1、专业英语四级（阅读）模拟试卷 31及答案与解析 0 Shortly before he died of lymphoma(淋巴瘤 ), the great writer and physician Lewis Thomas, whose books turned science into a way of appreciating the greatness of the world, told me he thought the true measure of a life was that it be useful. He wondered in those last days if hi
2、s own life had been useful, and many thousands of readers assured him that it had. “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be,“ cried Robert Brownings Rabbi Ben Ezra. Not always. Poetry replies to Rabbi Ben with A. E. Housmans “To an Athlete Dying Young“ and comes up with no more startling a con
3、clusion than that a life is what one makes of it. Celebrity is hardly a prerequisite(先决条件 ). Kennedys life would have been just as valuable had he been, to use another poets phrase, a “mute, inglorious Milton“. A beloved colleague at TIME died recently who was unknown to most of the world, except th
4、e friends she cherished. The measure of a life is often taken in the smallest units. On television, a parking attendant in the garage that Kennedy used mentioned that Kennedy came over personally to wish the man a merry Christmas every year. A middle aged African American woman with whom he worked i
5、n one of the programs he supported was in tears at the recollection of continuous small acts of kindness. The sudden garden that has developed on the front steps of Kennedys loft building began simply with neighbors paying homage(崇敬 )to a neighbor. From such fragments of evidence a whole life is con
6、structed, or reconstructed. When a man dies, a civilization dies with him. Everything dies but the reverberation(反响 )of his works in the lives of others; and so, while an individual civilization dies, the greater one profits. We call such deaths tragedies because the force of the life has been of gr
7、eat magnitude(重要性 ); yet tragedy from the point of view of the audience is high art, and one is filled with as much admiration as grief. Keats chose as his epitaph(墓志铭 )“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.“ He believed that his life would be viewed as without consequence, and that he would d
8、ebut(初次登台 )one more transitory figure among the yearning and striving masses. Kennedy, too, I think, would have had his name writ in water, thus the appropriateness of his sea burial, because the best public servants disappear into the world, whose pain they feel. Every name is writ in water, which
9、flows through us all. 1 We can infer from the first paragraph that Lewis Thomas believes that （ A） your life is important if it is meaningful for others. （ B） you can build meaning into your life if it is long. （ C） work while alive is the most important thing. （ D） usefulness of one life is hard to
10、 measure. 2 Which of the following statements is true about Robert Browning? （ A） He believes that longer life is no good thing. （ B） He believes that true life lies in how one makes of it. （ C） He is identical with Lewis Thomas, regarding the life issue. （ D） He is opposite to A.E. Housman, regardi
11、ng the death issue. 3 What idea does the author want to convey in the second paragraph? （ A） The importance of ones life is not related with his reputation or fame. （ B） Poets and politicians make the same contribution to society. （ C） Statesmen are always ready to do small things for people around
12、them. （ D） The beloved colleague at Time is as respectable as Kennedy. 4 By saying “The measure of a life is often taken in the smallest units“(Para. 2), the author means that （ A） Kennedy was most respected by the ordinary people. （ B） Kennedys life can be reflected by the small deeds he has done.
13、（ C） Kennedy has done many small deeds for the people around him. （ D） Kennedy devoted his life to serving the people from the lower class. 5 In the last paragraph, the author cites Keats epitaph to show that （ A） the poet finally died in the seawater. （ B） the poets dream of his great popularity ca
14、me true centuries later. （ C） the importance of ones life can not be predicted. （ D） human life is transitory, so dont waste it. 5 Utopia is a perfect place. It is a place without war, hunger, poverty, or crime. It is a place where the people work together and share. There is no money in Utopia beca
15、use the people do not need money. They do not have personal possessions because everything belongs to everyone. All of the people are equal in Utopia, and the laws are all fair. Utopia is not a new place. Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, described a perfect society in his famous dialogue The Re
16、public. In Platos Republic, philosophers were the kings, and every person had a place in the society. In 1516, Sir Thomas More wrote about an island in the Pacific Ocean where everything was perfect. He named the island “Utopia.“ In 1872, Samuel Butler wrote a novel about a perfect country which he
17、named “Erehwon“: “Utopia“ is a Greek word that means “not a place“ and “Erehwon“ is the English word “nowhere“ spelled backwards. Many people came to the New World to find Utopia. The Shakers, a religious group, wanted to live like the first Christians. The Shakers started their first community in N
