1、大学英语四级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 237及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay based on the picture below. You should start your essay with a brief account of peoples practice of forwarding best wishes messages and then express your views on this practice
2、. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. Section A （ A） Happy life the seniors enjoy nowadays. （ B） Problems of the aging population. （ C） A survey about economic growth. （ D） The rapid pace of retirements now. （ A） 5. （ B） 6. （ C） 20. （ D） 34. （ A） Fewer meat products will
3、go to developed countries. （ B） Both environment and public health will be threatened. （ C） Peoples income will decrease in developing countries. （ D） The pace of urbanization will slow down a bit. （ A） Consumer class rises in developing countries. （ B） Four-footed livestock are easier to raise. （ C
4、） Farm animals often provide nutrients. （ D） People are fond of milk, cheese and meat. （ A） They had an exact man-like appearance. （ B） They were more intelligent than humans. （ C） They could finish most housework for us. （ D） They could do many things like people. （ A） Its arms and hands have great
5、 strength. （ B） It can learn complicated operations by itself. （ C） It can play soccer with elementary students. （ D） It can teach students knowledge of robotics. （ A） They train children to learn integrated subjects. （ B） They improve students learning interest and efficiency. （ C） They can be used
6、 as suitable learning tools for children. （ D） They can free children from their daily homework. Section B （ A） An international drivers license. （ B） An Arizona drivers license. （ C） A regular license. （ D） A limited license. （ A） A written exam and an oral exam. （ B） A road test with a parallel pa
7、rking test. （ C） A thorough physical check-up. （ D） A traffic regulation test. （ A） A regular license will cost much more money. （ B） A regular license has a shorter effective period. （ C） A five-year license is much easier to get for students. （ D） A five-year license is more popular among students
8、. （ A） An Italian student studies for two years. （ B） An Italian immigrant resides for ever. （ C） A Spanish tourist is on a visit for half a year. （ D） A Spanish teacher teaches for three years. （ A） Someone phoned. （ B） Someone came. （ C） The woman went out. （ D） The woman phoned the man. （ A） She
9、didnt take Mr. Cooper to the restaurant. （ B） She didnt phone him when Mr. Cooper came. （ C） She has lost the card he had given to her. （ D） She made an excurse for her fault. （ A） An information card of a restaurant. （ B） His own business card. （ C） Mr. Coopers business card. （ D） A note of what to
10、 do. （ A） A student and a teacher. （ B） The secretary and the boss. （ C） A salesgirl and a customer. （ D） The wife and the husband. Section C （ A） He ran a village shop. （ B） He worked on a farm. （ C） He worked in an advertising agency. （ D） He was a gardener. （ A） It was stressful. （ B） It was colo
11、rful. （ C） It was peaceful. （ D） It was boring. （ A） His desire to start his own business. （ B） The crisis in his family life. （ C） His dream of living in the countryside. （ D） The decline in his health. （ A） The relationship between brain size and intelligence is unquestionable. （ B） People with sm
12、all brains may be highly intelligent as well. （ C） Einstein was the only exception of the brain size and intelligence relationship. （ D） It is meaningless to study the relationship between brain size and intelligence. （ A） In the 1830s. （ B） In the 1930s. （ C） In the 1860s. （ D） In the 1960s. （ A） A
13、dults and women tend to be more intelligent. （ B） Women on average have the same mental level with men. （ C） Women tend to score lower than men in intelligence tests. （ D） Women are generally more intelligent than men. （ A） Children were more likely to drink too much soda. （ B） Attention problems ha
14、d nothing to do with age and sex. （ C） Drinking soda might lead to aggressive behaviors. （ D） Signs of aggression were shown mainly by boys. （ A） Taking part in fights. （ B） Laughing at others. （ C） Consuming soft drinks. （ D） Attacking animals. （ A） Childrens friends. （ B） Parenting styles. （ C） Sl
15、eeping habits. （ D） Learning conditions. （ A） Caffeine. （ B） Sex. （ C） Sweets. （ D） Characters. Section A 26 If youre in charge of Christmas dinner, with all its interconnected tasks and challenges of timing when to preheat the oven, whether to put the potatoes in before the eggswhy not write down e
16、very【 C1】 _that needs doing, in order, then do them, checking them off as you go? That can be very helpful. The Checklist Manifesto, written by the journalist and doctor Atul Gawande, shows the importance of checklist when hospital doctors are【 C2】 _to tick off items on checklists as they carry out
17、routine but critical procedures. In one trial, the rate of infections from intravenous (静脉内的 ) drips fell from 11% of all patients to zero【 C3】 _because staff were compelled to work through a checklist of no-brainer items, such as【 C4】 _their hands. A more recent study, which included UK hospitals,
