2013 年 12 月英语六级真题(第 1 套)
Part I Writing (30 minutes)
Directions:Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteanessaycommenting
on the remarks“The greatestuse of lifeis to spend it for something
that will outlastit.” Youcan give examples toillustrate yourpoint
and then explain what you will do to make your life more meaningful.
You should write at least150words but no more than 200 words.
Part II
Section A
Listening Comprehension
(30 minutes)
Directions:In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long
conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions
willbeaskedaboutwhatwassaid.Boththeconversationandthequestions
will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause.
During the pause, youmustread thefour choicesmarked A), B), C) and
D), and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding
letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.
1. A) Labor problems.
B) Weather conditions.
C) An error in the order.
D) Misplacing of goods.
2. A) What the woman says makes a lot of sense.
B) The rich are opposed to social welfare.
C) He is sympathetic with poor people.
D) He agrees with Mr. Johnson’s views.
3. A) He will be practicing soccer.
B) He has work to finish in time.
C) He will be attending a meeting.
D) He has a tough problem to solve.
4. A) Mary should get rid of her pet as soon as possible.
B) Mary will not be able to keep a dog in the building.
C)Mary is not happy with the ban on pet animals.
D)Mary might as well send her dog to her relative.
5.A) The twins’ voices are quite different.
B) Lisa and Gale are not very much alike.
C) He does not believe they are twin sisters.
D) The woman seems a bit hard of hearing.
6.A) The serious economic crisis in Britain.
B) A package deal to be signed in November.
C) A message from their business associates.
D) Their ability to deal with financial problems.
7.A) It is impossible to remove the stain completely.
B) The man will be charged extra for the service.
C) The man has to go to the main cleaning facility.
D) Cleaning the pants will take longer than usual.
8.A) European markets.
B) A protest rally.
C) Luxury goods.
D) Imported products.
Questions 9 to 12 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
9.A) He made a business trip.
B) He had a quarrel with Marsha.
C) He talked to her on the phone.
D) He resolved a budget problem.
10.A) She may have to be fired for poor performance.
B) She has developed some serious mental problem.
C) She is in charge of the firm’s budget planning.
D) She supervises a number of important projects.
11.A) She failed to arrive at the airport on time.
B) David promised to go on the trip in her place.
C) Something unexpected happened at her home.
D) She was not feeling herself on that day.
12.A) He frequently gets things mixed up.
B) He is always finding fault with Marsha.
C) He has been trying hard to cover for Marsha.
D) He often fails to follow through on his projects.
Questions 13 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
13.A) They are better sheltered from all the outside temptations.
B) They are usually more motivated to compete with their peers.
C) They have more opportunities to develop their leadership skills.
D) They make an active part in more extracurricular activities.
14.A) Its chief positions are held by women.
B) Its teaching staff consists of women only.
C) Its students aim at managerial posts.
D) Its students are role models of women.
15.A) It is under adequate control.
B) It is traditional but colourful.
C) They are more or less isolated from the outside world.
D) They have ample opportunities to meet the opposite sex.
Section B
Directions:Inthissection,youwillhear3shortpassages.Attheendofeachpassage,
youwillhearsomequestions.Boththepassageandthequestionswillbe
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 1with a single line through the
centre.
Passage One
Questions 16 to 19 are based on the passage you have just heard.
16.A) By invading the personal space of listeners.
B) By making gestures at strategic points.
C) By speaking in a deep, loud voice.
D) By speaking with the local accent.
17.A) To promote sportsmanship among business owners.
B) To encourage people to support local sports groups.
C) To raise money for a forthcoming local sports event.
D) To show his family’s contribution to the community.
18.A) They are known to be the style of the sports world.
B) They would certainly appeal to his audience.
C) They represent the latest fashion in the business circles.
D) They are believed to communicate power and influence.
19.A) To cover up his own nervousness.
B) To create a warm personal atmosphere.
C) To enhance the effect of background music.
D) To allow the audience to better enjoy his slides.
Passage Two
Questions 20 to 22 are based on the passage you have just heard.
20.A) She was the first educated slave of John Whitley’s.
B) She was the greatest female poet in Colonial America.
C) She was born about the time of the War of Independence.
D) She was the first African-American slave to publish a book.
21.A) Revise in a number of times.
B) Obtain consent from her owner.
C) Go through a scholarly examination.
D) Turn to the colonial governor for help.
22.A) Literary works calling for the abolition of slavery.
B) Religious scripts popular among slaves in America.
C) A rich stock of manuscripts left by historical figures.
D) Lots of lost works written by African-American women.
