文档内容
六级通关模拟卷（第二套）
Part I Writing (30minutes)
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay entitled The Value of Details by
commenting on the remark “One ant-hole may cause the collapse of a thousand-li dam.” You can cite examples to
illustrate your point. You should write at least150 words but no more than 200 words.
Part II Listening Comprehension (30 minutes)
Section A
Directions: In this section, you will hear three news reports. At the end of each conversation, you will hear four
questions. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must
choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on
Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.
Questions 1 to 4 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
1.A)He wants to get the heating fixed in his room.
B)He wants to call room service.
C)He wants to praise the hall porter.
D)He wants to get his money refunded.
2.A) He is too old to know how to respect the others.
B)He is treated unjustly by all customers.
C)He doesn’t know how to respect the customers.
D)He is very much qualified for his work in the hotel.
3.A) He is satisfied except the bad food.
B)He isn’t satisfied with the restaurant.
C)He thinks the waiters are helpful.
D)He feels being cheated by the manager.
4.A) He isn’t satisfied with the money charged.
B)He likes to throw his weight around.
C)He is critical of the others.
D)He loses patience with the woman.
Questions 5 to 8 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
5.A)Is is hot now. C)Is was hot and sunny this morning.
B)Is was cold this morning. D)Is is sunny now.
6.A) Surprised.
B)Skeptical.
C)Disgusted.
D)Alarmed.
7.A) They can use the light more effectively.
B)They are stronger than the common materials.
C)They can store and release heat.
D)They can absorb water if necessary.
18.A) They become lighter when the temperature is low.
B)Their chemical composition changes with the temperature.
C)Their color darkens when the temperature is high.
D)Their structures are rearranged as the temperature fluctuates.
Section B
Directions：In this section, you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation, you will hear
four questions. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you
must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C), and D). Then mark the corresponding letter
on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.
Questions 9 to 12 are based on the passage you have just heard.
9.A)It guarantees federal investment in schools.
B)It is a universal law that applies to every university.
C)It stops gender discrimination in many schools.
D)It helps to save federal money on education programs.
10.A) Title Nine makes girls join in sports programs.
B)Title Nine has a very good effect on sports.
C)Title Nine is very effective in high schools.
D)Title Nine is well obeyed by high schools.
11.A) Participation in sports is relevant to positive effects.
B)Participation in sports increase female college attendance.
C)Participation in sports prevents obesity among adults.
D)Participation vary among different states and ages.
12.A) They give girls a chance to level the playing field.
B)They reveal that Title Nine is as effective as people think.
C)Far more boys than girls join sports teams.
D)They show the trend of girls’ participation in sports.
Passage Two
Questions 13 to 15 are based on the passage you have just heard.
13.A) Set a limit to the money spent each day by children.
B)Make sure children don’t spend it at once.
C)Learn about what children want to pay for with the money.
D)Teach children to make a budget from their experience.
14.A)Children can learn how a business works in social life.
B)Children may understand what a normal family life is.
C)Children may learn to save money rather than spend it.
D)Children can’t expect another allowance in a short time.
15.A)They will be more careful in buying presents.
B)They will learn how to budget and invest in the future.
C)They will be more likely to set goals for their life.
D)They will know how to bargain when doing business.
Section C
Directions: In this section, you will hear three recordings of lectures or talks followed by three or four questions.
The recordings will be played only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four
choices marked A), B), C), D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line
through the centre.
2Questions 16 to 19 are based on the recording you have just heard.
16.A) They are about philosophy in life.
B)They advise people to learn philosophy.
C)They introduce some difficult jargons.
D)They teach some jargons used in life.
17.A)Everybody will feel centered.
B)Nobody will get bored.
C)Everybody will talk a lot.
D)Everybody will talk a lot.
18.A)Others may follow your step. C)Others will lose interest in philosophy.
B)Others may not understand you. D)Others will not discuss philosophy with you.
19.A) Explain enough about what we thought.
B)Sum up our thoughts and let others talk.
C)Let others talk first and we give comments.
D)Keep our words quick and simple.
Questions 20 to 22 are based on the recording you have just heard.
20.A)Look in the mirror and do the self-talk.
B)Get well prepared before making any change.
C) Make little changes in their lifestyle.
D) Change anything that makes them unhappy.
21. A)Help others for nothing in return. C)Try to make more money.
B)Save money to help others. D) Get help from the rich ones.
22.A) They care too much about people they love
B)They are troubled by what others say.
C)They are more easily to be rated by others.
D)They tend to be the object of envy.
Questions 23 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.
