大学英语4级听力原文
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大学英语4级听力原文1
【答案】
A.
1) c
2) a
3) d
4) c
5) c
6) a
B.
1) That‘s because the explosion robs the fire of oxygen.
2) Once the fire is out, the well still needs to be covered, or capped, to stop the flow of oil. This is the most dangerous part of the process. Any new heat or fire could cause the leaking well and the surrounding area to explode.
3) In March of 1991, Red Adair went to Kuwait. He and his crews were called in to help put out oil well fires.
4) He has spent his 76th birthday in Kuwait working side by side with his crew.
5) At his funeral, many family members and friends honored him by wearing red clothes.
【原文】
Paul Neal Adair was born in Houston, Texas in nineteen fifteen. He was one of five sons of a metal worker. He also had three sisters. While growing up, he became known as Red Adair
because his hair was bright red. The color became a trademark for Adair. He wore red clothes and red boots. He drove a red car, and his crew members used red trucks and red equipment.
During World War Two, Adair served on a trained army team that removed and destroyed bombs. After the war, he returned to Houston and took a job with Myron Kinley. At the time, Kinley was the leader in putting out fires in oil wells. Red Adair worked with Myron Kinley for fourteen years. But in nineteen fifty-nine, Adair started his own company.
During his thirty-six years in business, Red Adair and his crews battled more than two
thousand fires all over the world. Some were on land. Others were on ocean oil-drilling structures. Some fires were in burning oil wells. Others were in natural gas wells.
Red Adair was a leader in a specialized and extremely dangerous profession. Putting out oil well fires can be difficult. This is because oil well fires are extinguished, or put out, at the wellhead just above ground. Normally, explosives are used to stop the fire from burning. The explosion robs the fire of oxygen. But, once the fire is out, the well still needs to be covered, or capped, to stop the flow of oil. This is the most dangerous part of the process. Any new heat or fire could cause the leaking well and the surrounding area to explode.
Red Adair developed modern methods to extinguish and cover burning oil wells.
They became known in the industry as Wild Well Control techniques. In addition to explosives, the techniques involved large amounts of water and dirt. Adair also developed special equipment made of bronze metal to help extinguish oil well fires. The modern tools and his Wild Well Control techniques earned Red Adair and his crews the honor of being called the "best in the business."
Red Adair was known for not being afraid. He was also known for his sense of calm and safety. None of his workers were ever killed while putting out oil well or gas fires. He described his work this way: ―It scares you—all the noise, the rattling, the shaking. But the look on
everyone's face, when you are finished and packing, it is the best smile in the world; and there is nobody hurt, and the well is under control.‖
One of Red Adair's most important projects was in nineteen sixty-two. He and his crew put out a natural gas fire in the Sahara Desert in Algeria. The fire had been burning for six months. This famous fire was called the "Devil's Cigarette Lighter." Fire from the natural gas well shot about one hundred forty meters into the air. The fire was so big that American astronaut John Glenn could see it from space as he orbited Earth.The desert sand around the well had melted into glass from the extreme heat. News reports said Adair used about three hundred forty kilograms of nitroglycerine explosive material to pull the oxygen out of the fire.
Adair's success with the "Devil's Cigarette Lighter" and earlier well fires captured the
imagination of the American film industry. In nineteen sixty-eight, Hollywood made an action film called Hellfighters. It was loosely based on events in Red Adair's life. Actor John Wayne played an oil well firefighter from Houston, Texas whose life was similar to Adair's. Adair served as an advisor to Wayne while the film was being made. The two men became close friends. Adair said one of the best honors in the world was to have John Wayne play him in a movie.
In nineteen eighty-eight, Adair fought what was possibly the world's worst off-shore accident. It was at the Piper Alpha drilling structure in the North Sea. Occidental Petroleum operated the structure off the coast of Scotland. The structure produced oil and gas from twenty-four wells.
One hundred sixty-seven men were killed when the structure exploded after a gas leak. Red Adair had to stop the fires and cap the wells. He faced winds blowing more than one hundred twenty kilometers an hour, and ocean waves at least twenty meters high.
