2018 年 06 月大学英语四级考试真题（第 3 套）

Neon (霓虹) is to Hong Kong as red phone booths are to London and fog is to San Francisco.

When night falls, red and blue and other colors __26__ a hazy (雾蒙蒙的) glow

over a city lit

up by tens of thousands of neon signs. But many of them are going dark, __27__ by more

practical, but less romantic, LEDs (发光二极管).

Changing building codes, evolving tastes, and the high cost of maintaining those wonderful

old signs have businesses embracing LEDs, which are energy __28__, but

still carry

great cost. "To me, neon represents memories of the past," says photographer Sharon Blance,

whose series Hong Kong Neon celebrates the city's famous signs. "Looking at the signs now I get

a feeling of amazement, mixed with sadness."

Building a neon sign is an art practiced by __29__ trained on the job to

mold

glass tubes into __30__ shapes and letters. They fill these tubes with

gases that glow

when __31__. Neon makes orange, while other gases make yellow or blue. It

takes

many hours to craft a single sign.

Blance spent a week in Hong Kong and __32__ more than 60 signs; 22 of them

appear in the series that capture the signs lighting up lonely streets—an __33__ that

makes it easy to admire their colors and craftsmanship. "I love the beautiful, handcrafted,

old-fashioned __34__ of neon," says Blance. The signs do nothing more than

__35__

a restaurant, theater, or other business, but do so in the most striking way possible.

For thousands of years, people have known that the best way to understand a concept is to

explain it to someone else. "While we teach, we learn," said Roman philosopher Seneca. Now

scientists are bringing this ancient wisdom up-to-date. They're documenting why teaching is such

a fruitful way to learn, and designing innovative ways for young people to engage in instruction.

Researchers have found that students who sign up to tutor others work harder to understand

the material, recall it more accurately and apply it more effectively. Student teachers score higher

on tests than pupils who're learning only for their own sake. But how can children, still learning

themselves, teach others? One answer: They can tutor younger kids. Some studies have found that

first-born children are more intelligent than their later-born siblings (兄弟姐妹). This suggests

their higher IQs result from the time they spend teaching their siblings. Now educators are

experimenting with ways to apply this model to academic subjects. They engage college

undergraduates to teach computer science to high school students, who in turn instruct middle

school students on the topic.

But the most cutting-edge tool under development is the "teachable agent"—a computerized

character who learns, tries, makes mistakes and asks questions just like a real-world pupil.

Computer scientists have created an animated (动画的) figure called Betty's Brain, who has been

"taught" about environmental science by hundreds of middle school students. Student teachers are

motivated to help Betty master certain materials. While preparing to teach, they organize their

knowledge and improve their own understanding. And as they explain the information to it, they

identify problems in their own thinking.

Feedback from the teachable agents further enhances the tutors' learning. The agents'

questions compel student tutors to think and explain the materials in different ways, and watching

the agent solve problems allows them to see their knowledge put into action.

Above all, it's the emotions one experiences in teaching that facilitate learning. Student tutors

feel upset when their teachable agents fail, but happy when these virtual pupils succeed as they

derive pride and satisfaction from someone else's accomplishment.

A new batch of young women—members of the so-called Millennial (千禧的)

generation—has been entering the workforce for the past decade. At the starting line of their

careers, they are better educated than their mothers and grandmothers had been—or than their

young male counterparts are now. But when they look ahead, they see roadblocks to their success.

They believe that women are paid less than men for doing the same job. They think it's easier for

men to get top executive jobs than it is for them. And they assume that if and when they have

children, it will be even harder for them to advance in their careers.

While the public sees greater workplace equality between men and women now than it did

20-30 years ago, most believe more change is needed. Among Millennial women, 75% say this

country needs to continue making changes to achieve gender equality in the workplace, compared

with 57% of Millennial men. Even so, relatively few young women (15%) say they have been

discriminated against at work because of their gender.

As Millennial women come of age they share many of the same views and values about work

as their male counterparts. They want jobs that provide security and flexibility, and they place

relatively little importance on high pay. At the same time, however, young working women are

less likely than men to aim at top management jobs: 34% say they're not interested in becoming a

boss or top manager; only 24% of young men say the same. The gender gap on this question is

even wider among working adults in their 30s and 40s, when many women face the trade-offs that

go with work and motherhood.

These findings are based on a new Pew Research Center survey of 2,002 adults, including

810 Millennials (ages 18-32), conducted Oct. 7-27, 2013. The survey finds that, in spite of the

dramatic gains women have made in educational attainment and labor force participation in recent

decades, young women view this as a man's world—just as middle-aged and older women do.