推荐：2011年12月全国英语等级考试pets5命题专家预测试卷(2)

　　听力材料：
　　Questions 1 ~ 10 ：
　　W： Come in, please.
　　M ：Good morning, Dr. Wilson.
　　W： Good morning, Wang. How nice to meet you again. Take a seat...
　　why don't you, please. When did you get to the university?
　　M： I arrived yesterday.
　　W ：Well... are you living in the college?
　　M：No, I am with an English family.., actually.., because I want to improve my speaking.
　　W ：Oh, fine. Right, did you take a language proficiency test before you came?
　　M ：Yes. Uhh... my Overall Band is 6, but.., unfortunately my speaking score is only 5.
　　W：OK, you know, here in this university, you have to take our own English test before you attend any lectures. So, first of all, what we've got to do is, we have to make an arrangement for the test date. Umm... will tomorrow be all right for you?
　　M：Yeah, I have time tomorrow morning.
　　W：Good, then. Tomorrow at ten. I don't think the test will be any problem for you. Now, let's make sure you make good use of your time here. Let's put it like this. What exactly do you want to accomplish in the next12 months?
　　M：I'm interested in computer language translation, I mean, from English to Chinese and Chinese to English. I'll try, if possible, to produce software or a device which can serve as an interpreter.
　　W：Yes, could you be a bit more specific about.., er... the device?
　　M：For instance, when you talk to the device in English it will translate your
　　words into Chinese and vice versa.
　　W： Uhuh... do you mean it'll be as competent as... er... a human interpreter?
　　M：Yes... well, I'll let it deal with general situations, at least.
　　W：Fascinating... and how big will the device itself be, do you think?
　　M ： The size of a cigarette pack, I think. So people can put it in their pocket.
　　W：Really? Well, that could be a Ph. D project. Tell me what you have done so far.
　　M：In my four years of undergraduate study, I studied electronics, advancedmathematics, hardware designing, some computer languages and pro-gram writing.
　　W：Yes, but have you done any practical jobs? I mean, have you written any
　　programs for practical use?
　　M ： I had been involved in a project for CAD in a shipyard.
　　W：Computer aided design. That was probably a good experience, but, un-fortunately, it may not help your present project much. Are you familiar with the C-language?
　　M：No.
　　W：Uhuh... the phonetic processing system, do you know how such a sys-
　　tem works?
　　M ： What do you mean by "phonetic processing system" ?
　　W：Well, you know, English is spoken by different people with different ac-cents. Your English accent is different from mine, and of course mine is not the same as my colleagues'. So as I see it, your device would have to be able to recognise and undo. Rst and different accents.
　　M：Oh, I see. I think I can learn the C-language and the phonetic processing
　　system here.
　　W ：Well, that's probably true, but you've got only twelve months and you
　　want a degree, don't you?
　　M： Yes.
　　W：OK, so there're two ways of studying for a degree here. You either take six courses, pass their exams and have your dissertation accepted or the other way is you do some research work and submit your project report.
　　M：I think I'll take the second way.
　　W：Fine, but are you sure you can finish your project in twelve months?
　　M：I don't know, but I can work twelve hours per day and seven days per
　　week.
　　W：Well, I'd suggest you spend some time in our library, trying to find out what other students have done before and perhaps reconsider your own project, to some extent. You might narrow your research area, concentrating on solving one or two major problems. And, it'd be a good idea to talk to your colleagues in the lab, first. Anyway, I'm sure we can work out something good. Shall I see you again in three days' time?
　　M：All right. I'I1 go away and do some thinking. Then I'll talk to you about
　　my new plan.
　　W ： Good. see you then.
　　M ：Thank you. Bye-bye.
　　Questions 11 ~ 13 ：
　　When a consumer finds that an item she or he bought is broken or in some other way does not reach the standard of the manufacturer's claim for it, the first step is to present the warranty, or any other records which might help, at the store of purchase. In most cases, this action will produce re-suits. However, if it does not, there are various means the consumers may use to gain satisfaction.
　　A simple and common method used by many consumers is to complain directly to the store manager. In general, the "higher up" the consumer takes his or her complaint, the faster he or she can expect it to be tackled. In such a case, it is usually settled in the consumer's favor, assuming he or she has a just claim.
　　Consumers should complain in person whenever possible, but if they can not get to the place of purchase, it is acceptable to phone or write the complaint in a letter.
　　Complaining is usually most effective when it is done politely but firmly, and especially when the consumer can demonstrate what is wrong with the item in question. If this cannot be done, the consumer will succeed best by presenting specific information as to what is wrong, rather than by making general statements. For example, "The left speaker does not work at all and the sound coming out of the right one is unclear" is better than "this stereo does not work".
　　The store manager may advise the consumer to write to the manufacturer. If so, the consumer should do this, stating the complaint as politely and as firmly as possible. But if a polite complaint does not achieve the desired result, the consumer can go a step further. She or he can threaten to take the seller to court or report the seller to a private or public organization responsible for protecting consumers' rights.
　　Questions 14 - 16 ：
　　The Unied States of America is a founding member of the International Football Association. In 1913 the American Football Association was founded with over 7,000 registered clubs and 1. 4 million players.
