2020年12月四级真题第2套.docx

2020年12月英语四级第2套 Part I Writing (30 minutes) Directions: For this part , you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on the topic Changes in the way of Transportation. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. Part II Listening Comprehension (25 minutes) Section A Directions: In this section, you will hear three news reports. At the end of each news report, you will hear two or three questions. Both the news report and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B),C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the center. Questions 1 and 2 are based on the news report you have just heard. 1. A) He wanted to buy a home. C) He lost a huge sum of money. B) He suffered from a shock. D) He did an unusual good deed. 2. A) Invite the waiter to a fancy dinner. C) Give some money to the waiter. B) Tell her story to the Daily News. D) Pay the waiter’s school tuition. Questions 3 and 4 are based on the news report you have just heard. 3. A) Whether or not to move to the state’s mainland. B) How to keep the village from sinking into the sea. C) Where to get the funds for rebuilding their village. D) What to do about the rising level of the seawater. 4. A) It takes too long a time. C) It has to wait for the state’s final approval. B) It costs too much money. D) It faces strong opposition from many villagers. Questions 5 to 7 are based on the news report you have just heard. 5. A) To investigate whether people are grateful for help. B) To see whether people hold doors open for strangers. C) To explore ways of inducing gratitude in people. D) To find out how people express gratitude. 6. A) They induced strangers to talk with them. B) They helped 15 to 20 people in a bad mood. C) They held doors open for people at various places. D) They interviewed people who didn’t say thank you. 7. A) People can be educated to be grateful. C)Most people have bad days now and then. B) Most people express gratitude for help. D) People are ungrateful when in a bad mood. Section B Directions: In this section, you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation, you will hear four questions. Both the conversations and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the center. Questions 8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard. 8. A) To order a solar panel installation. C) To enquire about solar panel installations. B) To report a serious leak in his roof. D) To complain about the faulty solar panels. 9. A) He plans to install solar panels. C) He owns a four-bedroom house. B) He saves $ 300 a year. D) He has a large family. 10. A) The service of the solar panel company. C) The maintenance of the solar panels. B) The cost of a solar panel installation. D) The quality of the solar panels. 11. A)One year and a half. C) Roughly six years. B) Less than four years. D) About five years. Questions 12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard. 12. A) At a travel agency. C) At an airline transfer service. B) At an Australian airport. D) At a local transportation authority. 13. A) She would be able to visit more scenic spots. B) She wanted to save as much money as possible. C) She would like to have everything taken care of. D) She wanted to spend more time with her family. 14. A) Four days. C) One week. B) Five days. D) Two weeks. 15. A) Choosing some activities herself. C) Driving along the Great Ocean Road. B)Spending Christmas with Australians. D) Learning more about wine making. Section C Directions: In this section, you will hear three passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear three or four questions. Both the passages and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the center. Questions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard. 16. A) Bring their own bags when shopping. C) Dispose of their trash properly. B) Use public transport when traveling. D) Pay a green tax upon arrival . 17. A) It has not been doing a good job in recycling. B) It has witnessed a rise in accidental drowning. C) It has not attracted many tourists in recent years. D) It has experienced an overall decline in air quality. 18. A) To charge a small fee on plastic products in supermarkets. B) To ban single-use plastic bags and straws on Bali Island. C) To promote the use of paper bags for shopping. D) To impose a penalty on anyone caught littering. Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard. 19. A) It gives birth to several babies at a time. B) It is the least protected mammal species. C) Its breeding grounds are now better preserved. D) Its population is now showing signs of increase. 20. A) Global warming. C) Commercial hunting. B) Polluted seawaters. D) Decreasing birthrates. 21. A) To mate. C) To escape hunters. B) To look for food . D) To seek breeding grounds. Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard. 22. A) They prefer to drink low-fat milk. C) They consume less milk these days. B) They think milk is good for health. D) They buy more milk than the British. 23.A) It is not as healthy as once thought. C) It benefits the elderly more. B) It is not easy to stay fresh for long. D) It tends to make people fat. 24. A) They drink too many pints every day. C)They lack the necessary proteins to digest it. B) They are sensitive to certain minerals. D) They have eaten food incompatible with milk . 25. A) It is easier for sick people to digest. C) It is healthier than other animal products. B) It provides some necessary nutrients. D) It supplies the body with enough calories. 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 is identified 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. When my son completes a task, I can’t help but praise him. It’s only natural to give praise where praise is due, right? But is there such a thing as too much praise? According to psychologist Katherine Phillip, children don’t benefit from 26 praise as much as we’d like to think. “Parents often praise, believing they are building their child’s self-confidence. However, over-praising can have a 27 effect,” says Phillip. “When we use the same praise 28 , it may become empty and no longer valued by the child. It can also become an expectation that anything they do must be 29 with praise. This may lead to the child avoiding taking risks due to fear of 30 their parents.” Does this mean we should do away with all the praise?Phillip says no.