1、2015 年 6 月大学英语六级真题试卷（一）（无答案）一、Part I Writing1 For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the saying “ Knowledge is a treasure, but practice is the key to it. “ You can give an example or two to illustrate your point of view. You should write at least 150 words but no m
2、ore than 200 words.Section A（A）Prepare for his exams.（B） Catch up on his work.（C） Attend the concert.（D）Go on a vacation.（A）Three crew members were involved in the incident.（B） None of the hijackers carried any deadly weapons.（C） The plane had been scheduled to fly to Japan.（D）None of the passengers
3、 were injured or killed.（A）An article about the election.（B） A tedious job to be done.（C） An election campaign.（D）A fascinating topic.（A）The restaurant was not up to the speakers expectations.（B） The restaurant places many ads in popular magazines.（C） The critic thought highly of the Chinese restaur
4、ant.（D）Chinatown has got the best restaurants in the city.（A）He is going to visit his mother in the hospital.（B） He is going to take on a new job next week.（C） He has many things to deal with right now.（D）He behaves in a way nobody understands.（A）A large number of students refused to vote last night
5、.（B） At least twenty students are needed to vote on an issue.（C） Major campus issues had to be discussed at the meeting.（D）More students have to appear to make their voice heard.（A）The woman can hardly tell what she likes.（B） The speakers like watching TV very much.（C） The speakers have nothing to d
6、o but watch TV.（D）The man seldom watched TV before retirement.（A）The woman should have registered earlier.（B） He will help the woman solve the problem.（C） He finds it hard to agree with what the woman says.（D）The woman will be able to attend the classes she wants.（A）Persuade the man to join her comp
7、any.（B） Employ the most up-to-date technology.（C） Export bikes to foreign markets.（D）Expand their domestic business。（A）The state subsidizes small and medium enterprises.（B） The government has control over bicycle imports.（C） They can compete with the best domestic manufacturers.（D）They have a cost a
8、dvantage and can charge higher prices.（A）Extra costs might eat up their profits abroad.（B） More workers will be needed to do packaging.（C） They might lose to foreign bike manufacturers.（D）It is very difficult to find suitable local agents.（A）Report to the management.（B） Attract foreign investments.（
9、C） Conduct a feasibility study.（D）Consult financial experts.（A）Coal burnt daily for the comfort of our homes.（B） Anything that can be used to produce power.（C） Fuel refined from oil extracted from underground.（D）Electricity that keeps all kinds of machines running.（A）Oil will soon be replaced by alt
10、ernative energy sources.（B） Oil reserves in the world will be exhausted in a decade.（C） Oil consumption has given rise to many global problems.（D）Oil production will begin to decline worldwide by 2025.（A）Minimize the use of fossil fuels.（B） Start developing alternative fuels.（C） Find the real cause
11、for global warming.（D）Take steps to reduce the greenhouse effect.Section B（A）The ability to predict fashion trends.（B） A refined taste for artistic works.（C） Years of practical experience.（D）Strict professional training.（A）Promoting all kinds of American hand-made specialties.（B） Strengthening coope
12、ration with foreign governments.（C） Conducting trade in art works with dealers overseas.（D）Purchasing handicrafts from all over the world.（A）She has access to fashionable things.（B） She is doing what she enjoys doing.（C） She can enjoy life on a modest salary.（D）She is free to do whatever she wants.（
13、A）Join in neighborhood patrols.（B） Get involved in his community.（C） Voice his complaints to the city council.（D）Make suggestions to the local authorities.（A）Deterioration in the quality of life.（B） Increase of police patrols at night.（C） Renovation of the vacant buildings.（D）Violation of community
14、regulations.（A）They may take a long time to solve.（B） They need assistance from the city.（C） They have to be dealt with one by one.（D）They are too big for individual efforts.（A）He had got some groceries at a big discount.（B） He had read a funny poster near his seat.（C） He had done a small deed of ki
15、ndness.（D）He had caught the bus just in time.（A）Childhood and healthy growth.（B） Pressure and heart disease.（C） Family life and health.（D）Stress and depression.（A）It experienced a series of misfortunes.（B） It was in the process of reorganization.（C） His mother died of a sudden heart attack.（D）His wi
16、fe left him because of his bad temper.（A）They would give him a triple bypass surgery.（B） They could remove the block in his artery.（C） They could do nothing to help him.（D）They would try hard to save his life.Section C26 When most people think of the word “education,“ they think of a pupil as a sort
17、 of animate sausage casing. Into this empty casing, the teachers【B1】_stuff “education. “But genuine education, as Socrates knew more than two thousand years ago, is not【B2 】_the stuffings of information into a person, but rather eliciting knowledge from him: it is the【B3】_of what is in the mind.“ Th
