2014年英语四级考试每日一练(5月18日)
1. 根据下列材料请回答22-11题:
What does Wordsworth mean by "habit rules the unreflecting herd" (Lines 2-3, Para. 1)?
A.The herd is not used to reflecting.
B.The wild animals have no choice to form their habits.
C.Habit is characterized by being mechanical.
D.Habits are changeable.
2. 点击按钮开始播放听力音频
Questions 11-1are based on the conversation you have just heard.
根据听到的内容作答____.
A) The exact site of the meeting.
B) The nearest way to the hall.
C) The position of the building.
D) The right way to the back door.
3. 65. What does the author say about social networks?
[A] They have effects similar to those of a marriage.
[B] They help develop people’s community spirit.
[C] They provide timely support for those in need.
[D] They help relieve people of their life’s burdens.
4. 听录音,回答1-46题
A.Children learn by example.
B.Children must not tell lies.
C.Children don’t like discipline.
D.Children must control their temper.
5.
根据以下内容回答46-62题
Is College a Worthy Investment?
A.Why are we spending so much money on college? Andwhy are we so unhappy about it? We all seem to agree that a college education is wonderful, and yet strangely we worry when we see families investing so much in this supposedly essential good. Maybe it's time to ask a question that seems almost sacrilegious (大不敬) : is all this investment in college education really worth it?
B. The answer. I fear, is no. For an increasing number of kids, the extra time and money spent pursuing a college diploma will leave them worse off than they were before they set foot on campus.
C.For my entire adult life, a good education has been the most important thing for middle-class households. My parents spent more educating my sister and me than they spent on their house, and they're not the only ones.., and, of course, for an increasing number of families, most of the cost of their house is actually the cost of living in a good school district. Questioning the value of a college education seems a bit like questioning the value of happiness, or tim.
D.The average price of all goods and services has risen about 50 percent. But the price of a college education has nearly doubled in that time. Is the education that today's students are getting twice as good? Are new workers twice as smart? Have they become somehow massively more expensive to educate?
E .Perhaps a bit. Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor, says, "I look at the data, and I see college costs rising faster than inflation up to the mid-1980s by 1 percent a year. Now I see them rising 3to 4 percent a year over inflation. What has happened? The federal government has started dropping money out of airplanes. " Aid has increased, subsidized (补贴的) loans have become available, and "the universities have gotten the money. " Economist Bryan Caplan, who is writing a book about education, agrees: "It's a giant waste of resources that will continue as long as the subsidies continue. "
F.Promotional literature for colleges and student loans often speaks of debt as an "investment in yourself. " But an investment is supposed to generate income to pay off the loans. More than haft of all recent graduates are tmemployed or in jobs that do not require a degree, and the amount of student- loan debt carried by households has increased more than five times since 1999. These graduates were told that a diploma was all they needed to succeed, but it won't even get them out of the spare bedroom at Mom and Dad's. For many, the most visible result of their four years is the loan payments, which now average hundreds of dollars a month on loan balances in the tens of thousands.
G.It's true about the money--sort of. College graduates now make 80 percent more than people who have only a high-school diploma, and though there are no precise estimates, the wage premium (高出的部分) for an outstanding school seems to be even higher. But that's not true of every student. It's very easy to spend four years majoring in English literature and come out no more employable than you were before you went in. Conversely, chemical engineers straight out of school can easily make almost four times the wages of an entry-level high-sch0ol graduate.
H. James Heckman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, has examined how the returns on education break down for individuals with different backgrounds and levels of ability. "Even with these high prices, you're still finding a high return for individuals who are bright and motivated," he says. On the other hand, "if you're not college ready, then the answer is no, it's not worth it. " Experts tend to agree that for the average student, college is still worth it today, but they also agree that the rapid increase in price is eating up more and more of the potential return. For borderline students, tuition ( 学费) rise can push those returns into negative territory.
