英語四級考試長篇閱讀習題及答案

　　長篇閱讀題篇章長，閱讀難度大，成為在英語四級考試中的難點，對考生的整體閱讀能力有了更高的要求。下面小編為大家帶來英語四級考試長篇閱讀習題，供大家閱讀練習。

　　英語四級考試長篇閱讀習題***一***

　　Has a tech entrepreneur come up with a product to replace our meA.s?

　　A.In December of 2012，three young men were living in a claustrophobic***患幽閉恐懼症的***apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district，working on a technology startup.They had received a hundred and seventy thousand dollars from the incubator Y Combinator.but their project—a plan to make inexpensive cell-phone towers——had failed.Down to their last seventy thousand dollars.they resolved to keep trying out new software ideas until they ran out of money.But how to make the funds last?Rent was a sunk cost.Since they were working frantically,they already had no social life.As they examined their budget，one big problem remained：food.

　　B.They had been living mostly on ramen，com dogs，and Costco frozen quesadillas——supplemented by Vitamin C tablets，to stave ofr scurvy***壞血病***——but the grocery bills were still adding up.Rob Rhinehart，one of the entrepreneurs，began to resent the fact that he had to eat at all.“Food was such a large burden，”he told me recently.“It was also the time and the hassle.We had a very small kitchen，and no dishwasher.”He tried out his own version of“Super Size Me.”living on McDonald’s dollar meals and five.dollar pizzas from Little Caesars.But after a week.he said,“I felt like l was going to die.”Kale was all the rage——and cheap——so next he tried an all.kale diet.But that did not work，either.“I was starving，”he said.

　　C.Rhinehart，who is twenty-five，studied electrical engineering at Georgia Tech，and he began to consider food as an engineering problem.“You need amino acids***氨基酸***and lipids，not milk itself,”he said.“You need carbohydrates***碳水化合物***，not bread.”Fruits and vegetables provide essential Vitamins and minerals.but they’re“mostly water.”He began to think that food was an inefficient way：of geRing what he needed to survive.“It iust seemed like a system that’s too complex and too expensive and too fragile，”he told me.

　　D.What if he went straight to the law chemical components?He took a break from experimenting with software and studied textbooks on nutrifional biochemistry and the Web sites ofthe F.D.A.,the U.S.D.A.，and the Institute of Medicine.Eventually,Rhinehan compiled a list of thirty-five nutrients required for survival.Then，instead of heading to the grocery store，he ordered them ofr the Intemet--mostlyin powder or pill form——and poured everything into a blender'with some water.The result.a slurry of chemicals，looked like gooey lemonade.Then，he told me，“I started living on it.”

　　E.Rhinehart called his potion Soylent，which，for most people，evokes the 1973 science-fiction film“Soylent Green.”starring Charlton Heston.The movie is set in a dystopian future where，because ofoverpopulation and pollution，people live on mysterious wafers called Soylent Green.The film ends with the ghastly revelation that Soylent Green is made from human flesh.

　　F.Rhinehart’s roommates were skeptical.One told me，“It seemed pretty weird.”They kept shopping at Costco.After a month，Rhinehart published the results of his experiment in a blog post，titled“How I Stopped Eating Food.”The post has a“Eureka!”tone.The chemical potion，Rhinehart reported，was“delicious!I felt like l’d just had the best breakfast of my life.”Drinking Soylent was saving him time and money：his food costs had dropped from four hundred and seventy dollars a month to fifty.And physically,he wrote，“I feel like the six million dollar mail.My physique has noticeably improved，my skin is clearer,my teeth whiter,my hair thicker and my dandruff gone.”He concluded.“I haven’t eaten a bite of food in thirty days，and it's changed my lifc.”In a fcw weeks，his blog post was at the top of Hacker News——a water cooler for the tech industry.Reactions were polarized.“RIP Rob，”a comment on Rhinehart’s blog read.But other people asked for his formula，which，in the spirit of the“open source”movement，he posted online.

