2009年6月英语六级考试真题(3) Part IV Reading
Comprehension (Reading in Depth) (25 minutes)
Section
A
Directions:
In this section, there is a short passage with 5 questions or incomplete
statements. Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete
statements in the fewest possible words. Please write your answers on Answer
Sheet 2.
Questions
47 to 51 are based on the following passage.
There
is nothing new about TV and fashion magazines giving girls unhealthy ideas
about how thin they need to be in order to be considered beautiful. What is
surprising is the method psycholo gists at the University of Texas have come up
with to keep girls from developing eating disorders. Their main weapon against
superskinny (role) models: a brand of civil disobedience dubbed “body
activism.”
Since
2001, more than 1,000 high school and college students in the U.S. have
participated in the Body Project, which works by getting girls to understand
how they have been buying into the notion that you have to be thin to be happy
or successful. After critiquing (评论) the so-called thin ideal by writing essays
and role-playing with their peers, participants are directed to come up with
and execute small, nonviolent acts. They include slipping notes saying “Love
your body the way it is” into dieting books at stores like Borders and writing
letters to Mattel, makers of the impossibly proportioned Barbie doll.
According
to a study in the latest issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, the risk of developing eating disorders was reduced 61% among Body
Project participants. And they continued to exhibit positive body-image
attitudes as long as three years after completing the program, which consists,
of four one-hour sessions. Such lasting effects may be due to girls’ realizing
not only how they were being influenced but also who was benefiting from the
societal pressure to be thin. “These people who promote the perfect body really
don’t care about you at all,” says Kelsey Hertel, a high school junior and Body
Project veteran in Eugene, Oregon. “They purposefully make you feel like less
of a person so you’ll buy their stuff and they’ll make money.”
注意:此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
47.
Were do girls get the notion that they need to be thin in order to be considered
beautiful?
48.
By promoting “body activism,” University of Texas psychologists aim to prevent
________.
49.
According to the author, Mattel’s Barbie dolls are ________.
50.
The positive effects of the Body Project may last up to ________.
51.
One Body Project participant says that the real motive of those who promote the
perfect body is to ________.
46.
TV and fashion magazines
48.
Developing eating disorders
49.
Impossibly proportioned
50.
3 years
51.
Make money
Section B
Passage OneQuestions 52 to 56 are based on the
following passage.
For
hundreds of millions of years, turtles (海龟) have struggled out of the sea to lay their
eggs on sandy beaches, long before there were nature documentaries to celebrate
them, or GPS satellites and marine biologists to track them, or volunteers to
hand-carry the hatchlings (幼龟) down to the water’s edge lest they become
disoriented by headlights and crawl towards a motel parking lot instead. A
formidable wall of bureaucracy has been erected to protect their prime nesting
on the Atlantic coastlines. With all that attention paid to them, you’d think
these creatures would at least have the gratitude not to go extinct.
But
Nature is indifferent to human notions of fairness, and a report by the Fish
and Wildlife Service showed a worrisome drop in the populations of several
species of North Atlantic turtles, notably loggerheads, which can grow to as
much as 400 pounds. The South Florida nesting population, the largest, has
declined by 50% in the last decade, according to Elizabeth Griffin, a marine
biologist with the environmental group Oceana. The figures prompted Oceana to
petition the government to upgrade the level of protection for the North
Atlantic loggerheads from “threatened” to “endangered”—meaning they are in
danger of disappearing without additional help.
Which
raises the obvious question: what else do these turtles want from us, anyway?
It turns out, according to Griffin, that while we have done a good job of
protecting the turtles for the weeks they spend on land (as egg-laying females,
as eggs and as hatchlings), we have neglected the years spend in the ocean.
“The threat is from commercial fishing,” says Griffin. Trawlers (which drag
large nets through the water and along the ocean floor) and longline fishers
(which can deploy thousands of hooks on lines that can stretch for miles) take
a heavy toll on turtles.
Of
course, like every other environmental issue today, this is playing out against
the background of global warming and human interference with natural
ecosystems. The narrow strips of beach on which the turtles lay their eggs are
being squeezed on one side by development and on the other by the threat of
rising sea levels as the oceans warm. Ultimately we must get a handle on those
issues as well, or a creature that outlived the dinosaurs (恐龙) will meet its end
at the hands of humans, leaving our descendants to wonder how creature so ugly
could have won so much affection.
注意:此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
52.
We can learn from the first paragraph that ________.
