2014年12月英语四级第一套

2014年12月大学英语四级第一套

2014年12月大学英语四级第一套

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 center. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.

Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.

One principle of taxation, called the benefits principle, states that people should pay taxes based on the benefits they receive from government services. This principle tries to make public goods similar to (36) goods. It seems reasonable that a person who often goes to the movies pays more in

(37) for movie tickets than a person who rarely goes. And (38) a person who gets great benefit from a public good should pay more for it than a person who gets little benefit.

The gasoline tax. for instance, is sometimes (39) using the benefits principle. In some states, (40) from the gasoline tax are used to build and maintain roads. Because those who buy gasoline are the same people who use the roads, the gasoline tax might be viewed as a (41) way to pay for this government service.

The benefits principle can also be used to argue that wealthy citizens should pay higher taxes than poorer ones, (42) because the wealthy benefit more from public services. Consider, for example. the benefits of police protection from (43). Citizens with much to protect get greater benefit from police than those with less to protect. Therefore, according to the benefits principle, the wealthy should (44) more than the poor to the cost of (45) the police force. The same argument can be used for many other public services, such as fire protection, national defense, and the court system.

注意:此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。

A) adapt I) provided

B) contribute J) revenues

C) exerting K) similarly

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2014年12月大学英语四级第一套

D) expenses L) simply

E) fair M) theft

F) justified N) total

G) maintaining O) wealth

H) private

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 then once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 Growing Up Colored

[A] You wouldn't know Piedmont anymore—my Piedmont, I mean—the town in West Virginia where I learned to be a colored boy.

[B] The 1950s in Piedmont was a time to remember, or at least to me. People were always proud to be from Piedmont—lying at the foot of a mountain, on the banks of the mighty Potomac. We know God gave America no more beautiful location. I never knew colored people anywhere who were crazier about mountains and water, flowers and trees, fishing and hunting. For as long as anyone could remember, we could outhunt, outshoot, and outswim the white boys in the valley.

[C] The social structure of Piedmont was something we know like the back of our hands. It was an immigrant town; white Piedmont was Italian and Irish, with a handful of wealthy WASPs (盎格鲁撒克逊人的白人新教徒) on East Hampshire Street, and “ethnic” neighborhoods of working-class people everywhere else, colored and white.

[D] For as long as anyone can remember. Piedmoent's character has been completely bound up with the Westvaco paper mill: its prosperous past and doubtful future. At first glance, the town is a typical dying mill center. Many once beautiful buildings stand empty, evidencing a bygone time of spirit and pride. The big houses on East Hampshire Street are no longer proud, as they were when I was a kid.

[E] Like the Italians and the Irish, most of the colored people migrated to Piedmont at the turn of 2

2014年12月大学英语四级第一套

the 20th century to work at the paper mill, which opened in 1888. All the colored men at the paper mill worked on “the platform”—loading paper into tricks until the craft unions were finally integrated in 1968. Loading is what Daddy did every working day of his life. That's what almost every colored grown—up I knew did.

[F] Colored people lived in three neighborhoods that were clearly separated. Welcome to the Colored Zone, a large stretched banner could have said. And it felt good in there, like walking around your house in bare feet and underwear, or snoring (打制) night out loud on the couch in front of the TV—enveloped by the comforts of home, the warmth of those you love.

[G] Of course, the colored world was not so much a neighborhood as a condition of existence.And though our own world was seemingly self-contained, it impacted on the white world of Piedmont in almost every direction. Certainly, the borders of our world seeped to be impacted on when some white man or woman showed up where he or the did not belong, such as at the black Legion Hall. Our space was violated when one of them showed up at a dance or a party. The rhythms would be off. The music would sound not quite right. Everybody would leave early.

