英语四级考试阅读理解素材
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英语四级考试阅读理解篇1
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 University Degree No Longer Confers Financial Security
A.Millions of school-leavers in the rich world are about to bid a tearful goodbye to their parents and start a new life at university. Some are inspired by a pure love of learning. But most also believe that spending three or four years at university--and accumulating huge debts in the process--will boost their chances of landing a well-paid and secure job.
B.Their elders have always told them that education is the best way to equip themselves to thrive in a globalised world. Blue-collar workers will see their jobs outsourced and automated, the familiar argument goes. School dropouts will have to cope with a life of cash-strapped (资金紧张的) insecurity. But the graduate elite will have the world at its feet. There is some evidence to support this view. A recent study from Georgetown University's Centre on Education and the Workforce argues that"obtaining a post-secondary credential ( 证书) is almost always worth it." Educational qualifications are tightly correlated with earnings: an American with a professional degree can expect to pocket $3.6m over a lifetime; one with merely a high- school diploma can expect only $1.3m. The gap between more- and less-educated earners may be widening. A study in 2002 found that someone with a bachelor's degree could expect to earn 75% more over a lifetime than someone with only a high-school diploma. Today the disparity is even greater.
C.But is the past a reliable guide to the future? Or are we at the beginning of a new phase in the relationship between jobs and education? There are good reasons for thinking that old patterns are about to change--and that the current recession-driven downturn (衰退) in the demand for Western graduates will morph (改变) into something structural. The strong wind of creative destruction that has shaken so many blue-collar workers over the past few decades is beginning to shake the cognitive elite as well.
D.The supply of university graduates is increasing rapidly. The Chronicle of Higher Education calculates that between 1990 and 2007 the number of students going to university increased by 22% in North America, 74% in Europe, 144% in Latin America and 203% in Asia. In 2007 150m people attended university around the world, including 70m in Asia. Emerging economies—specially China--are pouring resources into building universities that can compete with the elite of America and Europe. They are also producing professional- services firms snch as Tata Consulting Services and Infosys that take fresh graduates and turn them into world-class computer programmers and consultants. The best and the brightest of the rich world must increasingly compete with the best and the brightest from poorer countries who are willing to work harder for less money.
E. At the same time, the demand for educated labor is being reconfigured (重新配置) by technology, in much the same way that the demand for agricultural labor was reconfigured in the 19th century and that for factory labor in the 20th. Computers can not only perform repetitive mental tasks much faster than human beings. They can also empower amateurs to do what professionals once did: why hire a flesh-and-blood accountant to complete your tax return when Turbotax (a software package ) will do the job at a fraction of the cost? And the variety of jobs that computers can do is multiplying as programmers teach them to deal with tone and linguistic ambiguity.
F.Several economists, including Paul Krugman, have begun to argue that post-industrial societies will be characterized not by a relentless rise in demand for the educated but by a great "hollowing out", as mid-level jobs are destroyed by smart machines and high-level job growth slows. David Autor, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), points out that the main effect of automation in the computer era is not that it destroys blue-collar jobs but that it destroys any job that can be reduced to a routine. Alan Blinder of Princeton University, argues that the jobs graduates have traditionally performed are if anything more "offshorable" than low-wage ones. A plumber or lorry-driver's job cannot be outsourced to India. A computer programmer's can.
G. A university education is still a prerequisite for entering some of the great industries, such as medicine, law and academia (学术界), that provide secure and well-paying jobs. Over the 20th century these industries did a wonderful job of raising barriers to entry--sometimes for good reasons (nobody wants to be operated on by a barber) and sometimes for self-interested ones. But these industries are beginning to bend the roles. Newspapers are fighting a losing battle with the blogosphere. Universities are replacing tenure-track professors with non-tenured staff. Law firms are contracting out routine work such as"discovery" (digging up documents relevant to a lawsuit) to computerized-search specialists such as Blackstone Discovery. Even doctors are threatened, as patients find advice online and treatment in Walmart's new health centers.
H.Thomas Malone of MIT argues that these changes--automation, globalizafion and deregulation--may be part of a bigger change: the application of the division of labor to brain-work. Adam Smith's factory managers broke the production of pins into 18 components. In the same way, companies are increasingly breaking the production of brain-work into ever tinier slices. TopCoder chops up IT projects into bite-sized chunks and then serves them up to a worldwide workforce of freelance coders.
