1、2014年 12月大学英语六级真题试卷（一）及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay based on the picture below You should start your essay with a brief description of the picture and then discuss whether technology is indispensable in education. You should give sound argumen
2、ts to support your views and write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. Section A （ A） The mans tennis racket is good enough. （ B） The man should get a pair of new shoes. （ C） She can wait for the man for a little while. （ D） Physical exercise helps her stay in shape. （ A） The woman will s
3、kip Dr. Smiths lecture to help the man. （ B） Kathy is very pleased to attend the lecture by Dr. Smith. （ C） The woman is good at doing lab demonstrations. （ D） The man will do all he can to assist the woman （ A） The woman asked the man to accompany her to the party. （ B） Steve became rich soon after
4、 graduation from college （ C） Steve invited his classmates to visit his big cottage. （ D） The speakers and Steve used to be classmates, （ A） In a bus. （ B） In a clinic. （ C） In a boat （ D） In a plane. （ A） 10:10. （ B） 9:50. （ C） 9:40. （ D） 9:10. （ A） She does not like John at all. （ B） John has got
5、many admirers. （ C） She does not think John is handsome. （ D） John has just got a bachelors degree （ A） He has been bumping along for hours. （ B） He has got a sharp pain in the neck. （ C） He is involved in a serious accident. （ D） He is trapped in a terrible traffic jam. （ A） She is good at repairin
6、g things. （ B） She is a professional mechanic. （ C） She should improve her physical condition. （ D） She cannot go without a washing machine. （ A） Some witnesses failed to appear in court. （ B） The case caused debate among the public. （ C） The accused was found guilty of stealing. （ D） The accused re
7、fused to plead guilty in court. （ A） He was out of his mind. （ B） He was unemployed. （ C） His wife deserted him. （ D） His children were sick. （ A） He had been in jail before. （ B） He was unworthy of sympathy. （ C） He was unlikely to get employed. （ D） He had committed the same sort of crime. （ A） Ir
8、responsible. （ B） Unsatisfactory. （ C） Aggressive. （ D） Conservative. （ A） Internal communication. （ B） Distribution of brochures. （ C） Public relations. （ D） Product design. （ A） Placing advertisements in the trade press. （ B） Drawing sketches for advertisements. （ C） Advertising in the national pr
9、ess. （ D） Making television commercials. （ A） She has the motivation to do the job. （ B） She knows the tricks of advertising. （ C） She is not so easy to get along with. （ D） She is not suitable for the position. Section B （ A） The cozy communal life. （ B） The cultural diversity. （ C） Innovative acad
10、emic programs. （ D） Impressive school buildings. （ A） It is very beneficial to their academic progress. （ B） It helps them soak up the surrounding culture. （ C） It is as important as their learning experience. （ D） It ensures their physical and mental health. （ A） It offers the most challenging acad
11、emic programs. （ B） It has the worlds best-known military academies. （ C） It provides numerous options for students. （ D） It draws faculty from all around the world. （ A） They try to give students opportunities for experimentation. （ B） They are responsible merely to their Ministry of Education. （ C
12、） They strive to develop every students academic potential. （ D） They ensure that all students get roughly equal attention. （ A） It will arrive at Boulogne at half past two. （ B） It crosses the English Channel twice a day. （ C） It is now about half way to the French coast. （ D） It is leaving Folkest
13、one in about five minutes. （ A） Opposite the ships office. （ B） Next to the duty-free shop. （ C） At the rear of B deck. （ D） In the front of A deck. （ A） It is for the sole use of passengers travelling with cars. （ B） It is much more spacious than the lounge on C deck. （ C） It is for the use of pass
14、engers travelling with children. （ D） It is for senior passengers and people with VIP cards. （ A） It was named after its location. （ B） It was named after its discoverer. （ C） It was named after a cave art expert. （ D） It was named after one of its painters. （ A） Animal painting was part of the spir
15、itual life of the time. （ B） Deer were worshiped by the ancient Cro-Magnon people. （ C） Cro-Magnon people painted animals they hunted and ate. （ D） They were believed to keep evils away from cave dwellers. （ A） They know little about why the paintings were created. （ B） They have difficulty telling
16、when the paintings were done. （ C） They are unable to draw such interesting and fine paintings. （ D） They have misinterpreted the meaning of the cave paintings. Section C 26 If you are attending a local college, especially one without residence halls, youll probably live at home and commute to class
17、es. This arrangement has a lot of【 B1】_. Its cheaper. It provides a comfortable and familiar setting, and it means youll get the kind of home cooking youre used to instead of the monotony(单调 )that【 B2】_even the best institutional food. However, commuting students need to【 B3】 _to become involved in
18、the life of their college and to take special steps to meet their fellow students. Often, this means a certain amount of initiative on your part in【 B4】 _and talking to people in your classes whom you think you might like. One problem that commuting students sometimes face is their parents unwilling
