1、大学英语六级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 257及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 Suppose you are asked to give advice on whether shared bikes will be the most popular transportation means in the near future. Write an essay to state your opinion. You are required to write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. Sec
2、tion A （ A） The specialty of an applied linguist. （ B） The definition of second language acquisition. （ C） The causes of second language learning difficulty. （ D） The language competence of children and adults. （ A） Because they are not highly motivated. （ B） Because they are not quite curious. （ C）
3、 Because they are not rightly encouraged. （ D） Because they are not fully confident. （ A） They differ greatly with regard to vocabulary. （ B） They cause no language learning problems. （ C） They are similar in terms of grammar. （ D） They are both complicated and analytic. （ A） They should be effectiv
4、e in most situations. （ B） They should be used to teach different languages. （ C） They should be based on translation and grammar. （ D） They should be adapted according to different conditions. （ A） It should be close to a city with colourful nightlife. （ B） It should make your life convenient and m
5、eaningful. （ C） It should enable a person to enjoy nightclubs and discos. （ D） It should match with the buyers character. （ A） City outskirts. （ B） The downtown. （ C） The rural area. （ D） The coastal city. （ A） They are more expensive than those in cities. （ B） They might be cheaper than those in ci
6、ties. （ C） They are surprisingly low in price. （ D） They are especially large in size. （ A） A house should be away from a busy street or main road. （ B） A house should be close to famous schools. （ C） The number of children of a family decides where to live. （ D） A family affects the size of a house
7、. Section B （ A） Because it is a tonal language. （ B） Because its grammar is irregular. （ C） Because its characters are difficult to remember. （ D） Because it has many dialects. （ A） To talk to as many Chinese as possible. （ B） To get a bilingual teacher who can speak Chinese and English. （ C） To wa
8、tch as many Chinese movies as possible. （ D） To listen to as many Chinese recordings as possible. （ A） Find locals to talk to. （ B） Embrace it and use it everywhere. （ C） Memorize its characters. （ D） Read a lot of Chinese books. （ A） Because they get more praise from their parents. （ B） Because the
9、y get more mental stimulation from their parents. （ C） Because they get more emotional support from their parents. （ D） Because they get more help from their parents with their tasks. （ A） First-born children have better business achievements. （ B） First-born children have better thinking skills. （
10、C） First-born children have higher sense of independence. （ D） First-born children have better logical thinking. （ A） Writing. （ B） Reciting. （ C） Matching letters. （ D） Calculating. （ A） They are a reasonable explanation for the observed birth-order differences. （ B） They are incomplete in explaini
11、ng the observed birth-order differences. （ C） They are doubtful in explaining the observed birth-order differences. （ D） They are an unconvincing explanation for the observed birth-order differences. Section C （ A） Most people love reading books on smartphones. （ B） Most people love reading The New
12、York Times. （ C） Most people still love printed books. （ D） Most people have changed their taste for printed books. （ A） Visit a magnificent Gilded Age Manhattan library. （ B） Spend much time in book stores of all kinds. （ C） Borrow a lot of books from libraries. （ D） Buy a lot of books from book st
13、ores. （ A） He is a librarian. （ B） He is an author. （ C） He is a businessman. （ D） He is a bookseller. （ A） Those who can show their love romantically. （ B） Those who can speak American English. （ C） Those who can speak more than one language. （ D） Those who can learn a new language quickly. （ A） Ab
14、out one in four. （ B） About one in eight. （ C） About nine out of ten. （ D） About two-thirds. （ A） The one that has similar pronunciation with their mother tongue. （ B） The one that has similar spelling with their mother tongue. （ C） The one that has similar grammar with their mother tongue. （ D） The
15、 one that is part of the same family as their mother tongue. （ A） Its use of a special pronunciation. （ B） Its use of the Cyrillic alphabet system. （ C） Its use of a totally different spelling. （ D） Its use of too many grammatical rules. （ A） Favorable. （ B） Doubtful. （ C） Critical. （ D） Reserved. （
16、 A） Women are likely to have a longer life expectancy than men because of parenthood. （ B） Mens life expectancy increases more than women because of parenthood. （ C） Women can expect to live 18 months longer than men because of parenthood. （ D） Men can expect to live 2 years longer than women becaus
17、e of parenthood. （ A） Married women. （ B） Married men. （ C） Unmarried women. （ D） Unmarried men. Section A 26 A new study from researchers in Europe claims that the average IQ in Western nations dropped by a staggering 14.1 points over the past century. “We tested the【 C1】 _that the Victorians were
