2015年12月大学英语六级阅读真题.pdf

2 2 0 0 1 1 5 5年年1 1 2 2月月 大大 学学 英英 语语 六六 级级 阅阅 读读 真真 题题&答答 案案As it is,sleep is so undervalued that getting by on fewer hours has becomea badge o Plus,we live in a culture that 36 to the late nighter,from24-hourgrocery store toshopping site that never close.Its no surprise,then,that more than half of American adults get the 7 to 9 hours of shut-eye everynight as 37 by sleep experts.Whether or not we can catch up on sleep on the weekend,say-is a hotly38 among sleep researchers.The latest evidence suggests that while it isnt39,it mightwhen Liu,the UCLA sleep researcher and professor of medicine,brought 40 sleep-rest people into the lab for a weekend of sleep during whichthey lagged about 10 hours per night.showed 41 in the ability of insulin(胰岛素)to process blood sugar.That suggestsup sleep may undo some but notall of the damage that sleep 42 causes,which is encouraginggiven howmany adults dont get the hours they need each night.Still,Liu isnt 43 to endthe habit of sleeping less and making up for it later.Sleeping pills,while helpful for some,are not 44 an effective remedy either.“A sleeping pill will 45 one area of the brain,but theres never going to be aperfect sleeping pill,because you couldnt really replicate（复制）the differentchemicals moving in and out of different partsthe brain to go through thedifferent stages of sleep,”says Dr.Nancy Collop,director of the Em UniversitySleep Center.A)alternatively I)negotiatedB)caters J)pierceC)chronically K)presumptionD)debated L)readyE)deprivation M)recommendedF)ideal N)surpassesG)improvements O)targetH)necessarily答案：BMDFO GELHJClimate change may be real,but its still not easy being greenHow do we convince our inner caveman to be greenerWe ask someoutstanding social scientists.A)The road to climate hell is paved with our good intentions.Politiciansmay tackle polluters while scientists do battle with carbon emissions.But themost pervasive problem is less obvious:our own behaviour.We get distractedbefore we can turn down the heating.We break our promise not to fly afterhearing about a neighbors rip to India.Ultimately,we cant be bothered tochange our attitude.Fortunately for the planet,social science and behavioraleconomics may be able to do that for us.B)Despite mournful polar bears and carts showing carbon emissionssoaring,mot people find it hard to believe that global warming will affect thempersonally.Recent polls by the Pew Research Centre in Washington,DC,found that 75-80 per cent of participants regarded climate change as animportant issue.But respondents ranked it last on a list of priorities.C)This inconsistency largely stems from a feeling of powerlessness.“When we cant actually remove the source of our fear,we tend to adaptpsychologically by adopting a range of defense mechanisms,”says TomCrompton,change strategist for the environmental organization World WideFund for Nature.D)Part of the fault lies with our inner caveman.Evolution has programmedhumans to pay most attention to issues that will have an immediate impact.“We worry most about now because if we dont survive for the next minute,were not going to be around in ten years time,”says Professor Elke Weber ofthe Centre for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University inNew York.If the Thames were lapping around Big Ben,Londoners would faceup to the problem of emissions pretty quickly.But in practice,our braindiscounts the risksand benefitsassociated with issues that lie some wayahead.E)Matthew Rushworth,of the Department of Experimental Psychology atthe University of Oxford,sees this in his lab every day.“One of the ways inwhich all agents seem to make decisions is that they assign a lower weightingto outcomes that are going to be further away in the future,”he says.“This is avery sensible way for an animal to make decisions in the wild and would havebeen very helpful for humans for thousands of years.”F)Not any longer.By the time we wake up to the threat posed by climatechange,it could well be too late.And if were not going to make nationaldecisions about the future,others may have to help us to do so.G)Few political libraries are without a copy of Nudge:Improving DecisionsAbout Health,Wealth and Happiness,by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.They argue that governments should persuade us into making betterdecisionssuch as saving more in our pension plansby changing thedefault options.Professor Weber believes that environmental policy can makeuse of similar tactics.If,for example,building codes included greenconstruction guidelines,most developers would be too lazy to challenge them.H)Defaults are certainly part of the solution.But social scientists are mostconcerned about crafting messages that exploit our group mentality(心态).”Weneed to understand what motivates people,what it is that allows them to makechange,”says Professor Neil Adger,of the Tyndall Centre for Climate ChangeResearch in Norwich.”It is actually about what their peers think of them,whattheir social norms are,what is seen as desirable in society.”In other words,our inner caveman is continually looking over his shoulder to see what the restof the tribe are up to.I)The passive attitude we have to climate change as individuals can bealtered by counting us inand measuring us againstour peer group.