2021年英语专业四级考试真题及答案解析

(1) AS I write this, I have half an eye on an old James Bond film that is showing on my computer. But this is a story about how I stopped watching TV and began reading again for pleasure, after ten years in which I hardly turned a page. (2) I suppose I was an avid reader of“literature ” between the ages of nine and fourteen. I had enough time to be White Fang, Robinson Crusoe, and Bilbo Baggins and Jeeves. Of course there was room in the schoolboy's imagination for some real historical figures: Scott of the Antarctic, all of the Vikings, and Benjamin Franklin were good friends of mine. (3) Then, in adolescence, I began a long search for strange and radical ideas. I wanted to challenge my elders and betters, and stir up my peers with amazing points of view. Of course, the only place to look was in books. I hunted out the longest titles and the authors with the funniest names，and scoured the library for completely unread books. Then I found one which became my bible for the whole of 1982. It had a title composed of eleven long words and an author whose name I didn't know how to pronounce. It was really thick and looked dead serious. Even better, it put forward a whole world-view that would take days to explain. Perfect. I took it out of the library three times, proud to see the date-stamps lined up on the empty library insert. (4) Later, I went to university. Expecting to spend long evenings in learned discussion with clever people, I started reading philosophy. For some reason I never found the deep-thinking intellectuals I hoped to meet. Anyway, I was ready to impress with my profound knowledge of post-structuralism and existentialism. These things are usually explained in rather short books, but they take a long time to get through. They were the end of my youthful reading. (5) Working life was hard to get used to after so much theory. It was the end of books for me. There didn't seem to be much in books that would actually get things done. To do things you had to answer the telephone and work a computer. You had to travel about and speak to people who weren't at all interested in philosophy. I didn't stop reading; you can't avoid that. I read all day. But no books came my way, only manuals and pamphlets and contracts and documents. Maybe most people satisfy their need for stories and ideas with TV and, to tell the truth, it was all I needed for ten years. In those days I only had a book“on the go ”for the duration of plane flights. At first I would come home and watch TV over dinner. Then, I moved the TV so I could watch it from bed. I even rigged up a switch so I could turn it off without getting out of bed. Then, one fateful day, my TV broke and my landlady took it away. (6) My new TV is an extra circuit board inside my computer. It's on a desk in front of a working chair and I can't see it from the bed. I still use it for the weather forecasts and it's nice to have it on while I'm typing this...but what to do last thing at night? Well, have another go with books. (7) Now, I just like books. I have a pile of nice ones by my bed and I'm reading about six simultaneously. I don't want to BE any of the characters. I don't care if a thousand people have already read them. I don't have to search through libraries. There are books everywhere and all of them have something to read in them. I have the strange feeling that they’ve been there all along, waiting for me to pick them up.

(1) I was prepared to dislike Max Kelada even before I knew him. The war had just finished and the passenger traffic in the oceangoing liners was heavy. Accommodation was very hard to get and you had to put up with whatever the agents chose to offer you. You could not hope for a cabin to yourself and I was thankful to be given one in which there were only two berths. But when I was told the name of my companion my heart sank. It suggested closed portholes and the night air rigidly excluded. It was bad enough to share a cabin for fourteen days with anyone , but I should have looked upon it with less dismay if my fellow passenger's name had been Smith or Brown. (2) When I went on board I found Mr. Kelada's luggage already below. I did not like the look of it; there were too many labels on the suitcases. And the wardrobe trunk was too big. He had unpacked his toilet things, and I observed that he was a patron of the excellent Monsieur Coty. I did not at all like Mr. Kelada. I made my way into the smoking room. I called for a pack of cards and began to play. I had scarcely started before a man came up to me and asked me if he was night in thinking my name was so and so. (3)“I am Mr. Kelada," he added, with a smile that showed a row offlashing teeth, and sat down. (4)“Oh, yes, we're sharing a cabin, I think. ” (5)“Bit of luck, I call it. You never know whom you're going to be put in with. I was jolly glad when I heard you were English. I'm all for us English sticking together when we're abroad, if you understand what I mean. ” (6) I blinked. (7)“ Are you English?" I asked, perhaps tactlessly. (8)“Rather. You don't think I look like an American, do you? British to the backbone, that's what I am. (9) To prove it, Mr. Kelada took out of his pocket a passport and airily waved it under my nose. (10) Mr. Kelada was short and of a sturdy build, clean shaven and dark skinned, with a fleshy, hooked nose and very large, lustrous and liquid eyes. His long black hair was sleek and curly. He spoke with a fluency in which there was nothing English and his gestures were exuberant. Ifelt pretty sure that a closer inspection ofthat Britishpassport would have betrayed thefact that Mr. Kelada was born under a bluer sky than is generally seen in England. (11)“What will you have?" he asked me. (12) I looked at him doubtfully. Prohibition was in force and to all appearance the ship was bone dry. When I am not thirsty I do not know which I dislike more, ginger ale or lemon squash. But Mr. Kelada flashed an oriental smile at me. (13)“Whisky and soda or a dry martini, you have only to say the word. ” (14) From each of his hip pockets he fished a flask and laid it on the table before me. I chose the martini, and calling the steward he ordered a tumbler of ice and a couple of glasses. (15)“A very good cocktail," I said. (16)“Well, there are plenty more where that came from, and if you've got any friends on board, you tell them you've got a pal who's got all the liquor in the world. (17) Mr. Kelada was chatty. He talked of New York and of San Francisco. He discussed plays, pictures, and politics. I do not wish to put on airs, but I cannot help feeling that it is seemly in a total ， stranger to put mister before my name when he addresses me. Mr. Kelada, doubtless to set me at my ease, used no such formality. I did not like Mr. Kelada. I had put aside the cards when he sat down, but now, thinking that for this first occasion our conversation had lasted long enough, I went on with my game.

