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1、2020年下半年大学英语四级长篇阅读3篇【篇一】2020年下半年大学英语四级长篇阅读Directions： In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached 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
2、than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.A University Degree No Longer Confers Financial SecurityA.Millions of school-leavers in the rich world are about to bid a tearful goodbye to their parents and start a new lif
3、e at university. Some are inspired by a pure love of learning. But most also believe that spending three or four years at university-and accumulating huge debts in the process-will boost their chances of landing a well-paid and secure job.B.Their elders have always told them that education is the be
4、st way to equip themselves to thrive in a globalised world. Blue-collar workers will see their jobs outsourced and automated, the familiar argument goes. School dropouts will have to cope with a life of cash-strapped (资金紧张的) insecurity. But the graduate elite will have the world at its feet. There i
5、s some evidence to support this view. A recent study from Georgetown Universitys Centre on Education and the Workforce argues thatobtaining a post-secondary credential ( 证书) is almost always worth it. Educational qualifications are tightly correlated with earnings： an American with a professional de
6、gree can expect to pocket $3.6m over a lifetime; one with merely a high- school diploma can expect only $1.3m. The gap between more- and less-educated earners may be widening. A study in 2002 found that someone with a bachelors degree could expect to earn 75% more over a lifetime than someone with o
7、nly a high-school diploma. Today the disparity is even greater.C.But is the past a reliable guide to the future? Or are we at the beginning of a new phase in the relationship between jobs and education? There are good reasons for thinking that old patterns are about to change-and that the current re
8、cession-driven downturn (衰退) in the demand for Western graduates will morph (改变) into something structural. The strong wind of creative destruction that has shaken so many blue-collar workers over the past few decades is beginning to shake the cognitive elite as well.D.The supply of university gradu
9、ates is increasing rapidly. The Chronicle of Higher Education calculates that between 1990 and 2007 the number of students going to university increased by 22% in North America, 74% in Europe, 144% in Latin America and 203% in Asia. In 2007 150m people attended university around the world, including
10、 70m in Asia. Emerging economiesspecially China-are pouring resources into building universities that can compete with the elite of America and Europe. They are also producing professional- services firms snch as Tata Consulting Services and Infosys that take fresh graduates and turn them into world
11、-class computer programmers and consultants. The best and the brightest of the rich world must increasingly compete with the best and the brightest from poorer countries who are willing to work harder for less money.E. At the same time, the demand for educated labor is being reconfigured (重新配置) by t
12、echnology, in much the same way that the demand for agricultural labor was reconfigured in the 19th century and that for factory labor in the 20th. Computers can not only perform repetitive mental tasks much faster than human beings. They can also empower amateurs to do what professionals once did：
13、why hire a flesh-and-blood accountant to complete your tax return when Turbotax (a software package ) will do the job at a fraction of the cost? And the variety of jobs that computers can do is multiplying as programmers teach them to deal with tone and linguistic ambiguity.F.Several economists, inc
14、luding Paul Krugman, have begun to argue that post-industrial societies will be characterized not by a relentless rise in demand for the educated but by a great hollowing out, as mid-level jobs are destroyed by smart machines and high-level job growth slows. David Autor, of the Massachusetts Institu
15、te of Technology (MIT), points out that the main effect of automation in the computer era is not that it destroys blue-collar jobs but that it destroys any job that can be reduced to a routine. Alan Blinder of Princeton University, argues that the jobs graduates have traditionally performed are if a
16、nything more offshorable than low-wage ones. A plumber or lorry-drivers job cannot be outsourced to India. A computer programmers can.G. A university education is still a prerequisite for entering some of the great industries, such as medicine, law and academia (学术界), that provide secure and well-pa
17、ying jobs. Over the 20th century these industries did a wonderful job of raising barriers to entry-sometimes for good reasons (nobody wants to be operated on by a barber) and sometimes for self-interested ones. But these industries are beginning to bend the roles. Newspapers are fighting a losing ba
18、ttle with the blogosphere. Universities are replacing tenure-track professors with non-tenured staff. Law firms are contracting out routine work such asdiscovery (digging up documents relevant to a lawsuit) to computerized-search specialists such as Blackstone Discovery. Even doctors are threatened,
19、 as patients find advice online and treatment in Walmarts new health centers.H.Thomas Malone of MIT argues that these changes-automation, globalizafion and deregulation-may be part of a bigger change： the application of the division of labor to brain-work. Adam Smiths factory managers broke the prod
20、uction of pins into 18 components. In the same way, companies are increasingly breaking the production of brain-work into ever tinier slices. TopCoder chops up IT projects into bite-sized chunks and then serves them up to a worldwide workforce of freelance coders.I.These changes will undoubtedly imp
21、rove the productivity of brain-workers. They will allow consumers to sidestep (规避 ) the professional industries that have extracted high rents for their services. And they will empower many brain-workers to focus on what they are best at and contract out more tedious tasks to others. But the reconfi
22、guration of brain-work will also make life far less cozy and predictable for the next generation of graduates.【篇二】2020年下半年大学英语四级长篇阅读Directions： In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Ide
23、ntify the paragraph from which the information is derived.You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.How Your Language Affects Your Wealth and HealthA. Does the language we speak determ
24、ine how healthy and rich we will be? New research by Keith Chen of Yale Business School suggests so. The structure of languages affects our judgments and decisions about the future and this might have dramatic long-term consequences.B. There has been a lot of research into how we deal with the futur
25、e. For example, the famous marshmallow ( 棉 花糖)studies of Walter Mischel and colleagues showed that being able to resist temptation is predictive of future success. Four-year-old kids were given a marshmallow and were told that if they do not eat that marshmallow and wait for the experimenter to come
26、 back, they will get two marshmallows instead of one. Follow-up studies showed that the kids who were able to wait for the bigger future reward became more successful young adults.C. Resisting our impulses for immediate pleasure is often the only way to attain the outcomes that are important to us.
