1、大学英语四级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 245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 Do One Thing at a Time, And Do It Well by commenting on the saying, “I can do many things well at a time if given chances.“ You should write at least 120 words but no
2、more than 180 words. Do One Thing at a Time, And Do It Well Section A （ A） A businessman. （ B） A doctor. （ C） A full-time father. （ D） A lawmaker. （ A） Japan. （ B） The UK. （ C） The US. （ D） Australia. （ A） It will be hard to hire enough qualified teachers. （ B） British government will decide to cut
3、down educational fund. （ C） More and more students will not be qualified for graduation. （ D） Teachers pay will be restricted in England and Wales only. （ A） Offer more training to school leaders. （ B） Rethink the pay policies for teachers. （ C） Increase the number of pupils. （ D） Reform the educati
4、on system as a whole. （ A） She watched it on ABC News. （ B） She watched a video on YouTube. （ C） She witnessed it on the spot. （ D） She learned it from the fisherman. （ A） It snapped off the bait on the hook. （ B） It swung violently at the fisherman. （ C） It sank deep in the sea and escaped. （ D） It
5、 struggled hard to unhook itself. （ A） He was shocked at the sight of the white shark. （ B） He failed to get his fishing hook back from the shark. （ C） He was frightened into throwing his fishing rod away. （ D） He managed to free the white shark from the hook. Section B （ A） Consult the man about in
6、vestment strategy. （ B） Draw a large amount of money. （ C） Ask the man for financial advice. （ D） Open some bank accounts. （ A） Daily expenses. （ B） Big expenses. （ C） Holidays. （ D） Education fee. （ A） Her ID card and passport. （ B） Her personal references. （ C） Her social security number. （ D） Her
7、 cover letter. （ A） A salesman. （ B） A real estate agent. （ C） A bank clerk. （ D） A consultant. （ A） It takes up much room. （ B） It was delivered the day before yesterday. （ C） It was sold at 15% discount. （ D） It is of the same size as the old one. （ A） It is of good quality. （ B） It works well. （
8、C） It is pretty huge. （ D） Its not functioning. （ A） He thinks its a good bargain. （ B） He finds its just what he needs. （ C） He will use it more often than before. （ D） He considers it as a symbol of wealth. （ A） Rearrange its place. （ B） Return it to the store. （ C） Sell it to her. （ D） Give it to
9、 his friend. Section C （ A） Exposure to excessive noise. （ B） Lack of rest. （ C） Unpreventable accident. （ D） Intense work pressure. （ A） Moderate noise is harmless. （ B） Sound above 80 decibels can hurt hearing. （ C） Noise can make people feel stressed. （ D） There is no noise on campus. （ A） Do med
10、ical checkup regularly. （ B） Avoid making noise. （ C） Limit exposure to harmful noise. （ D） Live in the place without noises. （ A） Measure damaging noises on campus. （ B） Make a list of campus noises. （ C） Figure out how to fight against noise. （ D） Explain the concept of noise. （ A） It costs no mor
11、e than the normal construction. （ B） It does a poor job of facing extreme weather. （ C） It holds up much better to extreme weather. （ D） It impacts weather changes and the economy. （ A） Wildfires. （ B） Famine. （ C） Flood. （ D） Plague. （ A） Make people come up with rough numbers and estimates. （ B） M
12、ake people use less energy and generate fewer gases. （ C） Help scientists figure out what the future will bring. （ D） Encourage companies to emit more carbon dioxide. （ A） You will be delighted. （ B） You will not be affected. （ C） You may feel depressed. （ D） You will feel lonely. （ A） Social bonds
13、will stay steady. （ B） One will lose many friends. （ C） People can make friends more easily （ D） A social network will be destroyed. （ A） Transmit happy feelings to others. （ B） Reach out to people who need help. （ C） Pay more attention to lonely people. （ D） Interact with a happy person frequently.
