1、大学英语六级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 124及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay about the importance of apology by referring to the remark “An apology is the super glue of life. It can repair just about anything. You can give examples to illustrate your point a
2、nd then explain what people should do when making an apology. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. Section A （ A） The meeting is not on his schedule. （ B） He doesnt mind postponing the meeting. （ C） The meeting goes against his schedule. （ D） He doesnt mind having meeting
3、ahead of schedule. （ A） It was just so-so. （ B） It was great. （ C） It was terrible. （ D） It was interesting. （ A） He is as fat as a potato. （ B） He is fond of watching TV. （ C） He likes potatoes very much. （ D） He is a versatile person. （ A） It has friendly folks. （ B） Its air is clean. （ C） It is q
4、uiet. （ D） It gives him a sense of freshness. （ A） A new fitness club. （ B） Doing exercise to keep fit. （ C） After-work activities. （ D） Weekend plans. （ A） She likes Mexican food very much. （ B） She likes to go out dancing. （ C） She will celebrate his birthday. （ D） She accepts the mans invitation.
5、 （ A） To tell him they are busy. （ B） To cancel an appointment. （ C） To send him a busy signal. （ D） To invite him to go to a film. （ A） Studying history. （ B） Buying lottery tickets. （ C） Registering for courses. （ D） Going to an art gallery. （ A） What is so-called Thanksgiving Day. （ B） How to cel
6、ebrate Thanksgiving Day. （ C） The exact time of Thanksgiving Day. （ D） The history of Thanksgiving Day. （ A） They regard it as an important traditional festival. （ B） They think it a festival for only school children. （ C） They dont think it very important for them. （ D） They only think it time for
7、family to gather together. （ A） The party for Thanksgiving Day is beginning. （ B） They have to rush to the dancing party. （ C） She has talked so much about festivals. （ D） She will be late for the class. （ A） To ask for a three-day leave. （ B） To register for a photography course. （ C） To talk about
8、 the photography exhibition. （ D） To ask for some information about photography courses. （ A） Any daytime on Wednesdays. （ B） From 2:00 pm to 4:30 pm on Tuesdays. （ C） From 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm on Tuesday evenings. （ D） From 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm on Monday evenings. （ A） Introducing Photography. （ B） Lan
9、dscape Photography. （ C） Black and White Photography. （ D） The Art of Digital Photography. （ A） It lasts 16 hours in all. （ B） It is flexible in time. （ C） It can also be attended in evenings. （ D） It is suitable for intermediate learners. Section B （ A） Development of the National Flag （ B） Power o
10、f the National Flag （ C） Types of Flags （ D） Uses of Flags （ A） They could tell wind direction. （ B） They could bring good luck to fighters. （ C） They were handed down by the ancestors. （ D） They were believed to stand for natural forces. （ A） He knows when it was sent to Europe. （ B） He believes it
11、 was made in Egypt. （ C） He thinks it came from China. （ D） He doubts where it started. （ A） The role of China in the spread of the national flag. （ B） The second ancestor of the national flag. （ C） The use of modern flags in Europe. （ D） The importance of modern flags. （ A） Deciding where a house w
12、ill be built. （ B） Surrounding a building with wild flowers and plants. （ C） Marking the houses in an area similar to one another. （ D） Eliminating the original vegetation from the building site. （ A） They are removed for construction. （ B） They are changed to make the site more interesting. （ C） Th
13、ey are integrated into the design of the building. （ D） They are expanded to limit the amount of construction. （ A） Many architects studied with Wright. （ B） Wright used elements of Envelope Building. （ C） Wright started the practice of Envelope Building. （ D） Most of the houses Wright built were ma
14、de of stone. （ A） It brings about the generation gap. （ B） It is very careful about peoples privacy. （ C） It lists the telephone numbers of your friends. （ D） It encourages you to list your personal information. （ A） MySpace often holds parents meetings. （ B） MySpace is quite popular with parents. （
15、 C） MySpace has become a top issue troubling parents. （ D） Parents have lots of questions about MySpace. （ A） Trouble-makers can easily approach their children through the site. （ B） They think MySpace has a bad influence on their children. （ C） They dont want to pay so much money for MySpace. （ D）
16、It takes up too much of their childrens spare time. Section C 26 New Years resolutions often have to do with eating more healthily, going to the gym more, losing weight all admirable goals aimed at improving ones physical health. Most people, though, do not realize that they can【 B1】 _their brains i
