1、大学英语四级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 107及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Education Fever based on the statistics provided in the chart below(Family Spending on Education in China). Please give a brief description of the chart first and then
2、 make comments on it. You should write at least120 words but no more than 180 words. Family Spending on Education in China Source: iResearch, Jefferies Education Fever Section A （ A） She contained her happiness. （ B） She pretended to be cheerful. （ C） She thought the exam was hard. （ D） She was awfu
3、lly pleased with her grades. （ A） A carpenter. （ B） A painter. （ C） A gardener. （ D） A barber. （ A） Go for a later movie. （ B） Order his food quickly. （ C） Go to another restaurant. （ D） Decide which movie to watch. （ A） She will deliver a speech at the convention. （ B） She is the only representativ
4、e of her division. （ C） She helps to build a marketing system. （ D） She works in the marketing department. （ A） She forgot to make a call to the man. （ B） Her answering machine was broken. （ C） She didnt get the mans messages. （ D） She couldnt remember the mans number. （ A） She hasnt heard from the
5、teacher for three days. （ B） They have extra time to complete the assignment. （ C） She just found out the medical paper three days ago. （ D） They wont see the teacher until three days later. （ A） Have a meal. （ B） Go shopping. （ C） Go to the movie. （ D） Play badminton. （ A） He works three nights eve
6、ry two weeks. （ B） He works four times as much as he did before. （ C） He has twice as much work as he used to have. （ D） He has three free days for every four days he works. （ A） It was a custom to do so. （ B） There was flu in the city. （ C） The pollution was serious. （ D） Wearing a mask was popular
7、. （ A） Natural disasters. （ B） Large chemical factories. （ C） Exhaust from vehicles. （ D） Large amounts of household garbage. （ A） They care much about the environment. （ B） The air pollution will disappear gradually. （ C） Their towns become more pleasant to live. （ D） It benefits their economy a lo
8、t. （ A） He closes and opens his eyes too frequently. （ B） He didnt have enough sleep last night. （ C） He has been long staring at the computer screen. （ D） He has been doing homework about computer for hours. （ A） Lack of moisture. （ B） Exposure to radiation. （ C） Lack of sleep. （ D） Misuse of medic
9、ine. （ A） Using eye drops. （ B） Taking breaks. （ C） Seeing a doctor. （ D） Keeping eyes opener. （ A） Get some sleep. （ B） Do homework till tonight. （ C） Read articles about eye problems. （ D） Drink some coffee. Section B （ A） From the 1850s. （ B） From the 1700s. （ C） From the 1800s. （ D） From the 190
10、0s. （ A） To know direction. （ B） To measure time. （ C） To show off ones wealth. （ D） To get to work on time. （ A） Everyone needed to measure their spare time. （ B） Everyone wanted to be punctual. （ C） Efficiency meant much more money. （ D） Efficiency was closely related to time. （ A） Drive cars. （ B
11、） Fly planes. （ C） Pay wages. （ D） Repair machines. （ A） It can store many instructions. （ B） It can perform few tasks. （ C） It is a symbol of modernization. （ D） It is as clever as human brain. （ A） They are much cheaper than humans. （ B） They never complain about the difficulties. （ C） They can ha
12、ndle all the problems of the job. （ D） They can work for long periods without rest. （ A） It will be long before robots can be used at home. （ B） It will be very expensive to use robots in the future. （ C） Robots will take over all the jobs in industry. （ D） Robots will be used only in large factorie
13、s. （ A） Opera music. （ B） Drama. （ C） Country music. （ D） Politics. （ A） He had innate talent for music. （ B） He was the richest singer in America. （ C） He symbolizes the American dream. （ D） He stands for the new generation. （ A） They regret for them. （ B） They just ignore them. （ C） They sharply c
14、riticize them. （ D） They follow his behavior. Section C 26 Looking to improve your language skills, but dont have the time to go overseas to attend school? More and more universities around the world are【 B1】_opportunities for students to obtain online degrees from the comfort of their own homes, an
15、d many of these【 B2】 _have met certain standards of excellence. If you decide to take online language courses, be sure to【 B3】 _the benefits of online studying versus going abroad. The advantages of online studying are that the costs are usually【 B4】 _, students can study at their own pace, and they
16、 can have full【 B5】 _to the materials 24 hours a day from almost any computer in the world. However, they wont get the human【 B6】 _of meeting people face to face like they would do if they【 B7】 _ attended an overseas school. On the other hand, the advantages of going overseas may include day-to-day