I.These changes will undoubtedly improve the productivity of brain-workers. They will allow consumers to sidestep (规避 ) the professional industries that have extracted high rents for their services. And they will empower many brain-workers to focus on what they are best at and contract out more tedious tasks to others. But the reconfiguration of brain-work will also make life far less cozy and predictable for the next generation of graduates.
英语四级考试阅读理解篇2
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.
How Your Language Affects Your Wealth and Health
A. Does the language we speak determine how healthy and rich we will be? New research by Keith Chen of Yale Business School suggests so. The structure of languages affects our judgments and decisions about the future and this might have dramatic long-term consequences.
B. There has been a lot of research into how we deal with the future. For example, the famous marshmallow ( 棉 花糖)studies of Walter Mischel and colleagues showed that being able to resist temptation is predictive of future success. Four-year-old kids were given a marshmallow and were told that if they do not eat that marshmallow and wait for the experimenter to come back, they will get two marshmallows instead of one. Follow-up studies showed that the kids who were able to wait for the bigger future reward became more successful young adults.
C. Resisting our impulses for immediate pleasure is often the only way to attain the outcomes that are important to us. We want to keep a slim figure but we also want that last slice of pizza. We want a comfortable retirement, but we also want to drive that dazzling car, go on that dream vacation, or get those gorgeous shoes.
Some people are better at delaying gratification ( 满足 ) than others. Those people have a better chance of accumulating wealth and keeping a healthy life style. They are less likely to be impulse buyers or smokers, or to engage in unsafe sex.
D. Chen's recent findings suggest that an unlikely factor, language, strongly affects our future-oriented behavior. Some languages strongly distinguish the present and the future. Other languages only weakly distinguish the present and the future. Chen's recent research suggests that people who speak languages that weakly distinguish the present and the future are better prepared for the future. They accumulate more wealth and they are better able to maintain their health. The way these people conceptualize the future is similar to the way they conceptualize the present. As a result, the future does not feel very distant and it is easier for them to act in accordance with their future interestS.
E. Different languages have different ways of talking about the future. Some languages, such as English, Korean, and Russian, require their speakers to refer to the future explicitly ( 明确地). Every time English-speakers tall about the future, they have to use future markers such as "will" or "going to." In other languages, such as Mandarin, Japanese, and German, future markers are not obligatory (强制性的). The future is often talked about similar to the way present is talked about and the meaning is understood from the context. A Mandarin speaker who is going to go to a seminar might say "Wo qu ting jiangzuo," which translates to "I go listen seminar." Languages such as English constantly remind their speakers that future events are distant. For speakers of languages such as Mandarin future feels closer. As a consequence, resisting immediate impulses and investing for the future is easier for Mandarin speakers.
F.Chert analyzed individual-level data from 76 developed and developing countries. This data includes people's economic decisions, such as whether they saved any money last year, the languages they speak at home, demographics (人口统计资料 ), and cultural factors such as "saving is an important cultural value for me."
He also analyzed individual-level data on people's retirement assets, smoking and exercising habits, and general health in older age. Lastly, he analyzed national-level data that inchides national savings rates, country GDP and GDP growth rates, country demographics, and proportions of people speaking different languages.
G. People's savings rates are affected by various factors such as their income, education level, age, religious connection, their countries' legal systems, and their cultural values. After those factors were accounted for, the effect of language on people's savings rates turned out to be big. Speaking a language that has obligatory future markers, such as English, makes people 30 percent less likely to save money for the future. This effect is as large as the effect of unemployment. Being unemployed decreases the likelihood of saving by about 30 percent as well.
H. Similar analyses showed that speaking a language that does not have obligatory future markers, such as Mandarin, makes people accumulate more retirement assets, smoke less, exercise more, and generally be healthier in older age. Countries' national savings rates are also affected by language. Having a larger proportion of people speaking languages that does not have obligatory future markers makes national savings rates higher.
I.At a more practical level, researchers have been looking for ways to help people act in accordance with their long-term interests. Recent, findings suggest that making the future feel closer to the present might improve future-oriented behavior. For instance, researchers recently presented people with renderings of their future selves made using age-progression algorithms (算法) that forecast how physical appearances would change over time. One group of participants saw a digital representation of their current selves in a virtual mirror, and the other group saw an age-morphed version of their future selves. Those participants who saw the age- morphed version of their future selves allocated more money toward a hypothetical savings account. The intervention brought people's future to the present and as a result they saved more for the future.
