最新 2014年6月英语六级长篇阅读匹配练习题(一)-精品
2014年6月大学英语6级真题(三套全)
2014年6月大学英语6级真题(三套全)2014年6月大学英语六级真题(第一套) PartI Writing ( 30minutes)Directions: For this part, you areallowed 30 minutes to write an essay explaining why it is unwise to put allyour eggs in one basket. You can give examples to illustrate your point .Youshould write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.Directions: For this part, you areallowed 30 minutes to write an essay explaining why it is unwise a person bytheir appearance. You can give examples to illustrate your point .You shouldwrite at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.Directions: For this part, you areallowed 30 minutes to write an essay explaining why it is unwise to jump toconclusions upon seeing or hearing something. You can give examples toillustrate your point .You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200words.Part Ⅱ List ening Comprehension (30 minutes)Section ADirections:In this section,youwill hear 8 short conversations and 2 long conversations.At the end of eachconversation, one or more questions will be asked about what was said.Both theconversation and the questions will be spoken only once.After each questionthere will be a pause.During the pause,you must read the four choices markedA),B),C)and D),and decide which is the best answer.Then mark the correspondingletter on Answer Sheet1 with a single line through the centre.注意:此部分试题请在答题卡1上作答。
2014年6月大学英语六级考试真题(一).doc
2014年6月大学英语六级考试真题(一)Part I Writing (30 minutes)Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay explaining why it is unwise to jump to conclusions upon seeing or hearing something. You can give examples to illustrate your point. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.注意:此部分试题请在答题卡1上作答。
PartⅡListening Comprehension (30 minutes)Section ADirections: In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, you must read the four choices marked A), B), C) and D), and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.注意:此部分试题请在答题卡1上作答。
2014年6月大学英语六级仔细阅读训练答案及解析
Passage One Questions 56 to 60 are based on the following passage. University of York biologist Peter Mayhew recently found that global warming might actually increase the number of species on the planet,contrary to a previous report that higher temperatures meant fewer life forms—a report mat was his own. In Mayhew’s initial 2008 study,low biodiversity among marine invertebrates(⽆脊椎动物)appeared to coincide with warmer temperatures on Earth over the last 520 million years. But Mayhew and his colleagues decided to reexamine their hypothesis,this time using data that were“a fairer sample of the history of life.”砌this new collection of material.they found a complete reversal of the relationship between species richness and temperature from what their previous paper argued:the number of different groups present in the fossil record was higher,rather than lower,durin9“greenhouse phases.” Their previous findings rested on an assumption that fossil records can be taken to represent biodiversity changes throughout history.Thisn’t necessarily the case.because there are certain periods with higher.quality fossil samples.and some that are much more difficult to sample well.Aware of this bias.Mayhew’s team used data that standardized the number of fossils examined throughout history and accounted for other variables like sea level changes that might influence biodiversity in their new study to see if their old results would hold up. Two years later,the results did not.But then why doesn't life increasingly emerge on Earth as our temperatures get warmer? While the switch may prompt some to assert that climate change is not hazardous to living creatures,Mayhew explained that the timescales in his team’s study are huge--over 500million years--and therefore inappropriate for the shorter periods that we might look at as humans concerned about global wanning.Many global warming concerns are focused on the next century.He said——and the lifetime of a species is typically one to 10 million years. “I do worry that these findings vill be used by the climate skeptic community to say‘look.Climate warming is fine。
2014年6月大学英语六级阅读练习题附答案及解析水印版
2014年6月大学英语六级阅读练习题附答案及解析目录2014年6月大学英语六级阅读练习题附答案及解析 (1)2014年6月大学英语六级仔细阅读练习题附答案及解析(1) (2)2014年6月英语六级长篇阅读匹配练习题附答案解析(1) (11)2014年6月英语六级选词填空习模拟练习附答案(1) (17)2014年6月大学英语六级仔细阅读练习题附答案及解析(2) (21)2014年6月英语六级长篇阅读匹配练习题附答案解析(2) (30)2014年6月英语六级选词填空习模拟练习附答案(2) (37)2014年6月大学英语六级仔细阅读练习题附答案及解析(1) Passage OneQuestions 56 to 60 are based an the following passage.Dropping out of university to launch a start-up is old hat. The twist with Joseph Cohen, Dan Getelman and Jim Grandpre is that their start-up aims to improve how universities work. In May 2011 the three founders quit the University of Pennsvlvania. to launch Coursekit,soon renamed as Lore.whichhas already raised $ 6m to develop what Mr. Cohen, its 21-year-old chief executive, describes as a social-learning network for the classroom".Lore is part of a trend that builds on the