2016年12月英语四级考前冲刺试题第二套_第2页

　　I believe that TV's appeal to the short attention span is not only inefficient communication but decivilizing as well. Consider the casual assumptions that television tends to cultivate: that complexity must be avoided, that visual stimulation is a substitute for thought, that verbal precision is an anachronism. It may be old-fashioned, but I was taught that thought is words, arranged in grammatically precise.

　　There is a crisis of literacy in this country. One study estimates that some 30 million adult Americans are "functionally illiterate" and cannot read or write well enough to answer the want ad or understand the instructions on a medicine bottle.

　　Literacy may not be an inalienable human right, but it is one that the highly literate Founding Fathers might not have found unreasonable or even unattainable. We are not only not attaining it as a nation, statistically speaking, but we are falling further and further short of attaining it. And, while I would not be so simplistic as to suggest that television is the cause, I believe it contributes and is an influence.

　　Everything about this nationthe structure of the society, its forms of family organization, its economy, its place in the world has become more complex, not less. Yet its dominating communications instrument, its principal form of national linkage, is one that sells neat resolutions to human problems that usually have no neat resolutions. It is all symbolized in my mind by the hugely successful art form that television has made central to the culture, the 30-second commercial: the tiny drama of the earnest housewife who finds happiness in choosing the right toothpaste.

　　When before in human history has so much humanity collectively surrendered so much of its leisure to one toy, one mass diversion? When before has virtually an entire nation surrendered itself wholesale to a medium for selling?

　　Some years ago Yale University law professor Charles L. Black. Jr., wrote: "... forced feeding on trivial fare is not itself a trivial matter-" I think this society is being forced-fed with trivial fare, and I fear that the effects on our habits of mind, our language, our tolerance for effort, and our appetite for complexity are only dimly perceived. If I am wrong, we will have done no harm to look at the issue skeptically and critically, to consider how we should be residing it. I hope you will join with me in doing so.

　　1. In America people do sleeping and watching televisions more than anything else.

　　2. From the passage we know the time an average American spends on watching TV could have made the person learn to become an astronomer or engineer.

　　3. The trouble with TV is that it distracts people’s attention and encourages them to make no efforts toward their life.

　　4. TV programmers base this operation on the attraction of long-span attention of audiences.

　　5. According to the author the improper television operation in American society will be likely to make things eventually boring.

　　6. Americans will face a serious problem of illiteracy due to the negative impact of TV.

　　7. In American society literacy is a certain right that cannot be deprived.

　　Part Ⅳ Reading Comprehension(Reading in Depth) (25 minutes)

　　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. Questions 47 to 56 are based on the following passage.

　　A coeducational(男女合校的) school offers children nothing less than a tree version of society in miniature(缩影). Boys and girls are given the 47 to get to know each other, to learn to live together from their earliest years. They are put in a position where they can compare themselves with each other in terms of 48 ability, athletic achievement and many of the extracurricular activities which are part of school life. What a practical 49 it is (to give just a small example) to be able to put on a school play in which the male parts will be taken by boys and the female parts by girls! What nonsense coeducation makes of the argument that boys are cleverer than girls or vice versa. When 50 , boys and girls are made to feel that they are a race apart. In a coeducational school, everything falls into its 51 place.