文档内容
目 录
CONTENTS
第一部分 仔细阅读 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������001
、 .............................................................................................................................001
一 题型介绍
、 .............................................................................................................................001
二 考情分析
、 .............................................................................................................................001
三 解题技巧
、 .............................................................................................................................003
四 真题演练
第二部分 长篇阅读 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������036
、 .............................................................................................................................036
一 题型介绍
、 .............................................................................................................................036
二 考情分析
、 .............................................................................................................................036
三 解题技巧
、 .............................................................................................................................037
四 真题演练
第三部分 选词填空 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������064
、 .............................................................................................................................064
一 题型介绍
、 .............................................................................................................................064
二 考情分析
、 .............................................................................................................................064
三 解题技巧
、 .............................................................................................................................065
四 真题演练
001第一部分 仔细阅读
一、题型介绍
， ： 、 、 。
大学英语六级试卷由四个部分构成 依次为 写作 听力理解 阅读理解和翻译
、 ：
其中阅读理解部分的测试内容 题型和所占分值比例如下表所示
试卷结构 测试内容 测试题型 题目数量 分值占比 考试时间
10 5%
词汇理解 选词填空
10 10% 40
阅读理解 长篇阅读 匹配 分钟
10 20%
仔细阅读 单选题
30 35% 40
总计 分钟
， 400-450 ， （ ） ，
仔细阅读分值比例最高 每篇长度为 词 采用选择题 单选题 题型 考核
， 、 、
学生在不同层面上的阅读理解能力 包括理解主旨大意和重要细节 综合分析 推测判断
。 ５ ,
以及根据上下文推测词义等 每个篇章后有 个问题 要求考生根据对篇章的理解从每题
。
的四个选项中选择最佳答案
二、考情分析
、 、
虽然大纲里列出的题型包括理解主旨大意和重要细节 综合分析 推测判断以及根据
， ，
上下文推测词义 但在实际考试过程中考察比例最高的是 有时候甚至会
10 ，
出现整张卷子 道题全都是 的情况 所以这种题型应该成为同学们训练的
。
重中之重
三、解题技巧
： 、 、 。
仔细阅读出题原则
、 ， “ 、 ”。
整体原则是 做到
（一）划题干关键词
， 、 。
划关键词的目的是为了 所以要划那些好找的 不易替换的第一部分 仔细阅读
一、题型介绍
， ： 、 、 。
大学英语六级试卷由四个部分构成 依次为 写作 听力理解 阅读理解和翻译
、 ：
其中阅读理解部分的测试内容 题型和所占分值比例如下表所示
试卷结构 测试内容 测试题型 题目数量 分值占比 考试时间
10 5%
词汇理解 选词填空
10 10% 40
阅读理解 长篇阅读 匹配 分钟
10 20%
仔细阅读 单选题
30 35% 40
总计 分钟
， 400-450 ， （ ） ，
仔细阅读分值比例最高 每篇长度为 词 采用选择题 单选题 题型 考核
， 、 、
学生在不同层面上的阅读理解能力 包括理解主旨大意和重要细节 综合分析 推测判断
。 ５ ,
以及根据上下文推测词义等 每个篇章后有 个问题 要求考生根据对篇章的理解从每题
。
的四个选项中选择最佳答案
二、考情分析
、 、
虽然大纲里列出的题型包括理解主旨大意和重要细节 综合分析 推测判断以及根据
， ，
上下文推测词义 但在实际考试过程中考察比例最高的是 有时候甚至会
10 ，
出现整张卷子 道题全都是 的情况 所以这种题型应该成为同学们训练的
。
重中之重
三、解题技巧
： 、 、 。
仔细阅读出题原则
、 ， “ 、 ”。
整体原则是 做到
（一）划题干关键词
， 、 。
划关键词的目的是为了 所以要划那些好找的 不易替换的
001六级阅读讲义
： （ 、 ）， ，
专有名词 人名 地名 连字符词组 数字
： ， ，
并列 转折 比较
： ，
简单 替换少
： ，
注意 不能作为关键词 可以一次审 道题
（二）确定题目类型
， 。
根据题目的提问方式确定题目类型 不同题型的解题方法略有不同
1.
主旨大意
： main idea，best title ，
题目特征 题干中出现 等关键词 对段落或全篇文章的主旨大意
。
进行提问
2.
重要细节
： 、 ，
题目特征 通常是对 等细节进行提问 通常只需要看
。
懂 就可以做对题
3.
综合分析
： what can we learn from... ， ，
题目特征 题干中包括 等表达 此类题目题干无法直接定位
， ， 4 。
往往需要用选项来定位 表面上是一道题 其实是 道题
4.
推测判断
： infer，suggest，imply ，
题目特征 题干中往往包括 等关键词 需要对文章的内容进行
， ， 。
一定的推测 这种题目比较难 很容易因过度推理导致做错
5.
根据上下文推测词义
： 。
题目特征 对文章中的单词含义进行提问
（三）分题型解题
1.
主旨大意
（1）
段落大意
， 。 ：but，
重点读段落的 以及 的句子 常见转折词
however，in fact，actually 。
等
（2）
全篇大意
， ，
正确答案往往包括全篇重复次数最多的单词或词组 是对全篇文章的概括和提炼 而
。
不是个别细节
2.
重要细节
， 。
频率最高 必须重点训练
（1）
划题干关键词
（2）
用关键词定位
（3）
锁定
， ， 。
注意 答案句通常包括题干所有关键词 千万不要找错
（4）
精读答案句
（5） ，
对照答案句和选项 选出 的选项
3.
综合分析
， “ ” ，
题干往往只能大致定位到某段落 必须按照 细节题 的解题方法逐个分析每个选项
。
最后选出符合题干要求的选项
0024.
推测判断
， ，
定位方式跟 相同 不同之处在于找到答案句之后需要 但
， 。
是注意正确选项是从原文中得出的直接结论 不能过度推理
5.
根据上下文推测词义
， 。
该题型定位非常简单 重点在于根据语境推理出单词的含义
四、真题演练
【2019年6月第1套】
Passage One
Professor Stephen Hawking has warned that the creation of powerful artificial intelligence
(AI) will be“ either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity”, and praised the
creation of an academic institute dedicated to researching the future of intelligence as“ crucial to
the future of our civilization and our species”.
Hawking was speaking at the opening of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence
(LCFI) at Cambridge University, a multi-disciplinary institute that will attempt to tackle some of
the open-ended questions raised by the rapid pace of development in AI research.“ We spend a
great deal of time studying history,” Hawking said,“ which, let’s face it, is mostly the history of
stupidity. So it’s a welcome change that people are studying instead the future of intelligence.”
While the world-renowned physicist has often been cautious about AI, raising concerns
that humanity could be the architect of its own destruction if it creates a super-intelligence with
a will of its own, he was also quick to highlight the positives that AI research can bring.“ The
potential benefits of creating intelligence are huge,” he said.“ We cannot predict what we might
achieve when our own minds are amplified by AI. Perhaps with the tools of this new technological
revolution, we will be able to undo some of the damage done to the natural world by the last one—
industrialization. And surely, we will aim to finally eradicate disease and poverty. And every aspect
of our lives will be transformed. In short, success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the
history of our civilization.”
Huw Price, the center’s academic director and the Bertrand Russell professor of philosophy
at Cambridge University, where Hawking is also an academic, said that the center came about
partially as a result of the university’s Centre for Existential Risk. That institute examined a wider
range of potential problems for humanity, while the LCFI has a narrow focus.
AI pioneer Margaret Boden, professor of cognitive science at the University of Sussex,
praised the progress of such discussions. As recently as 2009, she said, the topic wasn’t taken
seriously, even among AI researchers.“ AI is hugely exciting,” she said,“ but it has limitations,
which present grave dangers given uncritical use.”
The academic community is not alone in warning about the potential dangers of AI as well
as the potential benefits. A number of pioneers from the technology industry, most famously
003六级阅读讲义
the entrepreneur Elon Musk, have also expressed their concerns about the damage that a super-
intelligent AI could do to humanity.
46．What did Stephen Hawking think of artificial intelligence?
A) It would be vital to the progress of human civilization.
B) It might be a blessing or a disaster in the making.
C) It might present challenges as well as opportunities.
D) It would be a significant expansion of human intelligence.
47．What did Hawking say about the creation of the LCFI?
A) It would accelerate the progress of AI research.
B) It would mark a step forward in the AI industry.
C) It was extremely important to the destiny of humankind.
D) It was an achievement of multi-disciplinary collaboration.
48．What did Hawking say was a welcome change in AI research?
A) The shift of research focus from the past to the future.
B) The shift of research from theory to implementation.
C) The greater emphasis on the negative impact of AI.
D) The increasing awareness of mankind’s past stupidity.
49．What concerns did Hawking raise about AI?
A) It may exceed human intelligence sooner or later.
B) It may ultimately over-amplify the human mind.
C) Super-intelligence may cause its own destruction.
D) Super-intelligence may eventually ruin mankind.
50．What do we learn about some entrepreneurs from the technology industry?
A) They are much influenced by the academic community.
B) They are most likely to benefit from AI development.
C) They share the same concerns about AI as academics.
D) They believe they can keep AI under human control.
Passage Two
The market for products designed specifically for older adults could reach $30 billion by
next year, and startups ( ) want in on the action. What they sometimes lack is feedback
初创公司
from the people who they hope will use their products. So Brookdale, the country’s largest owner
of retirement communities, has been inviting a few select entrepreneurs just to move in for a few
days, show off their products and hear what the residents have to say.
That’s what brought Dayle Rodriguez, 28, all the way from England to the dining room of
Brookdale South Bay in Torrance, California. Rodriguez is the community and marketing manager
for a company called Sentab. The startup’s product, SentabTV, enables older adults who may
not be comfortable with computers to access email, video chat and social media using just their
televisions and a remote control.
004“It’s nothing new, it’s nothing too complicated and it’s natural because lots of people have
TV remotes,” says Rodriguez.
But none of that is the topic of conversation in the Brookdale dining room. Instead, Rodriguez
solicits residents’ advice on what he should get on his cheeseburger and how he should spend the
afternoon. Playing cards was on the agenda, as well as learning to play mahjong ( ).
麻将
Rodriguez says it’s important that residents here don’t feel like he’s selling them something.
“I’ve had more feedback in a passive approach,” he says.“ Playing pool, playing cards, having
dinner, having lunch,” all work better“ than going through a survey of questions. When they get
to know me and to trust me, knowing for sure I’m not selling them something—there’ll be more
honest feedback from them.”
Rodriguez is just the seventh entrepreneur to move into one of Brookdale’s 1,100 senior living
communities. Other new products in the program have included a kind of full-body blow dryer and
specially designed clothing that allows people with disabilities to dress and undress themselves.
Mary Lou Busch, 93, agreed to try the Sentab system. She tells Rodriguez that it might be
good for someone, but not for her.
“I have the computer and FaceTime, which I talk with my family on,” she explains. She also
has an iPad and a smartphone“. So I do pretty much everything I need to do.”
To be fair, if Rodriguez had wanted feedback from some more technophobic (
害怕技术
) seniors, he might have ended up in the wrong Brookdale community. This one is located
的
in the heart of Southern California’s aerospace corridor. Many residents have backgrounds in
engineering, business and academic circles.
But Rodriguez says he’s still learning something important by moving into this Brookdale
community:“ People are more tech-proficient than we thought.”
And besides, where else would he learn to play mahjong?
51．What does the passage say about the startups?
A) They never lose time in upgrading products for seniors.
B) They want to have a share of the seniors’ goods market.
C) They invite seniors to their companies to try their products.
D) They try to profit from promoting digital products to seniors.
52．Some entrepreneurs have been invited to Brookdale to .
A) have an interview with potential customers
B) conduct a survey of retirement communities
C) collect residents’ feedback on their products
D) show senior residents how to use IT products
53．What do we know about SentabTV?
A) It is a TV program catering to the interest of the elderly.
B) It is a digital TV which enjoys popularity among seniors.
C) It is a TV specially designed for seniors to view programs.
D) It is a communication system via TV instead of a computer.
005六级阅读讲义
54．What does Rodriguez say is important in promoting products?
A) Winning trust from prospective customers.
B) Knowing the likes and dislikes of customers.
C) Demonstrating their superiority on the spot.
D) Responding promptly to customer feedback.
55．What do we learn about the seniors in the Brookdale community?
A) Most of them are interested in using the Sentab.
B) They are quite at ease with high-tech products.
C) They have much in common with seniors elsewhere.
D) Most of them enjoy a longer life than average people.
【2019年6月第2套】
Passage One
Effective Friday, Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
(SAG-AWRA) has declared a strike against 11 video game publishers over games that went into
production after Feb. 17, 2015. The companies include some of the heavyweights of the industry,
like Electronic Arts Productions, Insomniac Games, Activision and Disney.
The strike comes in light of an unsuccessful 19 months of negotiations after the existing labor
contract known as the Interactive Media Agreement expired in late 2014. Overall, the strike is an
effort to provide more secondary compensation along with other concerns, such as transparency
upon hiring talent and on-set ( ) safety precautions.
制作中
The video gaming industry has ballooned in recent years. The Los Angeles Times reports that
the industry is in the midst of an intense increase in cash flow. In 2015, gaming produced $23.5
billion in domestic revenue.
But SAG-AFTRA says voice actors don’t receive residuals ( ) for their gaming
追加酬金
work. Instead, they receive a fixed rate, which is typically about $825 for a standard four-
hour vocal session. So the voice actors are pushing for the idea of secondary compensation—a
performance bonus every time a game sells 2 million copies or downloads, or reaches 2 million
subscribers, with a cap at 8 million.
“It’s a very small number of games that would trigger this secondary compensation issue,”
said voice actor Crispin Freeman, who’s a member of the union’s negotiating committee.“ This is
an important aspect of what it means to be a freelance ( ) performer, who isn’t
从事自由职业的
regularly employed every single day working on projects.”
Another major complaint from the actors is the secrecy of the industry.“ I can’t imagine if
there’s any other acting job in the world where you don’t know what show you’re in, when you’re
hired,” says voice actor Keythe Farley, who chairs the SAG-AWRA negotiating committee.
“And yet that happens every day in the video game world,” Farley told reporters during a
press conference Friday.“ I was a main character in Fallout 4, a character by the name of Kellogg,
and I never knew that I was doing vocal recording for that game throughout the year and a half.”
Scott Witlin, the lawyer representing the video game companies, says voice actors“ represent
006less than one tenth of 1 percent of the work that goes into making a video game.” So“ even though
they’re the top craftsmen in their field,” Witlin says,“ if we pay them under a vastly different
system than the people who do the 99.9 percent of the work, that’s going to create far more
problems for the video game companies.”
46．Why did SAG-AFTRA declare a strike against some video game publishers?
A) The labor contract between them had been violated.
B) Its appeal to renegotiate the contract had been rejected.
C) It had been cheated repeatedly in the 19 months of talks.
D) The negotiations between them had broken down.
47．What do we learn from the passage about the video gaming industry?
A) It has reaped huge profits in recent years.
B) It has become more open and transparent.
C) It has attracted many famous voice actors.
D) It has invested a lot in its domestic market.
48．What are the voice actors demanding?
A) More regular employment. B) A non-discriminatory contract.
C) Extra pay based on sales revenues. D) A limit on the maximum work hours.
49．What does Keythe Farley say about voice actors?
A) They are kept in the dark about many details of their job.
B) They are discriminated against in the gaming industry.
C) They are not paid on a regular basis.
D) They are not employed full-time.
50．What is the argument of lawyer Scott Witlin?
A) Voice actors should have a pay raise if they prove to be top craftsmen.
B) Changing the pay system would cause the industry more problems.
C) Voice actors are mere craftsmen, not professional performers.
D) Paying voice actors on an hourly basis is in line with the law.
Passage Two
Officials at the White House announced a new space policy focused on managing the
increasing number of satellites that companies and governments are launching into space. Space
Policy Directive-3 lays out general guidelines for the United States to mitigate ( ) the effects
缓解
of space debris and track and manage traffic in space.
This policy sets the stage for the Department of Commerce to take over the management
of traffic in space. The department will make sure that newly launched satellites don’t use radio
frequencies that would interfere with existing satellites, and schedule when such new satellites
can be launched. This only applies to American space activities, but the hope is that it will help
standardize a set of norms in the dawning commercial spaceflight industry throughout the world.
Space, especially the space directly around our planet, is getting more crowded as more
007六级阅读讲义
governments and companies launch satellites. One impetus for the policy is that companies are
already starting to build massive constellations ( )，comprising hundreds or thousands
星座
of satellites with many moving parts among them. With so much stuff in space, and a limited
area around our planet, the government wants to reduce the chances of a collision. Two or more
satellites slamming into each other could create many more out-of-control bits that would pose
even more hazards to the growing collection of satellites in space.
And it’s not like this hasn’t happened before. In 2009 an old Russian craft slammed into
a communications satellite, creating a cloud of hundreds of pieces of debris and putting other
hardware at risk. Journalist Sarah Scoles reports that NASA currently tracks about 24,000 objects
in space, and in 2016 the Air Force had to issue 3,995,874 warnings to satellite owners alerting
them to a potential nearby threat from another satellite or bit of debris.
That’s why this new policy also includes directions to update the current U.S. Government
Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices, which already require any entity that launches
a satellite or spacecraft to vigorously analyze the likelihood that any of their actions, from an
unexpected failure or normal operations, will create more space debris. It includes accounting for
any piece of debris they plan to release over 5mm that might stay in orbit for 25 years or more. It
might seem surprising to think about an item staying in space for that long, but the oldest satellite
still in orbit—Vanguard l—turned 60 in 2018.
Agencies and companies throughout the world are working on developing technology that
would dispose of or capture space debris before it causes serious damage. But for now, the U.S.
government is more focused on preventing new debris from forming than taking the trash out of
orbit.
51．What is the purpose of the new U.S. space policy?
A) To lay out general guidelines for space exploration.
B) To encourage companies to join in space programs.
C) To make the best use of satellites in space.
D) To improve traffic conditions in space.
52．What is the Department of Commerce expected to do under the new policy?
A) Reduce debris in space.
B) Monitor satellite operations.
C) Regulate the launching of new satellites.
D) Update satellite communications technology.
53．What does the U.S. government hope to do with the new space policy?
A) Set international standards for the space flight industry.
B) Monopolize space industry by developing a set of norms.
C) Facilitate commercial space flights throughout the world.
D) Promote international collaboration in space exploration.
54．What is a space vehicle launching entity required to do according to the current U.S.
Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices?
008A) Give an estimate of how long its debris will stay in space.
B) Account for the debris it has released into space at any time.
C) Provide a detailed plan for managing the space debris it creates.
D) Make a thorough analysis of any possible addition to space debris.
55．What are space agencies and companies aiming to do at present?
A) Recycle used space vehicles before they turn into debris.
B) Develop technology to address the space debris problem.
C) Limit the amount of debris entering space.
D) Cooperate closely to retrieve space debris.
【2019年6月第3套】
Passage One
When I re-entered the full-time workforce a few years ago after a decade of solitary self-
employment, there was one thing I was looking forward to the most: the opportunity to have
work friends once again. It wasn’t until I entered the corporate world that I realized, for me at
least, being friends with colleagues didn’t emerge as a priority at all. This is surprising when
you consider the prevailing emphasis by scholars and trainers and managers on the importance
of cultivating close interpersonal relationships at work. So much research has explored the
way in which collegial ( ) ties can help overcome a range of workplace issues affecting
同事的
productivity and the quality of work output such as team-based conflict, jealousy, undermining,
anger, and more.
Perhaps my expectations of lunches, water-cooler gossip and caring, deep-and-meaningful
conversations were a legacy of the last time I was in that kind of office environment. Whereas now,
as I near the end of my fourth decade, I realize work can be fully functional and entirely fulfilling
without needing to be best mates with the people sitting next to you.
In an academic analysis just published in the profoundly-respected Journal of Management,
researchers have looked at the concept of“ indifferent relationships”. It’s a simple term that
encapsulates ( ) the fact that relationships at work can reasonably be non-intimate, inconsequential,
概括
unimportant and even, dare I say it, disposable or substitutable.
Indifferent relationships are neither positive nor negative. The limited research conducted thus
far indicates they’re especially dominant among those who value independence over cooperation,
and harmony over confrontation. Indifference is also the preferred option among those who are
socially lazy. Maintaining relationships over the long term takes effort. For some of us, too much
effort.
As noted above, indifferent relationships may not always be the most helpful approach in
resolving some of the issues that pop up at work. But there are nonetheless several empirically
proven benefits. One of those is efficiency. Less time chatting and socializing means more time
working and churning ( ).
产出
The other is self-esteem. As human beings, we’re primed to compare ourselves to each
other in what is an anxiety-inducing phenomenon. Apparently, we look down on acquaintances
009六级阅读讲义
more so than friends. Since the former is most common among those inclined towards indifferent
relationships, their predominance can bolster individuals’ sense of self-worth.
