1、大学英语六级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 237及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on understanding others by referring to Abraham Lincolns remark, “I dont like that man. I must get to know him better.“ You should write at least 150 words but no more t
2、han 200 words. Section A （ A） Play basketball with his colleagues. （ B） Go to hospital and have a physical check. （ C） Lose weight and strengthen the muscles. （ D） Compete in a cycling race with colleagues. （ A） He should start with a light workout. （ B） He should go to have a check-up. （ C） He shou
3、ld eat less fatty foods. （ D） He should visit a fitness trainer. （ A） It helps improve the physical health. （ B） It is good for a sound sleep. （ C） It helps develop mental toughness. （ D） It helps lose weight. （ A） He wakes up very early. （ B） He stays up watching TV. （ C） He often plays baseball. （
4、 D） He hates fruits and vegetables. （ A） A literature professor. （ B） An academic advisor. （ C） Dean of the English Department. （ D） A Doctor of Applied Linguistics. （ A） To inquire about switching majors. （ B） To find a helping supervisor. （ C） To make up the remaining credits. （ D） To apply for a
5、masters degree. （ A） He cant catch up with his classmates. （ B） He finds the English course load too heavy. （ C） He is not interested in his present major. （ D） He is good at Applied Linguistics. （ A） Twenty-four credits. （ B） Twelve credits. （ C） Three Credits. （ D） Thirty-six credits. Section B （
6、A） The merits and drawbacks of a large population. （ B） The disadvantages of a large population. （ C） The advantages of a small population. （ D） The rapidly growing world population. （ A） The level of education varies around the world. （ B） The economists attitudes to population differ greatly. （ C）
7、 The living standard varies from country to country. （ D） The countries attitudes to population differ greatly. （ A） Great pressure on housing. （ B） Rising demands of goods. （ C） The prosperity of the building industry. （ D） A declining market for manufactured goods. （ A） Rising fuel costs to limit
8、the use of it （ B） Saving energy and use other sources. （ C） Having protection against fuel shortage. （ D） Putting in a solar unit in every house. （ A） The disadvantages of solar energy. （ B） The pollution of other energy sources. （ C） The rising fuel costs and fuel shortage. （ D） The costs of solar
9、 energy system. （ A） There is no space to put in solar units. （ B） It is decided by Mother Nature. （ C） It is not the right time to use it （ D） It costs too much to use it （ A） It will go up. （ B） It will come down. （ C） It will go up and down. （ D） It will stay the same. Section C （ A） Her personal
10、 experience to be a successful CEO. （ B） Her management in Avon as a successful CEO. （ C） Her family education of the Chinese heritage. （ D） Her education experience in both China and America （ A） Her parents hard work to fulfill their full potential. （ B） Her parents thirst for opportunities of hig
11、her education. （ C） Her parents desire to adapt to American society. （ D） Her parents strong sense of competition in America. （ A） They studied engineer in Canada for graduate degree. （ B） They spoke very good English when they reached America （ C） They were more concerned with the speakers EQ than
12、IQ. （ D） They valued both Chinese and Western cultures in family education. （ A） Creative. （ B） Aggressive. （ C） Respectful. （ D） Responsible. （ A） The Open University. （ B） The Young Foundation. （ C） The British government. （ D） The School of Everything. （ A） School graduates lack of creativity and
13、 responsibility. （ B） School graduates lack of right attitudes and experience. （ C） School graduates lack of experience and confidence. （ D） School graduates lack of communication skills. （ A） Students learn best by doing things for real. （ B） Students learn fast in business environment. （ C） Studen
14、ts learn fast through online courses. （ D） Students learn best when sitting in classrooms. （ A） To find out how much time they spend in making decisions. （ B） To find out how many hours they spend on business meetings. （ C） To find out how often they go on business traveling. （ D） To find out how mu
15、ch pressure they undertake at work. （ A） To make choices more easily. （ B） To make work time more efficient （ C） To make shopping more convenient. （ D） To make decisions more independently. （ A） In words. （ B） By eye contact. （ C） By clapping hands. （ D） By raising hand. Section A 26 Comparisons wer
16、e drawn between the development of television in the 20th century and the diffusion of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. Yet much had happened between. As was discussed before, it was not until the 19th century that the newspaper became the dominant pre-electronic【 C1】 _ , following in the wa
17、ke of the pamphlet and the book and in the company of the periodical. It was during the same time that the communications revolution【 C2】 _ up, beginning with transport, the railway, and【 C3】 _ on through the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and motion pictures into the 20th-century world of the mot
18、or car and the airplane. Not everyone sees that process in【 C4】 _ . It is important to do so. It is generally recognized, however, that the introduction of the computer in the early 20th century, followed by the invention of the integrated circuit during the 1960s,【 C5】_ changed the process, althoug