17、opportunities to 【 B8】 _a new culture, meet new friends with whom students can use and practice the language, and chances to see different parts of the world. However, there may be a number of disadvantages for some including expense, time away from ones school, family, or work, and the challenge of
18、【 B9】 _ a new culture. Whatever you do, consider a【 B10】 _education program that meets your educational needs, is within your budget, and provides you with opportunities to grow beyond the classroom through cultural and educational activities. 27 【 B1】 28 【 B2】 29 【 B3】 30 【 B4】 31 【 B5】 32 【 B6】 33
19、 【 B7】 34 【 B8】 35 【 B9】 36 【 B10】 Section A 36 When it comes to using technology to promote education, the prevailing wisdom has been that more is better. Over the past decade, universities have invested heavily to add equipments into the classroom. But there is little【 C1】 _that these equipments e
20、nhance learning and, critics argue, they might actually【 C2】 _it, making both students and teachers passive. What if classrooms were【 C3】 _to the pre-Internet days of wooden tables and chalk? Jose Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, has taken technology ou
21、t of the classroom. He wants his【 C4】 _to “teach naked,“ meaning without the aid of any machines. Classroom time should be【 C5】 _for discussions with the professor, aimed at teaching students to think critically, argue, and raise new questions. Bowen, who teaches music, delivers content via podcasts
22、(播客 ), which students must listen to on their own time. He then tests them on the material before every class and uses class time for discussions. Hes been teaching the same material for 25 years, but since he【 C6】 _this new method, his students have been more engaged and scored better on exams. Col
23、lege students asked by researchers to list what motivates them have【 C7】_. emphasized teacher enthusiasm, organization, and harmonious relationship, while naming lack of【 C8】 _participation as a major negative factor. Technology has a place in education, but it should be used【 C9】 _by students outsi
24、de the classroom. That gives them more time to absorb【 C10】 _via podcast or video, and frees teachers to spend class time coaching students in how to apply the material rather than simply absorb it. A)consistently B)restored C)evidence D)improve E)faculty F)coach G)creative H)course I)lectures J)imp
25、lemented K)active L)reserved M)persistently N)hinder O)independently 37 【 C1】 38 【 C2】 39 【 C3】 40 【 C4】 41 【 C5】 42 【 C6】 43 【 C7】 44 【 C8】 45 【 C9】 46 【 C10】 Section B 46 How science goes wrong Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself. A)A simple idea underlies scie
26、nce: “trust, but verify“. Results should always be subject to challenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body of knowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyond recognition, and overwhelmingly for the better. But success
27、can breed extreme self-satisfaction. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying, damaging the whole of science, and of humanity. B)Too many of the findings are the result of cheap experiments or poor analysis. A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is tha
28、t half of published research cannot be replicated(复制 ). Even that may be optimistic. Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “milestone“ studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 s
29、imilarly important papers. A leading computer scientist worries that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are nonsense. In 2000-10, roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later withdrawn because of mistakes or improperness. What a load of rubbish C)Even w
30、hen flawed research does not put peoples lives at risk and much of it is too far from the market to do so it blows money and the efforts of some of the worlds best minds. The opportunity costs of hindered progress are hard to quantify, but they are likely to be vast. And they could be rising. D)One
31、reason is the competitiveness of science. In the 1950s, when modern academic research took shape after its successes in the Second World War, it was still a rarefied(小众的 )pastime. The entire club of scientists numbered a few hundred thousand. As their ranks have swelled to 6m -7m active researchers
32、on the latest account, scientists have lost their taste for self-policing and quality control. The obligation to “publish or perish(消亡 )“ has come to rule over academic life. Competition for jobs is cut-throat. Full professors in America earned on average $135,000 in 2012 more than judges did. Every
33、 year six freshly minted PhDs strive for every academic post. Nowadays verification(the replication of other peoples results)does little to advance a researchers career. And without verification, uncertain findings live on to mislead. E)Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the choose-the-most-
