1、2016年 12月大学英语四级真题试卷（一）及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay. Suppose you have two options upon graduation: one is to find a job somewhere and the other to start a business of your own. You are to make a decision. Write an essay to explain the reasons
2、for your decision. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. Section A （ A） It was dangerous to live in. （ B） It was going to be renovated. （ C） He could no longer pay the rent. （ D） He had sold it to the royal family. （ A） A strike. （ B） A storm. （ C） A forest fire. （ D） A ter
3、rorist attack. （ A） They lost contact with the emergency department. （ B） They were trapped in an underground elevator. （ C） They were injured by suddenly falling rocks. （ D） They sent calls for help via a portable radio. （ A） They tried hard to repair the elevator. （ B） They released the details of
4、 the accident. （ C） They sent supplies to keep the miners warm. （ D） They provided the miners with food and water. （ A） Raise postage rates. （ B） Improve its services. （ C） Redesign delivery routes. （ D） Close some of its post offices. （ A） Shortening business hours. （ B） Closing offices on holidays
5、. （ C） Stopping mail delivery on Saturdays. （ D） Computerizing mail sorting processes. （ A） Many post office staff will lose their jobs. （ B） Many people will begin to complain. （ C） Taxpayers will be very pleased. （ D） A lot of controversy will arise. Section B （ A） He will be kept from promotion.
6、（ B） He will go through retraining. （ C） He will be given a warning. （ D） He will lose part of his pay. （ A） He is always on time. （ B） He is a trustworthy guy. （ C） He is an experienced press operator. （ D） He is on good terms with his workmates. （ A） She is a trade union representative. （ B） She i
7、s in charge of public relations. （ C） She is a senior manager of the shop. （ D） She is better at handling such matters. （ A） He is skilled and experienced. （ B） He is very close to the manager. （ C） He is always trying to stir up trouble. （ D） He is always complaining about low wages. （ A） Open. （ B
8、） Friendly. （ C） Selfish. （ D） Reserved. （ A） They stay quiet. （ B） They read a book. （ C） They talk about the weather. （ D） They chat with fellow passengers. （ A） She was always treated as a foreigner. （ B） She was eager to visit an English castle. （ C） She was never invited to a colleagues home. （
9、 D） She was unwilling to make friends with workmates. （ A） Houses are much more quiet. （ B） Houses provide more privacy. （ C） They want to have more space. （ D） They want a garden of their own. Section C （ A） They dont have much choice of jobs. （ B） They are likely to get much higher pay. （ C） They
10、dont have to go through job interviews. （ D） They will automatically be given hiring priority. （ A） Ask their professors for help. （ B） Look at school bulletin boards. （ C） Visit the school careers service. （ D） Go through campus newspapers. （ A） Helping students find the books and journals they nee
11、d. （ B） Supervising study spaces to ensure a quiet atmosphere. （ C） Helping students arrange appointments with librarians. （ D） Providing students with information about the library. （ A） It tastes better. （ B） It is easier to grow. （ C） It may be sold at a higher price. （ D） It can better survive e
12、xtreme weathers. （ A） It is healthier than green tea. （ B） It can grow in drier soil. （ C） It will replace green tea one day. （ D） It is immune to various diseases. （ A） It has been well received by many tea drinkers. （ B） It does not bring the promised health benefits. （ C） It has made tea farmers
13、life easier. （ D） It does not have a stable market. （ A） They need decorations to show their status. （ B） They prefer unique objects of high quality. （ C） They decorate their homes themselves. （ D） They care more about environment. （ A） They were proud of their creations. （ B） They could only try to
14、 create at night. （ C） They made great contributions to society. （ D） They focused on the quality of their products. （ A） Make wise choices. （ B） Identify fake crafts. （ C） Design handicrafts themselves. （ D） Learn the importance of creation. （ A） To boost the local economy. （ B） To attract foreign
15、investments. （ C） To arouse public interest in crafts. （ D） To preserve the traditional culture. Section A 26 When someone commits a criminal act, we always hope the punishment will match the offense. But when it comes to one of the cruelest crimes animal fighting things【 C1】 _ work out that way. Do
16、g-fighting victims are【 C2】 _ and killed for profit and “sport,“ yet their criminal abusers often receive a【 C3】 _ sentence for causing a lifetime of pain. Roughly half of all federally-convicted animal fighters only get probation(缓刑 ). Some progress has been made in the prosecution(起诉 )of animal fi
17、ghters. But federal judges often rely heavily on the U. S. Sentencing Guidelines when they【 C4】 _ penalties, and in the case of animal fighting, those guidelines are outdated and extremely【 C5】 _ . The U. S. Sentencing Commission, which【 C6】 _ these sentencing guidelines, is revisiting them, proposi