familiarity with social networking that has come with the success of Facebook. It customizes the rules of a network to meet the specific needs of students. Anyone teaching a class would reasonably worry that students using Facebook were gossiping rather than learning useful information from their network of friends. Lore allows teachers to control exactly who is in the network by issuing a class-membership code and to see how they are using it. They can also distribute course materials, contact students, manage tests and grades, and decide what to make public and what to keep private. Students can also interact with each other.In the academic year after launching its first version last November, Lore was used in at least one class in 600 diversities and colleges. Its goal for its second year, about to begin, is to spread rapidly within those 600 institutions, not least to see what the effects of scale are from having lots of classes signed up within the same institution.The firm has a fast-growing army of fans in the faculty common room. Lore, says Edward Boches, who uses it for his advertising classes at Boston University, makes teaching "more interactive, extends it beyond the classroom and stimulates students to learn from each other rather than just the professor."Among other challenges for the company, there remains the small matter offiguring out a business model. For the moment it has none. Mr. Cohen hopes that eventually Lore could become the primary marketplace for everything from courses to textbooks, but so far the service is free and carries no advertising. Blackboard, the industry incumbent (占有者), charges users for its course-management software. It remains to be seen how it will respond to the upstart(新贵).The lack of a plan does not appear to bother Lore's founders or investors, -who seem content to learn a lesson from another university drop-out, Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook: achieve critical mass in your network and the profits will follow. And after that perhaps they can expect an honorary degree from the a/ma mater(母校).56. What do we learn from the first paragraph about Lore?A.It specializes in producing old hats.B.It aims to improve the way universities work.C.It invests $ 6m in the development of social network.D.It promotes the communication among classmates.57. What does Lore enable teachers to do?A.Meet specific needs of students.B.Learn useful information from friends.C.Control the online class membership.D.Monitor students' personal privacy.58. For its second-year goal, Lore is to __A.increase fans in the faculty common roomB.launch its second version in 600 universitiesC.make more classes from 600 institutions signed upD.spread its influence within the same institution59. Concerning the prospect of Lore, Mr. Cohen expects it toA.confront with Blackboard as an equalB.offer free service to the advertisersC.cover businesses from courses to textbooksD.Develop its own come-management software60. What do we learn about Lore's founders?A.They can't be bothered to design a business model.B.They learn a lesson from the success of Facebook.C.They will not make profits without drawing mass users.D.They desire to receive an honorary degree from the alma mater.Passage TwoQuestions 61 to 65 are based on the following passage.A bull grazes on dry wheat husks(Phi) in Logan, Kansas, one of the regions hit by the record drought that has affected more than half of the U. S. and is expected to drive up food prices.Leadinu water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world's population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.Adopting a vegetarian diet is one option to increase the amount of water available to grow more food in an increasingly climate-unstable world, the scientists said. Animal protein-rich food consumes 5 to 10 times more water than a vegetarian diet. One third of the world's arable(适于耕种的) land is used to grow crops to feed animals. Other options to feed people include eliminating waste and increasing trade between countries in food surplus and those in deficit."900 million people already go hungry and 2 billion people are malnourished in spite of the fact that per capita food production continues to increase," they said. "With 70% of all available water being in agriculture, growing more food to feed an additional 2 billion people by 2050 will place greater pressure on available water and land."The report is being released at the start of the annual world water conference in Stockholm, Sweden, where 2,500 politicians, UN bodies, non-governmental groups and researchers from 120 countries meet to address global water supply problems.Competition for water between food production and other uses will intensifypressure on essential resources, the scientists said. "The UN predicts that we must increase food production by 70% by mid-century. This will place additional pressure on our 'already stressed water resources, at a time when we also need to allocate