英语六级样卷.docx
《英语六级样卷.docx》由会员分享,可在线阅读,更多相关《英语六级样卷.docx(19页珍藏版)》请在冰点文库上搜索。
英语六级样卷
Part IIIReading Comprehension(40 minutes)
Section A
Directions:
In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to
select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank
following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making
your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please
mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with
a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the
bank more than once.
Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.
To understand why we should be concerned about how young people read, it
helps to know something about the way the ability to read evolved. Unlike the ability
to understand and produce spoken language, the ability to read must be painstakingly
36by each individual. The “reading circuits” we construct in the brain can be
37or they can be robust, depending on how often and how 38 we use them.
The deep reader enters a state of hypnotic trance (心醉神迷的状态). When
readers are enjoying the experience the most, the pace of their reading 39 slows.
The combination of fast, fluent decoding of words and slow, unhurried progress on
the page gives deep readers time to enrich their reading with reflection and analysis. It
gives them time to establish an40relationship with the author, the two of them
41in a long and warm conversation like people falling in love.
This is not reading as many young people know it. Their reading is instrumental:
the difference between what literary critic Frank Kermode calls “carnal (肉体的)
reading” and “spiritual reading.” If we allow our offspring to believe carnal reading is
all there is — if we don’t open the door to spiritual reading, through an early42
on discipline and practice — we will have43them of an enjoyable experience
they would not otherwise encounter. Observing young people’s44to digital
devices, some progressive educators talk about “meeting kids where they are,”
molding instruction around their onscreen habits. This is mistaken. We need,
45, to show them someplace they’ve never been, a place only deep reading can
take them.
注意:
此部分试题请在答题卡 2 上作答。
A) acquired
I) intimate
B) actuallyJ) notwithstanding
C) attachmentK) petition
D) cheatedL) rather
E) engagedM) scarcely
F) feebleN) swayed
G) illicitO) vigorously
H) insistence
Section B
Directions:
In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements
attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the
paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is
derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph
is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the
corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
Into the Unknown
The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope?
[A] Until the early 1990s nobody much thought about whole populations getting older.
The UN had the foresight to convene a “world assembly on ageing” back in 1982,
but that came and went. By 1994 the World Bank had noticed that something big
was happening. In a report entitled “Averting the Old Age Crisis”, it argued that
pension arrangements in most countries were unsustainable.
[B] For the next ten years a succession of books, mainly by Americans, sounded the
alarm. They had titles like Young vs Old, Gray Dawn and The Coming
Generational Storm, and their message was blunt:
health-care systems were
heading for the rocks, pensioners were taking young people to the cleaners, and
soon there would be intergenerational warfare.
[C] Since then the debate has become less emotional, not least because a lot more is
known about the subject. Books, conferences and research papers have multiplied.
International organisations such as the OECD and the EU issue regular reports.
Population ageing is on every agenda, from G8 economic conferences to NATO
summits. The World Economic Forum plans to consider the future of pensions
and health care at its prestigious Davos conference early next year. The media,
including this newspaper, are giving the subject extensive coverage.
[D] Whether all that attention has translated into sufficient action is another question.
Governments in rich countries now accept that their pension and health-care
promises will soon become unaffordable, and many of them have embarked on
reforms, but so far only timidly. That is not surprising:
politicians with an eye on
the next election will hardly rush to introduce unpopular measures that may not
bear fruit for years, perhaps decades.
[E] The outline of the changes needed is clear. To avoid fiscal (财政的) meltdown,
public pensions and health-care provision will have to be reined back severely and
taxes may have to go up. By far the most effective method to restrain pension
spending is to give people the opportunity to work longer, because it increases tax
revenues and reduces spending on pensions at the same time. It may even keep
them alive longer. John Rother, the AARP’s head of policy and strategy, points to
studies showing that other things being equal, people who remain at work have
lower death rates than their retired peers.
[F] Younger people today mostly accept that they will have to work for longer and
that their pensions will be less generous. Employers still need to be persuaded that
older workers are worth holding on to. That may be because they have had plenty
of younger ones to choose from, partly thanks to the post-war baby-boom and
partly because over the past few decades many more women have entered the
labour force, increasing employers’ choice. But the reservoir of women able and
willing to take up paid work is running low, and the baby-boomers are going grey.
[G] In many countries immigrants have been filling such gaps in the labour force as
have already emerged (and remember that the real shortage is still around ten
years off). Immigration in the developed world is the highest it has ever been, and
it is making a useful difference. In still-fertile America it currently accounts for
about 40% of total population growth, and in fast-ageing western Europe for
about 90%.
[H] On the face of it, it seems the perfect solution. Many developing countries have
lots of young people in need of jobs; many rich countries need helping hands that
will boost tax revenues and keep up economic growth. But over the next few
decades labour forces in rich countries are set to shrink so much that inflows of
immigrants would have to increase enormously to compensate:
to at least twice
their current size in western Europe’s most youthful countries, and three times in
the older ones. Japan would need a large multiple of the few immigrants it has at
present. Public opinion polls show that people in most rich countries already think
that immigration is too high. Further big increases would be politically unfeasible.
[I] To tackle the problem of ageing populations at its root, “old” countries would
have to rejuvenate (使年轻) themselves by having more of their own children. A
number of them have tried, some more successfully than others. But it is not a
simple matter of offering financial incentives or providing more child care.
Modern urban life in rich countries is not well adapted to large families. Women
find it hard to combine family and career. They often compromise by having just
one child.
[J] And if fertility in ageing countries does not pick up?
It will not be the end of the
world, at least not for quite a while yet, but the world will slowly become a
different place. Older societies may be less innovative and more strongly
disinclined to take risks than younger ones. By 2025 at the latest, about half the
voters in America and most of those in western European countries will be over
50—and older people turn out to vote in much greater numbers than younger ones.
Academic studies have found no evidence so far that older voters have used their
power at the ballot box to push for policies that specifically benefit them, though
if in future there are many more of them they might start doing so.
[K] Nor is there any sign of the intergenerational warfare predicted in the 1990s. After
all, older people themselves mostly have families. In a recent study of parents and
grown-up children in 11 European countries, Karsten Hank of Mannheim
University found that 85% of them lived within 25km of each other and the
majority of them were in touch at least once a week.
[L] Even so, the shift in the centre of gravity to older age groups is bound to have a
profound effect on societies, not just economically and politically but in all sorts
of other ways too. Richard Jackson and Neil Howe of America’s CSIS, in a
thoughtful book called The Graying of the Great Powers, argue that, among other
things, the ageing of the developed countries will have a number of serious
security implications.
[M] For example, the shortage of young adults is likely to make countries more
reluctant to commit the few they have to military service. In the decades to 2050,
America will find itself playing an ever-increasing role in the developed world’s
defence effort. Because America’s population will still be growing when that of
most other developed countries is shrinking, America will be the only developed
country that still matters geopolitically (地缘政治上).
Ask me in 2020
[N] There is little that can be done to stop population ageing, so the world will have to
live with it. But some of the consequences can be alleviated. Many experts now
believe that given the right policies, the effects, though grave, need not be
catastrophic. Most countries have recognised the need to do something and are
beginning to act.
[O] But even then there is no guarantee that their efforts will work. What is happening
now is historically unprecedented. Ronald Lee, director of the