Ego aside, a third advantage is that the emotional neutrality of indifferent relationships has
been found to enhance critical evaluation, to strengthen one’s focus on task resolution, and to gain
greater access to valuable information. None of that might be as fun as after-work socializing but,
hey, I’ll take it anyway.
46．What did the author realize when he re-entered the corporate world?
A) Making new friends with his workmates was not as easy as he had anticipated.
B) Cultivating positive interpersonal relationships helped him expel solitary feelings.
C) Working in the corporate world requires more interpersonal skills than self-employment.
D) Building close relationships with his colleagues was not as important as he had expected.
47．What do we learn from many studies about collegial relationships?
A) Inharmonious relationships have an adverse effect on productivity.
B) Harmonious relationships are what many companies aim to cultivate.
C) Close collegial relationships contribute very little to product quality.
D) Conflicting relationships in the workplace exist almost everywhere.
48．What can be inferred about relationships at work from an academic analysis?
A) They should be cultivated. B) They are virtually irrelevant.
C) They are vital to corporate culture. D) They should be reasonably intimate.
49．What does the author say about people who are socially lazy?
A) They feel uncomfortable when engaging in social interactions.
B) They often find themselves in confrontation with their colleagues.
C) They are unwilling to make efforts to maintain workplace relationships.
D) They lack basic communication skills in dealing with interpersonal issues.
50．What is one of the benefits of indifferent relationships?
A) They provide fun at work. B) They help control emotions.
C) They help resolve differences. D) They improve work efficiency
Passage Two
In a few decades, artificial intelligence (AI) will surpass many of the abilities that we believe
make us special. This is a grand challenge for our age and it may require an“ irrational” response.
One of the most significant pieces of news from the US in early 2017 was the efforts of
Google to make autonomous driving a reality. According to a report, Google’s self-driving cars
clocked 1,023,330 km, and required human intervention 124 times. That is one intervention about
every 8,047 km of autonomous driving. But even more impressive is the progress in just a single
year: human interventions fell from 0.8 times per thousand miles to 0.2, a 400% improvement.
With such progress, Google’s cars will easily surpass my own driving ability later this year.
Driving once seemed to be a very human skill. But we said that about chess, too. Then a
computer beat the human world champion, repeatedly. The board game Go（ ）took over
围棋
010from chess as a new test for human thinking in 2016, when a computer beat one of the world’s
leading professional Go players. With computers conquering what used to be deeply human tasks,
what will it mean in the future to be human? I worry about my six-year-old son. What will his
place be in a world where machines beat us in one area after another? He’ll never calculate faster,
never drive better, or even fly more safely. Actually, it all comes down to a fairly simple question:
What’s so special about us? It can’t be skills like arithmetic, which machines already excel in. So
far, machines have a pretty hard time emulating creativity, arbitrary enough not to be predicted by
a computer, and yet more than simple randomness.
Perhaps, if we continue to improve information-processing machines, we’ll soon have helpful
rational assistants. So we must aim to complement the rationality of the machine, rather than to
compete with it. If I’m right, we should foster a creative spirit because a dose of illogical creativity
will complement the rationality of the machine. Unfortunately, however, our education system
has not caught up to the approaching reality. Indeed, our schools and universities are structured
to mould pupils to be mostly obedient servants of rationality and to develop outdated skills in
interacting with outdated machines. We need to help our children learn how to best work with
smart computers to improve human decision-making. But most of all we need to keep the long-
term perspective in mind: that even if computers will outsmart us, we can still be the most creative.
Because if we aren’t, we won’t be providing much value in future ecosystems, and that may put in
question the foundation for our existence.
51．What is the author’s greatest concern about the use of AI?
A) Computers are performing lots of creative tasks.
B) Many abilities will cease to be unique to human beings.
C) Computers may become more rational than humans.
D) Many human skills are fast becoming outdated.
52．What impresses the author most in the field of AI?
A) Google’s experimental driverless cars require little human intervention.
B) Google’s cars have surpassed his driving ability in just a single year.
C) Google has made huge progress in autonomous driving in a short time.
D) Google has become a world leader in the field of autonomous driving.
53．What do we learn from the passage about creativity?
A) It is rational. B) It is predictable.
C) It is human specific. D) It is yet to be emulated by AI.
54．What should schools help children do in the era of AI?
A) Cultivate original thinking. B) Learn to work independently.
C) Compete with smart machines. D) Understand how AI works.
55．How can we humans justify our future existence?
A) By constantly outsmarting computers. B) By adopting a long-term perspective.
C) By rationally compromising with AI. D) By providing value with our creativity.
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【2018年12月第1套】
Passage One
Children with attention problems in early childhood were 40% less likely to graduate from
high school, says a new study from Duke University.
The study included 386 kindergarteners from schools in the Fast Track Project, a multi-site
clinical trial in the U.S. that in 1991 began tracking how children developed across their lives.
With this study, researchers examined early academic attention and socio-emotional skills and
how each contributed to academic success into young adulthood.
They found that early attention skills were the most consistent predictor of academic success,
and that likability by peers also had a modest effect on academic performance.
By fifth grade, children with early attention difficulties had lower grades and reading
achievement scores than their peers. As fifth-graders, children with early attention problems
obtained average reading scores at least 3% lower than their contemporaries’ and grades at least
8% lower than those of their peers. This was after controlling for IQ, socio-economic status and
academic skills at school entry.
Although these may not seem like large effects, the impact of early attention problems
continued throughout the children’s academic careers. Lower reading achievement scores and
grades in fifth grade contributed to reduced grades in middle school and thereby contributed to a
40% lower high school graduation rate.
“The children we identified as having attention difficulties were not diagnosed with attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder ( ) (ADHD), although some may have had the
注意力缺乏多动症
disorder. Our findings suggest that even more modest attention difficulties can increase the risk of
negative academic outcomes,” said David Rabiner, an associate dean of Duke’s Trinity College of
Arts & Sciences, whose research has focused on ADHD and interventions to improve academic
performance in children with attention difficulties.
Social acceptance by peers in early childhood also predicted grades in fifth grade. Children
not as liked by their first-grade peers had slightly lower grades in fifth grade, while those with
higher social acceptance had higher grades.
“This study shows the importance of so-called‘ non-cognitive’ or soft skills in contributing
to children’s positive peer relationships, which, in turn, contribute to their academic success,” said
Kenneth Dodge, director of the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy.
The results highlight the need to develop effective early interventions to help those with
attention problems stay on track academically and for educators to encourage positive peer
relationships, the researchers said.
“We are learning that student success requires a more comprehensive approach, one that
incorporates not only academic skills but also social, self-regulatory and attention skills,” Dodge
said.“ If we neglect any of these areas, the child’s development lags. If we attend to these areas, a
child’s success may reinforce itself with positive feedback loops.”
01246．What is the focus of the new study from Duke University?
A) The contributors to children’s early attention.
B) The predictors of children’s academic success.
C) The factors that affect children’s emotional well-being.
D) The determinants of children’s development of social skills.
47．How did the researchers ensure that their findings are valid?
A) By attaching equal importance to all possible variables examined.
B) By collecting as many typical samples as were necessary.
C) By preventing them from being affected by factors not under study.
D) By focusing on the family background of the children being studied.
48．What do we learn from the findings of the Duke study?
A) Modest students are generally more attentive than their contemporaries.
B) There are more children with attention difficulties than previously thought.
C) Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder accounts for most academic failures.
D) Children’s academic performance may suffer from even slight inattention.
49．What does the Duke study find about children better accepted by peers?
A) They do better academically. B) They are easy to get on with.
C) They are teachers’ favorites. D) They care less about grades.
50．What can we conclude from the Duke study?
A) Children’s success is related to their learning environment.
B) School curriculum should cover a greater variety of subjects.
C) Social skills are playing a key role in children’s development.
D) An all-round approach should be adopted in school education.
Passage Two
On Jan 9, 2007, Steve Jobs formally announced Apple’s“ revolutionary mobile phone”—a
device that combined the functionality of an iPod, phone and Internet communication into a single
unit, navigated by touch.
It was a huge milestone in the development of smartphones, which are now owned by a
majority of American adults and are increasingly common across the globe.
As smartphones have multiplied, so have questions about their impact on how we live and
how we work. Often the advantages of convenient, mobile technology are both obvious and taken
for granted, leaving more subtle topics for concerned discussion: Are smartphones disturbing
children’s sleep? Is an inability to get away from work having a negative impact on health? And
what are the implications for privacy?
But today, on the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, let’s take a moment to consider a less
obvious advantage: the potential for smartphone technology to revolutionize behavioral science.
That’s because, for the first time in human history, a large proportion of the species is in
continuous contact with technology that can record key features of an individual’s behavior and
environment.
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Researchers have already begun to use smartphones in social scientific research, either to
query people regularly as they engage in their normal lives or to record activity using the device’s
built-in sensors. These studies are confirming, challenging and extending what’s been found using
more traditional approaches, in which people report how they behaved in real life or participate in
relatively short and artificial laboratory-based tasks.
Such studies are just first steps. As more data are collected and methods for analysis improve,
researchers will be in a better position to identify how different experiences, behaviors and
environments relate to each other and evolve over time, with the potential to improve people’s
productivity and wellbeing in a variety of domains. Beyond revealing population-wide patterns, the
right combination of data and analysis can also help individuals identify unique characteristics of
their own behavior, including conditions that could indicate the need for some form of intervention
— such as an unusual increase in behaviors that signal a period of depression.
Smartphone-based data collection comes at an appropriate time in the evolution of
psychological science. Today, the field is in transition, moving away from a focus on laboratory
studies with undergraduate participants towards more complex, real-world situations studied
with more diverse groups of people. Smartphones offer new tools for achieving these ambitions,
providing rich data about everyday behaviors in a variety of contexts.
So here’s another way in which smartphones might transform the way we live and work: by
offering insights into human psychology and behavior and, thus, supporting smarter social science.
51．What does the author say about the negative impact of smartphones?
A) It has been overshadowed by the positive impact.
B) It has more often than not been taken for granted.
C) It is not so obvious but has caused some concern.
D) It is subtle but should by no means be overstated.
52．What is considered a less obvious advantage of smartphone technology?
A) It systematically records real human interactions.
B) It helps people benefit from technological advances.
C) It brings people into closer contact with each other.
D) It greatly improves research on human behavior.
53．What characterizes traditional psychological research?
A) It is based on huge amounts of carefully collected data.
B) It relies on lab observations and participants’ reports.
C) It makes use of the questionnaire method.
D) It is often expensive and time-consuming.
54．How will future psychological studies benefit individuals?
A) By helping them pin down their unusual behaviors.
B) By helping them maintain a positive state of mind.
C) By helping them live their lives in a unique way.
D) By helping them cope with abnormal situations.
01455．What do we learn about current psychological studies?
A) They are going through a period of painful transition.
B) They are increasingly focused on real-life situations.
C) They are conducted in a more rigorous manner.
D) They are mainly targeted towards undergraduates.
【2018年12月第2套】
Passage One
While human achievements in mathematics continue to reach new levels of complexity, many
of us who aren’t mathematicians at heart (or engineers by trade) may struggle to remember the last
time we used calculus ( ).
微积分
It’s a fact not lost on American educators, who amid rising math failure rates are debating
how math can better meet the real-life needs of students. Should we change the way math is taught
in schools, or eliminate some courses entirely?
Andrew Hacker, Queens College political science professor, thinks that advanced algebra
and other higher-level math should be cut from curricula in favor of courses with more routine
usefulness, like statistics.
“We hear on all sides that we’re not teaching enough mathematics, and the Chinese are
running rings around us,” Hacker says.“ I’m suggesting we’re teaching too much mathematics to
too many people... not everybody has to know calculus. If you’re going to become an aeronautical
( ) engineer, fine. But most of us aren’t.”
航空的
Instead, Hacker is pushing for more courses like the one he teaches at Queens College:
Numeracy 101. There, his students of“ citizen statistics” learn to analyze public information
like the federal budget and corporate reports. Such courses, Hacker argues, are a remedy for the
numerical illiteracy of adults who have completed high-level math like algebra but are unable to
calculate the price of, say, a carpet by area.
Hacker’s argument has met with opposition from other math educators who say what’s
needed is to help students develop a better relationship with math earlier, rather than teaching them
less math altogether.
Maria Droujkova is a founder of Natural Math, and has taught basic calculus concepts to
5-year-olds. For Droujkova, high-level math is important, and what it could use in American
classrooms is an injection of childlike wonder.
“Make mathematics more available,” Droujkova says.“ Redesign it so it’s more accessible
to more kinds of people: young children, adults who worry about it, adults who may have had bad
experiences.”
Pamela Harris, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, has a similar perspective. Harris
says that American education is suffering from an epidemic of“ fake math”—an emphasis on the rote
memorization ( ) of formulas and steps, rather than an understanding of how math can
死记硬背
influence the ways we see the world.
Andrew Hacker, for the record, remains skeptical.
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“I’m going to leave it to those who are in mathematics to work out the ways to make their
subject interesting and exciting so students want to take it,” Hacker says.“ All that I ask is that
alternatives be offered instead of putting all of us on the road to calculus.”
46．What does the author say about ordinary Americans?
A) They struggle to solve math problems.
B) They think math is a complex subject.
C) They find high-level math of little use.
D) They work hard to learn high-level math.
47．What is the general complaint about America’s math education according to Hacker?
A) America is not doing as well as China.
B) Math professors are not doing a good job.
C) It doesn’t help students develop their literacy.
D) There has hardly been any innovation for years.
48．What does Andrew Hacker’s Numeracy 101 aim to do?
A) Allow students to learn high-level math step by step.
B) Enable students to make practical use of basic math.
C) Lay a solid foundation for advanced math studies.
D) Help students to develop their analytical abilities.
49．What does Maria Droujkova suggest math teachers do in class?
A) Make complex concepts easy to understand.
B) Start teaching children math at an early age.
C) Help children work wonders with calculus.
D) Try to arouse students’ curiosity in math.
50．What does Pamela Harris think should be the goal of math education?
A) To enable learners to understand the world better.
B) To help learners to tell fake math from real math.
C) To broaden Americans’ perspectives on math.
D) To exert influence on world development.
Passage Two
For years, the U.S. has experienced a shortage of registered nurses. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics projects that while the number of nurses will increase by 19 percent by 2022, demand will
grow faster than supply, and that there will be over one million unfilled nursing jobs by then.
So what’s the solution? Robots.
Japan is ahead of the curve when it comes to this trend. Toyohashi University of Technology
has developed Terapio, a robotic medical cart that can make hospital rounds, deliver medications
and other items, and retrieve records. It follows a specific individual, such as a doctor or nurse,
who can use it to record and access patient data. This type of robot will likely be one of the first to
be implemented in hospitals because it has fairly minimal patient contact.
016Robots capable of social engagement help with loneliness as well as cognitive functioning,
but the robot itself doesn’t have to engage directly—it can serve as an intermediary for human
communication. Telepresence robots such as MantaroBot, Vgo, and Giraff can be controlled
through a computer, smartphone, or tablet, allowing family members or doctors to remotely
monitor patients or Skype them, often via a screen where the robot’s“ face” would be. If you can’t
get to the nursing home to visit grandma, you can use a telepresence robot to hang out with her. A
2016 study found that users had a“ consistently positive attitude” about the Giraff robot’s ability to
enhance communication and decrease feelings of loneliness.
A robot’s appearance affects its ability to successfully interact with humans, which is why
the RIKEN-TRI Collaboration Center for Human-Interactive Robot Research decided to develop a
robotic nurse that looks like a huge teddy bear. RIBA (Robot for Interactive Body Assistance), also
known as“ Robear”, can help patients into and out of wheelchairs and beds with its strong arms.
On the less cute and more scary side there is Actroid F, which is so human-like that some
patients may not know the difference. This conversational robot companion has cameras in its
eyes, which allow it to track patients and use appropriate facial expressions and body language
in its interactions. During a month-long hospital trial, researchers asked 70 patients how they felt
being around the robot and“ only three or four said they didn’t like having it around.”
It’s important to note that robotic nurses don’t decide courses of treatment or make diagnoses
(though robot doctors and surgeons may not be far off). Instead, they perform routine and laborious
tasks, freeing nurses up to attend to patients with immediate needs. This is one industry where it
seems the integration of robots will lead to collaboration, not replacement.
51．What does the author say about Japan?
A) It delivers the best medications for the elderly.
B) It takes the lead in providing robotic care.
C) It provides retraining for registered nurses.
D) It sets the trend in future robotics technology.
52．What do we learn about the robot Terapio?
A) It has been put to use in many Japanese hospitals.
B) It provides specific individualized care to patients.
C) It does not have much direct contact with patients.
D) It has not revolutionized medical service in Japan.
53．What are telepresence robots designed to do?
A) Directly interact with patients to prevent them from feeling lonely.
B) Cater to the needs of patients for recovering their cognitive capacity.
C) Closely monitor the patients’ movements and conditions around the clock.
D) Facilitate communication between patients and doctors or family members.
54．What is one special feature of the robot Actroid F?
A) It interacts with patients just like a human companion.
B) It operates quietly without patients realizing its presence.
017六级阅读讲义
C) It likes to engage in everyday conversations with patients.
D) It uses body language even more effectively than words.
55．What can we infer from the last paragraph?
A) Doctors and surgeons will soon be laid off.
B) The robotics industry will soon take off.
C) Robots will not make nurses redundant.
D) Collaboration will not replace competition.
【2018年12月第3套】
Passage One
Perhaps it is time for farmers to put their feet up now that robots are used to inspect crops, dig
up weeds, and even have become shepherds, too. Commercial growing fields are astronomically
huge and take thousands of man-hours to operate. One prime example is one of Australia’s most
isolated cattle stations, Suplejack Downs in the Northern Territory, extending across 4,000 square
kilometers, taking over 13 hours to reach by car from the nearest major town—Alice Springs.
The extreme isolation of these massive farms leaves them often unattended, and monitored
only once or twice a year, which means if the livestock falls ill or requires assistance, it can be a
long time for farmers to discover.
However, robots are coming to the rescue.
Robots are currently under a two-year trial in Wales which will train“ farmbots” to herd,
monitor the health of livestock, and make sure there is enough pasture for them to graze on. The
robots are equipped with many sensors to identify conditions of the environment, cattle and food,
using thermal and vision sensors that detect changes in body temperature.
“You’ve also got color, texture and shape sensors looking down at the ground to check
pasture quality,” says Salah Sukkarieh of the University of Sydney, who will carry out trials on
several farms in central New South Wales.
During the trials, the robot algorithms ( ) and mechanics will be fine-tuned to make it
算法
better suited to ailing livestock and ensure it safely navigates around potential hazards including
trees, mud, swamps, and hills.
“We want to improve the quality of animal health and make it easier for farmers to maintain
large landscapes where animals roam free,” says Sukkarieh.
The robots are not limited to herding and monitoring livestock. They have been created to
count individual fruit, inspect crops, and even pull weeds.
Many robots are equipped with high-tech sensors and complex learning algorithms to avoid
injuring humans as they work side by side. The robots also learn the most efficient and safest
passages, and allow engineers and farmers to analyze and better optimize the attributes and
tasks of the robot, as well as provide a live stream giving real-time feedback on exactly what is
happening on the farms.
Of course, some worry lies in replacing agricultural workers. However, it is farmers that
are pushing for the advancements due to ever-increasing labor vacancies, making it difficult to
018maintain large-scale operations.
The robots have provided major benefits to farmers in various ways, from hunting and pulling
weeds to monitoring the condition of every single fruit. Future farms will likely experience a
greater deal of autonomy as robots take up more and more farm work efficiently.
46．What may farmers be able to do with robots appearing on the farming scene?
A) Upgrade farm produce. B) Enjoy more leisure hours.
C) Modify the genes of crops. D) Cut down farming costs.
47．What will“ farmbots” be expected to do?
A) Take up many of the farmers’ routines.
B) Provide medical treatments for livestock.
C) Lead the trend in farming the world over.
D) Improve the quality of pastures for grazing.
48．What can robots do when equipped with high-tech sensors and complex learning algorithms?
A) Help farmers choose the most efficient and safest passages.
B) Help farmers simplify their farming tasks and management.
C) Allow farmers to learn instantly what is occurring on the farm.
D) Allow farmers to give them real-time instructions on what to do.
49．Why are farmers pressing for robotic farming?
A) Farming costs are fast increasing. B) Robotics technology is maturing.
C) Robotic farming is the trend. D) Labor shortage is worsening.
50．What does the author think future farms will be like?
A) More and more automated. B) More and more productive.
C) Larger and larger in scale. D) Better and better in condition.
Passage Two
The public must be able to understand the basics of science to make informed decisions.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of the negative consequences of poor communication between
scientists and the public is the issue of climate change, where a variety of factors, not the least of
which is a breakdown in the transmission of fundamental climate data to the general public, has
contributed to widespread mistrust and misunderstanding of scientists and their research.
The issue of climate change also illustrates how the public acceptance and understanding of
science (or the lack of it) can influence governmental decision-making with regard to regulation,
science policy and research funding.