　　G.One of Silicon Valley’s cultural exports in the past ten years has been the concept of“life hacking”：devising tricks to streamline the obligations of daily life.thereby freeing yourself up for whateveryou’d rather be doing.Rhinehart’s“future food”seemed a clever work.around.Lifehackers everywherebegan to test it out，and then to make their own versions.Soon commenters on Reddit were sparring about the appropriate dose of calcium-magnesium powder.Atier three months，Rhinehart said，he realized that his mixture had the makings of a company：“It provided more value to my life than any app.”He and his roommates put aside their software ideas.and got into the synthetic.food business.

　　H. To attract funding，Rhinehart and his roommates turned to the Internet：they set up a crowd-funding campaign in which people could receive a week’s supply of manufactured Soylent for sixty-five dollars.They started with a fund.raising goal of a hundred thousand dollars，which they hoped to raise in a month.But when thev opened up to donations，RhinehaIt says，“we got that in two hours.”Last week，the first thirty thousand units of commercially made Soylent were shipped out to customers across America.In addition to the crowd.funding money,its production was financed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists，including Y Combinator and the blue.chip investment firm Andreessen Horowitz， which contributed a million dollars.

　　I. Soylent has been heralded by the press as“the end of food，”which is a somewhat bleak prospect.It conjares up visions of a world devoid of pizza parlors and taco stands——our kitchens stocked with beige powder instead of banana bread，our spaghetti nights and ice-cream socials replaced by evenings sipping sludge.

　　J.But，Rhinehart says，that’s not exactly his vision.“Most of people’s meals are forgotten，”he told me.He imagines that，in the future，“we’ll see a separation between our meals for utility and function，and our meals for experience and socialization.”Soylent isn’t coming for our Sunday potlucks.It’s coming for our frozen quesadillas.

　　46.What will be the consequence of his direct study of raw chemical components?

　　47.What we really need for survival is the nutritional elements of food instead of the food itself.

　　48.The concept of life hacking is to encourage people to live reasonably and to be yourself.

　　49.Soylent is not prepared for our Sunday potlucks，but an alternative options for junk food.

　　50.Rent is definitely a cost you paid without the possibility of regain.

　　51.I feel that I have become a man who could not be beRer than before in physical condition.

　　52.Soylent has predicted the bleak future of food，the end of food.

　　53.Food is trouble.making and time.consuming.

　　54.Last week，the first batch of commercial Soylent was delivered to other parts of the world.

　　55.The film is on the background of a visionally terrible future，in which people live by Soylent owing to the overpopulation and pollution.

　　英語四級考試長篇閱讀習題答案

　　46.what will be the consequence of his direct study of raw chemical components?如果他直接研究原材料的化學成分又會是什麼結果呢?

　　47.What we really need for survival is the nutritional elements of food instead of the food itself.人們真正需要的不是食物本身，而是食物能帶給我們的營養成分。

　　48.The concept of life hacking is to encourage people to live reasonably and to be yourself.生活黑客的概念鼓勵人們合理生活、勇做自己。

　　49.Soylent is not prepared for our Sunday potlucks，but an alternative options for junk food.Soylent不是為我們的週末聚餐而準備的，而是垃圾食品的備選項。

　　50.Rent is definitely a cost you paid without the possibility ofregain.租金的確是一項支付了就沒法再獲得的支出。

　　51.I feel that I have become a man who could not be better than before in physical condition.我覺得我的身體狀況比起以前來，好得不能再好了。

　　52.Soylent has predicted the bleak future offood，the end offood.Soylent預示著食物的未來不容樂觀，甚至是食物的終結　。

　　53.Food is trouble.making and time.consuming.食物很麻煩和費時。

　　54.Last week，the first batch of commercial Soylent was delivered to other parts of the world.上週，第一批投入商用的Soylent已經被運往國外。

　　55.The film is on the background of a visionally terrible future，in which people live by Soylent owing to the overpopulation and pollution.這部電影以一個想象的悲慘未來為背景，由於人口過多和環境汙染，在未來世界裡，人們只能依靠Soylent為生。

　　英語四級考試長篇閱讀習題***二***

　　Being Objective on Climate Change

　　A.Last week，Craig Rucker,a climate-change skeptic and the executive director of a nonprofit organization called the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow***CFACT***，tweeted a quotation supposedly taken from a 1922 edition of the Washington Post：“Within a few years it is predicted due to ice melt the sea will rise&make most coastal cities uninhabitable.”The intent，of course，was to poke fun at current headlines about climate change.

