英语六级全套模拟试卷（第1套）

英语六级模拟题及参考答案

Part I Writing (30 minutes)

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the remark “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” You can cite examples to illustrate your point. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. Write your essay on Answer Sheet 1.

注意：此部分试题请在答题卡1上作答。

Part II Listening Comprehension (30 minutes)

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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.

To understand why we should be concerned about how young people read, it helps to know something about the way the ability to read evolved. Unlike the ability to understand and produce spoken language, the ability to read must be painstakingly 36__________ by each individual. The “reading circuits” we construct in the brain can be 37__________ or they can be robust, depending on how often and how 38__________ we use them. Thers are enjoying the experience the most, the pace of their reading 39__________ slows. The combination of fast, fluent decoding of words and slow, unhurried progress on the page gives deep readers time to enrich their reading with reflection and analysis. It gives them time to establish an 40__________ relationship with the author, the two of them 41__________ in a long and warm conversation like people falling in love.

This is not reading as many young people know it. Their reading

difference between what literary critic Frank Kermode calls “carnal (肉体的) reading” and “spiritual reading.” If we allow our offspring to believe carnal reading is all there is — if we don’t open the door to spiritual reading, through an early 42__________ on discipline and practice — we will have 43__________ them of an enjoyable experience

they would not otherwise encounter. Observing young people’s 44__________ to digital devices, some progressive educators talk about “meeting kids where they are,” molding instruction around their onscreen habits. This is mistaken. We need, 45 , to show them someplace they’ve never been, a place only deep reading can take them.

A)acquired

B) actually

C) attachment

D) cheated

E) engaged

F) feeble

G) illicit

H) insistence

J) notwithstan

K) petition

L) rather

M) scarcely

N) swayed

O) vigorously

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.

[A] The UN had the foresight to convene a “world assembly on ageing” back in 1982, but that came and went. By 1994 the World Bank had noticed that something big was happening. In a report entitled “Averting the Old Age Crisis”, it argued that pension arrangements in most countries were unsustainable.

[B] For the next ten years a succession of books, mainly by Ame alarm. They had titles like Young vs Old, Gray Dawn and The Coming Generational Storm, and their message was blunt: health-care systems were heading for the rocks, pensioners were taking young people to the cleaners, and soon there would be intergenerational warfare.

[C] Since then the debate has become less emotiona known about the subject. Books, conferences and research papers have multiplied. International organisations such as the OECD and the EU issue regular reports. Population ageing is on every agenda, from G8 economic conferences to NATO summits. The World Economic Forum plans to consider the future of pensions and health care at its prestigious Davos conference early next year. The media,

[D] Whether all that attention has translated into sufficient action is another question. Governments in rich countries now accept that their pension and promises will soon become unaffordable, and many of them have embarked on reforms, but so far only timidly. That is not surprising: politicians with an eye on the next election will hardly rush to introduce unpopular measures that may not bear fruit for years, perhaps decades.

[E] The outline of the changes needed is clear. To avoid fiscal (财政的) meltdown, public pensions and health-care provisi taxes may have to go up. By far the most effective method to restrain pension spending is to give people the opportunity to work longer, because it increases tax revenues and reduces spending on pensions at the same time. It may even keep them alive longer. John Rother, the AARP’s head of policy and strategy, points to studies showing that other things being equal, people who remain at work have lower death rates than their retired peers.

[F] Younger people today mostly accept that they will have to work for longer and that their pensions will be less generous.Employers older workers are worth holding on to. That may be because they have had plenty of younger ones to choose from, partly thanks to the post-war baby-boom and partly because over the past few decades many more women have entered the labour force, increasing employers’ choice. But the reservoir of women able and willing to take up paid work is running low, and the baby-boomers are going grey.

[G] In many countries immigrants have been filling such gaps in the labour force as have already emerged (and remember that the real shortage is still around ten

years off). Immigration in the developed world is the highest it has ever been, and it is making a useful difference. In still-fertile America it currently accounts for about 40% of total population growth, and in fast-ageing western Europe for about 90%.

[H] On the face of it, it seems the perfect solution. Many developing countries have lots of young will boost tax revenues and keep up economic growth. But over the next few decades labour forces in rich countries are set to shrink so much that inflows of immigrants would have to increase enormously to compensate: to at least twice their current size in western Europe’s most youthful countries, and three times in the older ones. Japan would need a large multiple of the few immigrants it has at present. Public opinion polls show that people in most rich countries already think that immigration is too high. Further big increases would be politically unfeasible.

[I] To tackle the problem of ageing populations at its root, “old” countries would have to rejuvenate (使年轻) themselves by having more of their own children. A number of them have tried, some more successfully than others. But it is not a simple matter of offering financial incentives or providing more child care. Modern urban life in rich countries is not well adapted to large families. Women find it hard to combine family and career. They often compromise by having just one child.

