1、2013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 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay based on the picture below. You should start your essay with a brief account of the impact of the Internet on the way people communicate and then explain whether electronic communication
2、 can replace face-to-face contact. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.“Dear Andy How are you? Your mother and I are fine. We both miss you and hope you are doing well. We look forward to seeing you again the next time your computer crashes and you come downstairs for some
3、thing to eat. Love, Mom and Dad.“ Section A （ A） Plan his budget carefully. （ B） Give her more information. （ C） Ask someone else for advice. （ D） Buy a gift for his girlfriend. （ A） Shell have some chocolate cake. （ B） Shell take a look at the menu. （ C） Shell go without dessert. （ D） Shell prepare
4、 the dinner. （ A） The man can speak a foreign language. （ B） The woman hopes to improve her English. （ C） The woman knows many different languages. （ D） The man wishes to visit many more countries. （ A） Go to the library. （ B） Meet the woman. （ C） See Prof. Smith. （ D） Have a drink in the bar. （ A）
5、She isnt sure when Prof. Bloom will be back. （ B） The man shouldnt be late for his class. （ C） The man can come back sometime later. （ D） She can pass on the message for the man. （ A） He has a strange personality. （ B） Hes got emotional problems. （ C） His illness is beyond cure. （ D） His behavior is
6、 hard to explain. （ A） The tickets are more expensive than expected. （ B） The tickets are sold in advance at half price. （ C） Its difficult to buy the tickets on the spot. （ D） Its better to buy the tickets beforehand. （ A） He turned suddenly and ran into a tree. （ B） He was hit by a fallen box from
7、 a truck. （ C） He drove too fast and crashed into a truck. （ D） He was trying to overtake the truck ahead of him. （ A） To go boating on the St. Lawrence River. （ B） To go sightseeing in Quebec Province. （ C） To call on a friend in Quebec City. （ D） To attend a wedding in Montreal. （ A） Study the map
8、 of Quebec Province. （ B） Find more about Quebec City. （ C） Brush up on her French. （ D） Learn more about the local customs. （ A） Its most beautiful in summer. （ B） It has many historical buildings. （ C） It was greatly expanded in the 18th century. （ D） Its the only French-speaking city in Canada. （
9、 A） It was about a little animal. （ B） It took her six years to write. （ C） It was adapted from a fairy tale. （ D） It was about a little girl and her pet. （ A） She knows how to write best-selling novels. （ B） She can earn a lot of money by writing for adults. （ C） She is able to win enough support f
10、rom publishers. （ D） She can make a living by doing what she likes. （ A） The characters. （ B） The readers. （ C） Her ideas. （ D） Her life experiences. （ A） She doesnt really know where they originated. （ B） She mainly drew on stories of ancient saints. （ C） They popped out of her childhood dreams. （
11、D） They grew out of her long hours of thinking. Section B （ A） Monitor students sleep patterns. （ B） Help students concentrate in class. （ C） Record students weekly performance. （ D） Ask students to complete a sleep report. （ A） Declining health. （ B） Lack of attention. （ C） Loss of motivation. （ D）
12、 Improper behavior. （ A） They should make sure their children are always punctual for school. （ B） They should ensure their children grow up in a healthy environment. （ C） They should help their children accomplish high-quality work. （ D） They should see to it that their children have adequate sleep
13、. （ A） She stopped being a homemaker. （ B） She became a famous educator. （ C） She became a public figure. （ D） She quit driving altogether. （ A） A motorists speeding. （ B） Her running a stop sign. （ C） Her lack of driving experience. （ D） A motorists failure to concentrate. （ A） Nervous and unsure o
14、f herself. （ B） Calm and confident of herself. （ C） Courageous and forceful. （ D） Distracted and reluctant. （ A） More strict training of women drivers. （ B） Restrictions on cell phone use while driving. （ C） Improved traffic conditions in cities. （ D） New regulations to ensure childrens safety. （ A）
