1、大学英语六级改革适用（阅读）模拟试卷 263及答案与解析 Section A 0 Drought, tsunami, violent crime, financial meltdown the world is full of risks. The poor are often most【 C1】 _ to their effects. Instead of【 C2】 _ responding to crises, aid workers and policymakers should anticipate and help to guard against such rare and【 C3
2、】 _ disastrous events. After the world suffered major crises in 2008, the concept of risk management has gained【 C4】 _ in international development. The links between risk, livelihoods and poverty are all too clear. Mounting evidence shows that【 C5】 _ shocksabove all, health and weather shocks and e
3、conomic crises play a major role in pushing households below the poverty line and keeping them there. But forward-thinking interventions can help【 C6】 _ the costs of future shocks. Bangladesh offers a good example. In 1970, a large typhoon caused 300,000 deaths in Bangladesh. In 2007, a typhoon of t
4、he same【 C7】 _ and strength caused only 4,000 deaths. The reason for the change was that the country had built a number of shelters. It went from having only 12 shelters in 1970 to having 2,500 in 2007. It also had a system of warning the population and a system of【 C8】 _ these events. But risk mana
5、gement isnt just about lessening the effects of crises; it can also help people get ahead. Farmers in Ghana and India who had access to rainfall insurance were more likely to【 C9】 _ in fertilizer, seeds, and other farming inputs, the report said, instead of sitting on their money to guard against po
6、tential future shocks. Several recent studies have predicted that extreme events will become more common. If we fail to anticipate and plan for those events, then we could【 C10】 _ giving up many of the development gains made over the past few decades. A) forecasting B) prominence C) optimum D) vulne
7、rable E) guidelines F) motivate G) simply H) risk I) adverse J) invest K) offset L) paralyzing M) potentially N) primarily O) characteristics 1 【 C1】 2 【 C2】 3 【 C3】 4 【 C4】 5 【 C5】 6 【 C6】 7 【 C7】 8 【 C8】 9 【 C9】 10 【 C10】 Section B 10 Secret E-Scores A Americans are obsessed with their scores. Cre
8、dit scores, G.P.A.s, SATs, blood pressure and cholesterol (胆固醇 ) levels you name it. So heres a new score to obsess about: the e-score, an online calculation that is assuming an increasingly important, and controversial, role in e-commerce. B These digital scores, known broadly as consumer valuation
9、 or buying-power scores, measure our potential value as customers. Whats your e-score? Youll probably never know. Thats because they are largely invisible to the public. But they are highly valuable to companies that want or in some cases, dont want to have you as their customer. C Online consumer s
10、cores are calculated by a handful of start-ups, as well as a few financial services, that specialize in the flourishing field of predictive consumer analytics. It is a Google like business, one fueled by almost unimaginable amounts of data and powered by complex computer algorithms (算法 ). The result
11、 is a private, digital ranking of American society unlike anything that has come before. A company, called eBureau, develops eScores its name for custom scoring algo-rithms to predict whether someone is likely to become a customer. Gordy Meyer, the founder and chief executive, says his system needs
12、less than a second to size up a consumer and to transmit his or her score to an eBureau client. D Its true that credit scores, based on personal credit reports, have been around for decades. And direct marketing companies have long ranked consumers by their socioeconomic status. But e-scores go furt
13、her. They can take into account facts like occupation, salary and home value to spending on luxury goods or pet food, and do it all with algorithms that their creators say accurately predict spending. E A growing number of companies, including banks, credit and debit card (借记卡 ) providers, insurers
14、and online educational institutions are using these scores to choose whom to persuade on the Web. These scores can determine whether someone deserves a super credit card or a plain one, a full-service cable plan or none at all. They can determine whether a customer is routed promptly to an attentive
15、 service agent or moved to an overflow call center. F Federal regulators and consumer advocates worry that these scores could eventually put some consumers at a disadvantage, particularly those under financial stress. In effect, they say, the scores could create a new subprime class: people who are
16、bypassed by companies online without even knowing it Financial institutions, in particular, might avoid people with low scores, reducing those peoples access to home loans, credit cards and insurance. G “The scoring is a tool to enable financial institutions to make decisions about financing based o
17、n unconventional methods,“ says David Vladeck, the director of the bureau of consumer protection at the Federal Trade Commission. “We are troubled by these practices.“ H Federal law governs the use of old-fashioned credit scores. Companies must have a legally permissible purpose before checking cons
