大学英语六级考试预测试题二
Part I Writing （30 minutes）
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on inspiration and action by referring to the remark “We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration.”You can cite examples to illustrate your point and then explain what you will do to develop your inspiration and how you can make use of your inspiration. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
Part II Listening Comprehension （30 minutes）
Section A
Directions: In this section, you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation, you will hear some questions. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A）, B）, C）and D）. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.
Conversation One
Questions 1 to 4 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
1．A) Best alternatives available for choosing a place to spend holidays.
B) What incentives travel agents can get from business partners.
C) The fierce competition among hotels, restaurants, and services.
D) Best strategies for travel agents' clients to bargain over prices.
2．A) 10 percent of commissions from its partners.
B) 15 percent of the commissions.
C) About 10 percent of his total expense.
D) More than 15 percent of the total expense.
3．A) It makes sense somewhat.
B) It is unfair for the clients.
C) It is too much to put up with.
D) It is a secret for travel agents.
4．A) Bargains.
B) Gift cards.
D) Water sports.
D) Fantastic books.
5．A) There aren't enough cabinets.
B) There is too much noise.
C) Office supplies are taking up space.
D) Some teaching assistants don't have desks.
6．A) To chat with him socially.
B) To get help with the course.
C) To hand in their assignments.
D) To practise giving interviews.
7．A) Give Jack a different office.
B) Complain to the department head.
C) Move the supplies to the storage room.
D) Try to get a room to use for meetings.
8．A) They'd have to get permission.
B) Jack wouldn't like it.
C) She thinks it might work.
D) Other assistants should be consulted.
Section B
Directions: In this section, you will hear two passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.
Passage One
Questions 9 to 11 are based on the passage you have just heard.
9．A) Because of its shape.
B) Because of its skin.
C) Because of its size.
D) Because of its behavior.
10．A) How sea animals manage to exist.
B) How large sea animals can be.
C) How frightening the squid is.
D) How little is known about the sea.
11．A) Why it is difficult to use aerial photographs in research.
B) Why oceanic research is so limited.
C) How oceanic research has helped land research.
D) How fossil remains are obtained from deep sea.
Passage Two
Questions 12 to 15 are based on the passage you have just heard.
12．A) To review what students know about volcanic activity.
B) To demonstrate the use of a new measurement device.
C) To explain the answer to an examination question.
D) To provide background for the next reading assignment.
13．A) They occur at regular intervals.
B) They can withstand great heat.
C) They travel through the Earth's interior.
D) They can record the Earth's internal temperature.
14．A) When the Earth was formed.
B) The composition of the Earth's interior.
C) Why molten rock is hot.
D) How often a volcano is likely to erupt.
15．A) How deep they are.
B) Where earthquakes form.
C) How hot they are.
D) What purpose they serve.
Section C
Directions: In this section, you will hear recordings of lectures or talks followed by some questions. The recordings will be played only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A）, B）, C）and D）. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.
Now listen to the following recording and answer questions 16 to 19.
16．A) Political values of a people.
B) People's religious beliefs.
C) Culture differences.
D) Politics, economics and war.
17．A) A soldier's survival from wars.
B) The shooting at a number of painters.
C) Soldiers shooting a group of simple people.
D) Francisco Goya's interesting experiences in Spain.
18．A) The absence of human and animal images.
B) The description of people and stories from the Bible.
C) The absence of flowers and geometric forms.
D) The buildings decorated with images of landscape.
19．A) Modern artists are more acceptable than traditional artists.
B) Traditional art and modern art have their own characteristics.
C) Traditional culture can only be preserved through internationalization.
D) Art reflects social changes that take place as different cultures influence one another.
Now listen to the following recording and answer questions 20 to 22.
20．A) Because they are unsatisfied with their work.
B) Because they need to take care of their children.
C) Because they are in companies with loose management.
D) Because they don't take their work seriously.
21．A) Male colleagues in their 30s.
C) Younger colleagues in their 20s.
B) Managers of the company.
D) Older colleagues in their 50s.
22．A) Fairness and equality were not paid due attention to.
B) Employees without children could have their voice better heard.
C) Managers had a good knowledge of the relevant laws.
D) Women could be in an unfavorable position in career development.
Now listen to the following recording and answer questions 23 to 25.
23．A) The excessive emission of automobile exhausts.
B) The unrestrained field burning during the dry season.
C) The overuse of coal in industry and city life.
D) The large amounts of flowing dust in various construction sites.
24．A) The acute shortage of timber for fuel and furniture.
B) The urgent need for more construction land for roads and houses.
C) The objective requirements of developing paper-making industry.
