2023年中央电大第一学期开放本科期末英语专业高级时事英语试题及参考答案.doc

中央广播电视大学2023—2023学年度第一学期“开放本科”期末考试
英语专业高级时事英语试题
2023年1月

注 意 事 项

一、将你旳准考证号、学生证号、姓名及分校(工作站)名称填写在答题纸旳规定栏内。考试结束后，把试卷和答题纸放在桌上。试卷和答题纸均不得带出考场。监考人收完考卷和答题纸后才可离开考场。
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三、用蓝、黑圆珠笔或钢笔答题，使用铅笔答题无效。

English in Current Affairs
This is the written examination which is part of the end-of-course assessment. The total marks for this examination are 100 points. The examination consists of two papers: Paper 1. Listening Test, and Paper 2. Reading and Writing. Time allowed for completing this examination is 2 hours (120 mins).

Instructions:
● Answer all questions.
● You will have ten minutes at the end of the listening test to transfer your answers to the answer sheet.
● All answers must be transferred to the answer sheet.

Paper 1: LISTENING TEST 30 points

Information for the candidates
There are two parts to the test. Each part will be played twice.
There will be a pause before each part to let you read through the questions and another pause at the end of each part for you to check your answers.
You may write your answers in the question paper as you listen.

You will have to minutes at the end of the listening test to transfer your answers to the answer sheet.

Part 1. Questions 1-6. Interview with Professor Michaelson.
You are going to listen to an interview with Professor Michael Michaelson. You will hear the recording twice. Choose the best answer according to what you learn through listening. Before the first listening you have half a minute to study the questions.
1. The main topic of the interview is .
A. education in China
B. pollution in England
C. pollution in China
2. As seen by the interviewer, the major problem of pollution in China concerns .
A. air, land and water pollution
B. people disposing of rubbish indiscriminately
C. too much waste cardboard and too many empty bottles
3. In his country, when Michael Michaelson sees people dropping litter he
A. reports them to the police
B. quietly disposes of the litter himself
C. confronts the person
4. Michael Michaelson was shocked in China because .
A. in England people never drop litter
B. in China people drop litter everywhere
C. he cannot run after people in China
5. Michael Michaelson the idea of using bikes to collect waste cardboard.
A. can't understand
B. criticizes
C. likes
6. In China people use bicycles .
A. to carry waste cardboard
B. to collect empty bottles for money
C. both A and B

Part 2. Questions 7-13. You are going to listen to a talk about ‘The Fourth Word’.
Task 1. Questions 7-13. A list of topics is given below. Find the ones that the speaker mentioned and write the letters representing them in the space provided on the Answer Sheet.
A. The Fourth World
B. Australia
C. Africa
D. cultural marginalisation
E. newspaper reports of social problems
F. Bushmen
G. landrights struggles
H. the Pitjanjara
I. the Mauritanians
J. popular culture
K. the common experiences of ' fourth world' peoples
L. the long term consequences of colonization

Task 2. Questions 14-20. Listen again to the talk and mark the following statements as True (T) or False (F) according to the text.
(14) The ‘fourth world’ is a term used to interpret forms of inequality in rich countries.
(15) The concept is used to interpret the problems of indigenous people
(16) ‘Indigenous people’ means people who colonised others.
(17) Fourth world people experience cultural, political and economic poverty.
(18) Fourth world people have to fight to maintain their cultural identity.
(19) When Australia was colonised only one cultural group was dispossessed.
(20) Australian aboriginal people are the only population of ‘fourth world’ people.
Paper 2: READING AND WRITING
Information for candidates
● There are four parts to the reading test.
● There is one writing task.
● You should write ALL your answers on the Answer Sheet as you do the tasks.