more water to satisfy global energy demand--which is expected to rise 60% over the coming 30 years--and to generate electricity for the 1.3 billion people currently without it," said the report.Overeating, undernourishment and waste are all on the rise and increased food production may face future constraints from water scarcity."We will need a new recipe to feed the world in the future," said the report's editor, Anders Jagerskog.A separate report from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) said the best way for countries to protect millions of farmers from food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia was to help them invest in small pumps and simple technology, rather than to develop expensive, large-scale irrigation projects."Farmem across the developing world are increasingly relying on and benefiting from small-scale,locally-relevant water solutions. These techniques could increase yields up to 300% and add tens of billions of U. S. dollars to household revenues across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. " said Dr. Colin Chartres, the director general.61. What can be inferred from the water scientists' warning?A.The record drought forces half of the U. S. to go hungry.B.The record drought drives up food prices m the U. S.C.Severe food shortage may happen without proper measures.D.A vegetarian diet is the only option to avoid disastrous shortages.62. What do the scientists say can be done to increase food supply?A.Grow more animal protein-rich food.B.Turn pastures into arable lands.C.Promote trade between countries self-sufficient in food.D.Increase the amount of water for food production.63. According to the water scientists' report,A.per capita food production has been increasingB.reduced food supply will make more people malnourishedC.70% of water will be used to feed 2 billion people by 2050D.researchers begin to seek solutions to tackle water problem64. In regard to the problem of water supply, scientists believeA.more water should be allocated to satisfy energy demandB.food production must be increased to 70% by mid-centuryC.energy demand will intensify pressure on water resourcesD.electricity generation must be increased by 60% 30 years later65. What does the IWMI say is the best solution to food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia?A.Applying small pumps and simple technology.B.Launching large-scale irrigation projects.C.Increase the local household revenues.D.Investing in a new expensive irrigation project.答案解析:56 B)。
2014年6月英语六级阅读答案及点评:试卷一仔细阅读(沪江网校版)
2014年6月英语六级阅读答案及点评:试卷一仔细阅读(沪江网校版)作者:沪江网校阅读:795156. D. It is often hard to understand.57. C. It does not have as long a history.58. A. It brings texters closer to each other.59. D. the gradual change of word meaning.60. B. It is a new form of verbal communication.【点评】这是一篇关于手机短信的议论文。
改编自Time的一篇题为Is Texting Killing the English Language?的文章。
文章提到手机短信因文字缩写、话语庸俗而受到批评。
作者则认为短信更接近于一种“口”语,并随着时间的推移而变得更加丰富多彩。
作者接着对文字和话语进行了历史的展望,话语先于文字产生。
手机短信作为一种新的说话方式出现,形成了自己的语法和规则。
作者以LOL,meat和silly为例,指出话语的含义会随时间推移产生变化。
作者认为短信不会破坏人们的写作技能,而是口头交流的一种新形式。
文章本身话题和语言难度不高,题目设置也比较简单,通过关键词定位到相应段落和句子,结合选项排除法还是比较容易选出正确答案的。
61 B. She worked her way to success in the entertainment industry.62 B. She was known as a supporter of fake science.63 A. He was strongly against it.64 C. They attach too much importance to public relations.65 D. Pursuit of knowledge and truth.【点评】本文来自Time上一篇文章,题为“Viewpoint: Oprah as Harvard's Commencement Speaker Is an Endorsement of Phony Science”。
2014年6月英语六级阅读真题及答案
2014年6⽉英语六级阅读真题及答案 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 bamk 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. For investors who desire low risk and guaranteed income,U.S. Government bonds are a secure investment because these bonds have the financial backing and full faith and credit of the federal government.Municipal bonds,also secure,are offered by local governmengts and often have____36______such as tax-free interest.Some may even be____37______.Corportate bonds are a bit more risky. Two questions often_____38_____first-time corportate bond investors.The first is”If I purchase a corportate bond,do I have to hold it until the matueity date?”The answer is no.Bonds are bought and sold daily on ____39_____securities exchanges.However,if your bond does not have____40_____ that make it attractive to other investors, you may be forced to sell your bond at a____41____i.e., a price less than the bond’s face value. But if your bond is highly valued by other investors, you may be able to sell it at a premium, i.e., a price above its face value. Bond prices gcncrally____42____ inversely (相反地)with current market interest rates. As interest rates go up, bond pnccs tall, and vice versa (反之亦然).Thus, like all investments,bonds have a degree of risk. The second question is “How can I ___43_______ the investment risk of a particular bond issue?” Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service rate the level of risk of many corporate and government bonds. And ____44______, the higher the market risk of a bond,the higher the interest rate. Investors will invest in a bond considered risky only if the_____45_____return is high enough. 注意:此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