In March of nineteen ninety-one, Red Adair went to Kuwait following the Persian Gulf War. He and his crews were called in to help put out fires set by the Iraqi army.
The Red Adair Company capped more than one hundred wells. His crews were among
twenty-seven teams from sixteen countries called in to fight the fires. The crews' efforts put out about seven hundred Kuwaiti fires. Their efforts saved millions of barrels of oil. Some experts say the operation also helped prevent an environmental tragedy. The job had been expected to take three to five years. However, it was completed in just eight months.
Red Adair had spent his seventy-sixth birthday in Kuwait working side by side with his crew. When asked when he might retire, he told reporters: "Retire? I do not know what that word means. As long as a man is able to work, and he is productive out there and he feels good—keep at it."
Still, Red Adair finally did retire in nineteen ninety-four. At that time, he joked about where he would end up when he died. He said he hoped to be in Heaven. But he said this about Hell: "I have made a deal with the devil. He said he is going to give me an air-conditioned place when I go down there—if I go there—so I won't put all the fires out."
Red Adair died in two thousand four. He was eighty-nine years old. At his funeral, many family members and friends honored him by wearing red clothes. Many Americans remember Red Adair for his bravery. He lived his life on the edge of danger. He was known for his willingness to risk his own life to save others.
大学英语4级听力原文2
Task 1:
【答案】
1) He started writing poetry when he was about 14 or 15.
2) He has published four books.
3) His first book came out when he was about 26. It wasn‘t easy. He got a lot of his work rejected at first.
4) The British, or at least the English, are embarrassed by it. They‘re embarrassed by people who reveal personal feelings, emotions, thoughts and wishes.
【原文】
When Thomas Edison was born in the small town of Milan, Ohio, in 1847, America was just beginning its great industrial development. In his lifetime of eighty-four years, Edison shared in the excitement of America‘s growth into a modern nation. The time in which he lived was an age of invention, filled with human and scientific adventures, and Edison became the hero of that age.
As a boy, Edison was not a good student. His parents took him out of school and his mother taught him at home, where his great curiosity and desire to experiment often got him into trouble. When he was six, he set fire to his father‘s barn ―to see what would happen.‖ The barn burned down.
When he was ten, Edison built his own chemistry laboratory. He sold sandwiches and newspapers on the trains in order to earn money to buy supplies for his laboratory. His parents became accustomed, more or less, to his experiments and the explosions which sometimes shook the house.
Edison‘s work as a sales boy with the railroad introduced him to the telegraph and, with a
friend, he built his own telegraph set.
Six years later, in 1869, Edison arrived in New York City, poor and in debt. He went to work with a telegraph company. It was there that he became interested in the uses of electricity.
Task 2:
【答案】
1815， 1914， 35million
I.
A. villages，seaport
B. danger，long ocean voyage
C. a new land，a new language
D. finding a place to live
II.
a better life，opportunity，freedom
III.
A. England, Germany, Russia, Hungary
B. Roman Catholic, Jewish
C. customs，languages
IV.
A. Americanized，disappeared.
B. haven't disappeared，customs，identities
V.
A. were cheated，prejudice，mistreated
B. hardest，least-paid，dirtiest，most overcrowded
D. rejected，old-fashioned，ashamed
overcome
【原文】
Thousands of people came to American cities before Blacks and Puerto Ricans did. Between 1815 and 1914, more than 35 million Europeans crossed the ocean to find new homes in the United States.
Most of these immigrants were ordinary people. Few were famous when they arrived. Few became famous afterward. Most had lived in small villages. Few had ever been far outside them. Most of them faced the same kinds of problems getting to America: the hardship of going from their villages to a seaport, the unpleasantness—even danger—of the long ocean voyage, the strangeness of a new land, and of a new language, the problem of finding a place to live, of finding work in a new, strange country.
Every immigrant had his own reasons for coming to America. But nearly all shared one reason: They hoped for a better life. They considered America a special place, a land of opportunity, a land of freedom.
Immigrants came from many different countries: England, Germany, Denmark, Finland[, Russia, Italy, Hungary and many others.