23.A) The right brain hemisphere remains awake all night long.
B)Both hemispheres of the brain remain active all night long.
C)The left brain hemisphere remains awake during deep sleep.
D)One brain hemisphere remains more awake than the other during deep sleep.
24. A)Six times. C)Fourteen times.
B)Two times. D)Seven tomes.
25.A) There was nothing different in alertness or activity in either hemisphere.
B)There was no obvious difference between both brain hemispheres.
C)The left hemisphere remained active in deep sleep phase.
D)The right hemisphere remained active in deep sleep phase.
Part Ⅲ Reading 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 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.
3Until recently, the medical community believed that most hearing loss was caused by hear cells in the ear
degrading as we age. But evidence is emerging that sound levels at sporting events, concerts, nightclubs and on
personal devices can cause lasting damage to the connections between hear cells in the ear and the nerves
that 26 sounds to the brain. Over 1.1 billion teenagers and young adults worldwide could be at risk of hearing
loss as a result of 27 to unsafe levels of recreational noise, according to a recent World Health Organization
report. To make matters worse, this kind of hearing loss doesn’t show up on 28 tests. Researchers are calling it
a hidden epidemic. “We think this problem is 29 prevalent, but it’s difficult to measure because the tools we
have available today are not sensitive enough,” says Konstantina Stankovic, an auditory neuroscientist and
surgeon at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, and Harvard Medical School, in Boston.
Stankovic is now working with colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne to
develop imaging 30 that would allow us to see this kind of neural damage in living brains. This could help
with early diagnosis. Others are developing drugs that could help 31 the connections between the ear and the
brain.
To properly 32 our ears, loud noises should be banned in many public places just as smoking is now, says
Stankovic. Some countries have laws in place to protect 33_in bars and clubs by monitoring noise levels. Last
year, Minneapolis City Council made it 34 for bars and clubs to offer free ear buds to patrons. Stankovic thinks
more will need to change 35 accepted norms around recreational noise. “I think it will require a public health
effort similar to the efforts for limiting smoking, because of the peer pressure associated with loud music and
noisy environments,” she says.
A)compulsory I)socially
B) condense J) standard
C) exposure K)techniques
D)incredibly L)transmit
E)independently M)treat
F)protection N)uneasy
G)restore O)workers
H)safeguard
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.
Why Depression Needs a New Definition
[A]Many psychiatrists believe that a new approach to diagnosing and treating depression—linking individual
symptoms to their underlying mechanisms—is needed for research to move forward. In his Aphorisms,
Hippocrates defined melancholia(忧郁症)，an early understanding of depression, as a state of “fears and losing
courage, if they last a long time.” It was caused, he believed, by an excess of bile( 胆汁)in the body(the word
“melancholia” is ancient Greek for “black bile”).
[B]Ever since then, doctors have struggled to create a more precise and accurate definition of the illness that
still isn’t well understood. In the 1920s, the German psychiatrist Kurt Schneider argued that depression could be
divided into two separate conditions, each requiring a different form of treatment: depression that resulted from
changes in mood, which he called “inner depression”, and depression resulting from reactions to outside events, or
“reactive depression”. His theory was challenged in 1926, when the British psychologist Edward Mapother argued
in the British Medical Journal that there was no evidence for two distinct types of depression, and that the apparent
differences between depression patients were just differences in the severity of the condition.
4[C]Today, Schneider’s subtypes have largely fallen out of favor, but over the years, many more definitions
were offered in their place. In 1969, the American psychologist Rollo May wrote in his book Love and Will that
“depression is the inability to construct a future,” while the cognitive psychologist Albert Ellis argued in 1987 that
depression, unlike “appropriate sadness”, stemmed from “irrational beliefs” that left sufferers ill-equipped to deal
with even mild setbacks.
[D]In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association tried to standardize the definitions of mental illnesses,
including depression, by creating a taxonomy( 分类法) of mental illnesses. In the first edition of the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual, depression was listed under the broad category of “disorders without clearly defined
physical cause”. The DSM-III, published in 1980, was the APA’s first attempt to clarify the definitions of specific
disorders by listing their symptoms; the new edition included guidelines for differentiating depression from other
disorders, and outlined eight symptoms of depression, included “poor appetite or significant weight loss” and
“complaints or evidence of diminished ability to think or concentrate”. If an adult met four of the eight symptoms,
the manual counseled, he or she would meet the criteria for clinical depression. In the DSM-V, published in 2013,
depressive disorders were finally allocated their own chapter. The diagnostic criteria were mostly unchanged, with
the exception of one additional symptom: “Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by
either subjective report(e. g. ,feels sad or empty)or observation made by others(e. g. ,appears tearful).”
