1、大学英语六级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 165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 following drawing. In your essay, you should first describe the drawing and interpret its meanings, and then give your comment on it. You should write at least 150 word
2、s but no more than 200 words. Write your essay on Answer Sheet 1. Section A （ A） They are held twice a year. （ B） They were first held in 1927. （ C） They are given for excellence in films. （ D） They are less desired than the Grammy Awards. （ A） By an anonymous ballot. （ B） By an open vote. （ C） By r
3、igid rules. （ D） By their personal preference. （ A） One of the academy members. （ B） Creator of the Oscar statue. （ C） An Oscar winner. （ D） A nominee for the Oscar award. （ A） She had great interest in the history of the Oscars. （ B） She searched the information from the Internet. （ C） She took a c
4、ourse in the history of film. （ D） She majored in motion pictures. （ A） Give suggestions for revision. （ B） Write one for her. （ C） Point out grammatical errors in it. （ D） Cut some unnecessary materials. （ A） Law. （ B） Music. （ C） Geology. （ D） Biology. （ A） Her well-prepared speech. （ B） Her motiv
5、ation and interest. （ C） Her unique music background. （ D） Her good explanations. （ A） Look through her materials. （ B） Make preparation for the interview. （ C） Pay attention to the presentation. （ D） Add something to make herself stand out. Section B （ A） The impact of Halloween on children is unde
6、restimated. （ B） People used to celebrate new year at the end of October. （ C） Spirits come out when winter begins. （ D） Most parents and children are terrified by Halloween. （ A） To keep the ghosts happy. （ B） To avoid being recognized by ghosts. （ C） To let the spirits roam among the living. （ D）
7、To form their own customs. （ A） They should be carefully avoided. （ B） They are just like the store-bought skeleton figures. （ C） They should be kept on reminding all the time. （ D） They can be introduced to kids during Halloween. （ A） It strikes every telephone indoors. （ B） It is a very dangerous
8、force. （ C） It kills millions of Americans each year. （ D） It strikes the plumbers. （ A） Staying in bed. （ B） Staying off the telephone. （ C） Switching off the lights. （ D） Taking a shower. （ A） The materials for indoor plumbing have been improved. （ B） The houses recently built are much more solid.
9、 （ C） People wont go anywhere when lightning. （ D） People will stay away from plumbing. （ A） Call somebody for help. （ B） Stay away from your house. （ C） Recharge your cell phone. （ D） Turn off the appliances and electronics. Section C （ A） It made people happier. （ B） It did more harm than good. （
10、C） It increased risks. （ D） It made people sick. （ A） They did not believe the harm of stress. （ B） They might die from experiencing a lot of stress. （ C） Their risk of dying increased over the years. （ D） They might die from believing stress is bad. （ A） People shall rethink stress response as help
11、ful. （ B） Participants shall prepare for the challenge of stress. （ C） Stress makes your heart pounding. （ D） Your body was energized during the stress test. （ A） He turns stress into your enemy. （ B） He is able to get rid of your stress. （ C） He wants to make you better at stress. （ D） He is no lon
12、ger a health psychologist. （ A） How high the rating is. （ B） How well the running shoes protect your feet. （ C） How fast you can run in these running shoes. （ D） How much the running shoes will cost you. （ A） They were rated 8.3% higher than the average ones. （ B） They were sold at an average price
13、of $61 per pair. （ C） They were rated 8.1% lower than the 10 cheapest ones. （ D） They were strongly welcomed by the 135,000 consumers. （ A） Because this brand has good quality. （ B） Because they are consumers favorite. （ C） Because they dont sell high price shoes. （ D） Because many moms buy this bra
14、nd. （ A） They have thought. （ B） They replace our jobs. （ C） They perform boring tasks. （ D） They create explosions. （ A） Drivers. （ B） Songwriters. （ C） Journalists. （ D） Fast food cooks. （ A） For we can create new robots in the future. （ B） For we can adapt our skills to the tasks at work. （ C） Fo
15、r we can learn a lesson from the unemployment. （ D） For we can work with advantages over machines. Section A 26 As the world excitedly greeted Snuppy, the first cloned(克隆 )dog, commentators celebrated our cleverness. Many feel proud that our age is marked by technological【 C1】 _. But an article in B
16、ritish newspaper The Observer recently said true innovation has【 C2】_from our society. The writer was Peter Watson, author of the book IdeasA History from Fire to Freud. Watson began: “The year 2005 cant begin to compete with 1905 in terms of【 C3】_innovations.“ “Writing a history of ideas over the p
