1、大学英语四级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 48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 The Returning of Traditional Chinese Culture following the outline given below. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. 1近年来社会上出现国学热 2国学回归的意义 3我
2、们应该怎样做 The Returning of Traditional Chinese Culture Section A （ A） Buy the tickets on the Internet. （ B） Buy the tickets on the phone. （ C） Buy the tickets at the train station. （ D） Buy the tickets at the tickets outlets. （ A） He majors in diplomacy. （ B） He is interested in American history. （ C）
3、He wants to be a diplomat in the future. （ D） He gave a speech on Sino-US relations last Wednesday. （ A） He would like to stay in a big city. （ B） He prefers to go to a smaller city. （ C） He doesnt like second-tier cities. （ D） He dreams of being a big fish. （ A） Her blood pressure is a little high.
4、 （ B） She needs a further check. （ C） She gets a fever. （ D） She is not seriously ill. （ A） The visual effect of the TV is not satisfying. （ B） The TV is not suitable for her. （ C） She cannot afford the TV. （ D） Some functions of the TV are useless. （ A） The man should lose some weight. （ B） The man
5、 is in poor health. （ C） The oily food is harmful to the mans health. （ D） The woman would like to cook for the man. （ A） Waiting to watch a film outside the cinema. （ B） Waiting to buy some drinks at the school bar. （ C） Discussing the plot and actors of a movie. （ D） Waiting for the hotdog at the
6、snack bar. （ A） The apartment is far from the campus. （ B） The traffic is not convenient. （ C） The apartment is located in the center of the city. （ D） There is no furniture in the apartment. （ A） He is proficient in driving. （ B） He is kind and learned. （ C） He knows a shortcut to the museum. （ D）
7、He is an inexperienced taxi driver. （ A） It is famous for its collection of paintings. （ B） It is likely to close at 6:00. （ C） It is the landmark of the city. （ D） It is a place the tourists must visit. （ A） it is cheaper than other restaurants. （ B） The portions are smaller than other restaurants.
8、 （ C） Its decoration is very good. （ D） The service is fabulous. （ A） There is no taxi around the museum. （ B） There is a pedestrian street in front of the museum. （ C） There is no bus station by the museum. （ D） There is a subway station just outside the museum. （ A） His car is broken down. （ B） He
9、 is caught in an accident. （ C） His car is parked in a no-parking area. （ D） His car ran a red light. （ A） It is covered by branches. （ B） It is too far to be seen. （ C） It cant be seen in a car. （ D） Its color is not so bright. （ A） Go to the lecture on the history of the English language. （ B） Acc
10、ept the coupons for a free burger. （ C） Return 150 dollars to the man. （ D） Give the man a ticket and tow his car away. Section B （ A） A great number of workers feel embarrassed when talking about office gossip. （ B） More than half of the workers confess that they are involved in office gossip. （ C）
11、 The percentage of workers involved in office gossip has increased. （ D） Four years ago workers were reluctant to talk about office gossip. （ A） Office gossip may boost when the company expands. （ B） Workers dare not to gossip when the company is downsizing. （ C） Office gossip may relatively drop wh
12、en the economy turns better. （ D） In a financial crisis, workers are over pressured to gossip. （ A） It is beneficial to the workers productivity. （ B） It helps to deliver the latest news of the company. （ C） It is an efficient way to relax peoples mind. （ D） It is a direct way for the boss to know h
13、is workers. （ A） People should take in less fat as they can. （ B） It is the reason for peoples obesity. （ C） It is useless for peoples health. （ D） It adds a burden to peoples heart. （ A） It is indispensible for building cell walls. （ B） It makes peoples body cells flexible. （ C） It makes peoples bo
14、dy cells rigid and stiff. （ D） It helps to deliver nutrients to the cells. （ A） The body cells will die. （ B） Children will stop growing in height. （ C） It will accelerate the process of aging. （ D） The cell walls will be less responsive and flexible. （ A） Corn, soy and vegetables. . （ B） Pork, chic
15、ken and beef. （ C） Mutton, olive and corn. （ D） Fish, nuts and sea vegetables. （ A） Over 80% teens get access to social media sites. （ B） A quarter of the teens have a Twitter account. （ C） Half of the teens have multiple accounts on social media sites. （ D） The number of teen Twitter users has doub
