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大学英语四级考试2022年12月真题(第一套)

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Part I Writing (30 minutes)

Directions: In this task, you are to write an essay on the importance of developing a healthy lifestyle among college students. You will have 30 minutes for the task. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

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 are based on the news report you have just heard.

1. A) A free car show.

B) A yearly concert.

C) A pipe band contest.

D) A sports competition.

2. A) Contribute a lot to the local economy.

B) Improve the image of Glasgow city.

C) Enrich the local culture of Glasgow.

D) Entertain people in local communities.

Questions 3 and 4 are based on the news report you have just heard.

3. A) Dangerous ice melts in Greenland.

B) Surprising rise in global sea levels.

C) Changing weather patterns in summer.

D) Record growth of Greenland's ice sheets.

4. A) It lasted three months.

B) It began in late May.

C) It ended a month earlier than before.

D) It started a month earlier than usual.

Questions 5 to 7 are based on the news report you have just heard.

5. A) Local policemen came across bundles of £20 notes.

B) Bundles of £20 notes kept turning up.

C) A villager was searching for his lost cash.

D) A bundle containing thousands of pounds got stolen.

6. A) They return it to the finder.

B) They give it to charity.

C) They place a notice in The Northern Echo.

D) They hand it over to the local government.

7. A) They cooperated well with the police.

B) They enjoyed a fairly affluent life.

C) They had a strong community spirit.

D) They were puzzled by the mystery.

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.

Questions 8 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

8. A) Excited.

B) Strange.

C) Delighted.

D) Indifferent.

9. A) Talk about future plans with friends.

B) Look back on their years at school.

C) Call on their relatives and friends.

D) Search for the meaning of their life.

10. A) He looks forward to receiving presents from his close friends.

B) He enjoys celebrating others' birthdays rather than his own.

C) He loves them but does not want to make a fuss.

D) He prefers to have them shown on social media.

11. A) Extend invitation to those he trusts most.

B) Make it an occasion to collect donations.

C) Hold it on a modest scale to remove birthday anxieties.

D) View it as a chance for people to socialize and have fun.

Questions 12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

12. A) There was too long a delay.

B) There was a terrible smell.

C) It was absolutely exhausting.

D) She got off at the wrong station.

13. A) She hasn't saved enough money.

B) She is used to taking public transport.

C) She is worried about traffic jams.

D) She hasn't passed the driving test yet.

14. A) They are popular.

B) They are a bit expensive for her.

C) They are dangerous.

D) They are environmentally friendly.

15. A) By renting a bike.

B) By sharing a ride.

C) By bus.

D) By jogging.

Section C

Directions: In this section, you will hear three passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear three or four 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.

Questions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard.

16. A) He is a deaf person working in IT.

B) He is a sign language interpreter.

C) He doesn't like speaking at meetings.

D) He doesn't use email or text messages.

17. A) Big advances in sign language.

B) Transformation in the IT industry.

C) Improved communication skills.

D) Speech recognition technology.

18. A) He can avoid being mistaken.

B) He can understand with ease.

C) He can take notes on the spot.

D) He can see the speakers' images.

Questions 19 to 21 are based on the passage you have just heard.

19. A) To find pure white walls shining.

B) To enter a house well looked after.

C) To see cheerful colours all around.

D) To get a hug from family members.

20. A) Painting the interior of their cupboards.

B) Doing the painting job all by themselves.

C) Designing all window frames the same way.

D) Choosing a colour because it is fashionable.

21. A) Paint the wooden frameworks and walls the same colour.

B) Match the room's ceiling with all the furniture in colour.

C) Hang landscape paintings all round.

D) Fit most of the cupboards into walls.

Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.

22. A) Children should start reading at age 3.

B) Reading to their children is important.

C) Reading is a habit every child can develop.

D) Children must read at least 3 times a week.

23. A) The speed of their brain development in infancy.

B) The number of books they have read by age four.

C) The number and quality of books parents read to them in infancy.

D) The quality and quantity of time parents spend playing with them.

24. A) Books telling very interesting stories.

B) Books with pictures of dolls and toys.

C) Books describing the lives of animals.

D) Books with specifically labeled images.

25. A) Share experience with other parents.

B) Create picture books for their children.

C) Choose carefully what to read to their children.

D) Read as many books as possible to their children.

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.

Phones influence all aspects of teenage life. Ninety-five percent of Americans ages 13 to 17 have a smartphone or have access to one, and nearly half report using the internet “almost 26 .”

