2015 年 12 月英语四级真题及答案第一套
Part I
Writing
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay
commenting on the saying ‘Learning is a daily experience and a lifetime mission.”
You can cite examples to illustrate the importance of lifelong learning. You should
write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.
Part II
Listening Comprehension
Directions: In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long
conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions will be asked
about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only
once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, you must read
the four choices marked A), B), C) and D), and decide which is the best answer.
Then
mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.
Section A
1.
They admire the courage of space explorers.
They enjoyed the movie on space exploration.
They were going to watch a wonderful movie.
They like doing scientific exploration very much.
2.
At a gift shop.
At a graduation ceremony.
In the office of a travel agency.
In a school library.
3.
He used to work in the art gallery.
He does not have a good memory.
He declined a job offer form the art gallery.
He is not interested in any part-time jobs.
4.
Susan has been invited to give a lecture tomorrow.
He will go to the birthday party after the lecture.
The woman should have informed him earlier.
He will be unable to attend the birthday party.
5.
Reward those having made good progress.
Set a deadline for the staff to meet.
Assign more workers to the project.
Encourage the staff to work in small groups.
6.
The way to the visitor’s parking.
The rate for parking in Lot C.
How far away the parking lot is.
Where she can leave her car.
7.
He regrets missing the classes.
He plans to take the fitness classes.
He is looking forward to a better life.
He has benefited form exercise.
8.
A. How to ? work efficiency.
B. How to select secretaries.
C. The responsibilities of secretaries.
D. The secretaries in the man’s company.
Conversation 1
9.
It is more difficult to learn than English.
It is used by more people than English.
It will be as commonly used as English.
It will eventually become a world language.
10.
It has words words from many languages,
Its popularity with the common people.
The influence of the British Empire.
The effect of the Industrial Revolution,
11.
It includes a lot of words form other languages.
It has a growing number of newly coined words,
It can be easily picked up by overseas travellers.
It is the largest among all languages in the world.
Conversation 2
12.
To return some goods.
To apply for a job.
To place an order.
To make a complaint.
13. He has become somewhat impatient with the woman.
He is not familiar with the
exact details of goods.
He has not worked in the sales department for long.
He works on a part-time basis for the company.
14.
It is not his responsibility.
It will be free for large orders.
It costs 15 more for express delivery.
It depends on a number of factors.
15.
Report the information to her superior.
Pay a visit to the saleswoman in charge.
Ring back when she comes to a decision.
Make inquiries with some other companies.
Section B
Directions:In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage,
you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only
once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices
marked A), B), C) and D ). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet I with
a single line through the centre.
Passage 1
16.
No one knows exactly where they were ??
No one knows for sure when thy came into being.
No one knows for what purpose they were ?
No one knows what they will ?????
17.
Carry ropes across rivers.
Measure the speed of wind.
Pass on secret messages.
Give warnings of danger.
18.
To protect houses against lightning.
To test the effects of the lightning rod.
To find out the strength of silk for kites.
To prove the lightning is electricity.
Passage 2
19.
She enjoys teaching languages,
She can speak several languages,
She was trained to be an interpreter.
She was born with a talent for languages.
20.
They acquire an immunity to culture shock.
They would like to live abroad permanently.
They want to learn as many foreign languages as possible.
They have an intense interest in cross-cultural interactions.
21.
She became an expert in horse racing.
She got a chance to visit several European countries.
She was able to translate for a German sports judge.
She learned to appreciate classical music.
22.
Taste the beef and give her comment.
Take part in a cooking competition.
Teach vocabulary for food in ??
Give cooking lessons on ????
Passage 3
23.
He had only a third-grade education.
He once threatened to kill his teacher.
He grew up in a poor ?
He often helped his ?
24.
Careless.
Stupid.
Brave.
Active.
25.
Write two book reports a week.
Keep a diary.
Help with housework.
Watch education??