[E] Some scientists believe that the DSM-V definition is still too vague. As the psychiatrist Daniel Goldberg
noted in the journal World Psychiatry in 2011, many of the DSM symptoms are opposites, which can make it
difficult for researchers working to develop a more precise understanding of the condition. “A patient who has
psychomotor retardation(精神运动性阻滞)，hypersomnia(嗜睡)，and gaining weight is scored as having
identical symptoms as another who is agitated, sleeping badly, and has weight loss,” Goldberg wrote.
[F]Many recent studies have verified Goldberg’s concerns. In 2000, for example, a group of researchers at
Johns Hopkins University attempted to identify subtypes of depression by studying the symptoms of
nearly2,000patients. However, the researchers were unable to find much of a pattern connecting gender, family
history, symptoms, and the degree of the condition(mild to severe). “Depression is of different kind,” they
concluded, adding that “the severity of an episode appears to be more informative than the pattern of symptoms.”
And in 2010, researchers in Germany testing the validity of the DSM-IV definition found that the criteria captured
a huge population of patients with “widely varying associations with the pattern of co-morbidity( 共 病 ) ，
personality traits, features of the depressive episode and demographic characteristics.” The results, they argued.
“challenge our understanding of major depression as a similar categorical entity.”
[G]Part of the problem, said Scott Monroe, a professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, is that
in medical term, depression is considered a syndrome rather than a disease. While a disease is a specific condition
characterized by a common underlying cause and consistent physical traits, a syndrome is a collection of signs and
symptoms known to frequently appear together, but without a single known cause. In a paper published in June in
the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, Monroe called for scientists to begin defining depression
with more precision. “It is in this vague and imprecise realm that problems can arise,” he wrote, “and vague
insights based on imperfect similarities and differences eventually may prove to be clear oversights.”
[H]Part of the reason that scientists are still working in the “vague and imprecise realm”. as Monroe put it, is
because they still don’t have a clear answer for what causes depression. In the 1960s, the dominant hypothesis was
that it stemmed from a chemical imbalance in the brain, specifically from lower levels of the neurotransmitter
serotonin(血清素). As a result, drug companies poured resources into developing “selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors”(SSRIs),drugs that increased type of antidepressant—despite the fact that research has shown that lower
of serotonin do not necessarily cause depression for all individuals. And in 2010, a review of three decades’ worth
of studies on antidepressants found that while SSRIs can be helpful for severely depressed people, their
effectiveness “may be minimal or nonexistent” in those with mild or moderate depression.
[I]Bruce Cuthbert, the director of adult translational( 平动 )research and treatment development at the
National Institute of Mental Health(NIMH), thinks that part of the problem is that researchers have largely focused
5their attention on finding a one-size-fits-all treatment that doesn’t exist. “When you do a clinical trial, you’re
getting a bunch of people who are ‘depressed’, but they’re actually very different,” he said. “It’s like comparing
apples, pears, and oranges. You’re not going to see a significant effect. You’re not going to be able to say, ‘This
treatment works for fruits.’” Trying to create a singular treatment for depression, Cuthbert said, is like trying to
create one for cancer: too unspecific to actually be helpful. “Our current diagnostic system is running out of steam
for research,” “While DSM has been described as a ‘Bible’ for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of
labels and defining each,” the NIMH director Tom Insel wrote in 2013.
[J]In 2010, Insel invited Cuthbert, who was then working as a psychology professor at the University of
Minnesota, to help the NIMH develop a new framework for defining mental illness. The result, unveiled in 2013,
was the Research Domain Criteria(RDoC),a system created to flip the way researchers think about mental
disorders. Unlike the DSM, RDoC isn’t organized by disorder; instead, it’s organized around specific symptoms,
like fear, anhedonia (the inability to feel pleasure), and willingness or unwillingness to work. The system also lists
the genes, neural circuits, physical response, and self-reported behavior associated with each symptom.
[K]The theory behind this RDoC system is that treating a specific symptom will produce better results than
treating a broad category of illness. Many depression patients exhibit anhedonia, for example, but many others
don’t. But if researchers took a group of patients who all displayed anhedonia, regardless of their diagnosis(it’s
also a common symptom of schizophrenia) and tested treatments for that very specific symptom, they would get
better results for treating anhedonia.
[L]The current definition of depression, Cuthbert explains, has largely stemmed from scientists observing
patients and then developing lists of symptoms based on what they saw. “The belief was that if you described the
disorder well enough, you would be able to define it,” he said. But it’s becoming increasingly clear, he said, that
by relying on describing the disorder, scientists are only skimming the surface in terms of understanding it.
