1、大学英语四级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 265及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a letter of inquiry following the outline given below. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. Write your essay on Answer Sheet 1. 假设你是刘梅，准备去美国留学。现向申请学校写信，咨询相关事宜。信件内容
2、如下： 1自我介绍 2咨询相关事宜，如签证、学费、奖学金和语言考试等 3表示感谢，并希望早日得到答复 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. （ A） The presidential election. （ B） Elect
3、ion 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 food market. （ A） About five months. （ B） Mo
4、re 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 team ranges in age from 15 to 26. （ D） They ar
5、e 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 from others. （ D） It was the best. （ A） Its c
6、heaper 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 literature. （ B） Elementary education. （ C） Developm
7、ental 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 same person. （ B） They are friends of the spe
8、akers. （ 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） It is an international organization （ B） It only exists in poor countri
9、es. （ C） People always think highly of it. （ D） Anyone can join the group easily. （ A） To try to stop the war in Italy. （ B） To help the wounded in the battle. （ C） To form an international treaty. （ D） To aid the injured in the earthquake. （ A） Protecting the prisoners of war. （ B） Teaching first a
10、id to the public. （ C） Raising money for public fund. （ D） Publicizing the idea of charity. （ A） They are offered for those with an interest in the courses. （ B） Employers and employees in a company are both welcome. （ C） People who will retire in a few years are the target students. （ D） Students f
11、rom a normal university can attend the courses. （ A） Specialist speakers. （ B） Retired people. （ C） Employers. （ D） Senior citizens. （ A） They can attend any courses for free. （ B） They arrange discussion groups for people. （ C） They learn how to communicate with others. （ D） They want to be carpent
12、ers or craftsmen. （ A） It charges at a reduced rate. （ B） It is available every day. （ C） It is open to all people. （ D） It is provided only in the evening. （ A） They have to learn basics of English. （ B） They know clearly what they want to learn. （ C） It is good for them to learn general English sk
13、ills. （ D） They want to have an up-to-date knowledge of English. （ A） The knowledge of teachers. （ B） The behaviors of students. （ C） The principles of schools. （ D） The introduction of books. （ A） English for doctors. （ B） English for lawyers. （ C） English for reporters. （ D） English for businessma
14、n. Section A 26 When Louise Brown was born on 25 July 1978, she kicked off an era. The first “test tube baby“ is a mother herself now, and shes been joined by millions of others born with the【 C1】 _of in vitro fertilization(体外受精 ), or IVF. Now specialists wonder whether people who were conceived by
15、IVF are likely to be【 C2】 _. “By and large, the kids are just fine. Its not like the kids having【 C3】 _arms or heads,“ says Carmen Sapienza, a scientist at Temple University. But none is older than their early 30s, and the vast【 C4】 _are under the age of 20, so they havent had time for long-term hea
16、lth problems to show up. One source of worry is that so many IVF babies have low birth weight. Children-conceived through IVF are more likely to【 C5】 _less than 2.5 kilograms than are babies conceived【 C6】 _. That could spell trouble ahead, because low-birth-weight babies often have long-term health
17、 problems. Theyre more likely to be obese, to have diabetes(糖尿病 )or other problems. With that in mind, Sapienza and colleagues have looked at genes that are likely to play a role in such health problems. They found that certain DNA-patterns, which affect how genes are【 C7】 _, are different between I
18、VF and non-IVF children. Theres no way to tell if thats because of the【 C8】 _used to produce the IVF babies or whether the difference has something to do with the underlying infertility problem the parents had. Its also【 C9】 _whether these gene-expression differences will translate into health diffe
19、rences. But it does suggest that children conceived by IVF are【 C10】 _on some level. A)weigh E)unclear I)unique M)majority B)technology F)naturally J)healthy N)minority C)help G)expressed K)explained O)completely D)unsure H)procedure L)extra 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【
20、 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 How Should Teachers Be Rewarded? AWe never forget our best teachersthose 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 o
21、ur lives. BIt would 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 rew
22、arded so that the best teachersthe most competent, caring and compellingremain 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
23、before for student 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
24、 over the next 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 ra
25、nked just 17th 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 materi
26、als. DAcross 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 migh
27、t be called combat pay for teachers who commit to working in the most distressed schools. But the idea gaining the most motivationand controversyis merit pay, which attempts to measure the quality of teachers work and pay teachers accordingly. ETraditionally, public-school salaries are based on year
28、s spent on 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 m
29、easure competence, 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 tea
30、chers who 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 hig
31、hly qualified candidates to the professionall 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. Meri
32、t pay has 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,
33、 not imposed 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
34、has a long 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 su
35、pport, thoughtful 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 performan
36、ce. The challenge 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, sa
37、nk such experiments. 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. Wo
38、rking with 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 a
39、nd then looks 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 th
40、e top 10% 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 f
41、or North 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
42、performance 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 goo
43、d teacher. 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 t
44、eachers according 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 pla
45、n? Try living 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 t
46、he University 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
47、the summit 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 w
48、as 105 kg, 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 calorie
49、s fewer per 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 physiologis
