2015年12月大学英语四级考试模拟试卷及答案（19）

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>>>>2015年12月大学英语四级考试模拟试卷及答案汇总

Part I Writing

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition on the topic: Overseas Study at an Early Age. You should write at least 150 words following the outline given below:

1. 目前很多父母在子女高中毕业前就送他们出国学习

2. 形成这种趋势的原因

3. 我对些的看法

Oversea Study at an Early Age Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)

Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer sheet1.

The Sky's Limit

Air travel is a rapidly growing source of greenhouse gases. But it is also an indispensable way of travel. The new A380 The double-decker A380, the biggest airliner the world has seen, landed at Heathrow last month to test whether London's main airport could handle the new 550-seater, due to enter commercial service at the end of this year. It was a proud moment for Britain's Rolls-Royce, the makers of the aircraft's Trent 900 engines. Rolls-Royce says the four Trents on the A380 are as clean and efficient as any jet engine, and produce "as much power as 3,500 family cars". A simple calculation shows that the equivalent of more than six cars is needed to fly each passenger.

Take the calculation further: flying a fully laden A380 is, in terms of energy, like a 14km (nine-mile) queue of traffic on the road below. And that is just one aircraft. In 20 years, Airbus reckons, 1,500 such planes will be in the air. By then, the total number of airliners is expected to have doubled, to 22,000. The huge airplane alone would be pumping out carbon dioxide (CO2) at the same rate as 5 million cars.

That may not seem much compared with the 60 million vehicles that pour off assembly lines every year—or the 1 billion vehicles already on the world's roads. But whereas cars are used roughly for about an hour or so a day, jet airliners are on the move for at least 10 hours a day. And they burn tax-free, highoctane (1) 高能量的) fuel, which dumps hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2 into the most sensitive part of the atmosphere.

Aviation is a relatively small source of the emissions blamed for global warming, but its share is growing the fastest. The evidence is strong. As a result, aviation is increasingly attracting the attention of environmentalists and politicians. Amid much controversy, CO2caps (最高限制) and carbon-trading could soon be used to help curb aircraft emissions.

Frequent flyers, free riders

Airlines are accused of having a free ride in terms of air pollution because they pay no tax on the fuel they use for international flights. Even though today's aircraft are about 70% more efficient than those of 40 years ago, concerns over emissions have grown. Despite booming demand for air travel, many airlines are losing money. Now green campaigners want people to think twice before they fly. The opposing voice is particularly loud in Europe, where low-cost carriers are expanding fast on busy shorthaul (2) 短距离) routes. The European Parliament will vote in July on a proposal to limit aircraft emissions.

America is deeply unhappy at the prospect of its airlines being affected. Sharon Pinkerton, a senior representative of the Federal Aviation Administration insisted, on a visit to Brussels last year, that American carriers should be exempted from the scheme. This sets the scene for another transatlantic aviation dispute, to add to the two bitter and long-running disputes over subsidies to Europe's Airbus and the liberalisation of air traffic between the two continents.

The airlines are growing nervous. The big international carriers represented by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) would rather Europe waited for the deliberations of a United Nations body, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which has set technical, legal and safety rules for more than 50 years. International aviation was excluded from the Kyoto protocol on global warming, but only on condition that, by theend of 2007, countries and airlines worked under the umbrella of ICAO to come up with a way of reducing emissions through a trading scheme.

Soon after the end of the Second World War the member governments of ICAO agreed that airlines should be free of fuel taxes. Some say this was to outlaw unilateral taxes that could distort markets, but others reckon it was done to boost the fledgling airline industry emerging from the fighting. The corollary was that aviation, unlike motor traffic and other forms of transport, would pay in a transparent manner for the infrastructure and services it required-air-traffic management, landing charges, flyover rights and so on. That was supposed to take care of the external costs. But no one in those days thought much about the environment. Counting the cost It was not until 1999 that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) attempted to reduce the effect of aviation on the environment. Transport as a whole was judged to be responsible for about a quarter of the world's CO2 discharges. That makes it one of the biggest sources, alongside power generation and households, as a source of the gas. Within transport, aviation accounts for about 13%. Its contribution to total man-made emissions worldwide is said to be around 3%. So why all the fuss about so little? One reason is that high-altitude emissions are probably disproportionately damaging to the environment. The nitrogen oxides from jet-engine exhausts lead to the formation of ozone, another greenhouse gas. Contrails (飞行云) are also suspected of enhancing the formation of cirrus clouds, which some scientists think adds to the global warming effect. The IPCC estimated that the overall impact on global warming of aircraft could be between two and four times that of their CO2 emissions alone, though there is no scientific consensus about the size of this multiplier.