14、 Section A 26 Back in the day, a good report card earned you a parental pat on the back, but now it could be money in your pocket. Experiments with cash incentives (激励 ) for students have been catching on in public-school districts across the country, and so has the debate over whether they are a【 C
15、1】 _tool for hard-to-motivate students. According to a study【 C2】 _today by the social-policy research group MDRC, a non-profit organization, cash incentives combined with counseling offered “real hope“ to low-income and nontraditional students at two Louisiana community colleges. The program【 C3】 _
16、by the Louisiana Department of Social Services and the Louisiana Workforce Commission was simple: enroll in college at least half-time,【 C4】_at least a C average and earn $1,000 a semester for up to two terms. Participants, who were randomly【 C5】 _, were 30% more likely to register for a second seme
17、ster than were students who were not offered the supplemental financial【 C6】_. And the participants who were first offered cash incentives in spring 2004 and thus whose progress was tracked for longer than that of subsequent groups before Hurricane Katrina【 C7】 _forced researchers to suspend the sur
18、vey for several months in August 2005 were also more likely than their peers to be enrolled in college a year after they had finished the two-term program. Students offered cash incentives in the Louisiana program earned more【 C8】 _and were more likely to attain a C average than were nonparticipants
19、. And they showed psychological【 C9】 _too, reporting more positive feelings about themselves and their abilities to【 C10】_their goals for the future. A) abruptly E) brilliant I) fulfilled M) released B) accomplish F) claim J) funded N) retain C) aid G) cooperative K) maintain O) selected D) benefits
20、 H) credits L) naturally 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 Schools outside cities A With its sandy beaches, charming ruins and occasionally blue waters, the Isle of Wight is a perfect spot off Englands southern coast. Wealthy Lond
21、oners sail their boats there. It seems odd that such a place should contain some of the worst-performing schools in England. But it does: and in this, the Isle of Wight is not quite as strange as it seems. B Provisional figures show that last year just 49% of 16-year-olds on the island got at least
22、five C grades, including in English and maths, in GCSE exams. That is fewer than in any of Londons 32 boroughs (行政区 ), or indeed anywhere in the southern half of England apart from nearby Portsmouth. In the previous year the Isle of Wight was second to bottom in the whole country. Just 23% of pupils
23、 entitled to free school meals (a representative of poverty) got five decent grades, compared with a national average of 36%. In September the islands schools were deemed so bad that Hampshire County Council took them over. C Part of the explanation is distinctively local. Luring good teachers to an
24、 out-of-the-way spot is hard. In 2011 the island endured a confused transition from the sort of three-tier school system common in America, with primary, middle and secondary schools, to the two-tier one that is standard in England. But its results were bad even before that change. The Isle of Wight
25、s real problems are structural. It suffers from three things that might appear to be advantages but are actually the opposite. The island lacks a large city: it has some, but not many, poor children: and it is almost entirely white. D Englands worst schools used to be urban, poor and black or someti
26、mes Asian. But these days pupils, including poor ones, often fare better in inner cities than elsewhere. In Tower Hamlets, an east London borough that is the third most deprived place in England, children entitled to free school meals do better in GCSE exams than do all children in the country as a
27、whole. Bangladeshis, who are concentrated in that borough, used to perform considerably worse than whites nationally: now they do better. E Poor whites are now the countrys signal educational underachievers. Just 31% of white British children entitled to free school meals got five good GCSEs two yea
28、rs ago, fewer than poor children from any other ethnic group. They fare especially badly in suburbs, small towns and on the coast places like the Isle of Wight. F Although the island contains pockets of poverty, it is hardly poverty-stricken: overall it comes 106th out of 326 local authorities in En
29、gland on the governments deprivation index. A bigger problem is a pervasive lack of faith in education as a means of self-improvement. Steph Boyd, who runs a new free school on the island, says some parents doubt whether the education system can help their children not altogether surprising given th
30、e islands failings. A few are more anxious for their offspring to go out and get jobs. And nearby career options are limited, points out Pat Goodhead, the headmistress of Christ the King College, the islands best secondary school. The jobs pages of the County Press, the local newspaper, are filled w
31、ith advertisements for care workers, barmen and cleaners. The advantage of deep poverty G Oddly, the Isle of Wight might do better if it were poorer. Truly poor parts of England receive large amounts of government cash. Schools in Tower Hamlets get 7,014 a year for each child, compared with 4,489 in
