大学英语四级（2013年12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷323

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the following topic The View on Campus Loan. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

A tough anti-smoking law has taken effect in Spain. The law—one of the strictest in Europe—makes smoking illegal in all bars and restaurants. Smokers will also be forbidden on television shows, near hospitals or in school playgrounds. The law enforces anti-smoking rules introduced in 2006. The anti-smoking rules introduced in 2006 forbade smoking only in the workplace. It lets bar and restaurant owners choose whether or not to allow it. Most chose to adopt it. Only large restaurants and bars had to provide a smoke-free area. Now, hotel, restaurant and bar owners have said they could face a 10% drop in trade with the new rules. The industry has already seen a sharp fall in sales because of Spain’ s economic problems. But doctors argue the new law will help smokers give up. 1. Where was smoking NOT allowed according to the 2006 anti-smoking rules? 2. According to the news, which of the following groups reacts negatively to the new law? Offices. Restaurants. Bars. School playgrounds.

The expected life span of Beijing residents has gone up to 75.5 years old compared with 74.4 years old a decade earlier while the death rate of middle-aged residents increased sharply according to recent official report. The report made public by the Beijing Disease Controlling Prevention Center said the death rate of people aged between 35 to 54 years old has gone up 58.5 percent during the past ten years. From 158 people per 100, 000 in 1991 to 251 people per 100, 000 last year. Baby and maternal death rate went down 132 percent and 147 percent respectively. However, expert said long-term infectious diseases were the main causes of death covering 60 percent of the total number of death. The male death rate is higher than that of females. And the death rate among rural residents is higher than that of the urban ones. 3. How many the expected life-span of Beijing residents has gone up compared with that a decade earlier? 4. Which group’ s death rate had gone up greatly during the past 10 years? 1.5 years. 1.4 years. 1.2 years. 1.1 years.

More than 22 million people who live in the Unite State don’ t speak or understand English very well and that can be deadly. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Doctor Grant Flores highlights(points out)some cases where language barriers prevented patients from communicating with health-care providers with serious consequences. Doctor Flores records one incident in which English-speaking doctors thought a Spanish-speaking man was suffering from a drug over-use. “He was in the hospital basically for two days being worked up for drug abuse“, Flores says. “They finally did a head CT scan and realized he had had a major bleed into his brain. He ended up being paralyzed and he got a 71 million dollars settlement award from the hospital.“ Doctor Flores, a professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin, says that despite examples like that, the majority of US health-care facilities still do not have trained interpreters on sight, but he acknowledges that increasing numbers of health care workers can speak two or more languages and that more clinics and hospitals do make sure their staff and patients understand each other. 5. What does the example in the news item show? 6. How much money does the hospital give the patient for their mistake? 7. What does Dr. Flores say about clinics and hospitals? Doctors are sometimes professionally incompetent. In cases like that hospitals have to pay huge compensations. Language barriers might lower the quality of treatment. Language barriers can result in fatal consequences.

W: Excuse me. My watch stopped running and I’ m not sure what’ s wrong with it. M: Well, let me have a look at it. W: OK. It’ s a new watch. I’ ve only had it for about a year. M: Hmm, it seems that it just needs a new battery. W: Oh. That’ s a relief. I was hoping it wouldn’ t be broken or something. How much is a new battery? M: It’ s $6.99 plus tax for a battery. W: Oh dear, that seems like a lot. My friend said she paid about $3.99 plus tax for a battery. M: Well, she may have. But we are a watch repair shop and we install your battery and then guarantee it for a year. If you have the watch cleaned here, we guarantee it for an additional three months. W: Well, I guess you get what you pay for. I’ 11 get my battery here. How long will it take to put it in? M: Usually I can do it right away, but right now I’ m way behind in my repair of a large shipment of watches. They all need to be fixed by this afternoon. Can you leave your watch here until about 5:00 p.m.? W: Oh dear, I’ m afraid I can’t. I need to get back to work and I have to work this evening, so I couldn’ t pick it up by five. And I have to have it by tomorrow. M: Well, then maybe I can just squeeze it in now. It’ 11 only take a few minutes. Can you wait? W: Oh, I’ d really appreciate that. Sure, I’ 11 wait. M: OK. Just sit down over here. I’ 11 have it fixed in a few minutes. W: Thanks a lot. Questions 8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard. 8. What is the problem with the woman’ s watch? 9. How long will the battery be guaranteed if the woman also has her watch cleaned? 10. What does the woman think about the price at last? 11. When will the woman get her watch? It is broken. It needs cleaning. It doesn’ t keep good time. It is out of battery.