A.human activities have
changed the way turtles survive
B.efforts have been
made to protect turtles from dying out
C.government
bureaucracy has contributed to turtles’ extinction
D.marine biologists are
looking for the secret of turtles’ reproduction
53.
What does the author mean by “Nature is indifferent to human notions of
fairness” (Line 1, Para. 2)?
A.Nature is quite fair
regarding the survival of turtles.
B.Turtles are by nature
indifferent to human activities.
C.The course of nature
will not be changed by human interference.
D.The turtle population
has decreased in spite of human protection.
54.
What constitutes a major threat to the survival of turtles according to
Elizabeth Griffin?
A.Their inadequate food
supply.
B.Unregulated
commercial fishing.
C.Their lower
reproductively ability.
D.Contamination of sea
water
55.
How does global warming affect the survival of turtles?
A.It threatens the
sandy beaches on which they lay eggs.
B.The changing climate
makes it difficult for their eggs to hatch.
C.The rising sea levels
make it harder for their hatchlings to grow.
D.It takes them longer
to adapt to the high beach temperature.
56.
The last sentence of the passage is meant to ________.
A.persuade human beings
to show more affection for turtles
B.stress that even the
most ugly species should be protected
C.call for effective
measures to ensure sea turtles’ survival
D.warn our descendants
about the extinction of species
Passage Two Questions
57 to 61 are based on the following passage.
There are few more sobering online activities than
entering data into college-tuition calculators and gasping as the Web spits
back a six-figure sum. But economists say families about to go into debt to
fund four years of partying, as well as studying, can console themselves with
the knowledge that college is an investment that, unlike many bank stocks,
should yield huge dividends.
A
2008 study by two Harvard economists notes that the “labor-market premium to
skill”—or the amount college graduates earned that’s greater than what
high-school graduate earned—decreased for much of the 20th century, but has
come back with a vengeance (报复性地) since the 1980s. In 2005, The typical
full-time year-round U.S. worker with a four-year college degree earned
$50,900, 62% more than the $31,500 earned by a worker with only a high-school
diploma.
There’s
no question that going to college is a smart economic choice. But a look at the
strange variations in tuition reveals that the choice about which college to
attend doesn’t come down merely to dollars and cents. Does going to Columbia
University (tuition, room and board $49,260 in 2007-08) yield a 40% greater
return than attending the University of Colorado at Boulder as an out-of-state
student ($35,542)? Probably not. Does being an out-of-state student at the
University of Colorado at Boulder yield twice the amount of income as being an
in-state student ($17,380) there? Not likely.
No,
in this consumerist age, most buyers aren’t evaluating college as an
investment, but rather as a consumer product—like a car or clothes or a house.
And with such purchases, price is only one of many crucial factors to consider.
As
with automobiles, consumers in today’s college marketplace have vast choices,
and people search for the one that gives them the most comfort and satisfaction
in line with their budgets. This accounts for the willingness of people to pay
more for different types of experiences (such as attending a private liberal-arts
college or going to an out-of-state public school that has a great
marine-biology program). And just as two auto purchasers might spend an equal
amount of money on very different cars, college students (or, more accurately,
their parents) often show a willingness to pay essentially the same price for
vastly different products. So which is it? Is college an investment product
like a stock or a consumer product like a car? In keeping with the automotive
world’s hottest consumer trend, maybe it’s best to characterize it as a hybrid
(混合动力汽车); an expensive consumer product that, over time, will pay rich
dividends.
注意:此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
57.
What’s the opinion of economists about going to college?
A.Huge amounts of money
is being wasted on campus socializing.
B.It doesn’t pay to run
into debt to receive a college education.
C.College education is
rewarding in spite of the startling costs.
D.Going to college
doesn’t necessarily bring the expected returns.
58.
The two Harvard economists note in their study that, for much of the 20th
century, ________.
A.enrollment kept
decreasing in virtually all American colleges and universities
B.the labor market
preferred high-school to college graduates
C.competition for
university admissions was far more fierce than today
D.the gap between the
earnings of college and high-school graduates narrowed
59.
Students who attend an in-state college or university can ________.
A.save more on tuition
B.receive a better
education
C.take more
liberal-arts courses
D.avoid traveling long
distances
60.
In this consumerist age, most parents ________.
A.regard college
education as a wise investment
B.place a premium on
the prestige of the College
C.think it crucial to
send their children to college
D.consider college
education a consumer product
61.
What is the chief consideration when students choose a college today?
A.Their employment
prospects after graduation.
B.A satisfying
experience within their budgets.
C.Its facilities and
learning environment.
D.Its ranking among
similar institutions. |