17、n a similar way. While some areas of the brain are hard-wired from birth or early childhood, other areas especially in the cerebral cortex (大脑皮层 ), which【 B2】 _higher cognitive powers like language and thought can be, to a remarkable extent, rewired as we grow older. In fact, the brain has an【 B3】 _
18、ability to rebound from damage. As a physician who treats patients with neurological conditions, I see this happen all the time. One does not have to be blind or deaf to tap into the brains mysterious and【 B4】_power to learn, adapt and grow. I have seen hundreds of patients with various【 B5】 _learn
19、to do things in new ways, whether consciously or unconsciously, to work around those deficits. That the brain is capable of such【 B6】_adaptation raises deep questions. To what extent are we shaped by, and to what degree do we shape, our own brains? And can the brains ability to change【 B7】_give us g
20、reater cognitive powers? The【 B8】 _of many people suggest that it can Whether it is by learning a new language or simply thinking about an old problem in a new way, all of us can find ways to stimulate our brains to grow, in the coming year and those to follow. Just as physical activity【 B9】 _mainta
21、ining a healthy body, a healthy brain is also essential to【 B10】 _fitness. 27 【 B1】 28 【 B2】 29 【 B3】 30 【 B4】 31 【 B5】 32 【 B6】 33 【 B7】 34 【 B8】 35 【 B9】 36 【 B10】 Section A 36 American presidents seem to age before our eyes. But the common belief that high-office stress grays our leaders faster t
22、han usual may be a myth, new research finds. In fact, the majority of American presidents have lived longer than【 C1】 _men of their times. Thats not to say that【 C2】 _stress has no effect on a persons lifespan, but so does high social standing.The findings add to a body of research linking high stat
23、us to better health: for instance, Oscar winners live longer than those who were only【 C3】_; and the longevity (长寿 ) effect is also seen in Nobel Prize winners. The new study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed the dates of birth,【 C4】 _and death of all
24、34 past presidents who died of natural causes. The average【 C5】 _for these men should have been 68 years, if theyd aged twice as fast during their years in office as the popular wisdom suggests they do. Instead, the study found, these presidents lived an【 C6】 _73 years. And indeed, 23 of the 34 pres
25、idents who died of natural causes lived longer than【 C7】 _, compared with other men their age during their lifetimes. Some presidents survived an【 C8】 _long time: Gerald Ford died at 93.5 years, Ronald Reagan at 93.3. All currently living presidents have already exceeded their life【 C9】 _ , or are l
26、ikely to do so. So why do people at the top of the 【 C10】 _fare better than those below? Access to wealth, education and the best health care of their times would seem to be obvious factors. A) average I) inauguration B) chronic J) lifespan C) empirically K) maximum D) exceptionally L) nominated E)
27、expectancy M) reign F) expected N) similar G) formulated O) typical H) hierarchy 37 【 C1】 38 【 C2】 39 【 C3】 40 【 C4】 41 【 C5】 42 【 C6】 43 【 C7】 44 【 C8】 45 【 C9】 46 【 C10】 Section B 46 Preschoolers Innate Knowledge Means They Can Probably Do Algebra Child development specialists are uncovering evide
28、nce that toddlers may understand much more than we think. A Give a three-year old a smart phone and shell likely figure out how to turn it on and operate a few simple functions. But confront her with an algebra problem and ask her to solve for x? Not likely. B For decades, child developmental psycho
29、logist Jean Piaget convinced us that young, undeveloped minds couldnt handle complex concepts because they simply werent experienced or mature enough yet. Piaget, in fact, believed that toddlers could not understand cause and effect, that they couldnt think logically, and that they also couldnt hand
30、le abstract ideas. C Thats because, he argued, children learn to develop these higher skills through trial and error. But child development specialists are finding out that preschoolers without any formal education may have the capacity to understand more complex concepts than we give them credit fo
31、r, such as complicated rules for operating a toy or even solving for an unknown in algebra. Some of this is due to their ability to be more open and flexible about their world than adults. But beyond that, toddlers may have the innate ability to understand abstract concepts like quantities and causa
32、lity, and thats fueling an exciting stream of experiments that reveal just how sophisticated preschoolers brains might be. D Alison Gopnik, professor of psychology at University of California Berkeley and her team devised a way to test how well young kids understand the abstract concept of multiple
33、causality the idea that there may be more than one cause for a single effect. They pitted 32 preschoolers around 4 years old against 143 un-dergrads. The study centered around a toy that could be turned on by placing a single blue-colored block on the toys tray, but could also be activated if two bl
