1、大学英语四级阅读分类真题 2 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：0，分数：0.00)二、Section A(总题数：0，分数：0.00)三、Passage One(总题数：1，分数：10.00)Can Digital Textbooks Truly Replace the Print Kind?AThe shortcomings of traditional print edition textbooks are obvious: For starters theyre heavy, with the average p
2、hysics textbook weighing 3.6 pounds. Theyre also expensive, especially when you factor in the average college students limited budget, typically costing hundreds of dollars every semester. But the worst part is that print versions of textbooks are constantly undergoing revisions. Many professors req
3、uire that their students use only the latest versions in the classroom, essentially rendering older texts unusable. For students, it means theyre basically stuck with a four pound paperweight that they cant sell back.BWhich is why digital textbooks, if they live up to their promise, could help ease
4、many of these shortcomings. But till now, theyve been something like a mirage (幻影) in the distance, more like a hazy (模糊的) dream than an actual reality. Imagine the promise: Carrying all your textbooks in a 1.3 pound iPad? It sounds almost too good to be true. But there are a few pilot schools alrea
5、dy making the transition (过渡) over to digital books. Universities like Cornell and Brown have jumped onboard. And one medical program at the University of California, Irvine, gave their entire class iPads with which to download textbooks just last year.CBut not all were eager to jump aboard. “People
6、 were tired of using the iPad textbook besides using it for reading,“ says Kalpit Shah, who will be going into his second year at Irvines medical program this fall. “They werent using it as a source of communication because they couldnt read or write in it. So a third of the people in my program wer
7、e using the iPad in class to take notes, the other third were using laptops and the last third were using paper and pencil.“ The reason it hasnt caught on yet, he tells me, is that the functionality of e-edition textbooks is incredibly limited, and some students just arent motivated to learn new stu
8、dy behavior.DBut a new application called Inkling might change all that. The company just released an updated version last week, and itll be utilized in over 50 undergraduate and graduate classrooms this coming school year. “Digital textbooks are not going to catch on,“ says Inkling CEO Matt MacInni
9、s as hes giving me a demo (演示) over coffee. “What I mean by that is the current perspective of the digital textbook is its an exact copy of the print book. Theres Course Smart, etc., these guys who take an image of the page and put it on a screen. If thats how were defining digital textbooks, theres
10、 no hope of that becoming a mainstream product.“ He calls Inkling a platform for publishers to build rich multimedia content from the ground up, with a heavy emphasis on real-world functionality. The traditional textbook merely serves as a skeleton.EAt first glance Inkling is an impressive experienc
11、e. After swiping (射击) into the iPad app (应用软件) , which you can get for free here, he opens up a few different types of textbooks. Up first is a chemistry book. The boot time is pretty fast, and he navigates through (浏览) a few chapters before swiping into a fully rendered 3D molecule that can be spun
12、 around to view its various building blocks. “Publishers give us all of the source media, artwork, videos,“ he says. “We help them think through how to actually build something for this platform.“ Next he pulls up a music composition textbook, complete with playable demos. Its a learning experience
13、that attacks you from multiple sensory directions. Its clear why this would be something a music major would love.FBut the most exciting part about Inkling, to me, is its notation (批注) system. Heres how it works: When you purchase a used print book, it comes with its previous owners highlights and n
14、otes in the margins. It uses the experience of someone who already went through the class to help improve your reading (how much you trust each notation is obviously up to you). But with Inkling, you can highlight a piece of content and make notes. Heres where things get interesting, though: If a pa
15、rticularly important passage is highlighted by multiple Inkling users, that information is stored on the cloud and is available for anyone reading the same textbook to come across. That means users have access to notes from not only their classmates and Facebook friends, but anyone who purchased the
16、 book across the country. The best comments are then sorted democratically by a voting system, meaning that your social learning experience is shared with the best and brightest thinkers.GAs a bonus, professors can even chime in (插话) on discussions. Theyll be able to answer the questions of students
17、 who are in their class directly via the interactive book. Of course, Inkling addresses several of the other shortcomings in traditional print as well. Textbook versions are constantly updated, motivating publishers by minimizing production costs (the big ones like McGraw-Hill are already onboard).
