hypocritical2014年12月英语四级真题及答案2

2021年1月8日发(作者：华明素)
2014年12月英语四级真题及答案（文字版）
Part I Writing
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the following t
opic. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

作文题一：印象最深的活动
AA campus activity that has benefited most.
作文题二：印象最深的课程
A course that has impressed you most in college.
作文题三:印象最深的同学
A classmate of yours who has influenced you most in college．
Part III Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)
Section A

Directions：In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to sel
ect one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the p
assage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in th
e bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on An
swer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in
the bank more than once.
For decades, Americans have taken for granted the XXXX development of new techn
ologies. The innovations(创新)XXXX opment during World War II and afterwards were(36)
_____ to the prosperity of the nation in the second half of the 20th century. Those innov
ations, upon which virtually all aspects of(37)_____ society now depend, were possible be
cause the United States then(38)_____ the world in mathematics and science education. To
day, however, despite increasing demand for workers with strong skills in mathematics and
science, the(39)_____ of degrees awarded in science, math, and engineering are decreasin
g.
The deeling in degree production in what are called the STEM disciplines(science, tec
hnology, engineering, and math.)seems to be(40)_____related to the comparatively weak pe
rformance by U.S. schoolchildren on international assessments of math and science. Many
students entering college have weak skills in mathematics. According to the 2005 report o
f the Business Higher Education Forum, 22 percent of college freshmen must take remedi
at(补习的)math(41)_____, and less than half of the students who plan to major in science
or engineering(42)_____complete a major in those fields.
The result has been a decrease in the number of American college graduates who ha
ve the skills, (43)_____ in mathematics, to power a workforce that can keep the country
at the forefront(前言)of innovation and maintain its standard of living. With the(44)_____
performance of American students in math and science has come increased competition fro
m students from other countries that have strongly supported education in these areas. Ma
ny more students earn(45)_____ in the STEM disciplines in developing countries than in t
he United States.
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Section B
Directions：In this section，you are going to read a passage with ten statements attac
hed 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 tha
n once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the cor
responding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
Ban sugary drinks that will add fuel to the obesity war
[A] On a train last Thursday, I sat opposite a man who was so fat he filled more th
an one seat. He was pale and disfigured and looked sick to death, which he probably was:
obesity(肥胖的)leads to many nasty ways of dying. Looking around the carriage, I saw q
uite a few people like him, including a couple of fatty children with swollen checks press
ing against their eyes. These people are part of what is without exaggeration an epidemic
(流行病)of obesity.
[B] But it is quite unnecessary: there is a simple idea- far from new- that could spar
e millions of such people a lifetime of chronic(长期的)ill health, and at the same time sa
ve the National Health Service(NHS)at least ￡14 billion a year in England and Wales. T
here would, you might think, be considerable public interest in it. This simple idea is that
sugar is as good- or as bad- as poison and should be avoided. It is pure, white and dea
dly, as Professor John Yudkin described it 40 years ago in a revolutionary book of that n
ame. The subtitle was How Sugar Is Killing Us.
[C] In its countless hidden forms, in ready meals, junk food and sweet drinks, sugar
leads to addiction(瘾), to hormonal upsets to the appetite, to metabolic(新陈代谢的)malfun
ctions and obesity and from there to type 2 diabetes(糖尿病)and its many horrible complic
ation. If people really grasped that, they would try to kick the habit, particularly as Britai
n is the ― fat man of Europe‖ . They might even feel driven to support government meas
ures to prevent people from consuming this deadly stuff. Yet so far this idea has met littl
e but resistance.
[D] It is not difficult to imagine the vested interests(既得利益集团)lined up against a
ny sugar control- all the food and drink manufacturers, processors, promoters and retailers
who make such easy pickings out of the magic powers of sugar. Then there are the libe
rals, with whom I would normally side, who protest that government regulation would be
yet another instance of interference in our lives.
[E]That is true, but people should realize that you cannot have a welfare state withou
t a nanny state(保姆国家), to some degree. If we are all to be responsible for one anothe
r’s health insurance, through socialized medicine, then we are all closely involved in one
another’s health, including everyone’s eating and drinking. That has already been admitted,
finally, with smoking. But it has yet to be admitted with overeating, even though one in
four adults in this country is obese and that number is predicted to double by the year
apart from anything else, obesity will cripple the NHS.
[F]Recently, though, there have been signs that the medical establishment is trying to
sound the alarm. Last month the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges(AMRC)published a
report saying that obesity is the greatest public health issue affecting the UK and urging
government to do something.
[G]The report offers 10 recommendations, of which the first is imposing a tax of 20
percent on sugary drinks for at least a year, on top of the existing 20 percent value-adde
d tax. That at least would be an excellent start. The amounts of sugar in soft drinks are
horrifying, and turn straight to fat. As Professor Terence Stephenson, head of the AMRC,
has said, sugary soft drinks are ―the ultimate bad food. You are just consuming neat suga
r. Your body didn’t evolve to handle this kind of thing.‖
[H]Precisely. The risks of eating too much fat or salt(which are very different)pale in
to insignificant compared with the harm done by sugar. And it is everywhere.
[I]It is difficult to buy anything in a supermarket, other than plain, unprepared meat,
fish or vegetables, that doesn’t have a large amount of sugar in it. This has come about
because the prevailing scientific views of the 1960s and 1970s ignored the evidence about
sugar, and instead saw fat as the really serious risk, both to the heart and other organs,
as well as the cause of obesity.
[J]The fashion was to avoid fat. But finding that food with much of its fat removed
is not very appetizing, food producers turned to sugar as a magic alternative flavor enhan
cer, often in the forms of syrups(糖浆)that had recently been developed from corn, and pu
t it generously into most prepared foods and soft drinks.
[K]This stuff is not just fattening. It is addictive. It interferes with the body’s metabo
lism, possibly via the activity of an appetite-controlling hormone. There’s plenty of eviden
ce for this, for those who will accept the truth.
[L]Theoretically, people ought to make ―healthy choices‖ and avoid overeating. But su
gar additives are not easy to identify and are hard to avoid. So the snacking, over- drinkin
g and over eating that makes people fat is not really their own fault: obesity is in large
part something that is being done to them. It should be stopped, or rather the government
should stop it.
[M]Going round my local supermarket, I am constantly astonished that it is still legal
to sell all the poisons stacked high on the shelves. The problem is that they are worse t
han useless. They are poisonous. They are known to be addictive. They are known to ma
ke people obese. And giving small children sweet drinks or bottles of fake juice all day l
ong is nothing less than child abuse.
[N]Clearly, the sale of such stuff ought to be illegal. I hate to think of yet more gov
ernment regulation. But a bit of tax on sweet soda and a little more health education, a b
it of cooking in schools and banning vending machines(自动售货机)here and there — as