W: So, you’ll be getting dressed up later—before you go to the BBC television studios. M: Yes, but to tell you the truth, Mary, I prefer working in radio. W: You prefer radio? M: That’ s right. You can dress down in a radio studio. W: What do you mean? M: You can dress down. You can wear something casual. There’ s no need to get dressed up. W: Well, I always try to make an effort to look smart! M: Yes, of course, you always look fantastic, Mary. But you don’t have to dress up for radio. The audience can’t see you. W: Ah, I see what you mean. In TV the audience can see you, so you have to look your best. M: Exactly. You have to dress up. You have to put on something smart so you look the part. W: Yes. I suppose if you’re on TV, you have to look like a TV presenter: you have to be dressed right. M: But in radio, the listeners can’t see you so we can dress down if we want to. W: Yes. That’ s why I sometimes wear jeans to work. M: Exactly, on radio. I can take off my tie! I can even take off my shoes! W: I don’t think so! You don’t have to wear your tie—you can take that off if you want to, but please don’t take off your shoes! Questions 12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard. 12. What is the man going to do? 13. Why does the man prefer working in the radio? 14. What does “dress down“ mean? 15. Which statement is correct according to the conversation? To film a TV show. To tape a radio program. To attend a party. To see a live show.

Every country in the world celebrates New Year, but not every country does it in the same way. The countries of America and Europe welcome the New Year on January first This practice began with the Romans. A Roman ruler Julius Caesar changed the date of the New Year from the first day of March to the first day of January. In the Middle East, New Year is when spring begins. People in China celebrate it on the Spring Festival, which is the first day of their calendar based on the moon. The Spring Festival usually comes between January 21 and February 19. The Jewish New Year comes at the end of summer. The Hindus in India celebrate the first day of each season, so they have four New Years. In all of these practices, there is a practice of making noise. People made noise in ancient times to drive away the evil spirits from the home. Many people do it with fireworks. In Japan, people go from house to house making noise with drums and bamboo sticks. Young people stay up until midnight on New Year’ s Eve to watch the clock pass from one year to the next. Friends often gather together at a park on New Year’s Eve, and when the New Year comes, all ring bells, blow horns, sing, and kiss each other. Questions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard. 16. In what countries do they celebrate New Year on January first? 17. When do Chinese celebrate New Year? 18. Why do people celebrate New Year by making noise? Countries of America and Europe. Countries in the Middle East. Jewish countries. India.

The diamond is considered the most famous and valuable jewel in the world. A diamond is a symbol of wealth. Diamonds were made as a result of great volcanic heat and pressure. A volcano is a mountain with a hole on the top. A volcano can be very dangerous because when it is active it sometimes explodes and causes great damage. Diamonds were pushed towards the surface of the earth—millions of years ago by a number of great volcanic explosions. It is in the narrow volcanic pipes that diamonds are found. They are also found among the sand and stones of certain river beds, and in a few places on the floor of the sea for they were washed down the mountain sides by the rain. Diamonds are very rare. There are not many diamond pipes or diamond-producing rivers in the world. During the last century adventurers from Europe went to Brazil, because they had heard that there were diamonds in the River Amazon. Many of these early diamond miners died of illness or went lost forever in the great forests. But some re turned home rich. The earliest known diamonds were found in India many centuries ago. The most recent and exciting discoveries have been made in eastern Russia. But most of the world’s diamonds now come from Congo, from Tanzania—which has the largest diamond mine in the world—and from South Africa. Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard. 19. What can we learn from the passage? 20. Where did diamonds first come into existence? 21. What do you think is the best title for the passage? Most of the early diamond miners became wealthy later. Diamonds couldn’t be formed without great heat and pressure of the volcano. The earliest known diamonds were discovered in the River Amazon. Explosions of the volcano can damage diamonds as well.

