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1、2021年青海公共英语考试模拟卷（9）本卷共分为1大题50小题，作答时间为180分钟，总分100分，60分及格。一、单项选择题（共50题，每题2分。每题的备选项中，只有一个最符合题意） 1.Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following interview between Mr. Pollard and Mrs. Partridge about the housing situation in Britain.Interviewer: Mrs. Partridge, I understand that you are very concerned a
2、bout the housing situation in Britain.Mrs. Partridge: Indeed I am. The government itself admits that there are more than two million houses which ought to be pulled down at once. It also admits that there are another two million in such a shocking state that it would be a waste of money to repair th
3、em.Interviewer: What do you mean by shocking stateMrs. Partridge: I mean houses that are in such a bad condition that they are permanently damp, or houses where you’ll find as many as five families sharing one tap and one toilet.Mr. Pollard: But what about all the good things that have been an
4、d are being done What about the rebuilding of whole parts of cities like Sheffield and Birmingham and Coventry not to mention the new townsMrs. Partridge: That’s all very fine and splendid, but it’s only one side of the picture. I’m simply saying that we’re not doing enough.
5、We can feel proud of what is good, but surely we shouldn’t be proud that, for example, Glasgow is some times called the biggest slum in Western Europe.Interviewer: What you are saying, in effect, Mrs. Partridge, is that the housing in this country isn’t worthy of a welfare state.Mrs. Par
6、tridge: Exactly! According to government figures there are less than 20,000 homeless people, but thousands more are living in such terrible conditions that they ought to be classed as homeless. It isn’t that these people can’t afford a reasonable rent. There just aren’t enough hous
7、es.Interviewer: Whom do you blameMrs. Partridge: The government, for not providing enough money, and the council for not spending properly what there is.Mr. Pollard: Aren’t you being unfair to the local housing committees Many of them do wonderful work.Mrs. Partridge: I agree, but that doesn&r
8、squo;t excuse councils that are inefficient and don’t take enough interest. Don’t you think it is shocking that in modern Britain there are still families who have nowhere to live Do you think it’s right that whole families should have to sleep in the ruins of empty buildings or un
9、der bridges or in railway station waiting-roomsMr. Pollard: But there are excellent hostels where they can go.Mrs. Partridge: In some towns, perhaps, Mr. Pollard, but things are very different in many of our midland and northern industrial cities, and in parts of London. Even where there are places,
10、 some of the state-run homes for the homeless are less comfortable than prisons. In any case, my point is that we shouldn’t need so many hostels for homeless families because there shouldn’t be any homeless families!Interviewer: Mrs. Partridge, I think many people would say that you are
11、exaggerating and drawing attention to the worst housing conditions instead of looking at the situation as a whole. Would you agree that you belong to a pressure group which is trying to bring pressure on the government to do something about the housing problemMrs. Partridge: If that’s what bel
12、onging to a pressure group means, the answer is yes! But I’m not exaggerating. Housing is the most serious problem of our welfare state. If it weren’t, would we hear so much about that excellent charity Shelter, which does such wonderful work in finding homes for the homelessWhere does M
13、r. Pollard think the homeless people can go().A. To hotels.B. To new towns.C. To hostels.D. To empty buildings.2.B Questions 11 to 13 are based on an interview with the EUs environment commissioner, Mr. Stavros Dimas. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13./BWhat have the European countr
14、ies agreed on at the Brussels SummitATo reduce greenhouse gas emissions.BTo find more energy resources.CTo substitute renewable energy for fossil fuels.DTo reverse the trend of global warming. 3.BText 2/B Three out of four British Bangladeshi children live below the poverty line. That was the bigges
15、t jolt in a series of sad reports on April 30th from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Their focus was the link between ethnicity and poverty, which they found to be pretty robust. Some 40% of those from ethnic minorities live in poverty, it said, if poverty is defined as receiving 60% or less of the
16、median income. This is double the proportion of whites. Even Indians and Chinese were much likelier than whites to be poor, despite trouncing them at school. The struggle to escape poverty begins with a big decision: whether to seek paid employment or work for oneself. Historically there has been a
