2017 年 12 月大学英语四级考试真题详细解析第三套

Part I

2017 年 12 月大学英语四级考试真题(第三套）

(25 minutes)

Writing

Directions：For this part，you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on how to best handle the relationship between parents and children. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

Part II

Listening Comprehension

(25 minutes)

说明：由于 2017 年 12 月四级考试全国共考了 2 套听力，本套真题听力与前 2 套内容完全一

样，只是顺序不一样，因此在本套真题中不再重复出现。

(40 minutes)

Part III Section A

Reading Comprehension

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. Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.

We all know there exists a great void (空白)in the public educational system when it comes to 26 to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) courses. One educator named Dori Roberts decided to do something to change this system. Dori taught high school engineering for 11 years. She noticed there was a real void in quality STEM education at all 27 of the public educational system. She said, “I started Engineering For Kids (EFK) after noticing a real lack of math, science and engineering programs to 28 my own kids in.”

She decided to start an afterschool program where children 29 in STEM-based competitions. The club grew quickly and when it reached 180 members and the kids in the program won several state 30 , she decided to devote all her time to cultivating and 31 it. The global business EFK was born.

Dori began operating EFK out of her Virginia home, which she then expanded to 32

recreation

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centers. Today, the EFK program 33

2017 年 12 月大学英语四级考试真题(第三套）

over 144 branches in 32 states within the United States

and in 21 countries. Sales have doubled from $5 million in 2014 to $10 million in 2015, with 25 new branches planned for 2016. The EFK website states, “Our nation is not 34 enough engineers. Our philosophy is to inspire kids at a young age to understand that engineering is a great 35.”

A) attracted B) career C) championships D) degrees

E) developing

I) feeding J) graduating K) interest L) levels

F) enroll G) exposure

M) local N) operates O) participated

H) feasible

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.

Why aren’t you curious about what happened?

A) “You suspended Ray Rice after our video, a reporter from TMZ challenged National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell the other day. “Why didn’t you have the curiosity to go to the casino (赌场 )yourself?” The implication of the question is that a more curious commissioner would have found a way to get the tape.

B) The accusation of incuriosity is one that we hear often, carrying the suggestion that there is something wrong with not wanting to search out the truth. I have been bothered for a long time about the curious lack of curiosity said a Democratic member of the New Jersey legislature back in July, referring to an insufficiently inquiring attitude on the part of an assistant to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who chose not to ask hard questions about the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal. “Isn’t the mainstream media the least bit curious about what happened?” wrote conservative writer Jennifer Rubin earlier this year, referring to the attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

C) The implication, in each case, is that curiosity is a good thing, and a lack of curiosity is a

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2017 年 12 月大学英语四级考试真题(第三套）

problem. Are such accusations simply efforts to score political points for one’s party? Or is there something of particular value about curiosity in and of itself?

D) The journalist Ian Leslie, in his new and enjoyable book Curious：The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It, insists that the answer to that last question is ‘Yes’. Leslie argues that curiosity is a much-overlooked human virtue, crucial to our success，and that we are losing it. E) We are suffering，he writes，from a “serendipity deficit.” The word “serendipity” was coined by Horace Walpole in an 1854 letter, from a tale of three princes who “were always making discoveries, by accident, of things they were not in search of.” Leslie worries that the rise of the Internet, among other social and technological changes, has reduced our appetite for aimless adventures. No longer have we the inclination to let ourselves wander through fields of knowledge, ready to be surprised. Instead, we seek only the information we want.

F) Why is this a problem? Because without curiosity we will lose the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. We will see unimaginative governments and dying corporations make disastrous decisions. We will lose a vital part of what has made humanity as a whole so successful as a species.

G) Leslie presents considerable evidence for the proposition that the society as a whole is growing less curious. In the U.S. and Europe, for example, the rise of the Internet has led to a declining consumption of news from outside the reader’s borders. But not everything is to be blamed on technology. The decline in interest in literary fiction is also one of the causes identified by Leslie. Reading literary fiction, he says, makes us more curious.