2014年6月大学英语六级真题试卷(一)(题后含答案及解析)
2014年6月大学英语六级真题试卷(一)(题后含答案及解析)题型有:1. Writing 2. Listening Comprehension 3. 4. Reading Comprehension 5. TranslationPart I Writing1.For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay explaining why it is unwise to jump to conclusions upon seeing or hearing something. You can give examples to illustrate your point. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.正确答案:Thinking Before Leaping! As the proverb goes, you should think before you leap. Living in the information age full of changes, we should definitely not jump to conclusions upon seeing or hearing something. Confronted with various kinds of information, modern people tend to trust whatever they have heard or read. However, we should know that information cannot be trusted until it is checked. It is evident that some information is so misleading that we should not believe it. For instance, several years ago, due to the nuclear leakage in Japan, a host of Chinese, especially middle-aged people and the seniors, rushed to buy salt, firmly believing that iodized salt could prevent radiation, which was very ridiculous. Although it is generally accepted that a picture is worth 1,000 words, some pictures cannot be trusted in this day and age, for Photoshop has prevailed all around the world. In conclusion, it is imperative for people to form the correct attitudes towards the information they see or hear. We should also not draw conclusions in a hurry. People should be educated to raise their awareness of judging right from wrong. I firmly believe a better future is awaiting us if we make every decision upon considerable thinking.Part II Listening ComprehensionSection A听力原文:W: The students have been protesting against the increased tuition.M: Yeah, I heard about the protest. But I don’t know how much good it will do. Q: What does the man mean?2.A.College tuition has become a heavy burden for the students.B.College students are in general politically active nowadays.C.He is doubtful about the effect of the students’ action.D.He took part in many protests when he was at college.正确答案:C解析:女士向男士提到了学生们正在因为学费上涨而进行抗议,男士说他也听说了这事,但他却不认为学生们的行为会起到什么好的效果。
2014年6月英语六级真题及答案(第一套)
2014年6月大学英语六级考试真题(一)Part I Writing (30 minutes)Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay explaining why it is unwise to jump to conclusions upon seeing or hearing something. You can give examples to illustrate your point. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.注意:此部分试题请在答题卡1上作答。
Part II Listening Comprehension (30 minutes)Section ADirections: In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, you must read the four choices marked A., B), C. and D., and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding letter on ,Answer Shoot 1 with a single line through the centre.注意:此部分试题请在答题卡1上作答。
2014年英语六级阅读段落信息匹配题练习以及答案
2014年英语六级阅读段落信息匹配题练习(1)Words: 943How to Survive Black FridayA) If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving today, you might be considering venturing out to the Black Friday sales tomorrow morning. After all, there will be at least a few great deals—and you can do all your holiday gift shopping in one crazy sprint. In order to make it out with your sanity—and your wallet—intact, there are a few Black Friday tips I)d like to share.B) First, making your shopping list is essential. When I was little, I could sit for hours with the Black Friday ads (especially Toys R Us), telling whoever was listening that I wanted pretty much everything on each page. I may have grown out of Toys R Us, but I still see plenty I want flipping through the sales papers. Sometimes, I can even convince myself that I really need some great gadget (小玩意儿)that I hadn’t actually intended to buy. So, before I even start browsing through the sales papers, I make a list of items that I’m particularly looking for. While I might adapt my list to what’s on sale—maybe swap out a movie title or choose a different videogame based on what is available.C) Second, many retailers offer online deals for Black Friday, so check the online deals before shopping. When you add in gas money and the time you might spend standing in line on Friday morning, online sales are even better. Before you brave the crowds, take a look at your favorite websites—and the stores you!re planning to visit. Many sales will kick in at midnight, so you"ll be able to check no matter how early you’re planning on getting in line at the local big box retailer. For some stores, you can order items online and pay the Black Friday price, then pick them up at your local store.D) Third, I have to say you’d better pick a shopping b uddy who will match your pace. My mother will be getting up at 4 a.m. Friday morning. While I admire her