2021年6月大学英语四级考试真题（三）Part IWriting(30 minutes)Directions:For this part,you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay titled "Do violent video games lead toviolence?".The statement given below is for your reference.You should write at least 120 words but no morethan 180 words.A growing body of research finds that violent video games can make kids act aggressively in their real worldrelationships,causing an increase in violence.Part IListening Comprehension(25 minutes)说明：由于2021年6月四级考试全国共考了两套听力，本套真题听力与前两套内容相同，只是选项顺序不同，因此在本套真题中不再重复出现。Reading Comprehension(40 minutes)Section ADirections:In this section,there is a passage with ten blanks.You are required to select one.word for eachblank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage.Read the passage through carefullybefore making your choices.Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter.Please mark the correspondingletter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.You may not use any of thewords in the bank more than once.Nowadays you can't buy anything without then being asked to provide a rating of a company'sperformance on a five-star scale.I've been asked to rate my "store 26 "on the EFTPOS terminal before I can pay.Even the most27 activities,such as calling Telstra or picking up a parcel from Australia Post,are followed by textsor emails with surveys asking,“How did we do?”Online purchases are 28 followed up by a customer satisfaction survey.Companies are so 29for a hit of stars that if you delete the survey the company sends you another one.We're 30 to rate our apps when we've barely had a chance to use them.One online courseprovider I use asks you what you think of the course after you've only completed 31 2 per cent of it.Economist Jason Murphy says that companies use customer satisfaction ratings because a 32display of star feedback has become the nuclear power sources of the modern economy.However,you can't help but 33 if these companies are basing their business on fabrications的东西).I_34_that with online surveys I just click the35that's closest to my mouse cursor(光标)to get the damn thing off my screen.Often the star rating I give has far more to do with the kind of dayI'm having than the purchase 1 just made.A)announceF)fascinatedK)shiningB)commonplaceG)optionL)showeringC)confessH promptedM varietyD)desperateD roughlyN)voyageE)experienceJ)routinelyO)wonder四级2021年6月47Section BDirections:In this section,you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it.Eachstatement contains information given in one of the paragraphs.Identify the paragraph from which theinformation is derived.You may choose a paragraph more than once.Each paragraph is marked with aletter.Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.Science of setbacks:How failure can improve career prospectsA)How do early career setbacks affect our long-term success?Failures can help us learn and overcome ourfears.But disasters can still wound us.They can screw us up and set us back.Wouldn't it be nice ifthere was genuine,scientifically documented truth to the expression "what doesn't kill you makes youstronger”?B)One way social scientists have probed the effects of career setbacks is to look at scientists of verysimilar qualifications.These scientists,for reasons that are mostly arbitrary,either just missed gettinga research grant or just barely made it.In social sciences,this is known as examining "near misses"and"narrow wins"in areas where merit is subjective.That allows researchers to measure only the effectsof being chosen or not.Studies in this area have found conflicting results.In the competitive game ofbiomedical science,research has been done on scientists who narrowly lost or won grant money.Itsuggests that narrow winners become even bigger winners down the line.In other words,the rich getricher.C)A 2018 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,for example,followedresearchers in the Netherlands.Researchers concluded that those who just barely qualified for a grantwere able to get twice as much money within the next eight years as those who just missed out.And thenarrow winners were 50 percent more likely to be given a professorship.D)Others in the US have found similar effects with National Institutes of Health early-career fellowshipslaunching narrow winners far ahead of close losers.The phenomenon is often referred to as theMatthew effect,inspired by the Bible's wisdom that to those who have,more will be given.There's agood explanation for the phenomenon in the book The Formula:The Universal Laws of Success byAlbert Laszlo Barabasi.According to Barabasi,it's easier and less risky for those in positions of powerto choose to hand awards and funding to those who've already been so recognized.E)This is bad news for the losers.Small early career setbacks seem to have a disproportionate effectdown the line.What didn't kill them made them weaker.But other studies using the same techniquehave shown there's sometimes no penalty to a near miss.Students who just miss getting into top highschools or universities do just as well later in life as those who just manage to get accepted.In this case,what didn't kill them simply didn't matter.So is there any evidence that setbacks might actuallyimprove our career prospects?There is now.F)In a study published in Nature Communications,Northwestern University sociologist Dashun Wangtracked more than 1,100 scientists who were on the border between getting a grant and missing outbetween 1990 and 2005.He followed various measures of performance over the next decade.Theseincluded how many papers they authored and how influential those papers were,as measured by thenumber of subsequent citations.As expected,there was a much higher rate of attrition (among四级2021年6月48scientists who didn't get grants.But among those who stayed on,the close losers performed even betterthan the narrow winners.To make sure this wasn't by chance,Wang conducted additional tests usingdifferent performance measures.He examined how many times people were first authors on influentialstudies,and the like.G)One straightforward reason close losers might outperform narrow winners is that the two groups havecomparable ability.In Wang's study,he selected the most determined,passionate scientists from theloser group and culled (what he deemed the weakest members of the winner group.Yet thepersevering losers still came out on top.He thinks that being a close loser might give people apsychological boost,or the proverbial kick in the pants.H)Utrecht University sociologist Arnout van de Rijt was the lead author on the 2018 paper showing therich get richer.He said the new finding is apparently reasonable and worth some attention.His ownwork showed that although the narrow winners did get much more money in the near future,the actualperformance of the close losers was just as good.I He said the people who should be paying regard to the Wang paper are the funding agents whodistribute government grant money.After all,by continuing to pile riches on the narrow winners,thetaxpayers are not getting the maximum bang for their buck if the close losers are performing just aswell or even better.There's a huge amount of time and effort that goes into the process of selectingwho gets grants,he said,and the latest research shows that the scientific establishment is not verygood at distributing money."Maybe we should spend less money trying to figure out who is better thanwho,"he said,suggesting that some more equal dividing up of money might be more productive andmore efficient.Van de Rijt said he's not convinced that losing out gives people a psychological boost.It may yet be a selection effect.Even though Wang tried to account for this by culling the weakestwinners,it's impossible to know which of the winners would have quit had they found themselves onthe losing side.J)For his part,Wang said that in his own experience,losing did light a motivating fire.He recalled arecent paper he submitted to a journal,which accepted it only to request extensive editing,and thenreversed course and rejected it.He submitted the unedited version to a more respected journal and gotaccepted.K)In sports and many areas of life,we think of failures as evidence of something we could have donebetter.We regard these disappointments.as a fate we could have avoided with more carefulpreparation,different training,a better strategy,or more focus.And there it makes sense thatfailures show us the road to success.These papers deal with a kind of failure people have little controlover-rejection.Others determine who wins and who loses.But at the very least,the research isstarting to show that early setbacks don't have to be fatal.They might even make us better at our jobs.Getting paid like a winner,though?That's a different matter.36.Being a close loser could greatly motivate one to persevere in their research37.Grant awarders tend to favor researchers already recognized in their respective fields.38.Suffering early setbacks might help people improve their job performance.39.Research by social scientists on the effects of career setbacks has produced contradictory findings.四级2021年6月49