(1) One of our most firmly entrenched ideas of masculinity is that a real man doesn't cry. Although he might shed a discreet tear at a funeral, he is expected to quickly regain control. Sobbing openly is for girls. (2) This isn 't just a social expectation. One study found that women report crying significantly more than men do -five times as often, on average ，and almost twice as long per episode. (3) So it's perhaps surprising to learn that the gender gap in crying seems to be a recent development. Historically, men routinely wept, and no one saw it as feminine or shameful. (4) For example, in chronicles of the Middle Ages ，we find one ambassador repeatedly bursting into tears when addressing Philip the Good, and the entire audience at a peace congress throwing themselves on the ground, sobbing and groaning as they listen to the speeches. In medieval romances, knights cried purely because they missed their girlfriends. In Chretien de Troyes's Lancelot, or, The Knight of the Cart, no less a hero than Lancelot weeps at a brief separation from Guinevere. At another point, he cries on a lady's shoulder at the thought that he won't get to go to a big tournament because of his captivity. What's more , instead of being disgusted by this sniveling ( 哭诉)，the lady is moved to help. (5) There's no mention of the men in these stories trying to restrain or hide their tears. No one pretends to have something in his eye. No one makes an excuse to leave the room. They cry in a crowded hall with their heads held high. Nor do their companions make fun of this public blubbering (大声哭) ; it's universally regarded as an admirable expression of feeling. (6) So where did all the male tears go? There was no anti-crying movement. No leaders of church or state introduced measures to discourage them. Nevertheless, by the Romantic period ，masculine tears were reserved for poets. From there, it was just a short leap to the poker-faced heroes of Ernest Hemingway，who, despite their poetic leanings, could not express grief by any means but drinking and shooting the occasional buffalo. (7) The most obvious possibility is that this shift is the result of changes that took place as we moved from a feudal agrarian society to one that was urban and industrial. In the Middle Ages ，most people spent their lives among those they had known since birth. A typical village had around 250 to 300 inhabitants , most of them related by blood or marriage. If men cried, they did so with people who would empathize. (8) But from the 18th to 20th centuries , the population became increasingly urbanized, and people were living in the midst of thousands of strangers. Furthermore, changes in the economy required men to work together in factories and offices where emotional expression and even private conversation were discouraged as time wasting. As Tom Lutz writes in Crying : The Natural and Cultural History ofTears,“You don't want emotions interfering with the smooth running of things. ” (9) Yet human beings weren't designed to swallow their emotions ，and there's reason to believe that suppressing tears can be hazardous to your well-being. Research from the 1980s has suggested a relationship between stress-related illnesses and inadequate crying. Weeping is also, somewhat counterintuitively, correlated with happiness and wealth. Countries where people cry the most tend to be more democratic and their populations more extroverted. (10) It's time to open the floodgates. Time for men to give up emulating the stone-faced heroes of action movies and be more like the emotive heroes of Homer, like the weeping kings, saints, and statesmen of thousands of years of human history. When misfortune strikes, let us all- men and women-join together and cry until our sleeves are drenched. As the Old Testament has it:“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. ”