2015年12月大学英语四级真题试卷及答案(第二套)（Word版）

Part III Reading Comprehension(40 minutes)
Section A
Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices.Each choice in the bank isidentified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once. Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.
For many Americans,2013 ended with an unusually bitter cold spell.Late November and December36early snow and bone-chilling temperatures in much of the country, part of a year when, for the first time in two37, record-cold days will likely turn out to have oumumbered record-warm ones. But the U. S. was the exception: November was the warmest ever38, and current data indicates that 2013 is likely to have been the fourth hottest year on record. Enjoy the snow now, because39are good that 2014 will be even hotter, perhaps the hottest year since records have been kept. That's because, scientists are predicting,2014 will be an El Nifio Year. El Nino, Spanish for "the child",40when surface ocean waters in the southern Pacific become abnormally warm. So large is the Pacific, covering 30% of the planet's surface, that the41energy generated by its warming is enough to touch off a series of weather changes around the world. El Ninos are42with abnormally dry conditions in Southeast Asia and Australia. They can lead to extreme rain in parts of North and South America, even as southern Africa43dry weather. Marine life may be affected too: E1 Ninos can44the rising of the cold, nutrient-rich ( 营养丰富的） water that supports large fish45, and the unusually warm ocean temperatures can destroy coral ( 珊瑚).
A. Additional         I. logically
B. Associated         J. occurs
C. bore               K. populations
D. Chances            L. realize
E. Communicated       M. reduce
F. Decades            N. Saw     
G. experiences        O. Specific          
H. globally
Section B
Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Eachstatement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraphfrom which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once.Each paragraph is marked with a letter.Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2. How to Eat Well
A. Why do so many Americans eat tons of processed food, the stuff that is correctly called junk (垃圾. and should really carry warning labels?
B. It's not because fresh ingredients are hard to come by. Supermarkets offer more variety than ever, and there are over four times as many farmers' markets in the U. S. as there were 20 years ago. nor is it for lack of available information. There are plenty of recipes (食谱), how-to videos and cooking classes available to anyone who has a computer, smartphone or television. If anything, the information is overwhelming.
C. And yet we aren't cooking. If you eat three meals a day and behave like most Americans, you probably get at least a third of your dally calories (卡路里. outside the home. Nearly two-thirds of us grab fast food once a week, and we get almost 25% of our dally calories from snacks. So we're eating out or taking in, and we don't sit down－or we do, but we hurry.
D. Shouldn't preparing－and consuming－food be a source of comfort, pride, health, weli－being, relaxation, sociability? Something that connects us to other humans? Why would we want to outsource(外包. this basic task, especially when outsourcing it is so harmful?
E. When I talk about cooking, I'm not talking about creating elaborate dinner parties or three－day science projects. I'm talking about simple, easy, everyday meals. My mission is to encourage green hands and those lacking time or money to feed themselves. That means we need modest, realistic expectations, and we need to teach people to cook food that's good enough to share with family and friends.
F. Perhaps a return to real cooking needn't be far off. A recent Harris poll revealed that 79% of Americans say they enjoy cooking and 30% "love it" ; 14% admit to not enjoying kitchen work and just 7% won't go near the stove at all. But this doesn't necessarily translate to real cooking, and the result of this survey shouldn't surprise anyone: 52% of those 65 or older cook at home five or more times per week; only a third of young people do.
G. Back in the 1950s most of us grew up in households where Morn cooked virtually every night. The intention to put a home-cooked meal on the table was pretty much universal. Most people couldn't afford to do otherwise.
H. Although frozen dinners were invented in the '40s, their popularity didn't boom until televisions became popular a decade or so later. Since then, packaged, pre-prepared meals have been what's for dinner. The microwave and fast-food chains were the biggest catalysts ( 催化剂), but the big food companies--which want to sell anything except the raw ingredients that go into cooking－made the home cook an endangered species.
I. Still, I fmd it strange that only a third of young people report preparing meals at home regularly. Isn't this the same crowd that rails against processed junk and champions craft cooking? And isn't this the generation who say they're concerned about their health and the well－being of the planet? If these are truly the values of many young people, then their behavior doesn't match their beliefs.