[I] “It's no disgrace to be colored,”the black entertainer Bert Williams famously observed early in the century, “but it is awfully inconvenient.” For most of my childhood, we couldn't eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels, we couldn't use certain bathrooms or try on clothes in stores. Mama insisted that we dress up when we went to shop. She was carefully dressed when she went to clothing stores, and wore white pads called shields under her arms so her dress or blouse would show no sweat. “We'd like to try this on,” she'd say carefully, uttering her words precisely and properly. “We don't buy clothes we can't try on,” she'd say when they declined, and we'd walk out in Mama's dignified (有尊严的) manner. She preferred to shop where we had an account and where everyone knew who she was.

[J] At the Cut-Rate Drug Store, no one colored was allowed to sit down at the counter or tables, with one exception: my father. I don't know for certain why Carl Dadisman, the owner, wouldn't stop Daddy from sitting down. But I believe it was in part because Daddy was so light-colored, and in part because, during his shift at the phone company, be picked up orders for food and coffee for the operators. Colored people were supposed to stand at the counter, get their food to go, and leave. 3

2014年12月大学英语四级第一套

Even when Young Doc Bess would set up the basketball team with free Cokes after one of many victories, the colored players had to stand around and drink out of paper cups while the white players and cheerleaders set down in comfortable chairs and drank out of glasses.

[K] I couldn't have been much older than five or six as I sat with my father at the Cut-Rate one afternoon, enjoying ice cream. Mr. Wilson, a stony-faced Irishman, walked by.“Hello, Mr. Wilson,” my father said.

“Hello, George.”

[L] I was genuinely puzzled. Mr. Wilson must have confused my father with somebody else, but who? There weren't any Georges among the colored people in Piedmont. “Why don't you tell him your name, Daddy?” I asked loudly. “Your name isn't George.”

“He knows my name, boy,” my father said after a long pause. “He calls all colored people George.”

[M] I knew we wouldn't talk about it again; even at that age, I was given to understand that there were some subjects it didn't do to worry to death about. Now that I have children, I realize that what distressed my father wasn't so much the Mr. Wilsons of the world as the painful obligation to explain the racial facts of life to someone who hadn't quite learned them yet. Maybe Mr. Wilson couldn't hurt my father by calling him George; but I hurt him by asking to know why.

注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。

46. The author felt as a boy that his life in a separated neighborhood was casual and cozy.

47. There is every sign of decline at the paper mill now.

48. One reason the author's father could sit and eat at the drug store was that he didn't look that dark.

49. Piedmont was a town of immigrants from different parts of the world.

50. In spite of the awful inconveniences caused by racial prejudice, the author's family managed to live a life of dignity.

51. The author later realized he had caused great distress to his father by asking why he was wrongly addressed.

52. The author took pride in being from Piedmont because of its natural beauty.

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2014年12月大学英语四级第一套

53. Colored people called white people by the business they did.

54. Colored people who lived in Piedmont did heavy manual jobs at the paper mill.

55. The colored people felt uneasy at the presence of the whites in their neighborhoods. 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 center.

Passage One

Questions 56 to 60 are based on the following passage.

Children are a delight. They are our future. But sadly, hiring someone to take care of them while you go to work is getting more expensive by the year.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the cost of enrolling an infant or small kid at a childcare center rose 3% in 2012, faster than the overall cost of living. There are now large strips of the country where daycare for an infant costs more than a tenth of the average married couple's income. This is not necessarily a new trend, but it is a somewhat puzzling one. The price of professional childcare has been rising since the 1980s. Yet during that time, pay for professional childcare workers has stood still. Actually caregivers make less today, in real terms, than they did in 1990. Considering that labor costs are responsible for up to 80% of a daycare center's expenses, one would expect flat wages to have meant flat prices.

So who's to blame for higher childcare costs?

Childcare is a carefully regulated industry. States lay down rules about how many children each employee is allowed to watch over, the space care centers need per child, and other minute details. And the stricter the regulations, the higher the costs. If it has to hire a caregiver for every two children, it can't really achieve any economics of scale on labor to save money when other expenses go up. In Massachusetts, where childcare centers must hire one teacher for every three infants, the price of care averaged more than $16,000 per year. In Mississippi, where centers must hire one teacher for every five infants, the price of care averaged less than 55,000.

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