1、2015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 an essay commenting on the saying “Learning is a daily experience and a lifetime mission. “ You can cite examples to illustrate the importance of lifelong learning. You should write at least 120 words
2、 but no more than 180 words. Section A （ A） The agenda for the board of directors meeting. （ B） The details of the meeting to be held next week. （ C） The reason for the mans absence from the meeting. （ D） The time for the mans visit to the womans company. （ A） At a travel agency. （ B） At a departmen
3、t store. （ C） In a library. （ D） In a post office. （ A） He cannot hear the womans call. （ B） He cannot get through to New York. （ C） He cannot recall the phone number. （ D） He cannot find a public phone nearby. （ A） Watch a movie with the woman. （ B） Revise his thesis in the office. （ C） Do some sho
4、pping with Jane. （ D） Discuss his thesis with Prof. Hudson. （ A） He just cannot work properly without a watch. （ B） He has no idea where he can buy a gold watch. （ C） He still does not know where he left his watch. （ D） He is not sure what went wrong with his watch. （ A） He forgot all about what he
5、said. （ B） He slipped and hurt his head. （ C） He was sorry for being off sick last week. （ D） He thought the womans car had been sold. （ A） She should try to catch an earlier bus. （ B） She is absent from his class too often. （ C） She is always making excuses for being late. （ D） She should come up w
6、ith a better excuse. （ A） He is going to help the woman out. （ B） He has to move out of the building soon. （ C） He is on his way to see a real estate agent. （ D） He will stay with the womans brother. （ A） From the wanted column. （ B） From some of her friends. （ C） From a telephone directory. （ D） Fr
7、om a television commercial. （ A） She received full-time education abroad. （ B） She graduated from an open university. （ C） She finished her secondary school. （ D） She studied in a vocational college. （ A） She is a shorthand-typist. （ B） She works as a tour guide. （ C） She is a policewoman. （ D） She
8、teaches an evening class. （ A） It provides him with career opportunities. （ B） It helps enlarge his customer network. （ C） It has been off and on for ten years. （ D） It was interrupted for four years. （ A） Individualized service. （ B） Traditional setting. （ C） Home-made beer. （ D） Social games. （ A）
9、 The quality of beer. （ B） The atmosphere. （ C） The owners attitude. （ D） The right location. （ A） It is a rather tough job. （ B） It is a profitable business. （ C） It helps old people kill time. （ D） It makes retirees feel useful. Section B （ A） It is becoming increasingly popular. （ B） It helps the
10、 user to escape reality. （ C） It gives rise to serious social instability. （ D） It hurts a person and those around them. （ A） They use drugs just for fun. （ B） They take drugs to get high. （ C） They use drugs as medicine. （ D） They keep drug use a secret. （ A） It is quite common in entertainment cir
11、cles. （ B） It is the cause of various social problems. （ C） It is hard to get rid of. （ D） It is fatal to the user. （ A） Taking up exercises after recovery. （ B） Producing tasty healthy frozen food. （ C） Finding new ways to cure heart disease. （ D） Going on a diet upon leaving the hospital. （ A） It
12、was carefully tested with consumers. （ B） It was promoted by health organizations. （ C） It was disapproved by many diet experts. （ D） It was highly expected by the general public. （ A） Competitive price. （ B） Low expectations. （ C） Vigorous promotion. （ D） Unique ingredients. （ A） It was suggested b
13、y the firms vice-president. （ B） It matches the foods dark green packaging. （ C） It has a positive implication for consumers. （ D） It tricks the elders into impulse purchasing. （ A） It is practiced in most of the states. （ B） It will be abolished sooner or later. （ C） It has drawn a lot of criticism
14、 from overseas. （ D） It has to be approved by the Supreme Court. （ A） Whether the practice should be allowed to continue in future. （ B） Whether there should be a minimum age limit for execution. （ C） What type of criminals should receive it. （ D） What effect it might have on youngsters. （ A） The co
15、urt sentenced him to life in prison for killing two friends. （ B） The governor changed his death sentence to life in prison. （ C） He was the first minor to be executed in South Carolina. （ D） He was sentenced to death for a crime he committed as a minor. Section C 26 Some people borrow money and “fo
16、rget“ to pay it back. Large loans are seldom the issue: they are usually treated as business【 B1】 _, with the terms spelled out on paper. But many women suffer【 B2】 _over problems like Carols “ My friend Ginny is always【 B3】 _cash,“ she says. “ I hate to recall how often Ive loaned her a dollar or t
17、wo for a drink or a movie. Each loan is so small Id feel really cheap making a big deal out of it: still, I do【 B4】 _the fact that she never pays me back. “ Carol admits to being “too【 B5】 _or something“ to demand repayment, but she has resolved to stop lending money to Ginny. “ The last time she as
18、ked for five dollars to pay for her dry cleaning, I just told her I couldnt【 B6】 _it. “ Another woman suggests a bolder【 B7】 _. “When somebody refuses to repay a loan, I【 B8】 _by requesting one myself,“ she says. “ I left home without my wallet, Ill say. Can you lend me enough to cover lunch? Then,
19、when the money is safely in hand, I am struck by a sudden【 B9】 _. Why, this is exactly the amount I loaned you last week! How【 B10】 _! Now you wont have to repay me!“ She says it works like a charm. 27 【 B1】 28 【 B2】 29 【 B3】 30 【 B4】 31 【 B5】 32 【 B6】 33 【 B7】 34 【 B8】 35 【 B9】 36 【 B10】 Section A
20、36 For many Americans, 2013 ended with an unusually bitter cold spell. Late November and December【 C1】 _early snow and bone-chilling temperatures in much of the country, part of a year when, for the first time in two【 C2】 _, record-cold days will likely turn out to have outnumbered record-warm ones.