18、ew York in 1776. George Rapp, a German farmer, came to the United States in 1804 to start a Utopian community. In 1815, Rapp and his followers bought land for their community in Harmony, Indiana, and they made the things they needed with machines. In 1824, they sold the community to Robert Owen, who
19、 started the Utopian community of New Harmony there. In New Harmony, everything belonged to everyone and men and women were equal, but New Harmony lasted only two years. Then Francis Wright began Nashoba, a community where white people and black people could live and work together, near Memphis, Ten
20、nessee. Nashoba lasted from 1825 to 1830. A group of intellectuals founded Brook Farm, a Utopian farming community, in 1841. However, they did not have many farming skills, so the farm closed in 1847. Four years later, Josiah Warren set up Modern Times, an anarchist community near New York City. It
21、closed in 1857. Utopia is a perfect place, but it is not a real place. Most “real“ Utopias last only a short time. This is because everyone wants to live in Utopia, but no one knows how to make it work. As a result, when we say something is “Utopian“ today, we mean that it is a good idea, but it is
22、not realistic. 6 The first paragraph is mainly about （ A） what makes Utopia. （ B） how to build Utopia. （ C） the origin of “utopia“. （ D） the economy of Utopia. 7 It can be inferred from the second paragraph that （ A） Utopia is a word created by Thomas More. （ B） Utopia has the same concept as “Erehw
23、on“. （ C） Thomas More named the island “Utopia“ because he was Greek. （ D） the characteristics of Utopia were first mentioned in The Republic. 8 What is true about the Shakers? （ A） They founded the first community in New York. （ B） They believed the first Christian community was Utopia. （ C） They h
24、ad tried to find Utopia only in New York. （ D） They had established the first real Utopia in the world. 9 Which of the following may be the most appropriate definition of “an anarchist community“? （ A） A community whose members believe some kind of religion. （ B） A community where people live under
25、much self-control. （ C） A community where its members are supposed to be equal. （ D） A community which is economically poor but spiritually rich. 10 All the “Utopias“ mentioned in the third paragraph lasted only a brief time because （ A） the members didnt know how to realize the idea of Utopia. （ B）
26、 the members were not satisfied with the idea of Utopia. （ C） the members were not capable enough t6 build a community. （ D） the members found that Utopia also had shortcomings. 10 The men and women of Anglo-Saxon England normally bore one name only. Distinguishing epithets were rarely added. These
27、might be patronymic, descriptive or occupational. They were, however, hardly surnames. Heritable names gradually became general in the three centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066. It was not until the 13th and 14th centuries that surnames became fixed, although for many years after that, t
28、he degree of stability in family names varied considerably in different parts of the country. British surnames fall mainly into four broad categories: patronymic, occupational, descriptive and local. A few names, it is true, will remain puzzling: foreign names, perhaps, crudely translated, adapted o
29、r abbreviated; or artificial names. In fact, over fifty per cent of genuine British surnames derive from place names of different kinds, and so they belong to the last of our four main categories. Even such a name as Simpson may belong to this last group, and not to the first, had the family once ha
30、d its home in the ancient village of that name. Otherwise, Simpson means “the son of Simon“, as might be expected. Hundreds of occupational surnames are at once familiar to us, or at least recognisable after a little thought: Archer, Carter, Fisher, Mason, Thatcher, Taylor, to name but a few. Hundre
31、ds of others are more obscure in their meanings and testify to the amazing specialisation in medieval arts, crafts and functions. Such are “Day“,(Old English for breadmaker)and “Walker“(a fuller whose job it was to clean and thicken newly made cloth). All these vocational names carry with them a cer
32、tain gravity and dignity, which descriptive names often lack. Some, it is true, like “Long“, “Short“ or “Little“, are simple. They may be taken quite literally. Others require more thinking: their meanings are slightly different from the modern ones. “Black“ and “White“ implied dark and fair respect
33、ively. “Sharp“ meant genuinely discerning, alert, acute rather than quick-witted or clever. Place-names have a lasting interest since there is hardly a town or village in all England that has not at some time given its name to a family. They may be picturesque, even poetical; or they may be pedestri