I. Everyone seems to agree that the government, and parents, should be rethinking how we invest in higher education-and that employers need to rethink the increasing use of college degrees as crude screening tools for jobs that don't really require college skills, "Employers seeing a surplus of college graduates and looking to fill jobs are just adding that requirement," says Vedder. "In fact, a college degree becomes a job requirement for becoming a bar-tender. "
J. We have started to see some change on the fmance side. A law passed in 2007 allows many students to cap their loan payment at 10 percent of their income and forgives any balance after 25 years. Bnt of course, that doesn't control the cost of education; it just shifts it to taxpayers. It also encourages gradimtes to choose lower-paying careers, which reduces the financial return to education still further. "You're subsidizing people to become priests and poets and so forth," says Heckman. "You may think that's a good thing, or you may not. " Either way it will be expensive for the government.
K. What might be a lot cheaper is putting more kids to work. Caplan notes that work also btfilds valuable skills--probably more valuable for kids who don't naturally love sitting in a classroom. Heckman agrees wholeheartedly:" People are different, and those abilities can be shaped. That's what we've learned, and public policy should recognize that. "
L. Heckman would like to see more apprenticeship-style (学徒式) programs, where kids can learn in the workplace learn not just specific job skills, but the kind of "soft skills," like getting to work on time and getting along with a team, that are crucial for career success, "It's about having mentors (指导者) and having workplace-based education," he says. "Time and again I've seen examples of this kind of program working. "
M. Ah, but how do we get there from here? With better public policy, hopefully, but also by making better individual decisions. "Historically markets have been able to handle these things," says Vedder, "and I think eventually markets will handle this one. ff it doesn't improve soon, people are going to wake up and ask, 'Why am I going to college?'"
Caplan suggests that kids who don't love school go to work,
6. 根据材料,回答62-2题:
The argument that global warming is causing more extreme weather is problematic because it presumes the globe is warming. In fact, the global temperature trend line has been stable for more than a dozen years, while carbon dioxide has increased 7%. If carbon dioxide was the driver, then why have global temperatures stopped increasing?
Keep in mind that carbon dioxide represents 0.0395% of the Earth's atmosphere. Arguing that carbon dioxide is driving the small temperature variations in our climate as opposed to the oceans, which cover70% of the planet and have 1,000 times the heat capacity of air, or the output of our sun, is scientifically disturbing.
Weather is more publicized nowadays because of its impact on society and the constant push of the global warming agenda. Increases in population result in more people being in the path of Mother Nature's great anger. Global warming activists attribute every major weather event to man because they are either uninformed about history, or choose to ignore it. The latest claims resulting from this series of hot and dry summers ignore the fact that more state heat records were set in the 1930s than all other decades of the last century combined. Anyone remember the Dust Bowl?
Seven major hurricanes hit the East Coast from 1954 to 1960. Now that we are in a pattern similar to the 1950s, the East Coast is vulnerable once again, and attributing events like Hurricane Irene to global warming is incorrect. All the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.projections for our climate have proved to be wrong. Global temperatures have stopped increasing and are nowhere near estimates made a decade ago. The IPCC incorrectly predicted Arctic sea ice would disappear by now.
After Katrina in 2005, more and stronger hurricanes were forecast to be the future. The Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index for the globe has instead declined to the lowest level in 30 years. This does not mean we will not see warm weather and land-falling hurricanes. We are in a pattern similar to the 1950s when U.S. heat and drought as well as East Coast land-failing hurricanes were quite prevalent.
Perhaps when the Atlantic becomes cold, we will be hearing Ice Age scares again as we did in the 1970s.
According to the first, paragraph_______.
A.there is less extreme weather
B.the global temperature is always stable
C.the globe is not waring
D.carbon dioxide delays global wanning
7. Section A
Direction: 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 question 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 center.
Questions{TSE}are based on the conversation you have just heard.
A.She thinks the man’s joking.
B.The man needs to have his eyes examined.
C.T he man needs a sound review method.
D.The man is wise to study.
翻译题
8.
The international co--unity is increasingly aware of the fact that___________________________________________________________ ( 中国在国际事务中正起着越来越重要的作用 ).
写作
9.
10. “你要茶还是要咖啡?”是用餐人常被问到的问题。许多西方人会选咖啡,而中国人则会选茶。相传,中国的一位尊王于五千多年前发现了茶,并用来治病。在明清(the Ming and Qing Dynasties)期间,茶馆遍布全国。饮茶在六世纪传到日本,但直到十七、十八世纪才传到欧美。如今,茶是世界上流行的饮料(bevemge)之一。茶是中国的民族饮品,也是中国传统和文化的重要组成部分。