大学英语四级阅读理解范文

因为坚持，才会有破茧成蝶这样美好的故事。作为备考人，我们也想为自己争取一个完美的结局。那么以下是小编为大家准备了2022大学英语四级阅读理解范文，欢迎参阅。

大学英语四级阅读理解篇1

Forecasting of Statistics

Nearly two thousand years have passed since a census decreed by Caesar Augustus become part of the greatest story ever told. Many things have changed in the intervening years. The hotel industry worries more about overbuilding than overcrowding, and if they had to meet an unexpected influx, few inns would have a manager to accommodate the weary guests. Now it is the census taker that does the traveling in the fond hope that a highly mobile population will stay long enough to get a good sampling. Methods of gathering, recording, and evaluating information have presumably been improved a great deal. And where then it was the modest purpose of Rome to obtain a simple head count as an adequate basis for levying taxes, now batteries of complicated statistical series furnished by governmental agencies and private organizations are eagerly scanned and interpreted by sages and seers to get a clue to future events. The Bible does not tell us how the Roman census takers made out, and as regards our more immediate concern, the reliability of present day economic forecasting, there are considerable differences of opinion. They were aired at the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the American Statistical Association. There was the thought that business forecasting might well be on its way from an art to a science, and some speakers talked about newfangled computers and high-falutin mathematical system in terms of excitement and endearment which we, at least in our younger years when these things mattered, would have associated more readily with the desc ription of a fair maiden. But others pointed to the deplorable record of highly esteemed forecasts and forecasters with a batting average below that of the Mets, and the President-elect of the Association cautioned that “high powered statistical methods are usually in order where the facts are crude and inadequate, the exact contrary of what crude and inadequate statisticians assume.” We left his birthday party somewhere between hope and despair and with the conviction, not really newly acquired, that proper statistical methods applied to ascertainable facts have their merits in economic forecasting as long as neither forecaster nor public is deluded into mistaking the delineation of probabilities and trends for a prediction of certainties of mathematical exactitude.

大学英语四级阅读理解篇2

The Present Is the Most Important

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men wouldsteadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it withsuch things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If werespected only what is inevitable and has a right to be , music and poetry would resoundalong the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthythings have any permanent and absolute existence, --that petty fears and petty pleasure arebut the shadow of reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes andslumbering, by consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life ofroutine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundation. Children, whoplay life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live worthily, butwho think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book,that “there was a king’s son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought upby a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to thebarbarous race with which be lived. One of his father’s ministers having discovered him,revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and heknew himself to be a prince. So soul, from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes itsown character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself tobe Brahme.” We think that that is which appears to be. If a man should give us an account ofthe realities he beheld, we should not recognize the place in his des cription. Look at ameeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop. Or a dwelling-house, and say what thatthing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Menesteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adamand after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all thesetimes and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the presentmoment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all ages. And we are enabled toapprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching ofthe reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to ourconceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives inconceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had as fair and noble a design but some of hisposterity at least could accomplish it.

大学英语四级阅读理解篇3

Advertisers tend to think big and perhaps this is why they’re always coming in for criticism. Their critics seem to resent them because they have a flair for self-promotion and because they have so much money to throw around. ‘It’s iniquitous,’ they say, ‘that this entirely unproductive industry (if we can call it that) should absorb millions of pounds each year. It only goes to show how much profit the big companies are making. Why don’t they stop advertising and reduce the price of their goods? After all, it’s the consumer who pays…’

The poor old consumer! He’d have to pay a great deal more if advertising didn’t create mass markets for products. It is precisely because of the heavy advertising that consumer goods are so cheap. But we get the wrong idea if we think the only purpose of advertising is to sell goods. Another equally important function is to inform. A great deal of the knowledge we have about household goods derives largely from the advertisements we read. Advertisements introduce us to new products or remind us of the existence of ones we already know about. Supposing you wanted to buy a washing machine, it is more than likely you would obtain details regarding performance, price, etc., from an advertisement.

Lots of people pretend that they never read advertisements, but this claim may be seriously doubted. It is hardly possible not to read advertisements these days. And what fun they often are, too! Just think what a railway station or a newspaper would be like without advertisements. Would you enjoy gazing at a blank wall or reading railway byelaws while waiting for a train? Would you like to read only closely printed columns of news in your daily paper? A cheerful, witty advertisement makes such a difference to a drab wall or a newspaper full of the daily ration of calamities.

We must not forget, either, that advertising makes a positive contribution to our pockets. Newspapers, commercial radio and television companies could not subsist without this source of revenue. The fact that we pay so little for our daily paper, or can enjoy so many broadcast programmes is due entirely to the money spent by advertisers. Just think what a newspaper would cost if we had to pay its full price!

