作为社会性考试，PETS不具有评价普通中学和大学校内英语教学水平的功能。但是通过公共英语四级的考生通过该级考试的考生，其英语水平基本符合一般专业技术人员或研究人员、现代企业经理等工作对英语的要求。是用人单位对应于的参考对象。下面是小编分享的公共英语四级阅读理解题，希望能对大家有所帮助!
公共英语阅读理解题【1】
Early in the age of affluence (富裕) that followed World War Ⅱ，an American retailing analyst named Victor Lebow proclaimed, “Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate." Americans have responded to Lebow's call, and much of the world has followed. Consumption has become a central pillar of life in industrial lands and is even embedded in social values. Opinion surveys in the world's two largest economics-Japan and the United States-show consumerist definitions of success becoming ever more prevalent. Overconsumption by the world's fortunate is an environmental problem unmatched in severity by anything but perhaps population growth. Their surging exploitation of resources threatens to exhaust or unalterably spoil forests, soils, water, air and climate. Ironically, high consumption may be a mixed blessing in human terms, too. The time-honored values of integrity of character, good work, friendship, family and community have often been sacrificed in the rush to riches. Thus many in the industrial lands have a sense that their world of plenty is somehow hollow, that misled by a consumerist culture, they have been fruitlessly attempting to satisfy what are essentially social, psychological and spiritual needs with material things. Of course, the opposite of overconsumption, poverty, is no solution to either environmental or human problems. It is infinitely worse for people and bad for the natural world too. Dispossessed (被剥夺得一无所有的) peasants slash, and burn their way into the rain forests of Latin America, and hungry nomads (游牧民族) turn their herds out onto fragile African grassland, reducing it to desert. If environmental destruction results when people have either too little or too much, we are left to wonder how much is enough .What level of consumption can the earth support ?When dose having more cease to add noticeably to human satisfaction?
1. The emergence of the affluent society after World War II .
A) led to the reform of the retailing system
B) resulted in the worship of consumerism
C )ve rise to the dominance of the new egoism
D) gave birth to a new generation of upper class consumers
2. Apart from enormous productivity, another important impetus to high consumption is
A) the people's desire for a rise in their living standards
B) the concept that one's success is measured by how much they consume
C) the imbalance that has existed between production and consumption
D) the conversion of the sale of goods into rituals
3. Why does the author say high consumption is a mixed blessing?
A) Because poverty still exists in an affluent society.
B) Because overconsumption won't last long due to unrestricted population growth.
C) Because traditional rituals are often neglected in the process of modernization.
D) Because moral values are sacrificed in pursuit of material satisfaction.
4. According to the passage, consumerist culture .
A) will not alleviate poverty in wealthy countries
B) will not aggravate environmental problems
C) cannot thrive on a fragile economy
D) cannot satisfy human spiritual needs
5. It can be inferred from the passage that .
A) human spiritual needs should match material affluence
B) whether high consumption should be encouraged is still an issue
C) how to keep consumption at a reasonable level remains a problem
D) there is never an end to satisfying people's material needs
参考答案：
BBDDC
公共英语阅读理解题【2】
Few creations of big technology capture the imagination like giant dams. Perhaps it is humankind’s long suffering at the mercy of flood and drought that makes the idea of forcing the waters to do our bidding so fascinating. But to be fascinated is also, sometimes, to be blind. Several giant dam projects threaten to do more harm than good.
The lesson from dams is that big is not always beautiful. It doesn’t help that building a big, powerful dam has become a symbol of achievement for nations and people striving to assert themselves. Egypt’s leadership in the Arab world was cemented by the Aswan High Dam. Turkey’s bid for First World status includes the giant Ataturk Dam.
But big dams tend not to work as intended. The Aswan Dam, for example, stopped the Nile flooding but deprived Egypt of the fertile silt that floods left — all in return for a giant reservoir of disease which is now so full of silt that it barely generates electricity.
And yet, the myth of controlling the waters persists. This week, in the heart of civilized Europe, Slovaks and Hungarians stopped just short of sending in the troops in their contention over a dam on the Danube. The huge complex will probably have all the usual problems of big dams. But Slovakia is bidding for independence from the Czechs, and now needs a dam to prove itself.
Meanwhile, in India, the World Bank has given the go-ahead to the even more wrong-headed Narmada Dam. And the bank has done this even though its advisors say the dam will cause hardship for the powerless and environmental destruction. The benefits are for the powerful, but they are far from guaranteed.
Proper, scientific study of the impacts of dams and of the costs and benefits of controlling water can help to resolve these conflicts. Hydroelectric power and flood control and irrigation are possible without building monster dams. But when you are dealing with myths, it is hard to be either proper, or scientific. It is time that the world learned the lessons of Aswan. You don’t need a dam to be saved.
