2011年12月四级考试模拟试题第一套Part I Writing (30 minutes)Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the topic “Education: Examination-Oriented or Quality-Oriented”. You should write at least 120 words following the outline given below in Chinese:1. 应试教育现状及其原因;2. 素质教育的优点;3. 你的观点。
Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.Selling Expertise on the Internet for Extra CashTeresa Estes, a licensed mental-health counselor, watched as business at her private practice decreased last year. Then the single mother turned to her keyboard to boost her income.Ms. Estes applied to become an “expert” on LivePerson Inc., a Web site where clients pay for online chat time with professionals and advisers of all fields. For $1.89 a minute — a rate she set — the 39-year-old from Marianna, Fla., dispenses advice to clients around the globe. She spends about four hours a day online, often at night, when her daughter has gone to bed.“It was the economy,”she says of her move to take her skills online. “Live Person is more profitable than my private practice.” Ms. Estes had charged her private clients up to $75 an hour.As the recession deepens, a small but growing number of people are taking their skills online, offering expertise or performing specified tasks for a fee. Labor-at-the-keyboard sites are gaining popularity as people increasingly turn to the Web in search of work. Internet job-search sites saw a 51% rise in traffic from January 2008 to January 2009, according to comScore Media Metrix, to 26.7 million unique visitors.Among the many fee-for-service Web sites out there, at least three are attracting a significant number of users — though consumers should exercise a healthy degree of skepticism when consulting any of these sites. Live Person seeks out experts on a slew of topics, including mental health, financial services, shopping and fashion, as well as psychics and spiritual advisers. Mechanical Turk, a Web service run by Inc., pays workers to perform tasks, such as cataloging products online. Associated Content pays contributors to write articles on a wide range of subjects, from organic flower gardening to how to apply for financial aid.Live Person went public in 2001, and the current version of the site was launched in late 2007. Today, the site has 30,000 registered experts, attracting an average of 100,000 people a year who pay for the offered services, says Chief ExecutiveOfficer Robert LoCascio. Roughly 3,500 people have made contributing to the site their full-time job, he says.Live Person says it vets contributors’ qualifications, such as medical licenses or financial certification, through a third party, and relies heavily on its community reviews. Some 200 people a day apply to be Live Person experts, up from 120 a year ago, says Mr. LoCascio. Once cleared, advisers work with clients on a cost-per-minute basis set by the adviser. The site takes a commission of between 30% and 35%.Associated Content, by contrast, reviews submissions in house and then decides how much to pay for them. The site, which specializes in how-to pieces and feature stories on news topics, had 237,000 registered contributors and more than one million content pieces as of February, both about double from the same month a year ago.After posting the content, the site sells advertisements against it and distributes it to other companies, such as online shoe retailer Zappos, which use the content on their own Web sites. If Associated Content accepts a submission (it says it rejects about 25% of them), the author gets between $5 and $30, plus $1.50 for each 1,000 page views. An ability to write “search-engine-optimized” content, an industry term for generating good Google results, helps, says site founder Luke Beatty.People are not only looking for payment but also establishing their credentials “as somebody with experience”, he says. Writing about a specific profession, such as law or real estate, helps raise a person’s profile online, e nhancing his job searches, says Mr. Beatty.Sabah Karimi, a 26-year-old from Orlando, Fla., left a career in marketing to become a full-time freelance writer and now spends between 8 and 10 hours a week writing for Associated Content. She has been at it for about three years and says she earns roughly $1,000 a month from her past and current submissions.Ms. Karimi cautions newcomers to Associated Content that it takes time to build up earnings. She says she learned how to write articles that would bring traffic and often looks for newsy ideas that will attract readers.Mechanical Turk, by contrast, is based on “crowd sourcing”, or breaking a task into lots of tiny pieces and giving it to a big group of people to complete quickly. Most of these jobs — which the site calls HITs, for human intelligence tasks —pay just a few cents. Efficient MTurkers, as they call themselves, can make more than $100 a week doing things such as finding someone’s email address or labeling images of a particular animal in a photograph.Amazon says that MTurk now has 200,000 workers from 100 different countries, but it doesn’t keep track of past figures.The site —named for an 18th-century stunt involving a turbaned chess-playing “machine” with an actual chess mast er hidden within —began as a way to help Amazon manage its product database, says Sharon Chiarella, vice president of Amazon Mechanical Turk. Amazon uses the site to help sort images and content, paying people a few cents a task. Mechanical Turk also serves a variety of companies who need Web tasks performed, especially those that require a human element. Test-prep startupKnewton Inc., for example, uses it extensively for focus-group-type tasks, as well as enlisting people to take its practice tests.Keri Knutson, a mother of five from Independence, La., discovered Mechanical Turk when her eldest son was headed for college. Ms. Knutson, now 45, needed money for his tuition and fees. She took on all kinds of low-paying but easy tasks at the