2013年12月大学英语六级考试真题及答案（第二套）

　　Section C

　　Directions: In this section, you will hear a passage three times. When the passage is read for the first time, you should listen carefully for its general idea. When the passage is read for the second time, you are required to fill in the blanks with the exact words you have just heard. 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 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 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.

　　Some performance evaluations require supervisors to take action. Employees who receive a very favorable evaluation may deserve some type of recognition or even a promotion. If supervisors do not acknowledge such outstanding performance, employees may either lose their ___36___ and reduce their effort or search for a new job at a firm that will ___37___ them for high performance. Supervisors should acknowledge high performance so that the employee will continue to perform well in the future.

　　Employees who receive unfavorable evaluations must also be given attention. Supervisors must ___38___ the reasons for poor performance. Some reasons, such as a family illness, may have a temporary adverse ___39___ on performance and can be corrected. Other reasons, such as a bad attitude, may not be temporary. When supervisors give employees an unfavorable evaluation, they must decide whether to take any ___40___ actions. If the employees were unaware of their own deficiencies, the unfavorable evaluation can pinpoint (指出) the deficiencies that employees must correct. In this case, the supervisor may simply need to monitor the employees ___41___ and ensure that the deficiencies are corrected.

　　If the employees were already aware of their deficiencies before the evaluation period, however, they may be unable or unwilling to correct them. This situation is more serious, and the supervisor may need to take action. The action should be ___42___ with the firm’s guidelines and may include reassigning the employees to new jobs, ___43___ them temporarily, or firing them. A supervisor’s action toward a poorly performing worker can ___44___ the attitudes of other employees. If no ___45___ is imposed on an employee for poor performance, other employees may react by reducing their productivity as well.

　　A) additional I) identify

　　B) affect J) impact

　　C) aptly K) penalty

　　D) assimilate L) reward

　　E) circulation M) simplifying

　　F) closely N) suspending

　　G) consistent O) vulnerable

　　H) enthusiasm

　　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.

　　The College Essay: Why Those 500 Words Drive Us Crazy

　　A) Meg is a lawyer-mom in suburban Washington, D.C., where lawyer-moms are thick on the ground. Her son Doug is one of several hundred thousand high-school seniors who had a painful fall. The deadline for applying to his favorite college was Nov. 1, and by early October he had yet to fill out the application. More to the point, he had yet to settle on a subject for the personal essay accompanying the application. According to college folklore, a well-turned essay has the power to seduce (诱惑) an admissions committee. “He wanted to do one thing at a time,” Meg says, explaining her son’s delay. “But really, my son is a huge procrastinator (拖延者). The essay is the hardest thing to do, so he’s put it off the longest.” Friends and other veterans of the process have warned Meg that the back and forth between editing parent and writing student can be traumatic (痛苦的).

　　B) Back in the good old days—say, two years ago, when the last of my children suffered the ordeal (折磨)—a high-school student applying to college could procrastinate all the way to New Year’s Day of their senior year, assuming they could withstand the parental pestering (烦扰). But things change fast in the nail-biting world of college admissions. The recent trend toward early decision and early action among selective colleges and universities has pushed the traditional deadline of January up to Nov. 1 or early December for many students.

　　C) If the time for heel-dragging has been shortened, the true source of the anxiety and panic remains what it has always been. And it’s not the application itself. A college application is a relatively straightforward questionnaire asking for the basics: name, address, family history, employment history. It would all be innocent enough—20 minutes of busy work—except it comes attached to a personal essay.

　　D) “There are good reasons it causes such anxiety,” says Lisa Sohmer, director of college counseling at the Garden School in Jackson Heights, N.Y. “It’s not just the actual writing. By now everything else is already set. Your course load is set, your grades are set, your test scores are set. But the essay is something you can still control, and it’s open-ended. So the temptation is to write and rewrite and rewrite.” Or stall and stall and stall.

　　E) The application essay, along with its mythical importance, is a recent invention. In the 1930s, when only one in 10 Americans had a degree from a four-year college, an admissions committee was content to ask for a sample of applicants’ school papers to assess their writing ability. By the 1950s, most schools required a brief personal statement of why the student had chosen to apply to one school over another.

　　F) Today nearly 70 percent of graduating seniors go off to college, including two-year and four-year institutions. Even apart from the increased competition, the kids enter a process that has been utterly transformed from the one baby boomers knew. Nearly all application materials are submitted online, and the Common Application provides a one-size-fits form accepted by more than 400 schools, including the nation’s most selective.

