2023年英语专业四级短文朗读.doc

短文朗诵及概括大意

Passage 1

A simple piece of rope hangs between some environmentally friendly Americans and their neighbors. On one side stand those who have begun to see clothes dryers as wasteful consumers of energy (up to 6% of total electricity) and powerful emitters of carbon dioxide (up to a ton of CO2 per household every year). As an alternative, they are turning to clotheslines as part of what Alexander Lee, an environmentalist, calls "what-I-can- do environmentalism."

But on the other side are people who oppose air-drying laundry outside on aesthetic grounds. Increasingly, they have persuaded community and homeowners associations (HOAs) across the U.S. to ban outdoor clotheslines, which they say not only look unsightly but also lower surrounding property values. Those actions, in turn, have sparked a right-to-dry movement that is pressing for legislation to protect the choice to use clotheslines. Only three states--Florida, Hawaii and Utah--have laws written broadly enough to protect clotheslines. Right-to-dry advocates argue that there should be more.

Matt Reck is the kind of eco-conscious guy who feeds his trees with bathwater and recycles condensation drops from his air conditioners to water plants. His family also uses a clothesline. But Otto Hagen, president of Reck's HOA in Wake Forest, N.C., notified him that a neighbor h, ad complained about his line. The Recks ignored the warning and still dry their clothes on a rope in the yard. "Many people claim to be environmentally friendly but don't take matters into their own hands," says Reck. HOAs Hagen has decided to hold off taking action. "I'm not going to go crazy," he says. "But if Matt keeps his line and more neighbors complain, I'll have to address it again."

North Carolina lawmakers tried and failed earlier this year to insert language into an energy bill that would expressly prevent HOAs from regulating clotheslines. But the issue remains a touchy one with HOAs and real estate agents. "Most aesthetic restrictions are rooted, to a degree, in the belief that homogenous (统一协调旳) exteriors are supportive of property value," says Sara Stubbins, executive director of the Community Association Institute's North Carolina chapter. In other words, associations worry that housing prices will fall if prospective buyers think their would-be neighbors are too poor to afford dryers.

Alexander Lee dismisses the notion that clotheslines devalue property assets, advocating that the idea "needs to change in light of global warming." "We all have to do at least something to decrease our carbon footprint," Alexander Lee says.

Passage 2

Within that exclusive group of literary characters who have survived through the centuries--from Hamlet to Huckleberry Finn--few can rival the cultural impact of Sherlock Holmes. Since his first public appearance 20 years ago, the gentleman with the curved pipe and a taste for cocaine, the master of deductive reasoning and elaborate disguise, has left his mark everywhere--in crime literature, film and television, cartoons and comic books.

At Holmes' side, of course, was his trusted friend Dr. Watson. Looming even larger, however, was another doctor, one whose medical practice was so slow it allowed him plenty of time to pursue his literary ambition. His name: Arthur Conan Doyle. As the creator of these fictional icons, Conan Doyle has himself become something of a cult figure, the object of countless critical studies, biographies and fan clubs.

Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859, in a respectable middle-class Catholic family. Still, it was far from an easy life. There was never enough money; they moved frequently in search of lower rents; and his father, a civil servant and illustrator was an alcoholic who had to be institutionalized. Yet the early letters he wrote to his mother are surprisingly optimistic, concerned mainly with food, clothes, allowances and schoolwork. At 14 came his first unforgettable visit to London, including Madame Tussaud's, where he was "delighted with the room of Horrors, and the images of the murderers."

A superb student, Conan Doyle went on to medical school, where he was attracted by Dr. Joseph Bell, a professor with an uncanny ability to diagnose patients even before they opened their mouths. For a time he worked as Bell's outpatient clerk and would watch, amazed, at how the location of a callus could reveal a man's profession, or how a quick look at a skin rash told Bell that the patient had once lived in Bermuda. In 1886, Conan Doyle outlined his first novel, A Study in Scarlet, which he described as "a simple tale of mystery to make a little extra money." Its main character, initially called Sherringford Hope and later called Sherlock Holmes, was based largely on Bell. But Holmes' first appearance went almost unnoticed, and the struggling doctor devoted nearly all of his spare time to writing long historical novels in the style of Sir Walter Scott—novels that he was convinced would make his reputation. It wasn't to be. In 1888, Holmes reappeared in A Scandal in Bohemia, a short story in Strand Magazine. And this time, its hero took an immediate hit and Conan Doyle's life would never be the same.

