1、大学英语六级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 239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 direct and indirect experience by referring to the saying “Youll learn more about a road by traveling it than by consulting all the maps in the world“ You can give ex
2、amples to illustrate your point and then explain how you can get more direct experience. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. Section A （ A） Putting up posters for her works. （ B） Attending an art class. （ C） Decorating her dorm room. （ D） Organizing a global tour. （ A） Tw
3、o dimensional. （ B） Three dimensional. （ C） Colorful. （ D） Detailed. （ A） She earned a lot of money. （ B） She learned many things. （ C） She was acquainted with many people. （ D） She became an art major. （ A） Hold an exhibition on campus. （ B） Go to New York City. （ C） Enter for the tour to Boston. （
4、 D） Meet the European painters. （ A） They clustered in caves. （ B） They traveled in groups. （ C） They had a refined language. （ D） They fed mostly on fruit. （ A） Looked for caves. （ B） Burned trees. （ C） Went to the sea. （ D） Built wooden houses. （ A） They lived in sturdy shelters. （ B） They used sa
5、nd as insulation. （ C） They kept fires burning constantly. （ D） They faced their homes southward. （ A） Meet his anthropology teacher. （ B） Lend him her magazine when she finishes it. （ C） Come over to his house after class. （ D） Speak slowly for him to take notes. Section B （ A） Women would like to
6、stay at home. （ B） People were more friendly. （ C） Students paid for their board. （ D） Immigration was encouraged. （ A） There are too many of them. （ B） They have a bad reputation. （ C） They dont pay taxes. （ D） They are not cooperative. （ A） Paying the families who volunteer. （ B） Appealing to all
7、sorts of families. （ C） Giving compulsory orders to young couples. （ D） Arranging homemakers for those families. （ A） Trouble. （ B） Youthful feeling. （ C） Companionship. （ D） Pressure. （ A） A water current struck his ship violently. （ B） A wave carried his ship far away. （ C） Great noise came down f
8、rom the sky. （ D） Rough storms suddenly occurred. （ A） Kidnap by aliens. （ B） Kidnap by ghosts. （ C） Attack from sea creatures. （ D） Transportation to other times and places. （ A） Fast currents sweep away the wreckage caused by terrible weather. （ B） The magnetic power draws them down to the ocean b
9、ottom. （ C） Some planes or ships lose contact with their remote controllers. （ D） Icebergs destroyed the passing vehicles and enclosed them. Section C （ A） He is a well-known comic movie star. （ B） He is a famous technician of mobile technology. （ C） He is one of Hollywoods renowned filmmakers. （ D）
10、 He is one of the best known film investors. （ A） Ability to combine technology and entertainment （ B） Ability to make every story as long as possible. （ C） Ability to find famous actors or actresses for the film. （ D） Ability to tell a story with an emotional grabbing point. （ A） There were crossov
11、er films and their makers. （ B） Many new filmmakers won awards. （ C） There was much sponsorship for crossover films. （ D） More musicians than actors attended this film festival. （ A） Create images making people stop thinking. （ B） Run after many fun things in life. （ C） Try things that doctors think
12、 impossible. （ D） Freeze a big animal in a block of ice. （ A） Staying in a glass box for 44 days just with water. （ B） Throwing cheeseburgers on a plane around London. （ C） Having his research paper published in a journal. （ D） Surviving in a box without air for an hour. （ A） The ambition to become
13、the greatest magician. （ B） The reality that he failed in a swimming race. （ C） The magician Houdini and his underwater challenges. （ D） Houdinis refusal to teach him holding breath underwater. （ A） He fell in a trap made by a hunter. （ B） He hurt his brain by staying underwater. （ C） He was drowned
14、 in an icy river. （ D） He was trapped underwater for 45 minutes. （ A） When the President and the First Lady danced in the White House. （ B） When an old slave was interviewed about American Black History. （ C） When an old lady danced with the President and the First lady. （ D） When some African Ameri
15、can children visited the White House. （ A） Working out for some time every day. （ B） Keeping ones ideals of youth and belief. （ C） Keeping a good mood every day. （ D） Using health care products every day. （ A） He died on the very day of his 96th birthday. （ B） He closed his door and never went out i
16、n his nineties. （ C） He became a famous reporter at the age of 92. （ D） He worked harder as he was getting older. Section A 26 Research on animal intelligence always makes us wonder just how smart humans are. Consider the fruit-fly experiments described by Carl Zimmer in the Science Times. Fruit fli
17、es who were taught to be smarter than the average fruit fly【 C1】 _ to live shorter lives. This suggests that dimmer bulbs burn longer, that there is a(n)【 C2】_ in not being too bright. Intelligence, it turns out, is a high-priced【 C3】 _ . It takes more upkeep, burns more fuel and is slow off the sta
