1、大学英语六级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 177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 the relationship between Internet and study. You should give sound a
2、rguments to support your views and write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. Section A （ A） Australia. （ B） America. （ C） Britain. （ D） Austria. （ A） Approval. （ B） Disapproval. （ C） Cautious. （ D） Uncertain. （ A） He will give up his right in voting. （ B） He will vote randomly. （ C） He is
3、 forced to pick one party. （ D） He must take politics seriously. （ A） When they are in a hurry. （ B） When they are forced to vote. （ C） When they dislike all the parties. （ D） When they dont want to waste their votes. （ A） In the basement. （ B） On the ground floor. （ C） On upper floors. （ D） In the
4、penthouse. （ A） In 236 BC. （ B） In the Middle Ages. （ C） In the Agriculture Age. （ D） In the Industrial Revolution. （ A） Wind. （ B） Gas. （ C） Steam power. （ D） Solar power. （ A） The U.S. A. （ B） Italy. （ C） China. （ D） Russia. Section B （ A） She did some acting work for TV shows. （ B） She sang for a
5、 local music group. （ C） She produced her first music album. （ D） She joined an all-America music tour. （ A） Best-selling Female Artist. （ B） Queen of Pop. （ C） MTV Video Music Awards. （ D） The Star of Hollywood. （ A） She broke up with her famous boyfriend. （ B） She began dating with her backup danc
6、er. （ C） She was engaged and married. （ D） She released her comeback album. （ A） To shorten the distance between the rural community and the Silicon Valley. （ B） To provide some proper training to help students in rural community. （ C） To recruit competent employees from communities around the Silic
7、on Valley. （ D） To offer internship positions for outstanding students from rural communities. （ A） 10 hours. （ B） 1 week. （ C） 1 month. （ D） 10 months. （ A） Twelve-grade students. （ B） Students whose fathers are farmers. （ C） Students of agriculture majors. （ D） Students who are good at math or sci
8、ence. （ A） From his father. （ B） From AT&T. （ C） From his university. （ D） From CNN report. Section C （ A） His books have been sold worldwide. （ B） He can speak and write eight languages. （ C） His lifestyle is well-known in the world. （ D） He has been to many countries before. （ A） It appears in you
9、r physiology. （ B） It is in your value system. （ C） It is emphasized by philosophers. （ D） It carries its own beliefs. （ A） It is the center of the world. （ B） It is not easy to reach. （ C） It has no room for lies. （ D） It is bright like the sun. （ A） Try to get what youve missed. （ B） Love the abun
10、dance you have. （ C） Think of ways to be better. （ D） Be satisfied with your past. （ A） It will continue to decline gradually. （ B） It will expand at a somewhat faster pace. （ C） It will begin to move up toward two percent. （ D） It will intensify problems in developing countries. （ A） It kept borrow
11、ing rates low for a long time. （ B） It set Quantitative Easing to end in this year. （ C） It bought Bond to put more money into the economy. （ D） It brought the unemployment rate to its lowest level. （ A） The job growth was considered very slow. （ B） The jobs are not pushing up hourly wages. （ C） The
12、 job gains were worse than expected. （ D） The income gains were satisfying. （ A） All the findings of the researches were published. （ B） There was a flood of work on the research of happiness. （ C） People gradually noticed traps on the way of having happiness. （ D） There was no way thinking straight
13、 about happiness. （ A） People refuse to accept the change of the definition of happiness. （ B） People tend to make happiness more and more complex. （ C） The experience and memory of happiness are mixed up. （ D） The importance of circumstances isnt treated objectively. （ A） Music, especially classic
14、music, is often the source of happiness. （ B） Its difficult for people of perfectionism to gain happiness. （ C） One tiny flaw can ruin the total experience of happiness. （ D） The man actually is focusing on his memory of happiness. Section A 26 Where we choose to live can have a huge impact on our l
15、ives. Living in an unfriendly neighborhood, or one where residents move often, can make it harder to find child-care help or other support. On the other hand, settling in a peaceful rural hamlet(小村庄 )may seem great until you realize you cant make a living【 C1】 _on the slow dial-up Internet access av
16、ailable there. A recent survey【 C2】 _the question of what bonds us to the places we live, and its findings suggest the【 C3】 _of life is a more influential factor than economists might think.【 C4】 _a choice, most people dont care as much about the local economy as they do about the social offerings,
17、physical beauty and openness of a locale(场地 ), says a recently released survey of about 14,000 people in 26 communities by Gallup and the Knight Foundation. Those【 C5】 _how warm, welcoming and fun a community seems to beare【 C6】 _why people living in Miami【 C7】 _to like it even more than they did la
