青海公共英语考试模拟卷9.docx

1、青海公共英语考试模拟卷92022年青海公共英语考试模拟卷（9）本卷共分为1大题50小题，作答时间为180分钟，总分100分，60分及格。 一、单项选择题（共50题，每题2分。每题的备选项中，只有一个最符合题意） 1.Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following interview between Mr. Pollard and Mrs. Partridge about the housing situation in Britain.Interviewer: Mrs. Partridge, I understand that you are ver

2、y concerned about the housing situation in Britain.Mrs. Partridge: Indeed I am. The government itself admits that there are more than two million houses which ought to be pulled down at once. It also admits that there are another two million in such a shocking state that it would be a waste of money

3、 to repair them.Interviewer: What do you mean by shocking stateMrs. Partridge: I mean houses that are in such a bad condition that they are permanently damp, or houses where you’ll find as many as five families sharing one tap and one toilet.Mr. Pollard: But what about all the good things that

4、 have been and are being done What about the rebuilding of whole parts of cities like Sheffield and Birmingham and Coventry not to mention the new townsMrs. Partridge: That’s all very fine and splendid, but it’s only one side of the picture. I’m simply saying that we’re not d

5、oing enough. We can feel proud of what is good, but surely we shouldn’t be proud that, for example, Glasgow is some times called the biggest slum in Western Europe.Interviewer: What you are saying, in effect, Mrs. Partridge, is that the housing in this country isn’t worthy of a welfare s

6、tate.Mrs. Partridge: Exactly! According to government figures there are less than 20,000 homeless people, but thousands more are living in such terrible conditions that they ought to be classed as homeless. It isn’t that these people can’t afford a reasonable rent. There just aren’

7、t enough houses.Interviewer: Whom do you blameMrs. Partridge: The government, for not providing enough money, and the council for not spending properly what there is.Mr. Pollard: Aren’t you being unfair to the local housing committees Many of them do wonderful work.Mrs. Partridge: I agree, but

8、 that doesn’t excuse councils that are inefficient and don’t take enough interest. Don’t you think it is shocking that in modern Britain there are still families who have nowhere to live Do you think it’s right that whole families should have to sleep in the ruins of empty bu

9、ildings or under bridges or in railway station waiting-roomsMr. Pollard: But there are excellent hostels where they can go.Mrs. Partridge: In some towns, perhaps, Mr. Pollard, but things are very different in many of our midland and northern industrial cities, and in parts of London. Even where ther

10、e are places, some of the state-run homes for the homeless are less comfortable than prisons. In any case, my point is that we shouldn’t need so many hostels for homeless families because there shouldn’t be any homeless families!Interviewer: Mrs. Partridge, I think many people would say

11、that you are exaggerating and drawing attention to the worst housing conditions instead of looking at the situation as a whole. Would you agree that you belong to a pressure group which is trying to bring pressure on the government to do something about the housing problemMrs. Partridge: If that&rsq

12、uo;s what belonging to a pressure group means, the answer is yes! But I’m not exaggerating. Housing is the most serious problem of our welfare state. If it weren’t, would we hear so much about that excellent charity Shelter, which does such wonderful work in finding homes for the homeles

13、sWhere does Mr. Pollard think the homeless people can go(). A. To hotels. B. To new towns. C. To hostels. D. To empty buildings. 2. B Questions 11 to 13 are based on an interview with the EUs environment commissioner, Mr. Stavros Dimas. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13./BWhat have

14、the European countries agreed on at the Brussels Summit ATo reduce greenhouse gas emissions. BTo find more energy resources. CTo substitute renewable energy for fossil fuels. DTo reverse the trend of global warming. 3.BText 2/B Three out of four British Bangladeshi children live below the poverty li

15、ne. That was the biggest jolt in a series of sad reports on April 30th from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Their focus was the link between ethnicity and poverty, which they found to be pretty robust. Some 40% of those from ethnic minorities live in poverty, it said, if poverty is defined as receiv

16、ing 60% or less of the median income. This is double the proportion of whites. Even Indians and Chinese were much likelier than whites to be poor, despite trouncing them at school. The struggle to escape poverty begins with a big decision: whether to seek paid employment or work for oneself. Histori

