2015英语四级卷一真题
I) She criticized me when Iincluded little-known references and professional jargon(行话). She had no patience for brilliant but irrelevant figures ofspeech. “Writers can’t bluff(虚张声势) theirway through ignorance.” That was news to me—I would need to find another way tostructure my daily existence.
J) She trimmed back my flowerylanguage, drew lines through my exclamation marks and argued for the value ofrestraint in expression. “John,” she almost whispered. I learned in to hearher:”I can’t hear you when you shout at me.” So I stopped shouting andbluffing, and slowly my writing improved.
K) Somewhere along the way I setaside my hopes of writing that flawless essay. But perhaps I missed somethingimportant in my mother’s lessons about creativity and perfection. Perhaps thepoint of writing the flawless essay was not to give up, but to never willinglyfinish. Whitman repeatedly reworded “Song of Myself” between 1855 and 1891.Repeatedly. We do our absolute best wiry a piece of writing, and come as closeas we can to the ideal. And, for the time being, we settle. In critique,however, we are forced to depart, to give up the perfection we thought we hadachieved for the chance of being even a little bit better. This is the lesson Itook from my mother. If perfection were possible, it would not be motivating.
46. The author was advised against theimproper use of figures of speech.
47. The author’s mother taught him avaluable lesson by pointing out lots of flaws in his seemingly perfect essay.
48. A writer should polish his writingrepeatedly so as to get closer to perfection.
49. Writers may experience periods of timein their life when they just can’t produce anything.
50. The author was not much surprised whenhis school teacher marked his essay as “flawless”.
51. Criticizing someone’s speech is said tobe easier than coming up with a better one.
52. The author looks upon his mother as hismost demanding and caring instructor.
53. The criticism the author received fromhis mother changed him as a person.
54. The author gradually improved hiswriting by avoiding fact language.
55. Constructive criticism gives an authora good start to improve his writing.
五、仔细阅读
第一篇
Could youreproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something unique about it?
It wouldn’t besurprising if it were hard to reproduce in other countries, because youcouldn’t reproduce it in most of the US either. What does it take to make aSilicon Valley?
It’s the rightpeople. If you could get the right ten thousand people to move from SiliconValley to Buffalo, Buffalo would become Silicon Valley.
You only needtwo kinds of people to create a technology hub (中心):rich people and nerds (痴迷科研的人).
Observationbears this out. Within the US, towns have become startup hubs if and only ifthey have both rich people and nerds. Few startups happen in Miami, forexample, because although it’s full of rich people, it has few nerds. It’s notthe kind of place nerds like.
WhereasPittsburg has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people. Thetop US Computer Science departments are said to be MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, andCarnegie-Mellon. MIT yielded Route 128. Stanford and Berkeley yielded SiliconValley. But what did Carnegie-Mellon yield in Pittsburgh? And whathappened in Ithaca, home of Cornell University, which is also high on the list.
I grew up inPittsburgh and went to college at Cornell, so I can answer for both. Theweather is terrible, particularly in winter, and there’s no interesting oldcity to make up for it, as there is in Boston. Rich people don’t want to livein Pittsburgh or Ithaca. So while there are plenty of hackers (电脑迷)who could start startups, there’s no one to invest in them.
Do you reallyneed the rich people? Wouldn’t it work to have the government invest the nerds?No, it would not. Startup investors are a distinct type of rich people. Theytend to have a lot of experience themselves in the technology business. Thishelps them pick the right startups, and means they can supply advice andconnections as well as money. And the fact that they have a personal stake inthe outcome makes them really pay attention.
56. What do welearn about Silicon Valley from the passage?
A) Its success is hard to copy any where else.
B) It is the biggest technology hub in the US.
C) Its fame in high technology is incomparable.
D) It leads the world in information technology.
57. What makesMiami unfit to produce a Silicon Valley?
A) Lack of incentive for investments.