However, the importance of effective communication with a general audience is not limited
to hot issues like climate change. It is also critical for socially charged neuroscience issues such
as the genetic basis for a particular behavior, the therapeutic potential of stem cell therapy for
neurodegenerative diseases, or the use of animal models, areas where the public understanding of
science can also influence policy and funding decisions. Furthermore, with continuing advances
in individual genome ( ) sequencing and the advent of personalized medicine, more non-
基因组
019六级阅读讲义
scientists will need to be comfortable analyzing complex scientific information to make decisions
that directly affect their quality of life.
Science journalism is the main channel for the popularization of scientific information among
the public. Much has been written about how the relationship between scientists and the media can
shape the efficient transmission of scientific advances to the public. Good science journalists are
specialists in making complex topics accessible to a general audience, while adhering to scientific
accuracy.
Unfortunately, pieces of science journalism can also oversimplify and generalize their subject
material to the point that the basic information conveyed is obscured or at worst, obviously wrong.
The impact of a basic discovery on human health can be exaggerated so that the public thinks a
miraculous cure is a few months to years away when in reality the significance of the study is far
more limited.
Even though scientists play a part in transmitting information to journalists and ultimately
the public, too often the blame for ineffective communication is placed on the side of the
journalists. We believe that at least part of the problem lies in places other than the interaction
between scientists and members of the media, and exists because for one thing we underestimate
how difficult it is for scientists to communicate effectively with a diversity of audiences, and for
another most scientists do not receive formal training in science communication.
51．What does the example of climate change serve to show?
A) The importance of climate data is increasingly recognized.
B) Adequate government funding is vital to scientific research.
C) Government regulation helps the public understand science.
D) Common folks’ scientific knowledge can sway policy making.
52．What should non-scientists do to ensure their quality of life?
A) Seek personalized medical assistance from doctors.
B) Acquire a basic understanding of medical science.
C) Have their individual genome sequenced.
D) Make informed use of animal models.
53．Why is it important for scientists to build a good relationship with the media?
A) It helps them to effectively popularize new scientific information.
B) It enables the public to develop a positive attitude toward science.
C) It helps them to establish a more positive public image.
D) It enables them to apply their findings to public health.
54．What does the author say is the problem with science journalism?
A) It is keen on transmitting sensational information.
B) It tends to oversimplify people’s health problems.
C) It may give inaccurate or distorted information to the public.
D) It may provide information open to different interpretations.
55．What should scientists do to impart their latest findings to the public more effectively?
020A) Give training to science journalists. B) Stimulate public interest in science.
C) Seek timely assistance from the media. D) Improve their communication skills.
【2018年6月第1套】
Passage One
Human memory is notoriously unreliable. Even people with the sharpest facial-recognition
skills can only remember so much.
It’s tough to quantify how good a person is at remembering. No one really knows how
many different faces someone can recall, for example, but various estimates tend to hover in the
thousands—based on the number of acquaintances a person might have.
Machines aren’t limited this way. Give the right computer a massive database of faces, and
it can process what it sees—then recognize a face it’s told to find—with remarkable speed and
precision. This skill is what supports the enormous promise of facial-recognition software in the
21st century. It’s also what makes contemporary surveillance systems so scary.
The thing is, machines still have limitations when it comes to facial recognition. And
scientists are only just beginning to understand what those constraints are. To begin to figure out
how computers are struggling, researchers at the University of Washington created a massive
database of faces—they call it MegaFace—and tested a variety of facial-recognition algorithms
( ) as they scaled up in complexity. The idea was to test the machines on a database that
算法
included up to 1 million different images of nearly 700,000 different people—and not just a large
database featuring a relatively small number of different faces, more consistent with what’s been
used in other research.
As the databases grew, machine accuracy dipped across the board. Algorithms that were right
95% of the time when they were dealing with a 13,000-image database, for example, were accurate
about 70% of the time when confronted with 1 million images. That’s still pretty good, says one of
the researchers, Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman“. Much better than we expected,” she said.
Machines also had difficulty adjusting for people who look a lot alike—either doppelgangers
( ), whom the machine would have trouble identifying as two separate people, or
长相极相似的人
the same person who appeared in different photos at different ages or in different lighting, whom
the machine would incorrectly view as separate people.
“Once we scale up, algorithms must be sensitive to tiny changes in identities and at the same
time invariant to lighting, pose, age,” Kemelmacher-Shlizerman said.
The trouble is, for many of the researchers who’d like to design systems to address these
challenges, massive datasets for experimentation just don’t exist—at least, not in formats that are
accessible to academic researchers. Training sets like the ones Google and Facebook have are
private. There are no public databases that contain millions of faces. MegaFace’s creators say it’s
the largest publicly available facial-recognition dataset out there.
“An ultimate face recognition algorithm should perform with billions of people in a dataset,”
the researchers wrote.
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46．Compared with human memory, machines can .
A) identify human faces more efficiently
B) tell a friend from a mere acquaintance
C) store an unlimited number of human faces
D) perceive images invisible to the human eye
47．Why did researchers create MegaFace?
A) To enlarge the volume of the facial-recognition database.
B) To increase the variety of facial-recognition software.
C) To understand computers’ problems with facial recognition.
D) To reduce the complexity of facial-recognition algorithms.
48．What does the passage say about machine accuracy?
A) It falls short of researchers’ expectations.
B) It improves with added computing power.
C) It varies greatly with different algorithms.
D) It decreases as the database size increases.
49．What is said to be a shortcoming of facial-recognition machines?
A) They cannot easily tell apart people with near-identical appearances.
B) They have difficulty identifying changes in facial expressions.
C) They are not sensitive to minute changes in people’s mood.
D) They have problems distinguishing people of the same age.
50．What is the difficulty confronting researchers of facial-recognition machines?
A) No computer is yet able to handle huge datasets of human faces.
B) There do not exist public databases with sufficient face samples.
C) There are no appropriate algorithms to process the face samples.
D) They have trouble converting face datasets into the right format.
Passage Two
There’re currently 21.5 million students in America, and many will be funding their college
on borrowed money. Given that there’s now over $1.3 trillion in student loans on the books, It’s
pretty clear that many students are far from sensible. The average student’s debt upon graduation
now approaches $40,000, and as college becomes ever more expensive, calls to make it“ free” are
multiplying. Even Hillary Clinton says that when it comes to college“, Costs won’t be a barrier.”
But the only way college could be free is if the faculty and staff donated their time, the
buildings required no maintenance, and campuses required no utilities. As long as it’s impossible
to produce something from nothing, costs are absolutely a barrier.
The actual question we debate is who should pay for people to go to college. If taxpayers are to
bear the cost of forgiving student loans, shouldn’t they have a say in how their money is used?
At least taxpayers should be able to decide what students will study on the public dime. If
we’re going to force taxpayers to foot the bill for college degrees, students should only study those
subjects that’re of greatest benefit to taxpayers. After all, students making their own choices in this
022respect is what caused the problem in the first place. We simply don’t need more poetry, gender studies,
or sociology majors. How do we know which subjects benefit society? Easy.
Average starting salaries give a clear indication of what type of training society needs its
new workers to have. Certainly, there’re benefits to a college major beyond the job a student can
perform. But if we’re talking about the benefits to society, the only thing that matters is what the
major enables the student to produce for society. And the value of what the student can produce is
reflected in the wage employers are willing to pay the student to produce it.
A low wage for elementary school teachers, however, doesn’t mean elementary education
isn’t important. It simply means there’re too many elementary school teachers already.
Meanwhile, there’re few who’re willing and able to perform jobs requiring a petroleum
engineering major, so the value of one more of those people is very high.
So we can have taxpayers pick up students’ tuition in exchange for dictating what those
students will study. Or we can allow students both to choose their majors and pay for their
education themselves. But in the end, one of two things is true:
Either a college major is worth its cost or it isn’t. If yes, taxpayer financing isn’t needed. If
not, taxpayer financing isn’t desirable. Either way, taxpayers have no business paying for students’
college education.
51．What does the author think of college students funding their education through loans?
A) They only expect to get huge returns. B) They are acting in an irrational way.
C) They benefit at taxpayers’ expense. D) They will regret doing so someday.
52．In the author’s opinion, free college education is .
A) impractical B) unsustainable
C) a goal to strive for D) a way to social equality
53．What should students do if taxpayers are to bear their college costs?
A) Work even harder to repay society.
B) Choose their subjects more carefully.
C) Choose majors that will serve society’s practical needs.
D) Allow taxpayers to participate in college administration.
54．What does the author say about the value of a student’s college education?
A) It is underestimated by profit-seeking employers.
B) It is to be proved by what they can do on the job.
C) It is well reflected in their average starting salary.
D) It is embodied in how they remove social barriers.
55．What message does the author want to convey in the passage?
A) Students should think carefully whether to go to college.
B) Taxpayers should only finance the most gifted students.
C) The worth of a college education is open to debate.
D) College students should fund their own education.
023六级阅读讲义
【2018年6月第2套】
Passage One
The Ebro Delta, in Spain, famous as a battleground during the Spanish Civil War, is now the
setting for a different contest, one that is pitting rice farmers against two enemies: the rice-eating
giant apple snail, and rising sea levels. What happens here will have a bearing on the future of
European rice production and the overall health of southern European wetlands.
Located on the Mediterranean just two hours south of Barcelona, the Ebro Delta produces
120 million kilograms of rice a year, making it one of the continent’s most important rice-growing
areas. As the sea creeps into these fresh-water marshes, however, rising salinity ( ) is
盐 分
hampering rice production. At the same time, this sea-water also kills off the greedy giant apple
snail, an introduced pest that feeds on young rice plants. The most promising strategy has become
to harness one foe against the other.
The battle is currently being waged on land, in greenhouses at the University of Barcelona.
Scientists working under the banner“ Project Neurice” are seeking varieties of rice that can
withstand the increasing salinity without losing the absorbency that makes European rice ideal for
traditional Spanish and Italian dishes.
“The project has two sides,” says Xavier Serrat, Neurice project manager and researcher at
the University of Barcelona,“ the short-term fight against the snail, and a mid- to long-term fight
against climate change. But the snail has given the project greater urgency.”
Originally from South America, the snails were accidentally introduced into the Ebro Delta
by Global Aquatic Technologies, a company that raised the snails for fresh-water aquariums (
水
), but failed to prevent their escape. For now, the giant apple snail’s presence in Europe
族馆
is limited to the Ebro Delta. But the snail continues its march to new territory, says Serrat.“ The
question is not whether it will reach other rice-growing areas of Europe, but when.”
Over the next year and a half investigators will test the various strains of salt-tolerant
rice they’ve bred. In 2018, farmers will plant the varieties with the most promise in the Ebro
Delta and Europe’s other two main rice-growing regions—along the Po in Italy, and France’s
Rhone. A season in the field will help determine which, if any, of the varieties are ready for
commercialization.
As an EU-funded effort, the search for salt-tolerant varieties of rice is taking place in all three
countries. Each team is crossbreeding a local European short-grain rice with a long-grain Asian
variety that carries the salt-resistant gene. The scientists are breeding successive generations to
arrive at varieties that incorporate salt tolerance but retain about 97 percent of the European rice
genome ( ).
基因组
46．Why does the author mention the Spanish Civil War at the beginning of the passage?
A) It had great impact on the life of Spanish rice farmers.
B) It is of great significance in the records of Spanish history.
C) Rice farmers in the Ebro Delta are waging a battle of similar importance.
024D) Rice farmers in the Ebro Delta are experiencing as hard a time as in the war.
47．What may be the most effective strategy for rice farmers to employ in fighting their enemies?
A) Striking the weaker enemy first. B) Killing two birds with one stone.
C) Eliminating the enemy one by one. D) Using one evil to combat the other.
48．What do we learn about“ Project Neurice”?
A) Its goals will have to be realized at a cost.
B) It aims to increase the yield of Spanish rice.
C) Its immediate priority is to bring the pest under control.
D) It tries to kill the snails with the help of climate change.
49．What does Neurice project manager say about the giant apple snail?
A) It can survive only on southern European wetlands.
B) It will invade other rice-growing regions of Europe.
C) It multiplies at a speed beyond human imagination.
D) It was introduced into the rice fields on purpose.
50．What is the ultimate goal of the EU-funded program?
A) Cultivating ideal salt-resistant rice varieties.
B) Increasing the absorbency of the Spanish rice.
C) Introducing Spanish rice to the rest of Europe.
D) Popularizing the rice crossbreeding technology.
Passage Two
Photography was once an expensive, laborious ordeal reserved for life’s greatest milestones.
Now, the only apparent cost to taking infinite photos of something as common as a meal is the
space on your hard drive and your dining companion’s patience.
But is there another cost, a deeper cost, to documenting a life experience instead of simply
enjoying it?“ You hear that you shouldn’t take all these photos and interrupt the experience,
and it’s bad for you, and we’re not living in the present moment,” says Kristin Diehl, associate
professor of marketing at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.
Diehl and her fellow researchers wanted to find out if that was true, so they embarked on a
series of nine experiments in the lab and in the field testing people’s enjoyment in the presence or
absence of a camera. The results, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
surprised them. Taking photos actually makes people enjoy what they’re doing more, not less.
“What we find is you actually look at the world slightly differently, because you’re looking
for things you want to capture, that you may want to hang onto,” Diehl explains.“ That gets people
more engaged in the experience, and they tend to enjoy it more.”
Take sightseeing. In one experiment, nearly 200 participants boarded a double-decker bus
for a tour of Philadelphia. Both bus tours forbade the use of cell phones but one tour provided
digital cameras and encouraged people to take photos. The people who took photos enjoyed the
experience significantly more, and said they were more engaged, than those who didn’t.
Snapping a photo directs attention, which heightens the pleasure you get from whatever
025六级阅读讲义
you’re looking at, Diehl says. It works for things as boring as archaeological ( ) museums,
考古的
where people were given eye-tracking glasses and instructed either to take photos or not.“ People
look longer at things they want to photograph,” Diehl says. They report liking the exhibits more,
too.
To the relief of Instagrammers (Instagram ) everywhere, it can even make meals more
用户
enjoyable. When people were encouraged to take at least three photos while they ate lunch, they
were more immersed in their meals than those who weren’t told to take photos.
Was it the satisfying click of the camera? The physical act of the snap? No, they found; just
the act of planning to take a photo—and not actually taking it—had the same joy-boosting effect.
“If you want to take mental photos, that works the same way,” Diehl says.“ Thinking about what
you would want to photograph also gets you more engaged.”
51．What does the author say about photo-taking in the past?
A) It was a painstaking effort for recording life’s major events.
B) It was a luxury that only a few wealthy people could enjoy.
C) It was a good way to preserve one’s precious images.
D) It was a skill that required lots of practice to master.
52．Kristin Diehl conducted a series of experiments on photo-taking to find out .
A) what kind of pleasure it would actually bring to photo-takers
B) whether people enjoyed it when they did sightseeing
C) how it could help to enrich people’s life experiences
D) whether it prevented people enjoying what they were doing
53．What do the results of Diehl’s experiments show about people taking pictures?
A) They are distracted from what they are doing.
B) They can better remember what they see or do.
C) They are more absorbed in what catches their eye.
D) They can have a better understanding of the world.
54．What is found about museum visitors with the aid of eye-tracking glasses?
A) They come out with better photographs of the exhibits.
B) They focus more on the exhibits when taking pictures.
C) They have a better view of what are on display.
D) They follow the historical events more easily.
55．What do we learn from the last paragraph?
A) It is better to make plans before taking photos.
B) Mental photos can be as beautiful as snapshots.
C) Photographers can derive great joy from the click of the camera.
D) Even the very thought of taking a photo can have a positive effect.
【2018年6月第3套】
026Passage One
Economically speaking, are we better off than we were ten years ago? Twenty years ago?
In their thirst for evidence on this issue, commentators seized on the recent report by the
Census Bureau, which found that average household income rose by 5.2% in 2015. Unfortunately,
that conclusion puts too much weight on a useful, but flawed and incomplete, statistic. Among the
more significant problems with the Census’s measure are that: 1) it excludes taxes, transfers, and
compensation like employer-provided health insurance; and 2) it is based on surveys rather than
data. Even if precisely measured, income data exclude important determinants of economic well-
being, such as the hours of work needed to earn that income.
While thinking about the question, we came across a recently published article by Charles
Jones and Peter Klenow, which proposes an interesting new measure of economic welfare.
While by no means perfect, it is considerably more comprehensive than average income; taking
into account not only growth in consumption per person but also changes in working time, life
expectancy, and inequality. Moreover, it can be used to assess economic performance both across
countries and over time.
The Jones-Klenow method can be illustrated by a cross-country example. Suppose we want to
compare the economic welfare of citizens of the U.S. and France in 2005.
In 2005, as the authors observe, real consumption per person in France was only 60% as high
as the U.S., making it appear that Americans were economically much better off than the French
on average. However, that comparison omits other relevant factors: leisure time, life expectancy,
and economic inequality. The French take longer vacations and retire earlier, so typically work
fewer hours; they enjoy a higher life expectancy, presumably reflecting advantages with respect to
health care, diet, lifestyle, and the like; and income and consumption are somewhat more equally
distributed there than in the U.S. Because of these differences, comparing France’s consumption
with the U.S.’s overstates the gap in economic welfare.
Similar calculations can be used to compare the U.S. and other countries. For example, this
calculation puts economic welfare in the United Kingdom at 97% of U.S. levels, but estimates
Mexican well-being at 22%.
The Jones-Klenow measure can also assess an economy’s performance over time. According
to this measure, as of the early-to-mid-2000s, the U.S. had the highest economic welfare of any
large country. Since 2007, economic welfare in the U.S. has continued to improve. However, the
pace of improvement has slowed markedly.
Methodologically, the lesson from the Jones-Klenow research is that economic welfare is
multi-dimensional. Their approach is flexible enough that in principle other important quality-of-
life changes could be incorporated—for example, decreases in total emissions of pollutants and
declines in crime rates.
46．What does the author think of the 2015 report by the Census Bureau?
A) It is based on questionable statistics. B) It reflects the economic changes.
C) It evidences the improved welfare. D) It provides much food for thought.
027六级阅读讲义
47．What does the author say about the Jones-Klenow method?
A) It is widely used to compare the economic growth across countries.
B) It revolutionizes the way of measuring ordinary people’s livelihood.
C) It focuses on people’s consumption rather than their average income.
D) It is a more comprehensive measure of people’s economic well-being.
48．What do Jones and Klenow think of the comparison between France and the U.S. in terms of
real consumption per person?
A) It reflected the existing big gap between the two economies.
B) It neglected many important indicators of people’s welfare.
C) It covered up the differences between individual citizens.
D) It failed to count in their difference in natural resources.
49．What is an advantage of the Jones-Klenow method?
A) It can accurately pinpoint a country’s current economic problems.
B) It can help to raise people’s awareness of their economic well-being.
C) It can diagnose the causes of a country’s slowing pace of economic improvement.
D) It can compare a country’s economic conditions between different periods of time.
50．What can we infer from the passage about American people’s economic well-being?
A) It is much better than that of their European counterparts.
B) It has been on the decline ever since the turn of the century.
C) It has not improved as much as reported by the Census Bureau.
D) It has not been accurately assessed and reported since mid-2000s.
Passage Two
If you’ve ever started a sentence with,“ If I were you...” or found yourself scratching your
head at a colleague’s agony over a decision when the answer is crystal-clear, there’s a scientific
reason behind it. Our own decision-making abilities can become depleted over the course of the
day causing indecision or poor choices, but choosing on behalf of someone else is an enjoyable
task that doesn’t suffer the same pitfalls.
The problem is“ decision fatigue,” a psychological phenomenon that takes a toll on the
quality of your choices after a long day of decision making, says Evan Polman, a leading
psychologist.
Physicians who have been on the job for several hours, for example, are more likely to
prescribe antibiotics to patients when it’s unwise to do so.“ Presumably it’s because it’s simple
and easy to write a prescription and consider a patient case closed rather than investigate further,”
Polman says.
But decision fatigue goes away when you are making the decision for someone else. When
people imagine themselves as advisers and imagine their own choices as belonging to someone
else, they feel less tired and rely less on decision shortcuts to make those choices.“ By taking upon
the role of adviser rather than decision maker, one does not suffer the consequences of decision
fatigue,” he says.“ It’s as if there’s something fun and liberating about making someone else’s
028choice.”
Getting input from others not only offers a fresh perspective and thought process, it often also
includes riskier choices. While this sounds undesirable, it can be quite good, says Polman.“ When
people experience decision fatigue—when they are tired of making choices—they have a tendency
to choose to go with the status quo ( ),” he says.“ But the status quo can be problematic,
现 状
since a change in the course of action can sometimes be important and lead to a positive outcome.”
In order to achieve a successful outcome or reward, some level of risk is almost always
essential.“ People who are susceptible to decision fatigue will likely choose to do nothing over
something,” he says.“ That’s not to say that risk is always good, but it is related to taking action,
whereas decision fatigue assuredly leads to inaction and the possible chagrin ( ) of a decision
懊恼
maker who might otherwise prefer a new course but is unfortunately hindered.”
