2015年英语专业四级考试真题及答案解析

(1) Inundated by more information than we can possibly hold in our heads, we’re increasingly handing off the job of remembering to search engines and smart phones. Google is even reportedly working on eyeglasses that could one day recognize faces and supply details about whoever you’re looking at. But new research shows that outsourcing our memory — and expecting that information will be continually and instantaneously available —is changing our cognitive habits. (2) Research conducted by Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University, has identified three new realities about how we process information in the Internet age. First, her experiments showed that when we don’t know the answer to a question, we now think about where we can find the nearest Web connection instead of the subject of the question itself. A second revelation is that when we expect to be able to find information again later on, we don’t remember it as well as when we think it might become unavailable. And then there is the researchers’ final observation: the expectation that we’ll be able to locate information down the line leads us to form a memory not of the fact itself but of where we’ll be able to find it. (3) But this handoff comes with a downside. Skills like critical thinking and analysis must develop in the context of facts; we need something to think and reason about, after all. And these facts can’t be Googled as we go; they need to be stored in the original hard drive, our long-term memory. Especially in the case of children, “factual knowledge must precede skill,” says Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology, at the University of Virginia —meaning that the days of drilling the days of drilling the multiplication table and memorizing the names of the Presidents aren’t over quite yet. Adults, too, need to recruit a supply of stored knowledge in order to situate and evaluate new information they encounter. You can’t Google context. (4) Last, there’s the possibility, increasingly terrifying to contemplate, that our machines will fail us. As Sparrow puts it, “The experience of losing our Internet connection becomes more and more like losing a friend. If you’re going to keep your memory on your smart phone, better make sure it’s fully charged.

(1) I was a second-year medical student at the university, and was on my second day of rounds at a nearby hospital. My university’s philosophy was to get students seeing patients early in their education. Nice idea, but it overlooked one detail: second-year students know next to nothing about medicine. (2) Assigned to my team that day was an attending—a senior faculty member who was there mostly to make patients feel they weren’t in the hands of amateurs. Many attendings were researchers who didn’t have much recent hospital experience. Mine was actually an arthritis specialist. Also along was a resident (the real boss, with a staggering mastery of medicine, at least to a rookie like myself) . In addition, there were two interns （ 住 院 实 习 医 生） . These guys were just as green as I was, but in a scarier way: they had recently graduated from the medical school, so they were technically MDs. (3) I began the day at 6:30 am. An intern and I did a quick check of our eight patients; later, we were to present our findings to the resident and then to the attending. I had three patients and the intern had the other five—piece of cake. (4) But when I arrived in the room of 70-year-old Mr. Adams, he was sitting up in bed, sweating heavily and panting（喘气）. He’d just had a hip operation and looked terrible. I listened to his lungs with my stethoscope, but they sounded clear. Next I checked the log of his vital signs and saw that his respiration and heart rate had been climbing, but his temperature was steady. It didn’t seem like heart failure, nor did it appear to be pneumonia. So I asked Mr. Adams what he thought was going on. (5) “It’s really hot in here, Doc,” he replied. (6) So I attributed his condition to the stuffy room and told him the rest of the team would return in a few hours. He smiled and feebly waved goodbye. (7) At 8:40 am, during our team meeting, “Code Blue Room307!” blared from the loudspeaker. (8) I froze. (9) That was Mr. Adams’s room. (10) When we arrived, he was motionless. (1 1 ) The autopsy（ 尸体 解 剖） later found Mr. Adams had suffered a massive pulmonary embolism（ 肺部 栓 塞） . A blood clot had formed in his leg, worked its way to his lungs, and cut his breathing capacity in half. His symptoms had been textbook: heavy perspiration and shortness of breath despite clear lungs. The only thing was: I hadn’t read that chapter in the textbook yet. And I was too scared, insecure, and proud to ask a real doctor for help. (12) This mistake has haunted me for nearly 30 years, but what’s particularly frustrating is that the same medical education system persists. Who know how many people have died or suffered harm at the hands of students as naive as I, and how many more will?

