1、大学英语六级改革适用（长篇阅读）模拟试卷 1及答案与解析 Section B 0 Now Hiring: Green-Collar Workers AIf youre looking for a good, safe job, it makes sense these days to go green. The Obama Administration, which is directing billions of dollars to the environmental sector, projects that by 2016, green jobs will grow by 52% fr
2、om 2,000 levels. Green jobs, which do not necessarily require a science degree, range from environmental scientist to nonprofit executive for a wildlife or pro-transit advocacy group. BWhen Alden Zeitz started the Wind Energy Program at Iowa Lakes Community College five years ago, 15 students enroll
3、ed. In 2009, 102 students enrolled in the two-year training program for wind turbine technicians, including some students who abandoned another career for the economic promise of green technology. The wind energy industry hasnt been immune to the recession, but students are counting on the federal g
4、overnments injection of $80 billion in clean energy projects to change that. Stimulus for Green Energy CThe American Recovery while Y is struggling to help, X is switched for Z and Y fails to notice. Researchers are still pondering the full implications, but it does show how little information we us
5、e in daily life, and undermines the idea that we know what is going on around us. EWhen we set out, we aimed to weigh in on the enduring, complicated debate about self-knowledge and intentionality. For all the intimate familiarity we feel we have with decision-making, it is very difficult to know ab
6、out it from the “inside“: one of the great barriers for scientific research is the nature of subjectivity. FAs anyone who has ever been in a verbal disagreement can prove, people tend to give elaborate justifications for their decisions, which we have every reason to believe are nothing more than ra
7、tionalisations(文过饰非 )after the event. To prove such people wrong, though, or even provide enough evidence to change their mind, is an entirely different matter: who are you to say what my reasons are? GBut with choice blindness we drive a large wedge between intentions and actions in the mind. As ou
8、r participants give us verbal explanations about choices they never made, we can show them beyond doubt and prove it that what they say cannot be true. So our experiments offer a unique window into confabulation(虚构 )(the story-telling we do to justify things after the fact)that is otherwise very dif
9、ficult to come by. We can compare everyday explanations with those under lab conditions, looking for such things as the amount of detail in descriptions, how coherent the narrative is, the emotional tone, or even the timing or flow of the speech. Then we can create a theoretical framework to analyse
10、 any kind of exchange. HThis framework could provide a clinical use for choice blindness: for example, two of our ongoing studies examine how malingering(装病 )might develop into true symptoms, and how confabulation might play a role in obsessive-compulsive disorder(强迫症 ). IImportantly, the effects of
11、 choice blindness go beyond snap judgments. Depending on what our volunteers say in response to the mismatched outcomes of choices(whether they give short or long explanations, give numerical rating or labelling, and so on)we found this interaction could change their future preferences to the extent
12、 that they come to prefer the previously rejected alternative. This gives us a rare glimpse into the complicated dynamics of self-feedback(“I chose this, I publicly said so, therefore I must like it“), which we suspect lies behind the formation of many everyday preferences. JWe also want to explore
13、the boundaries of choice blindness. Of course, it will be limited by choices we know to be of great importance in everyday life. Which bride or bridegroom would fail to notice if someone switched their partner at the altar through amazing sleight of hand(巧妙的手段 )? Yet there is ample territory between
14、 the absurd idea of spouse-swapping, and the results of our early face experiments. KFor example, in one recent study we invited supermarket customers to choose between two paired varieties of jam and tea. In order to switch each participants choice without them noticing, we created two sets of “mag
15、ical“ jars, with lids at both ends and a divider inside. The jars looked normal, but were designed to hold one variety of jam or tea at each end, and could easily be flipped over. LImmediately after the participants chose, we asked them to taste their choice again and tell us verbally why they made
16、that choice. Before they did, we turned over the sample containers, so the tasters were given the opposite of what they had intended in their selection. Strikingly, people detected no more than a third of all these trick trials. Even when we switched such remarkably different flavors as spicy cinnam
17、on and apple for bitter grapefruit jam, the participants spotted less than half of all switches. MWe have also documented this kind of effect when we simulate online shopping for consumer products such as laptops or cellphones, and even apartments. Our latest tests are exploring moral and political