Just because you can make good choices for others doesn’t mean you’ll do the same for
yourself, Polman cautions.“ Research has found that women negotiate higher salaries for others
than they do for themselves,” he says, adding that people slip in and out of decision roles.
51．What does the author say about people making decisions?
A) They may become exhausted by making too many decisions for themselves.
B) They are more cautious in making decisions for others than for themselves.
C) They tend to make decisions the way they think advantageous to them.
D) They show considerable differences in their decision-making abilities.
52．What does the example about the physicians illustrate?
A) Patients seldom receive due care towards the end of the day.
B) Prescription of antibiotics can be harmful to patients’ health.
C) Decision fatigue may prevent people making wise decisions.
D) Medical doctors are especially susceptible to decision fatigue.
53．When do people feel less decision fatigue?
A) When they take decision shortcuts.
B) When they help others to make decisions.
C) When they have major decisions to make.
D) When they have advisers to turn to.
54．What are people likely to do when decision fatigue sets in?
A) They turn to physicians for advice. B) They tend to make risky decisions.
C) They adopt a totally new perspective. D) They refrain from trying anything new.
55．What does the passage say about taking some risk in decision making?
A) It is vital for one to reach the goal desired.
B) It is likely to entail serious consequences.
C) It will enable people to be more creative.
D) It will more often than not end in regret.
029六级阅读讲义
【2017年12月第1套】
Passage One
At the base of a mountain in Tanzania’s Gregory Rift, Lake Natron burns bright red,
surrounded by the remains of animals that were unfortunate enough to fall into the salty water.
Bats, swallows and more are chemically preserved in the pose in which they perished, sealed in the
deposits of sodium carbonate in the water. The lake’s landscape is bizarre and deadly—and made
even more so by the fact that it’s the place where nearly 75 percent of the world’s flamingos (
火烈
) are born.
鸟
The water is so corrosive that it can burn the skin and eyes of unadapted animals. Flamingos,
however, are the only species that actually makes life in the midst of all that death. Once every
three or four years, when conditions are right, the lake is covered with the pink birds as they stop
flight to breed. Three-quarters of the world’s flamingos fly over from other salt lakes in the Rift
Valley and nest on salt-crystal islands that appear when the water is at a specific level—too high
and the birds can’t build their nests, too low and predators can move briskly across the lake bed
and attack. When the water hits the right level, the baby birds are kept safe form predators by a
corrosive ditch.
“Flamingos have evolved very leathery skin on their legs so they can tolerate the salt water,”
says David Harper, a professor at the University of Leicester.“ Humans cannot, and would die if
their legs were exposed for any length of time.” So far this year, water levels have been too high
for the flamingos to nest.
Some fish, too, have had limited success vacationing at the lake as less salty lagoons ( )
泻湖
form on the outer edges from hot springs flowing into Lake Natron. Three species of tilapia (
罗
) thrive there part-time.“ Fish have a refuge in the streams and can expand into the lagoons
非鱼
when the lake is low and the lagoons are separate,” Harper said.“ All the lagoons join when the
lake is high and fish must retreat to their stream refuges or die.” Otherwise, no fish are able to
survive in the naturally toxic lake.
This unique ecosystem may soon be under pressure. The Tanzanian government has once
again started mining the lake for soda ash, used for making chemicals, glass and detergents.
Although the planned operation will be located more than 40 miles away, drawing the soda ash in
through pipelines, conservationists worry it could still upset the natural water cycle and breeding
grounds. For now, though, life prevails—even in a lake that kills almost everything it touches.
46．What can we learn about Lake Natron?
A) It is simply uninhabitable for most animals.
B) It remains little known to the outside world.
C) It is a breeding ground for a variety of birds.
D) It makes an ideal habitat for lots of predators.
47．Flamingos nest only when the lake water is at a specific level so that their babies can .
A) find safe shelter more easily B) grow thick feathers on their feet
030C) stay away from predators D) get accustomed to the salty water
48．Flamingos in the Rift Valley are unique in that .
A) they can move swiftly across lagoons
B) they can survive well in salty water
C) they breed naturally in corrosive ditches
D) they know where and when to nest
49．Why can certain species of tilapia sometimes survive around Lake Natron?
A) They can take refuge in the less salty waters.
B) They can flee quick enough from predators.
C) They can move freely from lagoon to lagoon.
D) They can stand the heat of the spring water.
50．What may be the consequence of Tanzanian government’s planned operation?
A) The accelerated extinction of flamingos.
B) The change of flamingos’ migration route.
C) The overmining of Lake Natron’s soda ash.
D) The disruption of Lake Natron’s ecosystem.
Passage Two
It is the season for some frantic last-minute math—across the country, employees of all
stripe are counting backward in an attempt to figure out just how much paid time-off they have
left it their reserves. More of them, though, will skip those calculations altogether and just power
through the holidays into 2017: More than half of American workers don’t use up all of their
allotted vacation days each year.
Not so long ago, people would have turned up their noses at that kind of dedication to the job.
As marketing professors Silvia Bellezza, Neeru Paharia, and Anat Keinan recently explained in
Harvard Business Review (HBR), leisure time was once seen as an indicator of high social status,
something attainable only for those at the top. Since the middle of the 20th century, though, things
have turned the opposite way—these days, punishing hours at your desk, rather than days off, are
seen as the mark of someone important.
In a series of several experiments, the researchers illustrated just how much we’ve come to
admire busyness, or at least the appearance of it. Volunteers read two passages, on about a man
who led a life of leisure and another about a man who was over-worked and over-scheduled; when
asked to determine which of the two had a higher social status, the majority of the participants said
the latter. The same held true for people who used products that implied they were short on time:
In one experiment, for example, customers of the grocery-delivery service Peapod were seen as of
higher status than people who shopped at grocery stores that were equally expensive; in another,
people wearing wireless headphones were considered further up on the social ladder than those
wearing regular headphones, even when both were just used to listen to music.
In part, the authors wrote in HBR, this pattern may have to do with the way work itself has
changed over the past several decades.
031六级阅读讲义
We think that the shift from leisure-as-status to busyness-as-status may be linked to the
development of knowledge-intensive economies. In such economies, individuals who possess the
human capital characteristics that employers or clients value (e.g., competence and ambition) are
expected to be in high demand and short supply on the job market. Thus, by telling others that we
are busy and working all the time, we are implicitly suggesting that we are sought after, which
enhances our perceived status.
Even if you feel tempted to sacrifice your ow vacation days for fake busyness, though, at least
consider leaving your weekends unscheduled. It’s for your own good.
51．What do most employees plan to do towards the end of the year?
A) Go for a vacation. B) Keep on working.
C) Set an objective for next year. D) Review the year’s achievements.
52．How would people view dedication to work in the past?
A) They would regard it as a matter of course.
B) They would consider it a must for success.
C) They would look upon it with contempt.
D) They would deem it a trick of businessmen.
53．What did the researchers find through a series of experiments?
A) The busier one appears, the more respect one earns.
B) The more one works, the more one feels exploited.
C) The more knowledge one has, the more competent one will be.
D) The higher one’s status, the more vacation time one will enjoy.
54．What may account for the change of people’s attitude towards being busy?
A) The fast pace of life in modern society.
B) The fierce competition in the job market.
C) The widespread use of computer technology.
D) The role of knowledge in modern economy.
55．What does the author advise us to do at the end of the passage?
A) Schedule our time properly for efficiency.
B) Plan our weekends in a meaningful way.
C) Find time to relax however busy we are.
D) Avoid appearing busy when we are not.
【2017年12月第2套】
Passage One
You may have heard that Coca-Cola once contained an ingredient capable of sparking
particular devotion in consumers: cocaine. The“ coca” in the name referred to the extracts of coca
leaf that the drink’s originator, chemist John Pemberton, mixed with his sugary syrup ( ).
浆汁
At the time, coca leaf extract mixed with wine was a common tonic ( ), and Pemberton’s
滋补品
sweet brew was a way to get around local laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol. But the other half of
032the name represents another ingredient, less infamous ( ), perhaps, but also strangely
名声不好的
potent: the kola nut.
In West Africa, people have long chewed kola nuts as stimulants, because they contain
caffeine that also occurs naturally in tea, coffee, and chocolate. They also have heart stimulants.
Historian Paul Lovejoy relates that the cultivation of kola nuts in West Africa is hundreds of
years old. The leafy, spreading trees were planted on graves and as part of traditional rituals. Even
though the nuts, which need to stay moist, can be somewhat delicate to transport, traders carried
them hundreds of miles throughout the forests and grasslands.
Europeans did not know of them until the 1500s, when Portuguese ships arrived on the coast
of what is now Sierra Leone. And while the Portuguese took part in the trade, ferrying nuts down
the coast along with other goods, by 1620, when English explorer Richard Jobson made his way up
the Gambia, the nuts were still peculiar to his eyes.
By the late 19th century, kola nuts were being shipped by the tonne to Europe and the US.
Many made their way into medicines, a French product consisting of coca extract mixed with red
wine. It was created by a French chemist, Angelo Mariani, in 1863. So when Pemberton created
his drink, it represented an ongoing trend. When cocaine eventually fell from grace as a beverage
ingredient, kola-extract colas became popular.
The first year it was available, Coca-Cola averaged nine servings a day across all the Atlanta
soda fountains where it was sold. As it grew more popular, the company sold rights to bottle the
soda, so it could travel easily. Today about 1.9 billion Cokes are purchased daily. It’s become so
iconic that attempts to change its taste in 1985—sweetening it in a move projected to boost sales—
proved disastrous, with widespread anger from consumers.“ Coca-Cola Classic” returned to store
shelves just three months after the“ New Coke” was released.
These days, the Coca-Cola recipe is a closely guarded secret. But it’s said to no longer
contain kola nut extract, relying instead on artificial imitations to achieve the flavor.
46．What do we learn about chemist John Pemberton?
A) He used a strangely potent ingredient in a food supplement.
B) He created a drink containing alcohol without breaking law.
C) He became notorious because of the coca drink he developed.
D) He risked breaking local law to make a drink with coca leaves.
47．What does the passage say about kola nuts?
A) Their commercial value was first discovered by Portuguese settlers.
B) They contain some kind of energy boost not found in any other food.
C) Many were shipped to Europe in the late 19th century for medicinal use.
D) They were strange to the Europeans when first imported from West Africa.
48．How come kola-extract colas became popular?
A) Cocaine had become notorious. B) Alcoholic drinks were prohibited.
C) Fountains were set up to sell them. D) Rights were sold to bottle the soda.
49．What is known about the taste of Coca-Cola?
033六级阅读讲义
A) It was so designed as to create addiction in consumers.
B) It still relies on traditional kola nut extract.
C) It has become more popular among the old.
D) It has remained virtually unchanged since its creation.
50．What is the passage mainly about?
A) The evolution of Coca-Cola. B) The success story of Coca-Cola.
C) The medicinal value of Coca-Cola. D) The business strategy of Coca-Cola.
Passage Two
Twenty years ago, the Urban Land Institute defined the two types of cities that dominated
the US landscape: smaller cities that operated around standard 9-5 business hours and large
metropolitan areas that ran all 24 hours of the day. Analyzing and comparing cities using the lens
of this basic divide gives interesting context to how investment capital flows and housing prices
have shifted.
In recent years, many mid-sized cities have begun to adopt a middle-of-the-road approach
incorporating the excitement and opportunity of large cities with small cities’ quiet after midnight.
These 18-hour cities are beginning to make waves in real estate rankings and attract more real
estate investment. What is underlying this new movement in real estate, and why do these cities
have so much appeal?
18-hour cities combine the best of 24-hour and 9-5 cities, which contributes to downtown
revitalization. For decades, many downtown cores in small to mid-sized cities were abandoned
after work hours by workers who lived in the suburbs. Movement out of city centers was
widespread, and downtown tenants were predominantly made up of the working poor. This
generated little commerce for downtown businesses in the evenings, which made business and
generating tax revenue for municipal upkeep difficult. With the rise of a new concept in urban
planning that aims to make life easier and more convenient, however, increasing popularity for
urban areas that caused the real estate pushes, in major cities like San Francisco or New York, has
inspired a type of forward thinking urbanity and policy in smaller cities.
Transforming downtown areas so that they incorporate modern housing and improved
walkability to local restaurants, retail, and entertainment—especially when combined with
improved infrastructure for cyclists and public transit—makes them appeal to a more affluent
demographic. These adjustments encourage employers in the knowledge and talent industries
to keep their offices downtown. Access to foot traffic and proximity to transit allow the type of
entertainment-oriented businesses such as bars and restaurants to stay open later, which attracts
both younger, creative workers and baby boomers nearing retirement alike. Because of their
smaller size, most keep hours that allow people to enjoy themselves, then have some quiet after
midnight, as opposed to large major cities like New York, where the buzz of activity is ongoing.
Theses 18-hour cities are rapidly on the rise and offer great opportunities for homeowner
investment. In many of these cities such as Denver, a diverse and vigorous economy attracted to
the urban core has offered stable employment for residents. The right urban mix has propped up
034home occupancy, increased property values, and attracted significant investment capital.
51．What do we learn about American cities twenty years ago?
A) They were divided into residential and business areas.
B) Their housing prices were linked with their prosperity.
C) There was a clear divide between large and small cities.
D) They were places where large investment capital flowed.
52．What can be inferred from the passage about 18-hour cities?
A) They especially appeal to small businesses.
B) They have seen a rise in property prices.
C) They have replaced quiet with excitement.
D) They have changed America’s landscape.
53．Years ago, many downtown cores in small to mid-sized cities .
A) had hardly any business activity B) were crowded in business hours
C) exhibited no signs of prosperity D) looked deserted in the evenings
54．What characterizes the new downtown areas in 18-hour cities?
A) A sudden emergence of the knowledge industry.
B) Flooding in of large crowds of migrant workers.
C) Modernized housing and improved infrastructure.
D) More comfortable life and greater upward mobility.
55．What have 18-hour cities brought to the local residents?
A) More chances for promotion. B) Healthier living environment.
C) Greater cultural diversity. D) Better job opportunities.
035六级阅读讲义
第二部分 长篇阅读
一、题型介绍
， ： 、 、 。
大学英语六级试卷由四个部分构成 依次为 写作 听力理解 阅读理解和翻译
、 ：
其中阅读理解部分的测试内容 题型和所占分值比例如下表所示
试卷结构 测试内容 测试题型 题目数量 分值占比 考试时间
10 5%
词汇理解 选词填空
10 10% 40
阅读理解 长篇阅读 匹配 分钟
10 20%
仔细阅读 单选题
30 35% 40
总计 分钟
1200 ， 10%。
长篇阅读的篇章长度约 词 分值占比为
，
长篇阅读采用段落匹配题型 考核考生运用略读和查读的技能从篇章中获取信息的能
。 ；
力 略读要求学生通过快速阅读获取文章主旨大意或中心思想 查读要求学生快速查找篇
。 10 ， 1 。
章中的特定信息 篇章后附有 个句子 每句 题 每句所含的信息出自篇章中的某一段
， 。
落 要求学生找出与每句所含信息相匹配的段落
， 。
有的段落可能对应两题 有的段落可能不对应任何一题
二、考情分析
， ，
长篇阅读可以说是最耗时间的阅读题型 也是对基本功要求最高的题型 因为文章很
， ， 、
长 句子也很长 对同学们的 和 要求非常
。 ， ， 。
高 同时 这个题型的技巧性也不是很强 必须通过大量的训练来提升
三、解题技巧
（一）解题原则
文章尽量 把题做完
速战速决不要恋战
036参考时间
（二）解题方法
1. ，
第二部分 长篇阅读
预判文章结构
：
常见文章结构
（1） ： ； ；
提出问题 研究问题 解决问题
（2） ： ； ；
发展类记叙文 过去 现在 将来
2. （ ）
找出题干 划关键词
3.
一、题型介绍 一次多记几道题的关键词
4.
从头开始迅速扫读找
， ： 、 、 。 5. （ 、 、 ）
大学英语六级试卷由四个部分构成 依次为 写作 听力理解 阅读理解和翻译 优先找好找的 时间 比较 时态
、 ：
其中阅读理解部分的测试内容 题型和所占分值比例如下表所示 （三）注意事项
；
不要纠结意思 像玩连连看一样
试卷结构 测试内容 测试题型 题目数量 分值占比 考试时间
10 5%
词汇理解 选词填空
10 10% 40
阅读理解 长篇阅读 匹配 分钟
四、真题演练
10 20%
仔细阅读 单选题
30 35% 40
总计 分钟 【2019年6月第1套】
1200 ， 10%。 The Best Retailers Combine Bricks and Clicks
长篇阅读的篇章长度约 词 分值占比为
， A) Retail profits are falling sharply. Stores are closing. Malls are emptying. The depressing stories
长篇阅读采用段落匹配题型 考核考生运用略读和查读的技能从篇章中获取信息的能
。 ； just keep coming. Reading the earnings announcements of large retail stores like Macy’s,
力 略读要求学生通过快速阅读获取文章主旨大意或中心思想 查读要求学生快速查找篇
。 10 ， 1 。 Nordstrom, and Target is about as uplifting as a tour of an intensive care unit. The internet is
章中的特定信息 篇章后附有 个句子 每句 题 每句所含的信息出自篇章中的某一段
， 。 apparently taking down yet another industry. Brick and mortar stores ( ) seem to be
落 要求学生找出与每句所含信息相匹配的段落 实体店
， 。 going the way of the yellow pages. Sure enough, the Census Bureau just released data showing
有的段落可能对应两题 有的段落可能不对应任何一题
that online retail sales surged 15.2 percent between the first quarter of 2015 and the first quarter
of 2016.
B) But before you dump all of your retail stocks, there are more facts you should consider.
二、考情分析
Looking only at that 15.2 percent“ surge” would be misleading. It was an increase that was on
， ， a small base of 6.9 percent. Even when a tiny number grows by a large percentage terms, it is
长篇阅读可以说是最耗时间的阅读题型 也是对基本功要求最高的题型 因为文章很
， ， 、 often still tiny.
长 句子也很长 对同学们的 和 要求非常
。 ， ， 。 C) More than 20 years after the internet was opened to commerce, the Census Bureau tells us that
高 同时 这个题型的技巧性也不是很强 必须通过大量的训练来提升
brick and mortar sales accounted for 92.3 percent of retail sales in the first quarter of 2016.
Their data show that only 0.8 percent of retail sales shifted from offline to online between the
beginning of 2015 and 2016.
三、解题技巧
D) So, despite all the talk about drone ( ) deliveries to your doorstep, all the retail executives
无人机
expressing anxiety over consumers going online, and even a Presidential candidate exclaiming
（一）解题原则
that Amazon has a“ huge antitrust problem,” the Census data suggest that physical retail
文章尽量 把题做完 is thriving. Of course, the closed stores, depressed executives, and sinking stocks suggest
速战速决不要恋战 otherwise. What’s the real story?
037六级阅读讲义
E) Many firms operating brick and mortar stores are in trouble. The retail industry is getting
“reinvented,” as we describe in our new book Matchmakers. It’s standing in the path of what
Schumpeter called a gale ( ) of creative destruction. That storm has been brewing for
大风
some time, and as it has reached gale force, most large retailers are searching for a response. As
the CFO of Macy’s put it recently,“ We’re frankly scratching our heads.”
F) But it’s not happening as experts predicted. In the peak of the dot.com bubble, brick and mortar
retail was one of those industries the internet was going to kill—and quickly. The dot.com bust
discredited most predictions of that sort and in the years that followed, conventional retailers’
confidence in the future increased as Census continued to report weak online sales. And then
the gale hit.
G) It is becoming increasingly clear that retail reinvention isn’t a simple battle to the death
between bricks and clicks. It is about devising retail models that work for people who are
making increasing use of a growing array of internet-connected tools to change how they
search, shop, and buy. Creative retailers are using the new technologies to innovate just about
everything stores do from managing inventory, to marketing, to getting paid.
H) More than drones dropping a new supply of underwear on your doorstep, Apple’s massively
successful brick-and-mortar-and-glass retail stores and Amazon’s small steps in the same
direction are what should keep old-fashioned retailers awake at night. Not to mention the large
number of creative new retailers, like Bonobos, that are blending online and offline experiences
in creative ways.
I) Retail reinvention is not a simple process, and it’s also not happening on what used to be called
“Internet Time.” Some internet-driven changes have happened quickly, of course. Craigslist
quickly overtook newspaper classified ads and turned newspaper economics upside down.
But many widely anticipated changes weren’t quick, and some haven’t really started. With
the benefit of hindsight ( ), it looks like the internet will transform the economy at
后见之明
something like the pace of other great inventions like electricity. B2B commerce, for example,
didn’t move mainly online by 2005 as many had predicted in 2000, nor even by 2016, but that
doesn’t mean it won’t do so over the next few decades.
J) But the gale is still blowing. The sudden decline in foot traffic in recent years, even though it
hasn’t been accompanied by a massive decline in physical sales, is a critical warning. People
can shop more efficiently online and therefore don’t need to go to as many stores to find what
they want. There’s a surplus of physical shopping space for the crowds, which is one reason
why stores are downsizing and closing.