18、umers credit reports and must alert them if they are denied credit or insurance based on information in those reports. But the law does not extend to the new valuation scores because they are derived from nontraditional data and promoted for marketing. Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at th
19、e United States Public Interest Research Group in Washington, worries that federal laws havent kept pace with change in the digital age. I “Theres a nontransparent scoring system that collects information about you to generate a score and what your score is results in the offers you get on the Inter
20、net,“ he says. “In most cases, you dont know who is collecting the information, you dont know what predictions they have made about you, or the potential for being denied choice or paying too much.“ J Heres how e-scores work: A client submits a data set containing names of tens of thousands of sales
21、 leads (线索 ) it has already bought, along with the names of leads who went on to become customers. EBureau then adds several thousand details like age, income, occupation, property value, length of residence and retail history from its databases to each customer profile. From those raw data points,
22、the system calculates up to 50,000 additional variables per person. Then it searches thoroughly all that data for the rare common factors among the existing customer base. The result scores prospective customers based on their resemblance to previous customers. K E-cores might range from 0 to 99, wi
23、th 99 indicating a consumer who is a likely return on investment and 0 indicating an unprofitable one. But in some industries, “knowing the, bottom is more important than knowing the top,“ Mr. Meyer says. In online education, for instance, e-scores help schools distinguish prospective students who a
24、re not worth the investment of expensive course catalogs or attentive follow-up callslike people who use fake names or adopt the identities of relatives. “If we can find 25 percent who have zero chance of enrolling, we can say dont waste your money on them,“ he says. EBureau charges clients 3 to 75
25、cents a score, depending on the industry and the volume of leads. Such scores increase the accuracy and speed with which companies can identify potential customers, says Mr. Weintraub of the LeadsCon conference. “Scores tell you this person might actually qualify, so lets focus on them, “ he says. “
26、This way you are not focusing on people who really cant qualify.“ L Most people never see their value scores. But some services openly discuss how their measurements work. A case study on the eBureau site, for example, describes how the company ranked prospective customers for a national prepaid deb
27、it card issuer, assigning each a score of 0 to 998. People who scored above 950 were considered likely to become highly profitable customers, generating revenue over six months of an estimated $213 per card. Those who scored less than 550 were predicted to be unprofitable clients, with estimated rev
28、enue of $74 or less. With eBureaus system, the card issuer could identify and court the high scorers while avoiding low scorers. M For companies, this kind of scoring clearly increases the speed and reduces the cost of acquiring customers. But consumers are paying a heavy price for that increased co
29、rporate efficiency, public interests advocates say. The digital scores create a two-tiered system that invisibly prioritizes some online users for credit and insurance offers while denying the same opportunities to others, says Mr. Mierzwinski of the Public Interest Research Group. N Mr. Meyer and o
30、ther eBureau executives disagree, saying the concerns are misplaced. EBureau, Mr. Meyer says, went to great lengths to build a system with both regulatory requirements and consumer privacy in mind. The company, he says, has put firewalls in place to separate databases containing federally regulated
31、data, like credit or debt information used for purposes like risk management, from databases about consumers used to generate scores for marketing purposes. O He adds that eBureaus clients use the scores only to narrow their field of prospective customers not for the purposes of approving people for
32、 credit, loans or insurance. Moreover, he says, the company does not sell consumer data to others, nor does it retain the scores it transmits to clients. “We are an evaluator,“ Mr. Meyer says. “We are trying to stay away from being intrusive to the consumer.“ P Its just another sign of the rise of w
33、hat might be called the Scored Society. Google ranks our search results by our location and search history. Facebook scores us based on our online activities. Klout scores us by how many followers we have on Twitter, among other things. And now e-scores rank our potential value to companies. 11 An e