“Socialnorms are primitive and elemental,”says Dr.Robert Cialdini,author ofInfluence:The Psychology of Persuasion.“Birds flock together,fish schooltogether,cattle herd together just perceiving norms is enough to causepeople to adjust their behavior in the direction of the crowd.”J)These norms can take us beyond good intentions.Cialdini conducted astudy in San Diego in which coat hangers bearing messages about savingenergy were hung on peoples doors.Some of the messages mentioned theenvironment,some financial savings,others social responsibility.But it wasthe one that mentioned the actions of neighbours that drove down power use.K)Other studies show that simply providing the facility for people tocompare their energy use with the local average is enough to cause them tomodify their behaviour.The Conservatives plan to adopt this strategy bymaking utility companies print the average local electricity and gas usage onpeoples bills.L)Social science can also teach politicians how to avoid our collectivecapacity for self-destructive behaviour.Environmental campaigns that tell ushow many people drive SUVs unwittingly(不经意地)imply that this behaviouris widespread and thus permissible.Cialdini recommends some carefulframing of the message.“Instead of normalising the undesirable behaviour,themessage needs to marginalise it,for example,by stating that if even oneperson buys yet another SUV,it reduces our ability to be energy-independent.”M)Tapping into how we already see ourselves is crucial.The mostsuccessful environmental strategy will marry the green message to our ownsense of identity.Take your average trade union member,chances are theywill be politically motivated and be used to collective actionmuch like EricaGregory.A retired member of the Public and Commercial Services Union,sheis setting up one of 1,100 action groups with the support of Climate Solidarity,a two-year environmental campaign aimed at trade unionists.N)Erica is proof that a great-grandmother can help to lead the revolution ifyour get the psychology rightin this case,by matching her enthusiasm forthe environment with a fondness for organising groups.“I think there must besomething in it.”She is expecting up to 20 people at the first meeting she hascalled,at her local pub in the Cornish village of Polperro.O)Nick Perks,project director for Climate Solidarity,believes this sort ofactivity is where the future of environmental action lies.“Using existing civilsociety structures or networks is a more effective way of creating change and obviously trade unions are one of the biggest civil society networks in theUK,”he says.The“Love Food,Haste Waste”campaign entered into acollaboration last year with another such networkthe Womens Institute.Londoner Rachel Talor joined the campaign with the aim of making newfriends.A year on,the meetings have made lasting changes to what shethrows away in her kitchen.“Its always more of an incentive if youre doing itwith other people,”she says.“It motivates you more if you know that youve gotto provide feedback to a group.”P)The power of such simple psychology in fighting climate change isattracting attention across the political establishment.In the US,the House ofRepresentatives Science Committee has approved a bill allocating$10 milliona year to studying energy-related behaviour.In the UK,new studies are indevelopment and social scientists are regularly spotted in British governmentoffices.With the help of psychologists,there is fresh hope that we might gogreen after all.46.When people find they are powerless to change a situation,they tendto live with it.47.To be effective,environmental messages should be carefully framed.48.It is the governments responsibility to persuade people into makingenvironment-friendly decisions.49.Politicians are beginning to realize the importance of enlistingpsychologists help in fighting climate change.50.To find effective solutions to climate change,it is necessary tounderstand what motivates people to make change.51.In their evolution,humans have learned to pay attention to the mosturgent issues instead of long-term concerns.52.One study shows that our neighbors actions are influential unchangingour behavior.53.Despite clear signs of global warming,it is not easy for most people tobelieve climate change will affect their own lives.54.We would take our future into consideration in making decisionsconcerning climate change before it is too late.55.Existing social networks can be more effective in creating change inpeoples behaviour.