1、专业英语八级（作文）模拟试卷 76及答案与解析 一、 PART V WRITING 1 Lotteries are quite popular in China and also in many other countries. Some people argue that lotteries are a form of gambling, which should be abolished. From the following article, you may find both merit and demerit of lottery. Write an article of NO LE
2、SS THAN 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly both merits and demerits of lottery; 2. express your opinion towards lottery, especially whether national lotteries should be abolished. The Good and Bad of National Lotteries Lotteries and prize draws are big businesses throughout the wor
3、ld, and entice significant annual investments from individuals who dream of scooping a huge and potentially life-changing cash prize. According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, Americans spent a total of $50.4 billion on lotteries last year. In actual fact, while
4、your chances of winning the lottery anywhere are decidedly slim, the sheer size of the U.S. population and popularity of the game means that Americans must climb an even steeper mountain towards any potential windfall. This was evident to see in the formative part of this year, as the nations Mega M
5、illions jackpot soared to $656 million. When the first winner was announced, an estimated 1.5 billion tickets had been sold nationwide. Americans still invested more than $1 billion into chasing their fanciful dreams of wealth and fortune. This is reflective of a growing trend, where lottery sales c
6、ontinue to soar despite the uncertain economic climate. There has been a significant rise in the number of syndicates that are purchasing tickets. This proves that rather than being discouraged by the seeming insurmountable odds of victory, Americans are instead looking for innovative ways to improv
7、e their chances and actively investing more into buying tickets. Now, while an estimated one in three global lotteries are won by syndicates, the likelihood of winning remains remote in the extreme. Even for those who win the lottery, their financial future or long-term happiness is not necessarily
8、secured. Acquiring huge sums of money can inspire any number of extreme emotive reactions. There are individual state statistics which suggest that the majority of people only purchase lottery tickets when the jackpot has been steadily building over a period of weeks, with just nine to 12% of Illino
9、is residents playing regularly. This would suggest that rather than being symbolic of a growing gambling culture in the U.S., national lotteries are in fact played responsibly and only intermittently by most participants. Another factor in favor of lotteries is the money that they generate for state
10、 funded projects, with public education bodies in particular benefiting from the investment made by participants. People who play the lottery responsibly are contributing towards local community development, which actually means that their small weekly investment at least creates some form of social
11、 change. In terms of monetary value, 34 cents out of every $1 spent on lottery tickets is invested into education, with 58 cents being awarded to winners in the form of prizes and 6 cents paid to participating retailers for sales commissions. National lotteries across the globe are always likely to
12、be the subject of extreme opinion and controversy. Europe is looking to invest more during periods of sustained austerity. The fact remains, however, that participants have an individual responsibility to play the game responsibly, and spend within their means while pursuing the dream of huge cash p
13、rizes. As long as they do so, then there is no reason why they cannot enjoy the lottery while also contributing to state funded educational projects. 2 The National Tourism Administration has recently issued a document to support the legalization of tips in the tourism industry in China. Some believ
14、e tips are necessary, as tour guides in China are paid much less than they deserve, but others doubt the effectiveness of tips in helping boost tour guides incomes and worry that it will increase tourists traveling costs. The following are opinions from three media. Write an article of NO LESS THAN
15、300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the opinions from both sides; 2. give your comment. Zhang Fengyi (Xian Evening News) Amid various disputes and inconveniences existing in the tourism industry, the state hopes to make tip payment a system that will encourage tour guides to provide
16、 better services when they have higher and more stable incomes. However, whether this will really happen is quite doubtful. Anyway, tips are only desserts after a dinner, not the main course. Besides, we in China dont have the tradition of paying tips. Most consumers believe, after paying a certain
17、amount of money to the travel agency, they deserve to be well served. They resist paying tips. When tips are given on free will, tourists can choose to pay or not. Once tips become a system, tourists will have to pay tips, or their tour guides will make the journey uncomfortable for them. Besides, p
18、ossibilities remain that apart from collecting tips, some tour guides may continue to force tourists to shop. Therefore, before tips are legalized, a pay system for tour guides is necessary to ensure them a basic income and a decent life. Only when these worries no longer exist can tips truly play a
19、 role of encouragement. Song Guifang () We have to realize that tour guides in China are struggling with their wages and social security falling far behind the rapid development of the tourism industry itself. If tour guides can expect payment that shows respect to their services, we can expect an o
20、verall improvement in the tourism industry. In China, the public treats tips as an extra payment for certain service items, and thus there is resistance to tips. Given the conditions tour guides are now in, tips actually act as a kind of compensation to them, rather than bonuses. It sometimes happen
21、s that when we want to go to certain places to know more about local customs and scenic spots, we cant find a qualified tour guide. Its time to think of a way to make tour guides feel that their work is respected and that they dont need to exploit tourists to make a living. The legalization of tips
22、may help solve the problem to some extent, but in the long run, we need to explore a new model for the sustainable development of the tourism industry. Zhu Dazhi (China Youth Daily) We worry that the legalization of tips will make a voluntary payment a compulsory system, adding to the cost of travel
23、ing. This worry is not groundless. The Chinese society is not used to the practice of giving tips, and now it is planned that a system is to be set up to force people to give tips. This is not what tips are invented for. The priority now is not to push forward the tip system but to regulate and deve
24、lop the tourism industry into a healthy sector and to let tour guides earn a payment that is at least equal to their work. When the tourism sector embraces sound development, even without a compulsory system, tourists tip the guides that offer them good services. Shu Shengxiang (Beijing Youth Daily)
25、 Ideally, tips are paid to show respect and gratitude. In Western countries, although customers can choose to pay or not, giving tips has long been a common practice. The current salary system in Chinas tourism sector is such a mess that a large number of tour guides dont have base pay or basic insu
