来自学霸的专四专八听力备考技巧

According to Charles, people send messages via facsimile because ______.

A．it is cheaper and faster than ordinary mail

B．it can send things that could not be expressed by telex

C．it is faster and not much more expensive than mail

D．the Royal Mail could not reach places abroad

听力原文： Now European finance ministers are expected to reprimand the Irish government today after they meet in Brussels. They've been alarmed by December's budget in the Irish Republic which cut taxes and increased government spending. The other European countries fear this will stoke up inflation and undermine the stability of the Euro, the single currency.

Finance ministers from the European Unions 15 states are holding their regular monthly meeting in Brussels. They've been given the tricky task of handing out some public criticism to the government of the country with the most successful economy, the Irish Republic. In the last five years Ireland has boomed growing by an average eight percent a year, unemployment has reached its lowest level for 20 years and commodity prices in Dublin became more expensive than in London.

Why do other European countries criticize Ireland?

A．They worry that the Irish Republic's budget plan will undermine the stability of European Unions.

B．EU countries fear that Irish Republic's finance plan will cause inflation.

C．Other countries will have to cut taxes.

D．Other EU countries must increase government spending, too.

During the first half of the seventeenth century, when the nations of Europe were quarreling over who owned the New World, the Dutch and the Swedes founded competing villages ten miles apart on the Delaware River. Not long afterward, the English took over both places and gave them new names, New Castle and Wilmington.

For a century and a half the two villages grew rapidly, but gradually Wilmington gained all the advantages. It was a little closer to Philadelphia, so when new textile mills opened, they opened in Wilmington, not in New Castle. There was plenty of water power from rivers and creeks at Wilmington, so when young Irenee DuPont chose a place for his gunpowder mill, it was Wilmington he chose, not New Castle. Wilmington became a town and then a city —a rather important city, much the largest in Delaware. And New Castle, bypassed by the highways and waterways that made Wilmington prosperous, slept ten miles south on the Delaware River. No two villages with such similar pasts could have gone such separate ways. Today no two pieces could be more different.

Wilmington, with its expressways and parking lots and all its other concrete ribbons and badges, is a tired old veteran of the industrial wars and wears a vacant stare. Block after city block where people used to live and shop is broken and empty.

New Castle never had to make way for progress and therefore never had any reason to tear down its seventeenth-and eighteenth-century houses. So they are still here, standing in tasteful rows under ancient elms around the original town green. New Castle is still an agreeable place to live. The pretty buildings of its quiet past make a serene setting for the lives of 4,800 people. New Castle may be America's loveliest town, but it is not an important town at all. Progress passed it by.

Poor New Castle.

Lucky Wilmington.

Which is the major factor that made the difference between Wilmington and New Castle?

A．Convenience for traffic.

B．The Delaware River.

C．The investment of Irenee DuPont.

D．The textiles mills.

SECTION A CHINESE TO ENGLISH

Directions: Translate the following text into English.

窗子许里面人看出去，同时也许外面人看进来，所以在热闹地方住的人要用窗帘儿，替他们的私生活做个保障。晚上访人，只要看窗里有无灯光，就约略可以猜到主人在不在家，不必打开了门再问，好比不等人开口，从眼睛里看出他的心思。关窗的作用等于闭眼。天地间有许多景象是要闭了眼才看得见的，比如梦。假使窗外的人声物态太嘈杂了，关了窗好让灵魂自由地去探胜，安静地默想。