beginning, from finding a place to purchase a specific item to identifying the name of a street in a photograph.People looking to make money online as fee-for-service experts should read the fine print. Live Person has one of the more formal payment systems, requiring users to sign up for an account before talking with an expert. Some sites, including Associated Content and Mechanical Turk, reserve the right to refuse payment if a task is not completed satisfactorily.Most sites have a robust community of workers who regularly offer one another tips on which tasks pay the best. Mechanical Turk users have an independent site called Turker Nation (), which reviews the companies that solicit (索求) and pay for tasks so that workers can check a compa ny’s record before taking on a task.Consumers who use these sites also need to exercise caution. Relying on legal or medical advice from an unknown online source has obvious drawbacks, and the Web sites acknowledge that some users have registered complaints about the advice offered on the sites. LivePerson warns consumers to offer their financial and personal details with care.For the workers on these sites, even incremental sources of income are helpful these days. Ms. Knutson now spends the majority of her time transcribing Web audio and video for clients, earning about $250 a week for 30 hours of work. She says she has seen more competition lately but is determined to keep up her weekly pace.“If I didn’t have this money,” she says, “we’d be struggl ing to find what to eat every week.”1. What is the passage mainly talking about?A) The economic recession will last a few years.B) More people are taking their skills online to make money.C) Asking for advice through the Internet is a good way to solve your problems.D) People shouldn’t release their financial and personal details online.2. Live Person Inc. is a Web site where ___________.A) people chat with each other and make friends freelyB) professionals and advisers help others for freeC) people pay money for applying to become an expertD) clients pay for online chat time with professionals and advisers3. Why are labor-at-the-keyboard sites gaining popularity?A) Because people love to work on the Internet.B) Because more people are finding jobs on the Internet.C) Because people are being asked to work on the Internet.D) Because working on the Internet is easier than other ways of working.4. How much will an expert get through Live Person if a client pays $10?A) $3 to $3.5. B) $10. C) $6.5 to $7. D) $5.5. Mechanical Turk originated as a method to _________.A) label images of a particular animal in a photographB) serve a variety of companies who need Web tasks performedC) help Amazon manage its product databaseD) find someone’s email address6. What does Turker Nation do?A) It reserves the right to refuse payment if a task is not completed satisfactorily.B) It relies on legal or medical advice from an unknown online source.C) It registers complaints about the advice offered on the site.D) It reviews the companies that solicit and pay for tasks.7. What does Ms. Knutson spend the majority of her time doing?A) Finding a place to purchase a specific item.B) Identifying the name of a street in a photograph.C) Transcribing Web audio and video for clients.D) Struggling to find what to eat every week.8. Associated Content pays contributors to write articles on a wide range of subjects, from organic flower gardening to how to ______________.9. Live Person says it vets contributors’ qualifications through a third party, and relies heavily on its _______.10. Amazon says that MTurk now has 200,000 workers from ______________.Part IV Reading Comprehension (Reading in Depth) (25 minutes)■ Section ADirections: 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 is identified by a letter. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.Questions 47 to 56 are based on the following passage.Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its 47 lie mainly in blues, rhythm and blues, country, folk, gospel, and jazz. The style subsequently spread to the rest of the world and developed further, leading ultimately to 48 rock music.The term “rock and roll” now covers at least two different meanings, both in common usage. The American Heritage Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary both 49 rock and roll as synonymous with rock music.50 , defines the term as referring specifically to the music of the 1950s.Classic rock and roll is 51 played with one or two electric guitars, a string bass or an electric bass guitar, and a drum kit. In the 52 rock and roll styles of the late 1940s, either the piano or saxophone was often the lead instrument, but these were generally 53 or supplemented by the guitar in the middle to late 1950s.The massive popularity and eventual worldwide view of rock and roll gave it a 54 social impact. Far beyond simply a musical style, rock and roll, as seen in movies and in the new medium of television, 55 lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language. It went on to spawn various sub-genres, often without the initially56 backbeat, that are now more commonly called simply “rock music” or “rock”.A) define I) followedB) characteristic J) modernC) unique K) explanationD) roots L) ConverselyE) usually M) replacedF) Basically N) prepareG) earliest O) seldomH) influenced■Section BDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished sentences. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice.Passage OneQuestions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.According to a report, around 30,000 pupils started secondary school last year with the math skills of a seven-year-old. MPs (国会议员) warned that many young people would need “expensive” remedial lessons in later life to get a job —posing major problems for the economy. The findings came just months after Ofsted(教育标准办公室)claimed almost half of math lessons in English schools were not good enough. It said many teachers relied on textbooks and mundane exercises to make sure pupils passed exams at the expense of a proper understanding of the subject. MPs backed the conclusions, saying too many pupils found lessons “boring”. They insisted improvements had been made under Labor but achievement had “leveled off” in recent years.In 2008, 79 percent of pupils met the Gove rnment’s expected standard at the end of primary school, well short of the 85 percent target set for 2006. Around five percent moved to secondary school with the math skills of a seven- year-old, said the committee. In 2006, ￡2.3 billion was spent teaching the subject. It equates to around a quarter of the ￡10 billion total budget for primary teaching and support staff.The report said the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) needed to “radically rethink its strategy for improving pupil at tainment; otherwise we seriously doubt that the department will meet its 2011 target”. The target demands that 84.5 percent of pupils will make the necessary progress between 7 and 11.Last year, the DCSF published a major review of math education in England to boost standards. It called for a math specialist in every primary school within 10 years and more emphasis on mathematical “play” in nursery schools. Mr. Leigh said, “The department’s 10-year program to train 13,000 specialist math teacherswill no t benefit some primary schools for another decade. That’s far too long; the department needs to look for ways to accelerate the program.” Sarah McCarthy Fry, the Schools Minister, said, “We have already accepted the main recommendation from a recent independent review of primary math that every school should have a specialist math teacher and have pledged ￡24 million over the next three years for a training program for teachers.”Nick Gibb, the Tory shadow schools secretary, said, “The Government is not getting value for the money they have piled into education and the country is falling behind in international league tables as a result. The Government has failed to replace methods of teaching which have failed with tried and tested methods used in countri es that have much higher levels of math achievement.”57. What do we learn from the first paragraph?A) 30,000 pupils started secondary school with poor math skills.B) MPs insist more improvements should be made under Labor.C) Young people need medical lessons to get a job.D) Half of English schools were not good enough.58. According to the passage, what happened in 2006?A) 21% of pupils didn’t meet the Government’s expected standard.B) The target set for 2006 was 87 percent.C) ￡2.3 billion was spent on math teaching.D) The total budget for primary teaching and support staff was ￡5 billion in 2006.59. What will people probably do to improve math education in England?A) Spend money on training specialist math teachers.B) Hire a math specialist for every primary school.C) Allow pupils to have more mathematical “play”.D) Spend more time on math education.60. What do Nick Gibb’s words mean?A) The British government should put more money into math education.B) Britain is falling behind in the international knowledge competition.C) The British government should learn from other countries’ failures.D) The British government should change their teaching methods every few years.61. What’s the passage mainly tal king about?A) There aren’t enough math teachers in British primary schools.B) The British government didn’t spend enough money on math education.C) British pupils are not good at math.D) Math lessons in British primary schools need to be improved.Passage TwoQuestions 62 to 66 are based on the following passage.Bananas, always the fashion victims of the produce section, are wearing another new label this spring. Bananas with “Fair Trade Certified” stickers have been available in the United States since October. They represent the new front of an international effort to help first-world consumers improve the living standardsof the third-world farmers who grow much of their food.By expanding its reach to the produce section, Fair Trade is now trying to reach the American supermarket shopper. Fair Trade deals directly with farmer cooperatives. It helps organize, avoiding brokers (代理人) and middlemen. It guarantees higher prices for the farmers’ goods and helps them set up schools and health clinics.The Fair Trade movement took root in Europe in the 1990’s as a way of bolstering coffee farmers as prices were collapsing. Since Fair Trade began, more than a million coffee growers and other farmers have joined cooperatives that sell their products through Fair Trade channels instead of directly to a commercial producer.Not everyone is greeting the Fair Trade label with open arms. Several American coffee importers recently pulled out of Fair Trade, citing TransFair’s “corporate friendly” poli cies that allow large companies to use the Fair Trade logo in their marketing even if only a small amount of the company’s overall purchases are Fair Trade certified.Edmund LaMacchia, the national produce coordinator for Whole Foods, said Fair Trade is only one of many consumer choices. “Whole Foods has its own team of inspectors and has no plans to carry Fair Trade products”, Mr. LaMacchia said. “Our standards are higher than Fair Trade’s, actually.” Fair Trade is only one of several labels your bananas might be wearing this year. Another is that of the Rainforest Alliance, which certifies the use of sustainable agriculture methods.So far, though, Fair Trade is the biggest. A Fair Trade label by itself does not guarantee an organic product, but most Fair Trade bananas are also organic, Ms. Bourque said, because pesticides are usually too costly for the small farmers who grow them. If the bananas are organic, they will be labeled as such, and will probably be wearing a sticker to prove it.62. Why are bananas wearing “Fair Trade Certified” stickers?A) It means bananas are the fashion