26、rance. A percentage drawn from the sum tourists pay for souvenirs during the trip has almost become a major income source of tour guides. Forcing tourists to shop has become a hidden rule in the tourism sector, which has seriously damaged tourists traveling experience and affected the long-term deve
27、lopment of the tourism industry. It is against this backdrop that some travel agencies and local governments begin to seek to set up a tip system in the tourism industry, with the intention of dragging this industry out of the vicious cycle. If tour guides can make money by asking tourists to buy so
28、uvenirs, they are likely to offer quality services on this precondition. However, once they are forbidden to accept kickbacks from shops and instead depend on tips, which are usually much lower than the brokerage given by souvenir shops, the service quality may deteriorate. Besides, its quite possib
29、le that the guides will be comfortable with those who have paid them tips, while at the same time they will be harsh to those who have not done so. As a result, something supposed to be based on free will become compulsory. 3 As online shopping becomes yet more prevalent, and prepaid credit cards ta
30、ke the place of more and more low-value cash transactions, cash is now on its way out, accounting for just 40% of payments last year globally and dropping. From the following excerpts, you may find both benefits and concerns of removing cash from the economy. Write an article of NO LESS THAN 300 wor
31、ds, in which you should: 1. summarize the trend of cashless society, and then 2. express your opinion towards the tendency. Excerpt 1 To see how a society might operate without cash, we can look to Sweden, which is almost cashless already. In Stockholm, you dont need to carry bills or change. You ca
32、n make donations to your church using a credit card, and give money to a friend using an inter-person payment app called Swish when splitting a restaurant check, for example. Many banks dont accept or provide cash in their branches, and payment apps are on the rise. Swedish banks and businesses have
33、 good reason to prefer electronic payments. Stockholm has been a heist capital, with robberies targeting banks and cash-carrying security vans. But its not just the banks that prefer payments that cant be stolen. Stockholm native Peter Mathsson says that locals rarely use cash. Even the smallest tra
34、nsaction is made with a card. Living experiments like Sweden prove that cash-free living is not only possible, but desirable and potentially advantageous. In fact, many parts of the world are already cash free. People pay for a single cup of coffee with a credit card, often without signing or enteri
35、ng a PIN. People are already happy to operate without cash, and with new options like Apple Pay, which lets you use your iPhone and your fingerprint to pay with better security than an actual card, that trend is likely to accelerate. The end of cash may seem like fancy thinking, but look at how mone
36、y has changed since credit and debit cards started to usurp cash. We already route money around with bank transfers enacted from our tablets, we pay for Uber cars with the convenience of a phone app, and we travel abroad without even thinking about buying foreign currency before we go. And PayPal, t
37、he original cashless payment system, turned 18 years old this year. Excerpt 2 Governments and their agencies love electronic transactions. Without cash, its much harder to hide money from the tax man. The police and government agencies like the NSA love the trackable records that cashless payments l
38、eave behind. Last year, France and Spain both enacted laws that limit cash transactions. The promise is that banning cash would end black markets, but for honest citizens, the end of paper cash brings many unsettling downsides. Credit card transactions are already trackable, and electronic cash coul
39、d bring that lack of anonymity to every single transaction you make. Once this information exists, it will become a target of government agencies such as the police and intelligence services and trafficked to insurance companies, tax collectors, fraud squads, and even marketers. “When all our paymen
40、t transactions are tracked,“ says Rainey Reitman, activism director at the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, “it creates a trove of data we have no control over. Its easy to imagine a daring divorce lawyer or a government agent trying to gain access to our financial history to try to build a story ab
41、out who we are.“ 4 Bookstores are disappearing in cities and town, both big and small, while online sellers like Amazon, e-readers and other evolving technologies threaten both physical books and the brick and mortar venues. The following article is discussing the prospects of physical bookstores. R
42、ead it carefully and write your response in NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the articles main idea; 2. give your comment. Two of the worlds largest bookstore chains Barnes their plight raises the broader question of whether bookstores will survive in any significant
43、 number. There are two clear threats, both Internet-related, to the bookstore. The newest is the e-book, in which the contents of a book are transmitted over the Internet to an electronic reader owned by the books buyer. No bookstore is involved. Slightly older is the sale, as opposed to the deliver
44、y, of a book online; Amazon is the principal seller in this market No bookstore is involved unless Amazon doesnt have the book in inventory. A possible third threat is diminished appetite for books. It seems that the amount of entertainment and instruction available online is so great that online su
45、bstitution for reading books must have reduced the demand for them. At the same time, however, the demand for books should be stimulated by the fall in cost when books are bought online, cutting out the middleman the bookstore. It seems inevitable that the number of books sold through bookstores wil
46、l plummet. Books bought through bookstores are more costly not only in price (to cover the costs of the bookstore), but also in customers time the time required to travel to and from the bookstore, find the book one wants to buy, and complete the purchase. The only offsetting advantages of the books
47、tore are the opportunity it provides for browsing and the fact that the customer can see and handle the book before buying it. But these advantages are offset to a considerable extent (doubtless more than offset, for many customers) by the use by online sellers of artificial-intelligence programs to
48、 recommend books to their customers, by the much vaster inventory of an online seller like Amazon, by ease of search, by the reader reviews that the seller presents, and by the sellers ability to allow customers to look inside the online book before ordering it, much as if he were leafing through a
49、printed book in a bookstore. At present fewer than 30 percent of all books are bought online (either in hard copy or as an e-book), this figure is estimated to grow to 75 percent within a few years. Very few bookstores will have enough customers to survive if bookstore sales fall from 70 percent to 25 percent of all book sales, except those bookstores specializing in out of print books whose customers will largely be online. In time, moreover, with more and more publishing electronic, there will be fewer and fewer “out of print“ books. As