[J] And if fertility in ageing countries does not pick up? It will not be the end of the world, at ledifferent place. Older societies may be less innovative and more strongly disinclined to take risks than younger ones. By 2025 at the latest, about half the voters in America and most of those in western European countries will be over 50—and older people turn out to vote in much greater numbers than younger ones. Academic studies have found no evidence so far that older voters have used their power at the ballot box to push for policies that specifically benefit them, though if in future there are many more of them they might start doing so.

[K] Nor is there any sign of the intergenerational warfare predicted in the 1990s. After all, older people themselves mostly have families. In a recent study o

grown-up children in 11 European countries, Karsten Hank of Mannheim University found that 85% of them lived within 25km of each other and the majority of them were in touch at least once a week.

[L]Even so, the shift in the centre of gravity to older age groups is bound to have a profound effect on societies, not just economically a of other ways too. Richard Jackson and Neil Howe of America’s CSIS, in a thoughtful book called The Graying of the Great Powers, argue that, among other things, the ageing of the develop dcountries will have a number of serious security implications.

[M]For example, the shortage of young adults is likely to make countries more reluctant to commit the America will find itself playing an ever-increasing role in the developed world’s defence effort. Because America’s population will still be growing when that of most other developed countries is shrinking, America will be the only developed country that still matters geopolitically (地缘政治上). Ask me in 2020

[N] There is little that can be done to stop population ageinlive with it. But sbelieve that given the right policies, the effects, though grave, need not be catastrophic. Most countries have recognised the need to do something and are beginning to act.

[O] But even then there is no guarantee that their efforts will work. What is happening now is historically

Economics and Demography of Ageing at the University of California, Berkeley, puts it briefly and clearly: “We don’t really know what population ageing will be like, because nobody has done it yet.”

注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。

46. Employers should realise it is important to

47.A recent study found that most old people in some European countries had

48.Few governments in rich countries have launc

49.In a report published some 20

50.Countries that have a shortage of young adults wi

51.One-c

52.A series of books, mostly authored by Americans, warned o

53.Compared with younger ones, olde

54.The best solu

55.Immigration as a means to boost the shrinking labour force may

Section C

Directions:questions choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

Questions 56 to 60 are based on the following passage.

For most of the 20th century, Asia asked itself it could learn from the moderm.innovating west.Now the question must be reversed:what can the West's overly indebated and sluggish (经济滞长的) nations learn from a flourishing Asia? Just a few decades ago, Asia’s two giants were stagnating (停滞不前) under faulty economic ideologies. However, once China began embracing free-mark rms in the 1980s, followed by India in the 1990s, both countries achieved rapid growth. Crucially, as they opened up their markets, they balanced market economy with sensible government direction. As the Indian e conomist Amartya Sen has wisely said, “The invisible hand of the market has often relied heavily on the visible hand of government.”

Contrast this middle path with America and Europe, which have each gone ideologically o

easingly clinging to the ideology of uncontrolled free markets and dismissing the role of government—following Ronald Reagan’s idea that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Of course, when the markets came crashing down in 2007, it was decisive government intervention that saved the day. Despite this fact, many Americans are still strongly opposed to “big government.” If Americans could only free themselves from their antigovernment doctrine, they would be

ral measures could put the country back on the right path. A simple consumption tax of, say, 5% would significantly reduce the country’s huge government deficit without damaging productivity. A small gasoline tax would help free America from its dependence on oil imports and create incentives for green energy development. In the same way, a significant reduction of wasteful agricultural subsidies could also lower the deficit. But in order to take advantage of these common-sense solutions, Americans will have to put aside their own attachment to the idea of smaller government and less regulation. American politicians will have to develop the courage to follow what is taught in all American public-policy schools: that there are good taxes and bad taxes. Asian countries have embraced this wisdom, and have built sound long-term fiscal (财政的) policies as a result. Meanwhile, Europe has fallen prey to a different ideological trap: the belief that European governments would always have infinite

owing as if there were no tomorrow. Unlike the Americans, who felt that the markets knew best, the Europeans failed to anticipate how the markets would react to their endless borrowing. Today, the European Union is creating a $580 billion fund to ward off sovereign collapse. This will buy the EU time, but it will not solve the bloc’s larger problem.

56. What has contributed to the rapid economic growth in China and India?

B) Heavy reliance on the hand of government.

C) Copying western-style economic behavior.

D) Timely reform of government at all levels.

What does Ronald Reagan mean by saying “go

A) Government action is key to solving economic problems. B) Many

C) Many social ills are caused by wrong government policies.

D) Government regulation hinders economic development.

58. What stopped the American economy from collapsing in 2007?

A) Cooperation between the government and businesses.

B) Self-regulatory repair mechanisms of the free market.

C) Effective measures adopted by the government.

D) Abandonment of big government by the public.

59. What is the author’s suggestion to the American public in face of the government deficit?

A) They give up the idea of smaller government and less regulation.

B) They put up with the inevitable sharp increase of different taxes.

C) They urge the government to revise its existing public policies.

