文都：2008年12月英语四级全真预测试卷(六)

　　Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition on the topic Is Failure a Bad Thing. You should write at least 120 words following the outline given below in Chinese:

　　1. 失败是常有的事。

　　2. 人们对失败有各种态度。

　　3. 我对失败的态度。

　　Is Failure a Bad Thing?

　　Part IIReading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)(15 minutes)

　　Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the question on Answer Sheet 1.

　　For questions 1-7, mark

　　Y (for YES) if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage;

　　N (for NO) if the statement contradicts the information given in the passage;

　　NG (for NOT GIVEN) if the information is not given in the passage.

　　For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.

　　The Migration of Birds

　　The migration of birds has never been properly explained. Homer brings it into his books, and Aristotle kept a record of the migration dates of different birds. Men of the past cut pictures of birds on stone 40,000 years ago, and they probably knew something about migration.

　　In the last hundred years scientists have studied migration quite closely by fixing metal bands to the legs of birds and then setting them free. The bands have on them the date and the place where the birds lived. So if, for example, a bird has an English “address” and is found in the south of Africa, the scientists learn something about its journey.

　　How do the birds know when to begin their migration? What tells them that the right time has come to move? It is probably not cold weather. But when the summer is ending in the north, the days become shorter and shorter. This may be the sign for the birds that the winter is coming.

　　In a certain experiment, some birds were put in a place where the sun could not be seen. The only light was electric. In this place the “days” were made longer and longer by keeping the light turned on for more and more hours in the day. The birds thought that spring was coming, although winter was in fact getting nearer every day. They began to sing. Therefore the light was the cause of their mistake. Perhaps the birds know when to start their migration by watching the daylight. The setting sun sends them home in the evenings. Perhaps the shorter days send them south.

　　But how do they find their way? That is the great difficulty. The young birds do not always go with the older ones who could perhaps remember the way from earlier journeys. The young are often left to find their own way, and they do find it.

　　If a bird is carried a short way from its home, it can often find its way back. But can it do this if it is carried a long way? At Midway Island eighteen birds were caught and banded. They were then put into boxes, and the boxes were placed in waiting aero planes. Some of the birds were taken to North America, some to Japan, some to the Philippines, some to the island of Oahu, and some to the Marshall Islands.

　　Fourteen of the birds returned home. One from the Philippines took thirty-two days on its journey, but it had to cover more than 4,000 miles.

　　These long journeys are rather different from the journey of the bird that just goes home after the day’s business. Over a short journey, a bird may remember things; but not over 4,000 miles. And how does it find its way over the sea? There is nothing on the sea to remember. Some birds fly regularly from Alaska to Hawaii, a journey of 2,000 miles and there is no land on the way.

　　An experimenter, Robert Wood, took six birds from Ross Island and sent them 826 miles to the South Pole. The ice there does nothing to help a bird to find the right direction. Every direction from the South Pole is north. There are no stars to be seen in summer because the sun is bright for 24 hours a day. So the birds could not use the stars to help them. It seems that Robert Wood had placed the birds in an impossible position. They could not even feel the turning of the earth, because it turns slowly there: about 63 feet in 24 hours, twenty feet from the pole.

　　But one bird found its way home in ten days.

　　What, then, directs the birds? Scientists have had many ideas. Once they thought it was the turning of the earth. Then they thought it was the sun. Both of these have been proven wrong. The scientist and musician Gustav Kramer noticed that some singing birds fly only at night when the time for migration comes. Does the moon help these birds after the sun has gone down? Perhaps, some experts think so. But another scientist, R. Drost, says that birds can find a small island like Helgoland on a dark night with no moon. What is the truth? What is the answer?