　　B.Rucker’s organization is a member ofthe Cooler Heads Coalition，an umbrella organization operated by the Competitive Enterprise Institute，a nonprofit that prides itself on its opposition to environmental ists.Rucker himself is part of a network of bloggers，op-cd writers，and policy-shop executives who argue that climate change is either a hoax or all example of left-wing hysteria.Surfacing old newspaper clips is one of their favorite games.They also make substantive arguments about climate policy,but the sniping may be more effective.There is no stronger rhetorical tool than ridicule.

　　C.In this case，Ruckcr’s ridicule seems misplaced.After spending a few minutes poking around online，1 was able to find both the Washington Post article and the longer SourCe material that it came from—a weather report issued by the U.S.consul in Bergen，Norway,and sent to the State Department on october 1 0，1 922.The report didn’t say anything about coasts being inundated.This isn’t surprising.Scientists wete smart back then，too,and they knew that melting sea ice wouldn’t appreciably raise sea levels.any more than a melting ice cube raises the level of water in a glass.

　　D.Rucker ultimately corrected his tweet once commenters pointed out the misquote.Through Twitter,he informed me that he had taken the line from a Washington Times op—ed by Richard Rahn，a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.When I contacted Rahn’s office.a press representative acknowledged that Rahn had copied the quote from other bloggers and columnists;the fabricated sentence appears in articles at reason.corn and texasgopvote.corn.The fabricated line seems to have been inserted around 2011.but the original article has been circulating online since 2007.

　　E. The statement about rising sea levels aside，1 922 really was a strange period in the Svalbard archipelago.the area described by the weather report.The islands lie halfway between Norway and the North Pole,at a latitude that puts them several hundred miles farther north than Barrow,alaska.“The Arctic seems to be warming up.”the report read.In August of that year,a geologist near the island of Spitsbergen sailed as far north as eighty-one degrees.twenty.nine minutes in ice-free water.This was highly unusual.The previous several summers had likewise been warrn.Seal populations had moved farther north，and formerly unseen stretches of coast were now accessible.

　　F.What are we to take from this historical evidence?A central tenet for Rucker and his colleagues is mat today’s sea.ice retreat。warming surface temperatures，and similar observations are short-lived anomalies of a kind that often happened in the past—and that overzealous scientists and gullible media are quick to drum up crises where none exist.Favorite examples include numerous newspaper articles from the nineteen.seventies that predicted the advent of a new ice age.In fact.it's possible to find articles from nearly every decade of the past century that seem to imply information about the climate that turned out to be premature or wrong.

　　G.The 1922 article has been quoted repeatedly by Rucker’s comrades-in-arms since its 2007 rebirth in the Washington Times.For nearly that long，scientists have been objecting.Gavin Schmidt，a climate modeler and the deputy director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies，points out that what was an anomaly in 1922 is now the norm：the waters near Spitsbergen are clear of ice at the end of every summer.More important，long-term temperature and sea-ice records indicate that the dramatic sea-ice retreat in the early nineteen.twenties was short-lived.It also occurred locally around svalbard—the unusual conditions didn’t even encompass the whole Norwegian Sea，let alone the rest of the Arctic.

　　H. 0ver the weekend，after retracting his previous tweet，Rucker posted a link to a blog item about a different article.this one a 1932 New York Times story.The eighty-year-old headline reads，“The Next Great Deluge Forecast By Science：Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of the Seas and Flood the Continents.”That one sounded juicy,and，indeed，this time the text was correct：that really is what the headline said.Ironically,the lcad researcher cited in the piece was a German scientist named Alfred Wegener,who has sometimes been considered a hero of climate-change deniers for a completely different reason.Wegener is known for proposing the phenomenon of continental drift starting around the First Wbrid War,The idea was ridiculed before gaining acceptance in the nineteen-sixties，once

　　ample evidence had been amassed.Wegener’s lifc story,then，is used to support the idea that the small number of researchers in the field who downplay the risk of anthropogenic climate change will one day prevail.

