2015年12月英语四级真题及答案(卷四 完整版)
Part IWriting ( 30 minutes)
For thispart, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the saying “Learning is a daily experience and lifetime mission.”You can cite examples to illustrate the importance of lifelonglearning. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.
PartII Listening Comprehension ( 30 minutes)
SectionA
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 whatwas 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 thefour 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 throughthe centre.
1.A) Theyadmire the courage of space explorers.
B) Theyenjoyed the movie on space exploration.
C) Theywere going to watch a wonderful movie.
D) Theylike doing scientific exploration very much.
2. A) At agift shop.
B) At agraduation ceremony.
C) In theoffice of a travel agency.
D) In aschool library.
3. A) Heused to work in the art gallery.
B) He doesnot have a good memory.
C) Hedeclined a job offer form the art gallery.
D) He isnot interested in any part-time jobs.
4.A) Susanhas been invited to give a lecture tomorrow.
B) He willgo to the birthday party after the lecture.
C) Thewoman should have informed him earlier.
D) He willbe unable to attend the birthday party.
5.A) Rewardthose having made good progress.
B) Set adeadline for the staff to meet.
C) Assignmore workers to the project.
D)Encourage the staff to work in small groups.
6. A) Theway to the visitor’s parking.
B) The ratefor parking in Lot C.
C) How faraway the parking lot is.
D) Whereshe can leave her car.
7. A) Heregrets missing the classes.
B) He plansto take the fitness classes.
C) He islooking forward to a better life.
D) He hasbenefited form exercise.
8.A) How to? work efficiency.
B) How toselect secretaries.
C)Theresponsibilities of secretaries.
D) Thesecretaries in the man’s company.
ConversationOne
Questions 9to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
9.A) It ismore difficult to learn than English.
B) It isused by more people than English.
C) It willbe as commonly used as English.
D) It willeventually become a world language.
10.A) Ithas words words from many languages,
B) Itspopularity with the common people.
C) Theinfluence of the British Empire.
D) Theeffect of the Industrial Revolution.
11.A) Itincludes a lot of words form other languages.
B) It has agrowing number of newly coined words,
C) It canbe easily picked up by overseas travelers.
D) It isthe largest among all languages in the world.
Conversation2
Questions12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
12.A) Toreturn some goods.
B) To applyfor a job.
C) To placean order.
D) To makea complaint.
13. A) Hehas become somewhat impatient with the woman.
B) He isnot familiar with the exact details of goods.
C) He hasnot worked in the sales department for long.
D) He workson a part-time basis for the company.
14. A) Itis not his responsibility.
B) It willbe free for large orders.
C) It costs15 more for express delivery.
D) Itdepends on a number of factors.
15.A)Report the information to her superior.
B) Pay a visitto the saleswoman in charge.
C) Ringback when she comes to a decision.
D) Makeinquiries with some other companies.
SectionB
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 spokenonly once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from thefour choices marked A), B), C) and D ). Then mark the corresponding letter onAnswer Sheet I with a single line through the centre.
Passage One
Questions16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard.
16. A) Noone knows exactly where they were ??
B) No oneknows for sure when thy came into being.
C) No oneknows for what purpose they were ?
D) No oneknows what they will ?????
17. A)Carry ropes across rivers.
B) Measurethe speed of wind.
C) Pass onsecret messages.
D) Givewarnings of danger.
18. A) Toprotect houses against lightning.
B) To testthe effects of the lightning rod.
C) To find outthe strength of silk for kites.
D) To provethe lightning is electricity.
Passage Two
Questions19 to 22 are based on the passage you have just heard.
19. A) Sheenjoys teaching languages.
B) She canspeak several languages.
C) She wastrained to be an interpreter.
D) She wasborn with a talent for languages.
20. A) Theyacquire an immunity to culture shock.
B) Theywould like to live abroad permanently.
C) Theywant to learn as many foreign languages as possible.
D) Theyhave an intense interest in cross-cultural interactions.
21.A) Shebecame an expert in horse racing.
B) She gota chance to visit several European countries.
C) She wasable to translate for a German sports judge.
D) Shelearned to appreciate classical music.
22. A)Taste the beef and give her comment.
B) Takepart in a cooking competition.
C) Teachvocabulary for food in ??
D) Givecooking lessons on ????
PassageThree
Questions23 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.
23. A) Hehad only a third-grade education.
B) He oncethreatened to kill his teacher.
C) He grewup in a poor ???
D) He oftenhelped his ???