But as recent survey data and interviews have suggested, many teens find much of that time to be unsatisfyingly spent. Continuous 27 shouldn't be mistaken for endless enjoyment. A new 28 representative survey about “screen time and device distractions” from the Pew Research Center indicates that it's not just parents who think teenagers are worryingly 29 from their phones—many teens themselves do too. Fifty-four percent of the 13-to-17-year-olds surveyed said they spend too much time 30 in their phones.

Vicky Rideout, who runs a research firm that studies children's interactions with media and technology, was not surprised by this finding. She says it's hardly 31 to teenagers. “They are dealing with the same challenges that adults are, as far as they are living in the 32 of a tech environment designed to suck as much of their time onto their devices as possible,” Rideout says.

The way parents interact with technology can 33 the way they interact with their kids. Rideout thus thinks it's up to parents to model good 34 : Kids tend to take note if their parents put their phone away at dinner or charge it in another room while they sleep. Witnessing habits like that can help kids “realize that they can 35 some more control over their devices,” she says.

A) absorbed

B) addicted

C) behavior

D) constantly

E) context

F) exercise

G) inseparable

H) nationally

I) recruited

J) shape

K) solution

L) specific

M) summary

N) usage

O) vaguely

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 .

Evil Genius

A) A few years ago I found myself teaching a university class on evil. It was for third-year criminology students to help them contextualize theory and research within controversial current topics. It was a huge success. The debates were heated and interesting. I could see people's views change within the course of a single lecture. Over the past 13 years, as a student, lecturer and researcher, I've enjoyed discussing the science of evil with anyone willing to listen. What I like most is destroying the cliche ( 陈词滥调 ) of good and evil, and replacing them with scientific insight. We need a more informed way of discussing behavior that at first we cannot, or should not, begin to understand.

B) Without understanding, we risk dehumanizing others, writing off human beings simply because we don't comprehend them. We must try to understand what we have labeled evil. We tend to think evil is something that other people are. We think of ourselves as “good people”, and even when we do morally wrong things, we understand the context of our decisions. With others, however, it is far easier to write them off. If their actions deviate ( 偏离 ) substantially from what we consider acceptable, we may label them evil. We need to be careful with this. Calling someone evil is often similar to saying they cannot change, and perhaps aren't even a human at all. However, when you actually go monster-hunting, and you look deeply at the people behind shocking behavior, you may be surprised.

C) As a child I used to love the Scooby-Doo cartoons. Arriving in their “Mystery Machine”, the gang would have to find a monster who was terrorizing a neighborhood. They would run around looking for clues and at the end unmask the bad guy. It was always a normal person in a costume. There were no monsters. Like the Scooby crew, we may find ourselves hunting for an easy fix, one word for people who do bad things. But if we take a good look, the word “evil” is insufficient—there are no simple explanations for why humans do bad things: instead there are many, and they are all marvelously different.

D) Evil is typically referred to when there is deviance from social norms: formal deviance is the violation of laws, like theft, murder, and attacks, while informal deviance involves violations of social norms, like lying. Evil behavior is typically thought to embrace one or both forms. However, deviance can also describe a behavior that simply differs from the norm.

E) Perhaps this is where we can find the good side of our bad side. Deviating from the norm can make us villains ( 恶棍 ), but it can also make us heroes. A child deviates from social pressures when they stand up for another child being bullied in school. A soldier deviates when they choose not to follow orders to kill an innocent civilian. An employee in a big tech company deviates when they expose its wrongdoings.

F) Creativity is also a deviation. Here, too, things are complex. Thinking creatively has given us modern medicine, technology and modern political structures, but it has also given us poison and nuclear weapons. Great benefit and great harm can come from the same human tendency.

G) In a research paper, Evil Genius , published in 2014, the behavioral scientists Francesca Gino and Scott Wiltermuth wanted to examine whether people who behave unethically in one task are more creative than others on a subsequent task, even after controlling for differences in baseline creative skills. The unethical behavior they chose was dishonesty.

H) Over five experiments researchers gave participants tasks in which they could cheat. In one study, they were given matrixes ( 矩阵 ) and had to find two numbers that added up to 10. Participants were asked to self-report how well they did at the end of the study: 59% cheated by saying that they solved more matrixes than they actually had.