J. There have been haft－hearted but well-publicized efforts by some food companies to reduce calories in their processed foods, but the Standard American Diet is still the polar opposite of the healthy,mostly plant－based diet that just about every expert says we should be eating. Considering that the government's standards are not nearly ambitious enough, the picture is clear: bynot cooking athome, we're not eating the right things, and the consequences are hard to overstate.
K. To help quantify (量化). the costs of a poor diet, I recently tried to estimate this impact in terms of a most famous food, the burger (汉堡包). I concluded that the profit from burgers is more than offset (抵消） by the damage they cause in health problems and environmental harm.
L. Cooldng real food is the best defense－not to mention that any meal you're likely to eat at home contains about 200 fewer calories than one you would eat in a restaurant.
M. To those Americans for whom money is a concern, my advice is simple: Buy what you can afford,and cook it yourself. The common prescription is to primarily shop the grocery store, since that's where fresh produce, meat and seafood, and dairy are. And to save money and still eat well you don't need local, organic ingredients; all you need is real food. I'm not saying local food isn't better; it is. But there is plenty of decent food in the grocery stores.
N. The other sections you should get to know are the frozen foods and the canned goods. Frozen produce is still produce; canned tomatoes are still tomatoes. Just make sure you're getting real food without tons of added salt or sugar. Ask yourself, would Grandma consider this food? Does it look like something that might occur in nature? It's pretty much common sense: you want to buy food,not unidentifiable foodlike objects.
O. You don't have to hit the grocery store daily, nor do you need an abundance of skill. Since fewer than haft of Americans say they cook at an intermediate level and only 20% describe their cooldng skills as advanced, the crisis is one of confidence. And the only remedy for that is practice. There's nothing mysterious about cooking the evening meal. You just have to do a little thinking ahead and redefine what qualifies as dinner. Like any skill, cooking gets easier as you do it more; every time you cook, you advance your level of skills. Someday you won't even need recipes. My advice is that you not pay attention to the number of steps and ingredients, because they can be deceiving.
P. Time, I realize, is the biggest obstacle to cooking for most people. You must adjust your priorities
to find time to cook. For instance, you can move a TV to the kitchen and watch your favorite shows while you're standing at the sink. No one is asking you to give up activities you like, but if you're watching food shows on TV, try cooking instead.
46. Cooking benefits people in many ways and enables them to connect with one another.
47. Abundant information about cooking is available either online or on TV.
48. Young people do less cooking at home than the elderly these days.
49. Cooking skills can be improved with practice.
50. In the mid-20th century, most families ate dinner at home instead of eating out.
51. Even those short of time or money should be encouraged to cook for themselves and their family.
52. Eating food not cooked by ourselves can cause serious consequences.
53. To eat well and still save money, people should buy fresh food and cook it themselves.
54. We get a fairly large portion of calories from fast food and snacks.
55. The popularity of TV led to the popularity of frozen food.
Section C
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C. and
D ). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer
Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.
Passage One Questions 56 to 60 are based on the following passage.
The wallet is heading for extinction. As a day-to-day essential, it will die off with the generation who read print newspapers. The kind of shopping－where you hand over notes and count out change in return－now happens only in the most minor of our retail encounters, like buying a bar of chocolate or a pint of milk from a comer shop. At the shops where you spend any real money, that money is increasingly abstracted. And this is more and more true, the higher up the scale you go. At the most cutting-edge retail stores－Victoria Beckham on Dover Street, for instance－you don't go and stand at any kind of cash register when you decide to pay. The staff are equipped with iPads to take your payment while you relax on a sofa.
Which is nothing more or less than excellent service, if you have the money. But across society, the abstraction of the idea of cash makes me uneasy. Maybe I'm just old－fashioned. But earning money isn't quick or easy for most of us. Isn't it a bit weird that spending it should happen in haft a blink (眨眼). of an eye? Doesn't a wallet－that time－honoured Friday－night feeling of pleasing, promisingfatness－represent something that matters?
