2017年6月六级真题第2套

2017年6月大学英语六级考试真题（第二套）

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.

After becoming president of Purdue University in 2013, Mitch Daniels asked the faculty to prove that their students have actually achieved one of higher education’s most important goals: critical thinking skills. Two years before, a nationwide study of college graduates had shown that more than a third had made no 26 gains in such mental abilities during their school years. Mr. Daniels, needed to 27 the high cost of attending Purdue to its students and their families. After all, the percentage of Americans who say a college degree is “very important” has fallen 28 in the last 5-6 years.

Purdue now has a pilot test to assess the critical thinking skills of students as they progress. Yet like many college teachers around the United States, the faculty remain 29 that their work as educators can be measured by a “learning 30 such as a graduate’s ability to investigate and reason”. However the professors can use 31 metrics to measure how well students do in three key areas: critical thinking, written communication, and quantitative literacy.

Despite the success of the experiment, the actual results are worrisome, and mostly 32 earlier studies. The organizers of the experiment concluded that far fewer students were “achieving at high levels on a critical thinking than they were doing for written communication or quantitative literacy”. And that conclusion is based only on students nearing graduation.

American universities, despite their global 33 for excellence in teaching, have only begun to demonstrate what they can produce in real-world learning. Knowledge-based degrees are still important. But employers are 34 advanced thinking skills from college graduate. If the intellectual worth of a college degree can be 35 measured, more people will seek higher education—and come out better thinkers.

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.

Elite Math Competitions Struggle to Diversify Their Talent Pool

[A] Interest in elite high school math competitions has grown in recent years, and in light of last summer’s U.S. win at the International Math Olympiad—the first for an American team in more than two decades—the trend is likely to continue.

[B] But will such contests, which are overwhelmingly dominated by Asian and white students from middle-class and affluent families, become any more diverse? Many social and cultural factors play roles in determining which promising students get on the path toward international math recognition. But efforts are in place to expose more black, Hispanic, and low-income students to advanced math, in the hope that the demographic pool of high-level contenders will eventually begin to shift and become less insular.

[C] “The challenge is if certain types of people are doing something, it’s difficult for other people to break into it,” said Po-Shen Loh, the head coach of last year’s winning U.S. Math Olympiad team and an associate professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University. Participation grows through friends and networks and if “you realize that’s how they’re growing, you can start to take action” and bring in other students, he said.

[D] Most of the training for advanced-math competitions happens outside the confines of the normal school day. Students attend after-school clubs, summer camps, online forums and classes, and university-based “math circles”, or mathematician-led groups, to prepare for the paper-based and face-to-face competitions.

[E] One of the largest feeders for high school math competitions—including those that eventually lead to the International Math Olympiad—is a middle school program called MATHCOUNTS. About 100,000 students around the country participate in the program’s competition series, which culminates in a national game-show-style contest held each May. The most recent one took place last week in Washington. Students join a team through their schools, which provide a volunteer coach and pay a nominal fee to send students to regional and state competitions. The 224 students who make it to the national competition get an all-expenses-paid trip.

[F] Nearly all members of last year’s winning U.S. IMO team took part in MATHCOUNTS as middle school students—as did Loh, the coach. “Middle school is an important age because students have enough math capability to solve advanced problems, but they haven’t really decided what they want to do with their lives,” said Loh. “They often get hooked then.”

[G] Another influential feeder for advanced-math students is an online school called Art of Problem Solving, which began about 13 years ago and now has 15,000 users. Students use forums to chat, play games, and solve problems together at no cost, or they can pay a few hundred dollars to take courses with trained teachers. According to Richard Rusczyk, the company founder, the six U.S. team members who competed at the International Math Olympiad last year collectively took more than 40 courses on the site. Parents of advanced-math students and MATHCOUNTS coaches say the children are on the website constantly.

[H] There are also dozens of summer camps—many attached to universities—that aim to prepare elite math students. Some are pricey—a three-week, intensive program can cost $4,500 or more—but most offer scholarships. The Math Olympiad Summer Training Program—the three-week math camp held by the Mathematical Association of America that leads straight to the international championship—is free for those who make it. Only about 50 students are invited based on their performance on written tests and at the USA Math Olympiad.

[I] Students in university towns may also have access to another lever for involvement in accelerated math: math circles. In these groups, which came out of an Eastern European tradition of developing young talent, professors teach promising K-12 students advanced mathematics for several hours after school or on weekends. The Los Angeles Math Circle, held at the University of California, Los Angeles, began in 2007 with 20 students and now has more than 250.

