Total score: 710 Total time allowed: 125 minutes
Part I Writing (多题多卷写作题 1) (30 minutes)
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay. You should start your essay with a brief description of the picture and then express your views on the importance of doing small things before undertaking something big. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.
Part I Writing (多题多卷写作题 2) (30 minutes)
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay. You should start your essay with a brief description of the picture and then express your views on the importance of reading literature. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.
Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)
Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.
Can Digital Textbook Truly Replace the Print Kind?
The shortcomings of traditional print edition textbooks are obvious: For starters they’re heavy, with the average physics textbook weighing 3.6 pounds. They’re also expensive, especially when you factor in the average college student’s limited budget, typically costing hundreds of dollars every semester.
But the worst part is that print version of textbooks are constantly undergoing revisions. Many professors require that their students use only the latest versions in the classroom, essentially rendering older texts unusable. For students, it means they’re basically stuck with a four pound paper-weight that they can’t sell back.
Which is why digital textbooks, if they live up to their promise, could help ease many of these shortcomings. But till now, they’ve been something like a mirage（幻影）in the distance, more like a hazy（模糊的）dream than an actual reality. Imagine the promise: Carrying all your textbooks in a 1.3 pound iPad? It sounds almost too good to be true.
But there are a few pilot schools already making the transition（过渡）over to digital books. Universities like Cornell and Brown have jumped onboard. And one medical program at the University of California, Irvine, gave their entire class iPads with which to download textbooks just last year.
But not all were eager to jump aboard.
“People were tired of using the iPad textbook besides using it for reading,” says Kalpit Shah, who will be going into his second year at Irvine’s medical program this fall. “They weren’t using it as a source of communication because they couldn’t read or write in it. So a third of the people in my program were using the iPad in class to take notes, the other third were using laptops and the last third were using paper and pencil.”
The reason it hasn’t caught on yet, he tells me, is that the functionality of e-edition textbooks is incredibly limited, and some students just aren’t motivated to learn new study behavior.
But a new application called Inkling might change all that. The company just released an updated version last week, and it’ll be utilized in over 50 undergraduate and graduate classrooms this coming school year.
“Digital textbooks are not going to catch on,” says Inkling CEO Matt Maclnnis as he’s giving me a demo（演示）over coffee. “What I mean by that is the current perspective of the digital textbook is it’s an exact copy of the print book. There’s Course Smart, etc., these guys who take any image of the page and put it on a screen. If that’s how we’re defining digital textbooks, there’s no hope of that becoming a mainstream product.”
He calls Inkling a platform for publishers to build rich multimedia content from the ground up, with a heavy emphasis on real-world functionality. The traditional textbook merely serves as a skeleton.
At first glance Inkling is an impressive experience. After swiping（敲击）into the iPad app (应用软件 ), which you can get for free here, he opens up a few different types of textbooks.
Up first is a chemistry book. The boot time is pretty fast, and he navigates through (浏览 ) a few chapters before swiping into a fully rendered 3D molecule that can be spun around to view its various building blocks. “Publishers give us all of the source media, artwork, videos,” he says, “We help them think through how to actually build something for this platform.”
大学英语四级考试试卷真题Next he pulls up a music composition textbook, complete with playable demos. It’s a learning experience that attacks you from multiple sensory directions. It’s clear why this would be something a music major would love.
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