大学英语六级（2013年12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷318

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition entitled Choosing An Occupation. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. Write your essay on Answer Sheet 1.

M: Hello. W: Hello, Sam. This is Paula Handson. Sorry to bother you. But I’m having a small problem I thought you might be able to help me with. M: Sure, Paula. What’ s up? W: Well, you know Sarah and I moved into an off campus apartment in the fall, over on the west side of town. Anyway we have been happy with it until the past couple of months. M: Yeah? What happened? W: Well, the dishwasher broke down. So we reported it to Ms. Connors, the owner. She said she ’d take care of it. But a month went by and nothing happened. M: Did you get back in touch with her? W: I got a repair person to give me an estimate, then I sent it to her. When I didn’t hear from her, I had the repair done. And I deducted the cost from the rent check. M: So what’s the problem? W: She called here mad as a hornet. She said she could have gotten the repair done for less money. Now she’ s threatening to evict us for not paying the full rent check. M: Hold on, Paula. It does sound pretty serious. But I’m sure you can all sit down and work it out. W: Well, you are over at the law school. So I wondered if you would mind coming with Sarah and me when we go to talk to Ms. Connors. We ’re supposed to meet with her tomorrow night at eight. M: Sure. I haven’t studied a lot about contracts yet. But I’d be glad to help you straighten things out. Why don’t I stop by at about 7:30? W: Thanks, Sam. You’re a lifesaver. Questions 1 to 4 are based on the conversation you have just heard. 1. Where does the woman live now? 2. What does the landlord threaten to do? 3. When will the man meet the woman? 4. Who is the owner of the house? Campus. Sarah’ s home. Off campus apartment. A hotel on the west of the town.

W: What a nice, quiet spot away from all those people. Now tell me what’s bothering you. M: Great. I need to get this off my chest. I’m having problems living with John, my roommate. We’ ve barely spoken to each other in a month, and when we do, it’ s to fight. W: I knew you two were having problems, but I didn’t know that things were so bad. What started it all? M: Well, it started when we first moved in. I had a lot of things, and John wasn’t thrilled. He’s not easy to please, you know. W: So where did you find the room for all your stuff? M: I put it in the closet in the kitchen. This made him really upset because he wanted to put his surfing gear in there. W: Was that the only problem? M: Oh, no. I like a neat, orderly apartment, but John is so carefree. His part of the apartment is always a mess. That’s okay if he’ s just messy in his room, but we also share living space, such as the kitchen, living room, bath and etc. W: Have you tried talking to him about this? M: I’ve tried, but then he starts yelling at me about how my friends are always coming over when he has a lot of work to do. I don’ t know what to do. W: You might consider trying to compromise with him. If he promises to keep the house tidy, then you’ll get his permission before you bring your friends over. M: That just might work. Thanks for the advice. W: Anytime. Questions 5 to 8 are based on the conversation you have just heard. 5. Where did this conversation probably take place? 6. Who is John? 7. Why does John get angry at the man? 8. What did the woman suggest the man do? In a crowded classroom. In an empty room. In a busy street corner. In a shopping centre.

How often one hears children wishing they were grown-ups, and, old people wishing they were young again? Each age has its pleasures and its pains, and the happiest person is the one who enjoys what each age gives him with out wasting his time in useless regrets. Childhood is a time when there are few responsibilities to make life difficult. If a child has good parents, he is fed, looked after and loved, whatever he may do. It is impossible that he will ever again in his life be given so much without having to do anything in return. What’ s more, life is always giving new things to the child—things that have lost their in terest for older people because they are too well known. But a child has his pains: he is not so free to do what he wishes to do; he is repeatedly being told not to do something, or being punished for what he has wrongly done. When a young man starts to earn his own living, he can no longer expect others to pay for his food, his clothes, and his room, but has to work if he wants to live comfortably. If he spends most of his time playing about in the way that he used to as a child, he will go hungry. And if he breaks the laws of society as he used to break the laws of his parents, he may go to prison. If, however, he works hard, keeps out of trouble and has good health, he can have the great happiness of building up for himself his own position in society. Questions 9 to 11 are based on the passage you have just heard. 9. What should people do to be the happiest person? 10. What is the disadvantage of being a child? 11. Which of the following statement is NOT true according to the passage? To live happily. To be contented. To live and cherish what you have at the moment. To have a great ambition.