19、h its impact on the media was not immediately【 C6】 _ . As time went by, computers became smaller and more powerful, and they became “personal“ too, as well as institutional, with display becoming sharper and storage【 C7】 _ increasing. They were thought of, like people, in terms of generations, with
20、the distance between generations much smaller. It was within the computer age that the term “information society“ began to be widely used to describe the context within which we now live. The communications revolution has【 C8】 _ both work and leisure and how we think and feel both about place and ti
21、me, but there have been【 C9】 _ views about its economic, political, social and cultural implications. “Benefits“ have been weighed against “harmful“【 C10】 _ . And generalizations have proved difficult. A) speeded B) universal C) leading D) impressed E) influenced F) territory G) capacity H) radicall
22、y I) controversial J) presumably K) perspective L) outcomes M) apparent N) distracting O) medium 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 Trust Me, Im a Robot A With robots now emerging from their industrial cages and moving into homes a
23、nd workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. Inspired by the Pugwash Conferencesan international group of scientists, aca
24、demics and activists founded in 1957 to campaign for the non-proliferation of nuclear weaponsthe new group of roboethicists met earlier this year in Genoa, Italy, and announced their initial findings in March at the European Robotics Symposium in Palermo, Sicily. B “Security and safety are the big c
25、oncerns,“ says Henrik Christensen, chairman of the European Robotics Network at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Should robots that are strong enough or heavy enough to crush people be allowed into homes? Is “system malfunction“ a justifiable defence for a robotic fighter plan
26、e that contravenes (违反 ) the Geneva Convention and mistakenly fires on innocent civilians? C “These questions may seem hard to understand but in the next few years they will become increasingly relevant,“ says Dr. Christensen. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europes World Rob
27、otics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly surpassing their industrial counterparts. By the end of 2003 there were more than 600,000 robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowersa figure predicted to rise to more than 4m by the end of next year. Japanese indust
28、rial firms are racing to build humanoid robots to act as domestic helpers for the elderly, and South Korea has set a goal that 100% of households should have domestic robots by 2020. In light of all this, it is crucial that we start to think about safety guidelines now, says Dr. Christensen. Stop ri
29、ght there D So what exactly is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces? “Not enough,“ says Blay Whitby. This is hardly surprising given that the field of “safety-critical computing“ is barely a decade old, he says. But things are changing, and researchers are increasingly taking an in
30、terest in trying to make robots safer. One approach, which sounds simple enough, is try to program them to avoid contact with people altogether. But this is much harder than it sounds. Getting a robot to navigate across a cluttered room is difficult enough without having to take into account what it
31、s various limbs or appendages might bump into along the way. E “Regulating the behaviour of robots is going to become more difficult in the future, since they will increasingly have self-learning mechanisms built into them,“ says Gianmarco Veruggio. “As a result, their behaviour will become impossib
32、le to predict fully,“ he says, “since they will not be behaving in predefined ways but will learn new behaviour as they go.“ F Then there is the question of unpredictable failures. What happens if a robots motors stop working, or it suffers a system failure just as it is performing heart surgery or
33、handing you a cup of hot coffee? You can, of course, build in redundancy by adding backup systems, says Hirochika Inoue. But this guarantees nothing, he says. “One hundred per cent safety is impossible through technology,“ says Dr. Inoue. This is because ultimately no matter how thorough you are, yo
34、u cannot anticipate the unpredictable nature of human behaviour, he says. Or to put it another way, no matter how sophisticated your robot is at avoiding people, people might not always manage to avoid it, and could end up tripping over it and falling down the stairs. Legal problems G In any case, s
35、ays Dr. Inoue, the laws really just summarize commonsense principles that are already applied to the design of most modern appliances, both domestic and industrial. Every toaster, lawn mower and mobile phone is designed to minimize the risk of causing injuryyet people still manage to electrocute (电死
36、 ) themselves, lose fingers or fall out of windows in an effort to get a better signal. At the very least, robots must meet the rigorous safety standards that cover existing products. The question is whether new, robot-specific rules are neededand, if so, what they should say. H “Making sure robots
37、are safe will be critical,“ says Colin Angle of iRobot, which has sold over 2m “Roomba“ household-vacuuming robots. But he argues that his firms robots are, in fact, much safer than some popular toys. “A radio-controlled car controlled by a six-year old is far more dangerous than a Roomba,“ he says.
