1、大学英语六级（ 2013年 12月考试改革适用）模拟试卷 76及答案与解析 一、 Part I Writing 1 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay entitled On the Importance of Robots to the Development of Society. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words following the outline given below. Write your essay
2、 on Answer Sheet 1. 1有人说机器人对人类未来的发展很重要 2也有人觉得它们会对社会产生负面影响 3我认为 On the Importance of Robots to the Development of Society Section A （ A） In a zoo. （ B） In a park. （ C） In a pet store. （ D） In a museum. （ A） Lending something to a student. （ B） Asking for some financial aid. （ C） Reading a students ap
3、plication. （ D） Borrowing money for a business. （ A） She spends too much money. （ B） She likes money too much. （ C） She enjoys going out for shopping. （ D） She likes to argue about anything. （ A） He doesnt have time to read. （ B） He has no reading preference. （ C） He prefers non-fiction novels. （ D）
4、 He likes to read a mystery novel. （ A） Her husband was teaching there. （ B） She was born there. （ C） Her child was born there. （ D） She has lived there for two years. （ A） His vacation has been postponed. （ B） He needs to take his medicine on vacation. （ C） He is going to change his allergy medicin
5、e. （ D） His allergy will no longer bother him. （ A） Fill in the application form. （ B） Apply for a different position. （ C） File the paper in the cabinet. （ D） Show the woman the ad in the newspaper. （ A） The woman has lost Davids phone number. （ B） The man wants to install a phone. （ C） David will
6、keep his promise. （ D） David hasnt sent the man his phone number. （ A） The character of the book. （ B） The title of the book. （ C） The subject of the book. （ D） The form of the book. （ A） Beautiful but violent. （ B） Attractive but evil. （ C） Charming and interesting. （ D） Lovely and kind. （ A） He co
7、ntrols other gods with violence. （ B） He doesnt get along well with his wife. （ C） He punishes those who annoy him with lightening. （ D） He tempts other gods to do something evil. （ A） Accompanying the man to university. （ B） Packing for university. （ C） Choosing necessary stuff for university. （ D）
8、 Sending things to the mans university. （ A） Limit the necessary things to take. （ B） Take all his things with him. （ C） Mail all his things to the university. （ D） Rent a truck to carry his things. （ A） Go to the police academy. （ B） Finish packing the stuff. （ C） Go to play tennis. （ D） Help Jessi
9、ca to fill out some forms. （ A） Buy airline ticket for the man. （ B） Send the man check-in and arrival instructions. （ C） Play tennis with the man. （ D） Help the man get the stuff packed. Section B （ A） Because he wanted to refuel the bus. （ B） Because he wanted to have a rest. （ C） Because he wante
10、d to relieve himself. （ D） Because he wanted to have a meal. （ A） The driver. （ B） Ten-year-old Jake. （ C） The police. （ D） The kids on the bus. （ A） He will be charged with a minor driving violation. （ B） He will be put in prison for fifteen days. （ C） He will be fined a large amount of money. （ D）
11、 He will not be allowed to drive a bus in the county. （ A） Because it may cause fire accidents. （ B） Because it may cause air pollution. （ C） Because it may cause people out of breath. （ D） Because it may cause water pollution. （ A） Because they burn very fast. （ B） Because they have water inside. （
12、 C） Because people tend to burn them at the same time. （ D） Because people dont burn them thoroughly. （ A） Burning them completely. （ B） Keeping them where they are. （ C） Changing them into fertilizer. （ D） Using them to cover lawns. （ A） A fierce competition. （ B） The naval competition between Engl
13、and and the Netherlands. （ C） Things that were not good to hear. （ D） American peoples hatred for the Dutch people. （ A） It means you are in another country. （ B） It means you are in a bad mood. （ C） It means you have made a mistake. （ D） It means you have some trouble to handle. （ A） Because they c
14、ame to America from the Netherlands. （ B） Because they spoke Dutch. （ C） Because Deutsch sounded like Dutch. （ D） Because Deutsch was the full spelling of Dutch. （ A） The old Dutch expressions had the same meaning as before. （ B） One person will pay the whole bill in a Dutch treat. （ C） The Dutch li
15、ve only in the state of Pennsylvania. （ D） The Dutch parents are very strict with their kids. Section C 26 New York is the most populous(人口多的 )city in the United States, in a metropolitan area that ranks among the worlds most-populous urban areas. It is a leading global city,【 B1】 _a powerful influe
16、nce over worldwide commerce, finance, culture and entertainment. The city is also an important center for international【 B2】_, hosting the United Nations headquarters. Located on the Atlantic coast of the Northeastern United States, the city【 B3】 _five distinct areas. New York is largely unique amon
17、g American cities for its high use of mass【 B4】 _, and the overall density and diversity of its population. The city is sometimes【 B5】 _“The City That Never Sleeps“ due to its extensive 24-hour subway system and constant traffic and people. Founded as a commercial trading post by the Dutch in 1624,
