2010年6月英语四级全真预测试卷及答案详解(1)
2010年6月大学英语四级考试全真预测试卷一Model Test One
Part I Writing (30 minutes)
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition one topic: City Problems. You should write at least 120 words following the outline given below in Chine:
1. 越来越多的人涌入大城市，有些问题随之产生
2. 比较明显的大问题有……
中国连锁便利店排名出卖人3. 我对这种现象的想法商洛职业技术学院
City Problems
Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)
Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1.For questions 1-7, mark
齐燮元Y (for YES) if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage;
变电所N (for NO) if the statement contradicts the information given in the passage;
NG (for NOT GIVEN) if the information is not given in the passage.
For questions 8-10, complete the ntences with the information given in the passage.
Scientists Weigh Options for Rebuilding New Orleans
As experts ponder how best to rebuild the devastated (毁坏)city, one question is whether to wall off—or work with—the water.
Even before the death toll from Hurricane Katrina is tallied, scientists are cautiously beginning to discuss the future of New Orleans. Few em to doubt that this vital heart of U.S. commerce and culture will be restored, but exactly how to rebuild the city and its defens to avoid a repeat catastrophe is an open question. Plans for improving its levees and restoring the barrier of wetlands around New Orleans have been on the table since 1998, but federal dollars needed to implement them never arrived. After the tragedy, that's bound to change, says John Day, an ecologist at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. And if there is an upside to the disaster, he says, it
's that 'now we've got a clean slate to start from."
Many are looking for guidance to the Netherlands, a country that, just like bowl-shaped New Orleans, sits mostly below a level, keeping the water at bay with a construction of amazing scale and complexity. Others, pointing to Venice's long-standing adaptations, say it's best to let water flow through the city, depositing diment to offt geologic subsidence—a model that would require a radical rethinking of architecture. Another idea is to let nature help by restoring the wetland buffers between a and city.
But before the options can be weighed, veral unknowns will have to be addresd. One is precily how the current defens failed. To answer that, LSU coastal scientists Paul Kemp and Hassan Mashriqui are picking their way through the destroyed city and surrounding region, reconstructing the size of water surges by measuring telltale marks left on the sides of buildings and highway structures. They are feeding the data into a simulation of the wind and water around New Orleans during its ordeal.
一年级认字"We can't say for sure until this job is done," says Day, "but the emerging picture is exactly what we've predicted for years." Namely, veral canals—including the MRGO, which was built to speed s
hipping in the 1960s—have the combined effect of funneling surges from the Gulf of Mexico right to the city's eastern levees and the lake system to the north. Tho surges are to blame for the flooding. "One of the first things we'll e done is the complete backfilling of the MRGO canal," predicts Day, "which could take a couple of years."
核心主义价值观The levees, which have been provisionally repaired, will be shored up further in the months to come, although their long-term fate is unclear. Better levees would probably have prevented most of the flooding in the city center. To provide further protection, a mobile dam system, much like a storm surge barrier in the Netherlands, could be ud to clo off the mouth of Lake Pontchartrain. But most experts agree that the are short-term fixes.
The basic problem for New Orleans and the Louisiana coastline is that the entire Mississippi River delta is subsiding and eroding, plunging the city deeper below a level and removing a thick cushion of wetlands that once buffered the coastline from wind and waves. Part of the subsidence is geologic and unavoidable, but the rest stems from the levees that have hemmed in the Mississippi all the way to its mouth for nearly a century to prevent floods and facilitate shipping. As a result, river diment is no longer spread across the delta but dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. Without a constant stream of fresh diment, the barrier islands and marshes are disappearing rapidly, with a q
uarter, roughly the size of Rhode Island, already gone.
After years of political wrangling, a broad group pulled together by the Louisiana government in 1998 propod a massive $14 billion plan to save the Louisiana coasts, called Coast 2050 (now modified into a plan called the Louisiana Coastal Area project). Wetland restoration
was a key component. "It's one of the best and cheapest hurricane defens," says Day, who chaired its scientific advisory committee.
Although the plan was never given more than token funding, a team led by Day has been conducting a pilot study since 2000, diverting part of the Mississippi into the wetlands downstream of the city. "The results are as good as we could have hoped," he says, with land levels rising at about 1 centimeter per year—enough to offt rising a levels, says Day.
Even if the wetlands were restored and new levees were built, the combination of geologic subsidence and rising a levels will likely sink New Orleans another meter by 2100. The problem might be solved by another ambitious plan, says Roel Boumans, a coastal scientist at the University of Vermont in Burlington who did his ph.D. at LSU: shoring up the lowest land with a slurry of diment piped in from the river. The majority of the buildings in the flooded areas will have to be raz
ed anyway, he says, "so why not take this opportunity to fix the root of the problem?" The river could deposit enough diment to rai the bottom of the New Orleans bowl to a level "in 50 to 60 years," he estimates. In the meantime, people could live in the areas Venice-style, with buildings built on stilts. Boumans even takes it a step further: "You would have to rai everything about 30 centimeters once every 30 years, so why not make the job easier by making hous that can float."
Whether that is technically or politically feasible—Day, for one, calls it "not likely" —remains to be en, especially becau until now, the poorest residents lived in the lowest parts of the city. Any decision on how best to protect the city in the future will be tied to how many people will live there, and where. "there may be a large contingent of residents and business who choo not to return," says Bill Good, an environmental scientist at LSU and manager of the Louisiana Geological Survey's Coastal Process ction. It is also not yet clear how decisions
about the reconstruction will be made, says Good, "Since there is no precedent of comparable magnitude." Every level of government is sure to be involved, and "the process is likely to be ad hoc."
Even with the inevitable mingling of science and politics, we still have "a unique chance to back out o
f some bad decisions," says Good, who grew up in New Orleans. "I hope that we don't let this once-in-history opportunity slip through our fingers in the rush to rebuild the city:"
1. The passage gives a general description of the suggestions to reconstruct New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
2. Two examples to deal with water are Netherlands and Venice.
3. The canals have nothing to do with the flooding.
4. The levees will be shored up further with clear long-term fate.海水是什么颜色的
5. The basic problem for New Orleans is the subsidence of Mississippi River delta.
6. The key component of Coast 2050 is wetland restoration.
7. The plan of Coast 2050 will get billions of federal funding.
8. New Orleans will likely sink ________________ by 2100.
9. Another ambitious plan is to shoring up the lowest land with a slurry of diment
________________.
10. How decisions about the reconstruction will be made is also ________________.
Part III Listening Comprehension (35 minutes)
