1、专业英语八级模拟试卷 257及答案与解析 SECTION A MINI-LECTURE Directions: In this section you sill hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture.
2、 When the lecture is over, you will be given two minutes to check your notes, and another ten minutes to complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE. Use the blank sheet for note-taking. 0 . What is a research proposal? 1)intended to convince others that you have a worthwhile【 1】 _ you have th
3、e【 2】 _ and work-plan to complete it 2)usually structured in the same way as【 3】 _ . How to write a research proposal? 1)Title to be concise and【 4】 _ - often in terms of a functional relationship 2)Abstract a brief summary of about 300 words including【 5】 _, the rationale for study, the hypothesis,
4、 the method and main findings 3)Introduction purpose: to provide the background for the research problem frame: to paint your research question in broad brushes and bring out its significance to put the research question in the context of a current hot area, or an older area still viable to provide
5、a brief but appropriate【 6】 _ to provide the contemporary context 4)【 7】 _ many different ways to organize this part use of subheadings to bring order and coherence to this part 5)Methods purpose: to provide your work plan and describe the activities necessary for the completion of your project guid
6、ing principle: sufficient information to justify the soundness of the methodology to demonstrate your knowledge of【 8】 _ and prove that your method is the most appropriate to use qualitative method and justify it to be more elaborate than what is required for traditional quantitative research 6)Resu
7、lts no results at the proposal stage to have some idea of data to be collected and statistical procedures to be used 7)Discussion to convince readers of【 9】 _ of the proposed research to include merits as well as【 10】 _ of your research 1 【 1】 2 【 2】 3 【 3】 4 【 4】 5 【 5】 6 【 6】 7 【 7】 8 【 8】 9 【 9】
8、10 【 10】 SECTION B INTERVIEW Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions
9、. Now listen to the interview. 11 When is the conversation going on? （ A） Twenty days before Christmas Day. （ B） Twenty-three days before Christmas Day. （ C） A month before Christmas Day. （ D） Two months before Christmas Day. 12 Which of the following are the names of the man and womans children? （
10、A） Anne and Dick. （ B） Amme and Jim. （ C） jim and Tom. （ D） Mary and David. 13 What gift will the womans father be given? （ A） Some discs. （ B） A bedside reading lamp. （ C） A pair of gloves. （ D） A boa of cigars. 14 How old is the mans nephew, Tom? （ A） Ten. （ B） Eleven. （ C） Twelve. （ D） Thirteen.
11、15 Which of the following is true according to the conversation? （ A） The husband of the mans aunt, Mantha, was dead. （ B） The man has twin nieces. （ C） The womans sister, Mary is very short of money, so the woman suggests giving her some money. （ D） The two speakers have made out a list of all the
12、Christmas presents they are certain to buy. SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. At the end of each news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions. 16 Hurricane Lili （ A）
13、threatened US shores. （ B） lashed the Louisiana or upper Texas coast. （ C） hit the Caribbean islands very close to Miami. （ D） erupted into a major force in the Gulf of Mexico. 17 Max Mayfield, a top forecaster mentioned in the news report, works （ A） in the National Hurricane Center. （ B） as a CNN
14、meteorologist. （ C） somewhere near the Gulf of Mexico. （ D） to predict the tropical storms. 18 How old is Mark Sokolow who was reported to be injured in an explosion in Jerusalem? （ A） 43. （ B） 81. （ C） 27. （ D） 30. 19 Why did Mark Sokolow consider himself a lot luckier during the attack on Sept. 11
15、 ? （ A） Because he escaped without injury from the second tower of the World Trade Center. （ B） Because he was seriously injured during the Jerusalem explosion. （ C） Because his family was involved during the Jerusalem explosion. （ D） Because he found an 81-year-old man dead and 113 wounded. 20 Actr
16、ess Winona Ryder was charged on Friday with four felony offenses but she was free （ A） on 20,000 bond. （ B） on 30,000 bond. （ C） on 40,000 bond. （ D） on 50,000 bond. 20 High in a smooth ocean of sky floated a dazzling, majestic sun. Fragments of powdery cloud, like spray flung from a wave crest, spr