18、decisions, a domain where reflection and deliberation are supposed to play a central role, but which we believe is perfectly suited to investigating using choice blindness. NThroughout our experiments, as well as registering whether our volunteers noticed that they had been presented with the altern
19、ative they did not choose, we also quizzed them about their beliefs about their decision processes. How did they think they would feel if they had been exposed to a study like ours? Did they think they would have noticed the switches? Consistently, between 80 and 90 per cent of people said that they
20、 believed they would have noticed something was wrong. OImagine their surprise, even disbelief, when we told them about the nature of the experiments. In everyday decisionmaking we do see ourselves as knowing a lot about our selves, but like the wine buff or art critic, we often overstate what we kn
21、ow. The good news is that this form of decision snobbery should not be too difficult to treat. Indeed, after reading this article you might already be cured. 11 People have a tendency to try to give an acceptable explanation for the decision they make. 12 In their latest tests researchers are invest
22、igating peoples decisions in the fields of morals and politics with choice blindness. 13 The result of the face choosing experiments showed that most participants didnt realize that their choices had been switched. 14 Instead of playing tricks with things offered to participants, the researchers sec
23、retly changed the things they chose. 15 From the quiz researchers find that most people are quite confident about their feelings in the decision processes. 16 Change blindness refers to the phenomenon that many people fail to notice the big change around them. 17 The author says that some experts so
24、metimes fail to do well as claimed. 18 The volunteers were surprised at the fact that in everyday decision-making, peoples beliefs are often overstated. 19 Researchers suspect that the mechanism of self-feedback is the drive for many everyday preferences. 20 The boundary of choice blindness is not l
25、imited and it could happen even in the events of great importance. 20 Can We Play? APlay is rapidly disappearing from our homes, our schools, and our neighborhoods. Over the last two decades alone, children have lost eight hours of free, unstructured, and spontaneous play a week. Decades of research
26、 has shown that play is crucial to physical, intellectual, and social-emotional development at all ages. BWith play on the decline, we risk losing these and many other benefits. For too long, we have treated play as a luxury that kids, as well as adults, could do without. But the time has come for u
27、s to recognize why play is worth defending: If is essential to leading a happy and healthy life. Play and development CYears of research has confirmed the value of play. In early childhood, play helps children develop skills they can not get in any other way. At the preschool level, children engage
28、in dramatic play and learn who is a leader, who is a follower, who is outgoing, who is shy. They also learn to negotiate their own conflicts. DA 2007 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics documents that play promotes not only behavioral development but brain growth as well. The University o
29、f North Carolinas Abecedarian Early Child Intervention program found that children who received an enriched, play-oriented parenting and early childhood program had significantly higher IQs at age five than did a comparable group of children who were not in the program(105 vs. 85 points). EA large b
30、ody of research evidence also supports the value and importance of particular types of play. For example, Israeli psychologist Sara Smilanskys classic studies of sociodramatic play, where two or more children participate in shared make believe(虚构 ), demonstrate the value of this play for academic, s
31、ocial, and emotional learning. “Sociodramatic play activates resources that stimulate social and intellectual growth in the child, which in turn affects the childs success in school,“ concludes Smilansky in a 1990 study that compared American and Israeli children. FOther research illustrates the imp
32、ortance of physical play for childrens learning and development. Some of these studies have highlighted the importance of recess(休息 ). Psychologist Anthony Pellegrini and his colleagues have found that elementary school children become increasingly distractible in class when recess is delayed. Simil
33、arly, studies conducted in French and Canadian elementary schools over a period of four years found that regular physical activity had positive effects on academic performance. Spending one third of the school day in physical education, art, and music improved not only physical fitness, but attitude