17、ast three years, I have been【 C4】 _time and again by the fact that, contrary to what we tell ourselves all the timeon TV, in newspapers and magazines, in【 C5】 _and in government propagandaour present world is nowhere near as【 C6】 _and innovative as it thinks it is, certainly in comparison with past
18、ages. “Yes, we are dazzled by mobile phones, cameras, digital TV, and the www, by laser-guided surgery and bombs, by DNA fingerprinting, and now by cloning. These are not【 C7】 _things but do they change the way we think in importantin fundamentaldirections?“ Watson quotes Richard Southern, Oxford Un
19、iversity historian, who died last year: “Southern thought the most interesting times in history were 1050-1250 and 1750-1950.“ “Each of these periods transformed our understanding of ourselves【 C8】 _“. “But what great ideas or transformations have been【 C9】 _in the half-century since 1950?“ Watson a
20、sked, pointing out that except for a few innovations such as the Internet, most scientific research【 C10】 _modifies previous studies. A)rarely E)distributed I)radically M)interesting B)introduced F)important J)struck N)advertising C)merely G)advances K)disappeared O)pessimistic D)intimate H)statisti
21、cs L)small 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 The Beauty Advantage AMost of us have heard the story of Debrahlee Lorenzana, the 33-year-old Queens, N.Y., woman who sued Citibank last month, claiming that she was fired from her desk
22、 job for being “too hot.“ But for all the talk about this womans motivesand whether or not she was indeed fired for her looks theres one question nobody seems to want to ask: isnt it possible Lorenzanas looks got her the job in the first place? BNot all employers are that shallowbut its no secret we
23、 are a culture consumed by image. Economists have long recognized whats been dubbed the “beauty premium“the idea that pretty people, whatever their aspirations, tend to do better in, well, almost everything. Handsome men earn, on average, 5 percent more than their less-attractive counterparts(good-l
24、ooking women earn 4 percent more): pretty people get more attention from teachers, bosses, and mentors: even babies stare longer at good-looking faces(and we stare longer at good-looking babies). CA couple of decades ago, when the economy was thriving, we might have brushed off those statistics as s
25、uperficial. But now, theres a growing bundle of research to show that our bias against the unattractiveour “beauty bias,“is more pervasive than ever. And when it comes to the workplace, its looks, not merit, that all too often rule. DConsider the following: over his career, a good-looking man will m
26、ake some $250,000 more than his least-attractive counterpart, according to economist Daniel Hamermesh: 13 percent of women, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, say theyd consider cosmetic surgery if it made them more competitive at work. Both points are disturbing, certainly. But
27、in the current economy, when employers have more hiring options than ever, looks, it seems, arent just important: theyre critical. Newsweek surveyed 202 corporate hiring managers, from human-resources staff to senior-level vice presidents, as well as 964 members of the public, only to confirm what n
28、o qualified(or unqualified)employee wants to admit: from hiring to office politics to promotions, even, looking good is no longer something we can dismiss as unimportant or vain. EFifty-seven percent of hiring managers told Newsweek that qualified but unattractive candidates are likely to have a har
29、der time landing a job, while more than half advised spending as much time and money on “making sure they look attractive“ as on perfecting a resume. When it comes to women: 61 percent of managers said it would be an advantage for a woman to wear clothing showing off her figure at work. Asked to ran
30、k employee attributes in order of importance, meanwhile, managers placed looks above education: of nine character traits, it came in third, below experience and confidence but above “where a candidate went to school“. FDoes that mean you should drop out of Harvard and invest in a nose job? Probably
31、not. But a state school might be just as marketable. “This is the new reality of the job market,“ says one New York recruiter, who asked to have her name withheld because she advises job candidates for a living. “Its better to be average and good-looking than brilliant and unattractive.“ GBeauty is
32、linked to confidence: and its a combination of looks and confidence that we often equate with smarts. Perhaps theres some evidence to that: if handsome kids get more attention from teachers, then, sure, maybe they do better in school and, ultimately, at work. But the more likely plot is what scienti
33、sts dub the “halo(光圈，光晕 )effect“that, like a pack of untrained puppies, we are captivated by beauty, blindly ascribing intelligent traits to go along with it. HThere are various forces to blame for much of this, from an economy that allows pickiness to a plastic-surgery industry that encourages supe
