2010年12月英语四级真题及答案(含解析)(16)

28 What do we learn about Pete Gentry?

29 What message is the speaker trying to convey?

Passage Two

Some people want to make and save a lot of money in order to retire early. I see people pursuing higher paying and increasingly demanding careers to accomplish this goal. They make many personal sacrifices in exchange for income today. The problem is that tomorrow might not come. Even if it all goes according to plan, will you know how to be happy when you are not working if you spend your entire life making money? More importantly, who will be around for you to share your leisure time with? At the other extreme are people who live only for today. Why bother saving when I might not be here tomorrow, they argue. The danger of this approach is that tomorrow may come after all. And most people don't want to spend all their tomorrows working for a living. The earlier neglect of saving, however, makes it difficult not to work when you are older. You may be surprise to hear me say that if you must pick an extreme I think it's better to pick the spend-all approach. As long as you don't mind continuing to work, assuming your health allows, you should be OK. At least, you are making use of your money, and hopefully deriving value and pleasure from it. Postponing doing what you love and being with people you love until retirement can be a mistake. It may never come. Retirement can be a great time for some people. For others, it is a time of boredom, loneliness and poor health.

30 Why do some people pursue higher paying but demanding careers?

31 What is the danger facing people who live only for today?

32 What does the speaker seem to advocate?

Passage Three

Imagine that someone in your neighborhood broke the law, and the judge put the whole neighborhood under suspicion. How fair will that be? Well, it happens everyday to high schoolers. Just because some students have stolen things in shops, all of us are treated like thieves. Even though I’d never steal.

Store employees looked at me like I’m some kind of hardened criminal. For example, during one lunch period, my friend Denny and I went to the Graben Gore Restaurant to have a hotdog. We arrived to find a line of students waiting outside. A new sign in the window told the story. “No more than two students at a time”. After 15 minutes, we finally got in. But the store manger laid the evil eye on us. I asked him about the new sign, and he said, “You kids are stealing too much stuff.” You kids? Too much stuff? We were not only assumed to be thieves, but brilliant, greedy thieves. The most annoying thing though, is the way employees watched my friends and me. It’s horrible.

Once, at a drug store, I was looking around and found a guy standing on a large box, stocking the shelves. He was watching my hands, more than he was watching his own. I showed him that my hands were empty. He got down off his box and rushed off, as if he was going to get the store