But I'll leave the economics to the experts. What bothers me about the death of the wallet is thechange it represents in our physical environment. Everything about the look and feel of a wallet－theway the fastenings and materials wear and tear and loosen with age, the plastic and paper and gold andsilver, and handwritten phone numbers and printed cinema tickets－is the very opposite of what ourworld is becoming. The opposite of a wallet is a smartphone or an iPad..The rounded edges, coolglass, smooth and unknowable as a pebble (鹅卵石). Instead of digging through pieces of paper andpeering into corners, we move our fingers left and right. No more counting out coins. Show yourwallet, if you still have one. It may not be here much longer.
56. What is happening to the wallet?
A. It is disappearing.
B. It is being fattened.
C. It is becoming costly.
D. It is changing in style.
57. How are business transactions done in big modern stores?
A. Individually.
B. Electronically.
C. In the abstract.
D. Via a cash register.
58. What makes the author feel uncomfortable nowadays?
A. Saving money is becoming a thing of the past.
B. The pleasing Friday－night feeling is fading.
C. Earning money is getting more difficult.
D. Spending money is so fast and easy.
59. Why does the author choose to write about what's happening to the wallet?
A. It represents a change in the modern world.
B. It has something to do with everybody's life.
C. It marks the end of a time－honoured tradition.
D. It is the concern of contemporary economists.
60. What can we infer from the passage about the author?
A. He is resistant to social changes.
B. He is against technological progress.
C. He feels reluctant to part with the traditional wallet.
D. He feels insecure in the ever－changing modern world.
Passage Two
Questions 61 to 65 are based on the following passage.
Everybody sleeps, but what people stay up late to catch－or wake up early in order not to miss－varies by culture. From data collected, it seems the things that cause us to lose the most sleep, on average, are sporting events, time changes, and holidays.
Around the world, people changed sleep patterns thanks to the start or end of daylight savings time. Russians, for example, began to wake up about a half-hour later each day after President Vladimir Putin shifted the country permanently to "winter time" starting on October 26.Russia's other late nights and early mornings generally correspond to public holidays. On New Year's Eve, Russians have the world's latest bedtime, hitting the hay at around 3:30 am. Russians also get up an hour later on International Women's Day, the day for treating and celebrating female relatives. Similarly, Americans' late nights, late mornings, and longest sleeps fall on three－day weekends. Canada got the least sleep of the year the night it beat Sweden in the Olympic hockey (冰球. final.The World Cup is also chiefly responsible for sleep deprivation (剥夺). The worst night for sleep in the U. K. was the night of the England-Italy match on June 14. Brits stayed up a half－hour later to watch it, and then they woke up earlier than usual the next morning thanks to summer nights, the phenomenon in which the sun barely sets in northern countries in the summertime. That was nothing, though, compared to Germans, Italians, and the French, who stayed up around an hour and a haft later on various days throughout the summer to watch the Cup.
It should be made clear that not everyone has a device to record their sleep patterns; in some of these nations, it's likely that only the richest people do. And people who elect to track their sleep may try to get more sleep than the average person. Even if that's the case, though, the above findings are still striking. If the most health-conscious among us have such deep swings in our shut-eye levels throughout the year, how much sleeg are the rest of us losing?
61. What does the author say about people's sleeping habits?
A. They are culture－related.
B. They affect people's health.
C. They change with the seasons.
D. They vary from person to person.
62, What do we learn about the Russians regarding sleep?
A) They don't fall asleep until very late.
B. They don't sleep much on weekends.
C. They get less sleep on public holidays.
D. They sleep longer than people elsewhere.
63. what is the major cause for Europeans' loss of sleep?
A. The daylight savings time.
B. The colorful night life.
C. The World Cup.
D. The summertime.
64. what is the most probable reason for some rich people to use a device to record their sleeppatterns?
A) They have trouble falling asleep.
B. They want to get sufficient sleep.
C. They are involved in a sleep research.
D. They want to go to bed on regular hours.
65. what does the author imply in the last paragraph?
A. Sleeplessness does harm to people's health.
B. Few people really know the importance of sleep.
C. It is important to study our sleep patterns.
D. Average people probably sleep less than the rich.