1、大学英语六级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 272及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay based on the picture below. You should start your essay with a brief description of the picture and then discuss the significance of a healthy diet. You should give sound argum
2、ents to support your views and write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. Section A （ A） Their BBS was not as good as what they had thought before. （ B） Their progress in the website-design was hindered for lack of fund. （ C） Their full-time website designer was too busy to complete her ta
3、sk. （ D） Their temporary website designer was not qualified to do the BBS. （ A） She was a close relative of his colleague. （ B） She was recommended by someone he knows. （ C） She was assigned to help with his program. （ D） She was chosen after being interviewed. （ A） She complained that she was given
4、 too much work. （ B） She admitted that she had been dishonest. （ C） She owed it to miscommunication between them. （ D） She insisted that she had made a terrible website. （ A） Resort to the Part-time Job Center. （ B） Turn to their professor for help. （ C） Hire a professional with better pay. （ D） Pay
5、 her full fees for better work. （ A） She did the assignment for next week. （ B） She had a dentist appointment. （ C） She wrote a short story. （ D） She finished a really strange book by some French guy. （ A） A story in prose. （ B） A poem that rhymes. （ C） A translation of a short literary work. （ D） A
6、 journal about the process of writing. （ A） The class has been assigned to read it in English. （ B） He was able to read it in French. （ C） He isn t sure it s available in English. （ D） He thinks it s an example of what the professor wants. （ A） It s quite different when pronounced in French and Engl
7、ish. （ B） To write without using it is difficult both in English and in French. （ C） Every word in the French authors book contained it. （ D） It s commonly used in English to make poetry rhyme. Section B （ A） The floor is slick. （ B） The staircase is steep. （ C） The passage is narrow. （ D） The tread
8、 is unsteady. （ A） It disturbs the local people with noises. （ B） It causes the damage on the pavement. （ C） It stops people and cars moving freely. （ D） It prevents people from walking easily. （ A） It is part of their local heritage. （ B） It is an attraction of tourists. （ C） It is the revival of m
9、orals. （ D） It is the miracle of God. （ A） A sense of humor. （ B） Good look. （ C） Intelligence. （ D） Outgoing. （ A） It is a trait of a generous character. （ B） It is a reflection of self-esteem. （ C） It is an indicator of high intelligence. （ D） It is a sign of happiness and confidence. （ A） It was
10、self-defeating. （ B） It was aggressive. （ C） It was the essence of comedy. （ D） It was something admirable. （ A） It is a double-edged sword. （ B） It is a feature of a given culture. （ C） It is a unique gift of human beings. （ D） It is a result of both nature and nurture. Section C （ A） The guarantee
11、d quality of its goods. （ B） The huge volume of its annual sales. （ C） The service it provides to its customers. （ D） The high value-to-weight ratio of its goods. （ A） Those having a taste or smell component. （ B） Products potentially embarrassing to buy. （ C） Those that require very careful handlin
12、g. （ D） Services involving a personal element. （ A） Those who live in the virtual world. （ B） Those who have to work long hours. （ C） Those who are used to online transactions. （ D） Those who dont mind paying a little more. （ A） The United States. （ B） Massachusetts countryside. （ C） Britain. （ D） N
13、ew England. （ A） Paul Revere single-headily alerted the people that “the British were coming“. （ B） Paul Revere was a solitary rider galloping along in the dark from one farm house to another. （ C） Paul Revere was the only rider helping deliver the message. （ D） Paul Revere was only one of the many
14、riders helping deliver the message. （ A） One of the many riders. （ B） An important organizer. （ C） Promoter of this group effort for freedom. （ D） A church leader. （ A） The courage of one man. （ B） Individualistic heroism. （ C） The town leaders, the military commanders and volunteer groups. （ D） Car
15、eful planning and organization. （ A） 2,000 m. （ B） 2,000 km. （ C） 20,000 m. （ D） 20,000 km. （ A） Climate. （ B） Instinct. （ C） Temperature. （ D） Salinity. （ A） DNA can solve all the mysteries in biology. （ B） The DNA of two groups of green turtles are totally different. （ C） The useless of DNA analys
16、is to biology. （ D） The usefulness of DNA analysis to biology. Section A 26 One of our expectations about education is that it will pay off in terms of upward mobility. Historically , the correlation between education and income has been strong. But in the early 1970s, a contradiction【 C1】 _between
17、education and the economy. Our value of education and our average educational attainment outstripped the capacity of the economy to【 C2】 _the graduates. Experts have argued that this contradiction is at the heart of the problem of public education today. It is not, as business leaders claim, that th
18、e schools are failing to【 C3】_educate students. The real problem is a dearth(缺 乏 )of economic【 C4】_for students who are not continuing on to college. College graduates also are having difficulty finding jobs. Even when they do, the jobs may not be commensurate(相称的 )with their【 C5】 _and expectations.
