1、2014年 12月大学英语六级真题试卷（三）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 what qualities an employer should look for in job applicants. You should give
2、sound arguments to support your views and write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. Section A （ A） It will mainly benefit the wealthy. （ B） It will stimulate business activities. （ C） It will reduce government revenues. （ D） It will cut the stockholders dividends. （ A） She doesnt think mu
3、ch of job-hopping. （ B） She will stick to the job if the pay is good. （ C） She prefers a life of continued exploration. （ D） She will do her best if the job is worth doing. （ A） Talk the drug user out of the habit. （ B） Stop thinking about the matter. （ C） Keep his distance from drug addicts. （ D） B
4、e more friendly to his schoolmate. （ A） The son. （ B） Aunt Louise. （ C） The father. （ D） The mother. （ A） Move to another place. （ B） Stay away for a couple of weeks. （ C） Check the locks every two weeks. （ D） Look after the Johnsons house. （ A） He didnt want to miss the game. （ B） He would like to
5、warm up for the game. （ C） He didnt want to be held up in traffic. （ D） He wanted to catch as many birds as possible. （ A） It was burned down. （ B） It was closed down. （ C） It was robbed. （ D） It was blown up. （ A） She studies in the same school as her brother. （ B） She isnt going to work in her bro
6、thers firm. （ C） She isnt going to change her major. （ D） She plans to major in tax law. （ A） Current issues in economics. （ B） Choices faced by conservationists. （ C） A recent biology lecture. （ D） Topics for a research paper. （ A） A scarcity of jobs in their field. （ B） Inadequate training in meth
7、ods of biological research. （ C） Difficulties in classifying all of the varieties of owls. （ D） A lack of funding for their work with endangered species. （ A） It has numerous traits in common with the spotted owl. （ B） Its population is increasing in recent years. （ C） It may not survive without spe
8、cial efforts of conservationists. （ D） Its role in the chain of evolution has not yet been examined. （ A） Training given to music therapists. （ B） How music prevents disease. （ C） Studies on the benefits of music. （ D） How musicians create music. （ A） In place of physical therapy. （ B） To control br
9、ain problems. （ C） To prevent heart disease. （ D） To relieve depression. （ A） They like to have music in the operating room. （ B） They solved problems better while listening to music they liked. （ C） They preferred classical music. （ D） They performed better when they used headphones. （ A） It increa
10、sed the students white blood cell. （ B） It increased some students energy level. （ C） It improved the students ability to play musical instruments. （ D） It released a natural painkiller in some students bodies. Section B （ A） She was bored with her idle life at home. （ B） She was offered a good job
11、by her neighbour. （ C） She wanted to help with the familys finances. （ D） Her family would like to see her more involved in social life. （ A） Doing housework. （ B） Looking after her neighbours children. （ C） Reading papers and watching TV. （ D） Taking good care of her husband. （ A） Jane got angry at
12、 Bills idle life. （ B） Bill failed to adapt to the new situation. （ C） Bill blamed Jane for neglecting the family. （ D） The children were not taken good care of. （ A） Neighbours should help each other. （ B） Women should have their own careers. （ C） Man and wife should share household duties. （ D） Pa
13、rents should take good care of their children. （ A） To predict natural disasters that can cause vast destruction. （ B） To limit the destruction that natural disasters may cause. （ C） To gain financial support from the United Nations. （ D） To propose measures to hold back natural disasters. （ A） Ther
14、e is still a long way to go before man can control natural disasters. （ B） International cooperation can minimize the destructive force of natural disasters. （ C） Technology can help reduce the damage natural disasters may cause. （ D） Scientists can successfully predict earthquakes. （ A） There were
15、fatal mistakes in its design. （ B） The builder didnt observe the building codes of the time. （ C） The traffic load went beyond its capacity. （ D） It was built according to less strict earthquake resistance standards. （ A） By judging to what extent they can eliminate the risks. （ B） By estimating the
16、 possible loss of lives and property. （ C） By estimating the frequency of volcanic eruptions. （ D） By judging the possible risks against the likely benefits. （ A） One of Etnas recent eruptions made many people move away. （ B） Etnas frequent eruptions have ruined most of the local farmland. （ C） Etna
17、s eruptions are frequent but usually mild. （ D） There are signs that Etna will erupt again in the near future. （ A） They will remain where they are. （ B） They will leave this area forever. （ C） They will turn to experts for advice. （ D） They will seek shelter in nearby regions. Section C 26 Certain
18、phrases one commonly hears among Americans capture their devotion to individualism: “ Do your own thing. “ “ I did it my way. “ “ Youll have to decide that for yourself. “ “ You made your bed, now【 B1】 _in it. “ “If you dont look out for yourself, no one else will. “ “Look out for number one. “ Clos
19、ely associated with the value they place on individualism is the importance Americans【 B2】 _privacy. Americans assume that people “ need some time to themselves“ or “ some time alone“ to【 B3】 _things or recover their spent psychological energy. Americans have great【 B4】 _understanding foreigners who
20、 always want to be with another person, who dislike being alone. If the parents can【 B5】 _it, each child will have his or her own bedroom. Having ones own bedroom, even as an infant, fixes in a person the notion that she【 B6】 _a place of her own where she can be by herself, and keep her possessions.