15、 They havent devoted as much energy to medicine as to space travel. （ B） There are too many kinds of cold viruses for them to identify. （ C） It is not economical to find a cure for each type of cold. （ D） They believe people can recover without treatment. （ A） They reveal the seriousness of the prob
16、lem. （ B） They indicate how fast the virus spreads. （ C） They tell us what kind of medicine to take. （ D） They show our body is fighting the virus. （ A） It actually does more harm than good. （ B） It causes damage to some organs of our body. （ C） It works better when combined with other remedies. （ D
17、） It helps us to recover much sooner. Section C 26 You probably have noticed that people express similar ideas in different ways, depending on the situation they are in. This is very【 B1】 _All languages have two general levels of usage: a formal level and an informal level. English is no【 B2】_The di
18、fference in these two levels is the situation in which you use a【 B3】_level. Formal language is the kind of language you find in textbooks,【 B4】_, and in business letters. You would also use formal English in compositions and【 B5】 _that you write in school. Informal language is used in conversation
19、with colleagues, family members and friends, and when we write _【 B6】 _ notes or letters to close friends. Formal language is different from informal language【 B7】 _First, formal language tends to be more polite. What we may find interesting is that it usually takes more words to be polite. For exam
20、ple, I might say to a friend or a family member, “Close the door, please. “ but to a【 B8】 _, I probably would say, “Would you mind closing the door?“ Another difference between formal and informal language is some of the【 B9】_There are bound to be some words and phrases that【 B10】 _formal language a
21、nd others that are informal. Lets say that I really like soccer. If Im talking to my friend, I might say “Im just crazy about soccer!“ But if I were talking to my boss, I would probably say “I really enjoy soccer.“ 27 【 B1】 28 【 B2】 29 【 B3】 30 【 B4】 31 【 B5】 32 【 B6】 33 【 B7】 34 【 B8】 35 【 B9】 36 【
22、 B10】 Section A 36 The mobile phone is a magic device widely used these days. Although it has been nearly 30 years since the first commercial mobile-phone network was launched, advertisers have yet to figure out how to get their【 C1】 _out to mobile-phone users in a big way. There are 2.2 billion cel
23、l-phone users worldwide, a【 C2】 _that is growing by about 25% each year. Yet spending on ads carried over cell-phone networks last year【 C3】 _ to just $1.5 billion worldwide, a fraction of the $ 424 billion global ad market. But as the number of eyeballs glued to【 C4】 _screens multiplies, so too doe
24、s the mobile phones value as a pocket billboard(广告牌 ). Consumers are【 C5】_using their phones for things other than voice calls, such as text messaging, downloading songs and games, and【 C6】 _the Internet. By 2010, 70 million Asians are expected to be watching videos and TV programs on mobile phones.
25、 All of these activities give advertisers【 C7】 _options for reaching audiences. During soccers World Cup last summer, for example, Adidas used real-time scores and games to【 C8】 _ thousands of fans to a website set up for mobile-phone access. “Our target audience was males aged 17 to 25,“ says Marcu
26、s Spurrell, Adidas regional manager for Asia. “Their mobiles are always on, always in their pocket- you just cant【 C9】 _cell phones as an advertising tool.“ Mobile-phone marketing has become as【 C10】 _a platform as TV. online or print. A)accessing F)characters K)patiently B)amounted G)fresh L)tiny C
27、)approaching H)ignore M)total D)attract I)increasingly N)violated E)casual J)messages O)vital 37 【 C1】 38 【 C2】 39 【 C3】 40 【 C4】 41 【 C5】 42 【 C6】 43 【 C7】 44 【 C8】 45 【 C9】 46 【 C10】 Section B 46 A Mess on the Ladder of Success A)Throughout American history there has almost always been at least on
28、e central economic narrative that gave the ambitious or unsatisfied reason to pack up and seek their fortune elsewhere. For the first 300 or so years of European settlement, the story was about moving outward: getting immigrants to the continent and then to the frontier to clear the prairies(大草原 ).