17、inkled the radiant, lake-blue heaven. Relaxed on a bundle of hay in a comer of a meadow bathed in sunlight, Paul lay dreaming. A gentle breeze was stirring the surrounding hedges; bees moved, humming thoughtfully, from scarlet poppy to purple thistle; a distant lark, invisible in blue light, was flo
18、oding the vast realm of the sky with glorious song, as the sun was flooding the earth with brilliance. Beyond the hedge a brook tinkled over softly- glowing pebbles. Butterflies hovered above nodding clover. An ant was busily exploring the uncharted territory of Pauls suntanned wrist. A grasshopper
19、skidded briskly over his ankle. And the blazing sun was steadily scorching his fair freckled face to bright lobster red. Neither sun, nor grasshopper, nor ant, however, was able to arouse him. Not even when a fly started crawling over his face did he open his eyes. For Paul was a thousand miles away
20、, in a world of eternal snow and ice. Across the towering mountain range, a bitter gale was screaming furiously as with one hand he gripped a projecting knob of rock while with his axe he hacked out the next narrow foothold in the rock. As their infallible guide, he was leading his gallant party of
21、climbers up a treacherous, vertical wall of rock towards the lofty peak above, hitherto unconquered by man. A single slip, however trivial, would probably result in death for all of them. To his right he could glimpse the furrowed glacier sweeping towards the valley, but he was far too absorbed in h
22、is task to appreciate fully the scene around or even to be aware of a view of almost unearthly beauty. A sudden gust of wind nearly tore him from the ledge where he was perched. Gradually he raised his foot, tested the new foothold on the sheer rock wall, transferred his weight, and signaled to the
23、climbers below. Not until a tractor started working in the next field did he become conscious of his far from icy surroundings. He sat up, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, glanced at his watch and sighed in resignation. He had a headache through sleeping in the hot sun, a pain in his should
24、er from carrying his rucksack; his legs felt stiff and his feet ached. With no enthusiasm whatever he pulled the bulging rucksack over his shoulders and drew a large-scale map from his pocket. At the far end of the meadow two slates in the wall, which at this point replaced the hedge, indicated a st
25、ile, and beyond he could faintly see a thin thread of path which dwindled and finally disappeared as it climbed the steep slope of the down, quivering in the glare of the sun. The whole of Nature seemed to be luxuriating in warmth, sunshine and peace. Wherever he looked, leaves on twigs, grass blade
26、s, flower petals, all were sparkling in sunlight. Fifteen miles off, over the ridge, across a broad valley and then over a higher, even steeper range of hills lay the youth hostel: supper, company, a cool dip in the river. With a momentary intense longing for ice-axe, blizzard, glacier and heroic ex
27、ploit (none of which was at all familiar to him), Paul strode off unwillingly to less dramatic but equally heroic achievement in the tropical heat of an English sun. 25 Stratford-on-Avon, as we all know, has only one industry William Shakespeare but there are two distinctly separate and increasingly
28、 hostile branches. There is the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), which presents superb productions of the plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre on the Avon. And there are the townsfolk who largely live off the tourists who come, not to see the plays, but to look at Anne Hathaways Cottage, Shakes
29、peares birthplace and the other sights. The worthy residents of Stratford doubt that the theatre adds a penny to their revenue. They frankly dislike the RSCs actors, those with their long hair and beards and sandals and noisiness. Its all deliciously ironic when you consider that Shakespeare, who ea
30、rns their living, was himself an actor (with a beard) and did his share of noise-making. The tourist streams are not entirely separate. The sightseers who come by bus and often take in Warwick Castle and Blenheim Palace on the side dont usually see the plays, and some of them ate even surprised to f
31、ind a theatre in Stratford. However, the playgoers do manage a little sight-seeing along with their play going. It is the playgoers, the RSC contends, who bring in much of the towns revenue because they spend the night (some of them four or five nights) pouting cash into the hotels and restaurants.