18、cleverer than modern populations using high-quality instruments, namely measures of simple visual reaction time in a meta-analytic study,“ the researchers wrote in the study, which was published online in the journal Intelligence on Thursday. “Simple reaction time measures correlate【 C2】 _with measu
19、res of general intelligence and are considered elementary measures of【 C3】 _“ The results might surprise some. Especially if the researchers were simply measuring visual response times. After all, in a digital world constantly【 C4】 _for our attention, it would seem people generally respond more quic
20、kly to visual stimuli. However, the results appear to indicate something different. The Victorian era ran roughly from 1837 to 1901,【 C5】 _with the reign of Englands Queen Victoria. Some have credited the Reform Act of 1832 with sparking an era of previously【 C6】 _peace and prosperity in the U. K. T
21、he results were measured using data from 1889 to 2004 and were analyzed by Michael A. Woodley in Brussels. So why has there been such a【 C7】 _drop? As UPI notes, previous research studies have found that women of higher intelligence tend to have fewer children on average, meaning that population gro
22、wth may be driven by those with a lower IQ. And over time, the abundance of less intelligent【 C8】 _would affect the overall IQ average. On average, the general intelligence of those populations measured【 C9】_by 1.23 points per decade. “ These findings strongly indicate that with【 C10】_to general int
23、elligence the Victorians were substantially cleverer than modern Western populations,“ the study says. A)aspect I)insignificantly B)climbed J)offspring C)cognition K)respect D)coinciding L)sharp E)competing M)steady F)completing N)substantially G)dropped O)unprecedented H)hypothesis 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2
24、】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 The Amazon-Walmart Showdown That Explains the Modern Economy A With Amazon buying the high-end grocery chain Whole Foods, something retail analysts have known for years is now apparent to everyone: The online ret
25、ailer is on a collision course with Walmart to try to be the predominant seller of pretty much everything you buy. Each one is trying to become more like the other Walmart by investing heavily in its technology, Amazon by opening physical bookstores and now buying physical supermarkets. But this is
26、more than a battle between two business titans. Their rivalry sheds light on the shifting economics of nearly every major industry. B That in turn has been a boon(福音 )for consumers but also has more worrying implications for jobs, wages and inequality. To understand this epic shift, you can look not
27、 just to the grocery business, but also to my closet, and to another retail acquisition announced Friday morning. C Mens dress clothing, mine included, can be a little boring. Like many male office workers, I lean toward clothes that are sharp but not at all showy. Nearly every weekday, I wear a dre
28、ss shirt that is either light blue, white or has some subtle check pattern, usually paired with slacks and a blazer. The description alone could make a person doze. I used to buy my dress shirts from a Hong Kong tailor. They fit perfectly, but ordering required an awkward meeting with a visiting sal
29、esman in a hotel suite. They took six weeks to arrive, and they cost around $ 120 each, which adds up fast when you need to buy eight or 10 a year to keep up with wear and tear(破损 ). Then several years ago I realized that a company called Bonobos was making shirts that fit me nearly as well, that we
30、re often sold three for $ 220, or $ 73 each, and that would arrive in two days. D Bonobos became my main shirt provider, at least until recently, when I learned that Amazon was trying to get into the upper-end mens shirt game. The firms “ Buttoned Down“ line, offered to Amazon Prime customers, uses
31、high-quality fabric and is a good value at $ 40 for basic shirts. I bought a few: they dont fit me quite as well as the Bonobos, but I do prefer the stitching(针 脚 ). Im on the fence as to which company will provide my next shirt order, and a new deal this week makes it interesting: Walmart is buying
32、 Bonobos. Walmarts move might seem a strange decision. It is not a retailer people typically turn to for $ 88 summer weight shirts in Ruby Wynwood Plaid or $ 750 Italian wool suits. Then again, Amazon is best known as a reseller of goods made by others. E Walmart and Amazon have had their sights on
33、each other for years, each aiming to be the dominant seller of goods however consumers of the future want to buy them. It increasingly looks like that “ however“ is a hybrid of physical stores and online-ordering channels, and each company is coming at the goal from a different starting point. F Ama
34、zon is the dominant player in online sales, and is particularly strong among affluent consumers in major cities. It is now experimenting with physical bookstores and groceries as it looks to broaden its reach. Walmart has thousands of stores that sell hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods.
