1、2013年 12月大学英语四级真题试卷（二）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 increasing use of the mobile phone in peoples life and then explain the consequences of overusing it.
2、You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.People are crossing the street looking at their cell phones and using walking sticks in order to see. Section A （ A） Go to a place he has visited. （ B） Make her own arrangements. （ C） Consult a travel agent. （ D） Join in a package tour.
3、（ 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） They are tired of eating out at night. （ 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 kee
4、ps a distance from others. （ A） Work in another department. （ B） Pursue further education. （ C） Recruit graduate students. （ D） Take an administrative job. （ 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 lea
5、ve some more time for himself. （ D） He will get his application letter ready before May 1. （ A） Cleaner. （ B） Mechanic. （ C） Porter. （ D） Salesman. （ A） Request 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 hersel
6、f this time. （ D） Ask Laura to put off the cleaning until another week. （ A） A problem caused by the construction. （ B） An accident that occurred on the bridge. （ C） The building project they are working on. （ D） The public transportation conditions. （ A） To look for a job as a salesperson. （ B） To
7、have a talk with Miss Thompson. （ C） To place an order for some products. （ D） To complain about a faulty appliance. （ 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-catalogu
8、ing the items. （ A） 0743, 12536 extension 15. （ B） 0734, 21653 extension 51. （ C） 0734, 38750 extension 15. （ D） 0743, 62135 extension 51. （ 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. （ A）
9、He is getting too fat. （ B） He smokes too much. （ C） He doesnt eat vegetables. （ D） He doesnt look well at all. （ 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. （ A） To quit smok
10、ing. （ B） To reduce his weight. （ C） To find a girlfriend. （ D） To follow her advice. Section B （ 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. （ A） They have been hospitalized. （
11、B） They have got skin problems. （ C） They were Choked by the thick smoke. （ D） They were poisoned by the burning chemicals. （ 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 delaye
12、d for eleven hours and thirty minutes. （ A） They 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. （ A） Peaceful. （ B
13、） Considerate. （ C） Generous. （ D） Cooperative. （ 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. （ A）
14、 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. （ A） She is both a popular and highly respected author. （ B） She is the most loved African novelist of all
15、 times. （ C） She is the most influential author since the 1930s. （ D） She is the first writer to focus on the fate of slaves. （ A） The Book Critics Circle Award. （ B） The Nobel Prize for literature. （ C） The Pulitzer Prize for fiction. （ D） The National Book Award. （ A） She is a relative of Morrison
16、s. （ B） She is a slave from Africa. （ C） She is a skilled storyteller. （ D） She is a black woman. Section C 26 Many college students today own personal computers that cost anywhere from $ 1 000 to perhaps $5 000 or more.【 B1】 _, it is not uncommon for them to purchase【 B2】 _ costing another several
17、hundred dollars. Twenty years ago, computers were【 B3】 _, but they were very large and extremely expensive. Few, if any,【 B4】 _purchased computers for home use. Over the years, the price of the “guts“ Of a computer its memoryhas declined to less than a thousandth of the price per unit of memory that
18、 prevailed twenty years ago. This is the main reason why computers cost so much less today than they used to. Moreover,【 B5】 _improvements have made it possible to【 B6】 _memory circuitry that is small enough to fit into the portable personal computers that many of us own and use.【 B7】 _, as the pric
19、e of computation has declined the average consumer and business have spent more on purchasing computers. 【 B8】 _, improved agricultural technology, hybrid(杂交 )seeds,【 B9】_animal breeding, and so on have vastly increased the amount of output a typical farmer can produce. The prices of goods such as m
20、eats 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【 B10】_of a product purchased generally increases when its price falls, total expenses on it ma
21、y decline. 27 【 B1】 28 【 B2】 29 【 B3】 30 【 B4】 31 【 B5】 32 【 B6】 33 【 B7】 34 【 B8】 35 【 B9】 36 【 B10】 Section A 36 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【 C1】 _of some
22、 of the most important discoveries in modern science -starting with Ernest Lawrences invention of the cyclotron(回旋 加速器 )in 1931. A generation ago, female faces were【 C2】 _and, even today, visitors walking through the first floor of LeConte Hall will see a full corridor of exhibits【 C3】 _the many dis
23、tinguished physicists who made history here,【 C4】 _all of them white males. But climb up to the third floor and youll see a【 C5】 _display. There, among the photos of current faculty members and students, are portraits of the【 C6】_head of the department, Marjorie Shapiro, and four other women whose r
24、esearch【 C7】 _everything from the mechanics of 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【 C8】_may be in the smaller photos to the ri
25、ght: graduate and undergraduate students, about 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 【 C9】_. “I believe things are getting better,“ she says, “but theyre not getting better as【 C10
26、】 _as I would like.“ A)circumstance F)different K)presently B)confidence G)exposing L)rare C)covers H)fast M)realistic D)current I)honoring N)site E)deals J)hope O)virtually 37 【 C1】 38 【 C2】 39 【 C3】 40 【 C4】 41 【 C5】 42 【 C6】 43 【 C7】 44 【 C8】 45 【 C9】 46 【 C10】 Section B 46 Is College a Worthy In
27、vestment? A)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 a
28、lmost sacrilegious(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 ad
29、ult life, 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 t
30、he cost of 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 th
31、e education 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 inf
32、lation up to 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 mo
33、ney.“ Economist 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 supp
34、osed to generate income 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
35、needed to succeed, but 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 moneysort of. College gradu
36、ates now make 80 percent 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 a
37、nd come out no more 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 bre
38、ak down for individuals 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
39、agree that for the average 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 g
40、overnment, and parents, should be rethinking how we invest in higher educationand 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
41、are just adding that requirement,“ 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 an
42、y balance after 25 years. 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
43、 forth,“ says Heckman. “You 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 skillsprobably more valuable for kids who dont naturally love sitting
44、 in a classroom. Heckman agrees 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 workplacelearn not just specif
45、ic job skills, but the kind of “soft skills.“ like getting to work on time and getting along with a team, that are crucial for career success. “Its about having mentors(指导者 )and having workplace-based education,“ he says. “Time and again Ive seen examples of this kind of program working.“ M)Ah, but
46、how do we get there from here? With better public policy, hopefully, but also by making better individual decisions. “Historically markets have been able to handle these things,“ says Vedder. “and I think eventually markets will handle this one. If it doesnt improve soon, people are going tp wake up
47、 and ask, Why am I going to college?“ 47 Caplan suggests that kids who dont love school go to work. 48 An increasing number of families spend more money on houses in a good school district. 49 Subsidized loans to college students are a huge waste of money, according to one economist. 50 More and mor
48、e kids find they fare worse with a college diploma. 51 For those who are not prepared for higher education, going to college is not worth it. 52 Over the years the cost of a college education has increased almost by 100%. 53 A law passed recently allows many students to pay no more than one tenth of
49、 their income for their college loans. 54 Middle-class Americans have highly valued a good education. 55 More kids should be encouraged to participate in programs where they can learn not only job skills but also social skills. 56 Over fifty percent of recent college graduates remain unemployed or unable to find a suitable job. Section C 56 A recent global survey of 2 000 high-net-worth individuals found that 60% were not planning on a t