K) The rise of the mobile phone has recently added a new level of complexity to the process
of retail reinvention. Even five years ago most people faced a choice. Sit at your computer,
probably at home or at the office, search and browse, and buy. Or head out to the mall, or Main
Street, look and shop, and buy. Now, just about everyone has a smartphone, connected to the
internet almost everywhere almost all the time. Even when a retailer gets a customer to walk in
the store, she can easily see if there’s a better deal online or at another store nearby.
L) So far, the main thing many large retailers have done in response to all this is to open online
038stores, so people will come to them directly rather than to Amazon and its smaller online rivals.
Many are having the same problem that newspapers have had. Even if they get online traffic,
they struggle to make enough money online to compensate for what they are losing offline.
M) A few seem to be making this work. Among large traditional retailers, Walmart recently
reported the best results, leading its stock price to surge, while Macy’s, Target, and Nordstrom’s
dropped. Yet Walmart’s year-over-year online sales only grew 7 percent, leading its CEO to
lament ( ),“ Growth here is too slow.” Part of the problem is that almost two decades
哀叹
after Amazon filed the one-click patent, the online retail shopping and buying experience is
filled with frictions. A recent study graded more than 600 internet retailers on how easy it was
for consumers to shop, buy, and pay. Almost half of the sites didn’t get a passing grade and
only 18 percent got an A or B.
N) The turmoil on the ground in physical retail is hard to square with the Census data.
Unfortunately, part of the explanation is that the Census retail data are unreliable. Our deep
look into those data and their preparation revealed serious problems. It seems likely that Census
simply misclassifies a large chunk of online sales. It is certain that the Census procedures,
which lump the online sales of major traditional retailers like Walmart with“ non-store
retailers” like food trucks, can mask major changes in individual retail categories. The bureau
could easily present their data in more useful ways, but they have chosen not to.
O) Despite the turmoil, brick and mortar won’t disappear any time soon. The big questions are
which, if any, of the large traditional retailers will still be on the scene in a decade or two
because they have successfully reinvented themselves, which new players will operate busy
stores on Main Streets and maybe even in shopping malls, and how the shopping and buying
experience will have changed in each retail category. Investors shouldn’t write off brick and
mortar. Whether they should bet on the traditional players who run those stores now is another
matter.
36．Although online retailing has existed for some twenty years, nearly half of the internet
retailers still fail to receive satisfactory feedback from consumers, according to a recent
survey.
37．Innovative retailers integrate internet technologies with conventional retailing to create new
retail models.
38．Despite what the Census data suggest, the value of physical retail’s stocks has been dropping.
39．Internet-driven changes in the retail industry didn’t take place as quickly as widely
anticipated.
40．Statistics indicate that brick and mortar sales still made up the lion’s share of the retail
business.
41．Companies that successfully combine online and offline business models may prove to be a
big concern for traditional retailers.
42．Brick and mortar retailers’ faith in their business was strengthened when the dot.com bubble
burst.
039六级阅读讲义
43．Despite the tremendous challenges from online retailing, traditional retailing will be here to
stay for quite some time.
44．With the rise of online commerce, physical retail stores are likely to suffer the same fate as
the yellow pages.
45．The wide use of smartphones has made it more complex for traditional retailers to reinvent
their business.
【2019年6月第2套】
Companies Are Working with Consumers to Reduce Waste
A) As consumers, we are very wasteful. Annually, the world generates 1.3 billion tons of solid
waste. This is expected to go up to 2.2 billion by 2025. The developed countries are responsible
for 44% of waste, and in the U.S. alone, the average person throws away their body weight in
rubbish every month.
B) Conventional wisdom would seem to suggest that companies have no incentive to lengthen the
life cycle of their products and reduce the revenue they would get from selling new goods. Yet,
more and more businesses are thinking about how to reduce consumer waste. This is partly
driven by the rising price of raw materials and metals. It is also partly due to both consumers
and companies becoming more aware of the need to protect our environment.
C) When choosing what products to buy and which brands to buy from, more and more consumers
are looking into sustainability. This is opposed to just price and performance they were
concerned about in the past. In a survey of 54 of the world’s leading brands, almost all of them
reported that consumers are showing increasing care about sustainable lifestyles. At the same
time, surveys on consumers in the U.S. and the U.K. show that they also care about minimizing
energy use and reducing waste.
D) For the most part, consumers control what happens to a product. But some companies are
realizing that placing the burden of recycling entirely on the consumer is not an effective
strategy, especially when tossing something away seems like the easiest and most convenient
option.
E) Some retailers and manufacturers in the clothing, footwear, and electronics industries have
launched environmental programs. They want to make their customers interested in preserving
their products and preventing things that still have value from going to the garbage dump.
By offering services to help expand the longevity of their products, they’re promising quality
and durability to consumers, and receiving the reputational gains for being environmentally
friendly.
F) For example, the Swedish jeans company Nudie Jeans offers free repair at twenty of their
shops. Instead of discarding their old worn-out jeans, customers bring them in to be renewed.
The company even provides mail-order repair kits and online videos, so that customers can
learn how to fix a pair of jeans at home. Their philosophy is that extending the life of a pair
of jeans is not only great for the environment, but allows the consumer to get more value out
of their product. When customers do want to toss their pair, they can give them back to the
040store, which will repurpose and resell them. Another clothing company, Patagonia, a high-end
outdoor clothing store, follows the same principle. It has partnered with DIY website iFixit
to teach consumers how to repair their clothing, such as waterproof outerwear, at home. The
company also offers a repair program for their customers for a modest fee. Currently, Patagonia
repairs about 40,000 garments a year in their Reno, Nevada, service center. According to
the company’s CEO, Rose Marcario, this is about building a company that cares about the
environment. At the same time, offering repair supports the perceived quality of its products.
G) In Brazil, the multinational corporation Adidas has been running a shoe-recycling program
called“ Sustainable Footprint” since 2012. Customers can bring shoes of any brand into an
Adidas store to be shredded and turned into alternative fuels for energy creation instead of
being burned as trash. They are used to fuel cement ovens. To motivate visitors to bring in
more old shoes, Adidas Brazil promotes the program in stores by showing videos to educate
customers, and it even offers a discount each time a customer brings in an old pair of shoes.
This boosts the reputation and image of Adidas by making people more aware of the company’s
values.
H) Enormous opportunities also lie with e-waste. It is estimated that in 2014 the world produced
some 42 million metric tons of e-waste (discarded electrical and electronic equipment and its
parts) with North America and Europe accounting for 8 and 12 million metric tons respectively.
The materials from e-waste include iron, copper, gold, silver, and aluminum-materials that
could be reused, resold, salvaged, or recycled. Together, the value of these metals is estimated
to be about $52 billion. Electronics giants like Best Buy and Samsung have provided e-waste
take-back programs over the past few years, which aim to refurbish ( ) old electronic
翻新
components and parts into new products.
I) For other companies interested in reducing waste, helping the environment, and providing the
sustainable lifestyles that consumers seek, here are some first steps for building a relationship
with customers that focuses on recycling and restoring value to products:
J) Find partners. If you are a manufacturer who relies on outside distributors, then retailers
are the ideal partner for collecting old products. Power tool maker DeWalt partners with
companies, such as Lowes and Napa Auto Parts, to collect old tools at their stores for recycling.
The partnership benefits both sides by allowing unconventional partners (for example, two
companies from two different industries) to work together on a specific aspect of the value
chain, like, in this example, an engine firm with an accessory one.
K) Create incentives. Environmental conscientiousness isn’t always enough to make customers
recycle old goods. For instance, DeWalt discovered that many contractors were holding on to
their old tools, even if they no longer worked, because they were expensive purchases and it
was hard to justify bringing them in to recycle. By offering instant discounts worth as much as
$100, DeWalt launched a trade-in program to encourage people to bring back tools. As a result,
DeWalt now reuses those materials to create new products.
L) Start with a trial program, and expect to change the details as you go. Any take-back program
will likely change over time, depending on what works for your customers and company goals.
041六级阅读讲义
Maybe you see low customer participation at first, or conversely, so much success that the cost
of recycling becomes too high. Best Buy, for instance, has been bearing the lion’s share of
e-waste volume since two of its largest competitors, Amazon and Wal-mart, do not have their
own recycling programs. Since the launch of its program, Best Buy changed its policy to add a
$25 fee for recycling old televisions in order to keep the program going.
M) Build a culture of collective values with customers. A stronger relationship between the
retailer/producer and the consumer isn’t just about financial incentives. By creating more
awareness around your efforts to reduce waste, and by developing a culture of responsibility,
repair, and reuse, you can build customer loyalty based on shared values and responsibilities.
N) These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, but they demonstrate how helping customers
get more use of their materials can transform value chains and operations. Reducing waste
by incorporating used materials into production can cut costs and decrease the price of
procurement ( ): less to be procured from the outside and more to be re-utilized from the
采购
inside.
O) Companies play a big role in creating a circular economy, in which value is generating less
from extracting new resources and more from getting better use out of the resources we already
have—but they must also get customers engaged in the process.
36．Some companies believe that products’ prolonged lifespan benefits both the environment and
customers.
37．A survey shows shoppers today are getting more concerned about energy conservation and
environmental protection when deciding what to buy.
38．Companies can build customer loyalty by creating a positive culture of environmental
awareness.
39．When companies launch environmental programs, they will have their brand reputation
enhanced.
40．One multinational company offers discounts to customers who bring in old footwear to be
used as fuel.
41．Recycling used products can help manufacturers reduce production costs.
42．Electronic products contain valuable metals that could be recovered.
43．It seems commonly believed that companies are not motivated to prolong their products’
lifespan.
44．It is advisable for companies to partner with each other in product recycling.
45．Some businesses have begun to realize it may not be effective to let consumers take full
responsibility for recycling.
【2019年6月第3套】
The future of personal satellite technology is here—are we ready for it?
A) Satellites used to be the exclusive playthings of rich governments and wealthy corporations.
But increasingly, as space becomes more democratized, they are coming within reach of
042ordinary people. Just like drones ( ) before them, miniature satellites are beginning to
无人机
fundamentally transform our conceptions of who gets to do what up above our heads.
B) As a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences highlights, these satellites hold
tremendous potential for making satellite-based science more accessible than ever before.
However, as the cost of getting your own satellite in orbit drops sharply, the risks of
irresponsible use grow. The question here is no longer“ Can we?” but“ Should we?” What
are the potential downsides of having a slice of space densely populated by equipment built
by people not traditionally labeled as“ professionals”? And what would the responsible and
beneficial development and use of this technology actually look like? Some of the answers may
come from a nonprofit organization that has been building and launching amateur satellites for
nearly 50 years.
C) Having your personal satellite launched into orbit might sound like an idea straight out of
science fiction. But over the past few decades a unique class of satellites has been created
that fits the bill: CubeSats. The“ Cube” here simply refers to the satellite’s shape. The most
common CubeSat is a10cm cube, so small that a single CubeSat could easily be mistaken for a
paperweight on your desk. These mini-satellites can fit in a launch vehicle’s formerly“ wasted
space.” Multiples can be deployed in combination for more complex missions than could be
achieved by one CubeSat alone.
D) Within their compact bodies these minute satellites are able to house sensors and
communications receivers/transmitters that enable operators to study Earth from space, as
well as space around Earth. They’re primarily designed for Low Earth Orbit (LEO)—an easily
accessible region of space from around 200 to 800 miles above Earth, where human-tended
missions like the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station (ISS) hang out.
But they can attain more distant orbits; NASA plans for most of its future Earth-escaping
payloads (to the moon and Mars especially) to carry CubeSats.
E) Because they’re so small and light, it costs much less to get a CubeSat into Earth’s orbit than
a traditional communications or GPS satellite. For instance, a research group here at Arizona
State University recently claimed their developmental small CubeSats could cost as little as
$3,000 to put in orbit. This decrease in cost allows researchers, hobbyists and even elementary
school groups to put simple instruments into LEO or even having them deployed from the ISS.
F) The first CubeSat was created in the early 2000s, as a way of enabling Stanford graduate
students to design, build, test and operate a spacecraft with similar capabilities to the USSR’s
Sputnik ( ). Since then, NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office and
前苏联的人造卫星
even Boeing have all launched and operated CubeSats. There are more than 130 currently
in operation. The NASA Educational Launch of Nano Satellite program, which offers
free launches for educational groups and science missions, is now open to U.S. nonprofit
corporations as well. Clearly, satellites are not just for rocket scientists anymore.
G) The National Academy of Sciences report emphasizes CubeSats’ importance in scientific
discovery and the training of future space scientists and engineers. Yet it also acknowledges
that widespread deployment of LEO CubeSats isn’t risk-free. The greatest concern the authors
043六级阅读讲义
raise is space debris—pieces of“ junk” that orbit the earth, with the potential to cause serious
damage if they collide with operational units, including the ISS.
H) Currently, there aren’t many CubeSats and they’re tracked closely. Yet as LEO opens up to
more amateur satellites, they may pose an increasing threat. As the report authors point out,
even near-misses might lead to the“ creation of a burdensome regulatory framework and affect
the future disposition of science CubeSats.”
I) CubeSat researchers suggest that now’s the time to ponder unexpected and unintended possible
consequences of more people than ever having access to their own small slice of space. In an
era when you can simply buy a CubeSat kit off the shelf, how can we trust the satellites over
our heads were developed with good intentions by people who knew what they were doing?
Some“ expert amateurs” in the satellite game could provide some inspiration for how to
proceed responsibly.
J) In 1969, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT) was created in order to foster ham
radio enthusiasts ( ) participation in space research and communication.
业余无线电爱好者
It continued the efforts, begun in 1961, by Project OSCAR-a U.S.-based group that built
and launched the very first nongovernmental satellite just four years after Sputnik. As an
organization of volunteers, AMSAT was putting“ amateur” satellites in orbit decades before
the current CubeSat craze. And over time, its members have learned a thing or two about
responsibility. Here, open-source development has been a central principle. Within the
organization, AMSAT has a philosophy of open sourcing everything—making technical data
on all aspects of their satellites fully available to everyone in the organization, and when
possible, the public. According to a member of the team responsible for FOX l-A, AMSAT’s
first CubeSat, this means that there’s no way to sneak something like explosives or an energy
emitter into an amateur satellite when everyone has access to the designs and implementation.
K) However, they’re more cautious about sharing information with nonmembers, as the
organization guards against others developing the ability to hijack and take control of
their satellites. This form of“ self-governance” is possible within long-standing amateur
organizations that, over time, are able to build a sense of responsibility to community members,
as well as society in general. But what happens when new players emerge, who don’t have deep
roots within the existing culture?
L) Hobbyist and student are gaining access to technologies without being part of a long-standing
amateur establishment. They’re still constrained by funders, launch providers and a series of
regulations—all of which rein in what CubeSat developers can and cannot do. But there’s a
danger they’re ill-equipped to think through potential unintended consequences. What these
unintended consequences might be is admittedly far from clear. Yet we know innovators can
be remarkably creative with taking technologies in unexpected directions. Think of something
as seemingly benign as the cellphone—we have microfinance and text-based social spectrum,
improvised ( ) explosive devices at the other.
临时制作的
M) This is where a culture of social responsibility around CubeSats becomes important—
not simply to ensure that physical risks are minimized, but to engage with a much larger
044community in anticipating and managing less obvious consequences of the technology. This
is not an easy task. Yet the evidence from AMSAT and other areas of technology development
suggests that responsible amateur communities can and do emerge around novel technologies.
The challenge here, of course, is ensuring that what an amateur community considers to be
responsible, actually is. Here’s where there needs to be a much wider public conversation that
extends beyond government agencies and scientific communities to include students, hobbyists,
and anyone who may potentially stand to be affected by the use of CubeSat technology.
36．Given the easier accessibility to space, it is time to think about how to prevent misuse of
satellites.
37．A group of mini-satellites can work together to accomplish more complex tasks.
38．The greater accessibility of mini-satellites increases the risks of their irresponsible use.
39．Even school pupils can have their CubeSats put in orbit owing to the lowered launching cost.
40．AMSAT is careful about sharing information with outsiders to prevent hijacking of their
satellites.
41．NASA offers to launch CubeSats free of charge for educational and research purposes.
42．Even with constraints, it is possible for some creative developers to take the CubeSat
technology in directions that result in harmful outcomes.
43．While making significant contributions to space science, CubeSats may pose hazards to other
space vehicles.
44．Mini-satellites enable operators to study Earth from LEO and space around it.
45．AMSAT operates on the principle of having all its technical data accessible to its members,
preventing the abuse of amateur satellites.
【2018年12月第1套】
Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure
A) As constant travelers and parents of a 2-year-old, we sometimes fantasize about how much
work we can do when one of us gets on a plane, undistracted by phones, friends, or movies. We
race to get all our ground work done: packing, going through security, doing a last-minute work
call, calling each other, then boarding the plane. Then, when we try to have that amazing work
session in flight, we get nothing done. Even worse, after refreshing our email or reading the
same studies over and over, we are too exhausted when we land to soldier on with ( )
继续处理
the emails that have inevitably still piled up.
B) Why should flying deplete us? We’re just sitting there doing nothing. Why can’t we be tougher,
more resilient ( ) and determined in our work so we can accomplish all of the goals
有复原力的
we set for ourselves? Based on our current research, we have come to realize that the problem
is not our hectic schedule or the plane travel itself; the problem comes from a misconception of
what it means to be resilient, and the resulting impact of overworking.
C) We often take a militaristic,“ tough” approach to resilience and determination like a Marine
pulling himself through the mud, a boxer going one more round, or a football player picking
045六级阅读讲义
himself up off the ground for one more play. We believe that the longer we tough it out, the
tougher we are, and therefore the more successful we will be. However, this entire conception
is scientifically inaccurate.
D) The very lack of a recovery period is dramatically holding back our collective ability to be
resilient and successful. Research has found that there is a direct correlation between lack
of recovery and increased incidence of health and safety problems. And lack of recovery—
whether by disrupting sleep with thoughts of work or having continuous cognitive arousal by
watching our phones—is costing our companies $62 billion a year in lost productivity.
E) And just because work stops, it doesn’t mean we are recovering. We“ stop” work sometimes
at 5pm, but then we spend the night wrestling with solutions to work problems, talking about
our work over dinner, and falling asleep thinking about how much work we’ll do tomorrow. In
a study just released, researchers from Norway found that 7.8% of Norwegians have become
workaholics ( ). The scientists cite a definition of“ workaholism” as“ being overly
工作狂
concerned about work, driven by an uncontrollable work motivation, and investing so much
time and effort in work that it impairs other important life areas.”
F) We believe that the number of people who fit that definition includes the majority of American
workers, which prompted us to begin a study of workaholism in the U.S. Our study will use a
large corporate dataset from a major medical company to examine how technology extends our
working hours and thus interferes with necessary cognitive recovery, resulting in huge health
care costs and turnover costs for employers.
G) The misconception of resilience is often bred from an early age. Parents trying to teach their
children resilience might celebrate a high school student staying up until 3am to finish a
science fair project. What a distortion of resilience! A resilient child is a well-rested one.
When an exhausted student goes to school, he risks hurting everyone on the road with his
impaired driving; he doesn’t have the cognitive resources to do well on his English test; he has
lower self-control with his friends; and at home, he is moody with his parents. Overwork and
exhaustion are the opposite of resilience and the bad habits we acquire when we’re young only
magnify when we hit the workforce.
H) As Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz have written, if you have too much time in the performance
zone, you need more time in the recovery zone, otherwise you risk burnout. Gathering your
resources to“ try hard” requires burning energy in order to overcome your currently low arousal
level. It also worsens exhaustion. Thus the more imbalanced we become due to overworking,
the more value there is in activities that allow us to return to a state of balance. The value of a
recovery period rises in proportion to the amount of work required of us.
I) So how do we recover and build resilience? Most people assume that if you stop doing a task
like answering emails or writing a paper, your brain will naturally recover, so that when you
start again later in the day or the next morning, you’ll have your energy back. But surely
everyone reading this has had times when you lie in bed for hours, unable to fall asleep because
your brain is thinking about work. If you lie in bed for eight hours, you may have rested, but
you can still feel exhausted the next day. That’s because rest and recovery are not the same
046thing.
J) If you’re trying to build resilience at work, you need adequate internal and external recovery
periods. As researchers Zijlstra, Cropley and Rydstedt write in their 2014 paper:“ Internal
recovery refers to the shorter periods of relaxation that take place within the frames of the
work day or the work setting in the form of short scheduled or unscheduled breaks, by shifting
attention or changing to other work tasks when the mental or physical resources required for
the initial task are temporarily depleted or exhausted. External recovery refers to actions that
take place outside of work—e.g. in the free time between the work days, and during weekends,
holidays or vacations.” If after work you lie around on your bed and get irritated by political
commentary on your phone or get stressed thinking about decisions about how to renovate your
home, your brain has not received a break from high mental arousal states. Our brains need a
rest as much as our bodies do.
K) If you really want to build resilience, you can start by strategically stopping. Give yourself
the resources to be tough by creating internal and external recovery periods. Amy Blankson
describes how to strategically stop during the day by using technology to control overworking.