17、strong ethnic divide. South Asian and Chinese immigrants have been quick to set up businesses, whereas black Africans and Caribbeans have worked for others. Yet this pattern now appears to be breaking up. Chinese and Indian men seem to be ditching the takeaways and newsagents, but black Caribbeans a
18、nd Pakistanis are keener than ever to go into business for themselves. Ken Clark and Stephen Drinkwater, the authors of the Rowntree report, identify various characteristics that incline workers to self-employment. Those who are born abroad or poorly qualified find it harder to get other jobs. Start
19、ing a business usually takes financial and human capital, so older people who own their own home and have families are more likely to set up shop. Educational achievement makes an especially big difference in Britain, where graduates snootily consider sell-employment a last resort for dimwitsunlike
20、in America, where plenty of big brains make big bucks starting their own firms. If this is true, it is not surprising that Indians and Chinese are beginning to turn away from self-employment. Whizzes at exams, young and increasingly likely to have been born in Britain, the latest generation is more
21、apt to become doctors and lawyers than restaurateurs. Black Africans and Caribbeans, meanwhile, still lag behind at school and as a group are slightly older, which may explain their swerve into business. A boom in the construction industryin which much black self- employment is basedmay also have co
22、ntributed, along with government efforts to boost black entrepreneurship. The puzzle is Pakistanis. Though they share some characteristics with Indians and Chineseincluding improved education levels and a youthful profile-they are moving the other way. Relative to their qualifications, they seem to
23、get lower returns on paid employment than other groups, says Mr Drinkwater. That they persist in self-employment may be due to a lack of more rewarding alternatives. Why dont they find well-paid jobs as easily as others Discrimination is the thing we assume is left, says Mr Clark. But there are othe
24、r factors: The concentration of Pakistanis in depressed textile towns makes it harder to find employment, and unwillingness to move away compounds this. Religion may also play its part. Interestingly, white Muslims seem to experience the same labour-market disadvantages as black and Asian ones.The w
25、ord trouncing (Paragraph 1) probably means Atroubling.Bbeating.Cannoying.Dcompeting. 4.BText 3/B Telegrams have just passed into history in America, following the announcement by Western Union, once the colossus of the industry, that it was discontinuing its telegram service at the end of January. Y
26、et in a sense, the technology pioneered by Samuel Morse has been reborn with a modern twist, in the form of text messages sent between mobile phones. For years, foreigners have wondered why Americans, usually at the vanguard of technological adoption, were so reluctant to embrace texting. But now th
27、ey have adopted the technology with enthusiasm. What happened Americas apathy towards texting was easy to explain. Voice calls on mobile phones are cheaper than in other countries, which gives cost-conscious users less incentive to send texts instead; several different and incompatible wireless tech
28、nologies are in use, which made sending messages from one network to another unreliable or impossible; and texting was often an additional service that subscribers had to sign up for. As a result, the number of messages sent per subscriber per month was just over seven in December 2002, compared wit
29、h a global average of around 30. But things have since changed, with that figure rising to 13 in December 2003, 26 in December 2004, and 38 in June 2005, the most recent date for which figures are available from the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, an industry body. So America has n
30、ow overtaken Germany, Italy and France in its enthusiasm for texting. There are several reasons for this. Weve had that penetration of the youth market, says Brian Modoff, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. We didnt have that until a couple of years ago. Family calling plans and other new tariffs have put
31、 phones in the hands of more young people, who are more likely to adopt texting. There have also been technical changes: GSM, the text-friendly wireless technology used in Europe, has become far more widespread in America as operators have switched customers to it from older technologies, notes John
32、 Tysoe of The Mobile World, a consultancy. Interconnections between netwoks have improved too. But perhaps the most surprising factor is the role of reality televisionand in particular, American Idol, a talent show in which viewers phone in to vote for competing singers. In 2004, 13.5 million viewer