24.A)Careless.
B) Stupid.
C) Brave.
D) Active.
25.A) Writetwo book reports a week.
B) Keep adiary.
C) Helpwith housework.
D) Watcheducation??
SectionC
Directions:In this section, you will hear a passage three times. When the passage is readfor the first time, you should listen carefully for its general idea. When thepassage is read for the second time, you are required to fill in the blankswith the exact words you have just heard. Finally, when the passage is read forthe third time, you should check what you have written.
When youlook up at the night sky, what do you see? There are other bodies out therebesides the moon and stars. One of the most of this is a comet. Comets wereformed around the same the earth was formed. They are made up of ice and otherfrozen liquids and gasses. these dirty snow balls begin to orbit the sun just asthe planets do. As a comet gets closer to the sun, some gasses in it begin tounfreeze. They combine with dust particles from the comet to form a huge cloud.As the comet gets even nearer to the sun and solar wind blows the cloud behindthe comet thus forming its tail. The tail and generally fuzzy atmosphere aroundthe comet are that can help this phenomenon in the night sky. In any given year， about dozen known comets come close to the sun in their orbits. Theaverage person can’t see them all of course. Usuallythere is only one or two a year bright enough to be seen with the _________eye.Comet Hale-Bopp discovered in 1995 was an unusually bright comet. Its orbitbought it _________to the earth within 122 million miles of it. But Hale-Boppcame a long way on its earthly visit. It won’t be backfor another 4 thousand years or so.
Part Ш Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)
SectionA
Directions:In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to selectone word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank followingthe passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices.Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark thecorresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line throughthe centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.
Questions36 to 45 are based on the following passage.
For manyAmericans, 2013 ended with an unusually bitter cold spell. November andDecember 36 early snow and bone-chilling temperatures in much of the country,part of a year when, for the first time in two 37 , record-cold days willlikely turn out to have outnumbered record-warm ones. But the U.S. was theexception; November was the warmest ever 38 , and current data indicates that2013 is likely to have been the fourth hottest year on record.
Enjoy thesnow now, because 39 are good that 2014 will be even hotter, perhaps thehottest year since records have been kept. That’sbecause, scientists are predicting, 2014 will be an EI Niuo year.
EI niuo,Spanish for “the child”, 40when surface ocean waters in the southern Pacific become abnormally warm. Solarge is the Pacific, covering 30% of the planet’ssurface, that the 41 energy generated by its warming is enough to touch off aseries of weather changes around the world. EI Ninos are 42 with abnormally dryconditions in Southeast Asia and Australia. They can lead to extreme rain inparts of North and South America, even as southern Africa 43 dry weather.Marine life may be affected too; EI Ninos can 44 the rising of the cold,nutrient-rich(营养丰富的)water that supports large fish 45,and the unusually warm ocean temperatures can destroy coral(珊瑚).
注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
SectionB
Directions:In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attachedto it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs.Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose aparagraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer thequestion by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
The PerfectEssay
A) Lookingback on too many years of education, I can identify one truly impossibleteacher. She cared about me, and my intellectual life, even when I didn’t. Her expectations were high—impossibly so.She was an English teacher. She was also my mother.
B) Whengood students turn in an essay, they dream of their instructor returning it tothem in exactly the same condition, save for a single word added in the marginof the final page.“Flawless.”This dream came true for me one afternoon in the ninth grade. Of course, I hadheard that genius could show itself at an early age, so I was only slightlytaken aback that I had achieved perfection at the tender age of 14. Obviously,I did what and professional writer would do; I hurried off to spread the goodnews. I didn’t get very far. The first person I toldwas my mother.
C) Mymother, who is just shy of five feet tall, is normally incredibly soft-spoken,but on the rare occasion when she got angry, she was terrifying. I am not sureif she was more upset by my hubris(得意忘形)or by the factthat my English teacher had let my ego get so out of hand. In and event. Mymother and her red pen showed me how deeply flawed a flaw less essay could be.At the time, I am sure she thought she was teaching me about mechanics,transitions(过渡), structure, style and voice. But what Ilearned, and what stuck with me through my time teaching writing at Harvard,was a deeper lesson about the nature of creative criticism.