18、it【 B6】 _the Capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, and has been the nations largest city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty【 B7】 _millions of immigrants as they came to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Wall Street has been a【 B8】_global financial center since World War
19、II. Today, the city has many renowned(著名的 )landmarks and【 B9】 _that are world famous. The city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world, including the Empire State Building and the twin towers of the former World Trade Center. New York is the【 B10】_of many cultural movements in
20、 literature and visual art, abstract expressionism in painting, and hip hop, disco, music,etc. 27 【 B1】 28 【 B2】 29 【 B3】 30 【 B4】 31 【 B5】 32 【 B6】 33 【 B7】 34 【 B8】 35 【 B9】 36 【 B10】 Section A 36 A day after the mobile phone celebrated its 40th birthday, Facebook has produced something that it ho
21、pes to make certain of the devices even more useful. On April 4th the giant social network【 C1】 _Home, a new software that is designed to give it more prominence on mobile phones powered by Android, an operating system developed by Google. This matters because more and more folk are now accessing so
22、cial networks from mobile devices rather than from desktop computers and because mobile advertising【 C2】 _are growing fast, although from a low base. Without a robust mobile【 C3】 _, Facebook could see some of its users attracted by rivals born in the mobile era. And it could miss out on a【 C4】 _mass
23、ive source of new revenue. There had been【 C5】 _that Facebook was working on a phone of its own, or at least on a mobile operating system to rival Android or Apples iOS. But setting foot in hardware at this stage of its development would be a huge risk for Facebook and developing a rival operating s
24、ystem would risk【 C6】 _Apple and Google, whose mobile platforms have helped power its advertising growth. EMarketer, a research firm,【 C7】 _Facebook is on track to win 11% of the $13. 6 billion likely to be spent around the world on mobile ads this year. Home, which is a group of Facebook apps, avoi
25、ds both pitfalls. Among other things, it【 C8】 _a phones Home screen(and lock screen)to Facebooks Newsfeed, allowing people to get updates on what their friends are doing without having to launch a【 C9】_app each time they want news. A phone using Home will also notify you when your friends are doing
26、something new, as well as alerting you to new data from other apps. Another feature is a tool called “Chat Heads“ that【 C10】 _Facebooks message system with a phones regular SMS message offering. This means messages pop up on the home screen along with the senders profile picture, which is enclosed i
27、n a small circle. A)alienating I)potentially B)assumption J)presence C)attendance K)reckons D)combines L)revenues E)converts M)speculation F)dedicated N)uncovered G)deliberate O)unveiled H)equivalently 37 【 C1】 38 【 C2】 39 【 C3】 40 【 C4】 41 【 C5】 42 【 C6】 43 【 C7】 44 【 C8】 45 【 C9】 46 【 C10】 Section
28、 B 46 Why Cant American Students Compete? Twice as many students in Singapore are proficient in math as in the United States. A“We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time,“ President Obama said in his State of the Union address this year. “We need to out-innovate, out-e
29、ducate, and out-build the rest of the world. “ Yet despite the economic crisis facing the country, the U. S. educational system remains frozen in place, unable to adapt to contemporary global realities. BAs all schoolchildren know, water freezes to solid, barren, cracked ice at 32 degrees Fahrenheit
30、(华氏温度 ). So maybe it is more than a mere coincidence that 32 percent of U. S. public and private-school students in the class of 2011 are deemed proficient in mathematics, placing the United States 32nd among the 65 nations that participated in the latest international tests administered by the Orga
31、nization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD). The United States ranks between Portugal and Italy and far behind South Korea, Finland, Canada and the Netherlands. CWe became aware of the seriousness of the problem after we equated, with the help of colleagues, the test scores of the class
32、of 2011 on the latest international test when this class was in 10th grade, with its prior eighth-grade scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP), an official U. S. test that both assesses performance of U. S. students and sets the standard for “proficiency“. DLinking these tes
33、ts also allowed us to compare the performance of students in each state with that of students in other countries. The results are scary. Even in Massachusetts, with its famous collection of public and private schools, students reach only the level attained by students in the entire nations of Canada