She suggests downloading the Instant or Moment apps to see how many times you turn on your
phone each day. You can also use apps like Offtime or Unplugged to create tech free zones by
strategically scheduling automatic airplane modes. The average person turns on their phone 150
times every day. If every distraction took only 1 minute, that would account for 2.5 hours a day.
L) In addition, you can take a cognitive break every 90 minutes to charge your batteries. Try to not
have lunch at your desk, but instead spend time outside or with your friends—not talking about
work. Take all of your paid time off, which not only gives you recovery periods, but raises your
productivity and likelihood of promotion.
M) As for us, we’ve started using our plane time as a work-free zone, and thus time to dip into
the recovery phase. The results have been fantastic. We are usually tired already by the time
we get on a plane, and the crowded space and unstable internet connection make work more
challenging. Now, instead of swimming upstream, we relax, sleep, watch movies, or listen to
music. And when we get off the plane, instead of being depleted, we feel recovered and ready
to return to the performance zone.
36．It has been found that inadequate recovery often leads to poor health and accidents.
37．Mental relaxation is much needed, just as physical relaxation is.
38．Adequate rest not only helps one recover, but also increases one’s work efficiency.
39．The author always has a hectic time before taking a flight.
40．Recovery may not take place even if one seems to have stopped working.
41．It is advised that technology be used to prevent people from overworking.
42．Contrary to popular belief, rest does not equal recovery.
43．The author has come to see that his problem results from a misunderstanding of the meaning
of resilience.
44．People’s distorted view about resilience may have developed from their upbringing.
047六级阅读讲义
45．People tend to think the more determined they are, the greater their success will be.
【2018年12月第2套】
A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-Emerges after 300 Years
A) Maria Sibylla Merian, like many European women of the 17th century, stayed busy managing
a household and rearing children. But on top of that, Merian, a German-born woman who
lived in the Netherlands, also managed a successful career as an artist, botanist, naturalist and
entomologist ( ).
昆虫学家
B)“ She was a scientist on the level with a lot of people we spend a lot of time talking about,”
said Kay Etheridge, a biologist at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania who has been studying
the scientific history of Merian’s work.“ She didn’t do as much to change biology as Charles
Darwin, but she was significant.”
C) At a time when natural history was a valuable tool for discovery, Merian discovered facts
about plants and insects that were not previously known. Her observations helped dismiss the
popular belief that insects spontaneously emerged from mud. The knowledge she collected over
decades didn’t just satisfy those curious about nature, but also provided valuable insights into
medicine and science. She was the first to bring together insects and their habitats, including
food they ate, into a single ecological composition.
D) After years of pleasing a fascinated audience across Europe with books of detailed descriptions
and life-size paintings of familiar insects, in 1699 she sailed with her daughter nearly 5,000
miles from the Netherlands to South America to study insects in the jungles of what is now
known as Suriname. She was 52 years old. The result was her masterpiece, Metamorphosis
Insectorum Surinamensium.
E) In her work, she revealed a side of nature so exotic, dramatic and valuable to Europeans of the
time that she received much acclaim. But a century later, her findings came under scientific
criticism. Shoddy ( ) reproductions of her work along with setbacks to women’s roles
粗糙的
in 18th- and 19th-century Europe resulted in her efforts being largely forgotten.“ It was kind of
stunning when she sort of dropped off into oblivion ( ),” said Dr. Etheridge“. Victorians started
遗忘
putting women in a box, and they’re still trying to crawl out of it.”
F) Today, the pioneering woman of the sciences has re-emerged. In recent years, feminists,
historians and artists have all praised Merian’s tenacity ( ), talent and inspirational artistic
坚韧
compositions. And now biologists like Dr. Etheridge are digging into the scientific texts that
accompanied her art. Three hundred years after her death, Merian will be celebrated at an
international symposium in Amsterdam this June.
G) And last month, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium was republished. It contains 60
plates ( ) and original descriptions, along with stories about Merian’s life and updated
插图
scientific descriptions. Before writing Metamorphosis, Merian spent decades documenting
European plants and insects that she published in a series of books. She began in her 20s,
making textless, decorative paintings of flowers with insects.“ Then she got really serious,” Dr.
Etheridge said. Merian started raising insects at home, mostly butterflies and caterpillars.“ She
048would sit up all night until they came out of the pupa ( ) so she could draw them,” she said.
蛹
H) The results of her decades’ worth of careful observations were detailed paintings and
descriptions of European insects, followed by unconventional visuals and stories of insects
and animals from a land that most at the time could only imagine. It’s possible Merian used
a magnifying glass to capture the detail of the split tongues of sphinx moths (
斯芬克斯
) depicted in the painting. She wrote that the two tongues combine to form one tube for
飞蛾
drinking nectar ( ). Some criticized this detail later, saying there was just one tongue,
花蜜
but Merian wasn’t wrong. She may have observed the adult moth just as it emerged from its
pupa. For a brief moment during that stage of its life cycle, the tongue consists of two tiny half-
tubes before merging into one.
I) It may not have been ladylike to depict a giant spider devouring a hummingbird, but when
Merian did it at the turn of the 18th century, surprisingly, nobody objected. Dr. Etheridge called
it revolutionary. The image, which also contained novel descriptions of ants, fascinated a
European audience that was more concerned with the exotic story unfolding before them than
the gender of the person who painted it.
J)“ All of these things shook up their nice, neat little view,” Dr. Etheridge said. But later, people
of the Victorian era thought differently. Her work had been reproduced, sometimes incorrectly.
A few observations were deemed impossible.“ She’d been called a silly woman for saying
that a spider could eat a bird,” Dr. Etheridge said. But Henry Walter Bates, a friend of Charles
Darwin, observed it and put it in a book in 1863, proving Merian was correct.
K) In this same plate, Merian depicted and described leaf-cutter ants for the first time.“ In America
there are large ants which can eat whole trees bare as a broom handle in a single night,” she
wrote in the description. Merian noted how the ants took the leaves below ground to their
young. And she wouldn’t have known this at the time, but the ants use the leaves to farm fungi
( ) underground to feed their developing babies.
菌类
L) Merian was correct about the giant bird-eating spiders, ants building bridges with their bodies
and other details. But in the same drawing, she incorrectly lumped together army and leaf-
cutter ants. And instead of showing just the typical pair of eggs in a hummingbird nest, she
painted four. She made other mistakes in Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium as well:
not every caterpillar and butterfly matched.
M) Perhaps one explanation for her mistakes is that she cut short her Suriname trip after getting
sick, and completed the book at home in Amsterdam. And errors are common among some of
history’s most-celebrated scientific minds, too.“ These errors no more invalidate Ms. Merian’s
work than do well-known misconceptions published by Charles Darwin or Isaac Newton,” Dr.
Etheridge wrote in a paper that argued that too many have wrongly focused on the mistakes of
her work.
N) Merian’s paintings inspired artists and ecologists. In an 1801 drawing from his book, General
Zoology Amphibia, George Shaw, an English botanist and zoologist, credited Merian for
describing a frog in the account of her South American expedition, and named the young tree
frog after her in his portrayal of it. It wouldn’t be fair to give Merian all the credit. She received
049六级阅读讲义
assistance naming plants, making sketches and referencing the work of others. Her daughters
helped her color her drawings.
O) Merian also made note of the help she received from the natives of Suriname, as well as slaves
or servants that assisted her. In some instances she wrote moving passages that included her
helpers in descriptions. As she wrote in her description of the peacock flower,“ The Indians,
who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds to abort their children, so that
they will not become slaves like themselves. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have
demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. In fact, they sometimes
take their own lives because they are treated so badly, and because they believe they will be
born again, free and living in their own land. They told me this themselves.”
P) LondaSchiebinger, a professor of the history of science at Stanford University, called this
passage rather astonishing. It’s particularly striking centuries later when these issues are still
prominent in public discussions about social justice and women’s rights.“ She was ahead of her
time,” Dr. Etheridge said.
36．Merian was the first scientist to study a type of American ant.
37．The European audience was more interested in Merian’s drawings than her gender.
38．Merian’s masterpiece came under attack a century after its publication.
39．Merian’s mistakes in her drawings may be attributed to her shortened stay in South America.
40．Merian often sat up the whole night through to observe and draw insects.
41．Merian acknowledged the help she got from natives of South America.
42．Merian contributed greatly to people’s better understanding of medicine and science.
43．Merian occasionally made mistakes in her drawings of insects and birds.
44．Now, Merian’s role as a female forerunner in sciences has been re-established.
45．Merian made a long voyage to South America to study jungle insects over three centuries ago.
【2018年12月第3套】
Do Parents Invade Children’s Privacy When They Post Photos Online?
A) When Katlyn Burbidge’s son was 6 years old, he was performing some ridiculous song and
dance typical of a first-grader. But after she snapped a photo and started using her phone, he
asked her a serious question:“ Are you going to post that online?” She laughed and answered,
“Yes, I think I will.” What he said next stopped her“. Can you not?”
B) That’s when it dawned on her: She had been posting photos of him online without asking
his permission.“ We’re big advocates of bodily autonomy and not forcing him to hug or kiss
people unless he wants to, but it never occurred to me that I should ask his permission to post
photos of him online,” says Burbidge, a mom of two in Wakefield, Massachusetts.“ Now when
I post a photo of him online, I show him the photo and get his okay.”
C) When her 8-month-old is 3 or 4 years old, she plans to start asking him in an age-appropriate
way“, Do you want other people to see this?” That’s precisely the approach that two researchers
advocated before a room of pediatricians ( ) last week at the American Academy of
儿科医生
050Pediatrics meeting, when they discussed the 21st century challenge of“ sharenting,” a new term
for parents’ online sharing about their children.“ As advocates of children’s rights, we believe
that children should have a voice about what information is shared about them if possible,”
says Stacey Steinberg, a legal skills professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law
in Gainesville.
D) Whether it’s ensuring your child isn’t bullied over something you post, that their identity isn’t
digitally“ kidnapped”, or that their photos don’t end up on a half dozen child pornography
( ) sites, as one Australian mom discovered, parents and pediatricians are increasingly
色情
aware of the importance of protecting children’s digital presence. Steinberg and Bahareh Keith,
an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Florida College of Medicine, say most
children will likely never experience problems related to what their parents share, but a tension
still exists between parents’ rights to share their experiences and their children’s rights to
privacy.
E)“ We’re in no way trying to silence parents’ voices,” Steinberg says.“ At the same time, we
recognize that children might have an interest in entering adulthood free to create their own
digital footprint.” They cited a study presented earlier this year of 249 pairs of parents and their
children in which twice as many children as parents wanted rules on what parents could share.
“The parents said,‘ We don’t need rules—we’re fine,’ and the children said,‘ Our parents need
rules,’” Keith says.“ The children wanted autonomy about this issue and were worried about
their parents sharing information about them.”
F) Although the American Academy of Pediatrics offers guidelines recommending that parents
model appropriate social media use for their children, it does not explicitly discuss oversharing
by parents.“ I think this is a very legitimate concern, and I appreciate their drawing our
attention to it,” David Hill, a father of five, says. He sees a role for pediatricians to talk with
parents about this, but believes the messaging must extend far beyond pediatricians’ offices.“ I
look forward to seeing researchers expand our understanding of the issue so we can translate it
into effective education and policy,” he says.
G) There’s been little research on the topic, Steinberg wrote in a law article about this issue.
While states could pass laws related to sharing information about children online, Steinberg
feels parents themselves are generally best suited to make these decisions for their families.
“While we didn’t want to create any unnecessary panic, we did find some concerns that were
troublesome, and we thought that parents or at least physicians should be aware of those
potential risks,” Steinberg says. They include photos repurposed for inappropriate or illegal
means, identity theft, embarrassment, bullying by peers or digital kidnapping.
H) But that’s the negative side, with risks that must be balanced against the benefits of sharing.
Steinberg pointed out that parental sharing on social media helps build communities, connect
spread-out families, provide support and raise awareness around important social issues for
which parents might be their children’s only voice.
I) A C. S. Mott survey found among the 56 percent of mothers and 34 percent of fathers who
discussed parenting on social media, 72 percent of them said sharing made them feel less alone,
051六级阅读讲义
and nearly as many said sharing helped them worry less and gave them advice from other
parents. The most common topics they discussed included kids’ sleep, nutrition, discipline,
behavior problems and day care and preschool.
J)“ There’s this peer-to-peer nature of health care these days with a profound opportunity for
parents to learn helpful tips, safety and prevention efforts, pro-vaccine messages and all kinds
of other messages from other parents in their social communities,” says Wendy Sue Swanson,
a pediatrician and executive director of digital health at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where
she blogs about her own parenting journey to help other parents.“ They’re getting nurtured by
people they’ve already selected that they trust,” she says.
K)“ How do we weigh the risks, how do we think about the benefits, and how do we alleviate the
risks?” she says.“ Those are the questions we need to ask ourselves, and everyone can have a
different answer.”
L) Some parents find the best route for them is not to share at all. Bridget O’Hanlon and her
husband, who live in Cleveland, decided before their daughter was born that they would not
post her photos online. When a few family members did post pictures, O’Hanlon and her
husband made their wishes clear.“ It’s been hard not to share pictures of her because people
always want to know how babies and toddlers ( ) are doing and to see pictures,
学走路的孩子
but we made the decision to have social media while she did not,” O’Hanlon said. Similarly,
Alison Jamison of New York decided with her husband that their child had a right to their own
online identity. They did use an invitation-only photo sharing platform so that friends and
family, including those far away, could see the photos, but they stood firm, simply refusing to
put their child’s photos on other social media platforms.
M)“ For most families, it’s a journey. Sometimes it goes wrong, but most of the time it doesn’t,”
says Swanson, who recommends starting to ask children permission to post narratives or photos
around ages 6 to 8.“ We’ll learn more and more what our tolerance is. We can ask our kids to
help us learn as a society what’s okay and what’s not.”
N) Indeed, that learning process goes both ways. Bria Dunham, a mother in Somerville,
Massachusetts, was so excited to watch a moment of brotherly bonding while her first-grader
and baby took a bath together that she snapped a few photos. But when she considered posting
them online, she took the perspective of her son: How would he feel if his classmates’ parents
saw photos of him chest-up in the bathtub?“ It made me think about how I’m teaching him
to have ownership of his own body and how what is shared today endures into the future,”
Dunham says.“ So I kept the pictures to myself and accepted this as one more step in
supporting his increasing autonomy.”
36．Steinberg argued parental sharing online can be beneficial.
37．According to an expert, when children reach school age, they can help their parents learn
what can and cannot be done.
38．One mother refrained from posting her son’s photos online when she considered the matter
from her son’s perspective.
05239．According to a study, more children than parents think there should be rules on parents’
sharing.
40．Katlyn Burbidge had never realized she had to ask her son’s approval to put his photos online.
41．A mother decided not to post her son’s photo online when he asked her not to.
42．A woman pediatrician tries to help other parents by sharing her own parenting experience.
43．There are people who decide simply not to share their children’s photos online.
44．Parents and physicians should realize sharing information online about children may involve
risks.
45．Parents who share their parenting experiences may find themselves intruding into their
children’s privacy.
【2018年6月第1套】
Grow Plants Without Water
A) Ever since humanity began to farm our own food, we’ve faced the unpredictable rain that is
both friend and enemy. It comes and goes without much warning, and a field of lush ( )
茂盛的
leafy greens one year can dry up and blow away the next. Food security and fortunes depend
on sufficient rain, and nowhere more so than in Africa, where 96% of farmland depends on rain
instead of the irrigation common in more developed places. It has consequences: South Africa’s
ongoing drought—the worst in three decades—will cost at least a quarter of its corn crop this
year.
B) Biologist Jill Farrant of the University of Cape Town in South Africa says that nature has plenty
of answers for people who want to grow crops in places with unpredictable rainfall. She is hard
at work finding a way to take traits from rare wild plants that adapt to extreme dry weather
and use them in food crops. As the earth’s climate changes and rainfall becomes even less
predictable in some places, those answers will grow even more valuable.“ The type of farming
I’m aiming for is literally so that people can survive as it’s going to get more and more dry,”
Farrant says.
C) Extreme conditions produce extremely tough plants. In the rusty red deserts of South Africa,
steep-sided rocky hills called inselbergs rear up from the plains like the bones of the earth. The
hills are remnants of an earlier geological era, scraped bare of most soil and exposed to the
elements. Yet on these and similar formations in deserts around the world, a few fierce plants
have adapted to endure under ever-changing conditions.
D) Farrant calls them resurrection plants ( ). During months without water under a harsh
复苏植物
sun, they wither, shrink and contract until they look like a pile of dead gray leaves. But rainfall
can revive them in a matter of hours. Her time-lapse ( ) videos of the revivals
间歇性拍摄的
look like someone playing a tape of the plant’s death in reverse.
E) The big difference between“ drought-tolerant” plants and these tough plants: metabolism.
Many different kinds of plants have developed tactics to weather dry spells. Some plants store
reserves of water to see them through a drought; others send roots deep down to subsurface
water supplies. But once these plants use up their stored reserve or tap out the underground
053六级阅读讲义
supply, they cease growing and start to die. They may be able to handle a drought of some
length, and many people use the term“ drought tolerant” to describe such plants, but they never
actually stop needing to consume water, so Farrant prefers to call them drought resistant.
F) Resurrection plants, defined as those capable of recovering from holding less than 0.1 grams
of water per gram of dry mass, are different. They lack water-storing structures, and their
existence on rock faces prevents them from tapping groundwater, so they have instead
developed the ability to change their metabolism. When they detect an extended dry period,
they divert their metabolisms, producing sugars and certain stress-associated proteins and
other materials in their tissues. As the plant dries, these resources take on first the properties
of honey, then rubber, and finally enter a glass-like state that is“ the most stable state that the
plant can maintain,” Farrant says. That slows the plant’s metabolism and protects its dried-out
tissues. The plants also change shape, shrinking to minimize the surface area through which
their remaining water might evaporate. They can recover from months and years without water,
depending on the species.
G) What else can do this dry-out-and-revive trick? Seeds—almost all of them. At the start of her
career, Farrant studied“ recalcitrant seeds ( ),” such as avocados, coffee and
顽 拗 性 种 子
lychee. While tasty, such seeds are delicate—they cannot bud and grow if they dry out (as
you may know if you’ve ever tried to grow a tree from an avocado pit). In the seed world, that
makes them rare, because most seeds from flowering plants are quite robust. Most seeds can
wait out the dry, unwelcoming seasons until conditions are right and they sprout ( ). Yet
发芽
once they start growing, such plants seem not to retain the ability to hit the pause button on
metabolism in their stems or leaves.
H) After completing her Ph.D. on seeds, Farrant began investigating whether it might be possible
to isolate the properties that make most seeds so resilient ( ) and transfer
迅速恢复活力的
them to other plant tissues. What Farrant and others have found over the past two decades is
that there are many genes involved in resurrection plants’ response to dryness. Many of them
are the same that regulate how seeds become dryness-tolerant while still attached to their parent
plants. Now they are trying to figure out what molecular signaling processes activate those
seed-building genes in resurrection plants—and how to reproduce them in crops.“ Most genes
are regulated by a master set of genes,” Farrant says.“ We’re looking at gene promoters and
what would be their master switch.”
I) Once Farrant and her colleagues feel they have a better sense of which switches to throw, they
will have to find the best way to do so in useful crops.“ I’m trying three methods of breeding,”
Farrant says: conventional, genetic modification and gene editing. She says she is aware that
plenty of people do not want to eat genetically modified crops, but she is pushing ahead with
every available tool until one works. Farmers and consumers alike can choose whether or not to
use whichever version prevails:“ I’m giving people an option.”
J) Farrant and others in the resurrection business got together last year to discuss the best species
of resurrection plant to use as a lab model. Just like medical researchers use rats to test ideas
for human medical treatments, botanists use plants that are relatively easy to grow in a lab or
054greenhouse setting to test their ideas for related species. The Queensland rock violet is one
of the best studied resurrection plants so far, with a draft genome ( ) published last
基因图谱
year by a Chinese team. Also last year, Farrant and colleagues published a detailed molecular
study of another candidate, Xerophyta viscosa, a tough-as-nail South African plant with lily-
like flowers, and she says that a genome is on the way. One or both of these models will help
researchers test their ideas—so far mostly done in the lab—on test plots.
K) Understanding the basic science first is key. There are good reasons why crop plants do not use
dryness defenses already. For instance, there’s a high energy cost in switching from a regular
metabolism to an almost-no-water metabolism. It will also be necessary to understand what sort
of yield farmers might expect and to establish the plant’s safety.“ The yield is never going to be
high,” Farrant says, so these plants will be targeted not at Iowa farmers trying to squeeze more
cash out of high-yield fields, but subsistence farmers who need help to survive a drought like
the present one in South Africa.“ My vision is for the subsistence farmer,” Farrant says.“ I’m
targeting crops that are of African value.”
36．There are a couple of plants tough and adaptable enough to survive on bare rocky hills and in
deserts.
