1、大学英语四级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 194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 Marks or Abilities by commenting on the saying, “Experience without learning is better than learning without experience. “ You should write at least 120 words but no m
2、ore than 180 words. Section A （ A） It is a kind of VOCs that mainly comes from building materials. （ B） It can make people blind at high concentrations. （ C） It is the principle constituent of air fresheners. （ D） It can cause nervous system problems at high concentrations. （ A） Work out all the det
3、ails on the nail salon solution. （ B） Conduct a new experiment in a nail salon. （ C） Find out a truely green solution of air pollution. （ D） Test more houseplants on their air cleaning ability. （ A） 0.91. （ B） 0.004. （ C） 0.19. （ D） 0.04. （ A） They are changing all the time. （ B） They are as importa
4、nt as long-term trends. （ C） They are relatively stable. （ D） They are not so important as long-term trends. （ A） NASAs next target for New Horizons. （ B） NASAs study of 2014 MU69. （ C） The naming of 2014 MU69. （ D） The study schedule of New Horizons. （ A） It is as red as Pluto. （ B） It is as red as
5、 Mars. （ C） It is redder than Pluto but not as red as Mars. （ D） It is redder than Mars but not as red as Pluto. （ A） Using observations collected by the Hubble Space Telescope. （ B） Using the materials that astronaut Amanda Zangari collected from it. （ C） Using observations collected by New Horizon
6、s spacecraft. （ D） Using the materials that NASAs space probe collected from it. Section B （ A） Editor and writer. （ B） Editor and reader. （ C） Editor and publisher. （ D） Colleagues. （ A） Astonished. （ B） Excited. （ C） Doubtful. （ D） Anxious. （ A） To talk about the payment. （ B） To share the good ne
7、ws. （ C） To make an appointment. （ D） To discuss the publication date. （ A） He needs to receive an important guest. （ B） He has to answer another phone call. （ C） He needs to leave the office soon. （ D） He has to attend a meeting right now. （ A） He has to meet an important client. （ B） He has to att
8、end an important meeting. （ C） He has to attend a business discussion. （ D） He has to sign an important contract. （ A） Help him buy some medicine. （ B） Change the time of the meeting. （ C） Send some documents to him. （ D） Send the cat in his office away. （ A） He has got a fever. （ B） He is allergic
9、to drugs. （ C） He is allergic to cats. （ D） He has got the flu. （ A） Make an appointment with the doctor. （ B） Go to see the doctor directly. （ C） Find the root cause of the mans allergy. （ D） Go to have a meeting in the mans company. Section C （ A） They hire only retired workers. （ B） They do all t
10、he work themselves. （ C） They close the hotel during low seasons. （ D） They try to keep down the cost of extra staff. （ A） Staff training. （ B） Bookkeeping. （ C） Cleaning and washing-up. （ D） Gardening and flower arranging. （ A） They have their hotel beautifully decorated. （ B） They provide deliciou
11、s food. （ C） They make their guests feel at home. （ D） They give parties regularly for their visitors. （ A） For the research for the US military. （ B） For the research for a handful of universities. （ C） For the research for some government facilities. （ D） For the provision of information to its us
12、ers. （ A） 60 million. （ B） 14 million. （ C） 84 million. （ D） 28 million. （ A） Conveniences brought to consumers through the use of the Internet. （ B） Implications of the increasing commercial use of the Internet. （ C） Security risks posed by the commercial use of the Internet. （ D） Advantages of Int
13、ernet banking over traditional banking. （ A） They have unwritten regulations. （ B） They never punish the violators. （ C） They have the promising prospects. （ D） They have strict rules. （ A） He will be perceived as a successful person. （ B） He will be less likely to get promotion. （ C） He will be mor
14、e successful. （ D） He will be perceived as a shameless climber. （ A） Try to modify it. （ B） Criticize it directly. （ C） Dont judge it. （ D） Shoot it down. （ A） He who creates the idea deserves the credit himself. （ B） It doesnt matter if a business owner borrows his employees idea. （ C） You can borr
15、ow other peoples idea if you work as a team. （ D） The victim will forget soon if you borrow his idea. Section A 26 For centuries, boys were top of the class. But these days, thats no longer the【 C1】 _ . A new study by the OECD, examined how 15-year-old boys and girls performed at reading, mathematic
16、s and science. Boys still score somewhat better at maths, and in science the genders are【 C2】 _ equal. But when it comes to the students who really【 C3】 _ , the difference is obvious: boys are 50% more likely than girls to fall【 C4】 _ of basic standards in all three areas. Why are girls performing b
17、etter at school than their male classmates? First, girls read more than boys. Reading【 C5】 _ is the basis upon which all other learning is built. When boys dont do well at reading, their performance in other school subjects【 C6】 _ too. Second, girls spend more time on homework. Researchers suggest t