dedication, her Black Friday will be much longer than mine. I prefer to shop at a more comfortable pace, though, so I’ll be going with a different shop ping buddy. My mom and my sister—both power shoppers—are much happier pairing up and letting the slow poke(慢性子的A) (that’s me) go on my own. I do think that having a buddy does make the whole process much easier, though: one person can stand in line while the other person grabs whatever is on the list. Even better, a buddy can help youstick to your list and your budget, avoiding unnecessary spending.E) Fourth, don’t forget to bring your ads with you. There’s a chance that your discounted item may not ring up as on sale when you actually get up to the cash register. Instead of trying to recall exactly what the sale paper said, pull that ad out and ask the clerk to double check it. You can avoid confusion by carrying your ads with you—and, if you go to a store with a price-matching policy, you may be able to get the same prices that another store is offering. If you’re relying on ads you found online, you might have a harder time getting a deal, though. Some stores won’t even honor the prices listed on thei r own websites. Printing off the ad can help you convince a clerk, but it’s not guaranteed.F) Fifth, as to returns policies, they seem to get tighter every year, and they can be worse for Black Friday. For some items, stores may have only a short return policy—and they may charge you a restocking fee. If you aren’t sure if you’ve bought the right size (or are otherwise considering a return), plan on making your return as soon as possible. Keep your receipt handy and pick up gift receipts where necessary.G) Sixth, it is better to use your credit card on Black Friday. Normally, I,m against using a credit card for most purchases. It’s too easy to run up a big bill, but there are some definite benefits to using plastic on Black Friday. Many credit card companies have much better return protection than stores: a purchase made on your credit card may have guaranteed refund up to 90 days. Credit cards often offer warranty coverage for free on purchases—a much better deal than most of the service contracts offered by stores. Lastly, some cards offer sale price protection. If the price of your purchase is marked down further than the price you paid within a certain time frame, you can get a refund of the difference.H) Seventh, if you’re planning to find a grea t deal on an HDTV on Black Friday, I"m afraid that you’re out of luck. Even on Black Friday, it’s rare to see much in the way of sales on big ticket electronics. The small sales are generally just not worth the hassle of trying to get a sales person to help you with anything time intensive when they’re getting slammed with hundreds of shoppers.I) Last but not least, there’s nothing wrong with skipping the Black Friday sales. If there’s nothing on sale that you’re interested in, why bother? The entire day is set up to let retailers sell as much stuff as they can—to take as much of your money as they can. But there)s no better place for your money than in your wallet or bank account. So, stay Home, relax and take advantage of your leftovers. You’llbe saving money even if you wind up making a few full price purchases down the road.1. The author’s mother prefers shopping with the author’s sister because the author is slow.2. When shopping, it is better to bring the ads with you because some items may actually not be on sale.3. You can buy items online at the Black Friday price and then get them at the local store.4. While the author looks through the sales papers, she may make changes on her shopping list.5. In order to help readers spend their money more reasonably on Black Friday, the author would like to share a few Black Friday tips.6. You can’t find a great deal on expensive electronics on Black Friday because it is unnecessary for the stores to go for the small sales.7. Skipping the Black Friday sales means you are saving money.8. If your credit card is with price protection, you can get a refund of the price gap.9. For items with short return policy, you have a risk of paying for a restocking fee.10. The author advises people to use a credit card, which usually can guaranteea 90- day refund period.答案:6.H 本题是H段大意的总结。
大学英语六级长篇阅读匹配练习题(一)
大学英语六级长篇阅读匹配练习题(一)导读:本文大学英语六级长篇阅读匹配练习题(一),仅供参考,如果觉得很不错,欢迎点评和分享。