Why do we cry? Can you imagine life without tears? Not only do tears keep your eyes lubricated, they also contain a substance that kills certain bacteria so they cannot infect your eyes. Give up your tears, and you will lose this on-the-spot defence. Nobody wants to give up the flood of extra tears you produce when you get something physical or chemical in your eyes. Tears are very good at washing this irritating stuff out. Another thing you could not do without your tears is cry from joy, anger or sadness. Humans are the only animals that produce tears in response to emotions, and most people say a good cry makes them feel better. Many scientists believe that crying somehow helps us cope with emotional situations. One of the tear researchers, Winfred, is trying to figure out how it happens. One possibility he says is that tears discharge certain chemicals from your body, chemicals that build up during stress. If Fred is right, what do you think will happen to people who restrain their tears? Boys, for instance, cry only about a quarter as often as girls once they reach teenage years, and we all cry a lot less than we did as babies. Could it be possibly that we face less stress? Maybe we found another way to deal with it, or maybe we just feel embarrassed. Questions 12 to 15 are based on the passage you have just heard. 12. What is not the benefit of crying? 13. In terms of tears, what is the difference between humans and other animals? 14. What does the passage mean about boys and girls? 15. What’s the main idea of this passage? To keep our eyes lubricated. To show our weakness. To kill some bacteria. To relieve ourselves.

We’ve been looking at fear from biological perspective. And someone asked whether the tendency to be fearful is genetic. While some study done with mice indicate that mammals do inherit fearfulness to some degree. In one study for instance, a group of mice were placed in the bright lit open boxes with no hiding places. Some of the mice wondered around the box and didn’ t appear to be bothered about being so exposed. But other mice didn’ t move. They stayed up against one wall, which indicate that they were afraid. Well, when fearful mice or you might say anxious mice like ones who stayed in one place. When mice like this were bred with one another repeatedly, after about 12 or so generations, then all of the offspring show similar signs of fearfulness. And even when the new born mouse from this generation was raised by a mother and with other mice who were not fearful, that mice still tend to be fearful as the result. Now, why is this? Well, it’s thought that the specific gene in animal body have influenced on the anxious behavior. These genes that are associated with particular nerve cell receptors in brain. And the degree of overall fearfulness in the mammal seem to depend in the large part on the presence or absence of these nerve cell receptors. And this appears to apply to humans as well by the way. But while the tendency towards anxiety and fear may well be an inherited trait, but the specific form that the fear takes has more to do individual environment. So a particular fear like the fear of snakes or the fear of spider, say, is not genetic. But the overall tendency to have fearful responses is. Now listen to the following recording and answer questions 16 to 18. 16. How did some of the mice in the study demonstrated that they were afraid? 17. According to the professor, what contribute to a mammal tendency to be fearful? 18. Why does the professor mention snakes and spiders? They fought with the other mice. They stayed close to their mothers. They ran back and forth constantly. They remained close to one wall.

Ok, so in our last class we were discussing big bands swing music. You remember this was a kind of dance music with a steady rhythm. But today we deal with style of music played by smaller jazz bands. It’s called bebop. Now bebop may use all sorts of new types of rhythms, some of them very irregular. We’ll talk more about that later. But first I want to talk about some of the social elements that I believe contributed to the development of bebop music. To do this, we have to look at when bebop arose and started becoming so popular, which was from the late 1930s through the 1940s, some the time of great depression write into the second world war. Now one factor that certainly help create the environment for bebop music was the decline of US economy. During the great depression, the economy suffered tremendously. And fewer people had money to spend on entertainment. Then during the 2nd World War the government imposed a new tax on public entertainment, what you might call performance tax. The government collected money on performances that included any types of acting, dancing or singing, but not instrumental music. So to avoid this new tax, some jazz bands stop using singers altogether. They started relying on the creativity of the instrumentalists to attract audiences. This was what bebop bands did. Now remember a lot of big bands have singers. So the instrumentalists simply played in the background and had occasional solos while the singer sang the melody to the songs, but not bebop bands. So the instrumentalists had much more freedom to be creative. So they experimented, playing the music faster and using new irregular sorts of rhythms. Now listen to the following recording and answer questions 19 to 21. 19. How did the bebop bands avoid the performance tax? 20. Why does the professor mention the decline of the US economy during the great depression? 21. What does the professor describe as a significant characteristic of bebop music? They didn’t use singers. They gave free concerts. They performed in small nightclubs. They shortened the length of their performances.

