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 him, but theyre with you every time you fly. They record where you are 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 Comoros Islands in the India 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 mode for a black box, which became a requirement on all U.S. 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 plane the area least subject to impact from its original position in the landing wells (起落架舱). The 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 a quarter-inch-thick panels of stainless steel, the boxes can withstand massive force and temperatures up to 2,000℉. 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 colour 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 reconstructed.
C) They have stopped sending homing signals.
D) They were destroyed somewhere near Brazil.
答案请看第三页~~
Passage Two
Questions 62 to 66 are based on the following passage.
The $11 billion self-help industry is built on the idea that you should turn negative thoughts like I never do anything right into positive ones like I can succeed. But was positive thinking advocate Norman Vincent Peale right? Is there power in positive thinking?
Researchers in Canada just published a study in the journal Psychological Science that says trying to get people to think more positively can actually have the opposite effect: it can simply highlight how unhappy they are.
The studys authors, Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, begin by citing older research showing that when people get feedback which they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better. If you tell your dim friend that he has the potential of an Einstein, youre just underlining his faults. In one 1990s experiment, a team including psychologist Joel Cooper of Princeton asked participants to write essays opposing funding for the disabled. When the essayists were later praised for their sympathy, they felt even worse about what they had written.
In this experiment, Wood, Lee and Perunovic measured 68 students self-esteem. The
participants were then asked to write down their thoughts and feelings for four minutes. Every 15 seconds, one group of students heard a bell. When it rang, they were supposed to tell themselves, I am lovable.
Those with low self-esteem didnt feel better after the forced self-affirmation. In fact, their moods turned significantly darker than those of members of the control group, who werent urged to think positive thoughts.
The paper provides support for newer forms of psychotherapy (心理治疗) that urge people to accept their negative thoughts and feelings rather than fight them. In the fighting, we not only often fail but can make things worse. Meditation (静思) techniques, in contrast, can teach people to put their shortcomings into a larger, more realistic perspective. Call it the power of negative thinking.
62. What do we learn from the first paragraph about the self-help industry?
A) It is a highly profitable industry.
B) It is based on the concept of positive thinking.
C) It was established by Norman Vincent Peale.
D) It has yielded positive results.
63. What is the finding of the Canadian researchers?
A) Encouraging positive thinking many do more harm than good.
B) There can be no simple therapy for psychological problems.
C) Unhappy people cannot think positively.
D) The power of positive thinking is limited.
64. What does the author mean by youre just underlining his faults (Line 4, Para. 3)?
A) You are not taking his mistakes seriously enough.
B) You are pointing out the errors he has committed.
C) You are emphasizing the fact that he is not intelligent.
D) You are trying to make him feel better about his faults.
65. What do we learn from the experiment of Wood, Lee and Perunovic?
A) It is important for people to continually boost their self-esteem.
B) Self-affirmation can bring a positive change to ones mood.
C) Forcing a person to think positive thoughts may lower their self-esteem.
D) People with low self-esteem seldom write down their true feelings.
66. What do we learn from the last paragraph?
A) The effects of positive thinking vary from person to person.
B) Meditation may prove to be a good form of psychotherapy.
C) Different people tend to have different ways of thinking.
D) People can avoid making mistakes through meditation.
答案请看第三页~~
Answers:
C A C C A
B A B C B