　　I.In reality,the potential for anthropogenic global warming was being discussed earlier than continental drift.and took even longer to gain wide acceptance.The versatile Professor Wegener was a geophysicist and polar researcher who spent much of his career studying meteorology in Greenland，and trying to unlock the secrets of the Earth’s past.His elevated place in the current climate-change debate is

　　abstracted from history.

　　J.In any case，it’s not clear that the bloggers linking to the 1932 article read much beyond the headline.Thc article does discuss a collapse of the ice sheets that would raise sea levels by more than a hundred feet—but it says that event lies thirty to forty thousand years in the future.There’s nothing wrong with examining old newspaper articles for clues about climate conditions in the past.Legitimate climate researchers look at historical documents of all kinds.However,a good-faith effort to arrive at the truth would not rely on cherry-picking catchy headlines.It would require considering the context and looking at all the evidence.At the very least.it wouldn’t allow for deliberate distortions.A prediction that the ice caps might melt by the year 42，000 is hardly all example of climate alarmism.

　　46.Unlike melting ice in the glass，the melting sea ice cannot easily raise sea level.

　　47.Rucker maintains that the climate.change is just a terrible fantasy of the left-wing or even a totally distrustful matter.

　　48.It is fair to search for every piece of evidence to approach the truth without distortion.

　　49.As for Rucker,the clear purpose of tweeting this quotation is to laugh at the articles about climate change.

　　50.The various unusual phenomena about climate change are merely non-exist alarms claimed by the scientists and media，would be short-lived.

　　51.The drastic sea-ice melt occurred around Svalbard was only local and limited.

　　52.It is normal for the waters at northern latitude 8 1 degrees，29 minutes to be covered with ice.

　　53.It is embraced that the number of climate-change researchers will be multiplied one day.

　　54.It is ironic for the leading figure of climate-change opponents to quote this piece.

　　55.In reality,the universal information in articles about climate change is eventually proved to be unbelievable.

　　英語四級考試長篇閱讀習題答案

　　46.Unlike melting ice in the glass，the melting sea ice can not easily raise sea level.與杯中的融冰不同，海中的融冰不會使海面快速升高。

　　47.Rucker maintains that the climate change is just a terrible fantasy of the left-wing or even a totally distrustful matter.洛克認為氣候變化的論點不過是左派的糟糕的幻想，甚至根本就是一個***。

　　48.Itisfairto searchfor everypiece ofevidence to approach the truth without distortion.努力尋找證據，真實地靠近真相，這點是不可爭議的

　　49.As for Rucker,the clear purpose of tweeting this quotation is to laugh at the articles about climate change.洛克微博這條引語的用意很明顯是在嘲笑有關氣候變化的文章。

　　50.The various unusual phenomena about climate change are merely non.exist alarms claimed by the scientists and media，would be short-lived.各種有關氣候變化的非正常現象不過是短暫的，是科學家和媒體所宣稱的，本不存在的危言聳聽。

　　51.The drastic sea-ice melt occurred around Sval bard was only local and limited.發生在斯瓦爾巴特群島周圍劇烈的海冰融化現象只是區域性的。

　　52.It is normal for the waters at northern latitude 81 degrees，29 minutes to be covered with ice.照理說，北緯81度29分的水域應該是結冰的。

　　53.It is embraced that the number of climate-change researchers will be multiplied one day.終有一天，對氣候變化研究的人員數量會不斷增加。

　　54.It is ironic for the leading figure ofclimate-change opponents to quote this piece.作為氣候變化反對者的英雄人物，引用這篇文章是很諷刺的。

　　55.In reality.the universal information in articles about climate change is eventually proved to be unbelievable.事實上，大量關於氣候變化的資訊最後都被證實是不可信的。