2012年12月大学英语四级考试真题及答案

　　Part III Reading Comprehension (40minutes)

　　Section A

　　Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.

　　Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.

　　French fries, washed down with a pint of soda, are a favorite part of fast-food lunches and dinners for millions of American youngsters. But ___36___ a cue from health experts, a group of 19 restaurant companies are pledging to offer more-healthful menu options for children at a time when ___37___ is growing over the role of fast food in childhood obesity (肥胖症).

　　Burger King, the nation’s second-largest fast food chain, for instance, will ___38___ automatically including French fries and soda in its kids’ meals starting this month, although they will still be ___39___. Instead, the company said Tuesday, its employees will ask parents whether they ___40___ such options as milk or sliced apples before assembling the meals.”We’re asking the customers to ___41___ what they want,” said Craig Prusher, the chain’s vice president of government relations. Other participating chains, with a ___42___ of menu options, including Denny’s, Chili’s, Friendly’s and Chevy’s.

　　As part of the Kids Live Well campaign—expected to be announced ___43___ Wednesday—participating restaurants must promise to offer at least one children’s meal that has fewer than 600 calories (卡路里), no soft drinks and at least two ___44___ from the following food groups: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins or low-fat dairy. Among other requirements, they must offer a side dish that meets similar ___45___, with fewer than 200 calories and less than 35% of its calories from sugar.

　　[A] adapt [D] concern [G] nationwide [J] recommending [M] stop

　　[B] available [E] criteria [H] possible [K] species [N] taking

　　[C] begin [F] items [I] prefer [L] specify [O] variety

　　Section B

　　Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.

　　Seven Ways to Save the World

　　A) Forget the old idea that conserving energy is a form of self-denial—riding bicycles, dimming the lights, and taking fewer showers. These days conservation is all about efficiency: getting the same—or better—results from just a fraction of the energy. When a slump in business travel forced Ulrich Ramer to cut costs at his family-owned hotel in Germany, he replaced hundreds of the hotel’s wasteful light bulbs, getting the same light for 80 percent less power. He bought a new water boiler with a digitally controlled pump, and wrapped insulation around the pipes. Spending about 100,000 on these and other improvements, he slashed his 90,000 fuel and power bill by 60,000. As a bonus, the hotel’s lower energy needs have reduced its annual carbon emissions by more than 200 metric tons. “For us, saving energy has been very, very profitable,” he says. “And most importantly, we’re not giving up a single comfort for our guests.”

　　B) Efficiency is also a great way to lower carbon emissions and help slow global warming. But the best argument for efficiency is its cost—or, more precisely, its profitability. That’s because quickly growing energy demand requires immense investment in new supply, not to mention the drain of rising energy prices. The good news is that the world is full of proven, cheap ways to save energy. Here are the seven that could have the biggest impact:

　　Insulate

　　C) Space heating and cooling eats up 36 percent of all the world’s energy. There’s virtually no limit to how much of that can be saved, as prototype “zero-energy homes” in Switzerland and Germany have shown. There’s been a surge in new ways of keeping heat in and cold out (or vice versa). The most advanced insulation follows the law of increasing returns: if you add enough, you can scale down or even eliminate heating and air-conditioning equipment, lowering costs even before you start saving on utility bills. Studies have shown that green workplaces (ones that don’t constantly need to have the heater or air-conditioner running) have higher worker productivity and lower sick rates.

　　Change Bulbs

　　D) Lighting eats up 20 percent of the world’s electricity, or the equivalent of roughly 600,000 tons of coal a day. Forty percent of that powers old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs—a 19th-century technology that wastes most of the power it consumes on unwanted heat. Compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, not only use 75 to 80 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs to generate the same amount of light, but they also last 10 times longer. Phasing old bulbs out by 2030 would save the output of 650 power plants and avoid the release of 700 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year.