18、Furthermore, students will be able to purchase sections of the text instead of buying the whole thing, with individual chapters costing as little as 2.99.HThere are, however, challenges. “It takes efforts to build each book,“ MacInnis tells me. And its clear why. Each interactive textbook is a media
19、-heavy experience built from the ground up, and you can tell that it takes a respectable amount of manpower to put together each one. For now the app is also iPad-exclusive, and though a few of these educational institutions are giving the hardware away for free, for other students who dont have suc
20、h a luxury its an added layer of costand an expensive one at that.IBut this much is clear: The traditional textbook model is and has been broken for quite some time. Whether digitally interactive ones like Inkling actually take off or not remains to be seen, and we probably wont have a definite answ
21、er for the next few years. However, the solution to any problem begins with a step in a direction. And at least for now, that hazy mirage in the distance? A little more tangible (可触摸的), a little less of a dream.（分数：10.00）(1).Digital textbooks have been something more like an actual reality than a dr
22、eam.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(2).A third of students in the program were still using paper and pencil.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(3).Students could purchase individual chapters costing as little as 2.99 rather than the whole book.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(4).The problem with Course Smarts current digital textbooks is that they
23、are no more than print versions put on a screen.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(5).One problem for students to replace traditional textbooks with interactive digital ones is the high cost of the hardware.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(6).The biggest problem with traditional print textbooks is that they are not reused once a new
24、 edition comes out.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(7).Cornell university has already tried to use digital books.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(8).One additional advantage of the interactive digital textbook is that professors can join in students online discussions.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(9).Inklings system enables users to share thei
25、r learning experience with the best and brightest thinkers.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(10).One of the challenges to build an interactive digital textbook from the ground up is that it takes a great deal of labor work.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_四、Passage Two(总题数：1，分数：10.00)The MagicianThe revolution that Steve Jobs led is
26、 only just beginningAWhen it came to putting on a show, nobody else in the computer industry, or any other industry for that matter, could match Steve Jobs. His product launches, at which he would stand alone on a black stage and produce as if by magic an “incredible“ new electronic gadget (小器具) in
27、front of an amazed crowd, were the performances of a master showman. All computers do is fetch and work with numbers, he once explained, but do it fast enough and “the results appear to be magic“. Mr. Jobs, who died recently aged 56, spent his life packaging that magic into elegantly designed, easy-
28、to-use products.BThe reaction to his death, with people leaving candles and flowers outside Apple stores and politicians singing praises on the internet, is proof that Mr. Jobs had become something much more significant than just a clever money-maker. He stood out in three waysas a technologist, as
29、a corporate (公司的) leader and as somebody who was able to make people love what had previously been impersonal, functional gadgets. Strangely, it is this last quality that may have the deepest effect on the way people live. The era of personal technology is in many ways just beginning.CAs a technolog
30、ist, Mr. Jobs was different because he was not an engineerand that was his great strength. Instead he was keenly interested in product design and aesthetics (美学), and in making advanced technology simple to use. He repeatedly took an existing but half-formed ideathe mouse-driven computer, the digita
31、l music player, the smartphone, the tablet computer (平板电脑)and showed the rest of the industry how to do it properly. Rival firms competed with each other to follow where he led. In the process he brought about great changes in computing, music, telecoms and the news business that were painful for ex
32、isting firms but welcomed by millions of consumers.DWithin the wider business world, a man who liked to see himself as a hippy (嬉皮士), permanently in revolt against big companies, ended up being hailed by many of those corporate giants as one of the greatest chief executives of his time. That was par
33、tly due to his talents: showmanship, strategic vision, an astonishing attention to detail and a dictatorial management style which many bosses must have envied. But most of all it was the extraordinary trajectory (轨迹) of his life. His fall from grace in the 1980s, followed by his return to Apple in