READING TEST 50 points
Part 1. Read the following passage and answer Questions 21-30.
Passage 1
Changes in Australian Education
Haralambos and his colleagues (1996) have summarised the major changes in Australian education over the past two hundred years. The major issues driving their analysis are the questions:
-of the effects that education has had on society; and
-why some social groups tend to enjoy more educational success than others. They are not the only social scientists concerned with these issues. However their book contains a recent and comprehensive summary of Australian educational research. Here are some of the major points they make. There are five basic components to the Australian education system:
(ⅰ) primary school ( age 5-12 years of age)
(ⅱ) compulsory secondary school (12-15 years of age)
(or 12-16 years in the State of Tasmania)
(ⅲ) post-compulsory secondary school (15-17)
(ⅳ) technical and further education (17 years and older)
(ⅴ) higher education or university ( 17 years and older)
Before the second world war nearly haft of Australian children did not attend secondary school. In the second half of the twentieth century education expanded and changed form dramatically. Between 1956 and 1966 the number of universities grew from nine to 14, then rose to 19 in 1975. In addition, there has been a significant growth in non university post secondary education. In the 1990s the percentage of women with post secondary school qualifications was 37%. The percentage of men was 47 per cent.
Haralambos and his colleagues summarise the evidence about the impact of education on the creation of a more equal society. They say ' both material and cultural factors affect the length of stay in education. ' Family wealth still exerts a powerful influence on access to university education. However the expansion of education has meant an expansion of educational opportunities for people from social groups earlier denied a higher education.
Bob Connell, a major writer on Australian education, has argued that ‘the evidence of socially unequal outcomes continues to mount. It is one of the most firmly established facts about Western style educational Systems in all parts of the world.’
Mark the following statements as T (true) or F (false) according to the information in the text.
21. Haralambos worked alone on his summary of Australian education.
22. He and his colleagues were interested in studying social inequality.
23. Most Australian students must stay at school until they are 15 years of age.
24. There is a common compulsory school leaving age across all of Australia.
25. There are two major forms of education for 17 year olds to choose.
26. Post secondary education is compulsory in Australia.
27. Only a small number of children attended secondary school before 1939.
28. Major changes in education occurred in the latter half of the 20th century.
29. By the 1990s, a higher percentage of women than men had post secondary qualifications.
30. The expansion of education has meant that there is now no social inequality in access to higher education in Australia.

Part 2. Read Passage 2 and answer Questions 31-40.
Passage 2
My Computer
Ten years ago I occasionally used a typewriter for important documents such as my curriculum vitae and job application letters. I couldn't really type so I tapped away at the keyboard with my two index fingers and made lots of mistakes. One simple letter would often require at least a dozen attempts before I managed to produce the final, neat document. When a course that I was doing demanded typed assignments I begged friends with good typing skills to help me. In other words, to type them for me and when my final project had to be typed up, I actually paid a professional typist to do it ! I was ‘a pen and paper person’. I had never been interested in machines and ‘artificial intelligence’ and sincerely believed I could live happily without advanced technology in my personal life!
The situation has changed, of course. It's been a gradual change but these days I hardly know myself! I even have a computer and a printer. I have never learned to use all ten fingers on the keyboard but I can work quite quickly and produce documents which have an impressive layout and which use different sizes and styles of typeface (or font). I know how to underline, how to write words in bold or italic script, how to give parts of a text a border, how to insert illustrations and so on! I feel a great sense of achievement when I finish a document, print it out and see the finished product. Such documents seem ‘professional’ I suspect, however, that impressive layout may camouflage inferior content ! I hope this is not true in my case.
Five years ago, I had no idea what friends were talking about when they mentioned “E-mail (even if they used the full term, electronic mail), ‘the internet’ and ‘modem’ but my computer now has a modem, and through this device, it is connected to the international network known as the Internet. As a result, I can now send and receive E-mail messages to and from friends and organisations around the world whose computers are also connected to the Internet. There is no time delay. It's possible to read messages in Beijing as they are being written in London or Hong Kong. This is indeed progress !
Choose the best answer from the choices given ( Write the letter representing your choice in the space provided on the Answer Sheet):
(31) In the article the writer compares changes over a period of .
A. a decade
B. a century
C. five years
(32) The writer's typed essays were often produced by .
A. himself.
B. friends and paid professionals.
C. both A and B.
(33) How many different kinds of electronic possessions does the writer list?
A. Moro than five.
B. Three.
C. Two.
(34) The writer feels a sense of achievement because .
A. he produces an impressive looking document
B. his document cleverly camouflages inferior content
C. he can work quickly
(35) The author is an .
A. accomplished ten finger typist
B. illustrator
C. accomplished internet user
(36) The author started to use the Internet .
A. ten years ago
B. exactly five years ago
C. probably within the past five years
(37) The author sends e-mail messages .
A. to all his friends
B. to organisations around the world
C. both A and B.
(38) Five years ago, the author's friends .
A. were all connected to the Internet
B. knew more about the Internet than he did
C. worked in organisations all around the world
(39) It is now possible .
A. to send immediate answers to correspondents on the Internet
B. to assess the feelings of friends on the Internet
C. to become a ten finger typist by using the Internet
(40) It is .
A. inferable that the author approves of the Internet
B. likely that the author is no longer employed
C. unlikely that the author is a man

