英语专业四级阅读真题

1995

Passage A

If you are buying a property in France, whether for a permanent or a holiday home, it is important to open a French bank account. Although it is possible to exist on traveler’s cheques, Eurocheques and credit cards issued by British banks, the fees for these services can be expensive.

The simplest way to pay regular bills, such as electricity, gas or telephone, particularly when you are not in residence, is by direct debit (a sum withdrawn form an account) from your French account.

To open a current account, you will need to show your passport and birth certificate and to provide your address in the United Kingdom. You will be issued with a cheque book within weeks of opening the account. In France it is illegal to be overdrawn. All accounts must be operated in credit. However, there are no bank charges.

Note that cheques take longer to clear in France than in Britain, and can only be stopped if stolen or lost.

The easiest way to transfer money from a British bank account to a French one is by bank transfer: simply provide your British bank with the name, address and number or your French bank account. The procedure takes about a week and costs

between ￡5 and ￡40 for each transaction, depending on your British bank.

Alternatively, you can transfer money via a French bank in London. You can also send a sterling cheque (allow at least 12 days for the cheque to be cleared), Eurocheques or traveler’s cheques.

Finally, it is a good idea to make a friend of your French bank manager. His help can prove invaluable.

Passage B

PROOF AGAINST HEART ATTACKS

Does a drink a day keep heart attacks away? Over the past 20 years, numerous studies have found that moderate alcohol consumption—say, one or two beers, glasses of wine or cocktails daily— helps to prevent coronary heart disease. Last week a report in the New England Journal of Medicine added strong new evidence in support of that theory. More important, the work provided the first solid indication of how alcohol works to protect the heart.

In the study, researchers from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School compared the drinking habits of 340 men and women who had suffered recent heart attacks with those of healthy people of the same age and sex. The scientists found that people who sip one three drinks a day are about half as likely to suffer heart attacks as nondrinkers are. The apparent source

of the protection: those who drank alcohol had higher blood levels of high-density lipoproteins, the so-called good cholesterol, which is known to repel heart disease.

As evidence has mounted, some doctors have begun recommending a daily drink for patients of heart diseases. But most physicians are not ready to recommend a regular happy hour for everyone. The risks of teetotalling are nothing compared with the dangers of too much alcohol, including high blood pressure, strokes and liver troubles—not to mention violent behavior and traffic accidents. Moreover, some studies suggest that even moderate drinking may increase the incidence of breast and colon cancer. Until there is evidence that the benefits of a daily dose of alcohol outweigh the risks, most people won’t be able to take a doctor’s prescription to the neighborhood bar or liquor store.

Passage C

RUN, RABBITS, RUN

From Greenwich to The Mall is good sport for all In its 13 years, the London Marathon has acquired a pedigree of excellence. That excellence is not just the awesome energy of the best runners and the smoothness of the organization, but also the quality of determination shown by all the competitors, male and female, able-bodied and disabled. When more than 26,000 gather at Greenwich tomorrow morning, only a few will be in the running to win the big prize money. The success of this event is that most of the athletes

would be prepared to pay serious money just for the privilege of running the 26 miles 385 yards to the mall past the most famous urban scenery in the world.

The London Marathon has become one of Britain’s leading sports events. Since 1981, something like 45 million has been raised in individual sponsorship for charities. Tomorrow hundreds of thousands of people will line the route to cheer and to gasp in sympathetic participation. Millions will watch on television. Although they will be excited by the struggle for first place, they will also identify with the ordinary person trying to fulfill his or her physical potential. Many spectators will wonder whether next year they could complete the historic distance. That is how athletic dreams are born.

If the London Marathon and growth in physical fitness have transformed the lives of many adults, it is also important that children should have the opportunity to fulfill their ability in individual competitive sports.

Team games should be an essential ingredient of physical education in the national curriculum. However, coexisting with the playing of team games there should be an equal emphasis on the importance of individual competitive sports at all levels in schools.

The Government must be careful that in insisting on the value of team games in schools, it does not ignore the value of individual activities, which are practiced throughout the world and form the basis of the Olympic Games. Many of the runners in the London Marathon tomorrow have found courage, fulfillment and

fitness through training for the event. These are qualities that schoolchildren can, and should, acquire through a variety of demanding individual activities in physical education.

Passage D

No Stopping Him: The Fast Man with a Fast Car

On the track, the form embodies power, each curve and line is moulded for speed.

For the man at the wheel is the fastest athlete in the world today: Linford Christie. European, Commonwealth and World champion, who has just taken delivery of his new car, the latest version of the Toyota Supra.

It is a conspicuously fast car. The result perfectly matches Christie’s own character, and shares his inability to compromise when it comes to delivering performance.

The Supra, priced a few pence short of ￡39,000 is rumored to be capable of 180 mph, but the speed is artificially limited to 155 mph. From a standing start, it can reach 60 mph in under five seconds.

The Supra might raise Christie’s profile with the police, but if he is pulled over nowadays it is usually by an officer seeking a chat and an autograph rather than

anything more official. After an incident in 1988 when he was stopped, he prosecuted the police and won ￡30,000 compensation for wrongful arrest.

Safety is high on the list of Supra extras, with driver and passenger airbags; antilock braking; electronic traction control to avoid wheel-spin; side-impact door beams; and a steering column that collapses to protect the driver in an accident. Then there is the six-speed gearbox; cruise control; air-conditioning; alarm and immobilizer.

Christie, the British athletics team captain since 1990, will enjoy the comfort of the Supra during a hectic few weeks this June and July when he visits Sheffield, Wales, Gateshead, Wrexham, Edinburgh, Crystal Palace, and then Gateshead again, as his season builds towards the Commonwealth Games in August and the World Cup in September.