34、xecutive of eBureau claims that the company keeps the federally regulated data apart from those used to produce e-scores for marketing purposes. 12 Federal regulators and consumer advocates share concerns that e-scores may negatively affect some consumers who are deliberately neglected by online com
35、panies. 13 The e-score is a type of digital score which measures a consumers buying power. 14 The amount of fees eBureau asks for ranges from three to seventy-five cents per score. 15 The e-score is just another indication of the rising Scored Society. 16 E-scores do much more than evaluate consumer
36、s socioeconomic status. 17 According to a staff member of eBureau, the company neither sells consumer data nor keeps the e-scores sent to its clients. 18 EBureau cites the example of scoring potential customers for a prepaid debit card issuer to prove that its e-score measurement works. 19 The calcu
37、lation of the e-score involves a large quantity of data and relies on computers. 20 There is no existing federal law that governs the use of e-scores. Section C 20 Offering a gift can be a mutual pleasure; some might say it should be a pleasure for giver and recipient. A problem with a modern commer
38、cial Christinas, however, is that buying gifts can become a chore. Often it is a stress ridden chore in the dying days before Christmas Day, as everything gets left to the last minute. Why not make this next Christmas a time to make the choosing of individual gifts a pleasure for yourself, and for t
39、he recipient? Often in the last minute haste to buy gifts in time for Christmas Day, people become detached from not only the purpose, but the person to whom they are giving. Bought hastily in a crowded stress filled store, scarcely a thought may pass for the individual on the receiving end, however
40、 close they may be to you. Most of the year, if not all, can be filled with work, commuting, rushing here and there, stress, and self focus. How about time and attention for those who really matter in your life, whether spouse, offspring, other relatives, friends or colleagues? The choosing of a gif
41、t, and presentation of it, can be a silent way of giving each of them special attention, and then culminating with their pleasure at the receipt of the gift. Behind every good present there is a person who worked hard to make the best choice. The secret to buying the perfect gift is to think about t
42、he message you want to send out, when the receiver opens it. If you think about his or her hobbies, to his or her vacation plans etc., it means you have really studied that person and you bought the present precisely for them, for that occasion; in this case, Christmas. Friendship and caring are the
43、mselves a gift, so you can see that if you put some real selfless; effort into choosing gifts, the value of the gift is magnified. That is something which will shine through the wrapping paper, and in the moment of giving the pleasure that you feel in making the gesture will; radiate in the warmth o
44、f your expression. The choosing and the giving of a gift are inseparable. 21 What makes buying gifts for Christmas become a chore? （ A） The pressure of the holiday. （ B） The lack of time for shopping. （ C） The increasing variety of gifts. （ D） The commercialization of the holiday. 22 When buying gif
45、ts in the last minute, people tend to be concerned about _. （ A） choosing individual gifts for the recipients （ B） what is the more suitable gift for a holiday （ C） getting a gift for everyone （ D） to whom they send the gift 23 A perfect gift differs from other gifts in their _. （ A） usefulness （ B）
46、 meaningfulness （ C） exquisiteness （ D） artistry 24 The “gesture“ (Line 3, Para. 5) most probably refers to _. （ A） giving the gift to the recipient （ B） choosing a gift with selfless effort （ C） wrapping the gift before sending it （ D） showing your concern to the recipient 25 In this passage, the a
47、uthor is most likely to point out_. （ A） the best way of choosing and giving the right gifts （ B） the importance of thoughtfulness in choosing a gift （ C） that ones love for others can best be demonstrated by gifts （ D） that offering a gift benefits both the giver and the receiver 25 During the next
48、 several weeks I went completely to the wolves. I took a tiny tent and set it up on the shore of bay. The big telescope was set up in the mouth of the tent in such a way that I could observe the wolves by day or night. Quite by accident I had pitched my tent within ten yards of one of the major path
49、s used by the wolves. Shortly after I had taken up residence, one of the wolves came back and discovered me and my tent, but he did not stop or hesitate in his pace. Later, one or more wolves used the track past my tent and never did they show the slightest interest in me. I felt uncomfortable at being so totally ignored. The next day I noticed a male wolf make boundary markers by passing water on the rounds of his family lan
