1、2017年 6月大学英语四级真题试卷（二）及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an advertisement on your campus website to sell a bicycle you used at college. Your advertisement may include its brand, features, condition and price, and your contact information. You sho
2、uld write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. Section A （ A） Human drivers become easily distracted or tired while driving. （ B） Most drivers have test driven cars with automatic braking features. （ C） Most drivers feel uncertain about the safety of self-driving cars. （ D） The majority of
3、 drivers prefer to drive and park themselves. （ A） Their increased comfort levels have boosted their sales. （ B） They are not actually as safe as automakers advertise. （ C） They would be unpopular with drivers who only trust their own skills. （ D） Their drivers would feel safe after getting used to
4、the automatic devices. （ A） Thefts of snowmobile dogs in Alaska. （ B） Attacks on some Iditarod Race competitors. （ C） A series of injuries to snowmobile drivers. （ D） A serious accident in the Alaska sports event. （ A） He stayed behind to look after his injured dogs. （ B） He has quit the competition
5、 in Alaska for good. （ C） He received a minor injury in the Iditarod Race. （ D） He has won the Alaska Iditarod Race four times. （ A） It sank into the sea due to overloading. （ B） It ran into Nicaraguas Big Corn Island. （ C） It turned over because of strong winds. （ D） It disappeared between two larg
6、e islands. （ A） 32. （ B） 30. （ C） 25. （ D） 13 （ A） He has helped with the rescue effort. （ B） He is being investigated by the police. （ C） He was drowned with the passengers. （ D） He is among those people missing. Section B （ A） At a community college. （ B） At an accountancy firm. （ C） At a shopping
7、 centre. （ D） At an IT company. （ A） Making phone calls. （ B） Arranging interviews. （ C） Sorting application forms. （ D） Helping out with data input. （ A） He needs the money badly. （ B） He enjoys using computers. （ C） He wants to work in the city centre. （ D） He has relevant working experience. （ A）
8、 Learn some computer language. （ B） Review some accountancy terms. （ C） Improve his programming skills. （ D） Purchase some business suits. （ A） They are poor at technology skills. （ B） They are keen on high technology. （ C） They often listen to National Public Radio. （ D） They feel superior in scien
9、ce and technology. （ A） Japanese. （ B） Poles. （ C） Americans. （ D） Germans. （ A） Emailing. （ B） Texting. （ C） Literacy. （ D） Science. （ A） It is undergoing a drastic reform. （ B） It has much room for improvement. （ C） It lays emphasis on creative thinking. （ D） It prioritizes training of practical s
10、kills. Section C （ A） They taste like apples. （ B） They have small roots. （ C） They grow white flowers. （ D） They come from Central Africa. （ A） They turned from white to purple in color. （ B） They became an important food for humans. （ C） They began to look like modern-day carrots. （ D） They became
11、 popular on the world market. （ A） Farm machines helped lower their prices. （ B） People discovered their medicinal value. （ C） There were serious food shortages. （ D） They were found quite nutritious. （ A） She could download as many pictures as she liked. （ B） She could call up her family whenever s
12、he liked. （ C） She could locate her friends wherever they were. （ D） She could update her family any time she liked. （ A） She felt she was a teenager again. （ B） She felt quite popular among them. （ C） She enjoyed reading her friends status updates. （ D） She liked to inform her friends about her suc
13、cess. （ A） She didnt seem to be doing as well as her Facebook friends. （ B） She spent more time updating her friends than her family. （ C） She could barely respond to all her 500 Facebook friends. （ D） She could barely balance Facebook updates and her work. （ A） They have strong muscles. （ B） They e
14、at much less in winter. （ C） They live a longer life than horses. （ D） They can work longer than donkeys. （ A） It was a pet of a Spanish king. （ B） It was brought over from Spain. （ C） It was bought by George Washington. （ D） It was donated by a U.S. ambassador. （ A） They met and exchanged ideas on
15、animal breeding. （ B） They fed mules with the best food they could find. （ C） They participated in a mule-driving competition. （ D） They showed and traded animals in the market. （ A） A growing donkey population. （ B） The wider use of horses. （ C） A shrinking animal trade. （ D） The arrival of tractor
16、s. Section A 26 As if you needed another reason to hate the gym, it now turns out that exercise can exhaust not only your muscles, but also your eyes. Fear not, however, for coffee can stimulate them again. During【 C1】 _ exercise, our muscles tire as they run out of fuel and build up waste products.
