07.最新4级预测卷第七套
2016-04-27
大学英语四级考试预测卷（七）
PART II
Listening Comprehension (25 minutes)
Section A
Directions:
In this section, you will hear three news reports.
At the end of each news report, you will hear two or three questions.
Both the news report and the questions will be spoken only once.
After you hear a question,
you must choose the best answer from the four
choices marked A), B), C）and D).
Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1
with a single line through the centre.
Questions 1 and 2 will be based on the following news item.
News Item 1
Commodities are basic materials that are used and traded worldwide.
The price of commodities helps determine how much
a business can charge for a product and the profit it can make.
Commodity prices have reached a two year high
since falling sharply during the world financial crisis.
Hard commodities are materials like iron ore, oil and gold.
Agricultural products are soft commodities.
These include wheat, cotton and rice.
Economic measures show the world economy is recovering unevenly.
China and India, for example, have reported strong growth in manufacturing.
Developed nations have had slower growth.
John James is a business professor at Pace University in New York State.
He says demand in developing economies can push up prices
for commodities like oil and iron ore used for making steel.
But, he says, changing currency values can also influence prices.
Gold prices have reached record levels in recent months.
That means gold dealers must pay more for the commodity
now than they did only a year ago.That affects current prices.
Not surprisingly, manufacturers want some control
over the prices they pay for commodities.
Futures contracts are agreements between a buyer and a seller
to exchange something at a set price at some time in the future.
These contracts let buyers lock in a price for basic materials.
1.What is the price of commodities helpful to do?
2.Which has reached record high in price recently?
Questions 3 and 4 will be based on the following news item.
News Item 2
Egypt has held a second round of parliamentary elections
a week after a first round that was marked
by allegations of widespread fraud.From Cairo, Jon Leyne.
“With most opposition candidates boycotting,
the second round of voting seems to have gone much more smoothly than the first.
Most of the run off votes were between rival
candidates from the ruling party of President Mubarak.
It`s not clear yet what the turnout was,
but it`s widely expected to be very low.
Many Egyptians have long since lost faith in the democratic process.
An overwhelming victory for the ruling party is already assured.
The question now is what this result means for the presidential election next year,
in which President Mubarak will either stand for re election,
aged 83, or look to install a successor.”
3.Why are opposition candidates boycotting the election?
4.What is the question now according to the news?
Questions 5 to 7 will be based on the following news item.
News Item 3
2010 was a good year for American farmers.
They earned an estimated 82 billion dollars.
That is almost one third more than they earned last year.
And it is 26% higher than the ten year average.
The numbers are from the Economic Research Service
at the Department of Agriculture.They represent net farm income,
a measure of profitability of farm operations.
Values for grain and oilseed crops are up about 3%
from last year.The value of animal production is up by almost 7%.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack points out that agriculture
is one of the few major areas of the economy with a trade surplus.
A surplus of 41 billion dollars is predicted in 2011.
That would be an increase of almost 18 billion dollars from this year.
At the same time, farm exports are expected to break the all time high set in 2008.
The Agriculture Department
says exports in this coming year could top 126 billion dollars.
The largest buyer of agricultural products is expected to be Canada.
But farm exports to China are predicted to come within
five hundred million dollars of Canadian purchases.
Secretary Vilsack says countries in Southeast Asia
and the Middle East are also buying more from American farmers.
Poor growing conditions overseas played an important
part in higher prices for American crops this year.
5.What is the trade surplus of American agriculture in 2010?
6.How much will American farm exports reach in this coming year?
7.What contributed to the higher prices of American crops this year?
Section B
Directions:
In this section,
you will hear two long conversations.
At the end of each conversation,
you will hear four questions.
Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once.
After you hear a question, you must choose the best
answer from the four choices marked A), B), C）and D).
Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet
1 with a single line through the centre.
Now you will haer the two long conversations
Conversation One
M:Hi, Jane, look what just found.Right here in the sand.
W:A piece of wood? Oh, driftwood, interesting shape.
Almost like some sort of modern sculpture.
M:Yeah, and feel how smooth it is.
W:Mm…, Must have been in the water along time.
It could have been drifting in the ocean currents for months, or even years.
M:In the currents.Doesn`t the wind just blow things around out there?
W:Well, sure.But the currents were always moving, too, almost like rivers,
but underwater rivers, flowing through the ocean.
M:So how have they found out where these currents go?
Stick a message in a bottle and throw it in the water?
W:Don`t laugh.In fact, I was reading in a science magazine
that oceanographers have released a huge number of bottles
into the ocean over the years.
They wanted to map out where the currents would carry them.
M:Say, I bet after they have found out where all those bottles ended up,
they can enter all that data into a computer and make a pretty
detailed model to show where the currents go.
W:In fact, they did.And they also found the neat way to test that model.