18、st year. In Minneapolis and St. Paul,【 C8】 _had an above-average regard for their town even before Favre joined the Vikings, this article reports. Even in hard-pressed Detroit, citizens like life a little more than in recent years, perhaps because of better parks, green spaces and【 C9】 _opportunitie
19、s. In my case, living in the Pacific Northwest is a tradeoff. My town of Portland offers wonderful outdoor-sports access, edgy culture and natural beauty. However, as one who has worked in【 C10】 _and publishing all my life, I find many of my career contacts are a continent away, in New York. A)recon
20、ciliation I)inhabitants B)tackled J)tend C)apparently K)providing D)counting L)Given E)tangle M)quantity F)journalism N)recreational G)quality O)appropriately H)intangibles 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 All Change AThe basic m
21、odel of the electricity industry was to send high voltages over long distances to passive customers. Power stations were big and costly, built next to coal mines, ports, oil refineries orfor hydroelectric generationreservoirs. Many of these places were a long way from the industrial and population c
22、enters that used the power. The companies main concern was to supply the juice, and particularly to meet peaks in demand. BThat model, though simple and profitable for utilities and generators, was costly for consumers. But it is now changing to a “ much more colorful picture“, says Michael Weinhold
23、 of Siemens. Not only are renewables playing a far bigger role: thanks to new technology, demand can also be tweaked(进行改进 )to match supply, not the other way round. Traditional power stations and grids still play a role in this world, but not a dominant one. They have to compete with new entrants, a
24、nd with existing participants doing new things. Flattening the peaks CThe most expensive electricity in any power system is that consumed at peak time, so instead of cranking up(启动 )a costly and probably dirty power station, the idea is to pay consumers to switch off instead. For someone running a l
25、arge cooling, heating or pumping system, for example, turning the power off for a short period will not necessarily cause any disruption. But for the grid operator the spare power gained is very useful. DThis has been tried before: in France, a heat wave in 2003 hit the cooling systems of nuclear po
26、wer stations and led to power shortages. In response, big energy consumers agreed to cut their power consumption at peak times, in exchange for generous rebates(部分退款 ). The Japanese have installed 200,000 home energy-management systems that do something similar on a domestic scale. But new technolog
27、y takes it to another level, allowing a lot of small power savings from a large number of consumers to be bundled together. ENest is selling its programmes all over North America, and more recently in Britain, too. Customers of its “Rush Hour Rewards“ programme can choose between being given notice
28、a day in advance of a two- to four-hour “event“(meaning their thermostat will be turned down or up automatically)or being told ten minutes ahead of a 30-minute one. This can cut the peak load by as much as 55% . FNRG, Americas biggest independent power company, is also moving into the market. David
29、Crane, its chief executive, admits that some consumers find the idea of saving power “un-American“ , but thinks that for companies like his the “mindless pursuit of megawatts“ is a dead end. In 2013 NRG bought a demand-response provider, Energy Curtailment Specialists, which controls 2GW of “negawat
30、ts“. GThe big question for demand-response companies is the terms on which they compete with traditional generators, which argue that markets such as PJM are starving the power system of badly needed investment. For example, FirstEnergy, a company in Ohio, suspended modernization plans at a coal-fir
31、ed plant which failed to win any megawatts in the auction for 2017-2018. Such plants are viable only if utilities are paying top dollars for peak electricitya cost which is eventually passed on to the consumer. Companies like FirstEnergy hope that the Supreme Court will overturn a ruling by the Fede
32、ral Energy Regulatory Commission that negawatts be treated like megawatts in capacity auctions. These worries are already spooking the market. EnerNOC, which bundles together small energy savings from many different customers to offer negawatts, has seen its share price fall by half since May. HIn a
33、ny case, the days of the vertically integrated model of energy supply are numbered, observes Dieter Helm. Thanks to abundant solar power, he argues, the energy market increasingly resembles the economics of the Internet, where marginal costs are zero. That “undermines the very idea of wholesale elec
