1、专业英语四级（阅读）模拟试卷 176及答案与解析 SECTION A In this section there are several passages followed by ten multiple-choice questions. For each question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer. 0 (1) He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in
2、the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boys parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had go
3、ne at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sai
4、l was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat. (2) The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotch
5、es ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert. (3) Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and w
6、ere cheerful and undefeated. (4) “Santiago,“ the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. “I could go with you again. Weve made some money. “ (5) The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him. (6) “No,“ the old man said. “Youre with a lucky boat. St
7、ay with them. “ (7) “ But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks. “ (8) “I remember,“ the old man said. “I know you did not leave me because you doubted. “ (9) “It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him. “ (10) “I kn
8、ow,“ the old man said. “It is quite normal. “ (11) “He hasnt much faith. “ (12) “No,“ the old man said. “But we have. Havent we?“ (13) “Yes,“ the boy said. “Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then well take the stuff home. “ (14) “Why not?“ the old man said, “Between fishermen. “ (15) They sa
9、t on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of wh
10、at they had seen. (16) When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbor from the shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of the odor because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace. (17) “Santiago,“ the boy said.
11、 (18) “Yes,“ the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago. (19) “Can I go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?“ (20) “No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net. “ (21) “I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you, I would like to ser
12、ve in some way. “ (22) “You bought me a beer,“ the old man said. “You are already a man. “ (23) “How old was I when you first took me in a boat?“ (24) “ Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces. Can you remember?“ (25) “I can remember
13、 the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me. “ (26
14、) “Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?“ (27) “I remember everything from when we first went together. “ (28) The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes. (29) “If you were my boy Id take you out and gamble,“ he said. “But you are your fathers and your
15、mothers and you are in a lucky boat. “ 1 Why did the boy feel upset to leave the ship of the old man? （ A） Because he wanted to help the old man in difficulty. （ B） Because he felt reluctant to meet his parents request. （ C） Because he could have caught more fish with the old man. （ D） Because he wa
16、s haunted by the worse form of bad luck. 2 Santiago rejected the boys proposal to return to his ship because_. （ A） he didnt need the assistance of the boy any more （ B） he felt disheartened and uncertain about the future （ C） he hoped the boy could keep on with good harvest （ D） he couldnt accept t
17、he one who had betrayed him 3 The dialogue between Santiago and the boy suggests all the following EXCEPT_. （ A） it was Santiago who cultivated the boy as a fisherman （ B） they shared plenty of precious recollection of the past （ C） the affection between them were deep and warm （ D） the boy wanted v
18、ery much to be treated as an adult 3 (1) Humans have made enough plastic since the Second World War to coat the Earth entirely in clingfilm, an international study has revealed. This ability to plaster the planet in plastic is alarming, say scientists for it confirms that human activities are now ha
19、ving a pernicious impact on our world. (2) The research, published in the journal Anthropocene, shows that no part of the planet is free of the scourge of plastic waste. Everywhere is polluted with the remains of water containers, supermarket bags, polystyrene lumps, compact discs, cigarette filter
20、tips, nylons and other plastics. Some are in the form of microscopic grains, others in lumps. The impact is often highly damaging. (3) “The results came as a real surprise,“ said the studys lead author, Professor Jan Zalasiewicz, of Leicester University. “We were aware mat humans have been making in
21、creasing amounts of different kinds of plastic from Bakelite to polyethylene bags to PVC over the last 70 years, but we had no idea how far it had travelled round the planet. It turns out not just to have floated across the oceans, but has sunk to the deepest parts of the sea floor. This is not a si
22、gn that our planet is in a healthy condition either. “ (4) The crucial point about the studys findings is that the appearance of plastic should now be considered as a marker for a new epoch. Zalasiewicz is the chairman of a group of geologists assessing whether or not humanitys activities have tippe
23、d the planet into a new geological epoch, called the Anthropocene, which ended the Holocene that began around 12,000 years ago. (5) Most members of Zalasiewiczs committee believe the Anthropocene has begun and this month published a paper in Science in which they argued that several postwar human ac
24、tivities show our species is altering geology. In particular, radioactive isotopes released by atom bombs left a powerful signal in the ground that will tell future civilizations that something strange was going on. (6) In addition, increasing carbon dioxide in the oceans, the massive manufacture of
25、 concrete and the widespread use of aluminium were also highlighted as factors that indicate the birth of the Anthropocene. Lesser environmental impacts, including the rising use of plastics, were also mentioned in passing. (7) But Zalasiewicz argues that the humble plastic bag and plastic drink con
26、tainer play a far greater role in changing the planet than has been realised. “Just consider the fish in the sea,“ he said. “A vast proportion of them now have plastic in them. They think it is food and eat it, just as seabirds feed plastic to their chicks. Then some of it is released as excrement a
27、nd ends up sinking on to the seabed. The planet is slowly being covered in plastic. “ In total, more than 300 million tonnes of plastic is manufactured every year, states the paper, The Geological Cycle of Plastics and Their Use as a Stratigraphic Indicator of the Anthropocene. (8) “In 1950, we virt
