1、大学英语六级综合-阅读(二十五)及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、BPart Reading (总题数：0，分数：0.00)二、BSection A/B(总题数：2，分数：30.00)Directions: In this section, there is a passage with 10 blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passa
2、ge through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may NOT use any of the words in the bank MORE THAN ONCE.When my mothers health was faili
3、ng, I was the “bad“ sister who lived far away and wasnt involved. My sister helped my parents. She never asked me to do anything, and I didnt U U 1 /U /U. I was widowed, raising kids and working, but that wasnt really why I kept to weekly calls and short, infrequent visits. I was U U 2 /U /Uin my ad
4、olescent role as the aloof(超脱的) achiever, defending myself from my U U 3 /U /Umother and other family craziness. As always, I turned a deaf ear to my sisters criticisms about my not being around moreand I didnt hear her rising desperation. It wasnt until my moms U U 4 /U /U, watching my dad and sist
5、er cling to each other and weep, that I got a hint of their long painful experienceand how badly Id behaved.My sister was so furious, she U U 5 /U /Uspoke to me during my fathers last years. To be honest, Im not a terrible person. So how did I get it so wrong?We hear a lot about the U U 6 /U /Uof ta
6、king care of our graying population. But the big story beneath the surface is the psychological crisis among middle-aged siblings (兄弟姐妹) who are fighting toward issues involving their aging parents. According to a new survey, an estimated 43.5 million adults in the US are looking after an older U U
7、7 /U /Uor friend. Of these, 43% said they did not feel they had a U U 8 /U /Uin this role. And although 7 in 10 said another unpaid caregiver had U U 9 /U /Uhelp in the past year, only 1 in 10 said the burden was split equally.As siblings who are often separated geographically and emotionally, we ar
8、e having to come together to decide such U U 10 /U /Uissues as where Mom and Dad should live and where they should be buried. “Its like being put down with your siblings in the centre of a nuclear reactor and being told. Figure it out,“ says University of Colorado psychologist Sara Honn Quails.Astuc
9、k Fvolunteer KflungBfuneral Grelative LrandomlyCprovided Hjudgmental MnoisyDtough Ichoice NadaptEcosts Jbarely Oattach（分数：20.00）填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_In most cultures throughout the world, there is an expectation that when a person reaches adulthood, m
10、arriage should soon follow. In the United States alone, each month upwards of 168,000 couples wed, U U 11 /U /Uto love, honor, and respect their chosen life mates until death parts them. The expectation is deep-rooted.However, the social functions, purposes, and relevance of marriage are rapidly cha
11、nging in U U 12 /U /Usociety, making them less clear-cut than they have been throughout history. For instance, in a Pew Research Centre random polling of over 2,000 U U 13 /U /U, fewer than half of all of the adults polled indicated that if a man and a woman plan to spend the rest of their lives tog
12、ether as a couple, it was important that they U U 14 /U /Umarry.Those of us who choose to marry have U U 15 /U /Ureasons why we decide to marry the person we do. There is a U U 16 /U /U, however, in our Western, individualistic culture: We tend to marry for reasons that benefit ourselves, rather tha
13、n for reasons that benefit the society at large, such as found in collectivist cultures. Research in Western cultures has found, for example, that the number-one U U 17 /U /Upeople cite for marrying is to signify a lifelong commitment to someone they love. However, this reason is not the only U U 18
14、 /U /Uto why people wedtoday, people get married for reasons of commitment, security, and personal belief systems. The Pew Research Centres recent findings suggest that the main reasons people get married are for U U 19 /U /Uhappiness and commitment, and bearing and raising children. As the data fro
15、m this survey show us, there are racial, age, and religious differences in what people U U 20 /U /Uto be the main purposes of getting married.Avowing Fcontemporary KvisualBmutual Gresponse LpretendingCindividuals Hspecific MsubstituteDconsider Ilegally NequallyEtendency Jreason Osuggesting（分数：10.00）
16、填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_填空项 1:_三、BSection B/B(总题数：2，分数：30.00)Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with 10 statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which th
17、e information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.Norman Borlaug:“Father of the Green Revolution“A) Few people have quietly changed the world for the better more than