　　In history the U. S. team entered the finals of the Word Cup four times and gained the third place in the first World Cup. But since the 4th World Cup USA has paid more attention to the Olympic Games and American foot-ball.
　　The head coach of the U. S. team now is from Yugoslavia, the 57-year-old coach moved to Mexico twenty-one years ago and later he became the head coach of Mexico's National Team. After that he left for an even smaller country. Costa Rica. Before lone, he became well-known all over
　　the world..
　　On March 7th, 1991, he faced the biggest challenge in all his life to lead the U. S. team. The American Football Association spent a year building a football field in California for him. And in two years' time his team
　　defeated the teams of Ireland, England and Portugal.
　　Thus the U. S. team entered with ease into the finals of the World Cup. And as the host, it entered automatically into the first circle in 1994.
　　Questions 17 ~ 20 ：
　　Today it's my turn to give the weekly oral presentation, and the topic that Professor May had assigned to me is "the life of the poet, Emily Dickinson". Compared with Walt Whitman whom we discussed last week, I found Emily Dickinson strikingly different. She seemed in fact to be the complete opposite of Whitman in her life and in her work. I would like to share briefly with the class some of the essential facts of her biography. Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, Mass, barely a decade after Whitman. In her early 20's for reasons which still remain a mystery she began to with draw from her ordinary contact with the world. For the remaining 30 years of her life she was seldom seen outside her home. In this respect she was quite un-like Whitman who loved the great outdoors. Emily Dickinson spent her solitary days corresponding with her friends and writing hundreds of remarkable poems, notably "I heard a fly buzz" and the poem we have read for today "I'm nobody". Although she showed none of her poems to her family and sent some of her letters to friends, only four were published in her life time. Most of them, almost 1,200 poems were discovered in her room after she died in 1886 at the age of 56. These poems have established her as a major poet, and several modern critics consider her the greatest woman poet in the English language. Eh, that's about all I have. Is there any question? If not, we should probably begin talking about Dickinson's "I'm nobody", the poem Professor May assigned for this week's class discussion.
　　Questions 21 ~ 30：
　　As you know, many big changes happened after Christopher Columbus and other Europeans came to the Americas 500 years ago. Today I'm going to talk about a change in the world diet the way people cooked and ate. Five hundred years ago, there was a big change in the diet of people all over the world.
　　Let's talk about the diet in Europe 500 years ago. One important food was meat. Europeans ate many kinds of meat, including beef, lamb, goat, and pork. Europeans also ate dairy products, milk and cheese made from the milk of cows and goats. The Europeans ate several different grains： Most people ate wheat, and some people ate rice, which came first from Asia.
　　Now, let's look at the diet in the Americas about 500 years ago. The diet of the native American was quite different from the diet of the Europeans. This is because the European meats, dairy products, and grains didn't exist in the Americas. However, the native Americans ate some food that didn't exist in Europe. The native Americans ate different vegetables, such as potatoes and tomatoes. They ate different grains, such as corn. They ate different meat, such as turkey and other wild birds. They also used spices such as chocolate and hot chili peppers. None of these foods existed in Europe 500 years ago.
　　Now let's talk about the big change in the world diet 500 years ago, after Columbus and the Europeans went to the Americas.
　　After Europeans went to the Americas, the diet of the native Americans changed a lot. When the Europeans went to the Americas, they took many new kinds of food with them. The Europeans gave some of the food, the meat, dairy products, and grains to the native Americans and then the native Americans started to use the European food in their cooking. As a result, the diet in the America's today is very different from their diet 500 years ago. For example, if you go to a country like Mexico, you can see that the traditional Mexican food uses a lot of beef, pork, cheese, wheat, and rice, all foods that came from Europe with Columbus.
　　After the Europeans returned to Europe from the Americas, there was also a big change in the diet of people in Europe and the rest of the world. When the Europeans returned to Europe, they took many new kinds of food back from the Americas. They took back the vegetables, grains, and spices that they found in the Americas. Little by little, people all over Europe started using the new foods in their cooking, and then the foods spread around the world to Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
　　Some of the new food spread very quickly around the world. One ex-ample is the chili pepper. You may be surprised to know that 500 years ago, the chili pepper didn't exist in many countries that are famous today for their hot and spicy food made with chilies. Actually, we think that the first chili pepper was taken to Spain by Columbus in 1493, when he returned from the Americas. After only 100 years, chili peppers had spread all around the world. They grow easily in warm weather. The only place that the chili pep-per did not become popular was Northern Europe, probably because it is too cold to grow chili peppers easily.
　　Although chili peppers spread quickly, other foods from the Americas spread very slowly. Potatoes are a good example. It took about 250 years for the potatoes to spread around the world. The reason it took so long is that Europeans thought that potatoes were poisonous. The potato looked a lot like a very poisonous plant that grew in Europe. People were afraid to eat potatoes! For a long time, people only used potatoes to feed their pigs. But slowly, people started using potatoes as food for themselves. Today, of course, potatoes have been very popular in many diets, especially in Northern Europe and North America.
　　So the next time you sit down for dinner, think about the history of the food you are eating, maybe it was a part of the great change in the diet of people all over the world.