18、ng to raise the minimum sentence from 6-12 to 21 -27 months. This is a step in the right【 C7】 _ , but wed like to see the U. S. Sentencing Commission make further changes to the guidelines. Along with this effort, were working with animal advocates and state and federal lawmakers to【 C8】 _ anti-crue
19、lty laws across the country, as well as supporting laws and policies that assist overburdened animal【 C9】 _ that care for animal fighting victims. This help is【 C10】 _ important because the high cost of caring for animal victims is a major factor that prevents people from getting involved in cruelty
20、 cases in the first place. A)convenient I)method B)creates J)minimal C)critically K)rarely D)determine L)shelters E)direction M)strengthen F)hesitate N)sufferings G)inadequate O)tortured H)inspired 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 3
21、6 When Work Becomes a Game A)What motivates employees to do their jobs well? Competition with coworkers, for some. The promise of rewards, for others. Pure enjoyment of problem-solving, for a lucky few. B)Increasingly, companies are tapping into these desires directly through what has come to be kno
22、wn as “gamification“ : essentially, turning work into a game. “ Gamification is about understanding what it is that makes games engaging and what game designers do to create a great experience in games, and taking those learnings and applying them to other contexts such as the workplace and educatio
23、n,“ explains Kevin Werbach, a gamification expert who teaches at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. C)It might mean monitoring employee productivity on a digital leaderboard and offering prizes to the winners, or giving employees digital badges or
24、stars for completing certain activities. It could also mean training employees how to do their jobs through video game platforms. Companies from Google to LOreal to IBM to Wells Fargo are known to use some degree of gamification in their workplaces. And more and more companies are joining them. A re
25、cent report suggests that the global gamification market will grow from $ 1.65 billion in 2015 to $ 11.1 billion by 2020. D)The concept of gamification is not entirely new, Werbach says. Companies, marketers and teachers have long looked for fun ways to engage peoples reward-seeking or competitive s
26、pirits. Cracker Jacks has been “gamifying“ its snack food by putting a small prize inside for more than 100 years, he adds, and the turn-of-the-century steel magnate(巨头 )Charles Schwab is said to have often come into his factory and written the number of tons of steel produced on the past shift on t
27、he factory floor, thus motivating the next shift of workers to beat the previous one. E)But the word “gamification“ and the widespread, conscious application of the concept only began in earnest about five years ago, Werbach says. Thanks in part to video games, the generation now entering the workfo
28、rce is especially open to the idea of having their work gamified. “ We are at a point where in much of the developed world the vast majority of young people grew up playing video games, and an increasingly high percentage of adults play these video games too,“ Werbach says. F)A number of companies h
29、ave sprung up GamEffective, Bunchball and Badgeville, to name a few in recent years offering gamification platforms for businesses. The platforms that are most effective turn employees ordinary job tasks into part of a rich adventure narrative. “ What makes a game game-like is that the player actual
30、ly cares about the outcome,“ Werbach says. “ The principle is about understanding what is motivating to this group of players, which requires some understanding of psychology. “ G)Some people, Werbach says, are motivated by competition. Sales people often fall into this category. For them, the right
31、 kind of gamification might be turning their sales pitches into a competition with other team members, complete with a digital leaderboard showing who is winning at all times. Others are more motivated by collaboration and social experiences. One company Werbach has studied uses gamification to crea
32、te a sense of community and boost employees morale(士气 ). When employees log in to their computers, theyre shown a picture of one of their coworkers and asked to guess that persons name. H)Gamification does not have to be digital. Monica Cornetti runs a company that gamifies employee trainings. Somet
33、imes this involves technology, but often it does not. She recently designed a gamification strategy for a sales training company with a storm-chasing theme. Employees formed “storm chaser teams“ and competed in storm-themed educational exercises to earn various rewards. “Rewards do not have to be st