34、1996 after a period in the wilderness, is an inspiration to any businessperson whose career has taken a turn for the worse. The way in which Mr. Jobs revived the failing company he had co-founded and turned it into the worlds biggest tech firm (bigger even than Bill Gatess Microsoft, the company tha
35、t had outsmarted Apple so dramatically in the 1980s), sounds like something from a Hollywood movie.EBut what was perhaps most astonishing about Mr. Jobs was the absolute loyalty he managed to inspire in customers. Many Apple users feel themselves to be part of a community, with Mr. Jobs as its leade
36、r. And there was indeed a personal link. Apples products were designed to accord with the bosss tastes and to meet his extremely high standards. Every iPhone or MacBook has his fingerprints all over it. His great achievement was to combine an emotional spark with computer technology, and make the re
37、sulting product feel personal. And that is what put Mr. Jobs on the right side of history, as technological innovation (创新) has moved into consumer electronics over the past decade.FAs our special report in this issue (printed before Mr. Jobss death) explains, innovation used to spill over from mili
38、tary and corporate laboratories to the consumer market, but lately this process has gone into reverse. Many peoples homes now have more powerful, and more flexible, devices than their offices do; consumer gadgets and online services are smarter and easier to use than most companies systems. Familiar
39、 consumer products are being adopted by businesses, government and the armed forces. Companies are employing in-house versions of Facebook and creating their own “app stores“ to deliver software to employees. Doctors use tablet computers for their work in hospitals. Meanwhile, the number of consumer
40、s hungry for such gadgets continues to swell. Apples products are now being snapped up in Delhi and Dalian just as in Dublin and Dallas.GMr. Jobs had a reputation as a control freak (怪人), and his critics complained that the products and systems he designed were closed and inflexible, in the name of
41、greater ease of use. Yet he also empowered millions of people by giving them access to cutting-edge technology. His insistence on putting users first, and focusing on elegance and simplicity, has become deep-rooted in his own company, and is spreading to rival firms too. It is no longer just at Appl
42、e that designers ask: “What would Steve Jobs do?“HThe gap between Apple and other tech firms is now likely to narrow. This weeks announcement of a new iPhone by a management team led by Tim Cook, who replaced Mr. Jobs as chief executive in August, was generally regarded as competent but uninspiring.
43、 Without Mr. Jobs to shower his star dust on the event, it felt like just another product launch from just another technology firm. At the recent unveiling of a tablet computer by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, whose company is doing the best job of following Apples lead in combining hardware, software, cont
44、ent and services in an easy-to-use bundle, there were several attacks at Apple. But by doing his best to imitate Mr. Jobs, Mr. Bezos also flattered (抬举) him. With Mr. Jobs gone, Apple is just one of many technology firms trying to arouse his uncontrollable spirit in new products.IMr. Jobs was said b
45、y an engineer in the early years of Apple to emit a “reality distortion (扭曲) field“, such were his powers of persuasion. But in the end he created a reality of his own, channeling the magic of computing into products that reshaped entire industries. The man who said in his youth that he wanted to “p
46、ut a ding in the universe“ did just that.（分数：10.00）(1).Tim Cook who was generally regarded as competent but uninspiring took Mr. Jobss position in Apple.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(2).Apple customers feel that they belong to the same community.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(3).Nobody could match Steve Jobs in showmanship.（分
47、数：1.00）填空项 1:_(4).The most surprising part of Mr. Jobs was that he commanded absolute loyalty from Apple users.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(5).Mr. Jobss great strength lay in his keen interest in designing elegant and user-friendly gadgets.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(6).Many corporate giants saw Steve Jobs as one of the g
48、reatest chief executives of his time.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(7).What Steve Jobs did to most deeply affected peoples way of life is that he started the era of personal technology.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(8).Some people thought the products Mr. Jobs designed were closed and inflexible.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(9).For those who have suffered failures in business, Steve Jobss life experience serves as an inspiration.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_(10).The report mentioned many new ideas originate in the consumer market nowadays.（分数：1.00）填空项 1:_