18、 this rural lad from the midwestern state of Iowa in the United States. The man in focus is Norman Borlaug, the Father of the “Green Revolution“, who died on September 12, 2009 at age 95. Norman Borlaug spent most of his 60 working years in the farmlands of Mexico, South Asia and later in Africa, fi
19、ghting world hunger, and saving by some estimates up to a billion lives in the process. An achievement, fit for a Nobel Peace Prize.Early YearsB) “Im a product of the great depression“ is how Borlaug described himself. A great-grandson of Norwegian immigrants to the United States, Borlaug was born i
20、n 1914 and grew up on a small farm in the northeastern corner of Iowa in a town called Cresco. His family had a 40-hectare (公顷) farm on which they grew wheat, maize (玉米) and hay and raised pigs and cattle. Norman spent most of his time from age 7-17 on the farm, even as he attended a one-room, one-t
21、eacher school at New Oregon in Howard County.C) Borlaug didnt have money to go to college. But through a Great Depression era program, known as the National Youth Administration, Borlaug was able to enroll in the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis to study forestry. He excelled in studies and re
22、ceived his Ph.D. in plant pathology (病理学) and genetics in 1942. From 1942 to 1944, Borlaug was employed as a microbiologist at DuPont in Wilmington. However, following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Borlaug tried to join the military, but was rejected under wartime labour regulations.I
23、n MexicoD) In 1944, many experts warned of mass starvation in developing nations where populations were expanding faster than crop production. Borlaug began to work at a Rockefeller Foundation-funded project in Mexico to increase wheat production by developing higher-yielding varieties of the crop.
24、It involved research in genetics, plant breeding, plant pathology, entomology (昆虫学), agronomy (农艺学), soil science, and cereal technology. The goal of the project was to boost wheat production in Mexico, which at the time was importing a large portion of its grain. Borlaug said that his first couple
25、of years in Mexico were difficult. He lacked trained scientists and equipment. Native farmers were hostile towards the wheat program because of serious crop losses from 1939 to 1941 due to stem rust.E) Wheat varieties that Borlaug worked with had tall, thin stalks. While taller wheat competed better
26、 for sunlight, they had a tendency to collapse under the weight of extra graina trait called lodging. To overcome this, Borlaug worked on. breeding wheat with shorter and stronger stalks, which could hold on larger seed heads. Borlaugs new semi-dwarf, disease-resistant varieties, called Pitic 62 and
27、 Penjamo 62, changed the potential yield of Mexican wheat dramatically. By 1963 wheat production in Mexico stood six times more than that of 1944.Green Revolution in IndiaF) During the 1960s, South Asia experienced severe drought condition and India had been importing wheat on a large scale from the
28、 United States. Borlaug came to India in 1963 along with Dr. Robert Anderson to duplicate his Mexican success in the sub-continent. The experiments began with planting a few of the high-yielding variety strains in the fields of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa in New Delhi, under t
29、he supervision of Dr. M. S. Swaminathan. These strains were subsequently planted in test plots at Ludhiana, Pantnagar, Kanpur, Pune and Indore. The results were promising, but large-scale success, however, was not instant. Cultural opposition to new agricultural techniques initially prevented Borlau
30、g from going ahead with planting of new wheat strains in India. By 1965, when the drought situation turned alarming, the Government took the lead and allowed wheat revolution to move forward. By employing agricultural techniques he developed in Mexico, Borlaug was able to nearly double South Asian w
31、heat harvests between 1965 and 1970.G) India subsequently made a huge commitment to Mexican wheat, importing some 18,000 tonnes of seed. By 1968, it was clear that the Indian wheat harvest was nothing short of revolutionary. It was so productive that there was a shortage of labour to harvest it, of
32、bull carts to haul it to the threshing floor (打谷场), of jute (黄麻) bags to store it. Local governments in some areas were forced to shut down schools temporarily to use them as store houses.H) United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) observed that in 40 years between 1961 and 2001, “Indi