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.Six Steps to Tackling Your Student Loans[A] Any payment is a good debt payment, but a strategy can be useful too-even if your strategy means opening the envelope.Open the envelope[B] This is the hardest thing to do. The bills come with the "Sallie Mae" or "Discover" logo on them and you toss them aside, hoping to deal with them when you feel less besieged (围攻). You know you started owing some amount- $20,000, $50,000, $100,000—and that the interest is piling up, but you don't know exactly how much or how. When faced with heavy debt, many people try to avoid seeing the numbers.[C] This doesn't work, even psychologically. Anyone who has let credit-card bills or mortgage bills pile up, 1reopened, knows that avoiding the envelope does not reduce your anxiety; it increases it. As those envelopes multiply, they take over your psychological state. In horror movies, it's like the monster in the room behind the door. You don't know what it looks like, but it keeps you scared and immobile. So,open the envelope.[D] Or, even better, log in online. All student loan providers have a web site where you can see what you owe, your interest rates, and your payment schedules. SallieMae. com is no-frills, but still allows you to see your loans on one screen, including your interest rates. Discover. corn also has a pretty basic site. Citibank has a more complex site. Get used to logging into these sites pretty often; ff you need motivation, think of it as visiting your money while it's in prison.[E] The websites all have one thing in common: they let you see how much you owe, and what your interest is, and they make it easy to pay-but they don't let you see how much your debt load is growing. This is a major motivating factor in paying down your loans. Identify your loans[F] Are your loans held by the federal government--usually through Sallie Mae--or through "private" lenders like Citibank or Discover? if you don't know who holds your loans, you can find out here, at the National Student Loan Data System.[G] Why do you need to know who holds your loans? This will make a difference to your payment options and your interest rates, if you have a federal loan, for instance, your interest rate is probably very low, around 32% ; ff you have private loans, the interest rates are likely to be much higher, around 48%. Federal loans also give you options like requesting forbearance (延期还贷) ff you're out of work or if your income is too low-handy for the times when you're down on your luck.Start seeing your debt in new ways[H] The websites of lenders are often limited and only have basic information. To really tackle your student loans, it can often be useful to visualize how muchprogress you're making. There are several ways to do that.[I] One really useful new free site is Tuition. io, which gathers information for all your loans in one place. You can see your debt in colorful charts, play around with repayment plans, and, once you start paying your loans, you can see the numbers start to fall. That can be very motivating.[J] For the same effect that you can customize yourself, try a Google Docs spreadsheet. There's a template that already exists for paying down loans; it has the unpromising title of "Loan amortization schedule by Vertex42. corn" but it has very handy calculators built in so that you can tweak your monthly payments to see how much progress you can make if you increase or decrease your payments in any given month. If you don't like that template, just create a Google Docs spreadsheet with the categories you need: date; loan name/number; loan interest rate; starting loan amount ( including how much you owe on that date) ; payment amount you made on that date; ending loan amount after that payment. After you have enough entries, you can start creating graphs; there are few things more satisfying than seeing that graph move downward as you pay off your debt.[K] If you want to see your loans in a larger context of your whole financial picture, LearnVest is a great mobile app for iPhone. It gathers all your information income, loans, credit card debt by linking to your accounts. It serves up useful graphs on your net worth, comparing your assets to what you owe -and there's nothing more motivating than seeing a "minus" sign next to your financial picture. LearnVest "also lets you track your spending, which may make it easier to see where to cut down on expenses so that you can put more into your loan payments. LearnVest also has agood website full of useful advice .Don't be afraid to scare yourself[L] Student loans can often be scary and that's Why you should slay them. The more you see how much you owe, and how fast your interest is rising, the more motivated you can be to fight back by paying those loans. One staffer, after she saw how much money she was wasting on interest payments, increased her student loan payments by $ 75 a month.[M] It can also be tempting to believe that your student debt is so big that nothing you do can ever make a dent in it. That's completely untrue. Only paying your loans will shrink them. It will take years, true. It will take even longer if you don't pay, or pay the minimum. There's only one outcome of shirking your loans: ending up with bigger loans. Then you're in an even bigger bind. No one is going to save you from student loans. Action counts.Choose a strategy [N] Any payment is a good payment, but a strategy can be very useful too. There are two aspects to loans :principal and interest .Principal is how much you've borrowed ,and the interest is what you're paying every month for the privilege of having borrowed that money. Your goal is to pay down as much of the principal as possible. Your chief enemy here is interest: it grows fast, and makes the principal recede more distantly.