衰变2017年12月英语四级真题及答案第三套

2021年1月8日发(作者：虞愚)
2017年12月英语四级真题及答案第三套

Part I Writing (30 minutes)

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on how
to best handle the relationship between doctors and patients. You should write at
least 120 words but no more than 180 words.


Part Ⅱ Listening Comprehension (25 minutes)

特别说明：由于四级考试全国共考了两套听力，本套真题听力与前两套内 容相同，只是选项
顺序不同，故不再重复给出。


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.

We all know there exists a great void (空白) in the public educational system when
it comes to
26 to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) courses. One
educator named Dori Roberts decided to do something to change this system. Dori
taught high school engineering for11 years. She noticed there was a real void in
quality STEM education at all 27 of the public educational system. She said,
“I started Engineering For Kids (EFK) after noticing a real lack of math,science
and engineering programs to28 my own kids in.”She decided to start an
afterschool program where children 29 in STEM-based competitions. The
club grew quickly and when it reached 180 members and the kids in the program won
several state 30 , she decided to devote all her time to cultivating and
31it. The global business EFK was began operating EFK out of
her Virginia home, which she thenexpanded to 32 recreation centers. Today,
the EFK program 33over 144 branches in 32 states within the United States and
in 21 countries. Sales have doubled from $$5 million in 2014 to $$10 million in 2015,
with 25 new branches planned for 2016. The EFK website states, “Our
nation is not 34 enough engineers. Our philosophy is to inspire kids at a young
age to understand that engineering is a great 35 .”
A) attracted I) feeding
B) career
C) championships
D) degrees
E) developing
F) enroll
G) exposure
H) feasible



J) graduating
K) interest
L) levels
M) local
N) operates
O) participated



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 marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.

Why aren’t you curious about what happened?


A) “You suspended Ray Rice after our video,” a reporter from TMZ challenged
National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell the other day. “Why didn’t
you have the curiosity to go to the casino (赌场) yourself?” The implication of
the question is that a more curious commissioner would have found a way to get the
tape.

B) The accusation of incuriosity is one that we hear often, carrying the suggestion
that there is something wrong with not wanting to search out the truth. “I have
been bothered for a long time about the curious lack of curiosity,” said a Democratic
member of the New Jersey legislature back in July, referring to an insufficiently
inquiring attitude on the part of an assistant to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie
who chose not to ask hard questions about the George Washington Bridge traffic
scandal. “Isn’t the mainstream media the least bit curious about what happened?”
wrote conservative writer Jennifer Rubin earlier this year, referring to the attack
on Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

C) The implication, in each case, is that curiosity is a good thing, and a lack
of curiosity is a problem. Are such accusations simply efforts to score political
points for one’s party? Or is there something of particular value about curiosity
in and of itself?

D) The journalist Ian Leslie, in his new and enjoyable book Curious: The Desire
to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It, insists that the answer to that last
question is ‘Yes’. Leslie argues that curiosity is a much-overlooked human virtue,
crucial to our success, and that we are losing it.

E) We are suffering, he writes, from a “serendipity deficit.” The word
“serendipity” was coined by Horace Walpole in an 1854 letter, from a tale of three
princes who “were always making discoveries, by accident, of things they were not
in search of.” Leslie worries that the rise of the Internet, among other social
and technological changes, has reduced our appetite for aimless adventures. No
longer have we the inclination to let ourselves wander through fields of knowledge,
ready to be surprised. Instead, we seek only the information we want.

F) Why is this a problem? Because without curiosity we will lose the spirit of
innovation and entrepreneurship. We will see unimaginative governments and dying
corporations make disastrous decisions. We will lose a vital part of what has made
humanity as a whole so successful as a

species.

G) Leslie presents considerable evidence for the proposition that the society as
a whole is growing less curious. In the U.S. and Europe, for example, the rise of
the Internet has led to a declining consumption of news from outside the reader’s
borders. But not everything is to be blamed on technology. The decline in interest
in literary fiction is also one of the causes identified by Leslie. Reading literary
fiction, he says, makes us more curious.

