2014年6月英语四级选词填空真题
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2014年6月英语四级选词填空真题题目一：A nation of non-readers: A strange and costly disregard for booksMANY Brazilians cannot read. In 2000, a quarter of those aged 15 and older were functionally illiterate. Many simply do not want to. Only one literate adult in three reads books. The average Brazilian reads 1.8 non-academic books a year—less than half the figure in Europe and the United States. In a recent survey of reading habits, Brazilians came 27th out of 30 countries, spending 5.2 hours a week with a book. Argentines, their neighbours, ranked 18th.In rare accord, government, businesses and NGOs are all striving in different ways to change this. On March 13th the government launched a National Plan for Books and Reading. This seeks to boost reading, by founding libraries and financing publishers among other things. The Brazil Reader Institute, an NGO, brings books to people: it has installed lending libraries in two São Paulo metro stations, and is planning one in a Carnival samba school. It is starting to be common to see characters in television soap operas shown reading. Cynics note that Globo, the biggest broadcaster, is also a big publisher of books, newspapers and magazines.One discouragement to reading is that books are expensive. At São Paulo's book fair this week, “O Código Da Vinci” was on sale for 32 reais—more than a tenth of the official minimum monthly wage. Most other books have small print-runs, pushing up their price.But Brazilians' indifference to books has deeper roots. Centuries of slavery meant the country's leaders long neglected education. Primary schooling became universal only in the 1990s. Radio was ubiquitous by the 1930s; libraries and bookshops have still not caught up. “The electronic experience came before the written experience,” says M arino Lobello, of the Brazilian Chamber of Books, an industry body.All this means that Brazil's book market has the biggest growth potential in the western world, reckons Mr Lobello. That notion has attracted foreign publishers, such as Spain's Prisa-Santillana, which bought a local house last year. American evangelical publishers are eyeing the market for religious books, which outsell fiction in Brazil.But reading is a difficult habit to form. Brazilians bought fewer books in 2004—289m, including textbooks distributed by the government—than they did in 1991. Last year the director of Brazil's national library quit after a controversial tenure. He complained that he had half the librarians he needed and termites had eaten much of the collection. Along with crime and high interest rates, that ought to be a cause for national shame.题目二：Global warming is what we are worried about, and it is exactly as it sound — a trend toward warmer conditions around the world. Part of the warming is natural; we have experienced a 20,000-year-long warming as the last ice age ended and the ice melted away. However, we have already reached temperatures that re in line with other interglacial (minimum ice) periods, so continued warming is likely not natural. We are contributing to a predicted worldwide increase in temperatures ranging between 1° and 6 ℃(2° and 10 ℉) over the next 100 years. The warming will be more dramatic in some areas, less in others, and some places may even cool off. Likewise, the impact of this warming will be very different depending on where you are —coastal areas must worry about rising sea level, while Siberia and northern Canada my become more habitable and appealing for humans than these areas are now.The fact remains, however, that it will likely get warmer, on average, everywhere. Scientists are in general agreement that this process has already begun and that the warmer conditions we have been experiencing at the end of the twentieth century are at least in part the result of a human-induced global warming trend (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] 1995). Some scientists maintain that the changes we are seeing fall within the range of random variation — some years are cold, others warm, and we have just had an unremarkable string of warm years recently— but that is becoming an increasingly rare interpretation in the face of continued and increasing warm conditions.题目三：The fact is, the world has been finding less oil than it’s been using for 20 years now. Not only has demand been soaring, but the oil we’ve been finding is coming from places that are tough to reach. At the same time, more of this newly discovered oil is of the type that requires a greater investment to refine. And because demand for this precious resource will grow, according to some, by over 40% by 2025, fuelling the world’s growing economic prosperity will take a lot more energy from every possible source.The energy industry needs to get more from existing fields while continuing to search for new reserves. Automakers must continue to improve fuel efficiency and perfect hybrid vehicles. Technological improvements are needed so that wind, solar and hydrogen can be more viable parts of the energy equation. Governments need to create energy policies that promote economically and environmentally sound development. Consumers must demand, and be willing to pay for, some of these solutions, while practising conservation efforts of their own.Inaction is not an option. But if everyone works together, we can balance this equation. We’re taking some of the steps needed to get started, but we need your help to get the rest of the way.。