D) The conversion of forest for commercial agriculture.
25．A) Do nothing but wait for the monsoon season to drive the haze away.
B) Add rain-making and forest fire runs to alleviate the particles of dust.
C) Ask their neighboring countries to stop the forest fires and make a boundary fire line.
D) Hand out health pamphlets and teach patients how to wear the mask properly.
Part III Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)
Section A
Directions:In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.
Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.
Culture is the sum total of all the traditions, customs, beliefs, and ways of life of a given group of human beings. In this 26 , every group has a culture, however savage, undeveloped, or uncivilized it may seem to us.
To the professional anthropologist(人类学家), there is no intrinsic 27 of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist there is no intrinsic hierarchy(等级制度) among languages.
People once thought of the languages of backward groups as 28 and undeveloped forms of speech, consisting largely of grunts and groans. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of “backward”languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex, delicate, and ingenious pieces of machinery for the 29 of ideas. They fall behind our Western languages not in their sound patterns or 30 structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which 31 the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this department, however, two things are to be noted：1. All languages seem to 32 the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. 2. The objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in “backward”languages, while different from ours, are often surprisingly 33 and complicated.
This study of language, in turn，34 a new light upon the claim of the anthropologists that all cultures are to be viewed 35, and without ideas of rank or hierarchy.
A) savage
B) superiority
C) conceive
D) transfer
E) identification
F) grammatical
G) reflect
H) reveals
I) numerous
J) independently
K) exclusive
L) casts
M) sense
N) confidentially
O) possess
Section B
Directions:In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.
What If You Could Learn Everything
A）Imagine every student has a tireless personal tutor, an artificially intelligent and inexhaustible companion that knows everything, knows the student, and helps her learn what she needs to know. “‘You guys sound like you're from the future,'”Jose Ferreira, the CEO of the education technology startup Knewton, says. “That's the most common reaction we get from others in the industry.”
B）Several million data points generated daily by each of 1 million students from elementary school through college, using Knewton's “adaptive learning”technology to study math, reading, and other fundamentals. Adaptive learning is an increasingly popular catchphrase denoting educational software that customizes its presentation of material from moment to moment based on the user's input. It's being hailed as a “revolution”by both venture capitalists and big, established education companies.”
C）Ferreira started Knewton in 2008 with more or less the same vision he believes in today: to enable digital technology to transform learning for everyone and to build the company that dominates that transformation. “Look at what other industries the Internet has transformed,”he once said. “It laid waste to media and is rebuilding it. But for whatever reason, people don't see it with education. It is blindingly obvious to me that it will happen with education. All the content behind education is going to move online in the next 10 years. It's a great shift. And that is what Knewton is going to power.”
D）The recommendation engine is a core technology of the Internet, and probably one you encounter every day. Google uses recommendations: other people who entered these search terms clicked on this page, so we'll show it to you first. Amazon uses them: other people who bought this book also bought that book. The more you use one of these websites, the more it knows about you—not just about your current behavior, but about all the other searches and clicks you've done. In theory, as you spend more time with a site its recommendations will become more personalized even as they also draw on everyone else's interactions within the platform.
E）Knewton, at base, is a recommendation engine but for learning. Rather than the set of all Web pages or all movies, the learning data set is, more or less, the universe of all facts. For example, a single piece of data in the engine might be the math fact that a Pythagorean triangle has sides in the ratio 3-4-5, and you can multiply those numbers by any whole number to get a new set of side lengths for this type of triangle. Another might be the function of “adversatives”such as “but,”“however,”or “on the other hand”in changing the meaning of an English sentence.
F）Ferreira calls these facts “atomic concepts,”meaning that they're indivisible into smaller concepts—he clearly likes the physics reference.When a textbook publisher like Pearson loads its curriculum into Knewton's platform, each piece of content—it could be a video, a test question, or a paragraph of text—is tagged with the appropriate concept or concepts.
G）Let's say your school bought the Knewton-powered MyMathLab online system, using the specific curriculum, say，Lial's Basic College Mathematics 8e. When a student logs on to the system, she first takes a simple placement test or pretest from the book, which has been tagged with the relevant “atomic concepts.”As a student reads the text or watches the video and answers the questions，Knewton's system is “reading”the student as well—timing every second on task, tabulating (把…列成表格) every keystroke, and constructing a profile of learning style: hesitant or confident? Guessing blindly or taking her time?
H）Based on the student's answers, and what she did before getting the answer，“we can tell you to the percentile, for each concept: how fast they learned it, how well they know it, how long they'll retain it, and how likely they are to learn other similar concepts that well,”says Ferreira. By watching as a student interacts with it, the platform deduces.