“The key to healthy praise is to focus on the process rather than the 31 . It is the recognition of a child’s attempt, or the process in which they achieved something, that is essential,”she says. “Parents should encourage their child to take the risks needed to learn and grow.” So how do we break the 32 of praise we’re all so accustomed to? Phillip says it’s important to 33 between “person praise” and “process praise”. “Person praise is 34 saying how great someone is. Its a form of personal approval. Process praise is acknowledgement of the efforts the person has just 35 . Children who receive person praise are more likely to feel shame after losing,” says Phillip. A) choose I) pattern B) constant J)plural C) disappointing K) repeatedly D) distinguish L) rewarded E) exhausting M) separately F) experienced N) simply G) negative O) undertaken H) outcome Section B Directions：In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by making the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2. Poverty Is a Story About Us, Not Them A) Too often still, we think we know what poverty looks like. It’s the way we’ve been taught, the images we’ve been force-fed for decades. The chronically homeless. The undocumented immigrant. The urban poor, usually personified as a woman of color, the“ welfare queen” politicians still too often reference. B)But as income inequality rises to record levels in the United States, even in the midst of a record economic expansion, those familiar images are outdated,hurtful, and counterproductive to focusing attention on solutions and building ladders of opportunity. C) Today’s faces of income inequality and lack of opportunity look like all of us. Its Anna Landre, a disabled Georgetown University student fighting to keep health benefits that allow her the freedom to live her life.It’s Tiffanie Standard, a counselor for young women of color in Philadelphia who want to be tech entrepreneurs—but who must work multiple jobs to stay afloat. It’s Ken Outlaw, a welder in rural North Carolina whose dream of going back to school at a local community college was dashed by Hurricane Florence—just one of the extreme weather events that have tipped the balance for struggling Americans across the nation. D) If these are the central characters of our story about poverty, what layers of perceptions, myths,and realities must we unearth to find meaningful solutions and support? In pursuit of revealing this complicated reality, Mothering Justice, led by women of color, went last year to the state capital in Lansing, Michigan, to lobby on issues that affect working mothers.One of the Mothering Justice organizers went to the office of a state representative to talk about the lack of affordable childcare—the vestiges(痕迹) of a system that expected mothers to stay home with their children while their husbands worked. A legislative staffer dismissed the activists concerns, telling her“my husband took care of that—l stayed home.” E) That comment, says Mothering Justice director Danielle Atkinson,“was meant to shame” and relied on the familiar notion that a woman of color concerned about income inequality and programs that promote mobility must by definition be a single mom, probably with multiple kids. In this case,the Mothering Justice activist happened to be married. And in most cases in the America of 2019, the images that come to mind when we hear the words poverty or income inequality fail miserably in reflecting a complicated reality: poverty touches virtually all of us. The face of income inequality, for all but a very few of us, is the one we each see in the mirror. F) How many of us are poor in the U.S.? It depends on who you ask. According to the Census Bureau, 38 million people in the U.S. are living below the official poverty thresholds. Taking into account economic need beyond that absolute measure,the Institute for Policy Studies found that140 million people are poor or low-income. That’s almost half the U.S. population. G) Whatever the measure,within that massive group, poverty is extremely diverse. We know that some people are more affected than others, like children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and people of color. H) But the fact that 4 in 10 Americans cant come up with $ 400 in an emergency is a commonly cited statistic for good reason: economic instability stretches across race, gender,and geography. It even reaches into the middle classes, as real wages have stagnated (不增长)for all but the very wealthy and temporary spells of financial instability are not uncommon. I) Negative images remain of who is living in poverty as well as what is needed to move out of it. The big American myth is that you can pull yourself up by your own efforts and change a bad situation into a good one.The reality is that finding opportunity without help from families, friends, schools, and community is virtually impossible. And the playing field is nothing close to level. J) The FrameWorks Institute, a research group that focuses on public framing of issues, has studied what sustains stereotypes and narratives of poverty in the United Kingdom.“People view economic success and wellbeing in life as a product of choice,willpower and drive,”says Nat Kendall-Taylor, CEO of FrameWorks. “When we see people who are struggling,” he says, those assumptions “lead us to the perception that people in poverty are lazy, they don’t care, and they haven’t made the right decisions.” K) Does this sound familiar?Similar ideas surround poverty in the U.S. And these assumptions give a false picture of reality. “When people enter into that pattfern of thinking,”says Kendall-Taylor, “it’s cognitively comfortable to make sense of issues of poverty in that way. It creates a kind of cognitive blindness—all of the factors external to a person’s drive and choices that they’ve made become invisible and fade from view.” L) Those extemal factors include the difficulties accompanying low-wage work or structural discrimination based on race,gender, or ability.Assumptions get worse when people who are poor use government benefits to help them survive. There is a great tension between “the poor” and those who are receiving what has become a dirty word: “welfare.” M) According to the General Social Survey,71 percent of respondents believe the country is spending too little on “assistance to the poor”.On the other hand, 22 percent think we are spending too little on “welfare” : 37 percent believe we are spending too much. N)“Poverty has been interchangeable with people of color—specifically black women and black mothers,”says Atkinson of Mothering Justice. It’s true that black mothers are more affected by poverty than many other groups, yet they are disproportionately the face of poverty.For example, Americans routinely overestimate the share of black recipients of public assistance programs. O) In reality, most people will experience some form of financial hardship at some point in their lives. Indeed, people tend to dip in and out of poverty, perhaps due to unexpected obstacle