1、2018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 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the importance of speaking ability and how to develop it. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. Section A （ A） Annoyed. （ B） Scared. （ C） Confused. （ D） Offen
2、ded. （ A） It crawled over the woman s hands. （ B） It wound up on the steering wheel. （ C） It was killed by the police on the spot. （ D） It was covered with large scales. （ A） A study of the fast-food service. （ B） Fast food customer satisfaction. （ C） McDonald s new business strategies. （ D） Competi
3、tion in the fast-food industry. （ A） Customers higher demands. （ B） The inefficiency of employees. （ C） Increased variety of products. （ D） The rising number of customers. （ A） International treaties regarding space travel programs. （ B） Legal issues involved in commercial space exploration. （ C） U.
4、 S. government s approval of private space missions. （ D） Competition among public and private space companies. （ A） Deliver scientific equipment to the moon. （ B） Approve a new mission to travel into outer space. （ C） Work with federal agencies on space programs. （ D） Launch a manned spacecraft to
5、Mars. （ A） It is significant. （ B） It is promising. （ C） It is unpredictable. （ D） It is unprofitable. Section B （ A） Visiting her family in Thailand. （ B） Showing friends around Phuket. （ C） Swimming around a Thai island. （ D） Lying in the sun on a Thai beach. （ A） She visited a Thai orphanage. （ B
6、） She met a Thai girl s parents. （ C） She learned some Thai words. （ D） She sunbathed on a Thai beach. （ A） His class will start in a minute. （ B） He has got an incoming phone call. （ C） Someone is knocking at his door. （ D） His phone is running out of power. （ A） He is interested in Thai artworks.
7、（ B） He is going to open a souvenir shop. （ C） He collects things from different countries. （ D） He wants to know more about Thai culture. （ A） Buying some fitness equipment for the new gym. （ B） Opening a gym and becoming personal trainers. （ C） Signing up for a weight-loss course. （ D） Trying out
8、a new gym in town. （ A） Professional personal training. （ B） Free exercise for the first week. （ C） A discount for a half-year membership. （ D） Additional benefits for young couples. （ A） The safety of weight-lifting. （ B） The high membership fee. （ C） The renewal of his membership. （ D） The operati
9、on of fitness equipment. （ A） She wants her invitation renewed. （ B） She used to do 200 sit-ups every day. （ C） She knows the basics of weight-lifting. （ D） She used to be the gym s personal trainer. Section C （ A） They tend to be nervous during interviews. （ B） They often apply for a number of posi
10、tions. （ C） They worry about the results of their applications. （ D） They search extensively for employers information. （ A） Get better organized. （ B） Edit their references. （ C） Find better-paid jobs. （ D） Analyze the searching process. （ A） Provide their data in detail. （ B） Personalize each appl
11、ication. （ C） Make use of better search engines. （ D） Apply for more promising positions. （ A） If kids did not like school, real learning would not take place. （ B） If not forced to go to school, kids would be out in the streets. （ C） If schools stayed the way they are, parents were sure to protest.
