英语四级听力练习集锦48

Passage 14 To Do or Not to Do?

The Answer Is a Click-Away Can’t decide whether to dump your boyfriend, move house or sell your car? The answer may be just a click-away.Two British men and three women will let the Internet play God for 15 days by handing over their daily, sometimes life-changing decisions, to a potential jury¹ of 12.7 million people, Internet news portal MSN said in a statement. The five people were chosen as part of a project to give the Internet a chance to help ordinary people make important daily decisions.

This latest venture comes three decades after the publication of Luke Rhinehart’s best-selling book “The Dice² Man”,

the story of a man who gives up his control of life to the dice, and follows the worldwide success of reality TV show “Big Brother”. Each of the five will put a decision a day to the Internet community and will have to act on the outcome³ of the decision, although they will be given a “joker”— meaning they can back out of one decision —

during the period, MSN said. Internet users around the world will be able to vote on the decisions each day by visitingwww.liveyourlife.msn.co.uk. A dedicated⁴ site has been created around each participant, giving information about their backgrounds, their loves, hates, hopes and daily diary updates.

At the end of the 15 days, web users will decide which of the five has let the Internet live their life to the maximum

and he or she will win 10,000 pounds. In the past people tended to rely on dice or some fortune books to decide their next action. Nowadays it seems a popular trend to express their problems on the Internet to seek help. But is it really beneficial to make decisions based on the Internet? Or we’d better depend on ourselves and be responsible for our own lives.

1 jury   

n.陪审团，评委会；adj.临时用的；vt.挑选

参考例句：

• These twelve men are believed to compose the jury.据信，陪审团是由这12人组成的。
• The members of the jury were discharged from their duties.陪审员们被解除了职务。

2 dice   

n.骰子；vt.把（食物）切成小方块，冒险

参考例句：

• They were playing dice.他们在玩掷骰子游戏。
• A dice is a cube.骰子是立方体。

3 outcome   

n.结果，出口，演变

参考例句：

• The outcome of the experiment is in the lap of the gods.实验结果尚难预料。
• The outcome of the war is hard to foretell.战争胜负难以预卜。

4 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。