28、ually made none at all. It is an incredible rise,“ added Zalasiewicz. “That annual total of 300 million tonnes is close to the weight of the entire human population of the planet. And the figure for plastic manufacture is only going to grow. The total amount of plastic produced since the Second Worl
29、d War is around 5 billion tonnes and is very likely to reach 30 billion by the end of the century. The impact will be colossal. “ (9) As the paper makes clear, plastic is already on the ocean floor, remote islands, buried underground in landfill sites and in the food chain. Even the Polar Regions, g
30、enerally considered still to be pristine zones, are becoming affected. In 2014, researchers found “significant“ amounts of plastic granules frozen in the Arctic Sea, having been swept there from the Pacific Ocean. (10) In some cases, wildlife adapts to the spread of plastic. For example, on islands
31、such as Diego Garcia, hermit crabs have taken to using plastic bottles as homes. However, most of the impact on wildlife is harmful. Creatures ranging from seabirds to turtles become entangled in plastic and drown or choke to death. “ The trouble is that plastic is very slow to degrade, so we are go
32、ing to be stuck with this problem for a long time,“ said Zalasiewicz. 4 The word “pernicious“ in Para. 1 is closest in meaning to_. （ A） potential （ B） harmful （ C） significant （ D） unpredictable 5 It is indicated in the passage that Anthropocene_. （ A） can be defined as the start of plastics applic
33、ation （ B） reveals the way plastic get into food chain （ C） leaves signals that will be passed to the next civilization （ D） witnesses greater influence of human activities 6 The author uses figures in Para. 8 for the purpose of_. （ A） comparison （ B） transition （ C） explanation （ D） introduction 6
34、(1) “The elephant chart“ began life in 2012, hidden in the middle of a World Bank working paper by Branko Milanovic, an authority on global inequality. It turned a few heads in the New York Times in 2014, then graced Mr Milanovics well-received book on global inequality earlier this year. Somewhere
35、along the way it acquired its name, which helped it stampede across social media, brokers notes and even a ministerial speech this spring and summer. “Im about to bring an elephant into the room. A wild, angry, and dangerous elephant,“ joked Lilianne Ploumen, the Dutch trade minister, last month, be
36、fore unveiling the chart to her audience. Now, its critics are trying to shoot it. (2) The distinctively shaped chart summarized the results of a huge number (196) of household surveys across the world. It was created by ranking the worlds population, from the poorest 10% to the richest 1% , in 1988
37、 and again in 2008. At each rank, the chart showed the growth in income between these two years, an era of “high globalization“ from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the fall of Lehman Brothers. (3) When drawn for individual countries, charts of this kind tend to slant upwards (the rich gain more than
38、 the poor) or downwards. The global chart was unusual in sloping up, down, then upwards again, like an inverted S on its back, or an elephant raising its trunk. The chart showed big income gains at the middle and very top. But the era of globalization seemed to offer little for the people in between
39、: households in the 75th to 85th percentile of the income distribution seemed scarcely better off in 2008 than they had been 20 years before. They constituted a decile of discontent, squeezed between their own countries plutocrats and Asias middle class. This dramatic dip in the chart seemed to expl
40、ain a lot. (4) But who exactly occupies this dangerous decile? A report this week by Adam Corlett of the Resolution Foundation, a British think-tank, examines this group more closely, taking aim at some simplistic interpretations of the chart. Many people assume the chart shows how people in this co
41、ntroversial income bracket back in 1988 fared over the subsequent 20 years. But that is not quite the case. Instead it compares the people in this bracket in 1988 with people in the same bracket 20 years later. They may not be the same people. They may not belong to the same class. They may not even
42、 belong to the same country. (5) What accounts for the changing constituents of each income bracket? Fast growth will, of course, carry people up the income ranks. Data, dissolution and demography also play a part. The countries included in the 1988 and 2008 rankings differ because data did not exis
43、t for both years or because the country did not. In addition, faster population growth among people in the lower reaches of the income distribution will automatically shunt everyone above them further up the income ranks, even without any improvement in their fortunes. (6) To see why, imagine a simp
44、le world populated by 750m poor Southerners and 250m rich Northerners. Imagine that incomes do not change over the next 20 years, but the Souths population doubles. That would increase its share of mankind from 75% to over 85%. For that simple reason, in the 75th to 85th percentiles of the global in
45、come distribution poor Southerners would replace rich Northerners. Any comparison of this income bracket with the same bracket 20 years before would thus show a big decline in fortunes, even though no one is worse off. (7) This will not be new to readers of Mr Milanovics academic work. He and his co
46、-author, Christoph Lakner, were quite clear about the shifting composition of the troublesome deciles. Their journal article also included an alternative chart, which does what many people assumed the elephant chart had done: it illustrates how each income group in each country in 1988 fared over th
47、e subsequent 20 years. In its shape, the chart looks recognizably elephantine. But the top 1% do markedly less well in this alternative chart than in the more famous one, and even the worst performing groups boast income growth of 20% or more over 20 years. (8) Both charts show that the worlds rich
48、has gained handsomely in the era of globalization. It also remains true that the lower middle classes in rich countries have fared less well. The elephant shape remains, even if its dimensions are different. But it clarified a misunderstanding shared by many of the pundits and drumbeaters who made s
49、uch a noise about the rampaging chart. Like the elephant George Orwell described in a famous essay about his time as a colonial policeman in Burma, this one was shot chiefly to silence a crowd. 7 We can infer from the passage that the “dangerous decile“_. （ A） were deprived of some income （ B） may have a varied composition （ C） are mainly poor Southerners （ D） lost some fortunes in globalization 8 About the demographic change, which of the statements is CORRECT? （ A） It triggered the composition change of income groups.