They came with many different religions: Roman Catholic, Jewish, Quaker, Greek Orthodox. They brought many different customs and many languages.
Some people have called the United States a "melting pot". After immigrants were here awhile—in the melting pot—they became Americanized. Differences were "melted down". They
gradually disappeared.
Some people say no. America isn't a melting pot. It's more like a salad bowl. Important differences between groups of people haven't disappeared. Many groups have kept their own ways, their customs, their identities, and this has given America great strength.
Melting pot? Salad bowl? Perhaps there's some troth to both ideas.
In any case, life in America was hard for most immigrants—especially at first. Often they were cheated. Often they met with prejudice. They were often laughed at, even mistreated, by people who themselves had been immigrants.
Most of them soon found that the streets of America weren't paved with gold. They usually got the hardest jobs, and those that paid the least, the dirtiest places to live in, the most overcrowded tenements.
They came to be citizens of a new country; but often they felt like people without a country. They had given up their own, but they didn't understand their new one. They didn't really feel a part of it. And the people of the new one didn't always welcome them.
They came for the sake of their children, but in America their children often rejected them. To the children, their parents seemed old-fashioned. They didn't learn the new language quickly. Some didn't learn it at all. Their parents' customs made children ashamed.
Gradually, however, problems were overcome. For most immigrants, life in America was better. It certainly was better for their children and for their grandchildren.
Task 3:
【答案】
A.
The Life Story of Thomas Edison
Ohio，1847，industrial development, 1931, a modern nation
I.
A. curiosity，desire
B. 1857，station master‘s son
C. 1863
II.
A. New York City，electricity，report the prices
B. New Jersey，invented，produced
C. organized industrial research
D. 1877
E. 1879
III.
A. B. motion-picture machine
C. photography
D. streetcars，electric trains
IV.
B. turn off all power
C. the progress of man
B.
读: 27973次 大小: 1.0MB(共164页)
1) F
2) F
3) T
4) T
5) F
【原文】
When Thomas Edison was born in the small town of Milan, Ohio, in 1847, America was just beginning its great industrial development. The time in which he lived was an age of invention, filled with human and scientific adventures, and Edison became the hero of that age.
As a boy, Edison was not a good student. His parents took him out of school and his mother
taught him at home, where his great curiosity and desire to experiment often got him into trouble. When he was ten, Edison built his own chemistry laboratory. He sold sandwiches and newspapers on the local trains in order to earn money to buy supplies for his laboratory. His parents became accustomed, more or less, to his experiments and the explosions which sometimes shook the
house.
Edison‘s work as a sales boy with the railroad introduced him to the telegraph and with a friend, he built his own telegraph set. He taught himself the Morse telegraphic code and hoped for the chance to become a professional telegraph operator. A stroke of luck and Edison's quick thinking soon provided the opportunity.
One day, as young Edison stood waiting for a train to arrive, he saw the station master's sot wander into the track of an approaching train. Edison rushed out and carried the boy to safety. The thankful station master offered to teach Edison railway telegraphy. Afterwards, in 1863, he became tan expert telegraph operator and left home to work in various cities.
Six years later, in 1869, Edison arrived in New York City, poor and in debt. He went to work with a telegraph company. It was there that he became interested in the uses of electricity. At that time electricity was still in the experimental stages, and Edison hoped to invent new ways to use it for the benefit of people. As he once said: "My philosophy of life is work. I want to bring out the secrets of, nature and apply them for the happiness of man. I know of no better service to render for the short time we are in this world."
The same year, when he was only 22 years old, Edison invented an improved ticker-tape machine which could better report the prices on the New York Market. The ticker-tape machine was successful, and Edison decided to leave his job and concentrate wholly on inventing. When the president of the telegraph company asked how much they owed him for his invention, Edison was ready to accept only $3,000. Cautiously he said: "Suppose you make me an offer."
"How would $40,000 strike you?" the president inquired. Edison almost fainted, but he finally replied that the price was fair.