12、 （ D） If teaching failed to improve, kids would stay away from school. （ A） Allow them to play interesting games in class. （ B） Try to stir up their interest in lab experiments. （ C） Let them stay home and learn from their parents. （ D） Design activities they now enjoy doing on holidays. （ A） Allow
13、kids to learn at their own pace. （ B） Encourage kids to learn from each other. （ C） Organize kids into various interest groups. （ D） Take kids out of school to learn at first hand. （ A） It is especially popular in Florida and Alaska. （ B） It is a major social activity among the young. （ C） It is see
14、n almost anywhere and on any occasion. （ D） It is even more expressive than the written word. （ A） It is located in a big city in Iowa. （ B） It is really marvelous to look at. （ C） It offers free dance classes to seniors. （ D） It offers people a chance to socialize. （ A） Their state of mind improved
15、. （ B） They became better dancers. （ C） They enjoyed better health. （ D） Their relationship strengthened. （ A） It is fun. （ B） It is life. （ C） It is exhausting. （ D） It is rhythmical. Section A 26 Neon (霓虹 ) is to Hong Kong as red phone booths are to London and fog is to San Francisco. When night f
16、alls, red and blue and other colors【 C1】 _a hazy (雾蒙蒙的 ) glow over a city lit up by tens of thousands of neon signs. But many of them are going dark,【 C2】 _by more practical, but less romantic, LEDs (发光二极管 ). Changing building codes, evolving tastes, and the high cost of maintaining those wonderful
17、old signs have businesses embracing LEDs, which are energy【 C3】 _, but still carry great cost. “To me, neon represents memories of the past,“ says photographer Sharon Blance, whose series Hong Kong Neon celebrates the city s famous signs. “ Looking at the signs now I get a feeling of amazement, mixe
18、d with sadness. “ Building a neon sign is an art practiced by【 C4】 _trained on the job to mold glass tubes into【 C5】 _shapes and letters. They fill these tubes with gases that glow when【 C6】 _Neon makes orange, while other gases make yellow or blue. It takes many hours to craft a single sign. Blance
19、 spent a week in Hong Kong and【 C7】 _more than 60 signs; 22 of them appear in the series that capture the signs lighting up lonely streetsan【 C8】_that makes it easy to admire their colors and craftsmanship. “I love the beautiful, handcrafted, old-fashioned【 C9】 _of neon,“ says Blance. The signs do n
20、othing more than【 C10】 _a restaurant, theater, or other business, but do so in the most striking way possible. A) alternative I) photographed B) approach J) professionals C) cast K) quality D) challenging L) replaced E) decorative M) stimulate F) efficient N) symbolizes G) electrified O) volunteers
21、H) identify 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 New Jersey School District Eases Pressure on Students, Baring an Ethnic Divide A This fall, David Aderhold, the chief of a high-achieving school district near Princeton, New Jersey, se
22、nt parents an alarming 16-page letter. The school district, he said, was facing a crisis. Its students were overburdened and stressed out, having to cope with too much work and too many demands. In the previous school year, 120 middle and high school students were recommended for mental health asses
23、sments and 40 were hospitalized. And on a survey administered by the district, students wrote things like, “I hate going to school,“ and “Coming out of 12 years in this district, I have learned one thing: that a grade, a percentage or even a point is to be valued over anything else. “ B With his let
24、ter, Aderhold inserted West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District into a national discussion about the intense focus on achievement at elite schools, and whether it has gone too far. At follow-up meetings, he urged parents to join him in advocating a “ whole child“ approach to schooling that r
25、espects “social-emotional development“ and “deep and meaningful learning“ over academics alone. The alternative, he suggested, was to face the prospect of becoming another Palo Alto, California, where outsize stress on teenage students is believed to have contributed to a number of suicides in the l
26、ast six years. C But instead of bringing families together, Aderhold s letter revealed a divide in the district, which has 9,700 students, and one that broke down roughly along racial lines. On one side are white parents like Catherine Foley, a former president of the Parent-Teacher-Student Associat
27、ion at her daughter s middle school, who has come to see the district s increasingly pressured atmosphere as opposed to learning. “ My son was in fourth grade and told me, I m not going to amount to anything because I have nothing to put on my resume, “ she said. On the other side are parents like M
28、ike Jia, one of the thousands of Asian-American professionals who have moved to the district in the past decade, who said Aderhold s reforms would amount to a “ dumbing down“ of his children s education. “ What is happening here reflects a national anti-intellectual trend that will not prepare our c
29、hildren for the future,“ Jia said. D About 10 minutes from Princeton and an hour and a half from New York City, West Windsor and Plainsboro have become popular bedroom communities for technology entrepreneurs, researchers and engineers, drawn in large part by the public schools. From the last three
30、graduating classes, 16 seniors were admitted to MIT. It produces Science Olympiad winners, classically trained musicians and students with perfect SAT scores. E The district has become increasingly popular with immigrant families from China, India and Korea. This year, 65 percent of its students are