32、The sightseers can take in everything and get out of town by nightfall. The townsfolk dont see it this way and local council does not contribute directly to the subsidy of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stratford cries poor traditionally. Nevertheless every hotel in town seems to be adding a new win
33、g or cocktail lounge. Hilton is building its own hotel them, which you may be sure will be decorated with Hamlet Hamburger Bars, the Lear Lounge, the Banquo Banqueting Room, and so forth, and will be very expensive. Anyway, the townsfolk cant understand why the Royal Shakespeare Company needs a subs
34、idy. (The theatre has broken attendance records for three years in a row. Last year its 1,431 seats were 94 percent occupied all year long and this year theyll do better.) The reason, of course, is that costs have rocketed and ticket prices have stayed low. It would be a shame to raise prices too mu
35、ch because it would drive away the young people who are Stratfords most attractive clientele. They come entirely for the plays, not the sights. They all seem to look alike (though they come from all over) lean, pointed, dedicated faces, wearing jeans and sandals, eating their buns and bedding down f
36、or the night on the flagstones outside the theatre to buy the 20 seats and 80 standing-mom tickets held for the sleepers and sold to them when the box office opens at 10:30 a. m. 30 When the end of the world comes, well know what to blame. Scientists have found compelling evidence that the Sun has a
37、 baby brother, a dark star whose eccentric orbit is responsible for periodically showering the Earth with comets and meteorites. The dark star named Nemesis by astronomers is thought to be a brown dwarf that spins round the Sun in an orbit so large it is measured in light years, the distance light t
38、ravels in a year, equivalent to about 6,000 billion miles. The research suggests that, every 26m years, the stars eccentric orbit brings it within one light year of the solar system. There it causes havoc in the Oort Cloud, a huge region surrounding the solar system that contains billions of bits of
39、 cosmic rabble left over from the formation of planets. Of the millions of rocks it throws out of orbit at each visit, some hurtle Earthwards, and have several times nearly wiped out life on Earth. Astronomers have long wondered if the Sun has a smaller partner. Recently, two independent groups of r
40、esearchers have found evidence of one. One group, led by John Matese, professor of physics at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, confirms the notion that it is most likely to be a brown dwarf, a star that never accumulated enough mass to ignite and which has simply sat in space smoldering for
41、 billions of years. Matese studied 82 comets from the Oort Cloud and found common elements in the shape of their orbits that could only be explained if they had been influenced by the gravitational pull of an object several times the size of Jupiter and existing about 25,000 times farther from the S
42、un than tile Earth. Matese said: “A companion to the Sun orbiting at these distances would have little effect on the planets. But it would play a big role in the way comets made their way from their birth places in the planetary disc out to the Oort Cloud and in how they can return to the inner sola
43、r system.“ Further research was published by Richard Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, following analyses of moon rock samples brought back to Earth by Apollo 14. The absence of a protective atmosphere means the moon has been subjected to intense bombardment in
44、its 4.5 billion-year existence. Mullers breakthrough was to find a way to date how long ago any particle was melted - meaning he could build up a picture of whether the moon gets a constant barrage or suffers spells of intense bombardment. He said, “The evidence clearly shows that the moon has gone
45、through spells of relatively frequent impacts and others of reduced intensity. I believe it is likely that this is because the Oort Cloud is being disturbed by a massive body that is throwing comets out of stable orbits, a small fraction of which could reach the Earth.“ Muller and others believe tha
46、t the dark star probably takes about 26m years m complete an orbit around the sun. Other scientists have already noted that mass extinctions of life on Earth seem to occur in a pattern with gaps equivalent to multiples of 26m, suggesting some regular event is causing the comets to come Earths way. T
47、he best-known such event was the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65m years ago, but that was not the worst; the planet has suffered several such large mass extinctions. Astronomers have found the first Earth-sized planet orbiting another star. The discovery raises the chances of finding planets tha
48、t could support life as we know it. 35 There are two sorts of people in the world, who with equal degrees of health, and wealth, and the other comforts of life, become, the one happy, and the other miserable. This arises very much from the different views in which they consider things, persons, and
49、events. In whatever situation men can be placed, they may find conveniences and inconveniencies; in whatever company, they may find persons and conversation more or less pleasing; at whatever table, they may meet with meats or drinks of better and worse taste, dishes better or worse dressed; in whatever climate they will find good and bad weather; under whatever government, they may find good and bad laws, and good and bad administration of those laws;