34、, Japan, and Switzerland. Massachusetts, the only U. S. state with a majority of students(51 percent)above the proficiency mark, trails well behind students in South Korea and Finland. EThe percentage proficient in the state of New York(30 percent)is equivalent to that achieved by students in debt-r
35、idden Portugal and Spain. California, the home of highly skilled Silicon Valley, has a math proficiency rate of 24 percent, the same as bankrupt Greece and just a notch(等级 )above struggling Russia. FPresident Obama, to his credit, has highlighted the problem repeatedly. But too many state education
36、officials have done their best to obfuscate(使模糊 )the low performance of their students. Under the educational accountability rules set down by the federal law No Child Left Behind , each state may set its own proficiency standard, and most have set their standards well below the world-class level. A
37、s a result, most state proficiency reports grossly increase the percentage of students who are proficient, if we account for the fact that our students need to compete not just with others from the same state but also with those across the globe. GWhen not obfuscating the problem, apologists explain
38、 away the results with misleading arguments. Some point to the countrys large immigrant and disadvantaged populations, which, to be sure, do pose difficult educational challenges. Proficiency rates among African-Americans and Hispanics are very low(11 and 15 percent, respectively). But if one compar
39、es only the white students in the U. S. with all students in other countries, the U. S. still falls short: only 42 percent are proficient, which would place them at 17th in the world compared with all of the students in other nations. The only positive sign is the majority of Asian students in the U
40、nited States(52 percent)who score at or above the proficiency level. HWhen our results were first released, one school-board member in Loudoun County, a wealthy suburb of Washington D. C. , explained away the results: “In many countries, poor-performing children are filtered out of high school, wher
41、eas in the U. S. , we test all our students, both great and not so great. So the comparison is not on a level playing field.“ That might have been true some decades ago when only a few countries followed the United States emphasis on universal education and thus left many students out of school and
42、unavailable for testing. But today the U. S. actually graduates fewer students from high school than the average developed countries, completely eliminating any claim that the U. S. is testing a broader range of the youth population. ISome also take false comfort in the belief that it takes only a l
43、imited number of high-flying students to fill the jobs at Google, Facebook, IBM, and all the other businesses and professions that need highly skilled talent. The United States is still great at producing the advanced students needed to power economic growth. JStill others say the low math scores ar
44、e offset by a better record in reading. Admittedly the proficiency rate in only 10 countries is significantly higher than in the U. S. If not the world leader, the United States record is at least better than average. Nonetheless, the set of skills most needed for sustained growth in economic produc
45、tivity and the skills in shortest supply today are those rooted in math competencies. Our future scientists and engineers the engine of U. S. innovation come from those with high math skills. While Silicon Valley could possibly be fueled by importing skilled workers from abroad, we should not contin
46、ue to count on this in todays globalized world. Even if we could, it is hardly fair to our own young people to count them out of the countrys best jobs. KAccording to our best calculations, the U. S. could enjoy a remarkable increase in its annual per capita GDP growth by enhancing the math proficie
47、ncy of its students. Increasing the percentage of proficient students to the levels attained in Canada and South Korea would increase the annual U. S. growth rate by 0. 9 percentage points and 1. 3 percentage points, respectively. LWhen translated into dollar terms according to the historical patter
48、ns, we see very different futures for the United States, depending on whether or not our schools are improved. If one calculates increases in national income from projections over an 80-year period(providing for a 20-year delay before any school reform is completed and newly proficient students begi
49、n their working careers), the present value of gains amounts to some $75 trillion for reaching the performance levels of Canada. These additions can be compared with our current GDP of $15 trillion or the $1 trillion spent to stimulate the economy out of recession. MIt is easy for political leaders to put off considerations of effective school reform. The economic benefits from reform would not be felt immediately, as it takes