Cuthbert hopes that the RDoC system will challenge researchers to look at the mechanics of each symptom more
closely, and in the process, come up with more well-informed ideas around how to diagnose mental illness. “We’re
starting over with how we think about mental disorders,” Cuthbert said. “Our current diagnostic system is running
out of steam for research.” “Our current concept of depression is left over from times when we didn’t really
understand it very much,” he added. “We know so much so much more about it now—physically, genetically,
neurochemically—and we should be using that.”
36. A particular psychiatrist believed that there were two distinct types of depression which should be treated
differently.
37.It has been confirmed that antidepressants are effective in acute depression but of little or no effectiveness in
mild or moderate depression.
38.It was impossible for researchers to find similar characteristics in patients suffering the same degree of
depression in the early 21st century.
39.One authoritative figure thinks that researchers are looking in the wrong direction in treating depression.
40. Scientists only scratch the surface of the problem in understanding depression because relying on mere
description of the illness is insufficient.
41.One theory goes that seeking treatments for a specific disease is more effective than seeking treatments for a
category of disease.
42.The definite cause of depression still remains unknown, which is in part why scientists are still working on
it.
43.Classifying depression into subtypes has already been in disfavor and replaced by many more new
definitions.
44.The definition of depression in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual went through several editions over the
past six decades.
45.Far from being the psychiatrists’ authoritative masterpiece, DSM is considered as a lexicon at best.
6Section C
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished
statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best
choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.
Passage One
Questions 46 and 50 are based on the following passage.
Gulliver has a friend who recently gave up his job to study for “The Knowledge”, the notoriously difficult
programme that London’s black-taxi drivers must pass through before getting a license. Would-be cabbies must
first gain an encyclopedic( 百科全书式的)knowledge of the capital’s central district—some 25,000 streets and
approximately 20,000 landmarks—and be able to recite the best way of navigating between them. Studying for
“The Knowledge” typically takes from two to four years.
The sacrifice used to be worth it. Although driving a taxi for a living is undoubtedly hard work, cabbies earn
a decent wage, choose their own hours and usually manage to spend a few weeks a year at their holiday villas in
Spain. Alas, for Gulliver’s friend, it is no longer a job with prospects. Leaving aside that learning routes by rote in
an era of satellite navigation is a waste of everyone’s time, the reason that cabbies put themselves through such a
tough selection process is so they can earn the privilege of picking up passengers off the street, which only they
are legally allowed to do.
Uber is making this privilege increasingly irrelevant. The firm uses a smartphone platform to bring
passengers and drivers together. It is on its way to cornering the world taxi market—although, like many cabbies,
it is taking a circuitous( 迂回的) route. Several American cities, including Portland, have ordered the firm to
suspend operations, whole countries, such as Germany, have outlawed it.
Still, these are mere bumps in the road. The latest report by Certify, which tracks business-expense claims,
found that for the first time the majority of “ground transportation receipts” were for rides in Uber cars. In the
second quarter of 2015, 55% of such business expenses emanated(起源)from that single company, compared with
43% on all other taxi services. According to Certify, whose respondents are overwhelmingly American, the cities
in which businessmen are most likely to use an Uber car are San Francisco(79%),followed by Dallas(60%)and Los
Angeles(54%).It is easy to see why. Uber is cheap, reliable and easy to use. You know which driver is coming for
you and the driver knows you. There is no need to play a game of hailing leapfrog( 交替前进)with competitors
along busy streets, in the hope of finding a taxi with a light on.
On a recent trip to New York, Gulliver’s young daughter was desperate to take a ride in a yellow taxi because
she had seen them on posters. So we took a ride as a tourist attraction. When it came to pulling our suitcases back
to JFK, though, it was much more convenient to call an Uber car. Gulliver worries for his friend’s choice of new
career. How long will it be before he becomes little more than a curiosity for those wanting to experience ye olde
England?
46.What do we know about “The knowledge”?
A)It is an encyclopedia about London streets.C) It is a navigation between the landmarks.
B) It is an exam would-be cabbies must pass. D) It is a license for the profession.
47.According to the passage, “The sacrifice”(Line 1, Para.2) refers to .
A)the expense of spending luxurious holidays in Spain
B)the waste of time to remembering London streets
C)the efforts of grasping the transportation knowledge
D)the hardship of living as a London taxi driver
48.According to the author, which of the following statements about Uber is TRUE?
A)It has a privilege to use a smartphone platform.
