2001年英语专四四级真题详解

2001年真题详解

TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (2001)-GRADE FOUR-
PART I DICTATION
Listen to the following passage．
Altogether the passage will be read to you four times．
During the first reading,
which will be done at normal speed,
listen and try to understand the meaning．
For the second and third readings，
the passage will be read sentence by sentence，
or phrase by phrase， with intervals of 15 seconds．
The last reading will be done at normal speed again
and during this time you should check your work．
You will then be given
2 minutes to check through your work once more.
Please write the whole passage on ANSWER SHEET ONE．
Now listen to the passage.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD READER
To improve your reading habits,
you must understand the characteristics of a good reader.
First, the good reader usually reads rapidly.
Of course,
he does not read every piece of material at the same rate.
But whether he is reading a newspaper
or a chapter in a physics text,
his reading rate is relatively fast.
He has learned to read for ideas
rather than words one at a time.
Next, the good reader can recognize
and understand general ideas and specific details.
Thus he is able to comprehend the material
with a minimum of effort and a maximum of interest.
Finally, the good reader has at his command
several special skills,
which he can apply to reading problems as they occur.
For the college student,
the most helpful of these skills include
making use of the various aids to understanding
that most textbooks provide
and skim-reading for a general survey.
The second and third readings,
you should begin writing now.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD READER
To improve your reading habits,
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD READER
To improve your reading habits,
you must understand the characteristics of a good reader.
you must understand the characteristics of a good reader.
First, the good reader usually reads rapidly.
First, the good reader usually reads rapidly.
Of course, he does not read every piece of material at the same rate.
Of course, he does not read every piece of material at the same rate.
But whether he is reading a newspaper or a chapter in a physics text,
But whether he is reading a newspaper or a chapter in a physics text,
his reading rate is relatively fast.
his reading rate is relatively fast.
He has learned to read for ideas rather than words one at a time.
He has learned to read for ideas rather than words one at a time.
Next, the good reader can recognize and understand general ideas and specific details.
Next, the good reader can recognize and understand general ideas and specific details.
Thus he is able to comprehend the material with a minimum of effort and a maximum of interest.
Thus he is able to comprehend the material with a minimum of effort and a maximum of interest.
Finally, the good reader has at his command several special skills,
Finally, the good reader has at his command several special skills,
which he can apply to reading problems as they occur.
which he can apply to reading problems as they occur.
For the college student, the most helpful of these skills include
For the college student, the most helpful of these skills include
making use of the various aids to understanding that most textbooks provide
making use of the various aids to understanding that most textbooks provide
and skim-reading for a general survey.
and skim-reading for a general survey.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD READER
To improve your reading habits,
you must understand the characteristics of a good reader.
First, the good reader usually reads rapidly.
Of course,
he does not read every piece of material at the same rate.
But whether he is reading a newspaper or a chapter in a physics text,
his reading rate is relatively fast.
He has learned to read for ideas
rather than words one at a time.
Next, the good reader can recognize
and understand general ideas and specific details.
Thus he is able to comprehend the material
with a minimum of effort and a maximum of interest.
Finally, the good reader has at his command
several special skills,
which he can apply to reading problems as they occur.
For the college student,
the most helpful of these skills include
making use of the various aids to understanding
that most textbooks provide
and skim-reading for a general survey.
Now you have 2 minutes to check through your work.
That is the end of the Part I Dictation.
PART II LISTENING COMPREHENSION
In Sections A，B and C you will hear everything ONCE ONLY.
Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow．
Mark the correct answer to each question on your answer sheet．
SECTION A CONVERSATIONS
In this section you will hear several conversations．
Listen to the conversations carefully
and then answer the questions that follow．
Questions 1 to 3 are based on the following conversation.
At the end of the conversation，
you will be given 15 seconds to answer the questions．
Now, listen to the conversation.
W: Hi, you had an encounter
with an elephant yesterday?
M: Yeah, it scared me to death.
W: What happened?
M: I was walking in the park
when a female elephant came
charging at me right from behind.
W: How terrifying!
M: Yes. As I was running
I tripped and fell to the ground.
Just as I turned around
the tusks were already about a foot from my chest.
W: She was trying to stab you with her tusks?
M: She was going for a kill.
I just had time to grab the tusks
and kind of pulled them past my body.
And one tusk stabbed into the earth
about a few centimeters from my head.
I held on and she just tried to stab me.
Miraculously she didn't touch anything vital.
W: When she stabbed into the earth,
she must have been right on top of you?
M: Oh yes, she was.
Her eyeballs were about two inches from my eyeballs.
W: Just at that second
when you were staring at her in the eye,
was there anything going through your head
or were you overwhelmed with terror?
M: My thought was. If you let go of these tusks,
you are dead meat.
W: Well, what did happen? Why didn't you die?
M: Usually the elephant is just as scared as you are.
Someone came up and screamed at the elephant.
That probably distracted her
and she decided to run away.