We are rapidly nearing the end of this course in the history of classical music. We have covered several centuries in a very short time. Much too short to do the music justice, of course, but then this is a survey course. From now until the end of the term we’ll be talking about and listening to electronic music. You probably already know that it was in the 1950s that musical computers and synthesizers first appeared in universities. The first commercial synthesizers were sold about this time, too. The sophistication and complexity of these instruments has now increased to the point that they can produce almost any kind of sound. Some alarmists believe these new instruments will bring an end to classical music or that they already have. You know I don’t share this view, though I agree we are in the midst of a revolution in instrument design. This, however, is not the first such revolution in musical history and probably not the last one either. Remember we’ve already studied the similar case in the early 19th century when the piano replaced the harpsichord and modern brass and wind instruments came into being. One of the most important reasons for the great popularity of electronic instruments is their relatively cheap price. Well, just look at it. Only about 400 dollars for an electronic keyboard compared to nearly 3, 000 dollars for a piano. Naturally this has done a lot to increase sales of electronic instruments. But I don’t think even the most ardent supporters of electronic instruments expect them to completely replace acoustic instruments. Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard. 22. What is the speaker’ s main topic? 23. At what point in the semester is this talk being given? 24. What is the speaker’ s opinion of the idea that electronic instruments will destroy classical music? 25. When, according to the speaker, did another significant change in instrument design take place? The development of electronic musical instruments. The relative costs of different types of musical instruments. The performance of classical music on synthesizers. The replacement of the harpsichord by the piano.

“Data“, runs a common refrain, “is the new oil.“ Like the sticky black stuff that【C1】______of the ground, all those 1s and 0s are of little use until they are processed into something more valuable. That something is you. Seven of the world’s ten most【C2】______companies by market capitalization are technology firms. 【C3】______Apple, which makes money by selling pricey gadgets, and Microsoft, which charges businesses for its【C4】______and services, all are built on a foundation of【C5】______ data to human beings. Google and Facebook want to find out as much as it is possible to know about their【C6】______interests, activities, friends and family. Amazon has a detailed history of consumer behavior. Tencent and Alibaba are the digital wallets for hundreds of millions of Chinese; both know enough about【C7】______to provide widely used credit scores. That data are valuable is【C8】______well-understood by individuals, too, not least because personal information is so often hacked, leaked or stolen. India’ s database has been shown to be vulnerable to scammers and state abuse. Facebook has spent most of 2018【C9】______the reputational damage of multiple breaches, most notably via Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm. The list of other companies that have【C10】______some sort of data breach in 2018 alone reads like a roll call of household names: Google, Marriott, Delta, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Best Buy, Sears, Saks 5th Avenue, even Panera Bread. Such events have caused a tectonic shift in the public understanding of data collection. People have started to take notice of all the data they are giving away. A) Excluding B) users’ C) comes out D) tying E) suffered F) valuable G) dealing with H) software I) increasingly J) consumers K) rises from L) good M) unlike N) linking O) beginning