H) Moreover, in order to be curious, “you have to be aware of a gap in your knowledge in the first place.” Although Leslie perhaps paints a bit broadly in contending that most of us are unaware of how much we don’t know, he’s surely right to point out that the problem is growing: “Google can give us the powerful illusion that all questions have definite answers.” I)

Indeed, Google，for which Leslie expresses admiration, is also his frequent whipping boy (替

罪羊）. He quotes Google co-founder Larry Page to the effect that the “ perfect search engine” will “understand exactly what I mean and give me back exactly what I want.” Elsewhere in the book, Leslie writes: “Google aims to save you from the thirst of curiosity altogether.” J)

Somewhat nostalgically(怀旧地），he quotes John Maynard Keynes’s justly famous words of

praise to the bookstore：\

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dictates, should be an afternoon’s entertainment.” If only!

K) Citing the work of psychologists and cognitive ( 认 知 的 ） scientists ， Leslie criticizes the received wisdom that academic success is the result of a combination of intellectual talent and hard work. Curiosity, he argues, is the third key factor—and a difficult one to preserve. If not cultivated, it will not survive： “Childhood curiosity is a collaboration between child and adult. The surest way to kill it is to leave it alone. ”

L) School education, he warns, is often conducted in a way that makes children incurious. Children of educated and upper-middle-class parents turn out to be far more curious, even at early ages, than children of working class and lower class families. That lack of curiosity produces a relative lack of knowledge, and the lack of knowledge is difficult if not impossible to compensate for later on.

M) Although Leslie’s book isn’t about politics, he doesn’t entirely shy away from the problem. Political leaders, like leaders of other organizations, should be curious. They should ask questions at crucial moments. There are serious consequences, he warns, in not wanting to know. N) He presents as an example the failure of the George W. Bush administration to prepare properly for the after-effects of the invasion of Iraq. According to Leslie, those who ridiculed former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his 2002 remark that we have to be wary of the “unknown unknowns” were mistaken. Rumsfeld’s idea, Leslie writes, “wasn’t absurd —it was smart. ’’ He adds, “The tragedy is that he didn’t follow his own advice. ”

O) All of which brings us back to Goodell and the Christie case and Benghazi. Each critic in those examples is charging, in a different way, that someone in authority is intentionally being incurious. I leave it to the reader’s political preference to decide which，if any，charges should stick. But let’s be careful about demanding curiosity about the other side’s weaknesses and remaining determinedly incurious about our own. We should be delighted to pursue knowledge for its own sake—even when what we find out is something we didn’t particularly want to know. 36. To be curious, we need to realize first of all that there are many things we don't know. 37. According to Leslie，curiosity is essential to one’s success.

38. We should feel happy when we pursue knowledge for knowledge’s sake. 39. Political leaders’ lack of curiosity will result in bad consequences.

2017 年 12 月大学英语四级考试真题(第三套）

freely to attract and influence the eye. To walk the rounds of the bookshops, dipping in as curiosity

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truth.

41. The less curious a child is, the less knowledge the child may turn out to have.

42. It is widely accepted that academic accomplishment lies in both intelligence and diligence. 43. Visiting a bookshop as curiosity leads us can be a good way to entertain ourselves. 44. Both the rise of the Internet and reduced appetite for literary fiction contribute to people’s

declining curiosity.

45. Mankind wouldn’t be so innovative without curiosity. 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.

Aging happens to all of us, and is generally thought of as a natural part of life. It would seem silly to call such a thing a “disease.”

On the other hand, scientists are increasingly learning that aging and biological age are two different things, and that the former is a key risk factor for conditions such as heart disease, cancer and many more. In that light, aging itself might be seen as something treatable, the way you would treat high blood pressure or a vitamin deficiency.

Biophysicist Alex Zhavoronkov believes that aging should be considered a disease. He said that describing aging as a disease creates incentives to develop treatments.

“It unties the hands of the pharmaceutical (制药的 )industry so that they can begin treating the disease and not just the side effects,” he said.

“Right now, people think of aging as natural and something you can’t control，” he said. “In academic circles, people take aging research as just an interest area where they can try to develop interventions. The medical community also takes aging for granted, and can do nothing about it except keep people within a certain health range. ”

But if aging were recognized as a disease, he said, “It would attract funding and change the

2017 年 12 月大学英语四级考试真题(第三套）

40. There are often accusations about politicians’ and the media’s lack of curiosity to find out the

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