I) After each task, the researchers measured participants' performance on the Remote Associates Test. This shows participants three words at a time that appear to be unrelated, and the person has to think of a fourth word that is associated with all of them. For example, you might get “Fox, Man, Peep”, or “Dust, Cereal, Fish”. In order to find the linking words (“Hole” for the first, “Bowl” for the second) you need to be creative. The more you get right, the more creative you are thought to be because you have come up with uncommon associations.

J) For every one of the five studies, they found the same thing—participants who cheated in the first task did better on the creativity task. Why? Like other forms of unethical behavior, lying means breaking rules. It involves being deviant, going against the social principle that people should tell the truth. Similarly, being creative involves “thinking outside the box”, deviating from expectations. They involve similar thought patterns, so stimulating one stimulates the other. Can we learn from this? Perhaps. To be more creative, we could try lying in controlled environment. Find online logic games and cheat at them, play Scrabble ( 拼字游戏 ) with a dictionary, or write a story about something that is untrue? Such tasks can get our brains thinking flexibly, beyond our normal comfort zone. This is not a call to become a compulsive ( 强迫性的 ) liar, but a controlled liar.

K) In addition to benefits for creativity, deviance can be a good thing in other ways. Even Philip Zimbardo, the author of the Stanford prison experiment, who showed how easily we can be led to behave badly, believes that the future of deviance research may lie more in understanding extreme pro-social behavior, such as heroism. Like evil, we often view heroism as only a possibility for outliers—for people who are abnormal. But Zimbardo asks: “What if the capability to act heroically is also fundamentally ordinary and available to all of us?” Some say we should never meet our heroes, lest they disappoint us when we find out how normal they are. But this should be liberating, not disappointing. We are all capable of behaving like outliers. It's time for us to understand deviance, and realize its potential for good as well as for harm.

36. A behavior that does not conform to social norms may be described as being deviant.

37. Various experiments found that participants who cheated in the initial task performed better in the creativity test.

38. People may be simply considered evil if their behaviors are morally unacceptable to us.

39. The research published by two scientists was intended to examine the relationship between dishonesty and creativity.

40. The author's lectures sparked lively discussions in his class.

41. The researchers tested the participants' creativity by asking them to play a word game.

42. It is time we realized that deviance may be capable of doing both good and harm to individuals and society.

43. The reasons for people's evil behaviors can be explained in more ways than one.

44. The math task in one experiment was designed to test participants' tendency to cheat.

45. Some creative ideas have turned out to do harm to human society.

Section C

Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

Passage One
Questions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.

Even though we are living in an age where growing old is thought of as an inevitable misery, this doctor has been changing the game for seniors over the last 25 years.

It all started in 1991 when the Harvard-educated physician was transferred from working in a stressful emergency room to being the medical director of a nursing home in upstate New York. The depressing and regimented ( 严格管制的 ) environment got him thinking on what exactly could improve the residents' conditions.

Even though animals in nursing homes were illegal at the time, Dr. Bill Thomas took a chance. Based on a hunch ( 直觉 ), he brought in two dogs, four cats, hens, rabbits, 100 birds, a multitude of plants, a flower garden, and a vegetable patch.

The change was dramatic. There was a 50% drop in medical prescriptions along with a dramatic decrease in death rates—but most importantly, the residents were simply happier.

Dr. Thomas's approach, named the Eden Alternative, has driven nursing homes to allow a more autonomous ( 自主的 ) and creative living space for their elderly. It erases the belief that growing old means growing useless. He encourages residents to think of their age as an enriching new phase of life rather than the end of it.

Thomas, now a speaker and author of several books, also created small, independently-run residences with their own bedrooms and bathrooms, and he has been preaching a singular message that getting old is not a bad thing.

“Within six weeks, they had to send a truck around to pick up all the wheelchairs,” Thomas told the Washington Post. “You know why most people in nursing homes use wheelchairs? Because the buildings are so big.”

The 56-year-old doctor's methods have been adopted in Australia, Japan, Canada, and America with enormous success. Last year he published Second Wind: Navigating the Passage to a Slower, Deeper, and More Connected Life, a guide on how to shift our perspectives on aging and growth.

He is currently traveling through North America performing with his guitar and his enthusiasm on his Age of Disruption Tour.

46. What has Bill Thomas been doing for a quarter of a century?

A) Transforming people's lifestyle.

B) Honoring his Harvard education.

C) Changing people's philosophy of life.

D) Shifting people's perspective on aging.

47. Why did Bill Thomas try something different in the nursing home?

A) He wanted to make it more pleasant for seniors.

B) He wanted to apply his Harvard training to practice.