32、 the Isle of Wight. In addition, secondary schools get 900 for each poor child thanks to the “pupil premium“ introduced by the coalition government. Poverty-stricken spots also benefit from energetic, idealistic young teachers. Teach First, a programme that sends top graduates into poor schools for
33、at least two years, started in London in 2002. Then it expanded to other big cities such as Manchester. Last year it started sending teachers to south coast towns, but in tiny numbers. Of the 1,261 graduates who joined the programme last year, just 25 were placed on the entire south coast, compared
34、with 553 in London. H Poor children do best in schools where they are either scarce or very numerous. Where they are few, teachers can give them plenty of attention. Where they are numerous, as in the East End of London, schools have no choice but to focus on them. Most ill-served are those who fall
35、 in between, in schools where they are insufficiently numerous to merit attention but too many to succeed alone. The Isle of Wights six state secondary schools are all stuck in the unhappy middle: between 9% and 17% of the children in them are entitled to free school meals. I One woman, who moved to
36、 the island from east London with her young daughter, suspects that the Isle of Wights lack of diversity is itself a problem. She may be right about that. Illiteracy among white British children can be easier to overlook than illiteracy among immigrants. Where schools are forced to help the latter,
37、natives often benefit too, says Matthew Coffey of Ofsted, the schools inspectorate. That seems to have happened in Lincolnshire, which has seen a surge in Portuguese and east European immigration. J The government and Ofsted are increasingly worried about the gap in attainment between poor white Bri
38、tons and the rest. The Department for Education reckons changing the way schools success is measured could help. The current emphasis on grades of C and above encourages teachers to focus on children on the edge of attaining that grade, at the expense of those who do really badly. Beginning in 2016
39、schools will have to track more closely the progress of each child, no matter what grades they are predicted to get. That should raise attentions of schools that have been able to coast along, ignoring the neediest, to give them more attention. But such reforms may not make much difference on the Is
40、le of Wight. Schools there have struggled even against the current benchmark. K They might look to east London for inspiration. The dramatic improvement in Tower Hamlets resulted partly from efforts to change local culture. Schools ran programmes through mosques to tackle absenteeism (旷课 ). Parents
41、were encouraged to become governors. But change will be harder outside the capital. Tower Hamlets benefits from nearby Canary Wharf, the capitals second financial district, which supplies good jobs and middle-class advisers. The levers of change are less obvious where poor children are scattered thi
42、n. And there are fewer obvious institutions through which to try and improve the lot of the godless white majority. 37 Changing the way schools success is measured may of little help to improve the education of the Isle of Wight. 38 Compared with the illiteracy among immigrants, British white illite
43、rates are easier to be neglected. 39 Poor children can receive enough attention either in schools with large number of poor students or those with few poor students. 40 More than half of the 16-year-old students on the Isle of Wight failed to get at least five C grades in GCSE exams last year. 41 Pa
44、rents in the Isle of Wight generally lack confidence in the education system. 42 Poor schools in big cities embrace more young energetic teachers than those schools in south coast. 43 Nowadays poor whites are the representatives of Britains educational underachievers. 44 In Tower Hamlets, poor child
45、rens performances in GCSE are better than those of any other children in the whole country. 45 Changing local culture is one of the reasons that Tower Hamlets obtain great progress in its school education. 46 Two-tier school system did not exert positive influence on the Isle of Wights education. Se
46、ction C 46 Although the stigma (耻辱 ) once associated with mental illness has gradually gone away in recent years, most of the Americans who have clinical depression still dont get treated for it, partly because many are too embarrassed to go to a psychologist. In fact, the majority of depressed peop
47、le who seek professional help turn first not to a psychologist but to their primary-care physician. But do regular doctors really know how to identify depression? A large new scientific review suggests they dont. In a review of 41 previous studies, the authors found that general practitioners make f
48、requent mistakes, missing true cases of depression about half the time and incorrectly diagnosing it in 19% of healthy people. Alex Mitchell, Amol Vaze and Sanjay Rao of Leicester General Hospital in the U.K. estimate that about 1 in 5 people in developed nations will experience depression in their
49、lifetime. That means that among a general patient population of 100, about 20 will develop the condition, but the typical doctor will find it in only 10 of those who have it. And among the 80 healthy people, the doctor will incorrectly identify depression in 15. This is significant because depression can make the patient and his or her family weak. Depression also carries an enormous social burden, leading to missed work days, loss of productivity and increases in heal