34、uff,“ Cornetti says. “Rewards can be flexible working hours. “ Another training, this one for pay roll law, used a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs theme. “Snow White“ is available for everyone to use, but the “dwarfs“ are still under copyright, so Cornetti invented sound-alike characters(Grumpy Gus,
35、 Dopey Dan)to illustrate specific pay roll law principles. I)Some people do not take naturally to gamified work environments, Cornetti says. In her experience, people in positions of power or people in finance or engineering do not tend to like the sound of the word. “ If we are designing for engine
36、ers, Im not talking about a game at all,“ Cornetti says. “ Im talking about a simulation(模拟 ), Im talking about being able to solve this problem. “ J)Gamification is “not a magic bullet,“ Werbach warns. A gamification strategy that is not sufficiently thought through or well tailored to its players
37、may engage people for a little while, but it will not motivate people in the long term. It can also be exploitative, especially when used with vulnerable populations. For workers, especially low-paid workers, who desperately need their jobs yet know they can be easily replaced, gamification may feel
38、 more like the Hunger Games. Werbach gives the example of several Disneyland hotels in Anaheim, California, which used large digital leaderboards to display how efficiently laundry workers were working compared to one another. Some employees found the board motivating. To others, it was the opposite
39、 of fun. Some began to stop taking bathroom breaks, worried that if their productivity fell they would be fired. Pregnant employees struggled to keep up. In a Los Angeles Times article, one employee referred to the board as a “ digital whip. “ “ It actually had a very negative effect on morale and p
40、erformance,“ Werbach says. K)Still, gamification only stands to become more popular, he says, “as more and more people come into the workforce who are familiar with the structures and expressions of digital games. “ “ We are far from reaching the peak,“ Cornetti agrees. “There is no reason this will
41、 go away. “ 37 Some famous companies are already using gamification and more are trying to do the same. 38 Gamification is not a miracle cure for all workplaces as it may have negative results. 39 To enhance morale, one company asks its employees to identify their fellow workers when starting their
42、computers. 40 The idea of gamification was practiced by some businesses more than a century ago. 41 There is reason to believe that gamification will be here to stay. 42 Video games contributed in some ways to the wide application of gamification. 43 When turning work into a game, it is necessary to
43、 understand what makes games interesting. 44 Gamification in employee training does not always need technology. 45 The most successful gamification platforms transform daily work assignments into fun experiences. 46 It is necessary to use terms other than “gamification“ for some professions. Section
44、 C 46 Recently I attended several meetings where we talked about ways to retain students and keep younger faculty members from going elsewhere. It seems higher education has become an industry of meeting-holders whose task it is to “solve“ problems real or imagined. And in my position as a professor
45、 at three different colleges, the actual problems in educating our young people and older students have deepened, while the number of people hired not to teach but to hold meetingshas increased significantly. Every new problem creates a new job for an administrative fixer. Take our Center for Teachi
46、ng Excellence. Contrary to its title, the center is a clearing house(信息交流中心 )for using technology in classrooms and in online courses. Its an administrative sham(欺诈 )of the kind that has multiplied over the last 30 years. I offer a simple proposition in response: Many of our problems class attendanc
47、e, educational success, student happiness and well-being might be improved by cutting down the bureaucratic(官僚的 )mechanisms and meetings and instead hiring an army of good teachers. If we replaced half of our administrative staff with classroom teachers, we might actually get a majority of our class
48、es back to 20 or fewer students per teacher. This would be an environment in which teachers and students actually knew each other. The teachers must be free to teach in their own way the curriculum should be flexible enough so that they can use their individual talents to achieve the goals of the co
49、urse. Additionally, they should be allowed to teach, and be rewarded for doing it well. Teachers are not people who are great at and consumed by research and happen to appear in a classroom. Good teaching and research are not exclusive, but they are also not automatic companions. Teaching is an art and a craft, talent and practice: it is not something that just anyone can be good at. It is utterly confusing to me that people do not recognize this, despite the fact that pretty much anyone who h