19、 Part of the problem is that too many young Americans aspire to have professional jobs, making disappointment and frustration【 C6】 _for some. Another part of the problem is the assumption that greater educational attainment guarantees career【 C7】 _. In fact, employers do not routinely reward educati
20、onal attainment:【 C8】 _, they reward it only when they believe it will contribute to the employee s productivity. We should not overlook the fact that there is still a strong correlation between education, occupation , and income. College graduates have a strong advantage over those with less educat
21、ion. Despite the fact that the payoff is neither as large nor as【 C9】_as it once was, we could still argue that all or at least the majority of Americans would【 C10】 _by some degree because higher education can enable them to think more deeply, explore more widely, and enjoy a greater range of exper
22、iences. A)absorb I)inevitable B)advancement J)opportunities C)benefit K)properly D)certain L)rather E)created M)thus F)developed N)timely G)failure O)training H)gain 27 【 C1】 28 【 C2】 29 【 C3】 30 【 C4】 31 【 C5】 32 【 C6】 33 【 C7】 34 【 C8】 35 【 C9】 36 【 C10】 Section B 36 Keep Optimistic and Stay Away
23、from Depression A Cynic, Ambrose Bierce remarked in his “ Devil s Dictionary“ , is “ a blackguard(无赖，恶棍 )whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be“. In the century that has elapsed since Bierce s death, science has caught up with him. Cynicism, in all its guises, really ma
24、y make us see the world more realisticallythough at a high personal cost. B The phenomenon, which psychologists call “ depressive realism“ , was first identified by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson, psychologists at Northwestern and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, respectively, who wer
25、e studying the illusion that people often have of being in control when, in reality, they are not. In 1979, they took two groups of college studentsone depressed, one notand had them estimate how much control they had over a green light that would either turn on or not when they pressed a button. In
26、 reality, there was never a perfect correlation between the action and the event. The light would sometimes turn on when the student pressed the button, and sometimes when he didn t. What varied from student to student was the frequency with which the action corresponded with a result. The researche
27、rs found that the depressed individuals were much better at identifying those instances when they had little control over the outcomes, while the non-depressed students tended to overestimate their degree of influence over the light. C The difference became even more interesting when Alloy and Abram
28、son added money into the experiment. In some cases, the light was linked to losing money. Participants started out with five dollars and gradually lost it, quarter by quarter, as the light didn t respond to their actions. In the other cases, the light signaled financial gain: participants started wi
29、th nothing but received a quarter each time the light went on. At the end, each person in the first situation emerged having lost five dollars, and each in the second having won five dollars. D When the researchers asked the participants how much control they thought they d had throughout the experi
30、ment, those who weren t depressed reported having significantly more control than they actually hadbut only when they won. When they lost, they estimated that they had much less control than was the case. The depressed participants, on the other hand, were far more accurate in their judgments. Depre
31、ssion, Alloy and Abramson concluded, had prevented an unwarranted(毫无根据的 )illusion of control when someone wonand had provided a sense of responsibility when someone lost. In the years since Alloy and Abramson s initial studies, depressive realism has also been shown to arise from general pessimism a
32、nd, yes, from cynicism. E By 1992, Alloy and Abramson had replicated their findings in numerous contexts. Not only were depressed individuals more realistic in their judgments, they argued, but the very illusion of being in control held by those who weren t depressed was likely to protect them from
33、depression. In other words, the rose-colored glow, no matter how unwarranted, helped people to maintain a healthier mental state. Depression bred objectivity. A lack of objectivity led to a healthier, more adaptive, and more resilient(能复原的 )mind-set. F Why would that be the case? As it turns out, th
34、e way we explain the world can have very real effects on our physical and emotional well-beingboth positive and negative. It s a phenomenon that the Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert has called the “psychological immune system“ , a feedback loop between how we think and how we feel. If