I）The platform forms a personalized study plan based on that information and decides what the student should work on next, feeding the student the appropriate new pieces of content and continuously checking the progress. A dashboard shows the student how many “mastery points”have been achieved and what to do next. Teachers, likewise, can see exactly which concepts the student is struggling with, and not only whether the homework problems have been done but also how many times each problem was attempted, how many hints were needed, and whether the student looked at the page or opened up the video with the relevant explanation. The more people use the system, the better it gets; and the more you use it, the better it gets for you.
J）In a traditional class, a teacher moves a group of students through a predetermined sequence of material at a single pace. Reactions are delayed—you don't get homework or pop quizzes back for a day or two. Some students are bored; some are confused. You can miss a key idea, fall behind, and never catch up. Software-enabled adaptive learning flips all of this on its head. Students can move at their own speed. They can get hints and instant feedback. Teachers, meanwhile, can spend class time targeting their help to individuals or small groups based on need.
K）Ferreira is able to work with competitors like Pearson and Wiley because his software can power anybody's educational content, the same way Amazon Web Services provides the servers for any website to be hosted in the cloud. But before it had any content partners, as a proof of concept，Knewton built its own remedial college math course using its software platform. Math Readiness was adopted starting in the summer of 2011 at Arizona State University; the University of Nevada，Las Vegas; and the University of Alabama.
L）At ASU, students worked through the computer material in Knewton's Math Readiness program on their own or in small groups, with instructors spending face-to-face time working on problem solving, critical thinking, and troubleshooting specific concepts. After two semesters of use, course withdrawal rates dropped by 56 percent and pass rates went from 64 percent to 75 percent. At Alabama, pass rates rose from 70 percent to 87 percent, and at UNLV, where entering students were given the chance to take the course online in the summer before they started college, the percentage who then qualified for college algebra went from 30 percent to 41 percent.
M）“Before this，I worked on the assumption that all students were at the same place. Now, because they progress at different rates，I meet them where they are,”Irene Bloom, a math lecturer at ASU, told an education blog about the pilot program. “I have so much more information about what my students do (or don't do) outside of class. I can see where they are stuck, how fast they are progressing, and how much time and effort they are putting into learning mathematics.”
N）The Knewton system uses its analytics to keep students motivated. If it notices that you seem to have a confidence problem, because you too often blow questions that should be easy based on previous results, it will start you off with a few questions you're likely to get right. If you're stuck, choosing the wrong answer again and again, it will throw out broader and broader hints before just showing you the right answer. It knows when to drill you on multiplication and when to give you a fun animated video to watch.
O）It turns out that personalizing in this way can speed up learning. In the first year，45 percent of ASU students in a 14-week course learned the material four weeks ahead of schedule. Better data is giving more options to the student who didn't succeed as well. Students may not yet know enough to pass the final exam, but a close read of their answers shows that they are making slow and steady progress. “In the past, those students would have dropped out of school,”he says. In fact, the vast majority of students placed into remedial math at the nation's community colleges never get their degrees. “Instead, we were able to say, give them another semester and they'll get it. Their whole life has now changed.”
36．Under the help of the platform, a teacher knows thoroughly about a certain student's study and can see it in detail.
37．The result of the Knewton system is that learning can be stimulated by customizing a student's learning style.
38．Knewton was founded on the belief that it would lead the industry which helps everyone learn by digital techniques.
39．Theoretically speaking, the more a person uses a site, the more individualized recommendations the site can give.
40．Adaptive learning casts away the single-paced traditional teaching schedule and help students personalize their study pace.
41．According to Ferreira, some facts are too small to be divided into smaller concepts.
42．When students are asked to do a placement test or a pretest，Knewton's sysem will analyze them and evaluate their study.
43．The Knewton system can analyze students well and thus know how to push them forward.
44．Before beginning their study in UNLV, more than 40% of students reached the necessary standard of college algebra by using Knewton's system.
45．The novelty of adaptive learning educational software lies in that the materials it presents to users vary according to their input.
Section C
Directions:There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A) ，B) ，C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.
Passage One
Questions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.
Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment more widely. But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm? Should we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centers of production and work?
The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.
Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they lived.
Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial times, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and the family to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm today, and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes.
It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded—a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives.
All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the utopian goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs.
46．According to the author, the universal employment has______.
A) turned out not to be the best form of jobs
B) created an alternative form of jobs
C) built the foundation of an economic leap
D) failed to produce job opportunities for most people
47．Modern forms of transportation have greatly encouraged______.