19、ness to recognize that theyre adults. The【 B5】 _from high school to college is a big one, and if you live at home you need to develop the same kind of independence youd have if you were living away. Home rules that might have been【 B6】 _when you were in high school dont apply. If your parents are【 B
20、7】 _to renegotiate, you can speed the process along by letting your behavior show that you have the responsibility that goes with maturity. Parents are more willing to【 B8】 _their children as adults when they behave like adults. If, however, theres so much friction at home that it【 B9】_your academic
21、 work, you might want to consider sharing an apartment with one or more friends. Sometimes this is a happy solution when family【 B10】 _make everyone miserable. 27 【 B1】 28 【 B2】 29 【 B3】 30 【 B4】 31 【 B5】 32 【 B6】 33 【 B7】 34 【 B8】 35 【 B9】 36 【 B10】 Section A 36 Children are natural-born scientists
22、. They have【 C1】 _minds, and they arent afraid to admit they dont know something. Most of them,【 C2】 _, lose this as they get older. They become self-conscious and dont want to appear stupid. Instead of finding things out for themselves they make【 C3】 _that often turn out to be wrong. So its not a c
23、ase of getting kids interested in science. You just have to avoid killing the【 C4】 _for learning that they were bom with. Its no coincidence that kids start deserting science once it becomes formalised. Children naturally have a blurred approach to【 C5】 _knowledge. They see learning about science or
24、 biology or cooking as all part of the same act its all learning. Its only because of the practicalities of education that you have to start breaking down the curriculum into specialist subjects. You need to hnave specialist teachers who【 C6】 _what they know. Thus once they enter school, children be
25、gin to define subjects and erect boundaries that neednt otherwise exist. Dividing subjects into science, maths English. etc. is something we do for【 C7】_. In the end its all learning, but many children today【 C8】 _themselves from a scientific education. They think science is for scientists, not for
26、them. Of course we need to specialise【 C9】 _. Each of us has only so much time on Earth, so we cant study everything. At 5 years old, our field of knowledge and【 C10】_is broad, covering anything from learning to walk to learning to count. Gradually it narrows down so that by the time we are 45, it m
27、ight be one tiny little corner within science. A)accidentally I)formulas B)acquiring J)ignite C)assumptions K)impart D)convenience L)inquiring E)eventually M)passion F)exclude N)provoking G)exertion O)unfortunately H)exploration 37 【 C1】 38 【 C2】 39 【 C3】 40 【 C4】 41 【 C5】 42 【 C6】 43 【 C7】 44 【 C8】
28、 45 【 C9】 46 【 C10】 Section B 46 Meaning is Healthier Than Happiness AFor at least the last decade, the happiness craze has been building. In the last three months alone over 1,000 books on happiness were released on Amazon, including Happy Money, Happy-People-Pills For All, and, for those just star
29、ting out, Happiness for Beginners. BOne of tne consistent claims of books like these is that happiness is associated with all sorts of good life ourcomes including most promisingly good health Many studies have noted the connection between a happy nunc and a healthy body the happier we are, the bett
30、er health outcomes we seem to have. In an overview of 150 studies on this topic, researchers put it like this: “Inductions of well-being lead to healthy functioning and inductions of ill-being lead to compromised health.“ CBut a new study, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
31、 Sciences(PNAS)challenges tne rosy picture Happiness may not be as good for the body as researchers thought. It might ever be bad. DOf course, its important to first define happiness. A few months ago, I wrote a piece called “Theres More to Life Than Being Happy“ about a psychology study that dug in
32、to what happiness really meant to people It specifically explored the difference between a meaningful life and a happy life. EIt seems strange that there would be a difference at all. But the researchers, who looked at a large sample of people over a month-long period, found that happiness is associ
33、ated with selfish “taking“ behavior and that having a sense of meaning in life is associated with selfless “giving“ behavior. F“Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and compl
34、icated relationships are avoided,“ the authors of the study wrote. “If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need. “ While being happy is about feeling good, meaning is derived from contributing to others or to society in a bigger way. As Roy Baumeister, one of the researchers,
35、 told me. “ Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy. “ GThe new PNAS study also sneds light on the difference oetween meaning ino happiness, but an the biological level. Barbara Fredric
36、kson, a psychological researcher at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Steve Cole, a genetics and psychiatry(精神病学 )researcher at UCLA. examined the self-reported levels of happiness and meaning in 80 research subjects. HHappiness was defined, as in the earlier study, by feeling good.