答案：CLGPH DJBFOPassage OneMore than a decade ago,cognitive scientists John Bransford and DanielSchwartz,both then at Vanderbilt University,found that what distinguishedyoung adults from children was not the ability to retain facts or apply priorknowledge to a new situation but a quality they called“preparation for futurelearning.”The researchers asked fifth graders and college students to create arecovery plan to protect bald eagles from extinction.Shockingly,the twogroups came up with plans of similar quality(although the college students hadbetter spelling skills).From the standpoint of a traditional educator,thisoutcome indicated that schooling and failed to help students think aboutecosystems and extinction,major scientific ideas.The researchers decided to go deeper,however.They asked both groupsto generate questions about important issues need to create recovery plans.On this task,they found large differences.College students focused on criticalissues of interdependence between eagles and their habitats(栖息地).Fifthgraders tended to focus on features of individual eagles(“How big are they”and“What do they eat”).The college students had cultivated the ability to askquestions,the cornerstone of critical thinking.They had learned how to learn.Museums and other institutions of informal learning may be better suited toteach this skill than elementary and secondary schools.At the Exploratorium inSan Francisco,we recently studied how learning to ask good questions canaffect the quality of peoples scientific inquiry.We found that when we taughtparticipants to ask“What if”and“How can”questions that nobody presentwould know the answer to and that would spark exploration,they engaged inbetter inquiry at the next exhibit asking more questions,performing moreexperiments and making better interpretations of their results.Specifically,their questions became more comprehensive at the new exhibit.Rather thanmerely asking about something they wanted to try,they tended to include bothcause and effect in their question.Asking juicy questions appears to be atransferable skill for deepening collaborative inquiry into the science contentfound in exhibits.This type of learning is not confined to museums or institutional settings.Informal learning environments tolerate failure better than schools.Perhapsmany teachers have too little time to allow students to form and pursue theirown questions and too much ground to cover in the curriculum.But peoplemust acquire this skill somewhere.Our society depends on them being able tomake critical decisions about their own medical treatment,say,or what wemust do about global energy needs and demands.For that,we have a robustinformal learning system that gives no grades,takes all comers,and isavailable even on holidays and weekends.56.What is traditional educators interpretation of the research outcomementioned in the first paragraphA)Students are not able to apply prior knowledge to new problems.B)College students are no better than fifth grader in memorizing facts.C)Education has not paid enough attention to major environmental issues.D)Education has failed to lead students to think about major scientificideas.57.In what way are college students different from childrenA)They have learned to think critically.B)They are concerned about social issues.C)They are curious about specific features.D)They have learned to work independently.58.What is the benefit of asking questions with no ready answersA)It arouses students interest in things around them.B)It cultivates students ability to make scientific inquiries.C)It trains students ability to design scientific experiments.D)It helps students realize not every question has an answer.59.What is said to be the advantage of informal learningA)It allows for failures.B)It charges no tuition.C)It is entertaining.D)It meets practical needs.60.What does the author seem to encourage educators to do at the end ofthe passageA)Train students to think about global issues.B)Design more interactive classroom activities.C)Make full use of informal learning resources.D)Include collaborative inquiry in the curriculumPassage Two“Theres an old saying in the space world:amateurs talk about technology,professionals talk about insurance.”In an interview last year with TheEconomist,George Whitesides,chief executive of space-tourism firm VirginGalactic,was placing his company in the latter category.But insurance will becold comfort following the failure on October 31st of VSS Enterprise,resultingin the death of one pilot and the severe injury to another.On top of the tragic loss of life,the accident in California will cast a longshadow over the future of space tourism,even before it has properly begun.The notion of space tourism took hold in 2001 with a&29million flightaboard a Russian spacecraft by Dennis Tito,a millionaire engineer with anadventurous streak.Just half a dozen holiday-makers have reached orbit sincethen,for similarly astronomical price tags.But more recently,companies havebegun to plan more affordable“suborbital”flightsbriefer ventures just to theedge of spaces vast darkness.Virgin Galactic had,prior to this weeksaccident,seemed closet to star