[O] So make sure you know the rank of your loans, in order from smallest to largest, and lowest interest to highest interest. Do whatever is possible to reduce the interest; as our columnist Helaine Olen points out, Sallie Mac offers you a 0. 25% reduction in your loan interest if you sign up for an automatic debit ( 借方) plan--just make sure the money is always going to be in your account. If you don't want to do that, follow Helaine's other piece of advice: you're smarter to pay off theloans with the higher interest rate flint. This will create the biggest impact. Another popular strategy is the "snowball" method, where you pay the most on the smallest debt owed. So if you have a $20,000 loan and a $10,000 loan, the "snowball" method means you will start paying more towards the $10,000 loan. You'll see it disappear faster. These two methods don't always go together; so try what feels comfortable. The important thing is to see and track your progress.[P] If your income isn't enough, consider other methods of producing money: side projects, odd jobs, or selling things you don't need on eBay or Craigslist. For those whose parents can afford it, working out a joint payment plan can make sense. One graduate we know struck a savvy (精明的) deal with his parents: if he made the minimum student loan payment every month, they would contribute $100 toward his student loans. That's $100 he doesn't have to cut from his own budget. As a benefit, making bigger payments will help you pay down the principal of the loan, since the minimum payments often only end up reducing your interest, which balloons back later. Even $ 50 more a month can help.[Q] Here's an example: if you have a $ 20,000 loan, with a 4.2% interest, rate, you will end up paying an extra $ 2,814 in interest alone over six and a half years. If you increase your payment by only $ 50 a month, you'll cut that interest by $ 500 ; ff you can find a way to pay $ I00 more a month, you'll save nearly $ 800 in interest. That's $ 800 more in the bank, and $ 800 less wanted on pointless interest payments.Take it in stride[R] Most Americans owe some form of debt; learning how to handle it is a lifelong process. Most of all, don't beat yourself up if you're not perfect at payingdown your loans. Some of the savviest financial players struggled for years with their own finances. We all learn in our own time and we rind what works for us and what doesn't. Accept your own progress.46. If you have a federal loan, you are allowed to pay back the loan later when you are fired.47. LearaVest informs you about your spending so that you can see where to save money to pay off your debt.48. Even for financial experts, financial problems may have taken them years to deal with.49. You are advised to start with the loans with the higher interest rate.50. Many Americans are in debt and learning how to handle it will take a lifetime.51. With Google Docs spreadsheet, you can create your own personalized debt graphs.52. If you don't have enough income, you are advised to try other ways of making money.53. Those student, loan providers' websites don't present the growth of your debt load.54. The result of inaction to your loans is to bring about bigger loans.55. When you toss away envelopes containing your bills, you actually feel more anxious about it.。
2014年6月英语四级阅读段落匹配题真题及答案
2014年6月英语四级阅读段落匹配题真题及答案The End of the Book?By John Steele GordonA). Amazon, by far the largest bookseller in the count ry, reported on May 19 that it is now selling more books i n its electronic Kindle format than in the old paper-and-i nk format. That is remarkable, considering that the Kindle has only been around for four years. E-books now account for 14 percent of all book sales in this country and are i ncreasing far faster than overall book sales. E-book sales are up 146 percent over last year, while hardback sales i ncreased 6 percent and paperbacks decreased 8 percent.B). Does this spell the doom of the physical book? Cer tainly not immediately, and perhaps not at all. What it do es mean is that the book business will go through a transf ormation in the next decade or so more profound than any i t has seen since Gutenberg introduced printing from moveab le type in the 1450s.C). Physical books will surely become much rarer in th e marketplace. Mass market paperbacks, which have been dec lining for years anyway, will probably disappear, as willhardbacks for mysteries, thrillers, "romance fiction," etc. Such books, which only rarely end up in permanent collect ions either private or public, will probably only be avail able as e-books within a few years. Hardback and trade pap erbacks for "serious" nonfiction and fiction will surely l ast longer. Perhaps it will become the mark of an author t o reckon with that he or she is still