Passage 3

The Internet, E-commerce and globalization are making a new economic era possible. In the future, capitalist markets will largely be replaced by a new kind of economic system based on networked relationships, contractual arrangements and access rights.

Has the quality of our lives at work, at home and in our communities increased in direct proportion to all the new Internet and business-to-business Internet services being introduced into our lives? I have asked this question of hundreds of CEOS and corporate executives in Europe and the United States. Surprisingly, virtually everyone has said, "No, quite contrary." The very people responsible for ushering in what some have called a "technological renaissance" say they are working longer hours, feel more stressed, are more impatient, and are even less civil in their dealings with colleagues and friends--not to mention strangers. And what's more revealing, they place much of the blame on the very same technologies they are so aggressively championing.

The techno gurus (领袖) promised us that access would make life more convenient and give us more time. Instead, the very technological wonders that were supposed to liberate us have begun to enslave us in a web of connections from which there seems to be no easy escape.

If an earlier generation was preoccupied with the quest to enclose a vast geographic frontier, the generation, it seems, is more caught up in the colonization of time. Every spare moment of our time is being filled with some form of commercial connection, making time itself the most scarce of all resources. Our e-mail, voice mail and cell phones, our 24-hour Interact news and entertainment all seize for our attention.

And while we have created every kind of labor-and time-saving device to service our needs, we are beginning to feel like we have less time available to us than any other humans in history. That is because the great proliferation of labor-and-time-saving services only increases the diversity, pace and flow of commodified activity around us. For example, e-mail is a great convenience. However, we now find ourselves spending much of our day frantically responding to each other's electronic messages. The cell phone is a great time-saver, except now we are always potentially in reach of someone else who wants our attention.
Social conservatives talk about the decline in civility and blame it on the loss of a moral compass and religious values. Has anyone bothered to ask whether the hyper speed culture is making all of us less patient and less willing to listen and defer, consider and reflect?

Maybe we need to ask what kinds of connections really count and what types of access really matter in the e-economy era. This new technology revolution is only about hyper efficiency, then we risk losing something even precious than time--our sense of what it means to be a caring human being.

Passage 4
At the age of twelve years, the human body is at its most vigorous. It has yet to reach its full size and strength, and its owner his or her full intelligence; but at this age the likelihood of death is least. Earlier, we were infants and young children, and consequently more vulnerable; later, we shall undergo a progressive loss of our vigor and resistance which, though imperceptible at first, will finally become so steep that we can live no longer, however well we look after ourselves, and however well society, and our doctors, look after us.
This decline in vigor with the passing of time is called ageing. It is one of the most unpleasant discoveries which we all make that we must decline in this way, that if we escape wars, accidents and disease we shall eventually "die of old age", and that this happens at a rate which differs little from person to person, so that there are heavy odds in favor of our dying between the ages of sixty-five and eighty. Some of us will die sooner, a few will live longer—on into a ninth or tenth decade. But the chances are against it, and there is a virtual limit on how long we can hope to remain alive, however lucky and robust we are.
Normal people tend to forget this process unless and until they are reminded of it. We are so familiar with the fact that man ages, that people have for years assumed that the process of losing vigor with time, of becoming more likely to die the older we get, was something self-evident, like the cooling of a hot kettle or the wearing-out of a pair of shoes. They have also assumed that all animals, and probably other organisms such as trees, or even the universe itself, must in the nature of things "wear out".
Most animals we commonly observe do in fact age as we do, if given the chance to live long enough; and mechanical systems like a wound watch, or the sun, do in fact an out of energy in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics (热力学) (whether the whole universe does so is a moot point at present). But these are not analogous to what happens when man ages. A run-down watch is still a watch and can be rewound. An old watch, by contrast, becomes so worn and unreliable that it eventually is not worth mending. But a watch could never repair itself—it does not consist of living parts, only of metal, which wears away by friction. We could, at one time, repair ourselves—well enough, at least, to overcome all but the most instantly fatal illnesses and accidents. Between twelve and eighty years we gradually lose this power; an illness which at twelve would knock us over, at eighty can knock us out, and into our grave. If we could stay as vigorous as we are at twelve, it would take about 700 years for half of us to die, and another 700 for the survivors to be reduced by half again.

