1、专业英语八级（作文）模拟试卷 112及答案与解析 一、 PART V WRITING 1 In a complex society where efficiency is highly emphasized, developing friendship seems costly in terms of both time and energy. Yet, it is worth it! In the following excerpt, the author lists several advantages of establishing friendships. Meanwhile, he
2、also points out what we will face if we develop poor friendships. Read the excerpt carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the opinions from the excerpt; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, or
3、ganization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Friendship, immortalized in literature, songs and quotations, is increasingly being recognized as vital to health as well as happiness. In study after study, medical researchers have found that p
4、eople who have friends they can turn to for affirmation, understanding, advice and assistance as well as for affection are more likely to survive health challenges like heart attacks and major surgery and are less likely to develop diseases like cancer and breathing-connected infections. Yet in the
5、complex and highly mobile existence typical of many modern American lives, good friends are ever harder to make and even harder to keep. In two-career families with children, there is often little time and energy left for the adults to pursue or maintain close friendships. For those climbing occupat
6、ional ladders or holding two or more jobs to make ends meet, establishing and maintaining friendships often takes a back seat. For others, job changes or promotions often results in moving to new places, forcing friendships to subsist on long-distance phone calls and letters with only occasional vis
7、its to recapture former closeness. But friendship can also be a drag, taking on unreasonable elements that are emotionally and sometimes physically draining. It may be wisest to terminate a friendship when friends become overly dependent on you for emotional well-being. For friendships to be fulfill
8、ing, they should make you feel better, not worse. Friends can fill a variety of roles, and no one friend should be expected to satisfy them all. They can join you in pursuing pleasurable recreational activities, they can provide intellectual stimulation and they can enhance the joys of personal cele
9、brations. But more important from a health standpoint, friends can provide emotional support through their caring and respect and by how much they value their association with you. Friends can help to reaffirm your self-worth when circumstances, like the loss of a job or end of a marriage, challenge
10、 your sense of competence and self-esteem. Friends can help you solve problems by being a less passionate sounding board, by helping you appraise the situation realistically and offering concrete advice, even if they have never faced a similar problem. Friends can also provide material aid from baby
11、-sitting to shelter when you are in a jam or when an emergency arises. A friend may be able to help you cut through complicated channels, lend you a car when yours is stolen or not available for the moment, provide meals when a family member is hospitalized, among other ways of reducing the stress a
12、ssociated with lifes inevitable problems. Establishing close friendships involves taking some emotional risks. You must be willing to drop the reserve you feel among acquaintances and be revealing about deeper feelings, concerns and beliefs. You must also be willing to listen to the private thoughts
13、, feelings and needs of your friends. Dont measure friendship by how much you give to or get from the other person. Expect to give more than you receive. Or if your friend is the type who is always giving, dont feel you must match that generosity. Either accept it graciously or explain your discomfo
14、rt about getting more than you can give. A good friendship is like a marriage. It requires tolerance, humor, nurturing, time and perspective. It should never be taken for granted. Write your response on ANSWER SHEET FOUR. 2 Old though this topic seems to be, the relationship between money and happin
15、ess never ceases to be a hot debate. Can money always bring happiness? Read the excerpt carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the authors opinion; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organiz
16、ation and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Everything That Rises Must Converge Poets, songwriters and left-wing politicians hate the idea, but for decades the evidence of opinion poll has been clear; money buys happiness and the richer you are
17、, the more likely you are to express satisfaction with your life. A survey of 43 countries published on October 30th by the Pew Research Centre of Washington, DC, shows that people in emerging markets are within a whisker of expressing the same level of satisfaction as people in rich countries. It i
18、s the biggest qualification to the standard view of happiness and income seen so far. The Pew poll asks respondents to measure, on a scale from zero to ten, how good their lives are. (Those who say between seven and ten are counted as happy. ) In 2007, 57% of respondents in rich countries put themse
19、lves in the top four tiers; in emerging markets the share was 33% ; in poor countries only 16% a classic expression of the standard view. But in 2014, 54% of rich-country respondents counted themselves as happy, whereas in emerging markets the percentage jumped to 51%. This was happening just at a t
20、ime when emerging markets chances of converging economically with the West seemed to be receding. Rich countries did not experience steep decline in happiness. The decreases in America and Britain were tiny (a percentage point) , while the share of happy Germans rose 13 points. A large drop in forme
21、rly joyful Spain ensured a modest overall decline for the rich. But the convergence happened thanks to huge improvements in countries such as Indonesia ( + 35 ) and Pakistan ( + 22). In 12 of the 24 emerging markets, half or more people rate their life satisfaction in the top tiers of the ladder. Th
22、is is not to say the link between income and satisfaction has been snapped. Poor countries still lag behind: only a quarter of the people there are in the happy tiers half the level of the other two groups. There is also a clear link between happiness and income growth (as opposed to income levels).
23、 Chinas GDP rose at an annual average rate of 10% in 2007 - 2014 and its happiness level rose 26 points. Within countries, richer people express more satisfaction than their poorer neighbours. The study divided respondents into categories with higher and lower incomes and fewer and more household go
24、ods. In every country in every group, richer folks with more goods expressed higher levels of happiness. So at a personal (as opposed to national) level, money does buy happiness. And if you ask people about different aspects of their liveshealth, family life, religion, standard of living it turns o
25、ut that satisfaction with living standards still has the biggest influence on happiness. But the secret of happiness has been scattered around. Women tend to be happier than men. Married people are happier than unmarried ones. Latin Americans are more satisfied than people in other emerging markets.