D) They develop green energy to avoid dependence on oil import.

60. What is the problem with the European Union?

A) Conservative ideology. C) Lack of resources.

B) Excessive borrowing. D) Shrinking market.

Passage Two

Questions 61 to 65 are based on the following passage.

Picture a typical MBA lecture theatre twenty years ago. In it the majority of students will have conformed to the standard model of the time: male, middle class and Western. Walk into a class today, however, and you’ll get a completely different impression. For a start, you will now see plenty more women—the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, for example, boasts that 40% of its new enrolment is female. You will also see a wide range of ethnic groups and nationals of practically every country.

It might be tempting, therefore, to think that the old barriers have been broken down and equal opportunity achieved. But, increasingly, this apparent diversity is becoming a mask for a new type of conformity. Behind the differences in sex, skin tones and mother tongues, there are common attitudes, expectations and ambitions which risk creating a set of clones among the business leaders of the future.

Diversity, it seems, has not helped to address fundamental weaknesses in business leadership. So what can be done to create more effective managers of the commercial world? According to Valerie Gauthier, associate dean at HEC Paris, the key lies in the process by which MBA programmes recruit their students. At the moment candidates are selected on a fairly narrow set of criteria such as prior academic and career performance, and analytical and problem solving abilities. This is then coupled to a school’s picture of what a diverse class should look like, with the result that passport, ethnic origin and sex can all become influencing factors. But schools rarely dig down to find out what really makes an applicant succeed, to create a class which also contains diversity of attitude and approach—arguably the only diversity that, in a business context, really matters.

Professor Gauthier believes schools should not just be selecting candidates from traditional sectors such as banking, consultancy and industry. They should also be seeking individuals who have backgrounds in areas such as political science, the

creative arts, history or philosophy, which will allow them to put business decisions into a wider context.

Indeed, there does seem to be a demand for the more rounded leaders such diversity might create. A study by Mannaz, a leadership development company, suggests that, while the bully-boy chief executive of old may not have been eradicated completely, there is a definite shift in emphasis towards less tough styles of management—at least in America and Europe. Perhaps most significant, according to Mannaz, is the increasing interest large companies have in more collaborative management models, such as those prevalent in Scandinavia, which seek to integrate the hard and soft aspects of leadership and encourage delegated responsibility and accountability.

注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。

61. What characterises the business school student population of today?

A) Greater diversity. C) Exceptional diligence.

B) Intellectual maturity. D) Higher ambition.

62. What is the author’s concern about current business school education?

A) It will arouse students’ unrealistic expectations.

B) It stresses competition rather than cooperation.

C) It focuses on theory rather than on practical skills.

D) It will produce business leaders of a uniform style.

63. What aspect of diversity does Valerie Gauthier think is most important?

A) Attitude and approach to business.

B) Social and professional experience.

C) Age and educational background.

D) Ethnic origin and gender.

64. What applicants does the author think MBA programmes should consider recruiting?

A) Applicants with prior experience in corporate activities.

B) Applicants with sound knowledge in math and statistics.

C) Applicants from less developed regions and areas.

D) Applicants from outside the traditional sectors.

65. What does Mannaz say about the current management style?

A) It is eradicating the tough aspects of management.

B) It is shifting towards more collaborative models.

C) It adopts the bully-boy chief executive model.

D) It encourages male and female executives to work side by side..

Part IV Translation (30 minutes)

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2.

中国新年是中国最重要的传统节日，在中国也被称为春节。新年的庆祝活动从除夕开始一直延续到元宵节(the Lantern Festival)，即从农历(lunar calendar)最后一个月的最后一天至新年第一个月的第十五天。各地欢度春节的习俗和传统有很大差异，但通常每个家庭都会在除夕夜团聚，一起吃年夜饭。为驱厄运、迎好运，家家户户都会进行大扫除。人们还会在门上粘贴红色的对联(couplets)，对联的主题为健康、发财和好运。其他的活动还有放鞭炮、发红包和探亲访友等。

注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。

参考答案：

作文略。

Part III Reading Comprehension

Section A

36. A 37. F 38. O 39. B 40. I

41. E 42. H 43. D 44. C 45. L

Section B

46. F 47. K 48. D 49. A 50. M

51. I 52. B 53. J 54. E 55. H

Section C

56. A 57. D 58. C 59. A 60. B

61. A 62. D 63. A 64. D 65. B

Part IV Translation

Chinese New Year is the most important traditional Chinese holiday. In China, it is also known as the Spring Festival. New Year celebrations run from Chinese New Year’s Eve, the last day of the last month of the lunar calendar, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month. Customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Chinese New Year vary widely from place to place. However, New Year’s Eve is usually an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. It is also traditional for every family to thoroughly clean the house in order to sweep away ill fortune and to bring in good luck. And doors will be decorated with red couplets with themes of health, wealth and good luck. Other activities include lighting firecrackers, giving money in red envelopes, and visiting relatives and friends.