D) Firstoff, it hurts. Genuine criticism, the type that leaves a lasting mark on you asa writer, also leaves an existential imprint(印记)on youas a 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, is deeply personal, and gets to the heart of why wewrite the way we do. The intimate nature of genuine criticism implies somethingabout who is able to give it, namely, someone who knows you well enough to showyou how your mental life is getting in the way of good writing. Conveniently,they are also the people who care enough to see you through this painfulrealization. For me it took the form of my first, and I hope only, encounterwith writer’s block—I was notable to produce anything for three years.
F) FranzKafka once said; “Writing is utter solitude(独处), the descent into the cold abyss(深渊)ofoneself.” My mother’s criticismhad shown me that Kafka is right about the cold abyss, and when you make theintrospective(内省的)descent that writing requires you arenot always pleased by what you find. But, in the years that followed, hersustained tutoring suggested that Kafka might be wrong about the solitude, Iwas lucky enough to find a critic and teacher who was willing to make thejourney of writing with me. “It is a thing of no greatdifficulty.”according to Plutarch, “to raise objections against another man’sspeech. it is a very easy matter, but to produce a better in its place is awork extremely troublesome.” I am sure I wrote essaysin the later years of high school without my mother’sguidance, but I can’t recall them. What I remember,however, is how she took up the“extremely troublesome”work of ongoing criticism.
G) Thereare two ways to interpret Plutarch when he suggests that a critic should beable to produce“a better in its place.”In a straightforward sense, he could mean that a critic must be moretalented than the artist she critiques(评论).My motherwas well covered on this count. But perhaps Plutarch is suggesting somethingslightly different, something a bit closer to Marcus Cicero’s claim that one should“criticize bycreation, not by finding fault.”Genuine criticismcreates a precious opening for an author to become better on his own terms—a process that is often extremely painful, but also almost alwaysmeaningful.
H) Mymother said she would help me with my writing, but first I had to help myself.For each assignment, I was to write the best essay I could. Real criticism isnot meant to find obvious mistakes, so if she found any—the type I could have found on my own—I hadto start from scratch. From scratch. Once the essay was“flawless,” she would take an evening to walkme through my errors. That was when true criticism, the type that changed me asa person, began.
I) Shecriticized me when I included 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)their way through ignorance.” That was newsto me—I would need to find another way to structure mydaily existence.
J) Shetrimmed back my flowery language, drew lines through my exclamation marks andargued for the value of restraint in expression.“John,” she almost whispered. I leaned in to hear her: “I can’t hear you when you shout at me.” So I stopped shouting and bluffing, and slowly my writing improved.
K)Somewhere along the way I set aside my hopes of writing that flawless essay.But perhaps I missed something important in my mother’slessons about creativity and perfection. Perhaps the point of writhing the flawlessessay was not to give up, but to never willingly finish. Whitman repeatedlyreworked“song of Myself”between 1855 and 1891. Repeatedly. We do our absolute best with a piece ofwriting, and come as close as we can to the ideal. And, for the time being, wesettle. In critique, however, we are forced to depart, to give up theperfection we thought we had achieved for the chance of being even a little bitbetter. This is the lesson I took from my mother: If perfection were possible,it would not be motivating.
注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
46. Theauthor was advised against the improper use of figures of speech.
47. Theauthor’s mother taught him a valuable lesson bypointing out lots of flaws in his seemingly perfect essay.
48. Awriter should polish his writing repeatedly so as to get closer to perfection.
49. Writersmay experience periods of time in their life when they just can’t produce anything.
50. Theauthor was not much surprised when his school teacher marked his essay as“flawless”.
51. Criticizingsomeone’s speech is said to be easier than coming upwith a better one.
52. Theauthor looks upon his mother as his most demanding and caring instructor.
53. Thecriticism the author received from his mother changed his as a person.
54. Theauthor gradually improved his writing by avoiding fancy language.
55.Constructive criticism gives an author a good start to improve his writing.
SectionC
PassageOne
Questions56 to 60 are based on the following passage.
The walletis heading for extinction. As a day-to-day essential, it will die off with thegeneration who read print newspapers. The kind of shopping-where you hand overnotes and count out change in return—now happens onlyin the most minor of our retail encounters，like buyinga bar of chocolate or a pint of milk from a comer shop. At the shops where youspend any real money, that money is increasingly abstracted. And this is moreand more true, the higher up the scale you go. At the most cutting-edge retailstores—Victoria Beckham on Dover Street, for instance—you don’t go and stand at any kind of cashregister when you decide to pay. The staff are equipped with iPads to take yourpayment while you relax on a sofa.
