1、大学英语四级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 166及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 For this part, you are allowed SO minutes to write a short essay entitled Should Smoking Be Banned in Public Places? You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words following the outline given below. Write your essay on Answer
2、 Sheet 1. 1近年来越来越多的公共场所禁烟 2这项举措在受到拥护的同时也引发了争议 3我的看法 Should Smoking Be Banned in Public Places? Section A （ A） The election is not so just as expected. （ B） American president asked them to drop out from it. （ C） They are not confident in themselves. （ D） They are afraid of being cheated and attacked
3、. （ A） The presidential election. （ B） Election rescue. （ C） Boycott of election. （ D） Political transition. （ A） 20%. （ B） 70%. （ C） 80%. （ D） 17%. （ A） Decreasing the stock for food. （ B） Adjusting the food production scale. （ C） Cultivating more lands to grow. （ D） Encouraging speculation in the
4、food market. （ A） About five months. （ B） More than half a year. （ C） Half a month. （ D） 15 to 26 months. （ A） Spectators. （ B） Athletes. （ C） Fans. （ D） Cheerleaders. （ A） Olympic cheerleaders are the same as other games. （ B） Three groups of cheerleaders work at speed skating. （ C） The all-girl te
5、am ranges in age from 15 to 26. （ D） They are dressed in attractive clothes. Section B （ A） Where to celebrate the anniversary. （ B） The best style of dinner. （ C） Doing something different. （ D） Which restaurant is best. （ A） It was very successful. （ B） It was a bit boring. （ C） It was different f
6、rom others. （ D） It was the best. （ A） Its cheaper than others. （ B） It serves delicious food. （ C） There are fewer people eating there. （ D） Its a large restaurant. （ A） A new French restaurant. （ B） A Chinese restaurant. （ C） A Western restaurant. （ D） A Japanese restaurant. （ A） American literatu
7、re. （ B） Elementary education. （ C） Developmental psychology. （ D） Childrens literature. （ A） They are professional storytellers. （ B） They are the parents of young children. （ C） The stories will help improve their vocabulary. （ D） Reading the stories is required for the course. （ A） They are the s
8、ame person. （ B） They are friends of the speakers. （ C） They are psychology professors. （ D） They are fictional characters. （ A） It uses an extensive vocabulary. （ B） It is useful as a teaching tool. （ C） Children find it boring. （ D） Its author is unknown. Section C （ A） Babies begin to learn at 5
9、or 6 months old. （ B） Babies begin to learn when theyre bom. （ C） Babies dont like to be taught by strangers. （ D） Babies always want to learn new things. （ A） To help all the weak children and women. （ B） To study the genes of babies and mothers. （ C） To find out what affects healthy development in
10、 people. （ D） To study why babies are influenced by their environment. （ A） She will clap. （ B） She will blink. （ C） She will smile. （ D） She will imitate her mother. （ A） Unborn babies can remember sounds. （ B） Unborn babies learn how to smile. （ C） Unborn babies can learn to connect with people. （
11、 D） Unborn babies are active to learn things. （ A） They didnt like to do housework. （ B） Their efforts were unnoticed by the woman. （ C） They were very tired after a whole days work. （ D） They wanted to share the housework with women. （ A） Cleaning the washroom. （ B） Carrying shopping bags. （ C） Tak
12、ing out the rubbish. （ D） Changing the bed sheets. （ A） 4.7 hours. （ B） 6.9 hours. （ C） 5.1 hours. （ D） 1.5 hours. （ A） They can be good if they happen in summer. （ B） They occur only in South China sea. （ C） They can usually be seen around the Pacific Ocean. （ D） They happen in spring most often. （
13、 A） When the warmer air meets with the cooler air. （ B） When the wind moves faster than 30 meters a second. （ C） When the seawater evaporates into the air. （ D） When the air gets warmer and warmer. （ A） It is the most active part of a typhoon. （ B） It moves faster than 40 meters a second. （ C） It is
14、 right in the middle of a typhoon. （ D） It is the most dangerous part of a typhoon. Section A 26 Think before you post. You might not be aware of how much information youre【 C1】 _. Thats the message from the founders of Please Rob Me, a website launched last week that【 C2】 _just how easy it is to ro
15、b people blind on the basis of the information theyre posting on the Web. The site uses streams of data from Foursquare, a(n) 【 C3】_popular location-based social network that is based on a game-like premise(前提 ). Players use smart phones or laptops to “check in“ to a location,【 C4】 _their position o
16、n a map for friends using the service to see. The more often you check in, the better your chances of being declared the mayor of a【 C5】 _location, be it a restaurant, bar, office or even your own home. The problem comes when users also post these locations to Twitter, says Boy van Amstel, one of th
