英语四级考试真题第二套.docx

1、英语四级考试真题第二套2015年6月大学英语四级考试真题(第2套)Part I Writing (30 minutes)Directions：for this part，you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay based on the picture belowYou should start your essay with a brief description of the picture and then comment on this kind of modern lifeYou should write at least l20 wo

2、rds but no more than l80wordsPart HI Reading Comprehension(40 minutes) Section A Directions：n this section，there is a passage with ten blanksYou 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

3、 making your choicesEach choice in the bank is identified by a letterPlease mark the corresponding letterfor each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centreYou may not use any of the words in the bank more than onceQuestions 36 t0 45 are based on the following passageIts our guilty

4、 pleasure：Watching TV is the most comtion everyday activity，after work and sleep， in many parts of the worldAmericans view five hours of TV each day，and while we know that spending so much time sitting36 can lead to obesity(肥胖症)and other diseases，researchers have now quantified just how 37 being a c

5、ouch potato can beIn an analysis of data from eight large 38 published studies，a Harvardled group reported in the that for every two hours per day spent channel 39 ，the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes Journal of the American Medical Association(糖尿病)rose 20over 85 years，the risk of heart disease i

6、ncreased l5over a 40 ，and the odds of dying prematurely 41 13during a seven year followupAll of these 42 are linked to a lack of physical exerciseBut compared with other sedentary(久坐的)activities，like knitting，viewing TV may be especially 43 at promoting unhealthy habitsFor one，the sheer number of ho

7、urs we pass watching TV dwarfs the time we spend on anything elseAnd other studies have found that watching ads for beer and popcorn may make you more likely to 44 themEven sothe authors admit that they didnt compare different sedentary activities to 45 whether TV watching was linked to a greater ri

8、sk of diabetes，heart disease or early death compared with，say，readingA.climbedB.consumeC.decadeD.determine E.effectiveF.harmfulG.outcomesH.passivelyI.previously J.resumeK.suffered L.surfing M.term N.terminals0.twistingSection BDirections：n this section，you are going to read a passage with ten statem

9、ents attached to it.Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphsIdentify the paragraph from which the information is derivedYou may choose a paragraph more than onceEach paragraph is marked with a letterAnswer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2E

10、ssayGrading Software Offers Professors a BreakA.Imagine taking a college exam，and，instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later，clicking the“send”button when you are done and receiving a grade back instantly，your essay scored by a software programAnd then，i

11、nstead of being done with that exam，imagine that the system would immediately let you rewrite the test to try to improve your gradeB.EDX，the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT)to offer courses on the Internet，has just introduced such a system an

12、d will make its automated(自动的)software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use itThe software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers，freeing professors for other tasksC.The new service will bring the educational consortium(联盟)into a grow

13、ing conflict over the role of automation in educationAlthough automated grading systems for multiplechoice and truefalse tests are now widespread，the use of artificial intelligence technology to grade essay answers has not yet received widespread acceptance by educators and has many critics.D.Anant

14、Agarwal，an electrical engineer who is president of EDX，predicted that the instantgrading software would be a useful teaching tool enabling students to take tests and write essays over and over and improve the quality of their answersHe said the technology would offer distinct advantages over the tra

15、ditional classroom system，where students often wait days or weeks lor grades“There is a huge value in learning with instant feedback，”DrAgarwal said“Students are telling us they learn much better with instant feedback”E.But skeptics(怀疑者)say the automated system is no match for live teachersOne longt

16、ime critic， Les Perelman，has drawn national attention several times for putting together nonsense essays that have fooled software grading programs into giving high marksHe has also been highly critical of studies claiming that the software compares well to human gradersF.He is among a group of educ

17、ators who last month began circulating a petition(呼吁)opposing automated assessment softwareThe group which calls itself Professionals Against Machine Scoring of Student Essays in HighStakes Assessment，has collected nearly 2，000 signatures，including some from famous people like Noanl ChomskyG“Lets fa

18、ce the realities of automatic essay scorin9，”the groups statement reads in part. “Computers cannotreadThey cannot measure the essentials of effective written communication：accuracyreasonin9，adequacy of evidence，good sense，ethical(伦理的)position，convincing argument，meaningful organization，and clarity，a

19、mong others”H)But EdX expects its software to be adopted widely by schools and universitiesIt offers free online classes from HarvardMIT and the University of CaliforniaBerkeley；this fall，it will add classes from Well esleyGeorgetown and the University of TexasIn all，12 universities participate in E

20、DX，which offers certificates for course completion and has said that it plans to continue to expand next year，including adding international schoolsI.The EDX assessment tool requires human teachers，or graders，to first grade l00 essays or essay questionsThe system then uses a variety of machinelearni

21、ng techniques to train itself to be able to grade any number of essays or answers automatically and almost instantlyThe software will assign a grade depending on the scoring system created by the teacher，whether it is a letter grade or numerical(数字的)rankJ . EDX is not the first to use the automated

22、assessment technology，which dates to early computers in the l960sThere is now a range of companies offering commercial programs to grade written test answers，and four states-Louisiana，North Dakota，Utah and West Virginia-are using some formof the technology in secondary schoolsA fifth，Indiana，has exp

23、erimented with itIn some cases the software is used as a“second reader”to check the reliability of the human gradersK.But the growing influence of the EDx consortium to set standards is likely to give the technology aboostOn Tuesday，Stanford announced that it would work with EDX to develop a joint e

24、ducational system that will make use of the automated assessment technologyL.Two startupsCoursera and Udacity，recently founded by Stanford faculty members to create“massive open online courses，”0r MOOCs，are also committed to automated assessment systems because of the value of instant feedbackIt all

25、ows students to get immediate feedback on theirworkso that learning turns into a game，with students naturally gravitating(吸引)toward resubmitting the work until they get it right，”said Daphne Koller，a computer scientist and afounder of CourseraMLast year the Hewlett Foundation， a grantmalting organiz

26、ation set up by one of the Hewlett Packard founders and his wifesponsored two$100，000 prizes aimed at improving software that grades essays and short answersMore than l50 teams entered each categoryA winner of one of the Hewlett contestsVik Paruchuri，was hired by E(to help design its assessment soft

27、wareN“One of our focuses is to help Mds learn how to think critically，”said Victor Vuchic，a program officer at the Hewlett Foundation“Its probably impossible to do that with multiplechoice tests The challenge is that this requires human graders，and so they cost a lot more and they take a lot more ti

28、me“OMark DShermis，a professor at the University of Akron in Ohi0supervised the Hewlett Foundations contest on automated essay scoring and wrote a paper about the experimentIn his view，the technology-though imperfect-has a place in educational settingsPWith increasingly large classes，it is impossible

29、 for most teachers to give students meaningful feedback on writing assignments，he saidPlus，he noted，critics of the technology have tended to come from the nations best universities，where the level of teaching is much better than at n lost schoolsQ)“Often they come from very famous institutions where

30、，in fact，they do a much betterjob of providing feedback than a machine ever could，”DrShermis said“There seems to be a lack of appreciation of what is actually going on in the real world”46Some professionals in education are collecting signatures to voice their opposition to antomated essay grading47

31、Using software to grade students essays saves teachers time for other work48The Hewlett contests aim at improving essay grading software49Though the automated grading system is widely used in multiplechoice testsautomated essay grading is still criticized by many educators50Some people dont believe

32、the software grading system can do as good a job as human graders51Critics of automated essay scoring do not seem to know the true realities in less famous universities52 Critics argue many important aspects of effective writing cannot be measured by computer rating programs53As class size grows，most teachers are unable to give students valuable comments aS to how to improve their writin954The automated assessment technology is sometimes