Which isnothing more or less than excellent service, if you have the money. But acrosssociety, the abstraction of the idea of cash makes me uneasy. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned. But earning money isn’tquick or easy for most of us. Isn’t it a bit weird thatspending it should happen in half a blink (眨眼) of aneye? Doesn’t a wallet—thattime-honoured Friday-night feeling of pleasing, promising fatness—represent something that matters?
But I’ll leave the economics to the experts. What bothers me about thedeath of the wallet is the change it represents in our physical environment.Everything about the look and feel of a wallet—the waythe fastenings and materials wear and tear and loosen with age, the plastic andpaper and gold and silver, and handwritten phone numbers and printed cinematickets—is the very opposite of what our world isbecoming. The opposite of a wallet is a smartphone of an iPad. The roundededges, cool glass, smooth and unknowable as pebble (鹅卵石).Instead of digging through pieces of paper and peering into corners, we moveour fingers left and right. No more counting out coins. Show your wallet, ifyou still have one. It may not be here much longer.
56. What ishappening to the wallet?
A) It isdisappearing. C) it is becoming costly.
B) It isbeing fattened. D) It is changing in style.
57. How arebusiness transactions done in big modern stores?
A)Individually. C) In the abstract.
B)Electronically. D) Via a cash register.
58. Whatmakes the author feel uncomfortable nowadays?
A) Savingmoney is becoming a thing of the past.
B) Thepleasing Friday-night feeling is fading.
C) Earningmoney is getting more difficult.
D) Spendingmoney is so fast and easy.
59. Whydoes the author choose to write about what’s happeningto the wallet?
A) Itrepresents a change in the modern world.
B) It hassomething to do with everybody’s life.
C) It marksthe end of a time-honoured tradition.
D) It isthe concern of contemporary economists.
60.What canwe infer from the passage about the author?
A) He isresistant to social changes.
B) He isagainst technological progress.
C) He feelsreluctant to part with the traditional wallet.
D) He fellsinsecure in the ever-changing modern world.
PassageTwo
Questions61 to 65 are based on the following passage.
Everybodysleeps,but what people stay up late to catch—or wake upearly in order not to miss—varies by culture.
From datacollected,it seems the things that cause us to lose the most sleep,onaverage,are sporting events,time changes,and holidays.
Around theworld, people changed sleep patterns thanks to the start or end of daylightsavings time. Russians, for example, began to wake up about a half-hour latereach 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 topublic holidays. On New Year’s Eve, Russians have theworld’s latest bedtime, hitting the hay at around 3:30am.
Russiansalso 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 longestsleeps fall on three-day weekends.
Canada gotthe least sleep of the year the night it beat Sweden in the Olympic hockey(冰球)final.
The WorldCup is also chiefly responsible for sleep deprivation(剥夺), The worst night for sleep in the U.K. was the night of theEngland-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 summernights, the phenomenon in which the sun barely sets in northern countries inthe summertime. That was nothing, though, compared to Germans, Italians, andthe French, who stayed up around an hour and a half later on various daysthroughout the summer to watch the Cup.
It shouldbe made clear that not everyone has a device to record their sleep patterns, insome of these nations, it’s likely that only therichest people do. And people who elect to track their sleep may try to getmore sleep than the average person. Even if that’s thecase, though, the above findings are still striking, If the mosthealth-conscious among us have such deep swings in our shut-eye levelsthroughout the year, how much sleep are the rest of us losing?
注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
61. Whatdoes the author say about people’s sleeping habits?
A) They areculture-related C)They change with the seasons.
B) Theyaffect people’s health. D)They vary from person toperson.
62.What dowe 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 getless sleep on public holidays.
D) Theysleep longer than people elsewhere.
63.What isthe major cause for Europeans’ loss of sleep?
A) Thedaylight savings time.
B) Thecolorful night life.
C) TheWorld Cup.
D) Thesummertime.
64.What isthe most probable reason for some rich people to use a device to record theirpatterns?
A) Theyhave trouble falling asleep.
B) Theywant to get sufficient sleep.
C) They areinvolved in a sleep research.
D) Theywant to go to bed on regular hours.
65. Whatdoes the author imply in the last paragraph?
A)Sleeplessness does harm to people’s health.
B) Fewpeople really know the importance of sleep.
C) It isimportant to study our sleep patterns.
D) Averagepeople probably sleep less than the rich.
PartIV Translation ( 30 minutes)
Directions:For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chineseinto English. You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2.