17、 Muscle performance can also be affected by a【 C2】_ called “ central fatigue“ , in which an imbalance in the bodys chemical messengers prevents the central nervous system from directing muscle movements【 C3】 _ It was not known, however, whether central fatigue might also affect motor systems not dir
18、ectly【 C4】 _ in the exercise itself, such as those that move the eyes. To find out, researchers gave 11 volunteer cyclists a carbohydrate 碳水化合物 )【 C5】 _ either with a moderate dose of caffeine (咖啡因 ) , which is known to stimulate the central nervous system, or as a placebo (安慰剂 ) without, during 3 h
19、ours of【 C6】 _ After exercising, the scientists tested the cyclists with eye-tracking cameras to see how well their brains could still【 C7】 _ their visual system. The team found that exercise reduced the speed of rapid eye movements by about 8% ,【 C8】 _ their ability to capture new visual informatio
20、n. The caffeine, the equivalent of two strong cups of coffee, was【 C9】 _ to reverse this effect, with some cyclists even displaying【 C10】 _ eye movement speeds. So it might be a good idea to get someone else to drive you home after that marathon. A) cautiously I) phenomenon B) commit J) preventing C
21、) control K) sensitive D) cycling L) slowing E) effectively M) solution F) increased N) sufficient G) involved O) vigorous H) limited 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 The Blessing and Curse of the People Who Never Forget A handfu
22、l of people can recall almost every day of their lives in enormous detail and after years of research, neuroscientists are finally beginning to understand how they do it. A For most of us, memory is a mess of blurred and faded pictures of our lives. As much as we would like to cling on to our past,
23、even the saddest moments can be washed away with time. B Ask Nima Veiseh what he was doing for any day in the past 15 years, however, and he will give you the details of the weather, what he was wearing, or even what side of the train he was sitting on his journey to work. “My memory is like a libra
24、ry of video tapes, walk-throughs of every day of my life from waking to sleeping,“ he explains. C Veiseh can even put a date on when those tapes started recording: 15 December 2000, when he met his first girlfriend at his best friends 16th birthday party. He had always had a good memory, but the thr
25、ill of young love seems to have shifted a gear in his mind: from now on, he would start recording his whole life in detail. “I could tell you everything about every day after that.“ D Needless to say, people like Veiseh are of great interest to neuroscientists (神经科学专家 ) hoping to understand the way
26、the brain records our lives. A couple of recent papers have finally opened a window on these peoples extraordinary minds. And such research might even suggest ways for us all to relive our past with greater clarity. E “Highly superior autobiographical memory“ (or HSAM for short) , first came to ligh
27、t in the early 2000s, with a young woman named Jill Price. Emailing the neuroscientist and memory researcher Jim McGaugh one day, she claimed that she could recall every day of her life since the age of 12. Could he help explain her experiences? F McGaugh invited her to his lab, and began to test he
28、r: he would give her a date and ask her to tell him about the world events on that day. True to her word, she was correct almost every time. G It didnt take long for magazines and documentary film-makers to come to understand her “total recall“, and thanks to the subsequent media interest, a few doz
29、en other subjects (including Veiseh) have since come forward and contacted the team at the University of California, Irvine. H Interestingly, their memories are highly self-centred: although they can remember “autobiographical“ life events in extraordinary detail, they seem to be no better than aver
30、age at recalling impersonal information, such as random (任意选取的 ) lists of words. Nor are they necessarily better at remembering a round of drinks, say. And although their memories are vast, they are still likely to suffer from “false memories“. Clearly, there is no such thing as a “perfect“ memory t
31、heir extraordinary minds are still using the same flawed tools that the rest of us rely on. The question is, how? I Lawrence Patihis at the University of Southern Mississippi recently studied around 20 people with HSAM and found that they scored particularly high on two measures: fantasy proneness (
32、取向 ) and absorption. Fantasy proneness could be considered a tendency to imagine and daydream, whereas absorption is the tendency to allow your mind to become fully absorbed in an activity to pay complete attention to the sensations (感受 ) and the experiences. “Im extremely sensitive to sounds, smell
33、s and visual detail,“ explains Nicole Donohue, who has taken part in many of these studies. “I definitely feel things more strongly than the average person.“ J The absorption helps them to establish strong foundations for recollection, says Patihis, and the fantasy proneness means that they revisit