37．Farrant is trying to isolate genes in resurrection plants and reproduce them in crops.
38．Farmers in South Africa are more at the mercy of nature, especially inconsistent rainfall.
39．Resurrection crops are most likely to be the choice of subsistence farmers.
40．Even though many plants have developed various tactics to cope with dry weather, they
cannot survive a prolonged drought.
41．Despite consumer resistance, researchers are pushing ahead with genetic modification of
crops.
42．Most seeds can pull through dry spells and begin growing when conditions are ripe, but once
this process starts, it cannot be held back.
43．Farrant is working hard to cultivate food crops that can survive extreme dryness by studying
the traits of rare wild plants.
44．By adjusting their metabolism, resurrection plants can recover from an extended period of
drought.
45．Resurrection plants can come back to life in a short time after a rainfall.
【2018年6月第2套】
Peer Pressure Has a Positive Side
A) Parents of teenagers often view their children’s friends with something like suspicion. They
worry that the adolescent peer group has the power to push its members into behavior that is
foolish and even dangerous. Such wariness is well founded: statistics show, for example, that
a teenage driver with a same-age passenger in the car is at higher risk of a fatal crash than an
adolescent driving alone or with an adult.
B) In a 2005 study, psychologist Laurence Steinberg of Temple University and his co-author,
055六级阅读讲义
psychologist Margo Gardner, then at Temple, divided 306 people into three age groups: young
adolescents, with a mean age of 14; older adolescents, with a mean age of 19; and adults, aged
24 and older. Subjects played a computerized driving game in which the player must avoid
crashing into a wall that materializes, without warning, on the roadway. Steinberg and
Gardner randomly assigned some participants to play alone or with two same-age peers
looking on.
C) Older adolescents scored about 50 percent higher on an index of risky driving when their peers
were in the room—and the driving of early adolescents was fully twice as reckless when other
young teens were around. In contrast, adults behaved in similar ways regardless of whether
they were on their own or observed by others.“ The presence of peers makes adolescents and
youth, but not adults, more likely to take risks,” Steinberg and Gardner concluded.
D) Yet in the years following the publication of this study, Steinberg began to believe that this
interpretation did not capture the whole picture. As he and other researchers examined the
question of why teens were more apt to take risks in the company of other teenagers, they
came to suspect that a crowd’s influence need not always be negative. Now some experts are
proposing that we should take advantage of the teen brain’s keen sensitivity to the presence of
friends and leverage it to improve education.
E) In a 2011 study, Steinberg and his colleagues turned to functional MRI ( ) to investigate
磁共振
how the presence of peers affects the activity in the adolescent brain. They scanned the brains
of 40 teens and adults who were playing a virtual driving game designed to test whether players
would brake at a yellow light or speed on through the crossroad.
F) The brains of teenagers, but not adults, showed greater activity in two regions associated with
rewards when they were being observed by same-age peers than when alone. In other words,
rewards are more intense for teens when they are with peers, which motivates them to pursue
higher-risk experiences that might bring a big payoff (such as the thrill of just making the light
before it turns red). But Steinberg suspected this tendency could also have its advantages.
In his latest experiment, published online in August, Steinberg and his colleagues used a
computerized version of a card game called the Iowa Gambling Task to investigate how the
presence of peers affects the way young people gather and apply information.
G) The results: Teens who played the Iowa Gambling Task under the eyes of fellow adolescents
engaged in more exploratory behavior, learned faster from both positive and negative
outcomes, and achieved better performance on the task than those who played in solitude.
“What our study suggests is that teenagers learn more quickly and more effectively when their
peers are present than when they’re on their own,” Steinberg says. And this finding could have
important implications for how we think about educating adolescents.
H) Matthew D. Lieberman, a social cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Los
Angeles, and author of the 2013 book Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, suspects
that the human brain is especially skillful at learning socially significant information. He points
to a classic 2004 study in which psychologists at Dartmouth College and Harvard University
used functional MRI to track brain activity in 17 young men as they listened to descriptions
056of people while concentrating on either socially relevant cues (for example, trying to form an
impression of a person based on the description) or more socially neutral information (such as
noting the order of details in the description). The descriptions were the same in each condition,
but people could better remember these statements when given a social motivation.
I) The study also found that when subjects thought about and later recalled descriptions in terms
of their informational content, regions associated with factual memory, such as the medial
temporal lobe, became active. But thinking about or remembering descriptions in terms of
their social meaning activated the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex—part of the brain’s social
network—even as traditional memory regions registered low levels of activity. More recently,
as he reported in a 2012 review, Lieberman has discovered that this region may be part of a
distinct network involved in socially motivated learning and memory. Such findings, he says,
suggest that“ this network can be called on to process and store the kind of information taught
in school—potentially giving students access to a range of untapped mental powers.”
J) If humans are generally geared to recall details about one another, this pattern is probably even
more powerful among teenagers who are very attentive to social details: who is in, who is out,
who likes whom, who is mad at whom. Their desire for social drama is not—or not only—a
way of distracting themselves from their schoolwork or of driving adults crazy. It is actually
a neurological ( ) sensitivity, initiated by hormonal changes. Evolutionarily speaking,
神经的
people in this age group are at a stage in which they can prepare to find a mate and start their
own family while separating from parents and striking out on their own. To do this successfully,
their brain prompts them to think and even obsess about others.
K) Yet our schools focus primarily on students as individual entities. What would happen if
educators instead took advantage of the fact that teens are powerfully compelled to think in
social terms? In Social, Lieberman lays out a number of ways to do so. History and English
could be presented through the lens of the psychological drives of the people involved. One
could therefore present Napoleon in terms of his desire to impress or Churchill in terms of
his lonely gloom. Less inherently interpersonal subjects, such as math, could acquire a social
aspect through team problem solving and peer tutoring. Research shows that when we absorb
information in order to teach it to someone else, we learn it more accurately and deeply,
perhaps in part because we are engaging our social cognition.
L) And although anxious parents may not welcome the notion, educators could turn adolescent
recklessness to academic ends.“ Risk taking in an educational context is a vital skill that
enables progress and creativity,” wrote Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a cognitive neuroscientist at
University College London, in a review published last year. Yet, she noted, many young people
are especially unwilling to take risks at school—afraid that one low test score or poor grade
could cost them a spot at a selective university. We should assure such students that risk, and
even peer pressure, can be a good thing—as long as it happens in the classroom and not in the
car.
36．It is thought probable that the human brain is particularly good at picking up socially
057六级阅读讲义
important information.
37．It can be concluded from experiments that the presence of peers increases risk-taking by
adolescents and youth.
38．Students should be told that risk-taking in the classroom can be something positive.
39．The urge of finding a mate and getting married accounts for adolescents’ greater attention to
social interactions.
40．According to Steinberg, the presence of peers increases the speed and effectiveness of
teenagers’ learning.
41．Teenagers’ parents are often concerned about negative peer influence.
42．Activating the brain’s social network involved in socially motivated learning and memory
may allow students to tap unused mental powers.
43．The presence of peers intensifies the feeling of rewards in teens’ brains.
44．When we absorb information for the purpose of imparting it to others, we do so with greater
accuracy and depth.
45．Some experts are suggesting that we turn peer influence to good use in education.
【2018年6月第3套】
In the real world, nobody cares that you went to an Ivy League school
A) As a high school junior, everything in my life revolved around getting into the right college. I
diligently attended my SAT, ACT, and Advanced Placement test preparation courses. I juggled
( ) cross-country and track schedules, newspaper staff, and my church’s youth group
尽力应付
and drama team. I didn’t drink, party, or even do much dating. The right college, I thought, was
one with prestige, one with a name. It didn’t have to be the Ivy League, but it needed to be a
“top school.”
B) Looking back now, nine years later, I can’t remember exactly what it was about these
universities that made them seem so much better. Was it a curriculum that appeared more
rigorous, perhaps? Or an alumni network that I hoped would open doors down the line? Maybe.
“I do think there are advantages to schools with more recognition,” notes Marybeth Gasman,
a professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania.“ I don’t necessarily think
that’s a reason to go to one.”
C) In reflection, my firm belief in the power of the brand was naive, not to mention a bit snobby.
I quickly passed over state schools and southern schools, believing their curriculums to be
automatically inferior to northeastern or western counterparts. Instead, I dreamed of living
in New York City and my parents obliged me with a visit to New York University’s (NYU)
campus. During the tour, tuition fees were discussed. (NYU is consistently ranked one of the
countly’s most expensive schools, with room and board costs totaling upwards of $64,000 a
year.) Up until then, I hadn’t truly realized just how expensive an education can be. Over the
next few months, I realized not only could I not afford my dream school, I couldn’t even afford
the ones where I’d been accepted. City University of New York (CUNY), Rutgers University,
and Indiana University were out of reach as were Mississippi State and the University of
058Alabama, where I would have to pay out-of-state fees. Further complicating my college search
was a flourishing track career—I wanted to keep running but my times weren’t quite fast
enough to secure a scholarship.
D) And so, at 11pm on the night of Georgia State University’s (GSU) midnight deadline, I applied
online. Rated No. 466 overall on Forbes’ Lists Top Colleges, No. 183 in Research Universities,
and No. 108 in the South, I can’t say it was my top choice. Still, the track coach had offered me
a walk-on spot, and I actually found the urban Atlanta campus a decent consolation prize after
New York City.
E) While it may have been practical, it wasn’t prestigious. But here’s the thing: I loved my“ lower-
tier” ( ) university. (I use the term“ low-tier” cautiously, because GSU is a well-
低层次的
regarded research institution that attracts high quality professors and faculty from all over the
country.) We are taught to believe that only by going to the best schools and getting the best
grades can we escape the rat race and build a better future. But what if lower-tier colleges and
universities were the ticket to escaping the rat race? After all, where else can you leave school
with a decent degree—but without a lifetime of debt?
F) My school didn’t come pre-packaged like the more popular options, so we were left to take
care of ourselves, figuring out city life and trying to complete degree programs that no one was
championing for us to succeed in. What I’m saying is, I loved my university because it taught
us all to be resourceful and we could make what we wanted out of it.
G) I was lucky enough to have my tuition covered by a lottery-funded scholarship called HOPE
(Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally). When I started college, the HOPE scholarship
was funded by the state of Georgia and offered to graduating high school seniors with a GPA
of 3.0 or higher. Living costs and books I paid for with money earned during high school,
supplemented by a small college fund my deceased grandfather left for me and a modest
savings account my parents created when I was born.
H) So what about all that name recognition? Sure, many of my colleagues and competitors have
more glamorous alma maters ( ) than I do. As a journalist, I have competed against
母校
NYU, Columbia, and Northeastern graduates for jobs. And yet, not a single interviewer has
ever asked me about my educational background. In fact, almost every interview I’ve ever had
was due to a connection—one that I’ve gained through pure determination, not a school brand.
I) According to The Boston Globe, students who earned their bachelor’s in 2012 have an average
monthly loan payment of $312, which is one-third more than those who graduated in 2004.
Ultimately, that’s the thing universities don’t want to admit. Private universities are money-
making institutions. If you can afford to buy prestige, that’s your choice. For the rest of us,
however, our hearty lower-tiered universities are just fine, thank you.
J) Wealthy universities talk up the benefits their name will give graduates: namely, strong alumni
networks, star faculty, and a résumé boost. But you needn’t attend an Ivy League school to reap
those rewards. Ludacris and the former CEO of Bank of America Ken Lewis are alumni of my
college, as well as VICe’s first female editor-in-chief, Ellis Jones. Successful people tend to be
successful no matter where they go to school, and lower-tier schools can have alumni networks
059六级阅读讲义
just as strong as their big name counterparts. In fact, lower-tier school alumni networks are
arguably stronger, because fellow alumni recognize that you didn’t necessarily have an easy
path to follow. They might be more willing to offer career help, because your less famous
school denotes that, like them, you are also full of energy and perseverance.
K) The Washington Post reported on a recent study by Princeton economists, in which college
graduates who applied to the most selective schools in the 12th grade were compared to those
who applied to slightly less selective schools. They found that students with more potential
earned more as adults, and the reverse held true as well, no matter where they went to school.
L) Likewise, star faculty are not always found where you’d expect. Big name schools are not
necessarily the best places for professors; plus, many professors split teaching time between
multiple colleges and/or universities. This means, for instance, a CUNY student could
reasonably expect to receive the same quality of instruction from a prestigious professor as they
would if they were enrolled in the same class at NYU.
M) It’s possible that some hiring managers may be drawn to candidates with a particular
educational résumé, but it’s no guarantee. According to a 2012 survey described in The
Atlantic, college reputation ranked lowest in relative importance of attributes in evaluating
graduates for hire, beaten out by top factors like internships, employment during college,
college major, volunteer experience, and extracurriculars.
N) Maybe students who choose less prestigious universities are bound to succeed because they
are determined to. I tend to think so. In any case, if I could do it again, I’d still make the same
choice. Today I’m debt-free, resourceful—and I understand that even the shiniest packaging
can’t predict what you’ll find on the inside.
36．Modest institutions can also have successful graduates and strong alumni networks.
37．The money the author made in high school helped pay for her living expenses and books at
college.
38．The author came to see how costly college education could be when she was trying to choose
a university to attend.
39．A recent study found that a graduate’s salary is determined by their potential, not the
university they attended.
40．The author cannot recall for sure what made certain top universities appear a lot better.
41．None of the author’s job interviewers cared which college she went to.
42．The author thinks she did the right thing in choosing a less prestigious university.
43．In order to be admitted to a prestigious university, the author took part in various
extracurricular activities and attended test preparation courses.
44．The author liked her university which was not prestigious but less expensive.
45．Colleges are reluctant to admit that graduates today are in heavier debt.
060【2017年12月第1套】
Apple’s Stance Highlights a More Confrontational Tech Industry
A) The battle between Apple and law enforcement officials over unlocking a terrorist’s smartphone
is the culmination of a slow turning of the tables between the technology industry and the
United States government.
B) After revelations by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden in
2013 that the government both cozied up to ( ) certain tech companies and hacked into
讨好
others to gain access to private data on an enormous scale, tech giants began to recognize the
United States government as a hostile actor. But if the confrontation has crystallized in this
latest battle, it may already be heading toward a predictable conclusion: In the long run, the
tech companies are destined to emerge victorious.
C) It may not seem that way at the moment. On the one side, you have the United States
government’s mighty legal and security apparatus fighting for data of the most sympathetic
sort: the secrets buried in a dead mass murderer’s phone. The action stems from a federal court
order issued on Tuesday requiring Apple to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to
unlock an iPhone used by one of the two attackers who killed 14 people in San Bernardino,
California, in December.
D) In the other corner is the world’s most valuable company, whose chief executive, Timothy
Cook, has said he will appeal the court’s order. Apple argues that it is fighting to preserve a
principle that most of us who are addicted to our smartphones can defend: Weaken a single
iPhone so that its contents can be viewed by the American government and you risk weakening
all iPhones for any government intruder, anywhere.
E) There will probably be months of legal tussling, and it is not at all clear which side will prevail
in court, nor in the battle for public opinion and legislative favor. Yet underlying all of this is a
simple dynamic: Apple, Google, Facebook and other companies hold most of the cards in this
confrontation. They have our data, and their businesses depend on the global public’s collective
belief that they will do everything they can to protect that data.
F) Any crack in that front could be fatal for tech companies that must operate worldwide. If
Apple is forced to open up an iPhone for an American law enforcement investigation, what is
to prevent it from doing so for a request from the Russians or the Iranians? If Apple is forced
to write code that lets the FBI get into the Phone 5c used by Syed Rizwan Farook, the male
attacker in the San Bernardino attack, who would be responsible if some hacker got hold of that
code and broke into its other devices?
G) Apple’s stance on these issues emerged post-Snowden, when the company started putting in
place a series of technologies that, by default, make use of encryption ( ) to limit access to
加密
people’s data. More than that, Apple—and, in different ways, other tech companies, including
Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft—have made their opposition to the government’s
claims a point of corporate pride.
H) Apple’s emerging global brand is privacy; it has staked its corporate reputation, not to mention
061六级阅读讲义
the investment of considerable technical and financial resources, on limiting the sort of
mass surveillance that was uncovered by Mr. Snowden. So now, for many cases involving
governmental intrusions into data, once-lonely privacy advocates find themselves fighting
alongside the most powerful company in the world.
I)“ A comparison point is in the 1990s battles over encryption,” said Kurt Opsahl, general
counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog group.“ Then you had a
few companies involved, but not one of the largest companies in the world coming out with a
lengthy and impassioned post, like we saw yesterday from Tim Cook. The profile has really
been raised.”
J) Apple and other tech companies hold another ace: the technical means to keep making their
devices more and more inaccessible. Note that Apple’s public opposition to the government’s
request is itself a hindrance to mass government intrusion. And to get at the contents of a single
iPhone, the government says it needs a court order and Apple’s help to write new code; in
earlier versions of the iPhone, ones that were created before Apple found religion on ( )
热衷于
privacy, the FBI may have been able to break into the device by itself.
K) You can expect that noose ( ) to continue to tighten. Experts said that whether or not
束缚
Apple loses this specific case, measures that it could put into place in the future will almost
certainly be able to further limit the government’s reach.
L) That’s not to say that the outcome of the San Bernardino case is insignificant. As Apple and
several security experts have argued, an order compelling Apple to write software that gives
the FBI access to the iPhone in question would establish an unsettling precedent. The order
essentially asks Apple to hack its own devices, and once it is in place, the precedent could
be used to justify law enforcement efforts to get around encryption technologies in other
investigations far removed from national security threats.
M) Once armed with a method for gaining access to iPhones, the government could ask to use it
proactively ( ), before a suspected terrorist attack—leaving Apple in a bind as to
先发制人地
whether to comply or risk an attack and suffer a public-relations nightmare.“ This is a brand-
new move in the war against encryption,” Mr. Opsahl said.“ We’ve had plenty of debates in
Congress and the media over whether the government should have a backdoor, and this is an
end run ( ) around that—here they come with an order to create that backdoor.”
迂回战术
N) Yet it’s worth noting that even if Apple ultimately loses this case, it has plenty of technical
means to close a backdoor over time.“ If they’re anywhere near worth their salt as engineers, I
bet they’re rethinking their threat model as we speak,” said Jonathan Zdziarski, a digital expert
who studies the iPhone and its vulnerabilities.
O) One relatively simple fix, Mr. Zdziarski said, would be for Apple to modify future versions
of the iPhone to require a user to enter a passcode before the phone will accept the sort of
modified operating system that the FBI wants Apple to create. That way, Apple could not
unilaterally introduce a code that weakens the iPhone—a user would have to consent to it.
P)“ Nothing is 100 percent hacker—proof,” Mr. Zdziarski said, but he pointed out that the judge’s
order in this case required Apple to provide“ reasonable security assistance” to unlock Mr.
062Farook’s phone. If Apple alters the security model of future iPhones so that even its own
engineers’“ reasonable assistance” will not be able to crack a given device when compelled by
the government, a precedent set in this case might lose its lasting force. In other words, even if
the FBI wins this case, in the long run, it loses.
36．It is a popular belief that tech companies are committed to protecting their customers’ private
data.
37．The US government believes that its access to people’s iPhones could be used to prevent
terrorist attacks.
38．A federal court asked Apple to help the FBI access data in a terrorist’s iPhone.
39．Privacy advocates now have Apple fighting alongside them against government access to
personal data.
40．Snowden revealed that the American government had tried hard to access private data in
massive scale.
41．The FBI might have been able to access private data in earlier iPhones without Apple’s help.
42．After the Snowden incident, Apple made clear its position to counter government intrusion
into personal data by means of encryption.
43．According to one digital expert, no iPhone can be entirely free from hacking.
44．Timothy Cook’s long web post has helped enhance Apple’s image.
45．Apple’s CEO has decided to appeal the federal court’s order to unlock a user’s iPhone.
063六级阅读讲义
第三部分 选词填空
一、题型介绍
， ： 、 、 。
大学英语六级试卷由四个部分构成 依次为 写作 听力理解 阅读理解和翻译
、 ：
其中阅读理解部分的测试内容 题型和所占分值比例如下表所示
试卷结构 测试内容 测试题型 题目数量 分值占比 考试时间
10 5%
词汇理解 选词填空
10 10% 40
阅读理解 长篇阅读 匹配 分钟
10 20%
仔细阅读 单选题
30 35% 40
总计 分钟
250-300 ， 5%。
词汇理解的篇章长度约 词 分值占比为
， 。
词汇理解采用选词填空题型 考核学生对篇章语境中词汇的理解和运用能力 篇章中
10 ， 15 。
删去了 个词汇 并在篇章后提供 个词汇选项 要求考生在对篇章理解的基础上从所
， 。
给的词汇选项中选择正确的词汇答题 使篇章复原
二、考情分析
， ，
选 词 填 空 对 于 基 本 功 要 求 很 高 不 仅 对 要 求 高 对 于
， ，
的熟悉程度要求也很高 还有 的能力 这部分正确率不高
， ， ， ；
的同学 一定要多背单词 特别是选项中好多单词不认识的同学 证明词汇量太小了 对
， 。
于拆解句子有问题的同学 注意多回看语法课
三、解题技巧
1. ，
预览选项
2. ，
精读 先确定词性缩小范围
3.