31、 Asian-American, compared with 44 percent in 2007. Many of them are the first in their families born in the United States. They have had a growing influence on the district. Asian-American parents are enthusiastic supporters of the competitive instrumental music program. They have been huge supporte
32、rs of the district s advanced mathematics program, which once began in the fourth grade but will now start in the sixth. The change to the program, in which 90 percent of the participating students are Asian-American, is one of Aderhold s reforms. F Asian-American students have been eager participan
33、ts in a state program that permits them to take summer classes off campus for high school credit, allowing them to maximize the number of honors and Advanced Placement classes they can take, another practice that Aderhold is limiting this school year. With many Asian-American children attending supp
34、lementary instructional programs, there is a perception among some white families that the elementary school curriculum is being sped up to accommodate them. G Both Asian-American and white families say the tension between the two groups has grown steadily over the past few years, as the number of A
35、sian families has risen. But the division has become more obvious in recent months as Aderhold has made changes, including no-homework nights, an end to high school midterms and finals, and an initiative that made it easier to participate in the music program. H Jennifer Lee, professor of sociology
36、at the University of California, Irvine, and an author of The Asian American Achievement Paradox, says misunderstandings between first-generation Asian-American parents and those who have been in this country longer are common. What white middle-class parents do not always understand, she said, is h
37、ow much pressure recent immigrants feel to boost their children into the middle class. “They dont have the same chances to get their children internships (实习职位 ) or jobs at law firms,“ Lee said. “So what they believe is that their children must excel and beat their white peers in academic settings s
38、o they have the same chances to excel later. “ I The issue of the stresses felt by students in elite school districts has gained attention in recent years as schools in places like Newton, Massachusetts, and Palo Alto have reported a number of suicides. West Windsor-Plainsboro has not had a teenage
39、suicide in recent years, but Aderhold, who has worked in the district for seven years and been chief for the last three years, said he had seen troubling signs. In a recent art assignment, a middle school student depicted (描绘 ) an overburdened child who was being scolded for earning an A, rather tha
40、n an A + , on a math exam. In the image, the mother scolds the student with the words, “ Shame on you!“ Further, he said, the New Jersey Education Department has flagged at least two pieces of writing on state English language assessments in which students expressed suicidal thoughts. J The survey c
41、ommissioned by the district found that 68 percent of high school honor and Advanced Placement students reported feeling stressed about school “always or most of the time“. “We need to bring back some balance,“ Aderhold said. “ You don t want to wait until it s too late to do something. “ K Not all p
42、ublic opinion has fallen along racial lines. Karen Sue, the Chinese-American mother of a fifth-grader and an eighth-grader, believes the competition within the district has gotten out of control. Sue, who was born in the United States to immigrant parents, wants her peers to dial it back. “It s beco
43、me an arms race, an educational arms race,“ she said. “We all want our kids to achieve and be successful. The question is, at what cost?“ 37 Aderhold is limiting the extra classes that students are allowed to take off campus. 38 White and Asian-American parents responded differently to Aderholds app
44、eal. 39 Suicidal thoughts have appeared in some students writings. 40 Aderhold s reform of the advanced mathematics program will affect Asian-American students most. 41 Aderhold appealed for parents support in promoting an all-round development of children, instead of focusing only on their academic
45、 performance. 42 One Chinese-American parent thinks the competition in the district has gone too far. 43 Immigrant parents believe that academic excellence will allow their children equal chances to succeed in the future. 44 Many businessmen and professionals have moved to West Windsor and Plainsbor
46、o because of the public schools there. 45 A number of students in Aderhold s school district were found to have stress-induced mental health problems. 46 The tension between Asian-American and white families has increased in recent years. Section C 46 Living in an urban area with green spaces has a
47、long-lasting positive impact on people s mental well-being, a study has suggested. UK researchers found moving to a green space had a sustained positive effect, unlike pay rises or promotions, which only provided a short-term boost. Co-author Mathew White, from the University of Exeter, UK, explaine
48、d that the study showed people living in greener urban areas were displaying fewer signs of depression or anxiety. “There could be a number of reasons,“ he said, “for example, people do many things to make themselves happier; they strive for promotion or pay rises, or they get married. But the troub
49、le with those things is that within six months to a year, people are back to their original baseline levels of well-being. So, these things are not sustainable; they don t make us happy in the long term. We found that for some lottery (彩票 ) winners who had won more than 500,000 the positive effect was definitely there, but after six months to a year, they were back to the baseline. “ Dr. White said his team wanted to see whether living in greener urban areas had