34、those memories again and again in the coming weeks and months. Each time this initial memory trace is “replayed“, it becomes even stronger. In some ways, you probably go through that process after a big event like your wedding day but the difference is that thanks to their other psychological tenden
35、cies, the HSAM subjects are doing it day in, day out, for the whole of their lives. K Not everyone with a tendency to fantasise will develop HSAM, though, so Patihis suggests that something must have caused them to think so much about their past. “Maybe some experience in their childhood meant that
36、they became obsessed (着迷 ) with calendars and what happened to them,“ says Patihis. L The people with HSAM Ive interviewed would certainly agree that it can be a mixed blessing. On the plus side, it allows you to relive the most transformative and enriching experiences. Veiseh, for instance, travell
37、ed a lot in his youth. In his spare time, he visited the local art galleries, and the paintings are now lodged deep in his autobiographical memories. M “ Imagine being able to remember every painting, on every wall, in every gallery space, between nearly 40 countries,“ he says. “Thats a big educatio
38、n in art by itself.“ With this comprehensive knowledge of the history of art, he has since become a professional painter. N Donohue, now a history teacher, agrees that it helped during certain parts of her education: “I can definitely remember what I learned on certain days at school. I could imagin
39、e what the teacher was saying or what it looked like in the book.“ O Not everyone with HSAM has experienced these benefits, however. Viewing the past in high definition can also make it very difficult to get over pain and regret. “It can be very hard to forget embarrassing moments,“ says Donohue. “Y
40、ou feel the same emotions it is just as raw, just as fresh.You cant turn off that stream of memories, no matter how hard you try.“ Veiseh agrees: “It is like having these open wounds they are just a part of you,“ he says. P This means they often have to make a special effort to lay the past to rest.
41、 Bill, for instance, often gets painful “flashbacks“, in which unwanted memories intrude into his consciousness, but overall he has chosen to see it as the best way of avoiding repeating the same mistakes. “Some people are absorbed in the past but not open to new memories, but thats not the case for
42、 me. I look forward to each day and experiencing something new.“ 37 People with HSAM have the same memory as ordinary people when it comes to impersonal information. 38 Fantasy proneness will not necessarily cause people to develop HSAM. 39 Veiseh began to remember the details of his everyday experi
43、ences after he met his first young love. 40 Many more people with HSAM started to contact researchers due to the mass media. 41 People with HSAM often have to make efforts to avoid focusing on the past. 42 Most people do not have clear memories of past events. 43 HSAM can be both a curse and a bless
44、ing. 44 A young woman sought explanation from a brain scientist when she noticed her unusual memory. 45 Some people with HSAM find it very hard to get rid of unpleasant memories. 46 A recent study of people with HSAM reveals that they are liable to fantasy and full absorption in an Urbanization migr
45、ation away from the suburbs to the city center will be the biggest real estate trend in 2015, according to a new report. Section C 46 The report says Americas urbanization will continue to be the most significant issue affecting the industry, as cities across the country imitate the walkability and
46、transit-oriented development making cities like New York and San Francisco so successful. As smaller cities copy the model of these “24-hour cities“, more affordable versions of these places will be created. The report refers to this as the coming of the “18-hour city“, and uses the term to refer to
47、 cities like Houston, Austin, Charlotte, and Nashville, which are “positioning themselves as highly competitive, in terms of livability, employment offerings, and recreational and cultural facilities“. Another trend that looks significant in 2015 is that Americas largest population group, Millennial
48、s (千禧一代 ), will continue to put off buying a house. Apartments will retain their appeal for a while for Millennials, haunted by what happened to home-owning parents. This trend will continue into the 2020s, the report projects. After that, survey respondents disagree over whether this generation wil
49、l follow in their parents footsteps, moving to the suburbs to raise families, or will choose to remain in the city center. Another issue affecting real estate in the coming year will be Americas failing infrastructure. Most roads, bridges, transit, water systems, the electric grid, and communications networks were installed 50 to 100 years ago, and they are largely taken for granted until they fail. The reports writers state that Americas failure to invest in infrastructure i