29、drain the wetlands and build new cities. B)By the end of the 19th century, as the frontier vanished, the US had a mild panic attack. What would this energetic, enterprising country be without new lands to conquer? Some people, such as Teddy Roosevelt, decided to keep on conquering(Cuba, the Philippi
30、nes, etc.), but eventually, in industrialization, the US found a new narrative of economic mobility at home. From the 1890s to the 1960s, people moved from farm to city, first in the North and then in the South. In fact, by the 1950s, there was enough prosperity and white-collar work that many began
31、 to move to the suburbs. As the population aged, there was also a shift from the cold Rust Belt to the comforts of the Sun Belt. We think of this as an old persons migration, but it created many jobs for the young in construction and health care, not to mention tourism, retail and restaurants. C)For
32、 the last 20 years- from the end of the cold war through two burst bubbles in a single decade- -the US has been casting about for its next economic narrative. And now it is experiencing another period of panic, which is bad news for much of the workforce but particularly for its youngest members. D)
33、The US has always been a remarkably mobile country, but new data from the Census Bureau indicate that mobility has reached its lowest level in recorded history. Sure, some people are stuck in homes valued at less than their mortgages(抵押贷款 ), but many young people who dont own homes and dont yet have
34、 familiesare staying put, too. This suggests, among other things, that people arent packing up for new economic opportunities the way they used to. Rather than dividing the country into the 1 percenters versus(与 相对 )everyone else, the split in our economy is really between two other classes: the mob
35、ile and immobile. E)Part of the problem is that the countrys largest industries are in decline. In the past, it was perfectly clear where young people should go for work(Chicago in the 1870s, Detroit in the 1910s. Houston in the 1970s)and, more or less, what theyd be doing when they got there(killin
36、g cattle, building cars, selling oil). And these industries were large enough to offer jobs to each class of worker, from unskilled laborer to manager or engineer. Today, the few bright spots in our economy are relatively small(though some promise future growth)and decentralized. There are great job
37、s in Silicon Valley, in the biotech research capitals of Boston and Raleigh-Durham and in advanced manufacturing plants along the southern z-85 corridor. These companies recruit all over the country and the globe for workers with specific abilities.(You dont need to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, foun
38、der of Facebook, to get a job in one of the microhubs(微中心 ), by the way. But you will almost certainly need at least a B. A. in computer science or a year or two at a technical school.)This newer, select job market is national, and it offers members of the mobile class competitive salaries and highe
39、r bargaining power. F)Many members of the immobile class, on the other hand, live in the America of the gloomy headlines. If you have no specialized skills, theres little reason to uproot to another state and be the last in line for a low-paying job at a new auto plant or a green-energy startup. The
40、 surprise in the census(普查 )data, however, is that the immobile workforce is not limited to unskilled workers. In fact, many have a college degree. G)Until now, a B. A. in any subject was a near-guarantee of at least middle-class wages. But today, a quarter of college graduates make less than the ty
41、pical worker without a bachelors degree. David Autor, a prominent labor economist at M. I. T., recently told me that a college degree alone is no longer a guarantor of a good job. While graduates from top universities are still likely to get a good job no matter what their major is, he said, graduat
42、es from less-famous schools are going to be judged on what they know. To compete for jobs on a national level, they should be armed with the skills that emerging industries need, whether technical or not. H)Those without such specialized skills like poetry, or even history, majors are already compet
43、ing with their neighbors for the same sorts of second-rate, poorer-paying local jobs like low-level management or big-box retail sales. And with the low-skilled labor market atomized into thousands of microeconomics, immobile workers are less able to demand better wages or conditions or to acquire v
44、aluable skills. I)So what, exactly, should the ambitious young worker of today be learning? Unfortunately, its hard to say, since the US doesnt have one clear national project. There are plenty of emerging, smaller industries, but which ones are the most promising?(Nanotechnologys(纳米技术 )moment of re
45、markable growth seems to have been 5 years into the future for something like 20 years now.)Its not clear exactly what skills are most needed or if they will even be valuable in a decade. J)What is clear is that all sorts of government issueseducation, health-insurance portability, worker retraining
46、are no longer just bonuses to already prosperous lives but existential requirements. Its in all of our interests to make sure that as many people as possible are able to move toward opportunity, and Americas ability to invest people and money in exciting new ideas is still greater than that of most
47、other wealthy countries.(As recently as five years ago, US migration was twice the rate of European Union states.)That, at least, is some comfort at a time when our national economy seems to be searching for its next story line. 47 Unlike in the past, a college degree alone does not guarantee a good
48、 job for its holder. 48 The census data is surprising in that college graduates are also among the immobile workforce. 49 New figures released by the government show that Americans today are less mobile than ever before. 50 The migration of old people from cold to warm places made many jobs availabl
49、e to the young. 51 America is better at innovation than most other rich nations. 52 Early American history is one of moving outward. 53 Young people dont know what to learn because it is hard to predict what skills are most needed or valued ten years from now. 54 Computer or other technical skills are needed to get a well-paying job in high-tech or advanced manufacturing. 55 When the frontier vanished about a century ago, America found