J.Chen's research shows that language structures our future-related thoughts. Language has been used before to alter time perception with surprising effects. Ellen Langer and colleagues famously improved older people's physical health by simple interventions including asking them to talk about the events of twenty years ago as if it they were happening now. Talking about the past as if it were the present changed people's mindsets and their mindsets affected their physical states. Chen's research points at the possibility that the way we talk about the future can shape our mindsets. Language can move the future back and forth in our mental space and this might have dramatic influences on our judgments and decisions.
英语四级考试阅读理解篇3
Professor Smith recently persuaded 35 people, 23 of them women, to keep a diary of all their absent-mindedactions for a fortnight. When he came to analyse their embarrassing lapses(差错)in a scientific report, hewas surprised to find that nearly all of them fell into a few groupings, Nordid the lapses appear to be entirely random(随机的).
One of the women, for instance, on leaving her house for work one morning threw her dog her earrings and tried to fix a dog biscuit on her ear. "the explanation for this is that the brain is like a computer," explains the professor. "People programme themselves to do certain activities regularly. It was the woman’s custom every morning to throw her dog two biscuits and then put on her earrings. But somehow the action got reversed in the programme," About one in twenty of the incidents the volunteers reported were these "programme assembly failures,"
Altogether the volunteers logged 433 unintentional actions that they found themselves doing---an average of twelve each, There appear to be peak periods in the day when we are at our zaniest(荒谬可笑的).These aretwo hours some time between eight a.m. and noon, between four and six p.m. with a smaller peak between eight and ten p.m."Among men the peak seems to be when a changeover in brain’ programmes’ occurs, as for instance between going to and from work." Women on average reported slightly more lapses----- 12.5 compared with 10.9 for men m probably because they were more reliable reporters.
A startling finding of the research is that the absent-minded activity is a hazard of doing things in which we are skilled. Normally, you would expect that skill reduces the number of errors we make. But trying to avoid silly slips by concentrating more could make things a lot worse m even dangerous.
练习题：
Choose correct answers to the question:
1. In his study Professor Smith asked the subjects ________
A. to keep track of people who tend too forget things
B. to report their embarrassing lapses at random
C. to analyse their awkward experiences scientifically
D. to keep a record of what they did unintentionally
2. Professor Smith discovered that ________
A. certain patterns can be identified in the recorded incidents
B. many people were too embarrassed to admit their absent-mindedness
C. men tend to be more absent-minded than women
D. absent-mindedness is an excusable human weakness
3. "Programme assembly failures" (Line 6, Para. 2) refers to the phenomenon that people ______
A. often fail to programme their routines beforehand
B. tend to make mistakes when they are in a hurry
C. unconsciously change the sequence of doing things
D. are likely to mess things up if they are too tired
4. We learn from the third paragraph that _______
A. absent-mindedness tends to occur during certain hours of the day
B. women are very careful to perform actions during peak periods
C. women experience more peak periods of absent-mindedness
D. men’s absent-mindedness often results in funny situations
5.It can be concluded from the passage that _____
A. people should avoid doing important things during peak periods of lapses
B. hazards can be avoided when people do things they are good at
C. people should be careful when programming their actions
D. lapses cannot always be attributed to lack of concentration
参考答案
1.[D] 事实细节题。本文第1句中的to keep a diary of all their absent-minded actions就是指to keep a record of what they did unintentionally,题目中的subjects指实验对象，被测试者。
2.[A] 事实细节题。根据第2句中nearly all of them fell into a few groupings可以找到本题答案，题目中的discover是该句中find的同义词,A的patterns与原文中的groupings意义相同。
3.[C] 语义题。根据第2段最后两句提到,但是不知怎么的这种行为在程序中颠倒了。这些被测试者报告的事件中二十个中有一个属于这种“流水线程序错误”。C的unconsciously与somehow对应,change the sequence of doing things与the action got reversed对应，故本题选C。
4.[A] 事实细节题。根据第3段的第2、3句“一天之中似乎存在一些人们易犯荒谬可笑错误的高峰时段”,之后到举了几个高峰时间，可知A与之相符。
5.[D] 推理判断题。根据文章最后两句“一般来说，我们会以为技术娴熟可以减少错误。但是为了避免出现愚蠢的失误而更加专注，只会把事情弄得更糟糕，甚至会导致危险。”可知D“差错并不总是注意力不集中导致的” 正确。
英语四级考试阅读理解篇4
Taste is such a subjective matter that we don't usually conduct preference tests for food. The most you can say about anyone's preference, is that it's one person's opinion. But because the two big cola(可乐) companies Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola are marketed aggressively, we've wondered how big a role taste preference actually plays in brand loyalty. We set up a taste test that challenged people who identified themselves as either C0ca-Cola or Pepsi fans: Find your brand in a blind tasting.
