2015年12月大学英语六级阅读练习2篇

　　Passage Two

　　(美国教育问题、文化种族歧视)

　　In American high schools today, it's taken as a given that extracurricular (课外的) activities bring students of different races together. What's more, it's in clubs and sports teams that the conditions of Allport's Contact Theory are actually met—students are working together towards a single goal, rather than competing against each other.

　　If school districts can widely integrate their sports teams and clubs, then they might see less self-segregation in the hallways and lunchrooms.

　　It fell to a Duke University scholar, Dr. Charles Clotfelter, to figure out a way to measure how well schools are doing on this front.

　　Clotfelter could easily look up the racial composition of every school—those numbers are tracked by the National Centre for Education Statistics. But the racial make-up of clubs and sports teams wasn't as easy. How to go about getting a tabulation (列表) of who's in the drama club, belongs to the engineering society, and runs the school newspapers?

　　Then Clotfelter landed on an ingenious solution. In nearby Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was a printing company called Jostens. Inc. Jostens is one of the biggest printers of high school yearbooks. Clotfelter got permission to drive over and haul away a huge random sample of yearbooks from the previous year, which represented a fairly good mix of public, private independent, and Catholic high schools throughout the Midwest, Northeast and South.

　　Then his graduate students found every photograph of every track team, French club and Yearbook Club that existed in those yearbooks. There are over 4,400 sports teams and another 4,400 more clubs, each with roughly a couple dozen members on average—ultimately equivalent to a poll of over 150,000 students. It was painstaking work to catalogue the race of every kid in every photo.

　　Clotfelter found that extracurricular activities were far from the desegregating force they should be. The average club was 39% less diverse than the school itself. Fully one-third of all clubs and teams are mono-racial. In fact, there seemed to be a curious phenomenon: white students almost never belonged to a team or a club that was less than 3/4 white. If a club's racial composition got too diverse, it was hard to find a white face, save for clubs in the most diverse schools. There were also a small proportion of ethnic-identity clubs that whites probably did not feel welcome to join.

　　We couldn't help but wonder what if school districts were more proactively (积极地) getting kids involved in these activities—making sure that their participation includes kids from all races, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds. To do so, districts and schools would need to actively recruit students into various clubs and activities. They would need to make sure that fees for participation don't prohibit children from low-income families from joining. Bus schedules, too, would likely also have to be addressed, since they often make it hard for kids from other neighborhoods to participate.

　　It would take a real effort, but so many good things come from diverse extracurricular activities, shouldn't these be fostered?

　　6. What do we know about extracurricular activities in American high schools?

　　[A] Students are united and work to reach the same goal.

　　[B] There still exists prejudice and racial discrimination.

　　[C] Students from different races have equal access.

　　[D] They are organised according to Allport's Contact Theory.

　　7. What problem did Clotfelter face when he studied the effect of schools' extracurricular activities?

　　[A] Students were unwilling to cooperate when he conducted the poll.

　　[B] There was no available data of the racial composition of every school.

　　[C] He found it impossible to catalogue the structural feature of all high schools.

　　[D] It was difficult to compare the racial makeup of the clubs and sports teams.

　　8. How did Clotfelter manage to solve the problem in the end?

　　[A] By seeking cooperation with heads of the school clubs and sports teams.

　　[B] By hiring some graduate students to carry out a poll in the schools.

　　[C] By cataloguing the races from the pictures presented in the yearbooks.

　　[D] By getting the racial data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

　　9. What did Clotfelter's study reveal about the extracurricular activities?

　　[A] Most of them were exclusive to white and rich students only.

　　[B] They contributed to the forming of interracial friendships.

　　[C] They didn't help eliminate racial segregation as expected.

　　[D] They seemed to be neglected by American school districts.

　　10. To promote extracurricular mixing, the author suggests districts and schools _______.

　　[A] rearrange the school shuttles

　　[B] set stricter rules for the activities

　　[C] offer free buses for poor students

　　[D] make some curricular changes

　　1.

　　答案：B

　　解析：

　　本题为推断题。根据题干关键词extracurricular activities定位到第一段。该段提到课外活动让不同种族的学生聚在一起被视为一种假设。第二段也提到了自我种族隔离。由此可推断，当今美国中学的课外活动仍存在种族歧视。

　　2.

　　答案：D

　　解析：

　　本题为细节题。根据题干关键词Clotfelter，problem和studied定位到第三四段。第四段最后两句提到搞清俱乐部和运动队的种族成分没有那么容易。由此可知，要进行两者的比较很难是研究遇到的问题。因此答案应选D。

　　3.

　　答案：C

　　解析：

　　本题为细节题。根据题干关键词solve the problem定位到第5、6段。两段提到Clotfelter从乔斯滕斯印刷公司中随机抽取上一年的年鉴的样品，并从中获得每个俱乐部和运动队的照片。由此可知答案选C。

　　4.

　　答案：C

　　解析：

　　本题为细节题。根据题干关键词Clotfelter's study定位到倒数第三段。首句提到Clotfelter发现课外活动远未发挥其应发挥的消除种族隔离的作用。故答案选择C。

　　5.

　　答案：A

　　解析：

　　本题为态度题。根据题干关键词districts and schools定位到倒数第二段。该段提到学区和学校需要积极动员学生参加各种俱乐部和活动;确保参加费用不至于阻碍低收入家庭孩子的参与，以及校车时刻表问题要设法解决。故答案应选A。