18、rting line because it depends on learning a(n)【 C4】_ process instead of instinct. Plenty of other species are able to learn, and one of the things theyve apparently learned is when to stop. Is there an adaptive value to limited intelligence? Thats the question behind this new research. Instead of ca
19、sting a wistful glance【 C5】 _ at all the species weve left in the dust I.Q.-wise, it implicitly asks what the real costs of our own intelligence might be. This is on the【 C6】 _ of every animal weve ever met. Research on animal intelligence also makes us wonder what experiments animals would【 C7】 _ o
20、n humans if they had the chance. Every cat with an owner, for instance, is running a small-scale study in operant conditioning. We believe that if animals ran the labs, they would test us to【 C8】 _ the limits of our patience, our faithfulness, our memory for locations. They would try to decide what
21、intelligence in humans is really for, not【 C9】 _ how much of it there is. Above all, they would hope to study a【 C10】 _ question: Are humans actually aware of the world they live in? So far the results are inconclusive. A) mind E) advantage I) aptly M) tended B) fundamental F) happened J) overcome N
22、) inclination C) gradual G) spontaneous K) option O) perform D) determine H) backward L) merely 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 Eating Our Young A At Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences, a middle school in a poor neighborhoo
23、d of Philadelphia, the school year began chaotically as budget cuts took effect. With the cuts meaning no school nurse or counselor, teachers fill the gaps, disrupting lessons to help students in distress. And the problems are not small: A boy was stabbed in the head with a pencil by a fellow studen
24、t; a girl reported sexual assault by an uncle; another refused to speak after the brutal murder of a parent. And that was just the start of the school year. To make matters worse, budget cuts are hurting essential academic programs. B Across the United States, whether its schools, food stamps, healt
25、h care or entry-level jobs, the young are feeling the force of government cutbacks. This year, the young and vulnerable especially have been hit hard through automatic federal spending cuts to programs like Head Start, nutrition assistance, and child welfare. Financial crises in cities like Philadel
26、phia and Detroit have meant another wave of school budget cutbacks. And title weak job market is hurting the youngest workers most, with youth unemployment more than double the national jobless rate. C This is not just an American problem. In Europe, too, rigid budgets are squeezing even basic educa
27、tion and health needs. As governments strain to cover budget shortfalls and appease (缓解 ) debt fears, the young are losing out. “Were underinvesting in our children,“ said Julia Isaacs, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a child policy expert “Looking at future budget trends and the fact tha
28、t Congress doesnt want to raise taxes, I can see childrens programs continuing to be squeezed.“ D That has implications for long-term economic growth. Cutting back on the young is like eating the seed com: satisfying a momentary need but leaving no way to grow a prosperous future. E Is America overs
29、pending on its young? Public spending in the U.S. on children came to $12,164 per child in 2008, in current dollars, according to Kids Share, an annual report published by the Urban Institute. Of that total, about a third came from the federal government and two thirds from state and local governmen
30、ts. Compare that to what we spend on the elderly, which primarily comes from the federal government. According to the Urban Institute, public spending on the elderly, in current dollars! was $27,117 per person in 2008, more than double the spending on children. F The trend is the same across the dev
31、eloped world. Julia Lynch, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, studied 20 countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development between 1985 and 2000 and found each spent more public funds on the elderly than on the young. But there were large difference
32、s among them. She found the most youth-oriented welfare states were the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, and in Scandinavia, while the most elderly-oriented were Japan, Italy, Greece, the U.S., Spain, and Austria. Somewhere in the middle were Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Portugal. G Sinc
33、e the 1960s, federal spending on kids in the U.S. had been rising. That trend ended in 2011, when it dropped by $2 billion to $377 billion. A year later the figure plunged even more by $28 billion. And spending on kids is planned to shrink further over the next decade. The Urban Institute has foreca