H) Moreover, in order to be curious, “you have to be aware of a gap in your knowledge
in the first place.” Although Leslie perhaps paints a bit broadly in contending
that most of us are unaware of how much we don't know, he’s surely right to point
out that the problem is growing: “Google can give us the powerful illusion that
all questions have definite answers.”

I) Indeed, Google, for which Leslie expresses admiration, is also his frequent
whipping boy (替罪羊).

He quotes Google co-founder Larry Page to the effect that the “perfect search
engine” will “understand exactly what I mean and give me back exactly what I want.”
Elsewhere in the book, Leslie writes: “Google aims to save you from the thirst of
curiosity altogether.”

J) Somewhat nostalgically (怀旧地), he quotes John Maynard Keynes’s justly famous
words of praise to the bookstore: “One should enter it vaguely, almost in a dream,
and allow what is there freely to attract and influence the eye. To walk the rounds
of the bookshops, dipping in as curiosity dictates, should be an afternoon's
entertainment.” If only!

K) Citing the work of psychologists and cognitive (认知的) scientists, Leslie
criticizes the received wisdom that academic success is the result of a combination
of intellectual talent and hard work. Curiosity, he argues, is the third key factor
– and a difficult one to preserve. If not cultivated, it will not survive:
“Childhood curiosity is a collaboration between child and adult. The surest way
to kill it is to leave it alone.”

L) School education, he warns, is often conducted in a way that makes children
incurious. Children of educated and upper-middle-class parents turn out to be far
more curious, even at early ages, than children of working class and lower class
families. That lack of curiosity produces a relative lack of knowledge, and the lack
of knowledge is difficult if not impossible to compensate for later on.

M) Although Leslie’s book isn't about politics, he doesn’t entirely shy away from
the problem. Political leaders, like leaders of other organizations, should be
curious. They should ask questions at crucial moments. There are serious
consequences, he warns, in not wanting to know.

N) He presents as an example the failure of the George W. Bush administration to
prepare properly for the after-effects of the invasion of Iraq. According to Leslie,
those who ridiculed former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his 2002 remark
that we have to be wary of the “unknown unknowns” were mistaken. Rumsfeld's idea,
Leslie writes, “wasn't absurd – it was smart.” He adds, “The tragedy is that
he didn’t follow his own advice.”

O) All of which brings us back to Goodell and the Christie case and Benghazi. Each
critic in those examples is charging, in a different way, that someone in authority
is intentionally being incurious. I leave it to the reader’s political preference
to decide which, if any, charges should stick. But let’s be careful about demanding
curiosity about the other side’s weaknesses and remaining determinedly incurious
about our own. We should be delighted to pursue knowledge for its own
sake – even when what we find out is something we didn’t particularly want to know.

36. To be curious, we need to realize first of all that there are many things we
don’t know.

37. According to Leslie, curiosity is essential to one’s success.

38. We should feel happy when we pursue knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

39. Political leaders’ lack of curiosity will result in bad consequences.

40. There are often accusations about politicians’ and the media’s lack of
curiosity to find out the truth.

41. The less curious a child is, the less knowledge the child may turn out to have.

42. It is widely accepted that academic accomplishment lies in both intelligence
and diligence.

43. Visiting a bookshop as curiosity leads us can be a good way to entertain
ourselves.

44. Both the rise of the Internet and reduced appetite for literary fiction
contribute to people’s declining curiosity.

45. Mankind wouldn’t be so innovative without curiosity.

Section C


Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some
questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked
A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding
letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

Passage One

Questions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.

Aging happens to all of us, and is generally thought of as a natural part of life.
It would seem silly to call such a thing a “disease”.

On the other hand, scientists are increasingly learning that aging and biological
age are two different things, and that the former is a key risk factor for conditions
such as heart disease, cancer and many more. In that light, aging itself might be
seen as something treatable, the way you would treat high blood pressure or a vitamin
deficiency.

Biophysicist Alex Zhavoronkov believes that aging should be considered a disease.
He said that describing aging as a disease creates incentives to develop treatments.