大学英语四级阅读理解真题：2013年12月考试真题

　　大学英语四级阅读理解真题由英语网为大家精心整理，希望对广大考生们有所帮助，祝广大考生取得考成绩！！(注：第二页为Passage Two，第三页为答案)

　　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 Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

　　Passage One

　　Questions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.

　　You never see them, but theyre with you every time you fly. They record where youre going, how fast youre traveling and whether everything on your airplane is functioning normally. Their ability to withstand almost any disaster makes them seem like something out of a comic book. Theyre known as the black box.

　　When planes fall from the sky, as a Yemeni airliner did on its way to the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean June 30, 2009, the black box is the best bet for identifying what went wrong. So when a French submarine (潜水艇) detected the devices homing signal five days later, the discovery marked a huge step toward determining the cause of a tragedy in which 152 passengers were killed.

　　In 1958, Australian scientist David Warren developed a flight-memory recorder that would track basic information like altitude and direction. That was the first model for a black box, which became a requirement on all US commercial flights by 1960. Early models often failed to withstand crashes, however, so in 1965 the device was completely redesigned and moved to the rear of the planethe area least subject to impactfrom its original position in the landing wells (起落架舱). That same year, the Federal Aviation Authority required that the boxes, which were never actually black, be painted orange or yellow to aid visibility.

　　Modern airplanes have two black boxes: a voice recorder, which tracks pilots conversations,and a flight-data recorder, which monitors fuel levels, engine noises and other operating functions that help investigators reconstruct the aircrafts final moments. Placed in an insulated (隔绝的) case and surrounded by quarter-inch-thick panels of stainless steel, the boxes can withstand massive force and temperatures up to 2 000F. When submerged, theyre also able to emit signals from depths of 20 000 ft. Experts believe the boxes from Air France Flight 447, which crashed near Brazil on June 1, 2009, are in water nearly that deep, but statistics say theyre still likely to turn up. In the approximately 20 deep-sea crashes over the past 30 years, only one planes black boxes were never recovered.

　　57. What does the author say about the black box?

　　A) It ensures the normal functioning of an airplane.

　　B) The idea for its design comes from a comic book.

　　C) Its ability to ward off disasters is incredible.

　　D) It is an indispensable device on an airplane.

　　58. What information could be found from the black box on the Yemeni airliner?

　　A) Data for analyzing the cause of the crash.

　　B) The total number of passengers on board.

　　C) The scene of the crash and extent of the damage.

　　D) Homing signals sent by the pilot before the crash.

　　59. Why was the black box redesigned in 1965?

　　A) New materials became available by that time.

　　B) Too much space was needed for its installation.

　　C) The early models often got damaged in the crash.

　　D) The early models didnt provide the needed data.

　　60. Why did the Federal Aviation Authority require the black boxes be painted orange or yellow?

　　A) To distinguish them from the color of the plane.

　　B) To caution people to handle them with care.

　　C) To make them easily identifiable.

　　D) To conform to international standards.

　　61. What do we know about the black boxes from Air France Flight 447?

　　A) There is still a good chance of their being recovered.

　　B) There is an urgent need for them to be restructured.

　　C) They have stopped sending homing signals.

　　D) They were destroyed somewhere near Brazil.