38、 If you tread on a Roomba, it will not cause you to slip over, instead, a rubber pad on its base grips the floor and prevents it from moving. “Existing regulations will address much of the challenge,“ says Mr. Angle. “Im not yet convinced that robots are sufficiently different that they deserve spec
39、ial treatment.“ I Robot safety is likely to surface in the civil courts as a matter of product liability. “When the first robot carpet-sweeper sucks up a baby, who will be to blame?“ asks John Hallam, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. If a robot is autonomous and capable o
40、f learning, can its designer be held responsible for all its actions? Today the answer to these questions is generally “yes“. But as robots grow in complexity it will become a lot less clear cut, he says. J “Right now, no insurance company is prepared to insure robots,“ says Dr. Inoue. But that will
41、 have to change, he says. Last month, Japans Ministry of Trade and Industry announced a set of safety guidelines for home and office robots. They will be required to have sensors to help them avoid collisions with humans; to be made from soft and light materials to minimize harm if a collision does
42、occur; and to have an emergency shut-off button. This was largely prompted by a big robot exhibition held last summer, which made the authorities realize that there are safety implications when thousands of people are not just looking at robots, but mingling with them, says Dr. Inoue. K However, the
43、 idea that general-purpose robots, capable of learning, will become widespread is wrong, suggests Mr. Angle. It is more likely, he believes, that robots will be relatively dumb machines designed for particular tasks. Rather than a humanoid robot maid, “its going to be a heterogeneous (不同种类的 ) swarm
44、of robots that will take care of the house,“ he says. 37 It is pointed out there is no absolute safety through technology due to the unpredictable nature of human behavior. 38 It sounds easier said than done to program robots to avoid contact with people. 39 According to a survey, the number of dome
45、stic and service robots was three times over that of industrial robots in 2002. 40 To deal with the rising safety concern about domestic robots, roboethicists held meetings in Genoa. 41 To a great extent, a robot exhibition contributed to the issue of safety guidelines for home and office robots in
46、Japan. 42 A crew member from iRobot believes the existing regulations can cope with much challenges so robots are not so different as to be treated specially. 43 A university professor points out that the complexity of robots may result in the ambiguous product liability. 44 It will be more difficul
47、t to regulate robots behavior due to their self-learning mechanisms. 45 Right now, the laws can only summarize commonsense principles so as to reduce the chance of injury caused by robots. 46 Japanese firms are competing in the production of robots specifically helping the old people. Section C 46 C
48、hildren who live near a main road are in greater danger of catching pneumonia (肺炎 ) because pollution from passing traffic damages their lungs. A leading expert in childhood breathing difficulties has made the link between exposure to particles from vehicle exhausts and a childs susceptibility to th
49、e chest infection, which can be fatal. Professor Jonathan Grigg, an honorary consultant at, the Royal London Hospital and academic prediatrician (儿科医生 ) at Queen Mary, University of London, made the breakthrough after studying the effect of airborne pollutants on human lung cells. Children whose home is within 100 metres of a main road could be as much as 66% more likely than others to develop pneumonia, he said. Although the disease is usually associated with the elderly, it is a sign