Section C
Directions:In this section, you will hear a passage three times. When the passage
is read for the first time, you should listen carefully for its general idea. When
the passage is read for the second time, you are required to fill in the blanks with
the exact words you have just heard. Finally, when the passage is read for the third
time, you should check what you have written.
When you look up at the night sky,
what do you see? There are other… besides the moon and stars. One of the most 27___
of the …Comets were formed around the same time the Earth was formed. …and other
frozen liquids and gases. 29___ these “dirty snow…” just as the planets do.
As a comet get closer to the sun, some gases in it begin to unfreeze… particles
form the comet to form a huge cloud. As the comet gets … wind blows the cloud behind
the comet, thus forming its tail. The tail… (模糊的) atmosphere around a comet are
32____ that can help… in the night sky.
In any given year, about a dozen known comets come close to … average person
can’t see them all, of course. Usually there is only one … to be seen with 34___
eye. Comet Hale-Bopp, discovered… bright comet. Its orbit brought it 35___ close
to the Earth, … But Hale-Bopp came a long way an its earthly visit. It won’t be
back…or so.
Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.
Children do not think the way adults do. For most of the first yearof life, if
something is out of sight, it’s out of mind. if you cover a baby’s__36__toy with
a piece of cloth, the baby thinks the toy has disappeared andstops looking for it.
A 4-year-old man__37__, that a sister has more fruitjuice when it is only the shapes
of the glasses that differ, not the __38__ ofthe juice.
Yet children are smart in their own way. Like good little scientists,children
are always testing their child-sized __39__ about how things work.When your child
throws her spoon on the floor for the sixth time as you try tofeed her, and you say,
“That’s enough! I will not pick up your spoon again!”the child will__40__ test
your claim. Are you serious? Are you angry? What willhappen if she throws the spoon
again? She is not doing this to drive you__41__;rather, she is learning that her
desires and yours can differ, and thatsometimes those__42__ are important and
sometimes they are not.
How and why does children’s thinking change? In the 1920s, Swisspsychologist
Jean Piaget proposed that children’s cognitive abilities unfold__43__,like the
blooming of a flower, almost independent of what else is__44__ intheir lives.
Although many of his specific conclusions have been__45__ ormodified over the years,
his ideas inspired thousands of studies byinvestigators all over the world.
A) advocate B) amount C) confirmed
D) crazy E) definite F) differences
G) favorite H) happening I) immediately
J) naturally K) obtaining L) primarily
M) protest N) rejected O) theories
Section B
Directions:In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements
attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs.
Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a
paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the question
by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
The Perfect Essay
A) Looking back on too many yearsof education, I can identify one truly
impossible teacher. She cared about me,and my intellectual life, even when I didn’t.
Her expectations were highimpossibly so. She was an English teacher. She was also
my mother.
B) When good students turn in anessay, they dream of their instructor returning
it to them in exactly the samecondition, save for a single word added in the margin
of the final page:”Flawless.” This dream came true for me one afternoon in the
ninth grade. Ofcourse, I had heard that genius could show itself at an early age,
so I wasonly slightly taken aback that I had achieved perfection at the tender age
of14. Obviously, I did what any professional writer would do; I hurried off tospread
the good news. I didn’t get very far. The first person I told was mymother.
C) My mother, who is just shy offive feet tall, is normally incredibly
soft-spoken, but on the rare occasionwhen she got angry, she was terrifying. I am
not sure if she was more upset bymy hubris(得意忘形) or by the fact that my
Englishteacher had let my ego get so out of hand. In any event, my mother and her
redpen showed me how deeply flawed a flawless essay could be. At the time, I amsure
she thought she was teaching me about mechanics, transitions(过渡), structure, style
and voice. But what I learned, and what stuckwith me through my time teaching writing
at Harvard, was a deeper lesson aboutthe nature of creative criticism.