Questions 4 to 6 are based on the following conversation．
At the end of the conversation,
you will be given 15 seconds to answer the questions．
Now, listen to the conversation.
M: Math department, Doctor Webster speaking.
W: Hello, Prof. Webster,
this is Janet Hill calling.
I live two doors down from your teaching assistant, Don Williams.
Don asked me to call you
because he has lost his voice
and can't talk to you himself.
M: Lost his voice? Oh, what a shame!
Is there anything I can do for him?
W: Well, he has a class this afternoon from 2:30 to 4:00
and he won't be able to teach it.
But he doesn't want to cancel it, either.
M: Does he want me to try to
find somebody else to teach the class?
W: No, not exactly.
What he wants to do is to get someone to go in for him,
just to pass back the mid-term exams.
M: His class is at 2:30, you say?
Well, I'm free at that time
and I was going to be on campus anyway;
so I could do it for him.
What room is his class in?
W: Cater Hall, Room 214.
Will you need his office key to get the exams?
He's given it to me
and I could bring it to you.
M: Actually, that won't be necessary.
We have a master key in the math department.
So I can get into his office if necessary.
W: Thank you very much, Prof. Webster.
M: My pleasure.
Questions 7 to 10 are based on the following conversation．
At the end of the conversation,
you will be given
20 seconds to answer the questions．
Now, listen to the conversation.
M: Hey, Jane. What's so interesting?
F: I'm reading this fascinating article
on the societies of the Ice Age
during the Pleistocene period.
M: The Ice Age?
There weren't any societies then.
Just a bunch of cave people.
F: That's what people used to think.
But a new exhibit of the America museum of natural history
showed Ice Age people were surprisingly advanced.
M: Oh, really? In what ways?
F: Well, Ice Age people were the inventors of
language, art, and music as we know it.
And they didn't live in caves,
they built their own shelters.
M: What did they use to build them?
The cold weather would have killed off most of the trees
so they couldn't have used wood.
F: In some of the warmer climates,
they did build the houses of wood.
In other places, they used animal bones and skins
or lived in natural stone shelters.
M: How did they stay warm?
Animal skin walls don't sound very sturdy.
F: Well, in the early Ice Age,
they often faced the house towards south
to take the advantage of the sun,
a primitive sort of solar heating.
M: Hey, that's pretty smart.
I guess I spoke too soon.
Can I read that magazine article after you've done?
I think I'm going to try to impress my history teacher
with my amazing knowledge of the Ice Age civilization.
F: What a show off.
SECTION B PASSAGES
In this section，you will hear several passages．
Listen to the passages carefully
and then answer the questions that follow．
Questions 11 to 13 are based on the following passage．
At the end of the passage,
you will be given 15 seconds to answer the questions．
Now, listen to the passage.
There is probably no area of human activity
in which our values and lifestyles
are reflected more vividly
than they are in the clothes
that we choose to wear.
The dress of an individual
is a kind of "sign language"
that communicates a complex set of information
and is usually the basis on which
immediate impressions are formed.
Traditionally a concern for clothes
was considered to be a feminine preoccupation,
while men took pride in the fact
that they were completely lacking in clothes consciousness.
Time has changed as masculine dress
takes on greater variety and color.
As early as 1955, a research revealed
that men attached high importance
to the value of clothing in daily life.
White-collar workers in particular
viewed dress as a symbol capable of manipulation,
which could be used to impress or influence others,
especially in work situations.
Although blue-collar workers were less aware
that they might be judged on the basis of their clothing,
they recognized
that any difference from the accepted pattern of dress
would draw ridicule from fellow workers.
Since that time, the pattern has changed:
the typical office worker may now be wearing the blue shirt,
and the laborer a white shirt;
but the importance of dress has not diminished.
Questions 14 to 16 are based on the following passage．
At the end of the passage, you will be given
15 seconds to answer the questions．
Now, listen to the passage.
To work in an international organization,
such as the United Nations
or the European Commission,
you need to be accredited
by one of the various international translators'
or interpreters' associations.
To achieve this,
you must undergo strict and lengthy training,
either at an accrediting organization's own school,
or on a postgraduate course at university.
But a qualification in languages
is not the only route into the job.
At the European Commission, for example,
a recent intake of trainee interpreters
included several with degrees in subjects like
economics, linguistics, philosophy, law
and,of course, languages.
To become a successful interpreter,
candidates need to be at a high level in
between three and five languages.
However, regardless of how many languages they speak,
they will only be required to translate
from their acquired languages
into their mother tongue.
Compared with using a foreign language,
manipulating their own language
is more crucial for them. With this skill,
and a lot of practice,they will be able to
clearly communicate information or messages
which have been expressed in a very different way
in another language.
Yet, while interpreters may be seldom noticed,
they are always looking carefully at the people
for whom they are interpreting.
In particular,
they are looking at the body language of the speaker,
because they must also use this information
when they translate what he or she said.
Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following passage．
At the end of the passage, you will be given
20 seconds to answer the questions．
Now, listen to the passage.
How many of you drink cola? Nearly everybody.
Did you know that cola started out
not as a soft drink but as a cure for headache
back in the late 1800's?
John S. Pamberton, a druggist from Atlanta,
had experimented for many months
trying to find a cure for the common headache.
He worked in his backyard,
mixing and heating different combinations of oils and flavors
until he found one that seemed promising.
Pamberton bottled the mixture
and began selling it in drugstores as concentrated syrup
that the customer had to mix with water before drinking.
Cola's transformation
from concentrated syrup to a carbonated soft drink
came about quite by accident.
One day,
a customer came into a drugstore complaining of a headache
and asked for a bottle of cola syrup.
He wanted to take it right away.
So he asked the clerk to mix the medicine
while he waited. The clerk,
instead of walking to the other end of the counter
to get plain water,
suggested mixing the syrup with soda water.
The customer agreed, and after drinking it,
remarked how good it tasted.
The clerk continued offering the mixture
and the cola grew in popularity.
Today carbonated cola
is sold in most countries around the world.
And although they no longer contain the ingredients
to kill headaches,
they are still very refreshing.
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
In this section, you will hear several news items.
Listen to them carefully
and then answer the questions that follow.
Questions 21 and 22 are based on the following news．
At the end of the news item，
you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions．
Now listen to the news.
Commonwealth leaders agree to lift
Nigeria's three and a half years' suspension on May 29,
the day the military government
hands over power to an elected president,"
the organization's Secretary General announced yesterday.
Nigeria was suspended
from the 54-nation group of mainly former British colonies in 1995
after it executed nine minority rights activists,
including writer Ken Saro-Wiwa.
But now that the country has embarked
on a return to democracy.
Commonwealth heads of government
have agreed to end the estrangement.
Secretary General Chief Amecka Anyaoku said in a statement,
"I'm delighted
that an unfortunate episode in Nigeria-
Commonwealth relations will now come to an end
and Nigeria is resuming its rightful place in the Commonwealth."
Questions 23 and 24 are based on the following news．
At the end of the news item，
you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions．
Now listen to the news.
The space shuttle Discovery made a rare night landing
at the Kennedy Space Center
early on Thursday. The night landing,
the eleventh in the center's ninety-four shuttle missions,
ended a ten-day mission
to outfit the orbiting international space station.
Although the spacecraft created a sonic boom
that could be heard along much of Florida's eastern seaboard,
witnesses on the ground could not see the orbiter
until it was directly over the runway lights.
Scattered showers off the Florida coast
had threatened to postpone the shuttle's return,
but forecasters gave the green light
when they decided no rain would fall
within forty-eight kilometers of the space center.
Questions 25 and 26 are based on the following news．
At the end of the news item，
you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions．
Now listen to the news.
"Five people died, two were missing,
and at least eighteen were injured on Wednesday
when an Italian patrol boat vessel collided with a dinghy
filled with refugees crossing the Adriatic Sea from Albania,"
authorities said.
"The victims were believed
to be Albanians from either Albania or Kosovo,"
said authorities from Italy's tax police division,
which along with the coast guard patrols the nation-s coast.
The cause of the collision was not immediately known.
Three Albanians, believed to have smuggled the refugees,
were arrested a few hours after the accident.
Questions 27 is based on the following news．
At the end of the news item，
you will be given 5 seconds to answer the question．
Now listen to the news.
"Malaysian authorities are discussing
possible salvage efforts with Sun Cruises,
the Singapore owner of a luxury liner
which sank off Malaysia last week,"
a news report said yesterday.
"Sun Cruises has received some advice from Malaysia on the matter,"
the Business Times newspaper quoted company's spokeswoman,
Judy Chu, as saying.
Chu and other Sun Cruise officials
could not immediately be reached for further comment,
as they were away in Indonesia.
The Sun Vista went down in international waters,
the nearby Malaysia may have the right
to order the wreck's removal, the newspaper said.
Salvage experts said the wreck of the Sun Vista,
which sunk in sixty meters of the water,
poses no threat to ships passing over it,
but Malaysia may still want it removed.
Questions 28 to 30 are based on the following news．
At the end of the news item，you will be given
15 seconds to answer the questions．
Now listen to the news.
An international Roman Catholic organization
says human rights violations
have sharply increased in the Central American countries.
The organization, Pax Christi,
made the statement to the UN Human Rights Commission.
It said that murder, torture and disappearances
have risen in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
Pax Christi said that security forces in Guatemala
completely destroyed six villages,killing all citizens.
It said 1500 persons are killed in Guatemala every month.
The Catholic organization said killings
and disappearances have increased in El Salvador
since the rightist election victory there last March.
Pax Christi also charged
that officials in Honduras were responsible
for mistreating refugees from EL Salvador.
This is the end of the listening comprehension.