　　G) Those schools usually require essays of their own, but the longest essay, 500 words maximum, is generally attached to the Common Application. Students choose one of six questions. Applicants are asked to describe an ethical dilemma they’ve faced and its impact on them, or discuss a public issue of special concern to them, or tell of a fictional character or creative work that has profoundly influenced them. Another question invites them to write about the importance (to them, again) of diversity—a word that has assumed magic power in American higher education. The most popular option: write on a topic of your choice.

　　H) “Boys in particular look at the other questions and say, ‘Oh, that’s too much work,’” says John Boshoven, a counselor in the Ann Arbor, Mich., public schools.“They think if they do a topic of their choice, ‘I’ll just go get that history paper I did last year on the Roman Empire and turn it into a first-person application essay!’ And they end up producing something utterly ridiculous.”

　　I) Talking to admissions professionals like Boshoven, you realize that the list of “don’ts” in essay writing is much longer than the “dos.”“No book reports, no history papers, no character studies,” says Sohmer.

　　J) “It drives you crazy, how easily kids slip into clichés (老生常谈)，” says Boshoven. “They don’t realize how typical their experiences are. ‘I scored the winning goal in soccer against our arch-rival.’‘My grandfather served in World War II, and I hope to be just like him someday.’ That may mean a lot to that particular kid. But in the world of the application essay, it’s nothing. You’ll lose the reader in the first paragraph.”

　　K) “The greatest strength you bring to this essay,” says the College Board’s how-to book, “is 17 years or so of familiarity with the topic: YOU. The form and style are very familiar, and best of all, you are the world-class expert on the subject of YOU... It has been the subject of your close scrutiny every morning since you were tall enough to see into the bathroom mirror.” The key word in the Common Application prompts is “you.”

　　L) The college admission essay contains the grandest American themes—status anxiety, parental piety (孝顺), intellectual standards—and so it is only a matter of time before it becomes infected by the country’s culture of excessive concern with self-esteem. Even if the question is ostensibly (表面上) about something outside the self (describe a fictional character or solve a problem of geopolitics), the essay invariably returns to the favorite topic: what is its impact on YOU?

　　M) “For all the anxiety the essay causes,” says Bill McClintick of Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, “it’s a very small piece of the puzzle. I was in college admissions for 10 years. I saw kids and parents beat themselves up over this. And at the vast majority of places, it is simply not a big variable in the college’s decision-making process.”

　　N) Many admissions officers say they spend less than a couple of minutes on each application, including the essay. According to a recent survey of admissions officers, only one in four private colleges say the essay is of “considerable importance” in judging an application. Among public colleges and universities, the number drops to roughly one in 10. By contrast, 86 percent place “considerable importance” on an applicant’s grades, 70 percent on “strength of curriculum.”

　　O) Still, at the most selective schools, where thousands of candidates may submit identically high grades and test scores, a marginal item like the essay may serve as a tie-breaker between two equally qualified candidates. The thought is certainly enough to keep the pot boiling under parents like Meg, the lawyer-mom, as she tries to help her son choose an essay topic. For a moment the other day, she thought she might have hit on a good one. “His father’s from France,” she says. “I said maybe you could write about that, as something that makes you different. You know: half French, half American. I said, ‘You could write about your identity issues.’ He said, ‘I don’t have any identity issues!’ And he’s right. He’s a well-adjusted, normal kid. But that doesn’t make for a good essay, does it?”

　　46. Today many universities require their applicants to write an essay of up to five hundred words.

　　47. One recent change in college admissions is that selective colleges and universities have moved the traditional deadline to earlier dates.

　　48. Applicants and their parents are said to believe that the personal essay can sway the admissions committee.

　　49. Applicants are usually better off if they can write an essay that distinguishes them from the rest.

　　50. Not only is the competition getting more intense, the application process today is also totally different from what baby boomers knew.

　　51. In writing about their own experiences many applicants slip into clichés, thus failing to engage the reader.

　　52. According to a recent survey, most public colleges and universities consider an applicant’s grades highly important.

　　53. Although the application essay causes lots of anxiety, it does not play so important a role in the college’s decision-making process.

　　54. The question you are supposed to write about may seem outside the self, but the theme of the essay should center around its impact on you.

　　55. In the old days, applicants only had to submit a sample of their school papers to show their writing ability.