[J] According to Mark Saul, the director of competitions for the Mathematical Association of America, not a single African-American or Hispanic student—and only a handful of girls—has ever made it to the Math Olympiad team in its 50 years of existence. Many schools simply don’t prioritize academic competitions. “Do you know who we have to beat?” asked Saul. “The football team, the basketball team—that’s our competition for resources, student time, attention, school dollars, parent efforts, school enthusiasm.”

[K] According to Lou DiGioia, the program’s executive director, those connections often last well into high school, and beyond. “Kids at the MATHCOUNTS national competition are in the top echelon of math intelligence—they’re just in their own world. It’s great for them to come together and have a network of people.” There is a downside to the social aspect of advanced-math competitions: It can breed insular communities.

[L] A New York City-based nonprofit called Bridge to Enter Mathematics runs a residential summer program aimed at getting underserved, mostly black and Hispanic students working toward math and science careers. The summer after 7th grade, students spend three weeks on a college campus studying advanced math for seven hours a day. Over the next five years, the group helps the students get into other elite summer math programs, high-performing high schools, and eventually college. About 250 students so far have gone through the program, which receives funding from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. （The foundation also supports some coverage of low-income, high-achieving students in Education Week.）

[M] “If you look at a lot of low-income communities in the United States, there are programs that are serving them, but they’re primarily centered around, ‘Let’s get these kids’ grades up,’ and not around, ‘Let’s get these kids access to the same kinds of opportunities as more-affluent kids,’ ” said Daniel Zaharopol, the founder and executive director of the program. “We’re trying to create that pathway.” Students apply to the program directly through their schools. “We want to reach parents who are not plugged into the system,” said Zaharopol.

36. Middle school is a crucial period when students may become keenly interested in advanced mathematics.

37. Elite high school math competitions are attracting more interest throughout the United States.

38. Math circles provide students with access to advanced-math training by university professors.

39. Students may take advantage of online resources to learn to solve math problems.

40. The summer program run by a nonprofit organization has helped many underserved students learn advanced math.

41. Winners of local contests will participate in the national math competition for free.

42. Many schools don’t place academic competitions at the top of their priority list.

43. Contestants of elite high school math competitions are mostly Asian and white students from well-off families.

44. Some math training programs primarily focus on raising students’ math score.

45. Some intensive summer programs are very expensive but most of them provide scholarships.

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.

We live today in indebted to McCardell, Cashin, Hawes, Wilkins, and Maxwell, and other women who liberated American fashion from the confines of Parisian design. Independence came in trying, wrapping, storing, harmonizing, and rationalizing that wardrobe. These designers established the modern dress code, letting playsuits and other activewear outfits suffice for casual closing, allowing pants to enter the wardrobe, and prizing rationalism and versatility in dress, in contradiction to dressing for an occasion or allotment of the day. Fashion in America was logical and answerable to the will of women who wore it. Implicitly or explicitly, American fashion addressed a democracy, whereas traditional Paris-based fashion was prescriptive and imposed on women, willing or not.

In an earlier time, American fashion had also followed the dictates of Paris, or even copied and pirated specific French designs. Designer sportswear was not modeled on that of Europe, as “modern art” would later be; it was genuinely invented and developed in America. Its designers were not high-ended with supplementary lines. The design objective and the business commitment were to sportswear, and the distinctive traits were problem-solving ingenuity and realistic lifestyle applications. Ease of care was most important: summer dresses and outfits, in particular, were chiefly cotton, readily capable of being washed and pressed in home. Closings were simple, practical, and accessible, as the modern woman depended on no personal maid to dress her. American designers priced resourcefulness and the freedom of women who wore clothing.

Many have argued that the women designers of this time were able to project their own clothing values into a new style. Of course, much of this argument in the 1930s-40s was advanced because there was little or no experience in justifying apparel（服装）on the basis of utility. If Paris was cast aside, the tradition of beauty was also to some degree slighted. Designer sportswear would have to be verified by a standard other than that of pure beauty; the emulation of a designer’s life in designer sportswear was a crude version of this relationship. The consumer was ultimately to be mentioned as well, especially by the likes of Dorothy Shaver, who could point to the sales figures at Lord&Taylor.

Could utility alone justify the new ideas of American designers? Fashion is often regarded as a pursuit of beauty, and some cherished fashion’s trivial relationship to the fine arts. What the designers of American sportswear proved was that fashion is a genuine design art, answering to the demanding needs of service. Of course these practical, insightful designers have determined the course of late twentieth-century fashion. They were the pioneers of gender equity, in their useful, adaptable clothing, which was both made for the masses and capable of self-expression.

46. What contribution did the women designers make to American fashion?

A）They made some improvements on traditional Parisian design.

B）They formulated a dress code with distinctive American features.

C）They came up with a brand new set of design procedures.

D）They made originality a top priority in their fashion design.

47. What do we learn about American designer sportswear?

A）It imitated the European model.