C) He felt it his duty to revolutionize its management.

D) He felt disappointed working in the environment.

48. What do we learn about Bill Thomas bringing animals and plants into the nursing home?

A) He made a mess of the nursing home.

B) He did something all professionals would do.

C) He won instant support from the state authorities.

D) He acted in violation of the state law.

49. What has Bill Thomas been persistently advocating?

A) Good health is not just a privilege of the young.

B) Nursing homes should be strictly limited in size.

C) Getting old is by no means something miserable.

D) Residences for seniors should be run independently.

50. How is Bill Thomas's new concept received?

A) It is gaining ground in many countries.

B) It is being heatedly debated worldwide.

C) It is considered revolutionary everywhere.

D) It is winning approval from the government.

Passage Two
Questions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.

Research shows that in developed countries, more affluent and educated people tend to consume higher-quality diets—including more fruits and vegetables, fish and whole grains. On the contrary, economically disadvantaged people report diets that are nutrient-poor and energy-dense. They are less likely to have food-purchasing habits that conform to public health recommendations.

These dietary differences are often accompanied by higher rates of obesity and diabetes among lower-income people. This relationship between social class and diet quality and health is extensively documented. However, the research does not explain why this is the case—a question that has significant implications for designing effective policies and initiatives to improve diets and prevent chronic diseases.

Public-health initiatives to promote healthy diets often focus on providing nutrition education and recipes ( 食谱 ). These approaches,however,often presume less food literacy (i. e. food knowledge and skills) among low-income people. Are unhealthy diets really the result of poor choices, limited food skills and knowledge?

Research suggests that adults in food-insecure households are just as likely as those in food-secure households to adjust recipes to make them more healthy. They are also just as proficient in food preparation and cooking skills. There is no indication that increasing food skills or budgeting skills will reduce food insecurity.

Instead, disadvantaged groups are constrained by their economic, material and social circumstances. For example, low income is the strongest predictor of food insecurity in Canada, where one in eight households experiences insufficient access to nutritious foods.

It's well-established that food prices are an important determinant of food choice. Low-income households report that they find it difficult to adopt dietary guidelines because food prices are a barrier to improving their diets.

When researchers estimate the cost of diets people actually eat, higher-quality diets are typically more costly.

While this may be so, it does not, in itself, prove that healthy diets are necessarily more expensive or cost-prohibitive. After all, not all socioeconomically disadvantaged people consume poor diets.

We can easily think of a number of foods and recipes that are both inexpensive and nutritious. The internet is full of recipes for “eating well on a budget.”

51. What can we learn from research on diets in developed countries?

A) Dietary recommendations are not fit for underprivileged people.

B) People from different social groups vary in their dietary habits.

C) People's choice of food depends on their individual taste.

D) There is no consensus on what high-quality diets are.

52. What does the author say is important in formulating policies to improve diets and health?

A) A better understanding of the relationship between social class and health.

B) A greater emphasis on studying the cause of obesity and chronic diseases.

C) Prioritizing the provision of better nutrition for lower classes.

D) Designing education programs and initiatives on public health.

53. What does research reveal about adults in food-insecure households?

A) Their eating habits need to be changed.

B) Their food literacy has been improving.

C) They do not pay much attention to their food recipes.

D) They do not lack food knowledge or budgeting skills.

54. What would help improve food security among the disadvantaged groups in Canada?

A) Teaching them budgeting skills.

B) Increasing their food choices.

C) Enabling them to have more access to nutritious foods.

D) Taking more effective measures to increase food supplies.

55. What does the author suggest disadvantaged people do to improve their health?

A) Adopt a positive attitude towards dietary guidelines.

B) Choose diets that are both healthy and affordable.

C) Make sure to purchase healthy foods on the internet.

D) Change their eating habits and consumption patterns.

Part IV Translation (30 minutes)

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2 .

在中国农历中, 立秋 (Start of Autumn)意味着夏天的结束和秋天的开始。立秋带来的首先是天气的变化,气温逐渐下降。人们看到树叶开始变黄飘落时,知道秋天已经来临,这就是所谓的“一叶知秋”。但此时酷热的天气并未完全结束,高温通常还会持续一段时间,被称为“秋老虎”。立秋对农民意义重大,这时各种秋季作物迅速生长、开始成熟,收获的季节即将到来。 U4nbw3vFrC+VsWwP2wbT2vK4HNoBVfU6SN3MdvZRXqYvD62SKQgm79TUENXUOUv0

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