34、tricity markets“. The future model will be much more fragmented. Independent generators, plus new entrants, are already “revolutionizing the way electricity is sold and used“ : new technologies will make the 21st-century model even more different. “No wonder many of the energy giants of the past are
35、 already in such trouble,“ he says. No longer so useful IThe combination of distributed and intermittent generation, ever cheaper storage and increasingly intelligent consumption has created a perfect storm for utilities, particularly those in Europe, says Eduard Sala de Vedruna of IHS, a consultanc
36、y. They are stuck with the costs of mamtaining the grid and meeting peak demand, but without the means to make customers pay for it properly. Their expensively built generating capacity is oversized: spare capacity in Europe this winter is 100GW, or 19% of the constituent countries combined peak loa
37、ds. Much of that is mothballed(检修好存置备用的 )and may have to be written off. Yet at the same time new investment is urgently needed to keep the grid reliable, and especially to make sure it can cope with new kinds of power flowfrom “prosumers“ back to the grid, for example. JTo general surprise, demand
38、is declining as power is used more efficiently. Politicians and regulators are unsympathetic, making the utilities pay for electricity generated by other peoples assets, such as rooftop solar, to keep the greens happy. At the same time barriers to entry have collapsed. New energy companies do not ne
39、ed to own lots of infrastructure. Their competitive advantage rests on algorithms(算法 ), sensors, processing power and good marketingnot usually the strong points of traditional utilities. All the services offered by these new entrantsdemand response, supply, storage and energy efficiencyeat into the
40、 utilities business model. KThe problem for the states electricity utilities is that they still have to provide a reliable supply when the sun is not shining. But consumers, thanks to “net metering“ , may have an electricity bill of zero. That means the utilities revenues suffer, and consumers witho
41、ut solar power cross-subsidize those with it. Rows about this are flaring across America. Many utilities are asking regulators to impose a fixed monthly charge on consumers, rather than just let them pay variable tariffs. Since going completely off-grid still involves buying a large amount of expens
42、ive storage, the betting is that consumers will be willing to pay a monthly fee so they can fall back on the utilities when they need to. LConsumers, understandably, are resisting such efforts. In Arizona the utilities wanted a $ 50 fixed monthly charge: the regulator allowed $ 5. In Wisconsin they
43、asked for $ 25 and got $ 19. Even these more modest sums may help the utilities a bit. But the bigger threat is that larger consumers(and small ones willing to join forces)can go their own way and combine generation, storage and demand response to run their own energy systems, often called “microgri
44、ds“. They may maintain a single high-capacity gas or electricity connection to the outside world for safetys sake, but still run everything downstream from themselves. MSome organizations, such as military bases, may have specific reasons to want to be independent of outside suppliers, but for most
45、of them the main motive is to save money. Places like University of California, San Diego(UCSD)not only save money with their microgrids but advance research as well. A server analyses 84,000 data streams every second. A company called ZBB Energy has installed innovative zinc-bromide batteries: anot
46、her company is trying out a 28kW supercapacitor(超级 电容器 )a storage device far faster and more powerful than any chemical battery. NIn one sense, UCSD is not a good customer for the local utility, San Diego Gas & Electric. The microgrid imports only 8% of its power from the utility. But it can help ou
47、t when demand elsewhere is tight, cutting its own consumption by turning down air-conditioners and other power-thirsty devices and sending the spare electricity to the grid. UCSD is one of scores of such microgrids pioneering new ways of using electricity efficiently and cheaply through better desig
48、n, data-processing technology and changes in behavior. The IEA reckons that this approach could cut peak demand for power in industrialized countries by 20% . That would be good for both consumers and the planet. 37 A more cost-effective alternative than building power stations to meet the peak is t
49、o pay consumers to cut off the power. 38 For a particular university, microgrids contribute to the development of research activities besides saving money. 39 In the new business model of power generation, demand can be controlled to meet supply because of new technology. 40 Microgrids, an approach of cutting peak demand, is beneficial to both consumers and the earth. 41 A new technology allows small energy savings from many different customers to be gathered together. 42