17、cally there has been a strong ethnic divide. South Asian and Chinese immigrants have been quick to set up businesses, whereas black Africans and Caribbeans have worked for others. Yet this pattern now appears to be breaking up. Chinese and Indian men seem to be ditching the takeaways and newsagents,

18、 but black Caribbeans and Pakistanis are keener than ever to go into business for themselves. Ken Clark and Stephen Drinkwater, the authors of the Rowntree report, identify various characteristics that incline workers to self-employment. Those who are born abroad or poorly qualified find it harder t

19、o get other jobs. Starting a business usually takes financial and human capital, so older people who own their own home and have families are more likely to set up shop. Educational achievement makes an especially big difference in Britain, where graduates snootily consider sell-employment a last re

20、sort for dimwitsunlike in America, where plenty of big brains make big bucks starting their own firms. If this is true, it is not surprising that Indians and Chinese are beginning to turn away from self-employment. Whizzes at exams, young and increasingly likely to have been born in Britain, the lat

21、est generation is more apt to become doctors and lawyers than restaurateurs. Black Africans and Caribbeans, meanwhile, still lag behind at school and as a group are slightly older, which may explain their swerve into business. A boom in the construction industryin which much black self- employment i

22、s basedmay also have contributed, along with government efforts to boost black entrepreneurship. The puzzle is Pakistanis. Though they share some characteristics with Indians and Chineseincluding improved education levels and a youthful profile-they are moving the other way. Relative to their qualif

23、ications, they seem to get lower returns on paid employment than other groups, says Mr Drinkwater. That they persist in self-employment may be due to a lack of more rewarding alternatives. Why dont they find well-paid jobs as easily as others Discrimination is the thing we assume is left, says Mr Cl

24、ark. But there are other factors: The concentration of Pakistanis in depressed textile towns makes it harder to find employment, and unwillingness to move away compounds this. Religion may also play its part. Interestingly, white Muslims seem to experience the same labour-market disadvantages as bla

25、ck and Asian ones.The word trouncing (Paragraph 1) probably means Atroubling. Bbeating. Cannoying. Dcompeting. 4.BText 3/B Telegrams have just passed into history in America, following the announcement by Western Union, once the colossus of the industry, that it was discontinuing its telegram servic

26、e at the end of January. Yet in a sense, the technology pioneered by Samuel Morse has been reborn with a modern twist, in the form of text messages sent between mobile phones. For years, foreigners have wondered why Americans, usually at the vanguard of technological adoption, were so reluctant to e

27、mbrace texting. But now they have adopted the technology with enthusiasm. What happened Americas apathy towards texting was easy to explain. Voice calls on mobile phones are cheaper than in other countries, which gives cost-conscious users less incentive to send texts instead; several different and

28、incompatible wireless technologies are in use, which made sending messages from one network to another unreliable or impossible; and texting was often an additional service that subscribers had to sign up for. As a result, the number of messages sent per subscriber per month was just over seven in D

29、ecember 2002, compared with a global average of around 30. But things have since changed, with that figure rising to 13 in December 2003, 26 in December 2004, and 38 in June 2005, the most recent date for which figures are available from the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, an indus

30、try body. So America has now overtaken Germany, Italy and France in its enthusiasm for texting. There are several reasons for this. Weve had that penetration of the youth market, says Brian Modoff, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. We didnt have that until a couple of years ago. Family calling plans and

31、other new tariffs have put phones in the hands of more young people, who are more likely to adopt texting. There have also been technical changes: GSM, the text-friendly wireless technology used in Europe, has become far more widespread in America as operators have switched customers to it from olde

32、r technologies, notes John Tysoe of The Mobile World, a consultancy. Interconnections between netwoks have improved too. But perhaps the most surprising factor is the role of reality televisionand in particular, American Idol, a talent show in which viewers phone in to vote for competing singers. In 2004, 13.5 million viewers cast votes by text messagesnearly half of them using the technology for the first time. Last year the number of votes was 41.5 million. That upward arc is a fair indicator for the acceleration in growth of texting in general