516四级预测试题一

2021年1月15日发(作者：娄尔行)

四级预测试题一

Reading Comprehension
Part Ⅲ
标准时间 40minutes
自测用时 __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.
Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.
Most Americans find the idea of arranged marriages difficult to understand
or accept. They believe that two people should marry for love, after a period of
_36__ or courtships(求爱). During that period, the _37__ marriage partners are
supposed to learn enough about each other to decide whether or not they will be
able to build a 38_ marriage. Today in America, it is common for people to live
together as a way of _39__ for marriages. The idea of an arranged marriage
seems very _40__ indeed.
But aren’t all marriages arranged in one way or another? In the United
States marriages are seldom _41__ arranged, but quite a lot of informal
arranging goes on before two people become husband and wife. People who get
married are introduced to each other by friends. These friends have already
decided that the two people are right for each other and arrange for them to
meet. Because friends have such great influence, their _42__ of a dating partner
is very important.
Families also _43__ open and subtle pressures on their children to influence
their _44__ of marriage partners. Parents often arrange dates for their own
children. One parent often tells a friend about her beautiful daughter or
handsome son. Also, parents can meet the perfect marriage prospect for their son
or daughter through business relationships. Since parents often assist their
children _45__, they feel that they have the right to help the bride and groom
select where they will live, what type of furniture they will purchase, and what
their lifestyle will be like.

A) acceptance I) dating

B) exert J) formally

C) prospective K) take

D) decisions L) choices

E) out-of-date M) successful

F) managing N) old- fashioned

G) preparing O) financially

H) approval

Section B

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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.
The Great Australian Fence
A) A war has been going on for almost a hundred years between the sheep
farmers of Australia and the dingo, Australia’s wild dog. To protect
their livelihood, the farmers build a wire fence, 3,307 miles of continuous wire
mesh, reaching from the coast of South Australia all the way to the cotton
fields of eastern Queensland, just short of the Pacific Ocean.
B) The Fence is Australia’s version of the Great Wall of China, but even longer,
erected to keep out hostile invaders, in this case hordes of yellow dogs. The
empire it preserves is that of the woolgrowers, sovereigns of the world’s
second largest sheep flock, after China’s―some 123 million head, and
keepers of a wool export business worth four billion dollars. Never mind that
more and more people―conservationists, politicians, taxpayers and animal
lovers―say that such a barrier would never be allowed today on ecological
grounds. With sections of it almost a hundred years old, the dog fence has
become, as conservationist Lindsay Fair weather ruefully admits, “an icon of
Australian frontier ingenuity”.
C) To appreciate this unusual outback monument and to meet the people whose
livelihoods depend on it, I spent part of an Australian autumn traveling the
wire. It’s known by different names in different states: the Dog Fence in
South Australia, the Border Fence in New South Wales and the Barrier Fence
in Queensland. I would call it simply the Fence.
D) For most of its extreme length, this epic fence winds like a river across a
landscape that, unless a big rain has fallen, scarcely has rivers. The eccentric
route, prescribed mostly by property lines, provides a sampler of outback
topography (地形学): the Fence goes over sand dunes, past salt lakes, up and
down rock-strewn hills, through dense bushes and across barren plains.
E) The Fence stays away from towns. Where it passes near a town, it has actually
become a tourist attraction visited on bus tours. It marks the traditional
dividing line between cattle and sheep. Inside, where the dingoes are legally
classified as vermin (animals doing some damage), they are shot, poisoned
and trapped. Sheep and dingoes do not mix and the Fence sends that message
mile after mile.
F) What is this creature that by itself threatens an entire industry, inflicting
several millions of dollars of damage a year despite the presence of the
world’s most obsessive fence? Cousin to the coyote and the Jackal, descended
from the Asian wolf, Canis lupus dingo is an introduced species of wild dog.
Skeletal remains indicate that the dingo was introduce to Australia more than
3,500 years ago probably with Asian seafarers who landed on the north coast.
The adaptable dingo spread rapidly and in a short time became the top

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predator (肉食动物), killing off all its marsupial (有袋动物) competitors. The
dingo looks like a small wolf with a long nose, short pointed ears and a bushy
tail. Dingoes rarely bark; they yelp and howl. Standing about 22 inches at the
shoulder―slightly taller than a bush wolf ―the dingo is Australia’s largest
land predator.
G) The woolgrowers’ war against dingoes, which is similar to the sheep ranchers’
rage against bush wolves in the U.S., started not long after the first
European settlers disembarked (登陆) in 1788, bringing with them a cargo of
sheep. Dingoes officially became outlaws in 1830 when governments placed a
bounty on their heads. Today bounties for problem dogs killing sheep inside
the Fence can reach $$500. As pioneers penetrated the interior with their
flocks of sheep, fences replaced shepherds until, by the end of the 19th
century, thousands of miles of barrier fencing crisscrossed (纵横交错) the vast
grazing lands.
H）“The dingo started out as a quiet observer,” writes Roland Breckwoldt, in A
Very Elegant Animal: The Dingo, “but soon came to represent everything
that was dark and dangerous on the continent.” It is estimated that since
sheep arrived in Australia, an educated guess puts the population at more
than a million. Eventually government officials and grazers agreed that one
well- maintained fence, placed on the outer rim of sheep country and paid for
by taxes imposed on woolgrowers, should replace the maze of private netting.
By 1960, three states joined their barriers to form a single dog fence.
I) The intense private battles between woolgrowers and dingoes have usually
served to define the Fence only in economic terms. It marks the difference
between profit and loss. Yet the Fence casts a much broader ecological
shadow for it has become a kind of terrestrial dam, deflecting the flow of
animals inside and out. The ecological side effects appear most vividly at
Sturt National Park. In 1845, explorer Charles Sturt led an expedition
through these parts on an unproductive search for an inland sea. For Sturt
and other early explorers, it was a rare event to see a kangaroo. Now they are
ubiquitous (being present everywhere) for without a native predator the
kangaroo population has exploded inside the Fence. Kangaroos are now
cursed more than dingoes. They have become the rivals of sheep, competing
for water and grass. In response state governments cull, to kill animals to
reduce their populations, more than three million kangaroos a year to keep
Australia’s national symbol from overrunning the pastoral lands. Park
officials, who recognize that the fence is to blame, respond to the excess of
kangaroos by saying “The fence is there, we have to live with it.”
46. The fence has a peculiar route which provides a sampler of outback
topography.
47. The part of the fence that passes near a town attracts the tourists to visit by
bus.
48. Kangaroos are now cursed more than dingoes because they are competing
against sheep for water and grass.

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