27、We want to keep a slim figure but we also want that last slice of pizza. We want a comfortable retirement, but we also want to drive that dazzling car, go on that dream vacation, or get those gorgeous shoes.Some people are better at delaying gratification ( 满足 ) than others. Those people have a bett
28、er chance of accumulating wealth and keeping a healthy life style. They are less likely to be impulse buyers or smokers, or to engage in unsafe sex.D. Chens recent findings suggest that an unlikely factor, language, strongly affects our future-oriented behavior. Some languages strongly distinguish t
29、he present and the future. Other languages only weakly distinguish the present and the future. Chens recent research suggests that people who speak languages that weakly distinguish the present and the future are better prepared for the future. They accumulate more wealth and they are better able to
30、 maintain their health. The way these people conceptualize the future is similar to the way they conceptualize the present. As a result, the future does not feel very distant and it is easier for them to act in accordance with their future interestS.E. Different languages have different ways of talk
31、ing about the future. Some languages, such as English, Korean, and Russian, require their speakers to refer to the future explicitly ( 明确地). Every time English-speakers tall about the future, they have to use future markers such as will or going to. In other languages, such as Mandarin, Japanese, an
32、d German, future markers are not obligatory (强制性的). The future is often talked about similar to the way present is talked about and the meaning is understood from the context. A Mandarin speaker who is going to go to a seminar might say Wo qu ting jiangzuo, which translates to I go listen seminar. L
33、anguages such as English constantly remind their speakers that future events are distant. For speakers of languages such as Mandarin future feels closer. As a consequence, resisting immediate impulses and investing for the future is easier for Mandarin speakers.F.Chert analyzed individual-level data
34、 from 76 developed and developing countries. This data includes peoples economic decisions, such as whether they saved any money last year, the languages they speak at home, demographics (人口统计资料 ), and cultural factors such as saving is an important cultural value for me.He also analyzed individual-
35、level data on peoples retirement assets, smoking and exercising habits, and general health in older age. Lastly, he analyzed national-level data that inchides national savings rates, country GDP and GDP growth rates, country demographics, and proportions of people speaking different languages.G. Peo
36、ples savings rates are affected by various factors such as their income, education level, age, religious connection, their countries legal systems, and their cultural values. After those factors were accounted for, the effect of language on peoples savings rates turned out to be big. Speaking a lang
37、uage that has obligatory future markers, such as English, makes people 30 percent less likely to save money for the future. This effect is as large as the effect of unemployment. Being unemployed decreases the likelihood of saving by about 30 percent as well.H. Similar analyses showed that speaking
38、a language that does not have obligatory future markers, such as Mandarin, makes people accumulate more retirement assets, smoke less, exercise more, and generally be healthier in older age. Countries national savings rates are also affected by language. Having a larger proportion of people speaking
39、 languages that does not have obligatory future markers makes national savings rates higher.I.At a more practical level, researchers have been looking for ways to help people act in accordance with their long-term interests. Recent, findings suggest that making the future feel closer to the present
40、might improve future-oriented behavior. For instance, researchers recently presented people with renderings of their future selves made using age-progression algorithms (算法) that forecast how physical appearances would change over time. One group of participants saw a digital representation of their
41、 current selves in a virtual mirror, and the other group saw an age-morphed version of their future selves. Those participants who saw the age- morphed version of their future selves allocated more money toward a hypothetical savings account. The intervention brought peoples future to the present an
42、d as a result they saved more for the future.J.Chens research shows that language structures our future-related thoughts. Language has been used before to alter time perception with surprising effects. Ellen Langer and colleagues famously improved older peoples physical health by simple intervention
43、s including asking them to talk about the events of twenty years ago as if it they were happening now. Talking about the past as if it were the present changed peoples mindsets and their mindsets affected their physical states. Chens research points at the possibility that the way we talk about the
44、future can shape our mindsets. Language can move the future back and forth in our mental space and this might have dramatic influences on our judgments and decisions.【篇三】2020年下半年大学英语四级长篇阅读Directions： In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement
45、contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived.You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.World Must Adapt to Unknown
46、Climate FutureA.There is still great uncertainty about the impacts of climate change，according to the latest report from the Intefgovernmental Panel on Climate Change，released today.So if we are to survive and prosper, rather than trying to fend off specific threats like cyclones，we must build flexi
47、ble and resilient(有弹性的)societies.B.Todays report is the second of three instalments(分期连载)of the IPCCs fifth assessment of climate change.The first instalment，released last year,covered the physical science of climate change.It stated with increased certainty that climate change is happenin9，and that
48、 it is the result of humanitys greenhouse gas emissions.The new report focuses on the impacts of climate change and how to adapt to them.The third instalment，on how to cut greenhouse gas emissions，comes out in April.C.The latest report backs off from some of the predictions made in the previous IPCC
49、 report，in 2007.During the final editing process.the authors also retreated from many of the more confident projections from the final draft，leaked last year.The IPCC now says it often cannot predict which specific impacts of climate changesuch as droughts，storms or floodswill hit particular places.D.Instead，the IPCC focuses on how people call adapt in the face of uncertainty,arguing that we must