34、profitable of results. In order to safeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high rejection rates: in excess of 90% of submitted manuscripts. The most striking findings have the greatest chance of making it onto the page. Little wonder that one in three researchers knows of a colleagu
35、e who has polished a paper by, say, excluding inconvenient data from results based on his instinct, And as more research teams around the world work on a problem, it is more likely that at least one will fall prey to an honest confusion between the sweet signal of a genuine discovery and a nut of th
36、e statistical noise. Such lake correlations are often recorded in journals eager for startling papers. If they touch on drinking wine, or letting children play video games, they may well command the front pages of newspapers, too. F)Conversely, failures to prove a hypothesis(假设 )are rarely even offe
37、red for publication, let alone accepted. “Negative results“ now account for only 14% of published papers, down from 30% in 1990. Yet knowing what is false is as important to science as knowing what is true. The failure to report failures means that researchers waste money and effort exploring blind
38、alleys already investigated by other scientists. G)The holy process of peer review is not all it is praised to be, either. When a prominent medical journal ran research past other experts in the field, it found that most of the reviewers failed to spot mistakes it had deliberately inserted into pape
39、rs, even after being told they were being tested. If its broke, fix it H)All this makes a shaky foundation for an enterprise dedicated to discovering the truth about the world. What might be done to shore it up? One priority should be for all disciplines to follow the example of those that have done
40、 most to tighten standards. A start would be getting to grips with statistics, especially in the growing number of fields that screen through untold crowds of data looking for patterns. Geneticists have done this, and turned an early stream of deceptive results from genome sequencing(基因组测序 )into a f
41、low of truly significant ones. I)Ideally, research protocols(草案 )should be registered in advance and monitored in virtual notebooks. This would curb the temptation to manipulate the experiments design midstream so as to make the results look more substantial than they are.(It is already meant to hap
42、pen in clinical trials of drugs.) Where possible, trial data also should be open for other researchers to inspect and test. J)The most enlightened journals are already showing less dislike of tedious papers. Some government funding agencies, including Americas National Institutes of Health, which gi
43、ve out $30 billion on research each year, are working out how best to encourage replication. And growing numbers of scientists, especially young ones, understand statistics. But these trends need to go much further. Journals should allocate space for “uninteresting“ work, and grant-givers should set
44、- aside money to pay for it. Peer review should be tightened or perhaps dispensed with altogether, in favour of post-publication evaluation in the form of appended comments. That system has worked well in recent years in physics and mathematics. Lastly, policymakers should ensure that institutions u
45、sing public money also respect the rules. K)Science still commands enormous if sometimes perplexed respect. But its privileged status is founded on the capacity to be right most of the time and to correct its mistakes when it gets things wrong. And it is not as if the universe is short of genuine my
46、steries to keep generations of scientists hard at work. The false trails laid down by cheap research are an unforgivable barrier to understanding. 47 The major journals reject more than 90% of the submitted manuscripts to ensure their exclusiveness. 48 The flawed research wastes not only money but a
47、lso the energy of other talents. 49 Modern science began in the 17th century. 50 Some government funding agencies have already granted money to figure out how best to encourage replication. 51 Some clinical trials from 2000 to 2010 were later abandoned by reason of mistakes or impropemess. 52 Regist
48、ered and monitored research protocols would help to resist the temptation to manipulate the experiments design. 53 The most enlightened journals are more willing to accept dull papers than before. 54 Knowing what is false and knowing what is true are equally important to science. 55 Science can gain
49、 respect only when it is basically right and is able to correct mistakes. 56 “Publish or perish“ has become the dominant rule over academic life now. Section C 56 As an opportunity to highlight womens contributions, International Womens Day has always served to commemorate(纪念 )the cutting edge of the global womens movement, from demanding better working conditions in US sweatshop factories of the early 1900s, to voting rights, pay equality and, more recently, promoti