33、s cast votes by text messagesnearly half of them using the technology for the first time. Last year the number of votes was 41.5 million. That upward arc is a fair indicator for the acceleration in growth of texting in general, says Mark Siegel of Cingular, Americas biggest mobile operator. Even whe
34、n viewers do not vote by text themselves, such programmes raise awareness of texting in general, says Mr. Modoff. Whatever you think about the music, American Idol has undoubtedly helped Americans to discover a valuable new talent.According to Paragraph 1 AAmericans pioneered the use of texting as t
35、hey did with other technologies.Bcontrary to expectations, Americans were slow to adopt texting.CAmericas telegram service played a role in its late adoption of texting.DAmericans enthusiasm for texting has surprised foreigners. 5.B Questions 14 to 16 are based on a news report about carbon footprin
36、t. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16./BWhat information can be already seen on food packagingAThe products greenhouse gas emissions.BThe products food miles.CThe products total environmental impact.DThe products energy consumption. 6.B Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following i
37、nterview with Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to 20./BWhen did the green revolution startAIn the 1920s.BIn the 1940s.CIn the 1960s.DIn the 1980s. 7.BText 1/B Cowbirds, like cuckoos, are brood parasitesthat is, they lay their eggs in the nests of
38、other birds and leave those others to do the hard work of raising their changeling young. But there is a difference. A cuckoo chick usually pushes the original nestlings out, so that it can monopolise the food brought by its unwitting adoptive parents. Cowbird chicks, by contrast, seem to tolerate t
39、heir nestmates. That seems odd. So odd, in fact, that Jeffrey Hoover and Scott Robinson of the Illinois Natural History Survey decided to look into the matter. What they found is that the host birds real chicks are pawns in a protection racket of a sort the Sicilian Mafia would be proud to have inve
40、nted. The victims of the racket are prothonotary warblers. These birds do not reject cowbird eggs even though they look quite different from their own. That in itself is intriguing, for cuckoos, again in contrast to cowbirds, lay eggs that mimic those of their hosts. Dr. Hoover and Dr. Robinson demo
41、nstrated what was going on by erecting 182 warbler nestboxes at the top of narrow, greasy poles. The first phase of their study was observational. Over the course of six years, they watched 472 nests in which warblers had laid their eggs. Almost half of these were parasitised by cowbirds. But, paras
42、itised or not, almost allprotected as they were from ground-based predators successfully produced fledgling warblers. Then the experiment began. In the following seasons Dr. Hoover and Dr. Robinson removed cowbird eggs from some of the parasitised nests. At the same time, they reduced the diameter o
43、f the entrances to some of the nest boxes, in order to deny admission to cowbirds (which are larger than warblers). Warblers whose nests were thus protected did well, raising an average of four chicks to maturity in the absence of a cowbird parasite. Nests from which cowbird eggs had been removed, b
44、ut which lacked protection, did badly. In fact, more than half of them were attacked. The eggs were pecked open and the nests themselves torn to pieces. Nests thus attacked yielded, on average, but a single fledgling, whereas those with a cowbird egg in them yielded three warbler fledglings. Paying
45、protection money in the form of food for the cowbird nestling thus looks a good deal from the warblers point of view, and explains why cowbirds do not need to disguise their eggs to look like those of prothonotaries. The cowbirds dastardly Wicks do not stop at this protection racket, either, for a f
46、ifth of those warbler nests that had never had cowbird eggs in them also got destroyed. Dr. Hoover and Dr. Robinson ascribe this behaviour to a strategy they call farming. If warblers lose a clutch, they will often produce a second. If a cowbird female fails to lay in a warbler nest in time for her
47、egg to hatch with those of the host, she can reset the clock in her favour by killing the first clutch. Even the Mafia never thought of that one.Both cowbird and cuckoo chicks Aare raised and grow up in other birds nests.Bare laid in other birds nest and push the original nestlings out.Cgrow up with
48、 the original nestlings.Dare intolerant of the original nestlings. 8.BText 2/B Three out of four British Bangladeshi children live below the poverty line. That was the biggest jolt in a series of sad reports on April 30th from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Their focus was the link between ethnicity and poverty, which they found to be pretty robust. Some 40% of those from ethnic minorities live in poverty, it said, if poverty is defined as receiving 60% or less of the median