34、rficial notions of beauty. In reality, its a meeting point of cultural forces that has left us clutching, desperately, to an ever-evolving beauty ideal. Todays young workers were reared on the kind of reality TV and pop culture that screams, again and again, that everything is a candidate for upgrad
35、e. Weve watched bodies transformed on Extreme Makeover, faces taken apart and pieced back together on I Want a Famous Face. We compare ourselves with the airbrushed images in advertisements and magazines, and read surveysthat confirm our worst fears. We are a culture more sexualized than ever, with
36、technology thats made it easier than ever to “better“ ourselves, warping our standards for whats normal. Plastic surgery used to be for the rich and famous: today weve leveled the playing field with cheap stupid jobs, and outpatient procedures you can get on your lunch break. Where that leads us is
37、running to stand still: taught that good looks are no longer a gift but a ceaseless pursuit. IDeborah Rhode, a Stanford law professor and author of The Beauty Bias, is herself an interesting case study. During her term as chair of the American Bar Associations commission on working women, she was st
38、ruck by how often the nations most powerful females were stranded in cab lines and late for meetings because, in heels, walking any distance was out of the question. These were working, powerful, leading women, she writes. Why did they insist on wearing heels? Sure, some women just like heels. JBut
39、there is also the reality that however hard men have itand, from an economic perspective, their “beauty premium“ is higher, say economistswomen will always face a double bind, expected to conform to the beauty standards of the day, yet simultaneously condemned for doing so. Recruiters may think wome
40、n like Lorenzana can get ahead for showing off their looks, but 47 percent also believe its possible for a woman to be penalized for being “too good-looking.“ Whether or not any of it pays off, theres something terribly wrong when 6-year-olds are using makeup, while their mothers spend the equivalen
41、t of a college education just keeping their faces intact. “All of this is happening against a background of more women in the workplace, in all kinds of jobs, striving toward wage equality,“ says Harvard psychologist Nancy Etcoff. “So were surprisedbut we shouldnt behow this beauty curse continues t
42、o haunt us.“ KTo add an extra layer of complexity, theres the puzzling problem of aging in a culture where younger workers are more skillful, cheaper, and, well, nicer on the eyes. Eighty-four percent of managers told Newsweek they believe a qualified but visibly older candidate would make some empl
43、oyers hesitate, and while ageism affects men, too, its particularly tough for women. As Rhode puts it, silver hair and wrinkled brows may make aging men look “distinguished,“ but aging women risk marginalization or scorn for their efforts to pass as young. “This double standard,“ Rhode writes, “leav
44、es women not only perpetually worried about their appearance-but also worried about worrying.“ LThe quest for beauty may be a centuriesold charm, but in the present day the reality is ugly. Beauty has more influence than evernot just over who we work with, but whether we work at all. 37 The idea of
45、beauty premium is the beauty inclines to be better. 38 As the halo effect goes, we often mistakenly equate beauty with intelligence. 39 Last month, a bank was sued by one of its former employees for unfair dismissal. 40 According to an economist, the good-looking advantage can make people earn more.
46、 41 With the thriving of the plastic surgery, the pursuit of good looks becomes a ceaseless process. 42 As to land a job, more than half of hiring managers suggest spending time beautifying ones looks. 43 Managers consider experience as the most important attribute of an employee. 44 A law professor
47、 found that the nations most powerful females were often late for meetings because of wearing high heels. 45 Employers seem unwilling to hire qualified but visibly older candidates. 46 People think women should try to conform to the beauty standards but meanwhile blame them for doing so. Section C 4
48、6 Widespread adoption of plug-in electric vehicles could dramatically cut greenhouse gas pollution and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. But results of an electric-car pilot project presented recently at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science provide added
49、 incentive to go electric: Car owners could return unused electricity back to the grid(输电网 )and make real money while doing it. Electric cars need big, powerful batteries to accelerate to highway speeds and travel scores or even several hundred kilometers on a single charge. But because most drivers drive just a few dozen kilometers a day, most of that battery capacity sits unused. To take advantage of that storage capacity, Willett Kempton, director o