With this money, and now calling himself an electrical engineer, Edison formed his own "invention factory" in Newark, New Jersey. Over the next few years he invented and produced many new items, including the mimeograph machine, wax wrapping paper, and improvements of the telegraph.
In 1877 Edison decided he could no longer continue both manufacturing and inventing. He sold his share in the factory and built a new laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It was the first laboratory of its kind devoted to organized industrial research. One of the first inventions to come from his new laboratory was an improvement of Alexander Bell's telephone. Edison invented a
more powerful mouthpiece which removed the need to shout into the telephone. But his great inventions were still to come.
On August 12, 1877, Edison began experimenting with an instrument which he had designed and ordered to be built. It was a cylinder, wrapped in tinfoil and turned by a handle. As it revolved, a needle made a groove in the foil. Turning the handle, Edison began to shout.
"Mary had a little lamb
Whose fleece was white as snow!"
He stopped and moved the needle back in the starting position. Then, putting his ear close to the needle, he turned the handle again. A voice came out of the machine:
"Mary had a little lamb,
Whose fleece was white as snow!"
Edison had just invented the phonograph, a completely new concept: a talking machine.
While he was perfecting his phonograph, Edison also worked on another invention. He called it "an Electric Lamp for Giving Light by Incandescence". Today we call it the light bulb.
For years other inventors had experimented with electric lights, but none of the lights had proven economical to produce. Edison, in studying the problem, spent over a year experimenting. He tested 1,600 materials (even hairs from a friend's beard) to see if they would carry electric current and glow. Finally, on October 21, 1879, he tried passing electricity through a carbonized cotton thread in a vacuum glass bulb. In his own words Edison described the experiment: "... before nightfall the carbon was completed and inserted in the lamp. The bulb was exhausted of air and sealed, the current turned on, and the sight we had so long desired to see met our eyes." The lamp gave off a feeble, reddish glow, and it continued to bum for 40 hours. Edison's incredible invention proved that electric lighting would be the future light of the world.
Edison was now so famous as an inventor that people thought there was nothing he could not do. They began to call him "the wizard", as if he could produce an invention like magic. Few people realized how hard Edison worked, often 20 hours a day, and that most of his inventions were the results of hundreds of experiments.
For 60 years Edison was the world's leading inventor. He patented over 1,000 inventions which changed our way of living. He was one of the earliest inventors of the motion-picture machine. His invention of the phonograph was joined with photography to produce talking pictures. He also perfected the electric motor which made streetcars and electric trains possible.
It is no wonder that Edison received many honors during his life for contributions to the progress of mankind. The United States gave him its highest award, a special Congressional Medal of Honor. Yet, in spite of all his fame, Edison remained a modest man. He preferred to continue his work, rather than rest on his achievements. His motto was: "I find what the world needs; then I go ahead and try to invent it." He never considered himself a brilliant man and once remarked that genius was "2 percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration".
When Edison died in 1931, it was proposed that the American people mm off all power in their homes, streets, and factories for several minutes in honor of this great man. Of course, it was quickly realized that such an honor would be impossible. Its impossibility was indeed the real tribute to Edison's achievements. Electric power had become so important and vital a part of America's life that a complete shut-down for even a few seconds would have created chaos. As "one of the great heroes of invention", Edison rightfully belongs among America's and the world's great contributors to the progress of man.
大学英语4级听力原文3
Task 1:
【答案】
A.
Event
Kenny G was born. He toured Europe with his High School band. He made his first solo album. He won released his most successful album.
He won the Best Artist Award. He broke the world record for playing a
single note. Year 1956 1971 1982 1993 1994 1997
B.
1) F
2) F
3) T
【原文】
Saxophonist Kenny G is now the world's most successful jazz musician. He was born in 1956 as Kenny Gorelick in Seattle, USA, and he learned to play the saxophone at an early age. When he was just 15 years old, he toured Europe with his High School band. After studying at Washington University he started his career as a musician. In 1982 he signed for Arista Records and made his first solo album Kenny G.
Success came slowly at first, but during the 1990s Kenny became well-known on the international scene. He released Breathless, his most successful album so far in 1993, and in 1994 won the Best Artist Award at the 21st American Music Awards held in Los Angeles.