26、 Asians are the most optimistic; Middle Easterners the least. Income still matters. But it has been dethroned. Write your response on ANSWER SHEET FOUR. 3 The relationship between personal liberty and social obligation has been an old topic since ancient times. In the following excerpt, the author l
27、ists the traits of both sides. Read the excerpt carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the traits of both sides; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure
28、 to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. A stout old lady was walking down the middle of a street in Petrograd to the great confusion of the traffic and with no small peril to herself. It was pointed out to her that the pavement was the place for pedestrians, but she replied:
29、 “Im going to walk where I like. Weve got liberty now. “ It did not occur to the dear old lady that if liberty entitled the pedestrian to walk down the middle of the road, then the end of such liberty would be universal chaos. Everybody would be getting in everybody elses way and nobody would get an
30、ywhere. Individual liberty would have become social anarchy. There is a danger of the world getting liberty-drunk in these days like the old lady, and it is just as well to remind ourselves of what the rule of the road means. It means that in order that the liberties of all may be preserved, the lib
31、erties of everybody must be curtailed. When the policeman, say, at Piccadilly Circus steps into the middle of the road and puts out his hand, he is the symbol not of tyranny, but of liberty. You may not think so. You may, being in a hurry, and seeing your car pulled up by this insolence of officer,
32、feel that your liberty has been outraged. How dare this fellow interfere with your free use of the public highway? Then, if you are a reasonable person, you will reflect that if he did not interfere with you, he would interfere with no one, and the result would be that Piccadilly Circus would be a m
33、aelstrom that you would never cross at all. You have submitted to a curtailment of private liberty in order that you may enjoy a social order which makes your liberty a reality. Liberty is not a personal affair only, but a social contract. It is an accommodation of interests. In matters which do not
34、 touch anybody elses liberty, of course, I may be as free as I like. If I choose to go down the road in a dressing-gown, who shall say me nay? You have liberty to laugh at me, but I have liberty to be indifferent to you. And if I have a fancy for dyeing my hair, or wearing an overcoat and sandals, I
35、 shall follow my fancy and ask no mans permission. In all these you and I please ourselves and ask no ones leave. We have a whole kingdom in which we rule alone, can do what we choose, be wise or ridiculous, harsh or easy, conventional or odd. But directly we step out of that kingdom, our personal l
36、iberty of action becomes qualified by other peoples liberty. I might like to practice the trombone from midnight till three in the morning. If I went on to the top of Everest to do it, I could please myself, but if I do it in my bedroom my family will object, and if I do it out in the streets, the n
37、eighbors will remind me that my liberty to blow the trombone must not interfere with their liberty to sleep in quiet. There are a lot of people in the world, and I have to accommodate my liberty to theirs. We are all liable to forget this, and unfortunately we are much more conscious of the imperfec
38、tions of others in this respect than of our own. A reasonable consideration for the rights or feelings of others is the foundation of social conduct. Write your response on ANSWER SHEET FOUR. 4 The debate about whether food and drinks should be permitted on subways has been raging in China for a lon
39、g time. In some cities, such as Shanghai and Wuhan, passengers are not allowed to eat or drink on subways and violators may face fines. What do you think of it? The following are opinions from different sides. Read the excerpt carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should
40、: 1. summarize briefly the different opinions on the issue; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. The Shanghai Municipal Transport and Port Aut
41、hority is asking passengers to avoid eating while riding, but also to refrain from other behavior that could annoy their fellow travelers. The new measure covers skating in stations, carrying super-size luggage, smoking and a host of other acts. It was approved in December and took effect on Jan. 1.
42、 Of all the topics, eating was the most controversial. After heated debate about whether a ban should be written into regional regulations, which carry the force of law and include penalties, the authorities compromised. As enacted, the new rule asks passengers to avoid eating in train cars as a mat
43、ter of courtesy to others. It does not require them to refrain, nor is any penalty imposed for noncompliance. Eating inside subway stations was not banned. Nationwide, cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Nanjing have enacted similar rules to ban eating in subway cars. Wuhan, capital of Hubei Provi
44、nce, is the only city so far to use a regional law to clamp down on the practice. In Shanghai, a random survey by China Daily on Thursday morning found that people were largely unaware of the new guideline, though many said they were willing to abide by it. Not everyone thought it was a good idea. “
45、 Society should be more tolerant of those having to eat on the train,“ said Wu Fangcheng, 27, an IT company employee who was having bread and milk inside the Changshu Road station on Line 1. He said he preferred to spend more time sleeping in the morning, even if that meant crunching his time for br
46、eakfast. But the arrangement is less than ideal. “If possible, who would not sit down with their loved ones to have a decent breakfast? Its not comfortable to eat in a swaying train,“ he said. Another passenger, who was having a sandwich and yogurt on Line 7, said he was not aware of the rule but wo
47、uld like to follow it. Bert Quintens, a tourist from Belgium, said he doesnt find eating by fellow passengers offensive. “In Belgium, eating on public transportation is also prohibited, but people keep ignoring the rule,“ he said. “Nobody would stop them, and it is very hard to do so. I think it is
48、acceptable as long as you dont leave any garbage. “ A dispatch operator at the Changshu Road station, surnamed Yang, said on Thursday that he will intervene to block some discourteous acts in the subway such as smoking or boarding with a pet, but he will not step into a car to stop someone from eati
49、ng. Shanghai Shentong Metro Group, the sole operator of the citys subway network, gave no specific directions as to enforcement of the new rule, Yang said. “It is OK as long as no one complains about it.“ Wu Junshang, a manager of passenger service at the Shanghai Metro Operation Management Center, said the no-eating rule may not be very effective since it is not compulsory. At the same time, it would hard to enforce if it is included in the regional law, Wu said. Qian Zhaocheng, a commentator, said authorities should consider the needs of different groups of p