18、e most important part of education,“ once wrote William Ernest Hocking, the【B4】_Harvard philosopher, “is this instruction of a man in what he has inside of him. “And, as Edith Hamilton has reminded us, Socrates never said, “I know, learn from me. “ He said, rather, “Look into your own selves and fin
19、d the【B5】_of truth that God has put into every heart, and that only you can kindle (点燃) to a【B6 】_. “In a dialogue, Socrates takes an ignorant slave boy, without a day of【B7】_, and proves to the amazed observers that the boy really “ knows“ geometrybecause the principles of geometry are already in h
20、is mind, waiting to be called out.So many of the discussions and【B8】_about the content of education are useless and inconclusive because they【B9】_what should “go into“ the student rather than with what should be taken out, and how this can best be done.The college student who once said to me, after
21、a lecture, “ I spend so much time studying that I dont have a chance to learn anything,“ was clearly expressing his【B10】_with the sausage-casing view of education.27 【B1 】28 【B2 】29 【B3 】30 【B4 】31 【B5 】32 【B6 】33 【B7 】34 【B8 】35 【B9 】36 【B10 】Section A36 Innovation, the elixir (灵丹妙药) of progress, h
22、as always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution hand weavers were【C1】_aside by the mechanical loom. Over the past 30 years the digital revolution has【C2】_many of the mid-skill jobs that supported 20th-century middle-class life. Typists, ticket agents, bank tellers and many production-
23、line jobs have been dispensed with, just as the weavers were.For those who believe that technological progress has made the world a better place, such disruption is a natural part of rising【C3】_. Although innovation kills some jobs, it creates new and better ones, as a more【C4】_society becomes riche
24、r and its wealthier inhabitants demand more goods and services. A hundred years ago one in three American workers was【C5】_on a farm. Today less than 2% of them produce far more food. The millions freed from the land were not rendered【C6】_, but found better-paid work as the economy grew more sophisti
25、cated. Today the pool of secretaries has【C7】_, but there are ever more computer programmers and web designers.Optimism remains the right starting-point, but for workers the dislocating effects of technology may make themselves evident faster than its【C8】_. Even if new jobs and wonderful products eme
26、rge, in the short term income gaps will widen, causing huge social dislocation and perhaps even changing politics. Technologys【C9】_will feel like a tornado (旋风), hitting the rich world first, but【C10】_sweeping through poorer countries too. No government is prepared for it.A) benefits I) prosperityB)
27、 displaced J) responsiveC) employed K) rhythmD) eventually L) sentimentsE) impact M) shrunkF) jobless N) sweptG) primarily O) withdrawn H) productive37 【C1 】38 【C2 】39 【C3 】40 【C4 】41 【C5 】42 【C6 】43 【C7 】44 【C8 】45 【C9 】46 【C10 】Section B46 Why the Mona Lisa Stands OutAHave you ever fallen for a no
28、vel and been amazed not to find it on lists of great books? Or walked around a sculpture renowned as a classic, struggling to see what the fuss is about? If so, youve probably pondered the question a psychologist, James Cutting, asked himself: how does a work of art come to be considered great?BThe
29、intuitive answer is that some works of art are just great: of intrinsically superior quality. The paintings that win prime spots in galleries, get taught in classes and reproduced in books are the ones that have proved their artistic value over time. If you cant see theyre superior, thats your probl
30、em. Its an intimidatingly neat explanation. But some social scientists have been asking awkward questions of it, raising the possibility that artistic canons (名作目录) are little more than fossilised historical accidents.CCutting, a professor at Cornell University, wondered if a psychological mechanism
31、 known as the “mere-exposure effect “played a role in deciding which paintings rise to the top of the cultural league. Cutting designed an experiment to test his hunch (直觉). Over a lecture course he regularly showed undergraduates works of impressionism for two seconds at a time. Some of the paintin
32、gs were canonical, included in art-history books. Others were lesser known but of comparable quality. These were exposed four times as often. Afterwards, the students preferred them to the canonical works, while a control group of students liked the canonical ones best. Cuttings students had grown t
33、o like those paintings more simply because they had seen them more. DCutting believes his experiment offers a clue as to how canons are formed. He points out that the most reproduced works of impressionism today tend to have been bought by five or six wealthy and influential collectors in the late 1