37、The “esearchers measurea happiness by asking subjects questions like “How often did you feel happy?“ How often did you feel interested in life?“ and “ How often did you feel satisfied?“ The more strongly people endorsed these measures of “ hedonic(享乐主义的 )well-being, “ or pleasure, the higher they sc
38、ored on happiness. IMeaning was defined as an orientation to something bigger than the self. They measured meaning by asking questions like How often did you feel that your life has a sense of direction or meaning to it?“ and “How often did you feei that you had something to contribute to society?“
39、The more people endorsed these measures of “ eudaimonic(幸福论的 )well-being“ or, simply put. virtue the more meaning they felt in life. JAfter noting the sense of meaning and happiness that each subject had, Fredrickson and Cole, with their research colleagues, looked at the ways certain genes expresse
40、d themselves n each of the participants. Like neuroscientists who use fMRI(功能磁共振成像 )scanning to determine how regions m the brain respond to different stimuli, Cole and Fredrickson are interested in how the body, at the genetic level, responds to feelings of happiness and meaning. KColes past work h
41、as linked various kinds of chronic adversity to a particular gene expression pattern. When people feel lonely, are grieving the loss of a loved one. or are struggling to make ends meet, their bodies go into threat mode. This triggers the activation of a stress-reiated gene pattern that has two featu
42、res: an increase in the activity of pro-inflammatory(促炎症的 )genes and a decrease in the activity of genes involved in anti-virai responses. LCole and Fredrickson found that people who are happy but have little to no sense of meaning in their lives have the same gene expression patterns as people who
43、are responding to and enduring chronic adversity. That is, the bodies of these happy people are preparing them for oactenai threats by activating the pro-inflammatory response. Chronic inflammation is, of course, associated with major illnesses like heart disease and various cancers. M“Empty positiv
44、e emotions“ like the kind people experience during manic(狂喜的 )episodes or artificially induced euphoria(欣快 )from alcohol and drugs “ are about as good for you as adversity,“ says Fredrickson. NIts important to understand that for many people. a sense of meaning and happiness in life overlap; many pe
45、ople score jointly high(or jointly low)on the happiness and meaning measures in the study. But for many others. there is a dissonance(不一致 ) they feel that they are low on happiness and high on meaning or that their lives are very high in happiness. but low m meaning. This last group, which has the g
46、ene expression pattern associated with adversity, formed “5 percent of study participants. Only one quarter of the study participants had what the researchers call “ eudaimonic predominance“ that is, their sense of meaning outpaced their feelings of happmess. OThis is too bad given the more benefici
47、al gene expression pattern associated with meaningfulness. People whose levels of happiness and meaning line up, and people who have a strong sense of meaning but are not necessarily happy, showed a de-activation of the adversity stress response. Their bodies were not preparing them for the bacteria
48、l infections that we get when we are aione or in rouble, but for the viral infections we get when surrounded by a lot of other people. PFredricksons past research, described in her two books. Positivity and Love 2. 0, has mapped the benefits of positive emotions in individuals. She has found that po
49、sitive emotions broaden a persons perspective and help protect people against adversity. So it was surprising to her that hedonic well-being, which is associated with positive emotions and pleasure, did so badly in this study compared with eudaimonic well-being. Q“ Its not the amount of hedonic happiness thats a problem. “ Fredrickson tells me, “ Its that its not matched by eudaimonic well-being. Its