Your professor has asked me to talk to you today about the topic that should be of real concern to civil engineers: the erosion of the US beaches. Let me start with some statistics. Did you know that 90% of the coast in this country is eroding, on the gulf of Mexico for instance, erosion averages 4 to 5 feet per year. Over the past 20 years, there has been an increase in building along the coast, even though geologists and environmentalists have been warning communities about problems like erosion. Some way communities have tried to protect their building and roads and to build seawalls. However geologists have found that such stabilizing structures actually speed up to the destruction of the beaches. These beaches with seawalls, called stabilized beaches, are much narrower than beaches without them. U may wonder how seawalls speed up beach loss. The explanation is simple. If the flow of the beaches is gentle, the water energy is lessened as it washes up along the shore. It is reduced even more that returns to the sea so it doesn ’t carry back much sand. On the other hand, when the water hit the nearly vertical face of the seawall, it goes straight back to the sea with the full force of its energy and it carries back a great deal of sand. Because of the real risk of losing beaches, many geologists support a ban on all types of stabilizing construction on the shore lines. Now listen to the following recording and answer questions 22 to 25. 22. What is the speaker mainly discussing? 23. Why do communities build seawalls? 24. How does a gently sloping beach help prevent erosion? 25. What would the speaker probably advise engineers to do? The increase in beachfront property value. An experimental engineering project. The erosion of coastal areas How to build seawalls.

Education of exceptional children means provision of special educational services to those children who are either handicapped or gifted. Exceptional children differ from average children in mental characteristics, sensory abilities, physical characteristics, emotional behaviour, or communication abilities to the extent that they require special educational services to develop their【C1】______. The Department of Education【C2】______that 10 to 20 percent of the children in the Unite States suffer from handicaps. Another 2 to 3 percent are considered gifted. Special education provides these children with learning experiences suitable to their unique abilities. Caring for people who have disabilities is a relatively【C3】______idea. In ancient times disabled people were left to die. During the Middle Ages they were treated more【C4】______, but it was not thought that they could learn. In the 19th century, residential treatment centres were【C5】______, first in Europe and then in the US by individual states, to care for people who were blind, deaf, severely retarded, or suffered from severe emotional disorders. By the 20th century,【C6】______classes and public day schools were begun, but these served very few children. After World War II the attitude of Americans concerning the education of persons who were disabled changed significantly.【C7】______for special education was assumed by state legislatures and the federal government. Parent groups formed to【C8】______for the rights of children with disabilities, joined with professional educational programs. In 1925 the US congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act which【C9】______a free and appropriate education to all children in the US between the ages of 3 and 21. The law provides funds for special education programs to states and local districts that【C10】______with a set of guidelines. A) established B) humanely C) installed D) estimates E) Responsibility F) guarantees G) potential H) probability I) special J) evaluates K) private L) lobby M) new N) personally O) comply