16、led since 2009. （ A） He cant put his phone aside and listen to the teacher in class. （ B） He talks over the phone more than an hour a day. （ C） He feels uneasy without Internet. （ D） He has no time to talk with his parents. （ A） Teens could take control over themselves at the second stage. （ B） Ther
17、e is no serious harm to the teens at the first stage. （ C） Teens couldnt stop playing despite serious consequences in the third stage. （ D） If the teens play Face book more than three hours, they are in the second stage. Section C 26 There was a time when any personal information that was gathered a
18、bout us was typed on a piece of paper and【 B1】 _in a file cabinet. It could remain there for years and, often forgotten, never reach the outside world. Things have done a complete about-face since then.【 B2】 _for the change has been the astonishingly swift development in recent years of the computer
19、. Today, any data that is【 B3】 _about us in one place or another and for one reason or another can be stored in a computer bank. It can then be easily passed to other computer banks. They are owned by【 B4】 _and by private businesses and corporations, lending institutions, direct mailing and telemark
20、eting firms, credit bureaus, credit card companies, and government【 B5】 _at the local, state, and federal level. A growing number of Americans are seeing the accumulation and【 B6】 _of computerized data as a frightening invasion of their privacy. Surveys show that the number of worried Americans has
21、been【 B7】 _growing over the years as the computer becomes increasingly efficient, easier to operate, and less costly to purchase and【 B8】 _. In 1970, a national survey showed that 37 percent of the people【 B9】 _felt their privacy was being invaded. Seven years later, 47 percent expressed the same wo
22、rry. A recent survey by a credit bureau revealed that the number of alarmed citizens had【 B10】 _to 76 percent. 27 【 B1】 28 【 B2】 29 【 B3】 30 【 B4】 31 【 B5】 32 【 B6】 33 【 B7】 34 【 B8】 35 【 B9】 36 【 B10】 Section A 36 Although the enjoyment of color is universal and color theory has all kinds of names
23、to it, color remains a very emotional and subjective element. Our awareness of color is【 C1】 _conditioned by our culture, but color also probably【 C2】_our instincts. Our psyche(心灵 )reacts in different ways to colors in part through subjective【 C3】 _and in part through cultural conditioning, and the
24、two are often hard to separate. Black and white, for example,【 C4】 _us intuitively(直觉地 )of night and day, darkness and lights their link with evil and good is likely the result of culture. There exists a【 C5】 _tendency to feel that some colors are warm whereas other colors are cool. Colors that are
25、near red on the color wheel(色轮 )are【 C6】 _warm colors which seem more【 C7】 _; and colors near blue are regarded as cool colors, which seem more【 C8】 _Scientists have demonstrated that exposure to red light increases the heartbeat and that exposure to blue light slows it down. For artists the【 C9】 _o
26、f warm and cool depends on the contrasting relationship between any two colors. A violet might be cooler than an orange, because it has blue in it, and the same violet might be warmer than green, because it has red in it. The warm-cool【 C10】_helps to create exciting color contrasts because warm colo
27、rs seem warmer next to cool colors and cool colors seem cooler next to warm colors. A)partially F)associations K)arouses B)considered G)remove L)satisfying C)distinction H)universal M)respectively D)appointment I)ascribes N)remind E)relaxing J)stimulating O)replacement 37 【 C1】 38 【 C2】 39 【 C3】 40
28、【 C4】 41 【 C5】 42 【 C6】 43 【 C7】 44 【 C8】 45 【 C9】 46 【 C10】 Section B 46 Is Higher Education a Bubble? A)My colleague at Democracy in America draws attention to an ongoing debate over the nature of higher education, and, in particular, steady increases in the cost of getting one. The question of th
29、e hour is: is higher education a bubble? B)Consider: If you can only afford to go to a state university, dont be too annoyed. Except this: Kevin Drum went to a state university that does not exist anymore. When he graduated from Cal State Long Beach in 1981, he paid $160 in fees. If he graduated fro
30、m the same institution today, the tuition he would have paid for this year would be $4 335. They officially call it “tuition“ now, because its not meant to be a nominal(名义上的 )“fee“ anymore. Its simply the price you pay for your education, as a customer, and next year it will be higher, a lot higher.
