[外语类试卷]大学英语四级模拟试卷727(无答案).doc
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1、大学英语四级模拟试卷 727(无答案)一、Part I Writing (30 minutes)1 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition on the topic: Salary or Inter est. You should write at least 120 words following the outline given below in Chinese.找工作的时候选择兴趣还是工资高 二、Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scannin
2、g) (15 minutes)Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions attached to the passage. For questions 1-7, mark:Y (for YES) if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage;N (for NO) if the statement contradicts the informa
3、tion given in the passage;NG (for NOT GIVEN) if the information is not given in the passage.1 When It Conies to Water, We are All Maya NowIts possible that the impressive Maya civilizationwith mastery of mathematics, farming, water management, pyramid building and city planningwas undone by summer r
4、ain.Not enough summer rain.Undone, in fact, by exactly the kind of rainfall changes, we ourselves are starting to experience small shifts in rainfall that persist, and end up having an outsized impact.The Maya dominated the Yucatan Peninsula for 600 years, and their settlement and civilization there
5、 spanned more than 1,000 years. And yet the great Maya cities collapsed and were abandoned to the jungle over a period of between 100 and 200 years.What happened is the subject of wide scholarly debatesalthough drought (干旱) has often been argued as the major source of the Mayas termination, a long-l
6、asting and damaging drought.The debates have lacked hard data, until last week.In the journal Science, weve now got a graph showing the rainfall over the Yucatan, during the last 200 years of Maya dominancefrom the year 800 to the year 1000.Actually, its not quite a graph of rainfall: Its a graph of
7、 each years difference from the typical rainfall.The years 810 to 815 were pretty wet10 percent more rainfall than usual. The years 820 to 840 were harshnot a single year of even average rainfall, and decades of years with 30 percent less rainfall than usual.Whats so striking is that the periods of
8、drought were relatively short, often broken by brief good rain, and the actual fall-off in rainfall seems relatively modest20 to 40 percent less than usual in the dry periods. In fact, over a period of 200 years, there are only a couple deep troughs (波谷) reaching to 40 percent less than usual.Could
9、the Mayas have been undone by that kind of shift in rainfall over 100 or 150 years?We think the disastrous collapse of a civilization requires an equally disastrous cause. But what if our expectation of water availability is so fixed that we lose track of it? What if small shifts in rainfall can hav
10、e a surprisingly dramatic impact?“ Perhaps,“ write the papers authors, “ the impact of these droughts was rather modest despite the large associated environmental and societal disruptions. “The detailed picture of Maya rainfall is the work of two climate scientists, Martin Medina-Elizalde and Eelco
11、Rohling, and they analyzed lakebed substances that revealed the rainfall. Their conclusions are remarkably detailedMedina-Elizalde and Rohling were able to tease out the difference between the rainy season rainfall of the summers and the drier season rainfall of the winters. They found that it was t
12、he summer rainfall that fell offand that much of the fall-off may have been due to fewer hurricanes (飓风), or hurricanes of reduced intensity.We tend to be pretty confident in our ability to see and measure whats going on around us, to understand it, and to adjust.Its not certain what happened to the
13、 Mayabut one thing is true: They had sophisticated systems for accessing groundwater and for collecting, storing, and distributing rainwater. like our own systems, the Maya systems were elaborated and fixed in place. When the rain failed to appear in the quantities they had become used to, they didn
14、t have the flexibility to adapt their water system to serve the millions of people who relied on it.They had built a civilization assuming a certain quantity of water, and when 20 or 30 percent less water appeared consistently, their entire way of life, perhaps especially food cultivation, became un
15、sustainable.The authors themselves note, somewhat dryly, that the variations in rainfall they found during the period when Maya civilization disintegrated “ are not far outside the range of those preceding this time interval, when the Maya civilization flourished. “ That is, the amount of rain, and
16、the variation in that rain, wasnt too different between dominance and destruction.Heres the amazing thing. Were not actually much better off than the Mayasexcept for having a wealth of data to track our own vulnerability.Last year, rainfall in Houston, Texas, was 55 percent less than usual. How will
17、 Houston get along if that persists for a couple years?And then theres the story of Perth, Australia. Perth is the first western city to confront the possibility of truly running out of water.The circumstance in Perth in 2012 is startlingly similar to that in the Yucatan Peninsula in 912.Perth has s
18、een average rainfall drop 20 percent over the last 25 years. Water collected by its reservoirs fell by 75 percent over that same period.Why?Because the reservoirs were built assuming a certain amount and location of rainfall. As one Perth official put it, “All of a sudden, it looked like wed built o
19、ur reservoirs in the wrong place. “For a chilling bar graph of what it looks like when a city looks water disaster in the eye, nothing matches the simple chart Perths water utility has put up online.The crisis Perth confronted in the late 1990s, and avoided, was identical to that faced by Maya water
20、 managersexcept Perth got the leadership and vision to fix its water problems.Most super-sized modern cities would be in a similar crisis if their long-term water availability suddenly dropped 20 percentnot to say 30 or 40 percent. Our city water systems have no better adaptability than those of the
21、 Maya. Indeed, during the cruel 10-year drought in Australia, many big reservoirs were down to 30 or 20 or 10 percent capacitythere is nothing more threatening than a city-sized reservoir that is 80 percent empty.The lesson of the Maya and the lesson of Perth are the same. Our water assumptions are
22、just that; assumptions. We should be building city water cultures that have flexibility, multiple sources, the ability to re-use water, the ability to conserve.Real strategic thinking about water isnt about a new water treatment plant, or a plan to replace aging water mains. Its about knowing what y
23、oull do if youre suddenly faced with a 10 or 20 percent loss of available water, permanently.Being ready for that kind of shift would change how we all think about waterfrom factory managers to dads doing the dishes.In fact, we are all Maya.2 What is the reason for the author to mention Mayas rainfa
24、ll changes?(A)He conducted a research on the topic.(B) He read an article concerning the topic.(C) He used the topic to alarm readers.(D)He cited it as an example for argument.3 What is revealed in the graph published in the journal Science!(A)The development and rediscovery of Maya civilization.(B)
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