大学英语四级模拟试题十五(附含答案解析)
overall book sales. E-book sales are up 146 percent over last year, while hardback sales increased 6 percent and paperbacks decreased 8 percent. [B] Does this spell the doom of the physical book? Certainly not immediately, and perhaps not at all. What it does mean is that the book business will go through a transformation in the next decade or so more profound than any it has seen since Gutenberg introduced printing with moveable type in the 1450s.
[C] Physical books will surely become much rarer in the marketplace. Mass market paperbacks, which have been declining for years anyway, will probably disappear, as will hardbacks for mysteries, thrillers, “romance fiction,” etc. Such books, which only rarely end up in permanent collections, either private or public, will probably only be available as e-books within a few years. Hardback and trade paperbacks for “serious” nonfiction and fiction will surely last longer. Perhaps it will become the mark of an author to reckon with that he or she is still published in hard copy.
[D] As for children’s books, who knows? Children’s books are like dog food in that the purchasers are not the consumers, so the market (and the marketing) is inherently strange.
[E] For clues to the book’s future, let’s look at some examples of technological change and see what happened to the old technology. [F] One technology replaces another only because the new technology is better, cheaper, or both. The greater the difference, the sooner and more thoroughly the new technology replaces the old. Printing with moveable type on paper dramatically reduced the cost of producing a book compared with that of the old-fashioned ones handwritten on vellum, which comes from sheepskin. A Bible—to be sure, a long book—required vellum made from 300 sheepskins and countless man-hours of labor. Before printing arrived, a Bible cost more than a middle-class house. There were perhaps 50,000 books in all of Europe in 1450. By 1500 there were 10 million.
[G] But while printing quickly caused the hand written book to die out, handwriting lingered on（继续存在）well into the 16th century. Very special books are still occasionally produced on vellum, but they are one-of-a-kind show pieces.
[H] Sometimes a new technology doesn’t drive the old one out, but only parts of it while forcing the rest to evolve. The movies were widely predicted to drive live theater out of the marketplace, but they didn’t, because
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大学英语四级模拟试题十五(附含答案解析)
theater turned out to have qualities movies could not reproduce. Equally, TV was supposed to replace movies but, again, did not.
[I] Movies did, however, fatally impact some parts of live theater. And while TV didn’t kill movies, it did kill second-rate pictures, shorts, and cartoons.
[J] Nor did TV kill radio. Comedy and drama shows (“Jack Benny,” “Amos and Andy,” “The Shadow”) all migrated to television. But because you can’t drive a car and watch television at the same time, rush hour became radio’s prime, while music, talk, and news radio greatly enlarged their audiences. Radio is today a very different business than in the late 1940s and a much larger one.
[K] Sometimes old technology lingers for centuries because of its symbolic power. Mounted cavalry（骑兵）replaced the chariot（二轮战车）on the battlefield around 1000 BC. But chariots maintained their place in parades and triumphs right up until the end of the Roman Empire 1,500 years later. The sword hasn’t had a military function for a hundred years, but is still part of an officer’s full-dress uniform, precisely because a sword always symbolized “an officer and a gentleman.”
[L] Sometimes new technology is a little cranky（不稳定的）at first. Television repairman was a common occupation in the 1950s, for instance. And so the old technology remains as a backup. Steamships captured the North Atlantic passenger business from sail in the 1840s because of its much greater speed. But steamships didn’t lose their sails until the 1880s, because early marine engines had a nasty habit of breaking down. Until ships became large enough (and engines small enough) to mount two engines side by side, they needed to keep sails. (The high cost of steam and the lesser need for speed kept the majority of the world’s ocean freight moving by sail until the early years of the 20th century.)
[M] Then there is the fireplace. Central heating was present in every upper-and middle-class home by the second half of the 19th century. But functioning fireplaces remain to this day a powerful selling point in a house or apartment. I suspect the reason is a deep-rooted love of the fire. Fire was one of the earliest major technological advances for humankind, providing heat, protection, and cooked food (which is much easier to eat and digest). Human control of fire goes back far enough (over a million years)
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10 大学英语四级模拟试题十五(附含答案解析)
that evolution could have produced a genetic leaning towards fire as a central aspect of human life.
[N] Books—especially books the average person could afford—haven’t been around long enough to produce evolutionary change in humans. But they have a powerful hold on many people nonetheless, a hold extending far beyond their literary content. At their best, they are works of art and there is a tactile（触觉的）pleasure in books necessarily lost in e-book versions. The ability to quickly thumb through pages is also lost. And a room with books in it induces, at least in some, a feeling not dissimilar to that of a fire in the fireplace on a cold winter’s night.
[O] For these reasons I think physical books will have a longer existence as a commercial product than some currently predict. Like swords, books have symbolic power. Like fireplaces, they induce a sense of comfort and warmth. And, perhaps, similar to sails, they make a useful back-up for when the lights go out.
.
56. The increase of e-book sales will force the book business to make changes not seen
for centuries.
57. Authors still published in printed versions will be considered important ones.
58. The radio business has changed greatly and now attracts more listeners. 59. Contrary to many people’s prediction of its death, the film industry survived.
60. Remarkable changes have taken place in the book business.
61. A new technology is unlikely to take the place of an old one without a clear advantage.
62. A house with a fireplace has a stronger appeal to buyers.
63. Old technology sometimes continues to exist because of its reliability. 64. Paperbacks of popular literature are more likely to be replaced by e-books.
65. Some people are still in favor of printed books because of the sense of touch they can provide.
Section C (2’×10
=
20’)
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11 大学英语四级模拟试题十五(附含答案解析)
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.
Passage One
Questions 66 to 70 are based on the following passage.
Children are a delight. They are our future. But sadly, hiring someone to take care of them while you go to work is getting more expensive by the year.
Earlier this month, it was reported that the cost of enrolling an infant or small kid at a childcare center rose 3% in 2012, faster than the overall cost of living. There are now large strips of the country where daycare for an infant costs more than a tenth of the average married couple’s income.
This is not necessarily a new trend, but it is a somewhat puzzling one. The price of professional childcare has been rising since the 1980s. Yet during that time, pay for professional childcare workers has stood still.
Actually caregivers make less today, in real terms, than they did in 1990. Considering that labor costs are responsible for up to 80% of a daycare center’s expenses, one would expect flat wages to have meant flat prices.
So who’s to blame for higher childcare costs?
Childcare is a carefully regulated industry. States lay down rules about how many children each employee is allowed to watch over, the space care centers need per child, and other minute details. And the stricter the regulations, the higher the costs. If it has to hire a caregiver for every two children, it can’t really achieve any economies of scale on labor to save money when other expenses go up. In Massachusetts, where childcare centers must hire one teacher for every three infants, the price of care averaged more than $16,000 per year. In Mississippi, where centers must hire one teacher for every five infants, the price of care averaged less than $5,000.
Unfortunately, I don’t have all the daycare-center regulations at hand. But I wouldn’t be surprised if as the rules have become more elaborate, prices have risen. The tradeoff （交换）might be worth it in some cases; after all, the health and safety of children should probably come before cheap
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