21、 She will have her clothes, her toys, her books, and so on. These things will be hers and no one elses. Americans【 B7】 _that people will have their private thoughts that might never be shared with anyone. Doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, and others have rules governing “confidentiality“ that【 B8】 _p
22、revent information about their clients personal situations from becoming known to others. Americans attitudes about【 B9】 _can be hard for foreigners to understand. Americans houses, yards, and even their offices can seem open and inviting. Yet in the minds of Americans, there are【 B10】 _that other p
23、eople are simply not supposed to cross. When those boundaries are crossed, an Americans body will visibly stiffen and his manner will become cool and aloof. 27 【 B1】 28 【 B2】 29 【 B3】 30 【 B4】 31 【 B5】 32 【 B6】 33 【 B7】 34 【 B8】 35 【 B9】 36 【 B10】 Section A 36 It was 10 years ago, on a warm July nig
24、ht, that a newborn lamb took her first breath in a small shed in Scotland. From the outside, she looked no different from thousands of other sheep born on【 C1】 _farms. But Dolly, as the world soon came to realize, was no【 C2】_lamb. She was cloned from a single cell of an adult female sheep,【 C3】 _lo
25、ng-held scientific dogma that had declared such a thing biologically impossible. A decade later, scientists are starting to come to grips with just how different Dolly was. Dozens of animals have been cloned since that first lambmice, cats, cows and, most recently, a dogand its becoming【 C4】 _clear
26、that they are all, in one way or another, defective. Its【 C5】 _to think of clones as perfect carbon copies of the original. It turns out, though, that there are various degrees of genetic【 C6】 _. That may come as a shock to people who have paid thousands of dollars to clone a pet cat only to discove
27、r that the baby cat looks and behaves【 C7】 _like their beloved petwith a different-color coat of fur, perhaps, or a【 C8】 _different attitude toward its human hosts. And these art just the obvious differences. Not only are clones【 C9】 _from the original template(模板 )by time, but they are also the pro
28、duct of an unnatural molecular mechanism that turns out not to be very good at making【 C10】 _ copies. In fact, the process can embed small flaws in the genes of clones that scientists are only now discovering. A)abstract I)nothing B)completely J)ordinary C)deserted K)overturning D)duplication L)sepa
29、rated E)everything M)surrounding F)identical N)systematicaly G)increasingly O)tempting H)miniature 37 【 C1】 38 【 C2】 39 【 C3】 40 【 C4】 41 【 C5】 42 【 C6】 43 【 C7】 44 【 C8】 45 【 C9】 46 【 C10】 Section B 46 Should Single-Sex Education Be Eliminated? AWhy is a neuroscientist here debating single-sex scho
30、oling? Honestly, I had no fixed ideas on the topic when I started researching it for my book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain. But any discussion of gender differences in children inevitably leads to this debate, so I felt compelled to dive into the research data on single-sex schooling. I read every study I
31、 could, weighted the existing evidence, and ultimately concluded that single-sex education is not the answer to gender gaps in achievementor the best way forward for todays young people. After my book was published, I met several developmental and cognitive psychologists wnose work was addressing ge
32、nder and education from different angles, and we published a peer-reviewed Education Forum piece in Science magazine with the provocative title, “The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Education. “ BWe showed thai three lines of research used to justify single-sex schoolingeducational, neuroscience, and so
33、cial psychologyall fail to support its alleged benefits, and so the widely-held view that gender separation is somehow better for boys, girls, or both is nothing more than a myth. The Research on Academic Outcomes CFirst, we reviewed the extensive educational research that has compared academic outc
34、omes in students attending single-sex versus coeducational schools. The overwhelming conclusion when you put this enormous literature together is that there is no clear academic advantage of sitting in all-female or all-male classes, in spite of much popular belief to the contrary. I base this concl
