2016年6月英语六级考试模拟卷及答案解析(一)

　　What makes this slump different from the last, he says, is that there are still buyers in the market, whereas in the early 1990s, when interest rates were high, there was no demand even though many collectors wanted to sell. Christie’s revenues in the first half of 2009 were still higher than in the first half of 2006. Almost everyone who was interviewed for this special report said that the biggest problem at the moment is not a lack of demand but a lack of good work to sell. The three Ds — death, debt and divorce — still deliver works of art to the market. But anyone who does not have to sell is keeping away, waiting for confidence to return.

　　52. In the first paragraph, Damien Hirst’s sale was referred to as “a last victory” because .

　　A) the art market had witnessed a succession of victories

　　B) the auctioneer finally got the two pieces at the highest bids

　　C) Beautiful inside My Head Forever won over all masterpieces

　　D) it was successfully made just before the world financial crisis

　　53. By saying “spending of any sort became deeply unfashionable” (Line 1-2, Para.3), the author suggests that .

　　A) art collection as a fashion had lost its appeal to a great extent

　　B) collectors were no longer actively involved in art-market auctions

　　C) people stopped every kind of spending and stayed away from galleries

　　D) works of art in general had gone out of fashion so they were not worth buying

　　54. What do we learn about the art market from the passage?

　　A) Nobody has confidence in the future of the art market.

　　B) The art market surpassed many other industries in momentum.

　　C) The art market generally went downward in various ways.

　　D) Sales of contemporary art rose dramatically from 2007 to 2008.

　　55. The three Ds mentioned in the last paragraph are .

　　A) auction houses’ favorites　 C) factors promoting artwork circulation

　　B) contemporary trends　 D) styles representing impressionists

　　56. What is mainly discussed in the passage?

　　A) Art market in decline.　 C) Fluctuation of art prices.

　　B) Up-to-date art auctions.　 D) Shifted interest in arts.

　　Passage Two

　　Questions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.

　　Over the past decade, many companies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors — habits — among consumers. These habits have helped companies earn billions of dollars when customers eat snacks or wipe counters almost without thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set of daily cues.

　　“There are fundamental public health problems, like dirty hands instead of a soap habit, that remain killers only because we can’t figure out how to change people’s habits,” said Dr. Curtis, the director of the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “We wanted to learn from private industry how to create new behaviors that happen automatically.”

　　The companies that Dr. Curtis turned to — Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever — had invested hundreds of millions of dollars finding the subtle cues in consumers’ lives that corporations could use to introduce new routines.

　　If you look hard enough, you’ll find that many of the products we use every day — chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers, health snacks, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins — are results of manufactured habits. A century ago, few people regularly brushed their teeth multiple times a day. Today, because of shrewd advertising and public health campaigns, many Americans habitually give their pearly whites a cavity-preventing scrub twice a day, often with Colgate, Crest or one of the other brands.