21、 But the U. S. was the exception-. November was the warmest ever【 C3】 _, and current data indicates that 2013 is likely to have been the fourth hottest year on record. Enjoy the snow now, because【 C4】 _are good that 2014 will be even hotter, perhaps the hottest year since records have been kept. Tha
22、ts because, scientists are predicting, 2014 will be an El Nino year. El Nino, Spanish for “the child“ ,【 C5】 _when surface ocean waters in the southern Pacific become abnormally warm. So large is the Pacific, covering 30% of the planets surface, that the【 C6】 _energy generated by its warming is enou
23、gh to touch off a series of weather changes around the world. El Ninos are【 C7】 _with abnormally dry conditions in Southeast Asia and Australia. They can lead to extreme rain in parts of North and South America, even as southern Africa【 C8】 _dry weather. Marine life may be affected too: El Ninos can
24、【 C9】 _the rising of the cold, nutrient-rich(营养丰富的 )water that supports large fish【 C10】 _, and the unusually warm ocean temperatures can destroy coral(珊瑚 ). A)additional I)logically B)associated J)occurs C)bore K)populations D)chances L)realize E)communicated M)reduce F)decades N)saw G)experiences
25、O)specific H)globally 37 【 C1】 38 【 C2】 39 【 C3】 40 【 C4】 41 【 C5】 42 【 C6】 43 【 C7】 44 【 C8】 45 【 C9】 46 【 C10】 Section B 46 How to Eat Well A)Why do so many Americans eat tons of processed food, the stuff that is correctly called junk(垃圾 )and should really carry warning labels? B)Its not because f
26、resh ingredients are hard to come by. Supermarkets offer more variety than ever, and there are over four times as many farmers markets in the U. S. as there were 20 years ago. Nor is it for lack of available information. There are plenty of recipes(食谱 ), how-to videos and cooking classes available t
27、o anyone who has a computer, smartphone or television. If anything, the information is overwhelming. C)And yet we arent cooking. If you eat three meals a day and behave like most Americans, you probably get at least a third of your daily calories(卡路里 )outside the home. Nearly two-thirds of us grab f
28、ast food once a week, and we get almost 25% of our daily calories from snacks. So were eating out or taking in, and we dont sit downor we do, but we hurry. D)Shouldnt preparingand consumingfood be a source of comfort, pride, health, well-being, relaxation, sociability? Something that connects us to
29、other humans? Why would we want to outsource(外包 )this basic task, especially when outsourcing it is so harmful? E)When I talk about cooking, Im not talking about creating elaborate dinner parties or three-day science projects. Im talking about simple, easy, everyday meals. My mission is to encourage
30、 green hands and those lacking time or money to feed themselves. That means we need modest, realistic expectations, and we need to teach people to cook food thats good enough to share with family and friends. F)Perhaps a return to real cooking neednt be far off. A recent Harris poll revealed that 79
31、% of Americans say they enjoy cooking and 30% “love it“ : 14% admit to not enjoying kitchen work and just 7% wont go near the stove at all. But this doesnt necessarily translate to real cooking, and the result of this survey shouldnt surprise anyone: 52% of those 65 or older cook at home five or mor
32、e times per week: only a third of young people do. G)Back in the 1950s most of us grew up in households where Mom cooked virtually every night. The intention to put a home-cooked meal on the table was pretty much universal. Most people couldnt afford to do otherwise. H)Although frozen dinners were i
33、nvented in the 40s, their popularity didnt boom until televisions became popular a decade or so later. Since then, packaged, pre-prepared meals have been whats for dinner. The microwave and fast-food chains were the biggest catalysts(催化剂 ), but the big food companieswhich want to sell anything excep
34、t the raw ingredients that go into cooking made the home cook an endangered species. I)Still, I find it strange that only a third of young people report preparing meals at home regularly. Isnt this the same crowd that rails against processed junk and champions craft cooking? And isnt this the genera
35、tion who say theyre concerned about their health and the well-being of the planet? If these are truly the values of many young people, then their behavior doesnt match their beliefs. J)There have been half-hearted but well-publicized efforts by some food companies to reduce calories in their process