34、9th century. The preferences of these men bestowed (给予) prestige on certain works, which made the works more likely to be hung in galleries and printed in collections. The fame passed down the years, gaining momentum from mere exposure as it did so. The more people were exposed to, the more they lik
35、ed it, and the more they liked it, the more it appeared in books, on posters and in big exhibitions. Meanwhile, academics and critics created sophisticated justifications for its preeminence (卓越) . After all, its not just the masses who tend to rate what they see more often more highly. As contempor
36、ary artists like Warhol and Damien Hirst have grasped, critics praise is deeply entwined (交织)with publicity. “Scholars“ , Cutting argues,“are no different from the public in the effects of mere exposure. “EThe process described by Cutting evokes a principle that the sociologist Duncan Watts calls “c
37、umulative advantage“ : once a thing becomes popular, it will tend to become more popular still. A few years ago, Watts, who is employed by Microsoft to study the dynamics of social networks, had a similar experience to Cuttings in another Paris museum. After queuing to see the “ Mona Lisa“ in its cl
38、imate-controlled bulletproof box at the Louvre, he came away puzzled: why was it considered so superior to the three other Leonardos in the previous chamber, to which nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention?FWhen Watts looked into the history of “the greatest painting of all time“ , he di
39、scovered that, for most of its life, the “Mona Lisa“ remained in relative obscurity. In the 1850s, Leonardo da Vinci was considered no match for giants of Renaissance art like Titian and Raphael, whose works were worth almost ten times as much as the “ Mona Lisa“. It was only in the 20th century tha
40、t Leonardos portrait of his patrons wife rocketed to the number-one spot. What propelled it there wasnt a scholarly re-evaluation, but a theft.GIn 1911 a maintenance worker at the Louvre walked out of the museum with the “Mona Lisa“ hidden under his smock (工作服). Parisians were shocked at the theft o
41、f a painting to which, until then, they had paid little attention. When the museum reopened, people queued to see the gap where the “ Mona Lisa“ had once hung in a way they had never done for the painting itself. From then on, the “ Mona Lisa“ came to represent Western culture itself.HAlthough many
42、have tried, it does seem improbable that the paintings unique status can be attributed entirely to the quality of its brushstrokes. It has been said that the subjects eyes follow the viewer around the room. But as the paintings biographer, Donald Sassoon, dryly notes, “In reality the effect can be o
43、btained from any portrait. “ Duncan Watts proposes that the “ Mona Lisa“ is merely an extreme example of a general rule. Paintings, poems and pop songs are buoyed (使浮起 ) or sunk by random events or preferences that turn into waves of influence, passing down the generations.I“Saying that cultural obj
44、ects have value,“ Brian Eno once wrote,“is like saying that telephones have conversations. “ Nearly all the cultural objects we consume arrive wrapped in inherited opinion: our preferences are always, to some extent, someone elses. Visitors to the “ Mona Lisa“ know they are about to visit the greate
45、st work of art ever and come away appropriately impressedor let down. An audience at a performance of “Hamlet“ know it is regarded as a work of genius, so that is what they mostly see. Watts even calls the preeminence of Shakespeare a “ historical accident“.JAlthough the rigid high-low distinction f
46、ell apart in the 1960s,we still use culture as a badge of identity. Todays fashion for eclecticism (折衷主义)“I love Bach, Abba and Jay Z“is, Shamus Khan, a Columbia University psychologist, argues, a new way for the middle class to distinguish themselves from what they perceive to be the narrow tastes
47、of those beneath them in the social hierarchy.KThe intrinsic quality of a work of art is starting to seem like its least important attribute. But perhaps its more significant than our social scientists allow. First of all, a work needs a certain quality to be eligible to be swept to the top of the p
48、ile. The “ Mona Lisa“ may not be a worthy world champion, but it was in the Louvre in the first place, and not by accident. Secondly, some stuff is simply better than other stuff. Read “ Hamlet“ after reading even the greatest of Shakespeares contemporaries, and the difference may strike you as unar
49、guable.LA study in the British Journal of Aesthetics suggests that the exposure effect doesnt work the same way on everything, and points to a different conclusion about how canons are formed. The social scientists are right to say that we should be a little sceptical of greatness, and that we should always look in the next room. Great art and mediocrity (平庸) can get confused, even by experts. But thats why we need to see, and re