　　Comfort Zone

　　E) Water boilers, space heaters and air conditioners have been notoriously inefficient. The heat pump has altered that equation. It removes heat from the air outside or the ground below and uses it to supply heat to a building or its water supply. In the summer, the system can be reversed to cool buildings as well. Most new residential buildings in Sweden are already heated with ground-source heat pumps. Such systems consume almost no conventional fuel at all. Several countries have used subsidies to jump-start the market, including Japan, where almost 1 million heat pumps have been installed in the past two years to heat water for showers and hot tubs.

　　Remake Factories

　　F) From steel mills to paper factories, industry eats up about a third of the world’s energy. The opportunities to save are vast. In Ludwigshafen, German chemicals giant BASF runs an interconnected complex of more than 200 chemical factories, where heat produced by one chemical process is used to power the next. At the Ludwigshafen site alone, such recycling of heat and energy saves the company 200 million a year and almost half its CO2 emissions. Now BASF is doing the same for new plants in China. “Optimizing(优化) energy efficiency is a decisive competitive advantage,” says BASF CEO Jürgen Hambrecht.

　　Green Driving

　　G) A quarter of the world’s energy—including two thirds of the annual production of oil—is used for transportation. Some savings come free of charge: you can boost fuel efficiency by 6 percent simply by keeping your car’s tires properly inflated(充气). Gasoline-electric hybrid(混合型的)models like the Toyota Prius improve mileage by a further 20 percent over conventional models.

　　A Better Fridge

　　H) More than half of all residential power goes into running household appliances, producing a fifth of the world’s carbon emissions. And that’s true even though manufacturers have already hiked the efficiency of refrigerators and other white goods by as much as 70 percent since the 1980s. According to an International Energy Agency study, if consumers chose those models that would save them the most money over the life of the appliance, they’d cut global residential power consumption (and their utility bills) by 43 percent.

　　Flexible Payment

　　I) Who says you have to pay for all your conservation investments? “Energy service contractors” will pay for retrofitting(翻新改造) in return for a share of the client’s annual utility-bill savings. In Beijing, Shenwu Thermal Energy Technology Co. specializes in retrofitting China’s steel furnaces. Shenwu puts up the initial investment to install a heat exchanger that preheats the air going into the furnace, slashing the client’s fuel costs. Shenwu pockets a cut of those savings, so both Shenwu and the client profit.

　　J) If saving energy is so easy and profitable, why isn’t everyone doing it? It has to do with psychology and a lack of information. Most of us tend to look at today’s price tag more than tomorrow’s potential savings. That holds double for the landlord or developer, who won’t actually see a penny of the savings his investment in better insulation or a better heating system might generate. In many people’s minds, conservation is still associated with self-denial. Many environmentalists still push that view.

　　K) The most powerful incentives, of course, will come from the market itself. Over the past year, sky-high fuel prices have focused minds on efficiency like never before. Ever-increasing pressure to cut costs has finally forced more companies to do some math on their energy use. Will it be enough? With global demand and emissions rising so fast, we may not have any choice but to try. Efficient technology is here now, proven and cheap. Compared with all other options, it’s the biggest, easiest and most profitable bang for the buck.

　　46. According to the research, a green workplace which doesn’t need to be constantly heated or air-conditioned, contributes to workers’ productivity and health.

　　47. 36% of all the energy in the world has been consumed by space heating and cooling.

　　48. As an unexpected result, over 200 metric tons of carbon emissions have been reduced thanks to the lower energy demands of the hotel every year.

　　49. Compared with conventional models, such gasoline-electric mixed models as Toyota Prius show an increase in mileage by 20%.

　　50. Just in Ludwigshafen, the company saves 200 million and about 50% of CO2 emissions every year by reusing heat and energy.

　　51. It is well-known that, air conditioners, water boilers and space heaters have had a reputation for inefficiency.

　　52. Every day 20% of the world’s electricity is used by lighting, which amounts to what burning about 600,000 tons of coal could generate.

　　53. At last, under growing pressure, more companies have to budget carefully to reduce their energy consumption.

　　54. Using domestic appliances eats up over 50% of all household power, which produces 20% of the world’s carbon emissions.

　　55. Shenwu wins a share of those savings from the client’s fuel costs, which benefits both Shenwu and the client.