17、e founders of Please Rob Me. Then the information becomes【 C6】_available, making it possible for a robber to keep a close watch on when you say youre in your home or not. So how can you keep yourself off Please Rob Me and, more important, keep your home out of the police notebook? A little foresight
18、 goes a long way. Sites like Foursquare and its competitors dont post your location unless you give it to them, nor is it posted to Twitter without your【 C7】 _. Its always up to the user to【 C8】 _what to post. Are you going to get robbed because youre oversharing? Its【 C9】 _. But Please Rob Me shows
19、 that sometimes a little【 C10】 _online can go a long way. A)illustrates E)decide I)typical M)means B)likely F)excessively J)increasingly N)consent C)publicly G)realize K)revealing O)recording D)particular H)caution L)unlikely 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35
20、 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 How Should Teachers Be Rewarded? AWe never forget our best teachers those who inspired us with a deeper understanding or an enduring passion, the ones we come back to visit years after graduating, the educators who opened doors and altered the course of our lives. BIt w
21、ould be wonderful if we knew more about such talented teachers and how to multiply their number. How do they come by their craft? What qualities and capacities do they possess? Can these abilities be measured? Can they be taught? Perhaps above all: How should excellent teaching be rewarded so that t
22、he best teachers the most competent, caring and compelling remain in a profession known for low pay and low status? CSuch questions have become critical to the future of public education in the U.S. Even as politicians push to hold schools and their faculty members responsible as never before for st
23、udent learning, the nation faces a shortage of teaching talent About 3.2 million people teach in U.S. public schools, but, according to an estimate made by economist William Hussar at the National Center for Education Statistics, the nation will need to recruit an additional 2.8 million over the nex
24、t eight years owing to baby-boomer retirement, growing student enrollment and staff turnover(人员调整 ) -which is especially rapid among new teachers. Finding and keeping high-quality teachers are key to Americas competitiveness as a nation. Recent test results show that U.S. 10th-graders ranked just 17
25、th in science among peers from 30 nations, while in math they placed in the bottom five. Research suggests that a good teacher is the single most important factor in boosting achievement, more important than class size, the dollars spent per student or the quality of textbooks and materials. DAcross
26、 the country, hundreds of school districts are experimenting with new ways to attract, reward and keep good teachers. Many of these efforts borrow ideas from business. They include signing bonuses for hard-to-fill jobs like teaching high school chemistry, housing allowances and what might be called
27、combat pay for teachers who commit to working in the most distressed schools. But the idea gaining the most motivation and controversy is merit pay, which attempts to measure the quality of teachers work and pay teachers accordingly. ETraditionally, public-school salaries are based on years spent on
28、 the job and college credits earned, a system favored by unions because it treats all teachers equally. Of course, everyone knows that not all teachers are equal. Just witness how hard parents try to get their kids into the best classrooms. And yet there is no universally accepted way to measure com
29、petence, much less the great charm of a truly brilliant educator. In its absence, policymakers have focused on that current measure of all things educational: student test scores. In districts across the country, administrators are devising systems that track student scores back to the teachers who
30、taught them in an attempt to assign credit and blame and, in some cases, target help to teachers who need it. Offering bonuses to teachers who raise student achievement, the theory goes, will improve the overall quality of instruction, retain those who get the job done and attract more highly qualif
31、ied candidates to the profession all while lifting those all-important test scores. FSuch efforts have been encouraged by the government, which in 2006 started a program that awards $99 million a year in grants to districts that link teacher compensation to raising student test scores. Merit pay has
32、 also become part of the debate in Congress over how to improve the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. Last summer, the president signed merit pay at a meeting of the National Education Association, the nations largest teachers union, so long as the measure of merit is “developed with teachers, not impo
33、sed on them and not based on some test score.“ Hillary Clinton says she does not support merit pay for individual teachers but does advocate performance-based pay on a schoolwide basis. GIts hard to argue against the notion of rewarding the best teachers for doing a good job. But merit pay has a lon