Passage Three
Questions 23 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.
23.A) It is a trait of generouscharacter.
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.
24.A) It was self-defeating.
B) It was aggressive.
C) It was the essence of comedy.
D) It was something admirable.
25.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
Directions: Inthissection,youwillhearapassagethreetimes.Whenthepassage
is readfor thefirsttime, youshouldlistencarefully forits general
idea. When the passageis readfor thesecond time, you are requiredto
fillintheblankswiththeexactwordsyouhavejustheard.Finally,when
the passage is read for the third time, you should check what you have
written.
It is important that we be mindful of the earth, the planet out of which we are
born and by which we are nourished, guided, healed—the planet, however, which we
have (26)_______to a considerable degree in these past two centuries of (27)_______
exploitation. This exploitation has reached such (28)_______ that presently it
appears that some hundreds of thousands of species will be (29)_______ before the
end of the century.
In our times, human shrewdness has mastered the deep (30)_______ of the earth
at a level far beyond the capacities of earlier peoples. We can break the mountains
apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant
forests into throwaway paper products. We can (31)_______ the great grass cover of
the western plains and pour (32)_______ chemicals into the soil until the soil is
dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with
sewage(污水), the seas with oil. We can invent computers (33)_______ processing ten
million calculations per second. And why?To increase the volume and the speed with
which we move natural resources through the consumer economy to the junk pile or
the waste heap. Our managerial skills are measured by the competence (34)_______
in accelerating this process. If in these activities the physical features of the
planet are damaged, if the environment is made inhospitable for (35)_______ living
species, then so be it. We are, supposedly, creating a technological wonderworld.
Part IIIReading Comprehension
(40 minutes)
Section A
Directions: Inthis section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required
toselectonewordforeachblankfromalistofchoicesgiveninaword
bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before
making yourchoices.Eachchoice inthebank isidentified bya letter.
PleasemarkthecorrespondingletterforeachitemonAnswerSheet2with
asinglelinethroughthecentre.Youmaynotuseanyofthewordsinthe
bank more than once.
Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.
Quite often,educators tell families of children who are learning English as a
second language to speak only English,and not their native language,at home.
Although these educators may have good36,their advice to families is misguided, and
it 37from misunderstandings about the process of language acquisition. Educators
may fear that children hearing two languages will become 38 confused and thus their
language development will be 39;this concern is not documented in the literature.
Children are capable of learning more than one language, whether40or sequentially
(依次地). In fact, most children outside of the United States are expected to become
bilingual or even, in many cases, multilingual. Globally, knowing more than one
language is viewed as an 41and even a necessity in many areas.
It is also of concern that the misguided advice that students should speak only
English is given primarily to poor families with limited educational opportunities,
not to wealthier families who have many educational advantages. Since children from
poor families often are 42as at-risk for academic failure, teachers believe that
advising families to speak English only is appropriate. Teachers consider learning
two languages to be too43 for children from poor families, believing that the
children are already burdened by their home situations.
If families do not know English or have limited English skills themselves, how
can they communicate in English?Advising non-English-speaking families to speak
only English is44to telling them not to communicate with or interact with their
children. Moreover, the45message is that the family’s native language is not
important or valued.
注意:此部分试题请在答题卡 2 上作答。
A) asset
B) delayed
C) deviates
D) equivalent
E) identified
F) intentions
G) object
H) overwhelming
I) permanently
J) prevalent
K) simultaneously
L) stems
M) successively
N) underlying
O) visualizing
Section B
Directions:In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements
attachedtoit.Eachstatementcontainsinformationgiveninoneofthe
paragraphs.Identifytheparagraphfromwhichtheinformationisderived.
Youmaychooseaparagraphmorethanonce.Eachparagraphismarkedwith
a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on
Answer Sheet 2.
The Uses of Difficulty
Thebrainlikesachallenge—andputtingafewobstaclesinitswaymaywellboost
its creativity.
A)Jack White, the former frontman of the White Stripes and an influential figure
among fellow musicians, likes to make things difficult for himself. He uses cheap
guitars that won’t stay in shape or in tune. When performing, he positions his
instruments in a way that is deliberately inconvenient, so that switching from
guitar to organ mid-song involves a mad dash across the stage. Why?Because he’s
on the run from what he describes as a disease that preys on every artist: “ease
of use”.When making music gets too easy, says White, it becomes harder to make
it sing.