31、 Unless the direction of things changes soon, it will be $ 6 450. And the year after that? It will be even higher. Fees/Tuition in the California State system have risen significantly every year since when Kevin Drum went there, and they have risen by around 400% since 2002. Given the complete intra
32、nsigence(不妥协 )of California republicans, tuition will most likely rise by another 32% next year. C)A diploma is a kind of investment. It is a guarantor of higher lifetime earnings: The “college wage premium“ for highly educated workers is in the tens of thousands of dollars per year. It is also an i
33、nsurance policy against unemployment, a signaling device to employers and peers, a prestige line for your resume or New York Times wedding announcement, and a place to make friends and connections. Most importantly, it is a way to learn new skills and information. D)It could be that college students
34、 arc overpaying for their educations. But it seems more likely that some college students attending certain types of schools are overpaying. If you want to be an aerospace engineer and have the chops to get into Caltech, the quality of the education, contacts, and fellow students on offer might real
35、ly be worth $ 200 000 to you. A diploma from the school practically guarantees a good salary. E)Its much harder to talk about a bubble in education than one in housing. In housing, there was a clear metric: prices, in absolute terms and as a ratio of just about everything, were soaring. And there wa
36、s a clear debate: are these increases justified by some real economic shift or are they a bubble associated with new mortgage products and loose credit. In higher education, the questions arc much more difficult. F)For one thing, its hard to agree on what price should be the focus. Advertised toplin
37、e tuition? Few people pay that. Average tuition paid? Average student loan debt? Is the bubble in higher education present at all universities, or just top universities, or just for profit universities? And how is whatever rising price that is the focus connected to changes in the benefits of a high
38、er education? Indeed, what are those benefits? G)The ultimate benefit seems to be a substantial wage premium, and comparisons of that premium to average levels of tuition or incurred debt make college look like an incredibly good deal. The tricky thing is that there may well be an identification pro
39、blem: it could simply be the case that students who go to college earn more, because the types of students that go to college are the types that have characteristics(intelligence, discipline)that translate into higher earnings. University degrees could simply be expensive signaling mechanisms at bes
40、t, in this world, and massively wasteful cultural institutions at worst. H)Because we cant select high school seniors at random, send some to universities and some into the workforce, and see what happens, were going to be limited in what we can say about the extent to which this is true. But let me
41、 tell you how I think about this. I)I think the gains from higher education are mostly, though not at all entirely, about actual learning, though I should say that a healthy portion of these learning gains arent academic in nature, but have to do with things like social capital. Given the cost of hi
42、gher education, it seems unlikely that signaling can be the main value of a college degree. There are so many other available means to accomplish the same thing. Why wouldnt an employer be as happy with a set of scores on the SAT and GRE and a letter of acceptance from Harvard? The potential market
43、for a cheaper means to signal worth and to network seems so large that its absence is just very difficult to explain. J)There are highly successful firms that do opt to recruit large numbers of skilled young people away from universities and toward an early professional career: Americas professional
44、 sports teams. Why havent other companies followed suit? If college doesnt teach anything, how can we explain this enormous market failure? K)One potential explanation is that there are multiple balances and at present we are stuck in a bad one. So long as the vast majority of talented youths get tr
45、aditional college educations, it is too risky and costly for young people to defect from the higher-education strategy. Defection could, indeed, signal a lack of professional fitness. But this is a very vulnerable equilibrium(平衡 ). If even a small number of those students accepted to top universitie
46、s opt instead to strike out on their own, the bad record of missing out on college could quickly erode. One can even imagine a young student leaving to pursue an entrepreneurial vision directly targeted at potential college dropouts setting up support networks, alternative signaling mechanisms, and
47、so on. L)But why hasnt this already happened? My guess is that most people, including parents, students, and employers, consider a university education to be a good value. The full set of returns to the investment signaling and networking, yes, but also the actual investments in intellectual and soc
48、ial capital justifies the sticker price, and certainly the $ 20 000 or so in average student loan debt. M)What would we look for in a higher education bubble? College educations have long been incredibly cheap given the apparent long-run benefit to the degree-holder. Students today are now paying fo
49、r a larger share of the benefit they receive. And in some cases, universities appear to be getting better at gaining some of the surplus created by degree completion. N)Is this problematic? There is a positive societal effect to higher education, and so students(many of them anyway)should continue to receive some subsidy. And it is in societys interest to ensure that deserving poor students have the same opportunities as richer ones. But broadly