victims of the produce section.B) It means bananas have got a new label.C) It means bananas with these stickers are available in the United States.D) It represents an international effort to help the third-world farmers.63. What does Fair Trade do?A) It helps farmers sell their products for a higher profit.B) It appoints brokers and middlemen to deal with farmer cooperatives.C) It brings down the pri ce of farmers’ goods.D) It sets up schools and health clinics for American farmers.64. What was the original purpose of the Fair Trade movement?A) To cooperate with coffee growers and other farmers.B) To help coffee farmers as prices were collapsing.C) To prevent farmers from selling their products to commercial producers.D) To sell products through coffee growers and other farmers.65. What can we infer from this passage?A) American coffee importers will never buy their products through FairTrade channels.B) Fair Trade is the only label that bananas might be wearing this year.C) Not every consumer considers Fair Trade products the only choice.D) Whole Foods and the Rainforest Alliance are more influential than Fair Trade.66. What is the best title for this passage?A) Helping the Third World: One Banana at a TimeB) Consumers Face More ChoicesC) Fair Trade — the Best StickerD) The Fair Trade MovementPart V Cloze (15 minutes)Directions: There are 20 blanks in the following passage. For each blank there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should choose the ONE that best fits into the passage.Everyone knows hand washing is important. But a new study shows how washing your hands 67, and at the right time, can have a big impact on your family’s risk of getting sick.Most studies on hand washing focus on 68 and food service workers. But this month’s American Journal of Infection Control focuses on washing hands at69as a way to stop infections from 70 . Several studies show hands are the single most important 71route for all types of infections.Even though most people know to wash their hands after using the toilet or handling a diaper (尿布), studies 72many people are still ending up with germs on their hands.One study looked in homes of73recently vaccinated against polio (脊髓灰质炎). After vaccination, the virus is74 to be shed in the baby’s feces (粪便). Researchers found the virus on 13 percent of bathroom, living room and kitchen surfaces. 75 the virus from the vaccine didn’t pose a health risk, feces-borne viruses can 76through the home.Doorknobs and toilet flush handles are key 77of germ transmission in the home. That’s why people should focus on cleaning such surfaces 78and always wash their hands after touching them. In one study, a79touched a door handle contaminated with a virus. He then shook hands 80other volunteers, and spread the virus to six people.The study authors note that the timing of hand washing is key. It’s 81 to wash hands after using the toilet, before eating or handling food. Other crucial times for hand washing are after 82a diaper or cleaning up after a pet, or after touching garbage cans, dish rags and utensils that may have come 83contact with raw food.While it may be hard to 84 that something as simple as regular hand washing can make a difference in your family’s health, consider what happened during the 2003 outbreak of SARS. The outbreak 85extensive public and community health measures, including regular hand washing. Not only was the SARS outbreak contained,86other cases of illnesses dropped sharply.67. A) occasionally B) often C) sometimes D) repeatedly68. A) chemical B) physical C) medical D) mental69. A) home B) clinics C) hospitals D) school70. A) living B) spreading C) surviving D) going71. A) transmit B) transfer C) transferring D) transmission72. A) claim B) agree C) suggest D) object73. A) parents B) teachers C) adults D) infants74. A) known B) said C) moved D) added75. A) When B) While C) Why D) Which76. A) travel B) go C) fly D) float77. A) questions B) opportunities C) ideas D) sources78. A) always B) frequently C) regularly D) actually79. A) volunteer B) baby C) worker D) person80. A) in B) on C) with D) through81. A) useless B) obvious C) interesting D) thankful82. A) taking B) using C) changing D) bringing83. A) of B) for C) from D) into84. A) dream B) know C) figure D) believe85. A) triggered B) started C) helped D) saved86. A) yet B) while C) but D) sincePart VI Translation (5 minutes)Directions: Complete the sentences by translating into English the Chinese given in brackets.87. It was after the failure of this attempt that he _____________(诉诸武力).88. A lot of people nowadays have muscular problems in the neck, the shoulders and the back __________________(主要是由于工作中的压力和紧张造成的).89. This occupation ____________________(关注于计划和监督) the arrangement of exhibitions of collections.90. ____________________ (令学生失望的是), the books they needed were sold out at the bookstore.91. A number of women interviewed found ___________________________(获得提升很难).【参考答案】Part I WritingOne possible version:Education: Examination-Oriented or Quality-OrientedFrom primary school to college, students, teachers and parents all are struggling for high scores. This is because the current education system is not aimed at quality, but only at developing students’ ability to perform well on tests. As a result, many students, even those with high scores, often do poorly when it comesto the practical application of what they’ve learned.Therefore, China is challenging examination-oriented education by advocating quality-oriented education. The alternative will focus on the students’ ability as a whole. The exam results will no longer play a key role in evaluating a student.Personally, I firmly believe in the effectiveness of this new policy. I have seen in my mind’s eye the more dedicated study, the looser environment, yet the more creative minds of the future students. Our education, so to speak, will bring up a new generation.Part II Reading Comprehension(Skimming and Scanning)1. B)。