36、ed foods, but the Standard American Diet is still the polar opposite of the healthy, mostly plant-based diet that just about every expert says we should be eating. Considering that the governments standards are not nearly ambitious enough, the picture is clear: by not cooking at home, were not eatin
37、g the right things, and the consequences are hard to overstate. K)To help quantify(量化 )the costs of a poor diet, I recently tried to estimate this impact in terms of a most famous food, the burger(汉堡包 ). I concluded that the profit from burgers is more than offset(抵消 )by the damage they cause in hea
38、lth problems and environmental harm. L)Cooking real food is the best defensenot to mention that any meal youre likely to eat at home contains about 200 fewer calories than one you would eat in a restaurant. M)To those Americans for whom money is a concern, my advice is simple: Buy what you can affor
39、d, and cook it yourself. The common prescription is to primarily shop the grocery store, since thats where fresh produce, meat and seafood, and dairy are. And to save money and still eat well you dont need local, organic ingredients: all you need is real food. Im not saying local food isnt better: i
40、t is. But there is plenty of decent food in the grocery stores. N)The other sections you should get to know are the frozen foods and the canned goods. Frozen produce is still produce: canned tomatoes are still tomatoes. Just make sure youre getting real food without tons of added salt or sugar. Ask
41、yourself, would Grandma consider this food? Does it look like something that might occur in nature? Its pretty much common sense: you want to buy food, not unidentifiable foodlike objects. O)You dont have to hit the grocery store daily, nor do you need an abundance of skill. Since fewer than half of
42、 Americans say they cook at an intermediate level and only 20% describe their cooking skills as advanced, the crisis is one of confidence. And the only remedy for that is practice. Theres nothing mysterious about cooking the evening meal. You just have to do a little thinking ahead and redefine what
43、 qualifies as dinner. Like any skill, cooking gets easier as you do it more: every time you cook, you advance your level of skills. Someday you wont even need recipes. My advice is that you not pay attention to the number of steps and ingredients, because they can be deceiving. P)Time, I realize, is
44、 the biggest obstacle to cooking for most people. You must adjust your priorities to find time to cook. For instance, you can move a TV to the kitchen and watch your favorite shows while youre standing at the sink. No one is asking you to give up activities you like, but if youre watching food shows
45、 on TV, try cooking instead. 47 Cooking benefits people in many ways and enables them to connect with one another. 48 Abundant information about cooking is available either online or on TV. 49 Young people do less cooking at home than the elderly these days. 50 Cooking skills can be improved with pr
46、actice. 51 In the mid-20th century, most families ate dinner at home instead of eating out. 52 Even those short of time or money should be encouraged to cook for themselves and their family. 53 Eating food not cooked by ourselves can cause serious consequences. 54 To eat well and still save money, p
47、eople should buy fresh food and cook it themselves. 55 We get a fairly large portion of calories from fast food and snacks. 56 The popularity of TV led to the popularity of frozen food. Section C 56 The wallet is heading for extinction. As a day-to-day essential, it will die off with the generation
48、who read print newspapers. The kind of shoppingwhere you hand over notes and count out change in returnnow happens only in the most minor of our retail encounters, like buying a bar of chocolate or a pint of milk from a comer shop. At the shops where you spend any real money, that money is increasin
49、gly abstracted. And this is more and more true, the higher up the scale you go. At the most cutting-edge retail storesVictoria Beckham on Dover Street, for instanceyou dont go and stand at any kind of cash register when you decide to pay. The staff are equipped with iPads to take your payment while you relax on a sofa. Which is nothing more or less than excellent service, if you have the money. But a