As well as making records, he also found time to play in front of another famous saxophone player—US President Bill Clinton—at the "Gala for the President" concert in Washington, and to break the world record for playing a single note (45 minutes and 47 seconds!) at the J & R Music World Store in New York in 1997.
During the last 20 years, Kenny G has played with superstars like Aretha Franklin, Michael Bolton and Whitney Houston, and he has sold more than 36 million albums worldwide... and he hasn't sung a note!
Task 2:
【答案】
1) c
2) d
3) c
【原文】
Senn: Everybody always has this misconception that female policemen don't do the same
thing as men do, you know. I've worked..
Interviewer: That's not true?
Senn: That is not true! I've worked my share of graveyard shifts, and, you know, split
shifts, and double-back and no days off, and...
Interviewer: Uh-huh...
Senn: ...as much as the next guy. There's no distinction used if there's a male or female
officer on duty. Two men on duty—I'll refer to as two men, ‘cause in my
field there's no difference between the genders. We're still the same. Okay, if there's
two men on duty—just because one's a female, she still gets in on the same type of
call. If there's a bar disturbance downtown, then we go too. There's been many
times where being the only officer on duty—that's it! It‘s just me and whoever
else is on duty in the county. They can come back me up if I need assistance. And it
does get a little hairy. You go in there, and you have these great big, huge
monster-guys, and they're just drunker than skunks, and can't see three feet in front
of them. And when they see you, they see fifteen people, and you know... But still,
there's enough...
Interviewer: That's where the uniform is important, I should imagine.
Senn: Sometimes, you know. If somebody is going to…or has a bad day, and they are
out to get a cop, you know, it doesn't matter if you're, you know, boy, girl,
infant or anything! When you've got that cop uniform on, they'll still take it out on
you.
Interviewer: Yeah...
Senn: But I think there's one advantage to being a female police officer. And that is the fact
that most men still have a little respect, and they won't smack you as easy as they
would one of the guys.
Interviewer: Uh-huh...
Senn: But I'll tell you one thing I‘ve learned—I'd rather deal with ten drunk men that one
drunk woman any day of the week!
Interviewer: Well, why is that?
Senn: Because women are so unpredictable. You cannot ever predict what a woman's
going to do.
Interviewer: Hmm...
Senn: Especially, if she's agitated, you know.
Interviewer: Emotionally upset.
Senn: Yeah. I saw a lady one time just get mad at the guy she was with
because he wouldn't buy her another drink— take off her high heel and lay
his head wide open. Yuch! Oh, they can be so vicious, you know.
Task 3:
【答案】
1) d
2) b
3) b
4) b
【原文】
You are watching a film in which two men are having a fight. They hit one another hard. At
the start they only fight with their fists. But soon they begin hitting one another over the heads with chairs. And so it goes on until one of the men crashes through a window—and falls thirty feet to the ground below. He is dead!
Of course he isn't really dead. With any luck he isn't even hurt. Why? Because the men who fall out of high windows or jump from fast-moving trains, who crash cars of even catch fire, are professionals. They do this for a living. These men are called ―stunt men‖. That is to say, they perform ―tricks‖.
There are two sides to their work. They actually do most of the things you see on the screen. For example, they fall from a high building. However, they do not fall on to hard ground but on to empty cardboard boxes covered with a mattress. Again, when they hit one another with chairs, the chairs are made of soft wood and when they crash through windows, the glass is made of sugar!
But although their work depends on trick of this sort, it also requires a high degree of skill and training. Often a stunt man‘s success depends on careful timing. For example, when he is "blown up" in a battle scene, he has to jump out of the way of the explosion just at the right moment.
Naturally stuntmen are well-paid for their work, but they lead dangerous lives. They often get seriously injured, and sometimes killed. A Norwegian stuntman, for example, skied over the edge of a cliff a thousand feet high. His parachute failed to open—and he was killed.
In spite of all the risks, this is no longer a profession for ―men only‖. Men no longer dress up as women when actresses have to perform some dangerous action. For nowadays there are ―stunt girls‖ too!