2022年 专四真题 自测练习

(1) We didn't always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can't remember. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there'd be one more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six — Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me. (2) The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don't have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there isn't a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so, it's not the house we'd thought we'd get. (3) We had to leave the flat on Loomis quick. The water pipes broke and the landlord wouldn't fix them because the house was too old. We had to leave fast. We were using the washroom next door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons. That's why Mama and Papa looked for a house, and that's why we moved into the house on Mango Street, far away, on the other side of town. (4) They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn't have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on TV. And we'd have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed. (5) But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It's small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you'd think they were holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in. There is no front yard, only four little elms the city planted by the curb. Our back is a small garage for the car we don't own yet and a small yard that looks smaller between the two buildings on either side. There are stairs in our house, but they're ordinary hallway stairs, and the house has only one washroom. Everybody has to share a bedroom — Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny. (6) Once when we were living on Loomis, a nun from my school passed by and saw me playing out front. The laundromat downstairs had been boarded up because it had been robbed two days before and the owner had painted on the wood YES WE'RE OPEN so as not to lose business. (7) Where do you live? She asked. (8) There, I said pointing up to the third floor. (9) You live there? (10) There. I had to look to where she pointed — the third floor, the paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn't fall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded. (11) I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't it. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, says Papa. But I know how those things go.

(1) Thanksgiving may be an official day of gratitude in the U.S., but research suggests that if you make time for "thank you" every day, you might enjoy life more. (2) Many people may think of gratitude as a "passive" gesture — you wait for something good, then feel grateful, said David DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University. DeSteno studies the effects that thankfulness can have on people's behavior. (3) But a growing body of research is suggesting the opposite is true, according to DeSteno. By choosing to feel gratitude, people can make positive changes in their lives. "Gratitude isn't passive reflection. It's active," DeSteno said. "And it's not about the past. It's there to help direct our behavior in the future." (4) In experiments where he and his colleagues set people up to feel grateful, they found that thankfulness appeared to spur participants to act in more cooperative, less selfish ways. In one study, for example, people came to the lab to complete a computer task. At some point, certain participants' computers were rigged to "crash". Luckily, a kind stranger who had just completed the same task (and was actually part of the research team) offered help and got the computer running again. Afterward, all of the study participants played a standard economic game where people have the opportunity to either act strictly in their own self-interest or in a more cooperative way. (5) In general, DeSteno's team found, the study participants who had gotten help from a stranger during that first test were more likely to be cooperative during the next test. (A survey all of the participants took confirmed that those who'd received help were, in fact, feeling more grateful than their counterparts who'd had smooth sailing.) That's one of a number of studies, DeSteno said, that suggest that gratitude helps guide behavior. It can encourage you to get more exercises, or to be more helpful to others (and not just that person you feel you "owe"). (6) Some research has also found links between gratitude and better health, such as lower blood pressure and just feeling physically better. However, it's not clear whether gratitude directly affects physical well-being. (7) At the University of California, Professor Naomi Eisenberger and her colleagues hope to zero in a bit more on the effects of gratitude. For six weeks, some study participants will spend time writing about things for which they are grateful. The rest will write about positive subjects, but won't focus on gratitude. (8) According to Eisenberger, gratitude, based on studies like DeSteno's, seems to enhance people's ability to care for others. And in animals, Eisenberger noted, caregiving is linked to lesser reactivity in the face of a threat — mothers may feel less scared for themselves when a predator comes, and protect their babies instead. (9) Whatever the biological effects, plenty of research suggests that gratitude can change how you feel — even about those people who've been in your life for years, according to Sara Algoe, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina. (10) Her research has focused on the effects of gratitude in romantic relationships. In one study of 77 couples who'd been together for an average of four years, Algoe's team had each partner think of something the other had done for them recently — no matter how small — and then thank him or her. Before that task, the couples completed a survey on their satisfaction with their relationship. Then they did it again six months later. (11) In general, the study saw a shift in people who felt their partner really meant that "thank you" — thinking, for example, that "my partner saw the 'real' me." Those men and women typically felt more satisfied with their relationship six months later. The findings, according to Algoe, highlight the importance of saying "thank you" even for those mundane things, from those people you see every day. (12) "Expressing gratitude well is a potent part of relationship satisfaction," Algoe said. "Sometimes we feel grateful, but we don't say it. This research suggests it's important to say it. And if someone offers you help, try accepting it instead of shunning it. See it as a gift."