There was a freighter carrying sneakers from a factory in Asia.
It was caught in a big storm and thousands of pairs of sneakers got dumped into the Pacific Ocean.
M:Really? What a waste!
W:Yeah.Turns out, though,that hundreds of these shoes
started washing up on beaches somewhere near Seattle,
just about where the computer models had predicted the currents would carry them.
M:Gee, you mean all that stuff I found on the beaches might be part of
some big scientific experiment? I thought it was all just trash.
Questions 8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
8.What are the speakers mainly discussing?
9.What did the man find on the beach?
10.According to the magazine article, what did scientists put into the ocean?
11.What can be inferred from the story about the sneakers?
Conversation Two
M:Hey, Jenny, what`s so interesting?
W:What? Oh, hi, Tom.I am reading this fascinating article on the society
of the ice age during the Pleistocene period.
M:The ice age?There weren`t any societies then,
just a bunch of cave people.
W:That`s what people used to think.
But the new exhibit of the American Museum of Natural History shows
that the ice age people were surprisingly advanced.
M:Oh, really? In what ways?
W: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.
W:In some of the warmer climate,
they did build houses with 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.
W:Well, it says here, that,in the early ice age,
they often faced their homes toward the south to take the advantage of the sun,
a primitive sort of solar heating.
M:Hey，that`s pretty smart!
W:Then people in the late ice age,
even insulated their homes by putting heated cobble stones on the floor.
M:I guess I spoke too soon.
Can I read that magazine article after you are done?
I think I am going to try to impress my anthropology
teacher with my amazing knowledge of ice age civilization.
W:What a show off!
Questions 12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
12.What did the man think about people of the ice age?
13.How did people in the early ice age keep warm?
14.What does the man want the woman to do?
15.What are they discussing?
Section C
Directions:
In this section, you will hear three passages.
At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions.
Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once.
After you hear a question, you must choose the
best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C）and D).
Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer
Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.
Passage One
The world is changing.The change is a transition from expansion to improvement.
Expansion is about quantity,
about organizing society in such a way a continuing increase is possible in output and demand,
income and expenditure,
people`s needs and the means to satisfy them.
Improvement is about quality.
This begins with small things, which are,
nevertheless, not to be discounted,
because they improve the quality of our lives.
The recovery of cities for people is one example:
roads for cars rather than for human beings,
restored old buildings rather than new slums.
The way people live, and the space and the comforts
of their homes provide many other examples.
So do the arts, the opportunities for recreation and play, sports,
and whatever contributes to beauty and to pleasure.
All this is important for an improving society,
but improvement means more.
Even a butterfly adds a touch of color to a cheerless
and hopeless world but improvement goes to the core of this world:
that is, the social construction of human lifechances.
Questions 16 to 18 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
16. What is the expansion?
17. Which of the following improves the quality of our life?
18. What is the core of this world to which improvement goes?
Passage Two
September is the ninth month of the year.However,
the word September comes from the Latin word Septem, which means “seven”，
This is because long ago a different calendar
was used in which September was indeed the seventh month. When Julius Caesar,
leader of Rome, redid the Calendar, he made September the ninth month.
September in the northern hemisphere is a time of change.
With fall and winter approaching,
temperatures usually begin to drop somewhat .
It is also the productive time of the year
since it is when farmers harvest some of their vegetables and fruit,
especially apples, which have finished their growing season.
September has thirty days.In English,
the word is often abbreviated to just the first four letters.
The major China holiday in September is Teacher`s Day.
This holiday is the tenth.Also,
Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean on September 25,1513.
Questions 19 to 21 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
19.Before Julius Caesar's time, what was about the October?
20.Which of the following is not true about September?
21.Which of the abbreviation about September is correct?
Passage Three
AIt is a matter of common observation that although incomes keep going up over the years,
people never seem to become much better off! Prices are rising continuously.
This condition is termed one of inflation;
the money supply is becoming inflated so that each unit of it becomes less valuable.
People have grown accustomed in recent years to higher and higher rates of inflation.
What could be bought ten years ago for one dollar now costs well over two dollars.
Present indications are that this rate of inflation is tending to rise rather than to fall.
If in the real world our money incomes go up at the same rate
as prices one might think that inflation does not matter.
But it does.When money is losing value it lacks one of
the qualities of a good money—stability of value.
It is no longer acceptable as a store of value;
and it becomes an unsuitable standard of delayed payment.
Nobody wants to hold a wasting asset,
so people try to get rid of money as quickly as possible.
Inflation therefore stimulates consumer spending and prevents people from saving.
Questions 22 to 25 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
22.How often does the inflation happen?
23.What will result in, if incomes and prices rise together?
24.What will lead to when money loses its value?
25.When the inflation happens, what will people probably do?