34、g history in the U.S., and new programs to pay teachers according to test scores have already had an opposite effect in Florida and Houston. What holds more promise is broader efforts to transform the profession by combining merit pay with more opportunities for professional training and support, th
35、oughtful assessments of how teachers do their jobs and new career paths for top teachers. HTo the business-minded people who are increasingly running the nations schools, theres an obvious solution to the problems of teacher quality and teacher turnover offer better pay for better performance. The c
36、hallenge is deciding who deserves the extra cash. Merit-pay movements in the 1920s, 50s and 80s turned to failure just because of that question, as the perception grew that bonuses were awarded to principals pets. Charges of unfairness, along with unreliable funding and union opposition, sank such e
37、xperiments. IBut in an era when states are testing all students annually, theres a new, less subjective window onto how well a teacher does her job. As early as 1982, University of Tennessee statistician Sanders seized on the idea of using student test data to assess teacher performance. Working wit
38、h elementary-school test results in Tennessee, he devised a way to calculate an individual teachers contribution to student progress. Essentially, his method is this: he takes three or more years of student test results, projects a trajectory(轨迹 )for each student based on past performance and then l
39、ooks at whether, at the end of the year, the students in a given teachers class tended to stay on course, soar above expectations or fall short. Sanders uses statistical methods to adjust for flaws and gaps in the data. “Under the best circumstances,“ he claims, “we can reliably identify the top 10%
40、 to 30% of teachers.“ JSanders devised his method as a management tool for administrators, not necessarily as a basis for performance pay. But increasingly, thats what it is used for. Today he heads a group at the North Carolina-based software firm SAS, which performs value-added analysis for North
41、Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and districts in about 15 other states. Most use it to measure schoolwide performance, but some are beginning to use value-added calculations to determine bonuses for individual teachers. 37 Student test scores have become the key measure of teachers performan
42、ce due to the lack of well-accepted standards. 38 The merit pay program in Florida and Houston has turned out to be a failure. 39 The annual tests for students bring a new, less subjective way to measure the teaching quality. 40 The key factor to strengthen achievement for a school is a good teacher
43、. 41 Value-added calculations have been used to determine the bonuses a teacher deserves. 42 Teaching is an occupation known for low salary. 43 Sanders method was at first created as a management tool for administrators rather than a basis for performance pay. 44 Merit pay attempts to pay teachers a
44、ccording to their working performance. 45 Hillary Clinton agrees the school staff should be paid based on performance. 46 Merit-pay movements in the past didnt succeed because unfairness was created when deciding who should get the extra money. Section C 46 Looking for a new weight loss plan? Try li
45、ving on top of a mountain. Mountain air contains less oxygen than air at lower altitudes, so breathing it causes the heart to beat faster and the body to burn more energy. A handful of studies have found that athletes training at high altitudes tend to lose weight. Doctor Florian Lippl of the Univer
46、sity Hospital of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich wondered how the mountain air would affect overweight individuals if they werent doing any more physical activity than usual. Lippl and his colleagues invited 20 overweight men to an environmental research station about 300 meters below the summi
47、t of Zugspitze, a mountain around 2,970 meters near the Austrian border. They were allowed to eat as much as they liked. The men also gave blood so that researchers could test for hormones(荷尔蒙 )linked to appetite and fatness. At the end of the week, the men, whose mean weight starting out was 105 kg
48、, had lost on average about 1.5 kg. The mens blood pressure also dropped, which the researchers attributed to weight lost. Exactly what caused the weight loss is uncertain. Loss of appetite is common at higher altitudes, and indeed the men ate significantly less than usual-about 700 calories fewer p
49、er day. Lippl also notes that because their consumption was being recorded, they may have been more self-conscious about what they ate. Regardless, eating less accounts for just 1 kg of the 1.5 kg lost, says Lippl. He thinks the increased metabolic(新陈代谢的 )rate, which was measured, also contributed to weight loss but cannot separate the different effects with the given data Appetite loss at high altitudes could certainly be key, notes Damian Bailey, a physiologist at