Naturally, the airlines choose to measure the greenhouse gases they produce in the way that casts them in the best light — a trick they deploy on safety statistics, too. For instance, over half of aircraft accidents occur around take-off and landing. So accidents per passenger-mile compare very favourably with other means of transport. But at least one study has shown that, if accidents are measured per journey instead, aircraft are the second-most dangerous way of travelling, after motorcycles.

Likewise on greenhouse gases. IATA says an aircraft's fuel consumption is about the same as that of a family car, at 3.5 litres per 100 passenger-kilometres. So CO2 emissions are similar. But that is true only if the aircraft is full and the car's passenger seats are empty. And even then, a jumbo jet flying from London to Sydney would be like nearly 400 Volkswagen Polos each travelling just over 16,000km—the average distance a European drives in a year. In other words, although cars and aircraft discharge roughly the same amount of CO2for each passenger-kilometre, the aircraft travel an awful lot farther. Waiting to land

Crowded airports compound the problem. Busy runways at places such as Heathrow mean aeroplanes have to circle wastefully. The possibility of being held up ensures that pilots carry extra fuel, thereby increasing the aircraft's weight and, hence, its consumption of fuel. Other small changes could further save fuel and avoid carbon emissions: aircraft could be towed everywhere on the ground by electric vehicles. Consumers, too, can take a stand by voluntarily offsetting the carbon emissions associated with flying by paying, for instance, to have trees planted.

This week IATA said the net loss of the world's airlines in the past six years would amount to almost $44 billion. Carriers have been hit by terrorism, war, recession, the respiratory disease SAILS and soaring oil prices. There were hopes the industry could make a small profit in 2007, but having to pay for environmental costs could change that. Yet global warming is not something that airlines, or any other industry, can shake off for ever. Sooner or later, aviation will have to shoulder the burden it imposes on the planet.

1. This passage is mainly about how the development of airline industry has affected the environment through its greenhouse gases emission.

2. It is predicted that in 20 years, the huge airplanes alone would be pumping out carbon dioxide at the same rate as 5 million cars.

3. The author compares the effect of airliners on the environment and that of the cars and concluded that the effect ofthe former is less because the number of airplanes is much smaller than that of the cars.

4. In the past, aviation industry was the smallest source of greenhouse gases emission and thus did not attract people's attention.

5. Many airlines are having less profit today although there are more demand for air travel. 6. America is proposing an alternative plan to solve the problem of emission from airliners.

7. The airlines are mom and more nervous, and they want the problem be considered by IATA, a United Nations body.

8. ______as a whole was judged to be responsible for about a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide discharges.

9. Although aviation accounts for only 3% of the total man-made emission, its______ are believed to be disproportionately damaging to the environment.

10. During the past six years, airline industry has been hit by terrorism, war, ______which made the industry suffer a total loss of $44 billion.

Part IV Reading Comprehension (Reading in Depth)

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. The American Revolution was not a revolution in the sense of a radical or total change. It was not a sudden and (47) overturning of the political and social framework, such as later occurred in France and Russia, (48) both were already independent nations. Significant changes were ushered in, (49) they were not breathtaking. What happened was accelerated (50) rather than outright revolution. During the conflict, people went on working and praying, marrying and playing. Most of them were not (51) disturbed by the actual fighting, and many of the more isolated communities scarcely knew that a war was on.

America's War of Independence heralded the birth of three modem nations. One was Canada, which (52) its first large influx of English-speaking population from the thousands of loyalists who fled there from the United States; (53) was Australia, which became a penal colony now that America was no longer (54) for prisoners and debtors; the third newcomer—the United States — based itself squarely on republican principles.

Yet even the political overturn was not so (55) as one might suppose. In some states, notably Connecticut and Rhode Island, the war largely ratified a colonial self-rule already existing. British officials, everywhere ousted, were (56) by a home-grown governing class, which promptly sought a local substitute for king and parliament.

A) violent

B) seriously

C) revolutionary

D) evolution

E) another

F) and

G) replaced

H) repelled

I) other

J) received

K) but

L) severe