Slowbalisation A) A new pattern of world commerce is becoming clearer—as are its costs. When America took a protectionist turn two years ago, it provoked dark warnings about the miseries of the 1930s. Today those ominous predictions look misplaced. B) Yes, China is slowing. And, yes, Western firms exposed to China, such as Apple, have been clobbered. But in 2018 global growth was decent, unemployment fell and profits rose. In November President Donald Trump signed a trade pact with Mexico and Canada. If talks over the next month lead to a deal with Xi Jinping, relieved markets will conclude that the trade war is about political theatre and squeezing a few concessions from China, not detonating global commerce. C) Such complacency is mistaken. Today’ s trade tensions are compounding a shift that has been under way since the financial crisis in 2008-09. As we explain, cross-border investment, trade, bank loans and supply chains have all been shrinking or stagnating relative to world GDP. Globalisation has given way to a new era of sluggishness. Adapting a term coined by a Dutch writer, we call it “slowbalisation“. D) The golden age of globalisation, in 1990-2010, was something to behold. Commerce soared as the cost of shifting goods in ships and planes fell, phone calls got cheaper, tariffs were cut and the financial system liberalised. International activity went gangbusters, as firms set up around the world, investors roamed and consumers shopped in supermarkets with enough choice to impress Phileas Fogg. E) Globalisation has slowed from light speed to a snail’ s pace in the past decade for several reasons. The cost of moving goods has stopped falling. Multinational firms have found that global sprawl burns money and that local rivals often eat them alive. Activity is shifting towards services, which are harder to sell across borders: scissors can be exported in 20ft-containers, hair stylists cannot. And Chinese manufacturing has become more self-reliant, so needs to import fewer parts. F) This is the fragile backdrop to Mr. Trump’s trade war. Tariffs tend to get the most attention. If America ratchets up duties on China in March, as it has threatened, the average tariff rate on all American imports will rise to 3.4%, its highest for 40 years. (Most firms plan to pass the cost on to customers.) Less glaring, but just as pernicious, is that rules of commerce are being rewritten around the world. The principle that investors and firms should be treated equally regardless of their nationality is being ditched. G) Evidence for this is everywhere. Geopolitical rivalry is gripping the tech industry, which accounts for about 20% of world stockmarkets. Rules on privacy, data and espionage are splintering. Tax systems are being bent to patriotic ends—in America to prod firms to repatriate capital, in Europe to target Silicon Valley. America and the EU have new regimes for vetting foreign investment. America has weaponised the power it gets from running the world’ s dollar-payments system, to punish foreigners such as Huawei. Even humdrum areas such as accounting and antitrust are fragmenting. H) Trade is suffering as firms use up the inventories they had stocked in anticipation of higher tariffs. Expect more of this in 2019. But what really matters is firms’ long-term investment plans, as they begin to lower their exposure to countries and industries that carry high geopolitical risk or face unstable rules. There are now signs that an adjustment is beginning. Chinese investment into Europe and America fell by 73% in 2018. The global value of cross-border investment by multinational companies sank by about 20% in 2018. I) The new world will work differently. Slowbalisation will lead to deeper links within regional blocs. Supply chains in North America, Europe and Asia are sourcing more from closer to home. In Asia and Europe most trade is already intra-regional, and the share has risen since 2011. Asian firms made more foreign sales within Asia than in America in 2017. J) As global rules decay, a fluid patchwork of regional deals and spheres of influence is asserting control over trade and investment. The European Union is stamping its authority on banking, tech and foreign investment, for example. China hopes to agree on a regional trade deal this year, even as its tech firms expand across Asia. Companies have $30trn of cross-border investment in the ground, some of which may need to be shifted, sold or shut. K) Fortunately, this need not be a disaster for living standards. Continental-sized markets are large enough to prosper. Some 1.2bn people have been lifted out of extreme poverty since 1990, and there is no reason to think that the proportion of paupers will rise again. Western consumers will continue to reap large net benefits from trade. In some cases, deeper integration will take place at a regional level than could have happened at a global one. L) Yet slowbalisation has two big disadvantages. First, it creates new difficulties. In 1990-2010 most emerging countries were able to close some of the gap with developed ones. Now more will struggle to trade their way to riches. And there is a tension between a more regional trading pattern and a global financial system in which Wall Street and the Federal Reserve set the pulse for markets everywhere. Most countries’ interest rates will still be affected by America’ s even as their trade patterns become less linked to it, leading to financial turbulence. The Fed is less likely to rescue foreigners by acting as a global lender of last resort, as it did a decade ago. M) Second, slowbalisation will not fix the problems that globalisation created. Automation means there will be no renaissance of blue-collar jobs in the West. Firms will hire unskilled workers in the cheapest places in each region. Climate change, migration and tax-dodging will be even harder to solve without global co-operation. And far from moderating and containing China, slowbalisation will help it secure regional hegemony yet faster. N) Globalisation made the world a better place for almost everyone. But too little was done to mitigate its costs. The integrated world’ s neglected problems have now grown in the eyes of the public to the point where the benefits of the global order are easily forgotten. Yet the solution on offer is not really a fix at all. Slowbalisation will be meaner and less stable than its predecessor. In the end it will only feed the discontent.