Another thing we mustn’t forget is the ‘small ads.’ which are in virtually every newspaper and magazine. What a tremendously useful service they perform for the community! Just about anything can be accomplished through these columns. For instance, you can find a job, buy or sell a house, announce a birth, marriage or death in what used to be called the ‘hatch, match and dispatch’ column but by far the most fascinating section is the personal or ‘agony’ column. No other item in a newspaper provides such entertaining reading or offers such a deep insight into human nature. It’s the best advertisement for advertising there is!

大学英语四级阅读理解篇4

The past ages of man have all been carefully labeled by anthropologists. Des criptions like ‘ Palaeolithic Man’, ‘Neolithic Man’, etc., neatly sum up whole periods. When the time comes for anthropologists to turn their attention to the twentieth century, they will surely choose the label ‘Legless Man’. Histories of the time will go something like this: ‘in the twentieth century, people forgot how to use their legs. Men and women moved about in cars, buses and trains from a very early age. There were lifts and escalators in all large buildings to prevent people from walking. This situation was forced upon earth dwellers of that time because of miles each day. But the surprising thing is that they didn’t use their legs even when they went on holiday. They built cable railways, ski-lifts and roads to the top of every huge mountain. All the beauty spots on earth were marred by the presence of large car parks. ’

The future history books might also record that we were deprived of the use of our eyes. In our hurry to get from one place to another, we failed to see anything on the way. Air travel gives you a bird’s-eye view of the world – or even less if the wing of the aircraft happens to get in your way. When you travel by car or train a blurred image of the countryside constantly smears the windows. Car drivers, in particular, are forever obsessed with the urge to go on and on: they never want to stop. Is it the lure of the great motorways, or what? And as for sea travel, it hardly deserves mention. It is perfectly summed up in the words of the old song: ‘I joined the navy to see the world, and what did I see? I saw the sea.’ The typical twentieth-century traveler is the man who always says ‘I’ve been there. ’ You mention the remotest, most evocative place-names in the world like El Dorado, Kabul, Irkutsk and someone is bound to say ‘I’ve been there’ – meaning, ‘I drove through it at 100 miles an hour on the way to somewhere else. ’

When you travel at high speeds, the present means nothing: you live mainly in the future because you spend most of your time looking forward to arriving at some other place. But actual arrival, when it is achieved, is meaningless. You want to move on again. By traveling like this, you suspend all experience; the present ceases to be a reality: you might just as well be dead. The traveler on foot, on the other hand, lives constantly in the present. For him traveling and arriving are one and the same thing: he arrives somewhere with every step he makes. He experiences the present moment with his eyes, his ears and the whole of his body. At the end of his journey he feels a delicious physical weariness. He knows that sound. Satisfying sleep will be his: the just reward of all true travellers.

大学英语四级阅读理解篇5

When you think of the tremendous technological progress we have made, it’s amazing how little we have developed in other respects. We may speak contemptuously of the poor old Romans because they relished the orgies of slaughter that went on in their arenas. We may despise them because they mistook these goings on for entertainment. We may forgive them condescendingly because they lived 2000 years ago and obviously knew no better. But are our feelings of superiority really justified? Are we any less blood-thirsty? Why do boxing matches, for instance, attract such universal interest? Don’t the spectators who attend them hope they will see some violence? Human beings remains as bloodthirsty as ever they were. The only difference between ourselves and the Romans is that while they were honest enough to admit that they enjoyed watching hungey lions tearing people apart and eating them alive, we find all sorts of sophisticated arguments to defend sports which should have been banned long age; sports which are quite as barbarous as, say, public hangings or bearbaiting.

It really is incredible that in this day and age we should still allow hunting or bull-fighting, that we should be prepared to sit back and watch two men batter each other to pulp in a boxing ring, that we should be relatively unmoved by the sight of one or a number of racing cars crashing and bursting into flames. Let us not deceive ourselves. Any talk of ‘the sporting spirit’ is sheer hypocrisy. People take part in violent sports because of the high rewards they bring. Spectators are willing to pay vast sums of money to see violence. A world heavyweight championship match, for instance, is front page news. Millions of people are disappointed if a big fight is over in two rounds instead of fifteen. They feel disappointment because they have been deprived of the exquisite pleasure of witnessing prolonged torture and violence.

