the telephone before any telephone existed. Once the device was invented, and businessmen had wrested it away from the inventors, the Network began to form. Thats the actual inventionthe Network. It enables anyone to talk
25、to anyone anywhere at any given moment. So today, anyones real-time group includes people not physically present, and they could be anywhere. The infrastructure took some time to develop, but the telephone implied all this from the start.5. The Electrical GridG. Electricity existed all along, but th
26、e system of devices needed to generate this force and distribute it to individual buildings was an invention, launched initially by Edison: He effectively turned electricity into a salable commodity and his Pearl Street station was the worlds first electric power station. Nikola Teslas invention of
27、alternating current (AC) technology then made it possible to transmit electricity over long distances, leading to the nationwide grid we know today. Now, anyone in the West and throughout most of the world can tap into the grid to power everything from light bulbs to computers. We are, in fact, a so
28、cial organism animated by electricity.6. The AutomobileH. Once cars were invented, roads were improved. Once roads were improved, cities sprouted suburbs, because people could now live in the country, yet work in the city. And thus we have become a nation of sprawl, rather than density. Furthermore,
29、 as cars grew popular, the oil industry boomed. Oil became a key to power and wealthand one of the major factors for political and economic unrest in the Middle East. And here we are today.7. The TelevisionI. Wherever a television set is on, it absorbs attention like no other piece of furniture. Jan
30、e Healy, in her book Endangered Minds, says television has changed the human brain itself. Our neural networks are not hardwired at birth but continue to develop for several years, new circuits forming in response to our first interactions with the environment. In much of the developed world, young
31、children interact largely with television, so their neural networks can accommodate its warm, one-way, pacifying, activity-dampening stimulus.8. The ComputerJ. My deepest, richest, most diverse, and rewarding relationship is with my computer. It plays games with me, tells me jokes, plays music to me
32、, and does my taxes. I have great conversations with it, too. These conversations appear as e-mail and take on the personalities of supposed “friends,“ but the human embodiments of those “friends“ are rarely with me. My concrete relationship is with this object on my desk (or in my lap).（分数：20.00）(1
33、).Endangered Minds suggests that television has something to do with the change of our brain.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(2).In the era before birth of immunization, old people were respected because almost no one died of old age then.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(3).Nikola Tesla invented alternating current technology that
34、 enabled electricity to be transmitted over long distances.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(4).Gear, though a great invention, is excluded from the list because it doesnt have independent function.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(5).The political and economic unrest in the Middle East is principally attributed to off.（分数：2.00）填空项
35、1:_(6).The telephone network enables people communicate to anyone anywhere at any time.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(7).Electricity is something existed all along that cant be described as an invention.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(8).The plague that trilled nearly half of Europe broke out in 1347.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(9).Before
36、the clock was invented, there was not a universal reference of time.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(10).After the invention of printing press, people no longer had to live by oral tradition and memory.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_The US CongressA. The US congress is the legislative branch of the federal government. It is a bic
37、ameral (两院制的) law-malting body of more than 500 members. Its two chambers are respectively called the House of Representatives and the Senate. The American two-house legislature, a product of the compromise between big states and small ones, embodies the American principle of balances and checks. Al
38、l bills must carry both houses before becoming laws.B. The House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Congress. The membership of the House is distributed among the states according to their different populations. Since 1910, the House has had a permanent membership of 435, with ea
39、ch Representative representing about half a million Americans. Under the principle that each state is guaranteed at least one representative, Nevada, a state with a small population, sends only one Representative to the House. California has more than 40 Representatives in the House because of its l
40、arge population.C. The election of Representatives is organized by the state legislature which divides the state into a number of districts known as Congressional districts. Each district, with a population of nearly half a million, elects one Representative to the House. A Representatives term of o
41、ffice is set at two years, but there is no limit to the number of his terms. A new Representative can hardly feel easy about his position. Hardly has he begun his work in the Congress when he finds its time for him to seek re-election.D. The Senate is the upper house of the US Congress. Representati
42、on in the Senate is based on the principle of state equality. The Senate is comprised of 100 Senators, two from each of the fifty states. Senators have been directly elected by voters of their respective states since 1913. Their term of office is six years. With one-third of the Senate seats up for
43、election every two years. A Senator must be at least thirty years old and a citizen for nine years.E. Generally speaking, Senators are accorded greater prestige than their colleagues in the lower house. Many Representatives aspire to win the election to the Senate. Senators derive their prestige fro
44、m the following facts. They are less numerous, for there are fewer than one fourth as many Senators as Representatives, or Congressmen. Elected by the whole state instead of a single congressional district, most Senators represent more constituents (选民) than do House members. They are less worried b
45、y the problem of seeking re-electives. Whats more, the Senate has special powers which it does not share with the House. It has the power to approve or deny proposed treaties, nominations proposed by the President. In line with the tradition of “senatorial courtesy (礼貌)“, the Senate always rejects a
46、 nominee who is objected to by a Senator of the state from which he comes.F. It wont do to neglect the importance of the Senate in foreign affairs. Without its cooperation and support, the President can hardly take any significant action in foreign relations. A Secretary of State on good terms with
47、the Senators is always important for the President. Foreign countries must try to establish good relations with the US Senate if they intend to make a bargain with the United States.G. The presiding (主持的) officer of the Senate is the Vice President who functions as a kind chairman when the Senate is
48、 in session (开会). The chief spokesman of the House is known as the Speaker who is the leader of the majority party in the House. The Speaker is the most influential figure in the House because he directs his partys forces in legislative battles.H. The Congress is a legislative body, but it relies on its various committees to do preparatory work. The