(1) The war on smoking, now five decades old and counting, is one of the nation’s greatest public health success stories—but not for everyone. (2 ) As a whole, the country has made amazing progress. In 19 6 4 , four in ten adults in the US smoked; today fewer than two in ten do. But some states—Kentucky, South Dakota and Alabama, to name just a few—seem to have missed the message that smoking is deadly. (3 ) Their failure is the greatest disappointment in an effort to save lives that was started on Jan. 11 , 19 64 , by the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health. Its finding that smoking is a cause of lung cancer and other diseases was major news then. The hazards of smoking were just starting to emerge. (4) The report led to cigarette warning labels, a ban on TV ads and eventually an anti-smoking movement that shifted the nation’s attitude on smoking. Then, smokers were cool. Today, many are outcasts, rejected by restaurants, bars, public buildings and even their own workplaces. Millions of lives have been saved. (5) The formula for success is no longer guesswork； Adopt tough warning labels, air public service ads, fund smoking cessation programs and impose smoke-free laws. But the surest way to prevent smoking, particularly among price-sensitive teens, is to raise taxes. If you can stop them from smoking, you’ve won the war. Few people start smoking after turning 19 . (6) The real-life evidence of taxing power is powerful. The 10 states with the lowest adult smoking rates slap an average tax of $ 2.42 on every pack—three times the average tax in the states with the highest smoking rates. (7) New York has the highest cigarette tax in the country, at $ 4.35 per pack, and just 12 percent of teens smoke—far below the national average of 18 percent. Compare that with Kentucky, where taxes are low (60 cents), smoking restrictions are weak and the teen smoking rate is double New York’s Other low-tax states have similarly dismal records. (8) Enemies of high tobacco taxes cling to the tired argument that they fall disproportionately on the poor. True, but so do the deadly effects of smoking—far worse than a tax. The effect of the taxes is amplified further when the revenue is used to fund initiatives that help smokers quit or persuade teens not to start. (9) Anti-smoking forces have plenty to celebrate this week, having helped avoid 8 million premature deaths in the past 50 years. But as long as 3,000 adolescents and teens their first puff each day, the war is not won.

(1) Attachment Parenting is not Indulgent Parenting. Attachment parents do not “spoil” their children. Spoiling is done when a child is given everything that they want regardless of what they need and regardless of what is practical. Indulgent parents give toys for tantrums（发脾气）, ice cream for breakfast. Attachment parents don’t give their children everything that they want, they give their children everything that they need. Attachment parents believe that love and comfort are free and necessary. Not sweets or toys. (2) Attachment Parenting is not “afraid of tears” parenting. Our kids cry. The difference is that we understand that tantrums and tears come from emotions and not manipulation. And our children understand this too. They cry and have tantrums sometimes, of course. But they do this because their emotions are so overwhelming that they need to get it out. They do not expect to be “rewarded” for their strong negative emotions; they simply expect that we will listen. We pick up our babies when they cry, and we respond to the tears of our older children because we believe firmly that comfort is free, love is free, and that when a child has need for comfort and love, it is our job to provide those things. We are not afraid of tears. We don’t avoid them. We hold our children through them and teach them that when they are hurt or frustrated we are here to comfort them and help them work through their emotions. (3) Attachment Parenting is not Clingy Parenting. I do not cling to my children. In fact, I’m pretty free-range. As soon as they can move they usually move away from me and let me set up a chase as they crawl, run, skip and hop on their merry way to explore the world. Sure, I carry them and hug them and chase them and kiss them and rock and sleep with them. But this is not me following them everywhere and pulling them back to me. This is me being a home base. The “attachment” comes from their being allowed to attach to us, not from us attaching to them like parental leeches. (4) Attachment Parenting is not Selfish Parenting. It is also not selfless parenting. We are not doing it for us, and we are not doing it to torment ourselves. (5) Attachment Parenting is not Helicopter Parenting. I don’t hover, I supervise, I follow, I teach, I demonstrate, I explain. I don’t slap curious hands away. I show how do things safely. I let my child do the things that my child wishes to do, first with help and then with supervision and finally with trust. I don’t insist that my 23 month old hold my hand when we walk on the sidewalk because I know that I can recall him with my voice because he trusts me to allow him to explore and he trusts me to explain when something is dangerous and to help satisfy his curiosities safely. (6) Most of the negative things that I hear about “attachment parents” are completely off-base and describe something that is entirely unlike Attachment Parenting. Attachment Parenting is child-centric and focuses on the needs of the child. Children need structure, rules, and boundaries. Attachment Parents simply believe that the child and the parent are allies, not adversaries. And that children are taught, not trained.