A) the phenomenon of deprivation of employees' leisure time
B) the disconnection between people's work and their family life
C) the commutation between the working places and employees' homes
D) people's desire to work far away from where they were born
48．It can be inferred from the passage that______.
A) women could have been more productive than men in a proper job system
B) work in pre-industrial times has been distributed evenly between men and women
C) paid employment has aroused serious social problems in current society
D) women have been treated unfairly under the employment system of industrial age
49．What is the problem for the young under the employment system?
A) They are less likely to compete with the aged.
B) They are much worried about the generation gap.
C) They are more likely to suffer from unemployment.
D) Their academic performances seem useless for job hunting.
50．What is the possible change of job forms?
A) Full-time employment will not be the dominant form of work.
B) Most people can work at home and for themselves.
C) The differences between men and women will disappear.
D) All people get equal job opportunities and equal pay.
Passage Two
Questions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.
Blood vessels running all through the lungs carry blood to each air sac (囊), or alveolus(肺泡), and then back again to the heart. Only the thin wall of the air sac and the thin wall of a capillary (毛细血管) are between the air and the blood. So oxygen easily diffuses from the air sacs through the walls into the blood, while carbon dioxide easily diffuses from the blood through the walls into the air sacs.
When blood is sent to the lungs by the heart, it has come back from the cells in the rest of the body. So the blood that goes into the wall of an air sac contains much dissolved carbon dioxide but very little oxygen. At the same time, the air that goes into the air sac contains much oxygen but very little carbon dioxide. You have learned that dissolved materials always diffuse from where there is more of them to where there is less. Oxygen from the air dissolves in the moisture on the lining of the air sac and diffuses through the lining into the blood. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide diffuses from the blood into the air sac. The blood then flows from the lungs back to the heart, which sends it out to all other parts of the body.
Soon after air goes into an air sac, it gives up some of its oxygen and takes in some carbon dioxide from the blood. To keep diffusion going as it should, this carbon dioxide must be gotten rid of. Breathing, which is caused by movements of the chest, forces the used air out of the air sacs in your lungs and brings in fresh air. The breathing muscles are controlled automatically so that you breathe at the proper rate to keep your air sacs supplied with fresh air. Ordinarily, you breathe about twenty-two times a minute. Of course, you breathe faster when you are exercising and slower when you are resting. Fresh air is brought into your lungs when you breathe in, or inhale(吸入), while used air is forced out of your lungs when you breathe out, or exhale.
Some people think that all the oxygen is taken out of the air in the lungs and that what we breathe out is pure carbon dioxide. But these ideas are not correct. Air is a mixture of gases that is mostly nitrogen(氮). This gas is not used in the body. So the amount of nitrogen does not change as air is breathed in and out. But while air is in the lungs, it is changed in three ways：(1) About one-fifth of the oxygen in the air goes into the blood. (2) An almost equal amount of carbon dioxide comes out of the blood into the air. (3) Moisture from the linings of the air passages and air sacs evaporates until the air is almost saturated.
51．It can be inferred from the passage that oxygen and carbon dioxide______.
A) produce energy for breathing
B) diffuse immediately in the blood
C) penetrate slowly into the air sacs
D) travel in opposite ways in the lungs
52．When blood travels back to the lungs by the heart，______.
A) more oxygen was contained in blood
B) more carbon dioxide was contained in the blood
C) less carbon dioxide was contained in an air sac
D) less oxygen was contained in an air sac
53．The movement of breathing can effectively______.
A) help the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the lungs
B) prevent the inhaling of excessive carbon dioxide
C) keep the regular circulation of blood
D) strengthen the function of breathing muscles
54．When we breathe out, the amount of nitrogen______.
A) increases a bit because of the exchange of air
B) reduces a bit because of the exchange of air
C) remains the same as we breathe it in
D) keeps the same as that needed in lungs
55．The air in the lungs changes through______.
A) inhaling some amount of oxygen
B) the evaporation of moisture
C) exhaling some amount of carbon dioxide
D) generating a passage for evaporation
Part IV Translation (30 minutes)
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2.
京剧（Peking Opera）已有200多年的历史，是中国的国剧。与其他地方戏相比，京剧享有更高的声誉，但其实京剧融合了多种地方戏的元素。京剧演员的脸谱（facial make-up）和戏服都很精美，相比之下布景则显得十分简单。表演者主要应用四种技能：唱（song）、念（speech）、做（dance）、打（combat）。京剧比较擅长于表现政治、军事斗争等历史题材。在古代，京剧大多是在户外演出的，因此演员们形成了一种极具穿透力的唱腔，以便每个人都能听到。