2013年12月英语四级真题第3套

2013 年 12 月英语四级真题（第三套） Part I Writing (30 minutes) Directions：For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay based on the picture below. You should start your essay with a brief account of the impact of the Internet on the way people communicate and then explain whether electronic communication can replace face-to-face contact. You should write at least 120 words but no more than, 180 words. Part Ⅱ Listening Comprehension (30 minutes) （说明：由于 2013 年 12 月六级考试全国共考了 2 套听力，本套真题听力与前 2 套内容 完全一样，只是顺序不一样，因此在本套真题中不再重复出现） 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. Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage. The mobile phone is a magic device widely used these days. Although it has been nearly 30 years since the first commercial mobile-phone network was launched, advertisers have yet to figure out how to get their 36 out to mobile-phone users in a big way. There are 2.2 billion cell-phone users worldwide, a 37 that is growing by about 25% each year. Yet spending on ads carried over cell-phone networks last year 38 to just $1.5 billion worldwide, a fraction of the $424 billion global ad market. But as the number of eyeballs glued to 39 screens multiplies, so too does the mobile phone’s value as a pocket billboard ( 广 告 的 ). Consumers are 40 using their phones for things other than voice calls, such as text messaging, downloading songs and games, and 41 the Internet. By 2010, 70 million Asians are expected to be watching videos and TV programs on mobile phones. All of these activities give advertisers 42 options for reaching audiences. During soccer’s World Cup last summer, for example, Adidas used real-time scores and games to 43 thousands of fans to a website set up for mobile-phone access. “Our target audience was males aged 17 to 25,” says Marcus Spurrell, Adidas regional manager for Asia. “Their mobiles are always on, always in their pocket—you just can’t 44 cell phones as an advertising tool.” Mobile-phone marketing has become as 45 a platform as TV, online or print. A) accessing I) increasingly B) amounted J) messages C) approaching K) patiently D) attract L) tiny E) casual M) total F) characters N) violated G) fresh O) vital H) ignore 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. A Mess on the Ladder of Success [A] Throughout American history there has almost always been at least one central economic narrative that gave the ambitious or unsatisfied reason to pack up and seek their fortune elsewhere. For the first 300 or so years of European settlement, the story was about moving outward: getting immigrants to the continent and then to the frontier to clear the prairies (大草原), drain the wetlands and build new cities. [B] By the end of the 19th century, as the frontier vanished, the US had a mild panic attack. What would this energetic, enterprising country be without new lands to conquer? Some people, such as Teddy Roosevelt, decided to keep on conquering (Cuba, the Philippines, etc.), but eventually, in industrialization, the US found a new narrative of economic mobility at home. From the 1890s to the 1960s, people moved from farm to city, first in the North and then in the South. In fact, by the 1950s, there was enough prosperity and white-collar work that many began to move to the suburbs. As the population aged, there was also a shift from the cold Rust Belt to the comforts of the Sun Belt, We think of this as an old person’s migration, but it created many jobs for the young in construction and health care, not to mention tourism, retail and restaurants. [C] For the last 20 years—from the end of the cold war through two burst bubbles in a single decade—the US has been casting about for its next economic narrative. And now it is experiencing another period of panic, which is bad news for much of the workforce but particularly for its youngest members. [D] The US has always been a remarkably mobile country, but new data from the Census Bureau indicate that mobility has reached its lowest level in recorded history. Sure, some people are stuck in homes valued at less than their mortgages (抵押贷款), but many young people—who don’t own homes and don’t yet have families—are staying put, too. This suggests, among other things, that people aren’t packing up for new economic opportunities the way they used to. Rather than dividing the country into the 1 percenters versus ( 与 … … 相 对 ) everyone else, the split in our economy is really between two other classes: the mobile and immobile. [E] Part of the problem is that the country’s largest industries are in decline. In the past, it was perfectly clear where young people should go for work (Chicago in the 1870s, Detroit in the 1910s, Houston in the 1970s) and, more or less, what they’d be doing when they got there (killing cattle, building cars, selling oil). And these industries were large enough to offer jobs to each class of worker, from unskilled laborer to manager or engineer. Today, the few bright spots in our economy are relatively small (though some promise future growth) and decentralized. There are great jobs in Silicon Valley, in the biotech research capitals of Boston and Raleigh-Durham and in advanced manufacturing plants along the southern I-85 corridor. These companies recruit all over the country and the globe for workers with specific abilities. (You don’t need to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, to get a job in one of the microhubs (微中 心 ), by the way. But you will almost certainly need at least a B, A. in computer science or a year or two at a technical school.) This newer, select job market is national, and it offers members of the mobile class competitive salaries and higher bargaining power. [F] Many members of the immobile class, on the other hand, live in the America of the gloomy headlines. If you have no specialized skills, there’s little reason to uproot to another state and be the last in line for a lowpaying job at a new auto plant or a green-energy startup. The surprise in the census ( 普 查 ) data, however, is that the immobile workforce is not limited to unskilled workers. In fact, many have a college degree. [G] Until now, a B.A. in any subject was a near-guarantee of at least middleclass wages. But today, a quarter of college graduates make less than the typical worker without a bachelor’s degree. David Autor, a prominent labor economist at M.I.T., recently told me that a college degree alone is no longer a guarantor of a good job. While graduates from top universities are still likely to get a good job no matter what their major is, he said, graduates from less-famous schools are going to be judged on what they know. To compete for jobs on a national level, they should be armed with the skills that emerging industries need, whether technical or not. [H] Those without such specialized skills—like poetry, or even history, majors —are already competing with their neighbors for the same sorts of second-rate, poorer-paying local jobs like low-level management or bigbox retail sales. And with the low-skilled labor market atomized into thousands of microeconomies, immobile workers are less able to demand better wages or conditions or to acquire valuable skills. [I] So what, exactly, should the ambitious young worker of today be learning? Unfortunately, it’s hard to say, since the US doesn’t have one clear national project. There are plenty of emerging, smaller industries, but which ones are the most promising? (Nanotechnology’s ( 纳 米 技 术 ) moment of remarkable growth seems to have been 5 years into the future for something like 20 years now.) It’s not clear exactly what skills are most needed or if they will even be valuable in a decade. [J] What is clear is that all sorts of government issues education, healthinsurance portability, worker retraining—are no longer just bonuses to already prosperous lives but existential requirements. It’s in all of our interests to make sure that as many people as possible are able to move toward opportunity, and, America’s ability to invest people and money in exciting new ideas is still greater than that of most other wealthy countries. (As recently as five years ago, U.S. migration was twice the rate of European Union states.) That, at least, is some comfort at a time when our national economy seems to be searching for its next story line. 46. Unlike in the past, a college degree alone does not guarantee a good job for its holder. 47. The census data is surprising in that college graduates are also among the immobile workforce. 48. New figures released by the government show that Americans today are less mobile than ever before. 49. The migration of old people from cold to warm places made many jobs available to the young. 50. America is better at innovation than most other rich nations. 51. Early American history is one of moving outward. 52. Young people don’t know what to learn because it is hard to predict what skills are most needed or valued ten years from now. 53. Computer or other technical skills are needed to get a well-paying job in high-tech, or advanced manufacturing.