British Cuisine: The Best of Old and New British cuisine (烹饪) has come of age in recent years as chefs (厨师) combine the best of old and new. A) Why does British food have a reputation for being so bad? Because it is bad! Those are not the most encouraging words to hear just before eating lunch at one of Hong Kong’s smartest British restaurants, Alfie’ s by KEE, but head chef Neil Tomes has more to say. B) “The past 15 years or so have been a noticeable period of improvement for food in England,“ the English chef says, citing the trend in British cuisine for better ingredients, preparation and cooking methods, and more appealing presentation. Chefs such as Delia Smith, Nigel Slater, Jamie O-liver and Gordon Ramsay made the public realise that cooking—and eating—didn’t have to be a boring thing. And now, most of the British public is familiar even with the extremes of Heston Blumenthaps molecular gastronomy, a form of cooking that employs scientific methods to create the perfect dish. C) “It’s no longer the case that the common man in England is embarrassed to show he knows about food,“ Tomes says. D) There was plenty of room for improvement. The problems with the nation’s cuisine can be traced back to the Second World War. Before the War, much of Britain’ s food was imported and when German U-boats began attacking ships bringing food to the country, Britain went on rations (配给). E) “As rationing came to an end in the 1950s, technology picked up and was used to mass-produce food,“ Tomes says. “And by then people were just happy to have a decent quantity of food in their kitchens.“ F) They weren’t looking for cured meats, organic produce or beautiful presentation; they were looking for whatever they could get their hands on, and this prioritisation of quantity over quality prevailed for decades, meaning a generation was brought up with food that couldn’t compete with neighbouring France, Italy, Belgium or Spain. G) Before star chefs such as Oliver began making cooking fashionable, it was hard to find a restaurant in London that was open after 9 pm. But in recent years the capital’ s culinary (烹饪的) scene has developed to the point that it is now confident of its ability to please the tastes of any international visitor. H) With the opening of Alfie’s in April, and others such as The Pawn, two years ago, modern British food has made its way to Hong Kong. “With British food, I think that Hong Kong restaurants are keeping up,“ says David Tamlyn, the Welsh executive chef at The Pawn in Wan Chai. “Hong Kong diners are extremely responsive to new ideas or presentations, which is good news for new dishes.“ I) Chefs agree that diners in Hong Kong are embracing the modern British trend. Some restaurants are modifying the recipes (菜谱) of British dishes to breathe new life into the classics, while others are using better quality ingredients but remaining true to British traditions and tastes. J) Tamlyn is in the second camp. “We select our food very particularly. We use US beef, New Zealand lamb and for our custards (牛奶蛋糊) we use Bird’ s Custard Powder,“ Tamlyn says. “Some restaurants go for custard made fresh with eggs, sugar and cream, but British custard is different, and we stay true to that.“ K) Matthew Hill, senior manager at the two-year-old SoHo restaurant Yorkshire Pudding, also uses better ingredients as a means of improving dishes. “There are a lot of existing perceptions about British food and so we can’t alter these too much. We’re a traditional British restaurant so there are some staples (主菜) that will remain essentially unchanged.“ L) These traditional dishes include fish and chips, steak and kidney pie and large pieces of roasted meats. At Alfle’ s, the newest of the British restaurants in town and perhaps the most gentlemen’ s club-like in design, Neil Tomes explains his passion for provenance (原产地). “Britain has started to become really proud of the food it’s producing. It has excellent organic farms, beautifully crafted cheeses, high-quality meats.“ M) However, the British don’t have a history of exporting their foodstuffs, which makes it difficult for restaurants in Hong Kong to source authentic ingredients. N) “We can get a lot of our ingredients once a week from the UK,“ Tamlyn explains. “But there is also pressure to buy local and save on food miles, which means we take our vegetables from the local markets, and there are a lot that work well with British staples.“ O) The Phoenix, in Mid-Levels, offers the widest interpretation of “British cuisine“, while still trying to maintain its soul. The gastro-pub has existed in various locations in Hong Kong since 2002. Singaporean head chef Tommy Teh Kum Chai offers daily specials on a blackboard, rather than sticking to a menu. This enables him to reinterpret British cuisine depending on what is available in the local markets. P) “We use a lot of ingredients that people wouldn’ t perhaps associate as British, but are presented in a British way. Bell peppers stuffed with couscous, alongside ratatouille, is a very popular dish.“ Q) Although the ingredients may not strike diners as being traditional, they can be found in dishes across Britain. R) Even the traditional chefs are aware of the need to adapt to local tastes and customs, while maintaining the Britishness of their cuisine. At Yorkshire Pudding, Hill says that his staff asks diners whether they would like to share their meals. Small dishes, shared meals and “mixing it up“ is not something commonly done in Britain, but Yorkshire Pudding will bring full dishes to the table and offer individual plates for each diner. “That way, people still get the presentation of the dishes as they were designed, but can carve them up however they like,“ Hill says. S) This practice is also popular at The Pawn, although largely for rotisseries (烤肉馆), Tamlyn says. “Some tables will arrive on a Sunday, order a whole chicken and a shoulder of lamb or a baby pig, and just stay for hours enjoying everything we bring out for them.“ Some British traditions are too sacred (神圣的) to mess with, however, Tomes says. “I’d never change a full English breakfast.“