D) Fist off, it hurts. Genuinecriticism, the type that leaves a lasting mark
on you as a writer, also leavesan existential imprint(印记) on you asa person. I
have heard people say that a writer should never take criticismpersonally. I say
that we should never listen to these people.
E) Criticism, at its best, isdeeply personal, and gets to the heart of why we
write the way we do. Theintimate nature of genuine criticism implies something about
who is able togive it, namely, someone who knows you well enough to show you how
your mentallife is getting in the way of good writing. Conveniently, they are also
thepeople who care enough to see you through this painful realization. For me ittook
the form of my first, and I hope only, encounter with writer’s block—I wasnot able
to produce anything for three years.
F) Franz Kafka once said:” Writingis utter solitude(独处), the descentinto the
cold abyss(深渊) ofoneself. “My mother’s criticism had shown me that Kafka is right
about the coldabyss, and when you make the introspective (内省的) decent that writing
requires you are out always pleased by whatyou find.” But, in the years that followed,
her sustained tutoring suggestedthat Kafka might be wrong about the solitude. I was
lucky enough to find acritic and teacher who was willing to make the journey of
writing with me. “Itis a thing of no great difficulty,” according to Plutarch,
“to raise objectionsagainst another man’s speech, it is a very easy matter; but
to produce a betterin its place is a work extremely troublesome.” I am sure I wrote
essays in thelater years of high school without my mother’s guidance, but I can’t
recallthem. What I remember, however, is how we took up the “extremely
troublesome”work of ongoing criticism.
G) There are two ways to interpretPlutarch when he suggests that a critic should
be able to produce “a better inits place.” In a straightforward sense, he could
mean that a critic must bemore talented than the artist she critiques(评论). My
mother was well covered on this count. But perhaps Plutarch issuggesting something
slightly different, something a bit closer to MarcusCicero’s claim that one should
“criticize by creation, not by finding fault.”Genuine criticism creates a precious
opening for an author to become better onthis own terms—a process that is often
extremely painful, but also almostalways meaningful.
H) My mother said she would helpme with my writing, but fist I had myself. For
each assignment, I was write thebest essay I could. Real criticism is not meant to
find obvious mistakes, so ifshe found any—the type I could have found on my own—I
had to start fromscratch. From scratch. Once the essay was “flawless,” she would
take an eveningto walk me through my errors. That was when true criticism, the type
thatchanged me as a person, began.
I) She criticized me when Iincluded little-known references and professional
jargon(行话). She had no patience for brilliant but irrelevant figures ofspeech.
“Writers can’t bluff(虚张声势) theirway through ignorance.” That was news to
me—I would need to find another way tostructure my daily existence.
J) She trimmed back my flowerylanguage, drew lines through my exclamation marks
and argued for the value ofrestraint in expression. “John,” she almost whispered.
I learned in to hearher:”I can’t hear you when you shout at me.” So I stopped
shouting andbluffing, and slowly my writing improved.
K) Somewhere along the way I setaside my hopes of writing that flawless essay.
But perhaps I missed somethingimportant in my mother’s lessons about creativity
and perfection. Perhaps thepoint of writing the flawless essay was not to give up,
but to never willinglyfinish. Whitman repeatedly reworded “Song of Myself” between
1855 and 1891.Repeatedly. We do our absolute best wiry a piece of writing, and come
as closeas we can to the ideal. And, for the time being, we settle. In
critique,however, we are forced to depart, to give up the perfection we thought we
hadachieved for the chance of being even a little bit better. This is the lesson
Itook from my mother. If perfection were possible, it would not be motivating.
46. The author was advised against theimproper use of figures of speech.
47. The author’s mother taught him avaluable lesson by pointing out lots of flaws
in his seemingly perfect essay.
48. A writer should polish his writingrepeatedly so as to get closer to perfection.
49. Writers may experience periods of timein their life when they just can’t produce
anything.
50. The author was not much surprised whenhis school teacher marked his essay as