35、It is particularly strong in suburban and rural areas and among low- and middle-income consumers, but its playing catch-up with online sales and affluent urbanites. G Why are these two mega-retailers both trying to sell me shirts? The short answer is because they both want to sell everything. More s
36、pecifically, Bonobos is known as an innovator in exactly this type of hybrid of online and physical store sales. Its website and online customer service are excellent, and it operates stores in major cities where you can try on garments and order items to be shipped directly. Because all the actual
37、inventory is centralized, the stores themselves can occupy minimal square footage. So the acquisition may help Walmart build expertise in the very areas where it is trying to gain on Amazon. You can look at the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods through the same lens. The grocery business has a whole
38、 different set of challenges from the types of goods that Amazon has specialized in: you cant store a steak or a banana the way you do books or toys. And people want to be able to make purchases and take them home on the spur of the moment. H Just as Walmart is using Bonobos to get access to higher-
39、end consumers and a more technologically savvy way of selling clothes, Amazon is using Whole Foods to get the expertise and physical presence it takes to sell fresh foods. But bigger dimensions of the modern economy also come into play. I The apparel business has long been a highly competitive indus
40、try in which countless players could find a niche(商机 ). Any insight that one shirt-maker developed could be rapidly copied by others, and consumer prices reflected the retailers real estate costs and branding approach as much as anything. That helps explain why there are thousands of options worldwi
41、de for someone who wants a decent-quality mens shirt. In that world, any shirt-maker that tried to get too big rapidly faced diminishing returns. It would have to pay more and more to lease the real estate for far-flung stores, and would have to outbid competitors to hire all the experienced shirt-m
42、akers. The expansion wouldnt offer any meaningful cost savings and would entail a lot more headaches trying to manage it all. J But more and more businesses in the modern economy, rather than reflecting those diminishing returns to scale, show positive returns to scale: The biggest companies have a
43、huge advantage over smaller players. That tends to tilt markets toward a handful of players or even a monopoly, rather than an even playing field with countless competitors. K The most extreme example of this would be the software business, where a company can invest bottomless sums in a piece of so
44、ftware, but then sell it to each additional customer for practically nothing. The apparel industry isnt that extreme the price of making a shirt is still linked to the cost of fabric and the workers to do the stitching but it is moving in that direction. And that helps explain why Walmart and Amazon
45、 are so eager to put a shirt on my back. L Already, retailers need to figure out how to manage sophisticated supply chains connecting Southeast Asia with stores in big American cities so that they rarely run out of product. They need mobile apps and websites that offer a seamless user experience so
46、that nothing stands between a would-be purchaser and an order. Larger companies that are good at supply chain management and technology can spread those more-or-less fixed costs around more total sales, enabling them to keep prices lower than a niche player and entrench their advantage. M These posi
47、tive returns to scale could become even more pronounced. Perhaps in the future, rather than manufacture a bunch of shirts in Indonesia and Malaysia and ship them to the United States to be sold one at a time to urban office workers, a company will have a robot manufacture shirts to my specifications
48、 somewhere nearby. N If thats the future of clothing, and quite a few companies are working on just that, apparel will become a landscape of high fixed costs and enormous returns to scale. The handful of companies with the very best shirt-making robots will win the market, and any company that cant
49、afford to develop shirt-making robots, or isnt very good at it, might find itself left in the cold. 37 Traditionally, Amazon is popular among consumers in big cities while Walmart is widely located in rural areas. 38 Bonobos is selling apparel to the author in a relatively lower price than the Hong Kong tailor. 39 Walmart bought Bonobos in that it will help Walmart overtake Amazon. 40 The tendency of markets being occupied by big companies indicates that small companies have no advantag