We invited staff volunteers who had a strong liking for either Coca-Cola Classic (传统型)or Pepsi, Diet (低糖的)Coke, or Diet Pepsi-These were people who thought they'd have no trouble telling their brand from the other brand. We eventually located 19 regular cola drinkers and 27 diet cola drinkers.
We eventually located 19regular cola drinkers and 27diet cola drinkers. Then we fed them four unidentifiedsamples of cola one at a time, regular colas for the one group, diet versions for the other. We asked themto tell us whether each sample was Coke or Pepsi; then we analyzed the records statistically to compare the participants 'choices with what mere gum-work would have accomplished.
Getting all four samples right was a tough test, but not too tough, we thought, for people who believed they could recognize their brand. In the end, only 7out of19regular cola drinkers correctly identified theirbrand of choice in all four trials. The diet-cola drinkers did a little worse -only 7of27identified all four samples correctly.
While both groups did better than chance would predict, nearly half the participants in each group made the wrong choice two or more times. Two people got all four samples wrong. Overall, half the participants did about as well on the last round of tasting as on the first, so fatigue, or taste burn out, was not a factor. Our preference test results suggest that only a few Pepsi participants and Coke fans may really be able to tell their favorite brand by taste and price.
练习题：
Choose correct answers to the question:
1. According to the passage the preference test was conducted in order to _____.
A. find out the role taste preference plays in a person's drinking
B. reveal which cola is more to the liking of the drinkers
C. show that a person's opinion about taste is mere guess-work
D. compare the ability of the participants in choosing their drinks
2. The statistics recorded in the preference tests show _____.
A. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are people's two most favorite drinks
B. there is not much difference in taste between Coca-Cola and Pepsi
C. few people had trouble telling Coca-Cola from Pepsi
D. people's tastes differ from one another
3. It is implied in the first paragraph that _____.
A. the purpose of taste tests b to promote the sale of colas
B. the improvement of quality is the chief concern of the two cola companies
C. the competition between the two colas is very strong
D. blind tasting is necessary for identifying fans
4. The word "burnout"(Line4,Para.5) here refers to the state of _____.
A. being seriously burnt in the skin
B. being unable to burn for lack of fuel
C. being badly damaged by fire
D. being unable to function because of excessive use
5. The author's purpose in writing this passage is to _____.
A. show that taste preference is highly subjective
B. argue that taste testing is an important marketing strategy
C. emphasize that taste and price are closely related to each other
D. recommend that blind tasting be introduced in the quality control of colas
参考答案
1.[A] 第1段第3句提到，由于两大可乐公司的营销如此具有攻击性，我们不由想知道对味道的偏好在品牌忠诚度上起多大的作用，A与之相符。
2.[B] 第4段第2、3句表明可口可乐和百事可乐在味道方面并无多大差异，B与之相符。A、D不是实验数据所表明的事情，故排除;C与原文的意思不相符，也排除。
3.[C] 由第1段第3句中Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola are marketed so aggressively可知两大公司竞争极为激烈，故选C。
4.[D] 文章最后一段第3句中，fatigue与taste bum out之间用or连接，表明两者语义比较接近，对比四个选项，D符合，表示味觉疲劳、麻木。
5.[A] 文章第1句Taste is such... food表明味觉偏好是十分主观的，且下文讲到的实验结果也更进一步印证了该观点，故选A。
英语四级考试阅读理解篇5
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.
World Must Adapt to Unknown Climate Future
A.There is still great uncertainty about the impacts of climate change，according to the latest report from the Intefgovernmental Panel on Climate Change，released today.So if we are to survive and prosper, rather than trying to fend off specific threats like cyclones，we must build flexible and resilient(有弹性的)societies.