云南省的丽江古镇是中国著名的旅游目的地之一。那里的生活节奏比大多数中国的城市都要缓慢。丽江到处都是美丽的自然风光，众多的少数民族同胞提供了各式各样，丰富多彩的文化让游客体验。历史上，丽江还以“爱之城”而闻名。当地人中流传着许多关于人生，为爱而死的故事。如今，在中外游客眼中，这个古镇被视为爱情和浪漫的天堂。(paradise)
Part IWriting
【“活到老，学到老”参考范文】
As an oldsaying goes, “ Learning is a daily experience and alifetime mission”. Apparently, the meaning of thissaying is that if we truly desire to learn something, we are supposed to devoteour life to it.
There areseveral reasons accounting for this viewpoint. Firstly, learning itself is anactually complicated and painful matter, and as a result, it is advisable forus to commit much more time even our whole life to it. Additionally, it isexceedingly obvious that we are easy to forget what we learned, andaccordingly, the significance of lifetime learning cannot be ignored. Forexample, memorizing vocabulary is commonly the first step of preparing for anEnglish test.
To sum up,lifelong learning lays a solid foundation to the development of ourselves, andonly when we realize the significance of lifetime learning can we understandthe essence of learning.
PartII Listening Comprehension
【短对话】
1. C. Theyenjoyed the movie on space exploration.
2. B. At agift shop.
3. D. Hedeclined a job offer from the art gallery.
4. A. Hewill be unable to attend the birthday party.
5. A. Set adeadline for the staff to meet.
6. D. Theway to the visitor's parking.
7. B. Hehas benefited from exercise.
8. D. Thesecretaries in the man's company.
【短文理解】
Passage One
16. A) Noone knows for sure when they came into being.
17. D)Carry ropes across rivers.
18. C) Toprove that lightening is electricity.
Passage Two
19. C) Shecan speak several languages.
20. B) Theyhave an intense interest in cross-cultural interactions.
21. C) Shewas able to translate for a German sports judge.
22. B)Taste the beef and give her comment.
PassageThree
23. D) Hegrew up in a poor single parent family.
24. A)Stupid
25. B)Write two book reports a week.
【短文听写】
(26)heavenly
(27)fascinating
(28) madeup of
(29) Nowand then
(30)combine with
(31)generally
(32)characteristics
(33)phenomenon
(34) naked
(35)relatively
PartШ Reading Comprehension
SectionA
【选词填空】
36. G favorite
37 Mprotest
38. Bamount
39. Dtheories
40. Iimmediately
41. D crazy
42. Fdifference
43. Jnaturally
44. Hhappening
45. Cconfirmed
SectionB
【快速阅读】
46. I Shecriticized me when I included little-known...
47. C My mother,who is just shy of five feet tall...
48. KSomewhere along the way i set aside my hopes...
49. ECriticism, at its best, is deeply personal,and gets to the ....
50. B Whengood students turn in an essay, they dream of ....
51. ECriticism, at its best, is deeply personal,and gets to the ....
52. F FranzKafka once said: “writing is utter solitude...
53. H Mymother said she would help me with my writing...
54. I Shecriticized me when I included little-known references...
55. H My mothersaid she would help me with my writing...
【仔细阅读】
56 . Itssuccess is hard to copy anywhere else
57. Lack ofthe right kind of talents.
58. Itslocation is not as attractive to rich people
59. It isan old city...
60. Theycan do more than...
61. It mayprevent your business and career from advancing.
62.Encourage people to disagree and argue.
63. To findout ...
64. Theytake care ...
65.Acknowledge ...
Section C
PartIV Translation
【原文】
云南省的丽江古镇是中国著名的旅游目的地之一。那里的生活节奏比大多数中国的城市都要缓慢。丽江到处都是美丽的自然风光，众多的少数民族同胞提供了各式各样，丰富多彩的文化让游客体验。历史上，丽江还以“爱之城”而闻名。当地人中流传着许多关于人生，为爱而死的故事。如今，在中外游客眼中，这个古镇被视为爱情和浪漫的天堂。(paradise)
【参考译文】
Lijiang, anancient town in Yunan province, is one of the famous tourist attractions inChina. The life tempo there is slower than that of majority of cities in China.There is natural scenery everywhere in Lijiang. A substantial number ofminority peoples provide various and colorful cultures for tourists toexperience. Lijiang has also been known as the “City ofLove” in history. Plenty of legends about people bornfor love and died for love circulate among the local people. Currently, thisancient town is regarded as the paradise of love and romance in the eyes ofboth Chinese and foreign visitors.
