大学英语四级试题模拟试卷二

1、大学英语四级试题模拟试卷二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。

2、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 informati

3、on 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 Live

4、Person 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 daught

5、er 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 onlin

6、e, 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、.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

8、mental health, financial services, shopping and fashion, as well as psychics and spiritual advisers. Mechanical Turk, a Web service run by A Inc., pays workers to perform tasks, such as cataloging products online. Associated Content pays contributors to write articles on a wide range of sub

9、jects, 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

10、Chief Executive Officer 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.

11、 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

12、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 sit

13、e 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

14、 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 specif

15、ic profession, such as law or real estate, helps raise a persons profile online, enhancing 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 Asso

16、ciated 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 an

17、d 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 j

18、ust a few cents. Efficient MTurkers, as they call themselves, can make more than $100 a week doing things such as finding someones 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 doesnt keep t

19、rack of past figures.The site named for an 18th-century stunt involving a turbaned chess-playing “machine” with an actual chess master 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 hel

20、p 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 startup Knewton Inc., for example, uses it extensively for focus-group-type tasks, as well as enlisti

21、ng 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 fin

22、ding 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 wit

23、h 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 indep

24、endent site called Turker Nation (), which reviews the companies that solicit (索求) and pay for tasks so that workers can check a companys record before taking on a task.Consumers who use these sites also need to exercise caution. Relying on legal or medical advice from an unkn

25、own 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 inco

26、me 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 didnt have this money,” she says,

27、“wed be struggling 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 shouldnt

28、 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 professi

29、onals 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

30、 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

31、 manage its product databaseD) find someones 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 th

32、e 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 wha

33、t 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 w

34、orkers 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 careful

35、ly 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

36、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 Ameri

37、can Heritage Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary both 49 rock and roll as synonymous with rock music.50 , A 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

38、 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

39、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 initially 56 backbeat, that are now more commonly called simply “rock

40、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) influencedSection BDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfin

41、ished 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

42、-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 teache

43、rs 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

44、recent years.In 2008, 79 percent of pupils met the Governments 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

45、 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 attainment; otherwise we seriously doubt

46、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 withi

47、n 10 years and more emphasis on mathematical “play” in nursery schools. Mr. Leigh said, “The departments 10-year program to train 13,000 specialist math teachers will not benefit some primary schools for another decade. Thats far too long; the department needs to look for ways to accelerate the prog

48、ram.” 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.”

49、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 an

50、d tested methods used in countries 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

51、job.D) Half of English schools were not good enough.58. According to the passage, what happened in 2006?A) 21% of pupils didnt meet the Governments 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 suppo

52、rt 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 d

53、o Nick Gibbs 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 ever

54、y few years.61. Whats the passage mainly talking about?A) There arent enough math teachers in British primary schools.B) The British government didnt 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 Tw

55、oQuestions 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 intern

56、ational effort to help first-world consumers improve the living standards of 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 h

57、elps 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 1990s 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