Passage 5
This year, like lots of other people, I'm going to try to make my own Christmas presents. It's not the first time that I've promised myself this. Being a milliner, and an all-round crafty type, I've often thought I should put my money where my mouth is. But this year I'm really going to stick to it. It's partly that I'm short of cash, but also that I've recently returned from an inspiring trip around Britain, looking into "make do and mend" for BBC2's Newsnight.
I dreamed up the trip a few months ago. The thought of traveling the country--making things as I went, meeting artists and craftspeople--sounded like the perfect way to spend the summer. I'd pack a tent and a sewing machine and off I'd go. But by the time I finalized my plans and hit the road, leaves were already crunching under foot. It seemed crazy to camp with winter on the way; instead, Newsnight viewers offered me board and lodging in return for help with a craft task. There was an overwhelming response.
　　My tasks ranged from darning (缝补) a moth-eaten monk's jumper to making trousers for a stilt walker. Textile students in Harpenden offered to pay for my petrol in return for a talk about hats. In Derby, Amy needed help to transform an old pair of curtains.
I was really struck by people's growing enthusiasm for making things. I asked a WI group in Sheffield how many could sew, and only a few put up their hands. But when I asked who wanted to learn, nearly everyone responded positively. At the Textile Workshop in Nottingham, the number of classes on offer has doubled in a year, and a knitting club in Leeds is growing by the week.
　　 Craft is definitely fashionable at the moment. But over and above fashion, we're learning to appreciate effort and quality again. Perhaps once people rediscover the pleasure to be gained from making something unique, it may stick.
　　 Sue Pilchard is curator (管理者) of quilts at the V&A, where next spring she'll be putting on the museum's first major quilting exhibition. Sue believes the return to crafting is wrapped up in how we are redefining ourselves. "There's certainly a movement.., towards a new domesticity. People, especially women, are starting to think about the way they live their lives. It's 40 years since the first woman's liberation conference was held in Oxford. Since that time we've been in the workplace, and we've had the opportunity of choice. Now we're deliberately choosing to go back into the home."
　 Whether you agree with that or not, there's something about Christmas that brings out the artistic streak in everyone. Whether it's baking mince pies or decking the halls, we're all prepared to have a go. So if you fancy pushing the boat out and making a few presents, try these really simple ideas, each inspired by my recent journey. They make ideal stocking fillers or small gifts, and take no longer than 30 minutes each. Play some carols, settle down with a steaming cup of cocoa, and forget the cold. You'll save yourself a bit of money and spread a little bit of love too!

Passage 6
Racket, din clamor, noise, whatever you want to call it, unwanted sound is America's most widespread nuisance. But noise is more than just a nuisance. It constitutes a real and present danger to people's health. Day and night, at home, at work, and at play, noise can produce serious physical and psychological stress. No one is immune to this stress. Though we seem to adjust to noise by ignoring it, the ear, in fact, never closes and the body still responds—sometimes with extreme tension, as to a strange sound in the night.
　　The annoyance we feel when faced with noise is the most common outward symptom of the stress building up inside us. Indeed, because irritability is so apparent, legislators have made public annoyance the basis of many noise abatement programs. The more subtle and more serious health hazards associated with stress caused by noise traditionally have been given much less attention. Neverthe