(1) As words fall in and out of fashion, new ones enter the language. But some, such as automaut, chassimover and pupamotor failed to reach the assembly line. (2) English is a marvelous mashup of words. A few Celtic place names. A stock of Old English words (day and night, black and white, food and drink). More than twice as many words adopted from Norman French (marriage, parliament). Sometimes competing words from both: motherhood (Old English) and maternity (Norman French). Words of Greek derivation, like octopus. Words of Latin derivation, such as campus and ultimatum. Words from all over the place: Welsh (corgi), Irish (brogues), Arabic (algebra), German (hamster), Chinese (typhoon), Japanese (tycoon), American Indian (tobacco), and many more. (3) Wherever they come from, words fall in and out of fashion. Within living memory some words have changed meanings completely, while bad and wicked changed, then changed back. Yesterday's slang is respectable today. In the 1950s and 60s, words that angered people who write to newspapers included job (the writer thought it vulgar, and preferred employment), and breakdown ("horrible jargon"). The Manchester Guardian stylebook of 1950 banned such "slang" phrases as bank on, face up to, give away, sack (for "dismiss") and many others. (4) The expression "foregone conclusion" once meant an experience previously undergone, rather than making a decision without listening to the arguments. Many words we use today have a different meaning from 20, never mind 50, 100 or 200 years ago. The word "nice" once meant silly (silly meant happy or blessed), then subtle, then pleasant. You could be sad with food and drink — it meant full to the brim, and was related to satisfied and saturated. It then came to mean solid, so a reliable person could be called sad; in time, solid, heavy and dull came to mean sad in one of our modern uses. In recent years it subtly acquired an additional meaning, as in "how sad is that?" (5) About 1,700 words are first recorded in Shakespeare (which does not necessarily mean he invented them), including barefaced, fancy-free, laughable and submerged. Milton is credited with the expression "all ears". Jung invented the word synchronicity as well as ambivalent, extrovert and introvert, while Freud came up with the word psychoanalysis, which is derived from the Greek for butterfly, psyche, who was also the Greek goddess of the soul. (6) There is another continual source of new words. The man who developed Bluetooth in 1996 was reading a historical novel about Harald Bluetooth, a 10th- century King of Denmark, at the time and appropriated his name. Spam, in the sense of unwanted emails, was named after the 1970 Monty Python cafe sketch in which Spam, in the sense of unwanted canned meat, was compulsory in every dish. Sometimes new words catch on, sometimes they don't, but you can always bet that someone, somewhere will object to them. I recall readers complaining about the Guardian's use of the new word blog (an abbreviation of another new word, weblog) but within a very short time it had become established. In the early 1960s, the Automobile Association sought suggestions from the public for a new word to describe drivers: submissions included autocarist, automaut, chassimover, motorman, wheelist, and the bizarre acronym pupamotor ("person using power-assisted means of travelling on roads"). The idea was dropped. Whoever came up with laser ("light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation") in 1960 was more successful. (7) The writer A. P. Herbert devised a scoring system for new words, which would be given marks out of 10 on each of four criteria: is it readily understood, is it to be admired, is it sound etymologically, and is it actually required? The pass mark was 50% and television, for example, just scraped through (scoring respectively 10, 0, 0, and 10). One of my favorite recent words is bouncebackability, a neat alternative to "the ability to bounce back" attributed to the former football manager Iain Dowie. I fear it would fail the test.