B.Today’s report is the second of three instalments(分期连载)of the IPCC’s fifth assessment of climate change.The first instalment，released last year,covered the physical science of climate change.It stated with increased certainty that climate change is happenin9，and that it is the result of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions.The new report focuses on the impacts of climate change and how to adapt to them.The third instalment，on how to cut greenhouse gas emissions，comes out in April.
C.The latest report backs off from some of the predictions made in the previous IPCC report，in 2007.During the final editing process.the authors also retreated from many of the more confident projections from the final draft，leaked last year.The IPCC now says it often cannot predict which specific impacts of climate change—such as droughts，storms or floods——will hit particular places.
D.Instead，the IPCC focuses on how people call adapt in the face of uncertainty,arguing that we must become resilient against diverse changes in the climate.“The natural human tendency is to want things to be clear and simple.”says the report’s co-chair Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford，Califomia.“And one of the messages that doesn’t just come from the IPCC，it comes from history,is that the future doesn’t ever turn out the way you think it will be.”That means，Field adds，that‘'being prepared for a wide range of possible futures is iust always smart”.
E.Here New Scientist breaks down what is new in the report，and what it means for humanity’s efforts to cope with a changing climate.A companion article，“How climate change will affect where you live”，highlights some of the key impacts that different regions are facing.What has changed in the new IPCC report?
F.In essence，the predictions are intentionally vaguer.Much of the firlner language from the 2007 report about exactly what kind of weather to expect，and how changes witl affect people，has been replaced with more cautious statements.The scale and timing of many regional impacts，and even the form of some，now appear uncertain.
G.For example，the 2007 report predicted that the intensity of cyclones over Asia would increase by 10to 20 per cent.The new report makes no such claim.Similarly,the last report estimated that climate change would force up to a quarter of a billion Africans into water shortage by the end of this decade.The new report avoids using such firm numbers.
H.The report has even watered down many of the more confident predictions that appeared in the lcaked drafts.References to“hundreds of millions”of people being affected by rising sea levels have been removed from the summary,as have statements about the impact of warmer temperatures on crops.“I think it's gone back a bit，”says Jean Palutikof of Griffith University in Brisbane，Queensland，Australia，who worked on the 2007 report.“That may be a good thing.In the fourth [climate assessment]we tried to do things that weren’t really possible and the fifth has sort of rebalanced the whole thing.”
So do we know less than we did before?
I.Not really,says Andy Pitman of the University of New South Wales in Sydney,Australia.It is just more rigorous language.“Pointing to the sign of the change，rather than the precise magnitude of the change，is scientifically more defensible，”he says.
J.We also know more about what we don’t know,says David Karoly at the University of Melbourne.“There is now a better understanding of uncertainties in regional climate proj ections at decadal timescales(时标).”
Are we less confident about all the impacts of climate change?
K.Not quite.There are still plenty of confident predictions of impacts in the reponv—at least in the draft chapters that were lcaked last year,and which are expected to be roughly the same when they are released later this week.These include more rain in parts ofAfrica，more heatwaves in southem Europe，and more frequent droughts in Australia(see“How climate change will affect where you live”).It also remains clear that the seas are rising.How do we prepare in cases in which there is low confidence about the effects of climate change?
L.That’s exactly what this report deals with.In many cases，the uncertainty is a matter of magnitude，so the choices are not hard.“It doesn’t really matter if the car hits the wall at 70 or 80 kilometres an hour,”says Karoly.“You should still wear your seat belt.”So when it comes to sea.1evel rise or heatwaves，the uncertainty does not change what we need to do：build sea walls，use efficient cooling and so forth.
M.But in some cases——such as African rainfall，which could go up or down——the models are not giving us great advice.so all we know is that things will change.“We are not certain about the precise nature of regional change，but we are absolutely certain there are going to be profound changes in many regions，”says Pitman.Even then，there are things we can do that will always help.A big one is getting people out of poverty.The report says poverty makes other impacts worse and many suggested adaptations are about alleviating it.The IPCC suggests giving disadvantaged groups more of a voice，helping them move when they need to and strengthening social safety nets.
N.What’s more，all countries should diversify their economies，rather than relying on a few main sources of income that could flood or blow ovel Countries should also find ways to become less vulnerable to the current climate variability.That means improving the way they govem resources like water,the report says.
O.In short，we must become more resilient.That would be wise even if the climate was stable.Our current infrastructure often cannot deal with the current climate，says Karoly,pointing to events like the recent UK floods.“We don’t have a resilient system now,even in extremely well developed countries.”