18、suggested that wider use of checklists might【 C5】 _40% of deaths during treatment. Unlike in medicine, the【 C6】 _uses of checklists in everyday lifea list for holiday packing, for instance, arent usually matters of life and death. The idea of making a checklist is so stupidly obvious that it seems i
19、mpossible it could have so【 C7】 _an effect. But the truth is that all life, not just medicine, is【 C8】 _complex: if highly trained intensive-care specialists can forget a【 C9】 _step, its sure that anyone might. Besides, the step-by-step structure of checklists can narrow your【 C10】 _to the next acti
20、on. All you have to remember is to “do the next right thing“. Then the next, and the next. A) action E) increasingly I) request M) subject B) crucial F) normally J) required N) vast C) focus G) potential K) shaking O) washing D) gradual H) prevent L) simply 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C
21、5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 What Your iPad Knows About You A Youve finally finished the book your co-worker recommended, so what to read next? If it is 5 a,m., chances are that youre reaching for a romance novelespecially if youre in Texas or Georgia. By early morni
22、ng, thrillers might start to look more appealing. And if Philip K. Dick is your favorite author, books about beer are probably more up your taste than anything about wine or liquor. B These are some of the insights from Scribd Inc. and Oyster, two startups that offer unlimited e-book rentals for a m
23、onthly subscription fee. Scribd, Oyster and Entitle Bookswhich just launched in Decemberare tracking reader behavior in hopes of figuring out recommendations of exactly what youll want to pick up next. C About 50% of the U.S. population owns a dedicated e-reader, according to a Pew Research study re
24、leased last month. In addition, 28% read an e-book last year, up from 23% the previous year. The services are expanding. Scribd, a San Francisco-based site that started selling monthly e-book subscriptions last October, announced this month that its app is available on Amazons Kindle Fire and Kindle
25、 Paperwhite. After running exclusively on Apples operating system, New York-based Oyster plans to expand to Android later this year. And Entitle is considering adding an all-you-can-read feature to complement its current “book of the month“-style subscription service. Subscription services are popul
26、ar because they “reduce the emotional burden“ of purchasing, says Julie Haddon, Scribd vice president of marketing. Buying a book creates pressure to finish and get your moneys worth, she adds. In addition, people might try to save money by buying a cheaper book instead of the one they really want.
27、D Brian Konash, 34, who works at Web startup Squarespace in Manhattan, joined Oyster two months ago because it didnt cause the buyers sense of guilty he experienced when purchasing Kindle e-books. “Youve already paid for the service, so you can read as much as you want,“ he says. “With other models,
28、 theres that little financial bite each time you want to buy a book and you worry that its going to be worthless.“ Mr. Konash, who has been picking books based on the sites suggestions, predicts hell read up to 10 more books a year beyond his usual 25. E An all-access subscription “lowers the activa
29、tion energy for reading,“ says Oyster CEO Eric Stromberg. Reading often has a high “activation energy“ because theres a time gap between wanting to read a book and then actually getting your hands on it, he says. “When you can order a book and instantly get it on your tablet, you can hear about the
30、book and then read it right there,“ says Willem van Lancker, Oysters chief product officer. F “From the publishing perspective, the biggest problem is how to get people to care about a new book,“ says Otis Chandler, CEO of Goodreads, a site where people share what theyre reading and post recommendat
31、ions. Goodreads, which was acquired by Amazon in March, uses an algorithm (运算法则 ) that recommends books that users with similar taste have enjoyed. G Oyster and Scribd ask readers to rate books, what they call an “active signal.“ They also track “passive signals,“ such as the percentage of a book th
32、at a reader finishes and the click rate, or how many people who are shown a book click through to learn more. The companies use that information among other factors to recommend books. Active signals represent what we wish we read, while passive signals are more honest, says Jared Friedman, Scribd c
33、hief technology officer. A lot of people give a 5-star rating to “The Great Gatsby,“ while they read greedily, but dont necessarily rate, thrillers like “The Da Vinci Code,“ for example. H Other findings: Self-help might be a popular market, yet only about 20% of people who start such a book finish