33、a more than doubled its population, from 452 million to more than 1 billion. At the same time, it nearly tripled its grain production from 87 million tonnes to 231 million tonnes. It accomplished this feat while increasing cultivated grain acreage (土地面积) a mere 8 percent.“ It was in India that Norma
34、n Borlaugs work was described as the “Green Revolution.“In AfricaI) Africa suffered widespread hunger and starvation through the 1970s and 1980s. Food and aid poured in from most developed countries into the continent, but thanks to the absence of efficient distribution system, the hungry remained e
35、mpty-stomach. The then Chairman of the Nippon Foundation, Ryoichi Sasakawa wondered why the methods used in Mexico and India were not extended to Africa. He called up Norman Borlaug, now leading a semi-retired life, for help. He managed to convince Borlaug to help with his new effort and subsequentl
36、y founded the Sasakawa Africa Association. Borlaug later recalled, “but after I saw the terrible circumstances there, I said, Lets just start growing.“J) The success in Africa was not as spectacular as it was in India or Mexico. Those elements that allowed Borlaugs projects to succeed, such as well-
37、organized economies and transportation and irrigation systems, were severely lacking throughout Africa. Because of this, Borlaugs initial projects were restricted to developed regions of the continent. Nevertheless, yields of maize, sorghum (高粱) and wheat doubled between 1983 and 1985.Nobel PrizeK)
38、For his contributions to the world food supply, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. Norwegian officials notified his wife in Mexico City at 4:00 a. m., but Borlaug had already left for the test fields in the Toluca valley, about 65 km west of Mexico City. A chauffeur (司机) took her to
39、the fields to inform her husband. In his acceptance speech, Borlaug said, “the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world. Yet, 50 percent of the world population goes hungry.“Green Revolution vs Environme
40、ntalistsL) Borlaugs advocacy of intensive high-yield agriculture came under severe criticism from environmentalists in recent years. His work faced environmental and socio-economic criticisms including charges that his methods have created dependence on monoculture crops, unsustainable farming pract
41、ices, heavy indebtedness among subsistence farmers, and high levels of cancer among those who work with agriculture chemicals. There are also concerns about the long-term sustainability of farming practices encouraged by the Green Revolution in both the developed and the developing world.M) In India
42、, the Green Revolution is blamed for the destruction of Indian crop diversity, drought vulnerability, dependence on agro-chemicals that poison soils but reap large-scale benefits mostly to the American multi-national corporations. What these critics overwhelmingly advocate is a global movement towar
43、ds “organic“ or “sustainable“ farming practices that avoid using chemicals and high technology in favour of natural fertilizers, cultivation and pest-control programs.（分数：20.00）(1).Borlaugs new varieties of wheat have shorter stems and stronger resistance to disease.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(2).A large part
44、of Borlaugs life was spent in increasing food supply of poor countries and combating hunger.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(3).Borlaugs wheat program met with resistance during his first couple of years in Mexico.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(4).In both developed and developing countries there are concerns whether in the long
45、run Borlaugs farming practices will be sustainable.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(5).The lack of necessary supporting facilities in Africa prevented Borlaug from achieving brilliant success.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(6).Borlaug was not able to get ahead with his experiments in India until the government intervened.（分数：2.00
46、）填空项 1:_(7).Borlaug believes that elimination of hunger is one essential element in ensuring social justice.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(8).The poorly-managed distribution system prevented the food aid from feeding the hungry in Africa.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(9).Statistics indicate that India achieved a dramatic increase of grain production with a modest increase of farming land.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_(10).Critics blame Green Revolution for producing a huge profit for the American agro-chemical corporations.（分数：2.00）填空项 1:_A Nation Thats Losing Its ToolboxA) The scene inside the Home Depot on Weyman Av