再根据 选出答案
4. ，
较难的空可以先放着 第二遍再做
064四、真题演练
【2019年6月第1套】
第三部分 选词填空
Pasta is no longer off the menu, after a new review of studies suggested that the carbohydrate
can form part of a healthy diet, and even help people lose weight. For years, nutritionists have
recommended that pasta be kept to a 26 , to cut calories, prevent fat build-up and stop blood
sugar 27 up.
The low-carbohydrate food movement gave birth to such diets as the Atkins, Paleo and Keto,
一、题型介绍
which advised swapping foods like bread, pasta and potatoes for vegetables, fish and meat. More
， ： 、 、 。 recently the trend of swapping spaghetti for vegetables has been 28 by clean-eating experts.
大学英语六级试卷由四个部分构成 依次为 写作 听力理解 阅读理解和翻译
、 ： But now a 29 review and analysis of 30 studies by Canadian researchers found that not
其中阅读理解部分的测试内容 题型和所占分值比例如下表所示
only does pasta not cause weight gain, but three meals a week can help people drop more than half
a kilogram over four months. The reviewers found that pasta had been unfairly demonized (
试卷结构 测试内容 测试题型 题目数量 分值占比 考试时间 妖魔
10 5% ) because it had been 30 in with other, more fat-promoting carbohydrates.
词汇理解 选词填空 化
“The study found that pasta didn’t 31 to weight gain or increase in body fat,” said lead
10 10% 40
阅读理解 长篇阅读 匹配 分钟
author Dr John Sievenpiper.“ In 32 the evidence, we can now say with some confidence
10 20%
仔细阅读 单选题 that pasta does not have an 33 effect on body weight outcomes when it is consumed as part
30 35% 40
总计 分钟 of a healthy dietary pattern.” In fact, analysis actually showed a small weight loss. So 34 to
concerns, perhaps pasta can be part of a healthy diet.
250-300 ， 5%。
词汇理解的篇章长度约 词 分值占比为 Those involved in the 35 trials on average ate 3.3 servings of pasta a week instead of
， 。
词汇理解采用选词填空题型 考核学生对篇章语境中词汇的理解和运用能力 篇章中 other carbohydrates, one serving equaling around half a cup. They lost around half a kilogram over
10 ， 15 。
删去了 个词汇 并在篇章后提供 个词汇选项 要求考生在对篇章理解的基础上从所 an average follow-up of 12 weeks.
， 。
给的词汇选项中选择正确的词汇答题 使篇章复原
A) adverse I) minimum
B) championed J) radiating
C) clinical K) ration
二、考情分析
D) contrary L) shooting
， ，
E) contribute M) subscribe
选 词 填 空 对 于 基 本 功 要 求 很 高 不 仅 对 要 求 高 对 于
， ，
F) intimate N) systematic
的熟悉程度要求也很高 还有 的能力 这部分正确率不高
， ， ， ；
G) lumped O) weighing
的同学 一定要多背单词 特别是选项中好多单词不认识的同学 证明词汇量太小了 对
， 。
H) magnified
于拆解句子有问题的同学 注意多回看语法课
【2019年6月第2套】
三、解题技巧 The dream of personalized flight is still vivid in the minds of many inventors, some
1. ， developing cycle-powered craft, others 26 money into jetpacks ( ). However, the
预览选项 喷气飞行背包
2. ， flying car has always remained the 27 Symbol of personal transport freedom.
精读 先确定词性缩小范围
3. Several companies around the world have produced 28 that can drive on roads and
再根据 选出答案
4. ， fly. Airbus has a futuristic modular ( ) concept involving a passenger capsule that can
较难的空可以先放着 第二遍再做 组件式的
be 29 from the road-going chassis ( ) and picked up by a helicopter-type machine.
底盘
065六级阅读讲义
But all these concepts are massively expensive, require safety certification standards for road
and air, need 30 controls, involve complex folding wings and propellers, and have to be flown
from air-strips. So they are likely to remain rich people’s playthings rather than practical transport
solutions for the masses.
“A car that takes off from some London street and lands in another 31 street is unlikely
to happen,” says Prof. Gray, a leading aeronautical engineer.“ Sky taxis are much more likely.”
But that won’t stop inventors from dreaming up new ways to fly and trying to persuade investors
to back their sometimes 32 schemes.
Civilian aviation is being disrupted, not by the age-old desires for speed, romanticism
and 33 , but by the pressing need to respond to a changing climate. New electric engines
coupled with artificial intelligence and 34 systems will contribute to a more efficient,
integrated transport system that is less polluting and less noisy. That may sound simple, but as
Prof. Gray says,“ When I travel somewhere like this notion that when I finish my journey I feel
better than when I started it. That’s completely at 35 with how I feel today.” Now that would
be progress.
A) autonomous I) pouring
B) detached J) prototypes
C) dual K) random
D) glamour L) repressing
E) imminent M) segmented
F) odds N) spectrum
G) opposites O) ultimate
H) outrageous
【2019年6月第3套】
Steel is valued for its reliability, but not when it gets cold. Most forms of steel 26 become
brittle ( ) at temperatures below about -25℃ unless they are mixed with other metals.
脆的
Now, though, a novel type of steel has been developed that resists 27 at much lower
temperatures, while retaining its strength and toughness—without the need for expensive 28 .
Steel’s fragility at low temperatures first became a major concern during the Second World
War. After German U-boats torpedoed ( ) numerous British ships, a 2700-strong
用鱼雷攻击
fleet of cheap-and-cheerful“ Liberty ships” was introduced to replace the lost vessels, providing a
lifeline for the 29 British. But the steel shells of hundreds of the ships 30 in the icy north
Atlantic, and 12 broke in half and sank.
Brittleness remains a problem when building steel structures in cold conditions, such as oil
rigs in the Arctic. So scientists have 31 to find a solution by mixing it with expensive metals
such as nickel.
Yuuji Kimura and colleagues in Japan tried a more physical 32 . Rather than adding other
metals, they developed a complex mechanical process involving repeated heating and very severe
066mechanical deformation, known as tempforming.
The resulting steel appears to achieve a combination of strength and toughness that is 33 to
that of modern steels that are very rich in alloy content and, therefore, very expensive.
Kimura’s team intends to use its tempformed steel to make ultra-high strength parts, such
as bolts. They hope to reduce both the number of 34 needed in a construction job and their
weight—by replacing solid supports with 35 tubes, for example. This could reduce the
amount of steel needed to make everything from automobiles to buildings and bridges.
A) abruptly I) cracked
B) additives J) fractures
C) approach K) hollow
D) ardently L) relevant
E) besieged M) reshuffled
F) channel N) strived
G) comparable O) violent
H) components
【2018年12月第1套】
In what’s probably the craziest headline I’ve ever written, I’ve reported that 26 in
livestock protection are happening with scientists painting eyes on the butts of cows. The
experiment is based upon the idea that farmers who’re protecting their herd from lions would
shoot and kill lions in an effort to protect their livestock. While this makes a lot of sense, it results
in many lion deaths that 27 would have been unnecessary. Researchers in Australia have
been 28 and testing a method of trickery to make lions think they are being watched by the
painted eyes on cow butts.
This idea is based on the principle that lions and other 29 are far less likely to
attack when they feel they are being watched. As conservation areas become smaller, lions
are increasingly coming into contact with human populations, which are expanding to the
30 of these protected areas.
Efforts like painting eyes on cow butts may seem crazy at first, but they could make actual
headway in the fight for conservation.“ If the method works, it could provide farmers in Botswana
—and 31 —with a low-cost, sustainable tool to protect their livestock, and a way to keep lions
safe from being killed.”
Lions are 32 ambush ( ) hunters, so when they feel their prey has 33 them,
埋 伏
they usually give up on the hunt. Researchers are 34 testing their idea on a select herd of
cattle. They have painted half of the cows with eyes and left the other half as normal. Through
satellite tracking of both the herd and the lions in the area, they will be able to 35 if their
psychological trickery will work to help keep farmers from shooting lions.
067六级阅读讲义
A) advances I) otherwise
B) boundaries J) predators
C) challenging K) primarily
D) currently L) retorted
E) determine M) spotted
F) devising N) testimonies
G) elsewhere O) wrestle
H) nevertheless
【2018年12月第2套】
Surfing the Internet during class doesn’t just steal focus from the educator; it also hurts
students who’re already struggling to 26 the material. A new study from Michigan State
University, though, argues that all students—including high achievers—see a decline in
performance when they browse the Internet during class for non-academic purposes.
To measure the effects of Internet-based distractions during class, researchers 27 500
students taking an introductory psychology class at Michigan State University. Researchers used
ACT scores as a measure of intellectual 28 . Because previous research has shown that people
with high intellectual abilities are better at 29 out distractions, researchers believed students with
high ACT scores would not show a 30 decrease in performance due to their use of digital devices.
But students who surfed the web during class did worse on their exams regardless of their ACT scores,
suggesting that even the academically smartest students are harmed when they’re distracted in class.
College professors are increasingly 31 alarm bells about the effects smartphones, laptops,
and tablets have on academic performance. One 2013 study of college students found that 80% of
students use their phones or laptops during class, with the average student checking their digital
device 11 times in a 32 class. A quarter of students report that their use of digital devices
during class causes their grades to 33 .
Professors sometimes implement policies designed to 34 students’ use of digital devices,
and some instructors even confiscate ( ) tablets and phones. In a world where people are
没收
increasingly dependent on their phones, though, such strategies often fail. One international study
found that 84% of people say they couldn’t go a day without their smartphones. Until students
are able to 35 the pull of social networking, texting, and endlessly surfing the web, they may
continue to struggle in their classes.
A) aptitude I) obscure
B) eradication J) obsess
C) evaluated K) raising
D) evaporated L) resist
E) filtering M) significant
F) grasp N) suffer
G) legacy O) typical
H) minimize
068【2018年12月第3套】
Just off the coast of Southern California sits Santa Cruz Island, where a magical creature
called the island fox 26 . A decade ago, this island’s ecosystem was in 27 . Wild pigs
attracted golden eagles from the mainland, and those flying 28 crashed the fox population. So
the Nature Conservancy launched a 29 war against the pigs, complete with helicopters and
sharpshooters.
And it worked. Today, federal agencies are pulling the island fox from the Endangered
Species List. It’s the fastest-ever recovery of a mammal, joining peers like the Louisiana black
bear as glowing successes in the history of the Endangered Species Act.
But the recovery of Santa Cruz Island isn’t just about the fox. The Nature Conservancy
has 30 war on a multitude of invasive species here, from sheep to plants to the
31 Argentine ant.“ Our philosophy with the island has always been,‘ OK, 32 the threats
and let the island go back to what it was,’” says ecologist Christina Boser. And it appears to be
working. Native plants are coming back, and the fox once again bounds about carefree.
But keeping those foxes from harm will occupy Boser and her colleagues for years to come.
You see, humans are still allowed on Santa Cruz Island, and they bring dogs. So Boser has to
vaccinate her foxes against various diseases.“ We’re obligated to keep a pulse on the population
for at least five years after the foxes are delisted,” says Boser. That includes tagging the foxes
and 33 their numbers to ensure nothing goes wrong.
This is the story of the little fox that has come back, and the people who have 34
their lives to protecting it. This is the story of wildlife conservation in the age of mass 35 .
A) aggressive I) hinders
B) chaos J) mammal
C) configuration K) monitoring
D) declared L) predators
E) dedicated M) remove
F) dwells N) tempt
G) extinction O) underlying
H) fierce
【2018年6月第1套】
Did Sarah Josepha Hale write“ Mary’s Little Lamb,” the eternal nursery rhyme ( ) about
儿歌
a girl named Mary with a stubborn lamb? This is still disputed, but it’s clear that the woman 26 for
writing it was one of America’s most fascinating 27 . In honor of the poem’s publication on
May 24, 1830, here’s more about the 28 author’s life.
Hale wasn’t just a writer, she was also a 29 social advocate, and she was particularly
30 with an ideal New England, which she associated with abundant Thanksgiving meals that
she claimed had“ a deep moral influence.” She began a nationwide 31 to have a national
holiday declared that would bring families together while celebrating the 32 festivals. In
069六级阅读讲义
1863, after 17 years of advocacy including letters to five presidents, Hale got it. President Abraham
Lincoln during the Civil War, issued a 33 setting aside the last Thursday in November for the
holiday.
The true authorship of“ Mary’s Little Lamb” is disputed. According to the New England
Historical Society, Hale wrote only part of the poem, but claimed authorship. Regardless of
the author, it seems that the poem was 34 by a real event. When young Mary Sawyer was
followed to school by a lamb in 1816, it caused some problems. A bystander named John Roulstone
wrote a poem about the event, then, at some point, Hale herself seems to have helped write it.
However, if a 1916 piece by her great-niece is to be trusted, Hale claimed for the 35 of her life
that“ some other people pretended that someone else wrote the poem”.
A) campaign I) proclamation
B) career J) rectified
C) characters K) reputed
D) features L) rest
E) fierce M) supposed
F) inspired N) traditional
G) latter O) versatile
H) obsessed
【2018年6月第2套】
Scientists scanning and mapping the Giza pyramids say they’ve discovered that the Great
Pyramid of Giza is not exactly even. But really not by much. This pyramid is the oldest of the
world’s Seven Wonders. The pyramid’s exact size has 26 experts for centuries, as the“ more
than 21 acres of hard, white casing stones” that originally covered it were 27 long ago.
Reporting in the most recent issue of the newsletter“ AERAGRAM,” which 28 the work of
the Ancient Egypt Research Associates, engineer Glen Dash says his team used a new measuring
approach that involved finding any surviving 29 of the casing in order to determine where the
original edge was. They found the east side of the pyramid to be a 30 of 5.5 inches shorter
than the west side.
The question that most 31 him, however, isn’t how the Egyptians who designed and built
the pyramid got it wrong 4,500 years ago, but how they got it so close to 32 .“ We can only
speculate as to how the Egyptians could have laid out these lines with such 33 using only
the tools they had,” Dash writes. He says his 34 is that the Egyptians laid out their design on
a grid, noting that the great pyramid is oriented only 35 away from the cardinal directions
(its north-south axis runs 3 minutes 54 seconds west of due north, while its east-west axis runs 3
minutes 51 seconds north of due east)—an amount that’s“ tiny, but similar,” archeologist Atlas
Obscura points out.
070A) chronicles I) perfect
B) complete J) precision
C) established K) puzzled
D) fascinates L) remnants
E) hypothesis M) removed
F) maximum N) revelations
G) momentum O) slightly
H) mysteriously
【2018年6月第3套】
When Elon Musk says that his new priority is using artificial intelligence to build domestic
robots, we should look forward to the day in admiration.
Mr. Musk is a guy who gets things done. The founder of two tech companies, Tesla Motors
and SpaceX, is bringing electric vehicles to mass market and 26 humans to live on other
planets. This sounds like so much hot air, but the near $13 billion fortune this entrepreneur
has 27 comes from practical achievements rather than hypothetical ones.
A lot of clever people are 28 about artificial intelligence, fearing that robots will one day
become so 29 that they’ll murder all of us. These fears are mostly 30 : as with hysteria
about genetic modification, we humans are generally wise enough to manage these problems with
speed and care.
And just think of how wonderful it would be if you had a live-in robot. It could, 31 ,
be like having a babysitter and a nurse rolled into one—or, if that required 32 intelligence
beyond the power of Mr. Musk’s imagined machine, at least someone to chop the carrots, wash the
car and mow the lawn. Once purchased and trained, this would allow the 33
user to save money and time, freeing up 34 space in our busy lives to read a good book.
That is why we welcome Mr. Musk’s latest 35 , and wish him well. As long as robots add
to the sum of human happiness, reduce suffering, and create time to read world-class journalism,
we should be their fans. Especially since journalism is one job robots will never do.
A) amassed I) misleading
B) casual J) precious
C) emotional K) reward
D) enabling L) smart
E) eventually M) sphere
F) exaggerated N) terrified
G) extravagant O) venture
H) generously
071六级阅读讲义
【2017年12月第1套】
Many European countries have been making the shift to electric vehicles and Germany has
just stated that they plan to ban the sale of vehicles using gasoline and diesel as fuel by 2030. The
country is also planning to reduce its carbon footprint by 80-95% by 2050, 26 a shift to green
energy in the country. Effectively, the ban will include the registration of new cars in the country
as they will not allow any gasoline 27 vehicle to be registered after 2030.
Part of the reason this ban is being discussed and 28 is because energy officials see that
they will not reach their emissions goals by 2050 if they do not 29 a large portion of vehicle
emissions. The country is still 30 that it will meet its emissions goals, like reducing emissions
by 40% by 2020, but the 31 of electric cars in the country has not occurred as fast as expected.
Other efforts to increase the use of electric vehicles include plans to build over 1 million
hybrid and electric car battery charging stations across the country. By 2030, Germany plans on
having over 6 million charging stations 32 . According to the International Business Times,
electric car sales are expected to increase as Volkswagen is still recovering from its emissions
scandal.
There are 33 around 155,000 registered hybrid and electric vehicles on German roads,
dwarfed by the 45 million gasoline and diesel cars driving there now. As countries continue
setting goals of reducing emissions, greater steps need to be taken to have a 34 effect on the
surrounding environment. While the efforts are certainly not 35 , the results of such bans will
likely only start to be seen by generations down the line, bettering the world for the future.
A) acceptance I) incidentally
B) currently J) installed
C) disrupting K) noticeable
D) eliminate L) powered
E) exhaust M) restoration
F) futile N) skeptical
G) hopeful O) sparking
H) implemented
【2017年12月第2套】
In the past 12 months, Nigeria has suffered from a shrinking economy, a sliding currency, and
a prolonged fuel shortage. Now, Africa’s largest economy is facing a food crisis as major tomato
fields have been destroyed by an insect, leading to a nationwide shortage and escalating prices.
The insect, Tutaabsoluta, has destroyed 80% of farms in Kaduna, Nigeria’s largest tomato-
producing state, leading the government there to declare a state of 26 . The insect, also known
as the tomato leaf miner, devastates crops by 27 on fruits and digging into and moving
through stalks. It 28 incredibly quickly, breeding up to 12 generations per year if conditions
are favorable. It is believed to have 29 in South America in the early 1900s, and later spread to
Europe before crossing over to sub-Saharan Africa.
072In Nigeria, where tomatoes are a staple of local diets, the insect’s effects are devastating.
Retail prices for a 30 of tomatoes at local markets have risen from $0.50 to $2.50. Farmers are
reporting steep losses and a new $20 million tomato-paste factory has 31 production due to
the shortages.
Given the moth’s ability also to attack crops like pepper and potatoes, Audu Ogbeh, Nigeria’s
minister of agriculture, has warned that the pest may“ create serious problems for food 32 ” in
the country. Ogbeh says experts are investigating how to control the pest’s damage and prevent its
spread, which has gone largely 33 until now.
Despite being the continent’s second-largest producer of tomatoes, Nigeria is 34 on
$1 billion worth of tomato-paste imports every year, as around 75% of the local harvest goes to
waste thanks to a lack of proper storage facilities. A further 35 in local supplies is yet another
unwelcome setback to the industry.
A) dependent I) originated
B) embarking J) reduction
C) emergency K) reproduces
D) feeding L) security
E) grazes M) terror
F) halted N) unchecked
G) handful O) untouched
H) multitude
【2017年12月第3套】
The Pacific island nation of Palau has become home to the sixth largest marine sanctuary
in the world. The new marine reserve, now the largest in the Pacific, will 26 no fishing or
mining. Palau also established the world’s first shark sanctuary in 2009.
The tiny island nation has set aside 500,000 square kilometres—80 percent—of its
maritime 27 , for full protection. That’s the highest percentage of an 28 economic zone
devoted to marine conservation by any country in the world. The remaining 20 percent of the Palau
seas will be reserved for local fishing by individuals and small-scale 29 fishing businesses
with limited exports.
“Island 30 have been among the hardest hit by the threats facing the ocean,” said
President Tommy Remengesau Jr. in a statement.“ Creating this sanctuary is a bold move that
the people of Palau recognize as 31 to our survival. We want to lead the way in restoring the
health of the ocean for future generations.”
Palau has only been an 32 nation for twenty years and has a strong history of
environmental protection. It is home to one of the world’s finest marine ecosystems, with more
than 1,300 species of fish and 700 species of coral.
Senator Hokkons Baules, lead 33 of the Palau National Marine Sanctuary Act, said the
sanctuary will“ help build a 34 future for the Palauan people by honoring the conservation
073六级阅读讲义
traditions of our past”. These include the centuries-old custom of“ bul”, where leaders would call
a temporary stop to fishing for key species in order to give fish 35 an opportunity to replenish
( ).
补充
A) allocate I) permit
B) celebrities J) secure
C) commercial K) solitary
D) communities L) spectacle
E) essential M) sponsor
F) exclusive N) stocks
G) independent O) territory
H) indulge
074