Why should we ban violent sports if people enjoy them so much? You may well ask. The answer is simple: they are uncivilized. For centuries man has been trying to improve himself spiritually and emotionally – admittedly with little success. But at least we no longer tolerate the sight madmen cooped up in cages, or public floggings of any of the countless other barbaric practices which were common in the past. Prisons are no longer the grim forbidding places they used to be. Social welfare systems are in operation in many parts of the world. Big efforts are being made to distribute wealth fairly. These changes have come about not because human beings have suddenly and unaccountably improved, but because positive steps were taken to change the law. The law is the biggest instrument of social change that we have and it may exert great civilizing influence. If we banned dangerous and violent sports, we would be moving one step further to improving mankind. We would recognize that violence is degrading and unworthy of human beings.

大学英语四级阅读理解篇6

Europe’s Gypsies, Are They a Nation?

The striving of countries in Central Europe to enter the European Union may offer anunprecedented chance to the continent’s Gypsies (or Roman) to be recognized as a nation,albeit one without a defined territory. And if they were to achieve that they might even seeksome kind of formal place—at least a total population outnumbers that of many of the Union’spresent and future countries. Some experts put the figure at 4m-plus; some proponents ofGypsy rights go as high as 15m.

Unlike Jews, Gypsies have had no known ancestral land to hark back to. Though their languageis related to Hindi, their territorial origins are misty. Romanian peasants held them to be bornon the moon. Other Europeans (wrongly) thought them migrant Egyptians, hence thederivative Gypsy. Most probably they were itinerant metal workers and entertainers whodrifted west from India in the 7th century.

However, since communism in Central Europe collapsed a decade ago, the notion ofRomanestan as a landless nation founded on Gypsy culture has gained ground. TheInternational Romany Union, which says it stands for 10m Gypsies in more than 30 countries, isfostering the idea of “self-rallying”. It is trying to promote a standard and written form of thelanguage; it waves a Gypsy flag (green with a wheel) when it lobbies in such places as theUnited Bations; and in July it held a congress in Prague, The Czech capital. Where PresidentVaclav Havel said that Gypsies in his own country and elsewhere should have a better deal.

At the congress a Slovak-born lawyer, Emil Scuka, was elected president of the InternationalTomany Union. Later this month a group of elected Gypsy politicians, including members ofparliament, mayors and local councilors from all over Europe (OSCE), to discuss how topersuade more Gypsies to get involved in politics.

The International Romany Union is probably the most representative of the outfits that speakfor Gypsies, but that is not saying a lot. Of the several hundred delegates who gathered at itscongress, few were democratically elected; oddly, none came from Hungary, whose Gypsiesare perhaps the world’s best organized, with some 450 Gypsy bodies advising local councilsthere. The union did, however, announce its ambition to set up a parliament, but how itwould actually be elected was left undecided.

So far, the European Commission is wary of encouraging Gypsies to present themselves as anation. The might, it is feared, open a Pandora’s box already containing Basques, Corsicans andother awkward peoples. Besides, acknowledging Gypsies as a nation might backfire, just whenseveral countries, particularly Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, are beginning to treatthem better, in order to qualify for EU membership. “The EU’s whole premise is to overcomedifferences, not to highlight them,” says a nervous Eurocrat.

But the idea that the Gypsies should win some kind of special recognition as Europe’s largestcontinent wide minority, and one with a terrible history of persecution, is catching on . Gypsieshave suffered many pogroms over the centuries. In Romania, the country that still has thelargest number of them (more than 1m), in the 19th century they were actually enslaved. Hitlertried to wipe them out, along with the Jews.

“Gypsies deserve some space within European structures,” says Jan Marinus Wiersma, aDutchman in the European Parliament who suggests that one of the current commissionersshould be responsible for Gypsy affairs. Some prominent Gypsies say they should be moredirectly represented, perhaps with a quota in the European Parliament. That, they argue,might give them a boost. There are moves afoot to help them to get money for, among otherthings, a Gypsy university.

One big snag is that Europe’s Gypsies are, in fact, extremely heterogeneous. They belong tomany different, and often antagonistic, clans and tribes, with no common language or religion,Their self-proclaimed leaders have often proved quarrelsome and corrupt. Still, says,Dimitrina Petrova, head of the European Roma Rights Center in Budapest, Gypsies’ sharedexperience of suffering entitles them to talk of one nation; their potential unity, she says,stems from “being regarded as sub-human by most majorities in Europe.”

And they have begun to be a bit more pragmatic. In Slovakia and Bulgaria, for instance, Gypsypolitical parties are trying to form electoral blocks that could win seats in parliament. InMacedonia, a Gypsy party already has some—and even runs a municipality. Nicholas Gheorge,an expert on Gypsy affairs at the OSCE, reckons that, spread over Central Europe, there arenow about 20 Gypsy MPS and mayors, 400-odd local councilors, and a growing number ofbusinessmen and intellectuals.

That is far from saying that they have the people or the cash to forge a nation. But, with theGypsy question on the EU’s agenda in Central Europe, they are making ground.