18、hat doing homework【 C7】 _ by teachers is linked to better performance in maths, reading and science. Boys, it【 C8】 _ , spend more of their free time in the virtual world: they are 17% more likely to play online games than girls every day. They also use the Internet more. Third, peer pressure plays a
19、【 C9】 _ . A lot of boys decide early on that they are just too cool for school which means theyre more likely to be【 C10】 _ in class. Teachers mark them down for this. In anonymous(匿名的 )tests, boys perform better. In fact, the gender gap in reading drops by a third when teachers dont know the gender
20、 of the pupil they are marking. A)appears I)proficiency B)case J)role C)distinguishes K)roughly D)dramatically L)set E)engaged M)short F)experience N)struggle G)lazy O)suffers H)noisy 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 Green Burial
21、s: Thinking Outside the Box A)When Bonnie Ramey buried her husband two years ago, she knew she didnt want to have a typical funeral ceremony at a landscaped cemetery plot. “The commercialization of funerals is getting out of control,“ she said. “ They get you at your weakest point. In my opinion, th
22、eyre just ripping off the dead. “ Bonnie and her husband, Charles, both nature lovers, spent many hours hiking through the wooded Appalachian foothills surrounding their home in rural South Carolina. So after Charles died, Bonnies choice of burial spots was an easy one down the road from her house i
23、s Memorial Ecosystems, one of the only places in the United States devoted to environmentally sensitive or “green“ burials. Simple Living, Simple Dying B)The ideas behind “green“ burials are simple. Bodies are not embalmed(对尸体进行防腐处理 ). Elaborate caskets made of metal or rare tropical hardwoods are r
24、eplaced with fabric burial shrouds or simple, biodegradable(生物所能分解的 )coffins made of wood or cardboard. Concrete grave liners or vaults that prevent the ground above the coffin from settling are avoided. Perhaps most significantly, in place of carefully trimmed cemetery grounds, native plants and wi
25、ldflowers are allowed to flourish, turning the burial ground into a nature preserve. “It preserves the land and the habitat for the animals,“ said Ramey. “Our habitat is going quickly, and if we dont preserve it, we wont have any. “ Though there are over 200 green cemeteries in Great Britain, the mo
26、vement is unknown in the United States. South Carolina, Florida, California and Texas have the only four green cemeteries currently operating in America. Several more green burial facilities are being planned throughout the country. Everything Old Is New Again C)“A green burial is not about extra wo
27、rk its about not doing extra work,“ said Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a group of grassroots organizations interested in alternatives to the choices offered by the funeral industry. And for advocates of green burials, these arent unique or unusual ceremonies. “
28、 What people need to remember is that this is not new,“ said Slocum. “This is a return to what we used to do before the commercial funeral industry came along. “ D)Indeed, many religious traditions follow the basic principles of green burials. Traditional Jewish burial rites, for example, view embal
29、ming as an insult to the dead. Only coffins made completely of wood are allowed a metal coffin would be a disrespectful effort to artificially preserve the body. The modern practice of embalming is relatively new. It was largely unknown until the Civil War, when bodies of Union soldiers were often e
30、mbalmed in preparation for the long trip home from Southern battlefields. Civil War-area embalming fluids contained poisonous arsenic(砒霜 ). Formaldehyde(甲醛 )is now used as a preservative(防腐剂 ), but formaldehyde is not without its risks. Does Embalming Cause Cancer? E)Studies by the National Cancer I
31、nstitute have found that embalmers and anatomists(解剖学家 ), exposed daily to formaldehyde, are at an increased risk for leukemia and brain cancer. NCI investigators concluded that exposure to formaldehyde may particularly cause myeloid(骨髓的 )leukemia, though further studies are needed. The Internationa
32、l Agency for Research on Cancer lists formaldehyde as a known matter which can cause cancer. It is listed by the Environmental Protection Agency as a suspected carcinogen(致癌物质 ), and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration has established a permissible exposure limit of 0. 75 parts per mil
33、lion averaged over an 8-hour work shift. Consumers are often confused about state and local requirements for dealing with dead bodies, and its generally assumed that health codes require embalming. Not So, According to Slocum F)“Embalming is never routinely required by law,“ said Slocum, adding that