35、usion not on any individual study, but on large-scale and systematic reviews of thousands of studies conducted in every major English-speaking country. DOf course. therere many excellent single-sex schools out there, but as these careful research reviews have demonstrated, its not their single-sex c
36、omposition that makes them excellent. Its all the other advantages that are typically packed into such schools, such as financial resources, quality of the faculty, and pro-academic culture, along with the family background and preselected ability of the students themselves that determine their outc
37、omes. EA case in point is the study by Linda Sax at UCLA, who used data froma large national survey of college freshmen to evaluate the effect of single-sex versus coeducational high schools. Commissioned by the National Coalition of Girls Schools, the raw findings look pretty good for the fundershi
38、gher SAT scores and a stronger academic orientation among women who had attended all girls high schools(men werent studied). However, once the researchers controlled for both student and school attributesmeasures such as family income, parents education. and school resourcesmost of these effects wer
39、e erased or diminished. FWhen it comes to boys in particular, the data show that single-sex education is distinctly unhelpful for them. Among the minority of studies that have reported advantages of single-sex schooling, virtually all of them were studies of girls. Therere no rigorous studies in the
40、 United States that find single-sex schooling is better for boys, and in fact. a separate line of research by economists has shown both boys and girls exhibit greater cognitive growth over the school year based on the “dose“ of girls in a classroom. In fact, boys benefit even more than girls from ha
41、ving larger numbers of female classmates. So single-sex schooling is really not the answer to the current “boy crisis“ in education. Brain and Cognitive Development GThe second line of research often used to justify single-sex education falls squarely within my area of expertise; brain and cognitive
42、 development. Its been more than a decade now since the “ brain sex movement“ began infiltrating(渗入 )our schools, and there are literally hundreds of schools caught up in the fad(新潮 ). Public schools in Wisconsin, Indiana, Florida and many other states now proudly declare on their websites that they
43、 separate boys and girls because “research solidly indicates that boys and girls learn differently.“ due to “hard-wired“ differences in their brains, eyes, ears, autonomic nervous systems, and more. HAll of these statements can be traced to just a few would-be neuroscientists. especially physician L
44、eonard Sax and therapist Michael Gurian. Each gives lectures, runs conferences, and does a lot of professional development on so-called “ gender-specific learning. “ I analyzed their various claims about sex differences in hearing, vision, language, math, stress responses, and “ learning styles“ in
45、my book and a long peer-reviewed paper. Other neuroscientists and psychologists have similarly exposed their work. In short, the mechanisms by which our brains learn language, math, physics, and every other subject dont differ between boys and girls. Of course, learning does vary a lot between indiv
46、idual students, but research reliably shows that this variance is far greater within populations of boys or girls than between the two sexes. IThe equal protection clause of the US Constitution prohibits separation of students by sex in public education thats based on precisely this kind of “ overbr
47、oad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females. “ And the reason it is prohibited is because it leads far too easily to stereotyping and sex discrimination. Social Developmental Psychology JThat brings me to the third area of research which fails to
48、support single-sex schooling and indeed suggests the practice is actually harmful: social developmental psychology. KIts a well-proven finding in social psychology that segregation promotes stereotyping and prejudice, whereas intergroup contact reduces themand the results are the same whether you di
49、vide groups by race, age, gender, body mass index, sexual orientation, or any other category. Whats more, children are especially vulnerable to this kind of bias, because they are dependent on adults for learning which social categories are important and why we divide people into different groups. LYou dont have to look far to find evidence of stereotyping and sex discrimination in single-sex schools. The