34、st that federal spending on kids will decrease from 10 percent of the federal budget today to 8 percent by 2023. That decline will occur even as federal spending is expected to increase by $1 trillion over the same period. H So, what is the federal government spending on? The budget can be roughly d
35、ivided in the following way: 41 percent goes to the elderly and disabled portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; 20 percent to defense; 10 percent to children; 6 percent to interest payments on the debt; and 23 percent to all other government functions. So if spending on kids does fall
36、to 8 percent of the federal budget, and if interest payments rise along with higher interest rates over the same period, the federal government soon will be spending more on interest payments on the debt than on children. I Whats driving government cutbacks? Much can be tied to fears of rising natio
37、nal debt. Paradoxically, advocates of debt reduction claim they are acting in the interest of the young; our debts seem be too heavy for the next generation. But in a super competitive global economy, nations investing today in the well-being and education of the young are writing the success storie
38、s of tomorrow. J Of course, the U.S. is investing in education. Roughly 65 percent of all public spending on kids is on education, and thats done primarily through state and local governments. But whether its early childhood education, elementary, middle, or high schools, or universities and college
39、s, fewer resources are going into public education. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of teachers employed in kindergarten through year 12th grade, principals, superintendents and support staff, fell 2 percent between 2009 and 2011 while enrollment was steady. K The trend of pu
40、tting fewer resources into public education is even more striking at the college level. Take the University of California for example: The average annual student charges for resident undergraduates have increased 275 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1990 to 1991, while the universitys ave
41、rage per-student expenditures have decreased 25 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars over the same period. So as California students pay much more for their education than their parents did, theyre getting less. L Throughout the current downturn, unemployment has tailed the workforce. The hardest h
42、it has been the young. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment for 16-to-24-year-olds in July was 16.3 percent. That compares with our national jobless rate of 7.3 percent. And there are also large numbers of the young who are underemployed. Gallup recently found that only 43.6 per
43、cent of Americans between the ages of 18 to 29 had a full-time job in June 2013. M High youth unemployment has implications for future earnings power. Economists who study the labor market have found that people who graduate from school without a job are likely to have lower wages in their career. N
44、 Even when the young land a job, investment in young workers isnt what it used to be. Training and education used to be part of any full-time job. Now, while global companies like Google advertise staff training, they tend to be the exception. Most companies have cut back over the years as corporate
45、 budgets are reduced and companies believe they can buy talent rather than grow it. O Whether because of government cutbacks or falling business investment, the young are facing tougher prospects than did their parents. And that raises irritating questions about the future. Starting with the younges
46、t, without solid nutrition and basic health care, children cant become engaged and active students. Without resources to teach and a secure support system, public schools cant turn out educated, smart kids. With the costs of college rising beyond the reach of many, large groups are being left behind
47、. And with entry-level jobs and training scarcer than ever, the human capital necessary to grow Americas huge economy isnt being developed. The burden on todays young to support an aging society will grow even as the resources they are provided dont. 37 Not only America but also European countries a
48、re experiencing the budget-cutting trend. 38 The federal spending on the young has been decreasing since 2011. 39 Nowadays, many companies spend less on staff training because of corporate budget reduction and their belief that talent can be bought. 40 Federal spending approximately consists of five
49、 principle parts and forty-one percent of it goes to the elderly and the disabled. 41 A research indicated that countries like Netherlands spent more public funds on the young while countries like the U.S. spent more on the elderly. 42 Fears of increasing national debt contribute to government cutbacks. 43 Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the jobless rate for the young in July is much higher than the national unemployment rate. 44 University students have to bear