34、 cold storage is an acceptable alternative for preserving a body, in addition to being much safer and less invasive. “No law requires a casket,“ Slocum adds. “And a grave liner or vaultnowhere are they required by law. “ Voicing Environmental Concerns G)In addition to concerns over formaldehyde expo
35、sure, some suspect that the preservative may be leaking into groundwater supplies from the millions of bodies buried every year. The fact that elevated levels of arsenic have been found in the groundwater near Civil War-era cemeteries buttresses the argument. Formaldehyde has been found in groundwat
36、er sampling wells near cemeteries. But scientific data are limited, and formaldehydes long-term health effects in the environment are believed to be minorformaldehyde evaporates readily and is biodegradable. H)But the environmental effects of cemeteries go beyond formaldehyde. Some land-use planners
37、 are concerned about the impact of turning vast tracts of land into heavily landscaped cemeteries, and the resulting use of fertilizers, pesticides, water supplies and gasoline-powered landscaping equipment. “Cemeteries just seemed like an ecological wasteland,“ said David Schroeder, a landscape arc
38、hitect-in-training who specializes in green burial sites. “ There was a period of time in the 1800s when cemeteries were designed like parks,“ said Schroeder. “ They were like a garden. Now, most are about economics. “ I)As an example of the economics that drive burial practices, Schroeder points to
39、 the cemetery vaults and grave liners that are not required by the law, but are required by most cemeteries. “ Cemetery vaults are designed to keep the ground flat to make things easier for the lawn mowers,“ he said. In Schroeders model for green burials, the topsoil is separated from other layers o
40、f soil, and is returned to its original place after the body is placed in the grave. “ The top layers are a biological hotbed. Seeds and microbes(微生物 )are kept near the surface,“ he said. J)Preserving undeveloped land was foremost in John Wilkersons mind when he and his brother created Glendale Memo
41、rial Gardens, a green burial site in north Florida. One of the last wishes of Wilkersons father was that the family farm be protected from development. Both of his parents are now buried on the site. “It was the best answer we could find to keep this farm from being developed,“ said Wilkerson. “It t
42、ook their death to speed action. They did not like the idea of the circus, the modern-day funeral,“ said Wilkerson. “They thought it was out of control, it was ridiculous. “ But in addition to the environmental benefits, most families participating in green burials agree that the cost savings are si
43、gnificant. “ There is, in fact, a large percentage of American people who are resistant to the large $ 10,000 funeral, especially the embalming. We dont even allow it,“ said Wilkerson. Estimates vary from state to state, but the average cost of a typical funeral in a commercial cemetery is between $
44、5,000 and $ 10,000. A green burial, however, is usually less than $ 3,000. “We have allowed the commercial funeral industry to convince us that the only way to measure our love for our dead is through the amount of conspicuous consumption that we lavish on them,“ said Slocum. 37 Generally speaking,
45、in the United States, the average expense of a normal commercial funeral is much more than that of a green burial. 38 In the authors opinion, a “green“ burial refers to a green cemetery which will become a nature preserve. 39 According to Schroeder, the topsoil of a standard green cemetery should be
46、 a biological hotbed. 40 It is not the law but the cemeteries that require cemetery vaults and grave liners. 41 Before the commercial funeral industry became popular, people used to practise green burials. 42 Traditional Jewish principles regard embalming as an offense to the dead. 43 At present, co
47、mpared with the United States, Great Britain has done a better job in increasing the popularity of green cemeteries. 44 People under the exposure of formaldehyde every day are more likely to get leukemia and brain cancer. 45 According to David Schroeder, commercialized cemeteries will do harm to the
48、 ecological environment. 46 The Funeral Consumers Alliance is a group of unofficial organizations at the basic level in favor of green burial. Section C 46 For many people, genetically modified foods raise all kinds of questions. Particularly in countries with long agrarian(耕地的 )traditions the idea
49、seems against nature. In fact, genetically modified foods are already very much a part of our lives. A third of the corn and more than half the soybeans and cotton grown in the US last year were the products of biotechnology, according to the Department of Agriculture. More than 65 million acres of genetically modified crops will be planted in the US this year. The genetic genie is out of the bottle. Yet there are clearly some very real issues that need to be resolved. Like any new product enterin
