2014年06月英语四级真题听力部分(2)

　　M: I used to feel the same as you. But now I quite enjoy it.

　　W: How do you pass the time? Do you bring some work with you to do on the train?

　　M: Ah, that’s a good question. In the morning, I just sit in comfort and read the papers to catch up with the news. On the way home at night, I relax with a good book or chat with friends or even have a game of bridge.

　　W: I suppose you know lots of people on the train now.

　　M: Yes, I bumped into someone I know on the platform every day. Last week I came across a couple of old school friends and we spend the entire journey in the bar.

　　W: It sounds like a good club. You never know. I may join it too.

　　Questions 12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

　　12. What does the man say about his job?

　　13. Which train does the man take to work every day?

　　14. How does the man feel about commuting to work every day now?

　　15. How does the man spend his time on the morning train?

　　Section B

　　Directions: In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passages and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D ). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.

　　Passage One

　　Most American college students need to be efficient readers. This is necessary because full-time students probably have to read several hundred pages every week. They don't have time to read a chapter three or four times. They need to extract as much information as possible from the first or second reading.

　　An extraordinarily important study skill is knowing how to mark a book. Students mark the main ideas and important details with a pen or pencil, yellow or blue or orange. Some students mark new vocabulary in a different color. Most students write questions or short notes in the margins. Marking a book is a useful skill, but it's important to do it right. First, read a chapter with one pen in your hand and others next to you on the desk. Second, read a whole paragraph before you mark anything. Don't mark too much. Usually you will mark about 10% of a passage. Third, decide on your own system for marking. For example, maybe you will mark main ideas in yellow, important details in blue and new words in orange. Maybe you will put question marks in the margin when you don't understand something and before an exam. Instead, you just need to review your marks and you can save a lot of time.

　　16. What should American college students do to cope with their heavy reading assignments?

　　17. What suggestion does the speaker give about marking a textbook?

　　18. How should students prepare for an exam according to the speaker?

　　Passage Two

　　The thought of having no sleep for 24 hours or more isn't a pleasant one for most people. The amount of sleep that each person needs varies. In general, each of us needs about 8 hours of sleep each day to keep us healthy and happy. Some people, however, can get by with just a few hours of sleep at night.

　　It doesn't matter when or how much a person sleeps. But everyone needs some rest to stay alive. Few doctors would have thought that there might be an exception to this. Sleep is, after all, a very basic need. But a man named Al Herpin turned out to be a real exception, for supposedly, he never slept!

　　Al Herpin was 90 years old when doctors came to his home in New Jersy. They hoped to challenge the claim that he never slept. But they were surprised. Though they watched him every hour of the day, they never saw Herpin sleeping. He did not even own a bed. He never needed one.

　　The closest that Herpin came to resting was to sit in a rocking chair and read a half dozen newspapers. His doctors were puzzled by the strange case of permanent sleeplessness. Herpin offered the only clue to his condition. He remembered some talk about his mother having been injured several days before he had been born. Herpin died at the age of 94, never, it seems, having slept at all.

　　19. What is taken for granted by most people?

　　20. What do doctors think of Al Herpin's case?

　　21. What could have accounted for Al Herpin's sleeplessness?

　　Passage Three

　　Hetty Green was a very spoiled, only child. She was born in Massachusetts USA in 1835. Her father was a millionaire businessman. Her mother was often ill, and so from the age of two her father took her with him to work and taught her about stocks and shares. At the age of six she started reading the daily financial newspapers and opened her own bank account. Her father died when she was 21 and she inherited 7.5 million dollars. She went to New York and invested on Wall Street. Hetty saved every penny, eating in the cheapest restaurants for 15 cents. She became one of the richest and most hated women in the world. At 33 she married Edward Green, a multi-millionaire, and had two children, Ned and Sylvia.