34、it. More than 80% of people who crack the pages of a mystery novel will find out who did it. People read through biographies at 20 pages per hour, while they read at three times that speed for erotica (色情作品 ). And higher “acceleration factor“or how much readers speed up as they get closer to finishi
35、ngcorrelates with higher average rating for a book. One of the highest acceleration factors comes from Kurt Vonneguts “Cats Cradle,“ which readers start speeding through at the halfway mark, Mr. Friedman says. All three companies allow users to hide their reading behavior from other customers, but u
36、sers cant opt out of their behavior being collected by the company itself. Entitle, however, says it keeps track of browsing and download information only. I Personalized recommendations drive 10 times more browsing traffic than lists based on themes such as “globe-trotting memoirs“ or “bad role mod
37、els“ that copy racks at the front of bookstores, Scribds Mr. Friedman says. The company is interested in combining algorithms with lists to create a list of best sellers that someone would, based on past reading behavior, find interesting. Another possible approach is to suggest different books or g
38、enres depending on time of day to take advantage of what the company knows about time-based preferences. J The algorithm doesnt just analyze behavior signals, but “reads“ through a books text to pull out different topics, genres and subjects, says Bryan Batten, chief executive of Entitle. Theres als
39、o a patent-pending (申请专利中的 ) service called “if these books had a baby,“ where users can input two books and find a third with similar themes. For example, the “baby“ of Joseph Hellers “Catch-22“ and Leo Tolstoys “Anna Karenina“ is Fyodor Dostoevskys “The Brothers Karamazov“ but the product of “Catc
40、h-22“ and Steve Jobs biography is a book called “Dealers of Lightning,“ about engineers at Xerox Corp. K Entitle operates on a tiered model: two books for $9.99 a month (the most popular plan), three for $14.99, and so on. For customers, the upside is being able to keep the e-books, even if they can
41、cel the service. The services, of course, compete with the library. But libraries have had limited e-book offerings and there are often waits for the books. Robert Wolven, co-chair of the American Library Associations Digital Content Working Group, says demand has increased significantly in the past
42、 18 months. He says he doesnt see the startups as a threat. L While libraries budget for e-books has been growing, licensing restrictions mean that popular titles often arent available, says Laura Girmscheid, research manager for the trade publication Library Journal, which recently released its fou
43、rth annual report on e-books in libraries. This, combined with holds on e-books, is the largest hurdle preventing people from using library e-books more. “Its just not convenient for instant access,“ Ms. Girmscheid says. 37 Subscribers cant stop e-book provider from collecting information about thei
44、r reading behavior. 38 Due to the time gap between wanting to read a book and actually starting reading, people need high activation energy to read a paper book. 39 The biggest problem for publication is how to raise readers interests in a new book. 40 Passive signals, like click rates, are more hon
45、est indications of reading behavior. 41 Some e-book rental websites track subscribers reading behavior so as to offer proper book recommendations. 42 Subscribers of Entitle can keep e-books they have bought even after they cancel the service. 43 Inconvenience for instant access to popular e-books pr
46、events people from using library e-books. 44 About four-fifth readers of self-help books fail to complete their reading. 45 When purchasing paper books, people might give up the one they want and choose a cheaper one in order to save money. 46 Personalized recommendations are more efficient in boost
47、ing books browsing rates than traditional best-sale lists based on different themes. Section C 46 In Sao Paulo, a baby boy is smiling, unaware that a court is deciding his fate. If it finds in his fathers favor, he is in all kinds of trouble. There may be a law in Brazil against giving your child a
48、name that might cause him to be laughed at, but daddy wants to call his son Osama bin Laden. The same father, Osvaldo Oliveira Soares, has a habit of trying to use babies as political statements. Nine years ago, he was banned from naming a previous son Saddam Hussein. Unlike Brazil, there is no law
49、in Britain that restricts a parents right to name their child. “Its not for the officials to say if someone has picked a name they dont think is suitable,“ says Alison Cathcart, superintendent official at Westminster register office. “But if someone is from a different culture and wants to register a name that sounds like a swear word in English then we do advise them of that.“ “Naming does matter,“ says Helen Petrie, a professor at the City Univ