Imagining being asked to spend twelve or so years of your life in a society which consisted only of members of own sex, how would you react? Unless there was something definitely wrong with you, you wouldn’t be too happy about it, to say the least. It is all the more surprising therefore that so many parents in the world choose to impose such abnormal conditions on their children conditions which they themselves wouldn ’t put up with for one minute! Any discussion of this topic is bound to question the aims of education. Stuffing children’ s heads full of knowledge is far from being foremost among them. One of the chief aims of educations is to equip future citizens with all they require to take their place in adult society. Now adult society is made up of men and women, so how can a segregated school possibly offer the right sort of preparation for it? Anyone entering adult society after years of segregation can only be in for a shock. A co-educational school offers children nothing less than a true version of society in miniature. Boys and girls are given the opportunity to get to know each other, to learn to live to gather from their earliest years. They are put in a position where they can compare themselves with each other in terms of academic ability, athletic achievement and many of the extra-curricular activities which are part of school life. What a practical advantage it is(to give just a small example) to be able to put on a school play in which the male parts will be taken by boys and the female parts by girls! What nonsense co-education makes of the argument that boys are cleverer than girl or vice-versa. When segregated, boys and girls are made to feel that they are a race apart. Rivalry between the sexes is fostered. In a coeducational school, everything falls into its proper place. But perhaps the greatest contribution of co-education is the healthy attitude to life it encourages. Boys don’t grow up believing that women are mysterious creatures—airy goddesses, more like book-illustrations to a fairy-tale, than human beings. Girls don’t grow up imagining that men are romantic heroes. Years of living together at school dispel illusions of this kind. There are no goddesses with freckles, pigtails, piercing voices and inky fingers. There are no romantic heroes with knobbly knees, dirty fingernails and unkempt hair. The awkward stage of adolescence brings into sharp focus some of the physical and emotional problems involved in growing up. These can better be overcome in a co-educational environment. When the time comes for the pupils to leave school, they are fully prepared to enter society as well-adjusted adults. They have already had years of experience in coping with many of the problems that face men and women.

Bernard Bailyn has recently reinterpreted the early history of the United States by applying new social research findings on the experiences of European migrants. In his reinterpretation, migration becomes the organizing principle for rewriting the history of preindustrial North America. His approach rests on four separate propositions. The first of these asserts that residents of early modern England moved regularly about their countryside; migrating to the New World was simply a natural spillover. Although at first the colonies held little positive attraction for the English-they would rather have stayed home-by the 18th century people increasingly migrated to America because they regarded it as the land of opportunity. Secondly, Bailyn holds that, contrary to the notion that used to flourish in America history textbooks, there was never a typical New World community. For example, the economic and demographic character of early New England towns varied considerably. Bailyn’ s third proposition suggest two general patterns prevailing among the many thousands of migrants: one group came as indentured servants, another came to acquire land. Surprisingly, Bailyn suggests that those who recruited indentured servants were the driving forces of transatlantic migration. These colonial entrepreneurs helped determine the social character of people who came to preindustrial North America. At first, thousands of unskilled laborers were recruited; by the 1730’ s, however, American employers demanded skilled artisans. Finally, Bailyn argues that the colonies were a half-civilized hinterland of the European culture system. He is undoubtedly correct to insist that the colonies were part of an Anglo-American empire. But to divide the empire into English core and colonial periphery, as Bailyn does, devalues the achievements of colonial culture. It is true, as Bailyn claims, that high culture in the colonies never matched that in England. But what of seventeenth-century New England, where the settlers created effective laws, built a distinguished university, and published books? Bailyn might respond that New England was exceptional. However, the ideas and institutions developed by New England Puritans had powerful effects on North American culture. Although Bailyn goes on to apply his approach to some thousands of indentured servants who migrated just prior to the revolution, he fails to link their experience with the political development of the United States. Evidence presented in his work suggests how we might make such a connection. These indentured servants were treated as slaves for the period during which they had sold their time to American employers. It is not surprising that as soon as they served their time they passed up good wages in the cities and headed west to ensure their personal independence by acquiring land. Thus, it is in the west that a peculiarly American political culture began, among colonists who were suspicious of authority and intensely anti-aristocratic.

中国画是世界上最古老的艺术传统之一。传统的绘画在今天被称为国画，意思是与20世纪在中国流行的西洋油画相对的“民族的”“本土的”画。传统的绘画本质上和书法的技法相同。用毛笔蘸黑色或彩色的墨水画，而不是用油彩。与书法一样，最常用的绘画材料是纸和丝绸。早期的绘画主要是装饰而不是再现世界，主要是图案而非图画。在唐朝，人物画在宫廷里盛行。艺术家周昉在他的帝王画、宫女画和御马画中展现了宫廷生活的盛况。