B）It laid emphasis on women’s beauty.

C）It represented genuine American art.

D）It was a completely new invention.

48. What characterized American designer sportswear?

A）Pursuit of beauty.

B）Ease of care.

C）Decorative closings.

D）Fabric quality.

49. What occurred in the design of women’s apparel in American during 1930s-40s?

A）A shift of emphasis from beauty to utility.

B）The emulation of traditional Parisian design.

C）A search for balance between tradition and novelty.

D）The involvement of more women in fashion design.

50. What do we learn about designers of American sportswear?

A）They catered to the taste of the younger generation.

B）They radically changed people’s concept of beauty.

C）They advocated equity between men and women.

D）They became rivals of their Parisian counterparts.

Passage Two

Questions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.

Massive rubbish dumps and sprawling land fills contribute to one of the more uncomfortable impacts that humans have on wildlife. They have led some birds to give up on migration. Instead of flying thousands of miles in search of food, they make the waste sites their winter feeding grounds.

Researchers in Germany used miniature GPS tags to track the migrations of 70 white storks（鹳）from different sites across Europe and Asia during the first five months of their lives. While many birds travelled along well-known routes to warmer climates, others stopped short and spent the winter on landfills, feeding on food waste, and the multitudes of insects that thrive on the dumps.

In the short-term, the birds seem to benefit from overwintering（过冬）on rubbish dumps. Andrea Flack of the Max Planck Institute found that birds following traditional migration routes were more likely to die than German storks that flew only as far as northern Morocco, and spent the winter there on rubbish dumps. “For the birds it’s a very convenient way to get food. There are huge clusters of organic waste they can feed on,” said Flack. The meals are not particularly appetising, or even safe. Much of the waste is discarded rotten meat, mixed in with other human debris such as plastic bags and old toys.

“It’s very risky. The birds can easily eat pieces of plastic or rubber bands and they can die,” said Flack. “And we don’t know about the long-term consequences. They might eat something toxic and damage their health. We cannot estimate that yet.”

The scientists tracked white storks from different colonies in Europe and Africa. The Russian, Greek and Polish storks flew as far as South Africa, while those from Spain, Tunisia and Germany flew only as far as the Sahel.

Landfill sites on the Iberian Peninsula have long attracted local white storks, nut all of the Spanish birds tagged in the study flew across the Sahara desert to the western Sahel. Writing in the journal, the scientists describe how the storks from Germany were clearly affected by the presence of waste sites, with four out of six birds that survived for at least five months overwintering on rubbish dumps in the northern Morocco, instead of migrating to the Sahel.

Flack said it was too early to know whether the benefits of plentiful food outweighed the risks of feeding on landfills. But that’s not the only uncertainty. Migrating birds affect ecosystems both at home and at their winter destinations, and disrupting the traditional routes could have unexpected side effects. White storks feed on locusts（蝗虫）and other insects that can become pests if their numbers get out of hand. “They provide a useful service,” said Flack.

51. What is the impact of rubbish dumps on wildlife?

A）They have forced white storks to search for safer shelters.

B）They have seriously polluted the places where the birds spend winter.

C）They have accelerated the reproduction of some harmful insects.

D）They have changed the previous migration habits of certain birds.

52. What do we learn about birds following the traditional migration routes?

A）They can multiply at an accelerating rate.

B）They can better pull through the winter.

C）They help humans kill harmful insects.

D）They are more likely to be at risk of dying.

53. What does Andrea Flack say about the birds overwintering on rubbish dumps?

A）They may end up staying there permanently.

B）They may eat something harmful.

C）They may evolve new eating habits.

D）They may have trouble getting adequate food.

54. What can be inferred about the Spanish birds tagged in the study?

A）They gradually lose the habit of migrating in winter.

B）They prefer rubbish dumps far away to those at home.

C）They are not attracted to the rubbish dumps on their migration routes.

D）They join the storks from Germany on rubbish dumps in Morocco.

55. What is scientists’ other concern about white storks feeding on landfills?

A）The potential harm to the ecosystem.

B）The genetic change in the stork species.

C）The spread of epidemics to their homeland.

D）The damaging effect on bio-diversity.

Part VI 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.

唐朝始于618年，终于907年，是中国历史上最灿烂的时期。经过三百年的发展，唐代中国成为世界上最繁荣的强国，其首都长安是世界上最大的都市，这一时期，经济发达，商业繁荣，社会秩序稳定，甚至边境也对外开放，随着城市化的财富的增加，艺术和文学也繁荣起来。李白和杜甫是以作品简洁自然而著称的诗人。他们的诗歌打动了学者和普通人的心，即使在今天，他们的诗歌仍广为儿童及成人阅读背诵。

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