34、an, even trivial. Among the commoner names which survive with relatively little change from old-English times are “Milton“(middle enclosure)and “Hilton“(enclosure on a hill). 11 Surnames are said to be _ in Anglo-Saxon England. （ A） common （ B） vocational （ C） unusual （ D） descriptive 12 We learn fr
35、om the first paragraph that _ for many years after the 13th and 14th centuries. （ A） family names became descriptive and occupational （ B） people in some areas still had no surnames （ C） some people kept changing their surnames （ D） all family names became fixed in England 13 “Patronymic“ in the sec
36、ond paragraph is closest in meaning to “formed from _ “. （ A） the name of ones father （ B） the family occupation （ C） ones family home （ D） ones family history 14 Which of the following sentences is an opinion rather than a fact? （ A） Hundreds of occupational names are at once familiar to us. （ B） B
37、lack and “White“ implied “dark“ and “fair“ respectively. （ C） Vocational names carry with mem a certain gravity and dignity. （ D） Every place in England has given its name to a family. 14 More surprising, perhaps, than the current difficulties of traditional marriage is the fact that marriage itself
38、 is alive and thriving. As Skolnick notes, Americans are a marrying people: relative to Europeans, more of us marry and we marry at a younger age. Moreover, after a decline in the early 1970s, the rate of marriage in the United States is now increasing. Even the divorce rate needs to be taken in thi
39、s pro-marriage context: some 80 percent of divorced individuals remarry. Thus, marriage remains, by far, the preferred way of life for the vast majority of people in our society. What has changed more than marriage is the nuclear family. Twenty-five years ago, the typical American family consisted o
40、f a husband, a wife, and two or three children. Now, there are many marriages in which couples have decided not to have any children. And there are many marriages where at least some of the children are from the wifes previous marriage, or the husbands, or both. Sometimes these children spend all of
41、 their time with one parent from the former marriage; sometimes they are shared between the two former spouses. Thus, one can find the very type of family arrangement. There are marriages without children; marriages with children from only the present marriage; marriages with “full-time“ children fr
42、om the present marriage and “part-time“ children from former marriages. There are step-fathers, step-mothers, half-brothers, and half-sisters. It is not all that unusual for a child to have four parents and eight grandparents! These are enormous changes from the traditional nuclear family. But even
43、so, even in the midst of all this, there remains one constant: most Americans spend most of their adult lives married. 15 By calling Americans “marrying people“ the author means that （ A） there are more married couples in the U.S.A. than in Europe. （ B） more Americans prefer marriage and at a younge
44、r age than Europeans. （ C） most divorced individuals remarry. （ D） marriage is the most important part of American life. 16 From the first paragraph we can know that （ A） traditional marriage now runs into difficulty. （ B） marriage rate has been rising since the 1970. （ C） marriage rate in Europe is
45、 rather low. （ D） Europeans marry when they are quite old. 17 Which of the following can be presented as the picture of todays American families? （ A） There are no nuclear families any more. （ B） A family usually consists of a husband, a wife and two or three children. （ C） A child usually has four
46、grandparents. （ D） Many types of family rearrangements have become socially acceptable. 18 “Part-time“ children （ A） do part-time jobs to earn their living. （ B） spend all of their time with one parent from the previous marriage. （ C） are shared between the two former spouses. （ D） are quite unusual
47、 even in the U.S.A. 19 As great changes have taken place in the structure of American families, （ A） the functions of marriage remain unchanged. （ B） most Americans dont mind a second marriage. （ C） most Americans still have faith in marriage. （ D） the concept of nuclear family is modernized. 专业英语四级
48、（阅读）模拟试卷 31答案与解析 【知识模块】 阅读 1 【正确答案】 A 【试题解析】 首段首句末尾表明了 Lewis Thomas对生命的看法，其中 useful一词是关键， A中的 meaningful表达了此义，因 此为正确答案。 Lewis Thomas并没有讨论生命的长短 (B)或活着应该工作 (C)等问题； D虽然也提到了 usefulness，但Lewis Thomas没有讨论如何 measure usefulness。 【知识模块】 阅读 2 【正确答案】 D 【试题解析】 首段倒数第 2句的 Not always连接了上下文两种不同的意见，即表明倒数第 3句中 Robert
49、 Browning和末句中的 A E Housman的看法是相反的，因此 D为本题答案。首段倒数第 3句开头的 “Grow oldalong with me”表明Browning认为长寿好，由此可否定 A； B在首段末句提到，但那是A E Housman的看法，并非 Browning的看法；而 Lewis Thomas和 Browning对生命的看法并没有什么相同之处，因此 C也不对。 【知识模块】 阅读 3 【正确答案】 A 【试题解析】 本题事实上是考查对第 2段的主旨的理解。本段首句就是该段的主题句，其他句子提到的如 Kennedy和时代周刊的同事都是为了支持本段首句的看法， A是对该句的近义解析，因此为本题答案。 【知识模块】 阅读 4 【正确答案】 B 【试题解析】 原文第 2段第 4句之后举了几个关于 Kennedy的例子，用以说明该句的观点，表明 Kennedy的生命价值可以从他所做的小事反映出来，因此本题答案为 B。 C只概括了第 2段第 4句的部分内容，没有指出 “从小事可以判断一个人的价值 ”这个道理； A和 D都只是根据后面的例子总结的表面现象，不能解释考点句子里关键词 measure的内涵。 【知识模块】 阅读 5 【正确答案】 C 【试题解析】 由末段第 2句中的