35、we think more optimistically, we tend to feel better, which in turn makes us think more optimistically. G The notion that our outlook on life is connected to our well-being is not a new one. In the nineteen-sixties, the University of Connecticut psychologist Julian Rotter proposed that we could view
36、 external events in one of two lights: either we controlled them or they were the result of something in the environment. He found that successful people tended to follow the same patterns. They took credit for successes, and they reasoned away negative events. H A decade later, Bobbi Fibel and W. D
37、aniel Hale, psychologists from the University of Massachusetts, realized that the effect went even further: when you thought you d do well a mind-set that they termed a “generalized expectancy of success“you were more likely to be shielded from negative life events. It didn t matter whether you were
38、 in control: what mattered was your belief that you had good things coming to you. Positive expectations generally lead to positive results. I Most recently, the psychologists Michael Scheier and Charles Carver have taken the insight further still: the positive buffer comes from neither simply contr
39、ol nor expectation alone. Instead, its your general outlook on life, or, as they call it, your “life orientation“. Their Life Orientation Test, or LOT, measures how a person responds to a set of statements that range from “I hardly expect things to go my way“ to “In uncertain times, I usually expect
40、 the best“. Positive responses are associated with generalized success and negative responses are related to depression and helplessness. J In a review of the field, Carver and Scheier have further expanded their initial findings to show that increased optimism, after controlling for other factors,
41、also leads to improved career success, strengthens friendships and marriages, protects against loneliness later in life, lowers the risk of heart disease and mortality(死亡率 )in women, protects against strokes, helps to reduce the need for rehospitalization(重复住院 )following surgery, and improves sleep
42、quality in children. In all cases, optimism serves as a shield, allowing us to see the world in a light that is more helpful to our own mental and physical well-being. K It all comes back, Daniel Gilbert says, to expectations. When we expect to do well, we push on. When we set our sights lower, we b
43、alk at signs of resistance. Depressive realists and cynics set themselves lower goals to begin with and then give up when they find that they are falling short. As everyones favorite pessimist, A. A. Milnes Eeyore, tells Pooh, “We can t all, and some of us don t. That s all there is to it. “ His exp
44、ectations are so low that the effort doesn t seem worth it. The negative view is self-fulfilling: you set lower expectations, do less, achieve less, and experience a worse outcome, which in turn conforms to your initial negative views. L Of course, unwarranted optimism, too, comes with a price. It s
45、 Tigger, the unrelenting(不屈不挠的 )optimist, who finds himself eating thistles, stuck in trees, and otherwise caught in all manner of inopportune situations. When we re overconfident and think we re in control of situations when we re not, we may find ourselves overreaching and persisting in hopeless t
46、asks. It s a fine balance. Set your goals too high, and the effects on health can be just as perilous(危险的，不利的 ). Aspire to an Olympic medal in figure skating when you can barely clear a double Axel, and you re doomed to disappointment. M Still, it seems that, at least as far as the research goes, it
47、 s far healthier to think like Tigger than like Eeyore. 37 Optimism, no matter how unrealistic it is, can improve peoples mental health. 38 Cynicism may actually enable us to have a clearer understanding of the world in a realistic way. 39 Setting unrealistically high goals will put our health in da
48、nger. 40 The way we think of the world can influence our physical and emotional well-being both positively and negatively. 41 According to the researches that have been done so far, it s much healthier to be over-optimistic than to have low expectation and make little effort. 42 It has already been
49、proposed by Julian Rotter in the 1960s that we would view external events either as a result of environment or something under our control. 43 Depressive realists and cynics tend to set lower goals and easily give up. 44 Overconfident people will have to pay for their baseless optimism. 45 Carver and Scheier found that increased optimism can benefit our mental and physical health. 46 In the 1970s, psychologists found that when you thought you d do well, you were less lik