Malaria killed 435,000 people last year, most of them in Africa. The parasite that causes the illness is carried by females of some, but not all, species of mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. An insect becomes infected by biting an infected human being. Over the course often to 12 days, the parasites then multiply inside her. Once this has happened she transmits them with her bite. The threat posed by an individual mosquito thus depends on its species, sex and age. Knowing these for lots of local insects gives a better idea of where, when and how to intervene in a particular place. If the locals are, for example, of a species that prefers to bite people inside houses, or to rest indoors after feeding, fumigating household interiors is the best approach. If not, it may be better to locate and disrupt breeding sites, using aerial spraying. Sex is easy to determine. Males have bushy mouths—in essence, beards. Females do not. Determining species and age, though, is slow and laborious. DNA must be sequenced. Bodies must be dissected under microscopes. Chemical analyses must be performed. Laboratories in Britain and Tanzania are therefore testing an alternative—infrared spectroscopy. Mario Gonza lez-Jime nez, a chemist at the University of Glasgow, uses a diamond and a piece of steel that act as a hammer and anvil, crushing the mosquito to be analysed. The infrared light is then provided by a laser. With the insect duly splattered across one facet of the diamond, this laser is shone through the crystal onto it. The light reflected back out of the crystal by the insect’ s remains is run through a spectroscope for analysis. Part of the incident light will have been absorbed by various chemicals in the mosquito—particularly chitin (a structural carbohydrate), proteins and lipids in the animal’ s cuticle. This absorption shows up in the reflected light’ s spectrum as an absence of certain frequencies. These absences are called Fraunhofer lines, after the German physicist who discovered them two centuries ago. Particular molecules create particular patterns of Fraunhofer lines, as the missing light energy has been absorbed to drive the vibrations of atomic bonds within those molecules. Properly analysed, Fraunhofer lines provide information about the exact chemical make-up of whatever is reflecting the light. Their patterns in spectra therefore correspond to the different chemistries of species, sexes and ages. That permits the construction of a library, with which unknown insects can be compared. That, at least, is the theory. Dr. Gonza lez-Jime nez is trying to put it into practice. His methods are now 83% accurate at recognising species, and close to 100% accurate at recognising age. He and his colleagues are also using the process to try to determine how resistant the now-dead insect being examined would have been to insecticides. What works in a laboratory in a Scottish city might not, though, work in the African countryside. The person in charge of testing that out is FredrosOkumu, science director of the Ifakara Health Institute, a Tanzanian organisation. Ifakara runs Mosquito City, a research facility in the Kilombero River valley. Mosquito City’s buzzing, whining “biospheres“ mimic local field conditions, even down to banana plants and goats. Besides testing the equipment, Dr. Okumu and his team are also trying to extend the range of data that mosquito spectra can provide, including into the way the insects behave. Some mosquitoes, for example, feed only on people. Others dine as well on chickens, cows and goats. This is all valuable information. But it will be much more valuable if it can be gathered easily in the field. Engineers at Glasgow are therefore working on a laser optimised to emit light at the frequencies best suited for analysing mosquitoes. Meanwhile, those at Ifakara are experimenting with shoebox-sized versions of the apparatus that can be taken into the countryside. Their aim is eventually to shrink this to something the size of a mobile phone. That could shine a whole new light on the problem of malaria.

Teaching children to read well from the start is the most important task of elementary schools. But relying on educators to approach this task correctly can be a great mistake. Many schools continue to employ instructional methods that have been proven ineffective. The staying power of the “look-say“ or “whole-word“ method of teaching beginning reading is perhaps the most flagrant example of this failure to instruct effectively. The whole-word approach to reading stresses the meaning of words over the meaning of letters, thinking over decoding, developing a sight vocabulary of familiar words over developing the ability to unlock the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. It fits in with the self-directed, “learning how to learn“ activities recommended by advocates(倡导者)of “open“ classrooms and with the concept that children have to be developmentally ready to begin reading. Before 1963, no major publisher put out anything but these “Run-Spot-Run“ readers. However, in 1955, Rudolf Flesch touched off what has been called “the great debate“ in beginning reading. In his best-seller Why Johnny Can’t Read, Flesch indicted(控诉)the nation’s public schools for miseducating students by using the look-say method. He said—and more scholarly studies by Jeane Chall and Rovert Dykstra later confirmed—that another approach to beginning reading, founded on phonics(语音学), is far superior. Systematic phonics first teaches children to associate letters and letter combinations with sounds: it then teaches them how to blend these sounds together to make words. Rather than building up a relatively limited vocabulary of memorized words, it imparts a code by which the pronunciations of the vast majority of the most common words in the English language can be learned. Phonics does not devalue the importance of thinking about the meaning of words and sentences: it simply recognizes that decoding is the logical and necessary first step.

皮影(shadow play)是中国民间广为流传的道具戏之一。它是借助灯光把雕刻精巧的皮影人映照在屏幕上，由艺人们在幕后操动皮影人，伴以音乐和歌唱，演出一幕幕妙趣横生的皮影戏。皮影戏历史悠久，相传萌芽于汉，发展于唐，至宋已十分兴盛。陕西皮影分东、西路，不仅唱腔种类繁多，表演技术高超，而且皮影人的雕镂技艺达到了很高的水平。