Part 3. Read Passage 3 and answer Questions 41-50.
Passage 3
Income Equality
Adapted from Work by Yang Chunya and Kate Thorne
A system to regulate income inequality should be mapped out in time to prevent income gaps from broadening. The lopsided individual income pattern in China has tended to worsen since the country initiated economic reform and the open-door policy 17 years ago.
Although official statistics have not yet been made available to indicate how large income gaps have become, the people in the street have tested enough of this inequality in their daily life. While a couple of restaurant owners in Shanghai have revealed that their monthly income has reached 100, 000 yuan ( $11,900) ,630,000 residents in Hnnan Province are struggling for a bare subsistence wage of 132 yuan ( $16) a month, according to the weekly magazine Outlook.
Gone are the days when people who had 10,000 yuan ( $1,190) were dubbed upstarts. Nowadays, a person who has 100,000 yuan ( $11,900) is barely considered rich. At the same time, around 10 million people across the country are living such a scanty life that they can't afford enough vegetables and fruit.
Although the disparity is inevitable when the country is in the stage of transition from the planned economy to a market-oriented economy, it does not mean that such unequal distribution of wealth is acceptable or fair. If the income gap keeps widening and finally develops to a polarisation, it will lead to deep resentment among the poor. A growing fear in the public is that chronic disaffection will trigger social disruption.
Research cited by Keith Windschuttle in his Australian book on unemployment shows that low income people usually suffer higher levels of sickness and mortality and have few opportunities to enable their children to progress. The Left Realist school in the UK have shown that people living in communities suffering poverty and unemployment are at higher risks of becoming victims of crime. On the other hand, the rich who rise to fortune through illegal profiteering will frustrate fair competition in the market pace. Moreover, their self-indulgent life style has a negative effect on social values. To narrow the income gap, the most common practice exercised in western countries is to levy strictly regulated personal income tax.
Unfortunately, this practice does not function well in China due to the fledgling financial and banking systems of the country, even though it has been pursued for about ten years, the weekly said.

Questions 41-50. Fill in all the empty cells with either one-word or short-phrase (no more than three words) answers in the following Table:

Examples of Rich People
Examples of Poor People
Monthly income in RMB
100,000 yuan
132 yuan
Monthly income in dollars
$ (41)
$16
Unaffordable foods
Not stated
(42)
Polarisation could lead to
Not stated
(43)
Health conditions
Lower levels of
(44) and (45)
Higher rates of these conditions.
Children's opportunities
Not stated
(46)
Levies paid within the western regulated taxation system
(47)
Not stated
Life styles
(48)
scanty
Effect on social values
(49)
Not stated
Left Realist view of risk of crime victimisation
Not stated
(50)

Part 4. Read passage 4 and answer Questions 51-60.
Passage 4
Analysing the Media
People in today's global society know about their own lives, they also know something about what is happening in their local community and they have news about the wider world, the world they never exp