B)It’s an odd thought. Why would anyone make their work more difficult than it
already is?Yet we know that difficulty can pay unexpected dividends. In 1966,
soon after the Beatles had finished work on “Rubber Soul”, Paul McCartney
looked into the possibility of going to America to record their next album. The
equipment in American studios was more advanced than anything in Britain, which
had led the Beatles’great rivals, the Rolling Stones, to make their latest album,
“Aftermath”,
in
Los
Angeles.
McCartney
found
that EMI’s( 百 代 唱
片)contractual clauses made it prohibitively expensive to follow suit, and the
Beatles had to make do with the primitive technology of Abbey Road.
C)Lucky for us. Over the next two years they made their most groundbreaking work,
turning the recording studio into a magical instrument of its own. Precisely
because they were working with old-fashioned machines, George Martin and his
team of engineers were forced to apply every ounce of their creativity to solve
the problems posed to them by Lennon and McCartney. Songs like“Tomorrow Never
Knows”, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, and “A Day in the Life”featured
revolutionary sound effects that dazzled and mystified Martin’s American
counterparts.
D)Sometimes it’s only when a difficulty is removed that we realise what it was
doing for us. For more than two decades, starting in the 1960s, the poet Ted
Hughes sat on the judging panel of an annual poetry competition for British
schoolchildren. During the 1980s he noticed an increasing number of long poems
among the submissions, with some running to 70 or 80 pages. These poems were
verbally inventive and fluent, but also “strangely boring”. After making
inquiries Hughes discovered that they were being composed on computers, then
just finding their way into British homes.
E)You might have thought any tool which enables a writer to get words on to the
page would be an advantage. But there may be a cost to such facility. In an
interview with the Paris Review Hughes speculated that when a person puts pen
to paper,“you meet the terrible resistance of what happened your first year
at it,when you couldn’t write at all”. As the brain attempts to force the
unsteady hand to do its bidding,the tension between the two results in a more
compressed,psychologically denser expression. Remove that resistance and you
are more likely to produce a 70-page ramble(不着边际的长篇大论).
F)Our brains respond better to difficulty than we imagine. In schools,teachers and
pupils alike often assume that if a concept has been easy to learn,then the lesson
has been successful. But numerous studies have now found that when classroom
material is made harder to absorb,pupils retain more of it over the long term,and
understand it on a deeper level.
G)As a poet,Ted Hughes had an acute sensitivity to the way in which constraints
on self-expression,like the disciplines of metre and rhyme(韵律),spur creative
thought. What applies to poets and musicians also applies to our daily lives.
We tend to equate(等同于)happiness with freedom,but,as the psychotherapist and
writer Adam Phillips has observed,without obstacles to our desires it’s harder
to know what we want,or where we’re heading. He tells the story of a patient,a
first-time mother who complained that her young son was always clinging to
her,wrapping himself around her legs wherever she went. She never had a moment
to herself,she said,because her son was“always in the way”. When Phillips
asked her where she would go if he wasn’t in the way,she replied
cheerfully,“Oh,I wouldn’t know where I was!”
H)Take another common obstacle: lack of money. People often assume that more money
will make them happier. But economists who study the relationship between money
and happiness have consistently found that,above a certain income,the two do
not reliably correlate. Despite the ease with which the rich can acquire almost
anything they desire,they are just as likely to be unhappy as the middle classes.
In this regard at least,F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong.
I)Indeed,ease of acquisition is the problem. The novelist Edward St Aubyn has a
narrator
remark
of
the
very
rich
that,“not
having
to
consider
affordability,their desires rambled on like unstoppable bores,relentless(持续
不 断 的 )and whimsical( 反 复 无 常 的 )at the same time.”When Boston College,a
private research university,wanted a better feel for its potential donors,it
asked the psychologist Robert Kenny to investigate the mindset of the super-rich.
He surveyed 165 households,most of which had a net worth of $25m or more. He found
that many of his subjects were confused by the infinite options their money
presented them with. They found it hard to know what to want,creating a kind of
existential bafflement. One of them put it like this: “You know,Bob,you can just
buy so much stuff,and when you get to the point where you can just buy so much
stuff,now what are you going to do?”
J)The internet makes information billionaires out of all of us,and the architects
of our online experiences are catching on to the need to make things creatively
difficult. Twitter’s huge success is rooted in the simple but profound insight
that in a medium with infinite space for self-expression,the most interesting
thing we can do is restrict ourselves to 140 characters. The music service This
Is My Jam helps people navigate the tens of millions of tracks now available
instantly via Spotify and iTunes. Users pick their favourite song of the week
to share with others. They only get to choose one. The service was only launched
this year,but by the end of September 650,000 jams had been chosen. Its co-founder
Matt Ogle explains its raisond’être(存在的理由)like this: “In an age of endless