34、s toward learning and test scores. These findings echo those from one analysis of 200 studies on the effects of exercise on cognitive functioning, which also suggests that physical activity promotes learning. GIn recent years, and most especially since the 2002 passage of the No Child Left Behind Ac
35、t, weve seen educators, policy makers, and many parents embrace the idea that early academics leads to greater success in life. HYet several studies by Kathy Hirsch-Pasek and colleagues have compared the performance of children attending academic preschools with those attending play-oriented prescho
36、ols. The results showed no edge in reading and math achievement for children attending the academic preschools. But there was evidence that those children had higher levels of test anxiety, were less creative, and had more negative attitudes toward school than did the children attending the play pre
37、schools. So if play is that important, why is it disappearing? The perfect storm IThe decline of childrens free, self-initiated play is the result of a perfect storm of technological innovation, rapid social change, and economic globalization. JTechnological innovations have led to the all-pervasive
38、ness of television and computer screens in our society in gen-eral, and in our homes in particular. An unintended consequence of this invasion is that childhood has moved indoors. Children who might once have enjoyed a pick-up game of baseball in an empty lot now watch the game on TV, sitting on the
39、ir couch. KMeanwhile, single and working parents now outnumber the once-predominant nuclear family, in which a stay-at-home mother could provide the kind of loose oversight that facilitates free play. Instead, busy working parents outsource(外包 )at least some of their former responsibilities to coach
40、es, tutors, trainers, martial arts teachers, and other professionals. As a result, middle-income children spend more of their free time on adult-led and-organized activities than any earlier generation.(Low-income youth sometimes have the opposite problem: Their parents may not have the means to put
41、 them in high-quality programs that provide alternatives to playing in unsafe neighborhoods.) LFinally, a global economy has increased parental fears about their childrens prospects in an increasingly high-tech marketplace. Many middle-class parents have bought into the idea that education is a race
42、, and that the earlier you start your child in academics, the better. Preschool tutoring in math and programs such as the Kumon System, which emphasizes daily drills in math and reading, are becoming increasingly popular. And all too many kindergartens, once dedicated to learning through play, have
43、become full-day academic institutions that require testing and homework. In such a world, play has come to be seen as a waste of precious time. A 1999 survey found that nearly a third of kindergarten classes did not have a recess period. MAs adults have increasingly thwarted(反对 )self-initiated play
44、and games, we have lost important markers of the stages in a childs development. In the absence of such markers, it is difficult to determine what is appropriate and not appropriate for children. We run the risk of pushing them into certain activities before they are ready, or preventing the develop
45、ment of important intellectual, social, or emotional skills. NFor example, it is only after the age of six or seven that children will spontaneously participate in games with rules, because it is only at that age that they are fully able to understand and follow rules. Those kinds of developmental m
46、arkers fall by the wayside when we slot very young kids into activities such as Little League. When Little League was founded in 1939, the adult organizers looked to children themselves in setting the starting age, which ended up being about age nine or older. But the success of Little League was no
47、t lost on parents eager to find supervised activities for young children. Before long, team soccer was promoted for younger children because it was an easier and less complex game for the six to nine-year-old age group. The rapid growth of soccer leagues challenged the popularity of Little League. T
48、his led to the introduction of Tee Ball, a simplified version of baseball for children as young as four. OBy pushing young children into team sports for which they are not developmentally ready, we rule out forms of play that once encouraged them to learn skills of independence and creativity. Inste
49、ad of learning on their own in backyards, fields, and on sidewalks, children are only learning to do what adults tell them to do. Moreover, one study found that many children who start playing soccer at age four are burned out on that sport by the time they reach adolescence, just the age when they might truly enjoy and excel at it. 21 According to Smilanskys study, the resources activated by sociodramatic play can promote childrens social and intellectual growth. 22 Among all the genera