B) It provides illegal service in American cities.
C) It may be completely suspended in the near future.
D) It has met some obstacles in its fast booming.
749.The data mentioned in Paragraph 4 implies that .
A)Uber’s market share has already surpassed that of all other taxi companies
B) Uber is most popular with businessmen in American cities
C) Uber has bought most of the ground transportation receipts
D) Uber is providing clients with cheap and convenient services
50.What does the author think of the traditional taxi service?
A)It will be replaced by Uber soon.
B)It will become a tourist attraction.
C)It will not be a promising career any more.
D)It will become a symbol of the old England.
Passage Two
Questions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.
Education in most of the developing world is shocking. Half of children in South Asia and a third of those in
Africa who complete four years of schooling cannot read properly. Most governments have promised to provide
universal primary education and to promote secondary education. But even when public schools exist, they often
fail.
The failure of state education, combined with the shift in emerging economies from farming to jobs that need
at least a modicum(少量)of education, has caused a private-school boom. According to the World Bank, across the
developing world a fifth of primary-school pupils are enrolled in private schools, twice as many as 20 years ago.
So many private schools are unregistered that the real figure is likely to be much higher.
By and large, politicians and educationalists are unenthusiastic. Governments see education as the state’s job.
NGOs tend to be ideologically opposed to the private sector. The U.N. special rapporteur(报告人)on education,
Kishore Singh, has said that “for-profit education should not be allowed in order to safeguard the noble cause of
education”.
This attitude harms those whom educationalists claim to serve: children. The boom in private education is
excellent news for them and their countries, for three reasons.
First, it is bringing in money—not just from parents, but also from investors, some in search of a profit. Most
private schools in the developing world are single operators that charge a few dollars a month, but chains are now
emerging.
Second, private schools are often better value for money than state ones. Measuring this is hard, since the
children who go to private schools tend to be better off, and therefore likely to perform better. But a rigorous
four-year study of 6,000pupils in Andhra Pradesh, in southern India, suggested that private pupils performed better
in English and Hindi than public-school pupils, and the private schools achieved these results at a third of the cost
of the public schools.
Lastly, private schools are innovative. Since technology has great(though as yet mostly unrealized) potential
in education, this could be important. Bridge gives teachers tablets linked to a central system that provides
teaching materials and monitors their work. Suck robo-teaching may not be ideal, but it is better than lessons
without either materials or monitoring.
The private sector has problems. But the alternative is often a public school that is worse—or no school at all.
The growth of private schools is a manifestation of the healthiest of instincts: parents’ desire to do the best for
their children. Governments should therefore be asking not how to discourage private education, but how to boost
it. Ideally, they would subsidize(以津贴补助)private schools, preferably through a voucher(凭证)which parents
could spend at the school of their choice and top up; they would regulate schools to ensure quality; they would run
public exams to help parents make informed choices.
851.According to the author, the state governments in developing countries fail to .
A)provide proper education for all the school age children
B)fulfill their promises by establishing enough public schools
C)improve education quality of the existing public schools
D)speed up the social shift from farming to manufacturing
52.The author mentions Kishore Singh in order to show .
A)how state governments dislike private education
B)why NGOs are so much opposed to private sectors
C)how we should safeguard the nobility of education
D)what the social mainstream thinks of the private schools
53.Private schools surpass the public ones in that .
A)they can obtain more money from parents
B)they have achieved better teaching quality
C)they make better use of money and innovate
D)they can use tablets to assist teaching
54.What does the author think of the private education?
A)It meets the need of social development.
B)It should be suspended and reorganized.
C)It should not be run purely after high profits.
D)It is encouraged to replace public education.
55.Which of the following can be the title of the passage?
A)Why Are Private Schools Booming So Fast?
B)Should Private Education Be Helped or Curbed?
C)How Should the Government Improve Education?
D)What Should the State Do with Public Schools?
Part Ⅳ Translation (30 minutes)
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into
English. You should write your answer on Answer Sheet
2.
灯笼作为民间传统工艺（craftwork）,现在仍受到全国各地的欢迎。灯笼艺术，作为中国珍贵传统文
化的一部分，在民间仍被继承（inherit）着。我们可以说灯笼在中国悠久的历史中发挥着巨大而不可替代
的作用，它象征着灿烂的中国文化。中国灯笼不但在中国历史上扮演着重要的角色，在国际发明、发展上
也做出了巨大的贡献。一些西方国家通过传教士（missionary）活动和对外贸易，掌握了中国灯笼的设计及
制作技巧，极大地促进了其社会发展。
9