34、ocks of different colors orange and purple were placed on the tray. Both the kids and the undergraduates were shown how the toy worked and then asked which blocks activated the toy. E The preschoolers were adept at figuring out that the blue blocks turned on the toy, as did the purple and orange one
35、s. The Berkeley undergraduates, however, had a harder time accepting the scenario.Their previous experience in the world, which tends to work in a single-cause-equals-single-effect way, hampered their ability to accept the unusual rules that activated they toy; they wanted to believe that it was act
36、ivated either by a single color or by a combination of colors, but not both. F The preschoolers lack of bias about causality likely contributed to their ability to learn the multiple ways to activate the toy, but the results also suggest that preschoolers really can think logically and in more compl
37、icated ways. Just because they cant express themselves or arent as adept at demonstrating such knowledge, doesnt mean they dont have it. G Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, for example, found a similar effect among preschoolers when it came to math. Previous studies showed that if you prese
38、nt infants with eight objects over and over until they got bored, and then showed them 16, they suddenly regained interest and sensed that things changed. “All the evidence so far leads us to believe that this is something that babies come into the world with,“ says Melissa Kibbe, co-author of that
39、study. H She and her colleague Lisa Feigenson wondered if that innate sense of quantity might translate into an understanding of numbers and higher math functions, including solving for unknowns one of the foundations of algebra which often isnt taught until seventh or eighth grades. So they conduct
40、ed a series of experiments using a cup with a fixed amount of objects that substituted for x in the equation 5 + x=17. I To divert the four- and six-year olds attention away from Arabic numerals to quantities instead, the researchers used a puppet and a “magic“ cup that contained 12 buttons. In one
41、of the experiments, the children saw five buttons on the table. After watching the researchers add the 12 buttons from the cup, they were told there were 17 buttons on the table. In another test, the youngsters saw three piles of objects buttons, coins or small toys in varying amounts, and observed
42、the researchers adding the fixed number of contents of the puppets cup to each. J After training the kids on how the cup worked, the researchers tried to confuse them with another cup containing fewer (such as four) or more (such as 24) objects. However, the kids understood intuitively that the deco
43、y cup contained the wrong amount of items and that a specific amount x, the “magic“ cup amount had to be added to reach the sum. That suggested that the preschoolers had some concept of quantity. What surprised Kibbe was not just that preschoolers understood the concept of adding “more,“ but that th
44、ey could also calibrate how much more was needed to fill in the unknown quantity. K “These kids had very little formal schooling so far, but what we are finding is that when we tap into their gut sense, something we call the Approximate Number Sense (ANS), kids are able to do much more complex calcu
45、lations than if we gave them numbers and letters,“ says Kibbe of her results. And there doesnt seem to be any gender differences in this innate ability, at least not among the girls and boys Kibbe studied. L Theres also precedent for such innate pre-learning in reading, says Jon Star, at the Harvard
46、 University Graduate School of Education. To improve reading skills, some teachers have tapped into childrens memorization skills to make the connection between words and meaning more efficient. M Kibbes and Gopniks recent work may have broader implications for education, since current math curricul
47、a in schools, which focuses on teaching Arabic numerals and on solving equations, may not be ideal for nurturing the number sense that kids are born with. “Theres an exciting movement in psychology over the past decade, as we learn that students bring certain capabilities, or innate knowledge that w
48、e hadnt thought they had before,“ says Star. N Though it may be too early to translate such findings to the classroom, the results lay the groundwork for studying similar innate skills and how they might be better understood. ANS, for example, is one of many constructs that young children may have t
49、hat could enhance their learning but that current curricula arent exploiting. Developmental experts are still trying to figure out how malleable these constructs are, and how much of an impact they can have on future learning. For instance, do kids who hone their ANS skills become better at algebra and calculus in high school? “We still need to figure out which con