published in hard co py.D). As for children's books, who knows? Children's boo ks are like dog food in that the purchasers are not the co nsumers, so the market (and the marketing) is inherently s trange.E). For clues to the book’s future, let’s look at so me examples of technological change and see what happened to the old technology.F). One technology replaces another only because the n ew technology is better, cheaper, or both. Thee greater th e differential, the sooner and more thoroughly the new tec hnology replaces the old. Printing with moveable type on p aper reduced the cost of producing a book by orders of mag nitude compared with the old-fashioned ones handwritten on vellum, which comes from sheepskin. A Bible—to be sure,a long book—required vellum made from 300 sheepskins and untold man-hours of scribe labor. Before printing arrived, a Bible cost more than a middle-class house. There were p erhaps 50,000 books in all of Europe in 1450. By 1500 ther e were 10 million.G). But while printing quickly caused the handwritten book to go extinct, handwriting lingered on well into the 16th century in the practice of "rubricating" books, or ha nd drawing elaborate initial letters (often in red ink, he nce the term). Very special books are still occasionally p roduced on vellum, but they are one-of-a-kind show pieces.H). Sometimes a new technology doesn't drive the old o ne extinct, but only parts of it while forcing the rest to evolve. The movies were widely predicted to drive live th eater out of the marketplace, but they didn't, because the ater turned out to have qualities movies could not reprodu ce. Equally, TV was supposed to drive movies extinct but, again, did not.I). Movies did, however, fatally impact some parts of live theater, such as vaudeville. (Ironically, TV gave vau deville a brief revival in the 1950s in such shows as “Th e Ed Sullivan Show” and brought many of the old vaudeville stars—Sophie Tucker, Jimmy Durante, Ben Blue—out of re tirement.) And while TV didn't kill movies, it did kill B pictures, shorts, and, alas, cartoons.J). Nor did TV kill radio. Comedy and drama shows (“J ack Benny,” “Amos and Andy,” “The Shadow”) all migrat ed to television. But because you can’t drive a car and w atch television at the same time, radio prime time became rush hour, while music, talk, and news radio greatly enlar ged their audiences. Radio is today a very different busin ess than in the late 1940s and a much larger one.K). Sometimes old technology lingers for centuries bec ause of its symbolic power. Mounted cavalry replaced the c hariot on the battlefield around 1000 BC. But chariots mai ntained their place in parades and triumphs right up until the end of the Roman Empire 1,500 years later. The sword hasn't had a military function for a hundred years, but is still part of an officer's full-dress uniform, precisely because a sword always symbolized "an officer and a gentle man."L). Sometimes new technology is a little cranky at fir st. Television repairman was a common occupation in the 19 50s, for instance. And so the old technology remains as aback up. Steam captured the North Atlantic passenger busin ess from sail in the 1840s because of its much greater spe ed. But steamships didn't lose their rigging and sails unt il the 1880s, because early marine engines had a nasty hab it of breaking down. Until ships became large enough (and engines small enough) to mount two engines side by side, t hey needed to keep sails. (The high cost of steam and the lesser need for speed kept the majority of the world’s oc ean freight moving by sail until the early years of the 20 th century.)M). Then there is the fireplace. Central heating was u biquitous in upper- and middle-class homes by the second h alf of the 19th century. But functioning fireplaces remain to this day a powerful selling point in a house or apartm ent. I suspect the reason is a deeply ingrained, atavistic love of fire. Fire was one of the earliest major technolo gical advances for humankind, providing heat, protection, and cooked food (which is much easier to eat and digest). Human control of fire goes back far enough (over a million years) that evolution could have produced a genetic predi sposition towards fire as a central aspect of a human habi tation (just consider the phrase "hearth and home").N). Books—especially books the average person could a fford—haven’t been around long enough to pr oduce evoluti onary change in humans. But they have a powerful hold on m any people nonetheless, a hold extending far beyond their literary content. At their best, they are works of art and there is a tactile pleasure in books necessarily lost in e-book versions. The ability to quickly flip through pages is also lost. And a room with books in it induces, at lea st in some, a feeling not dissimilar to that of a fire in the fireplace on a cold winter’s night.O). For these reasons I think physical books will have a longer existence as a commercial product than some curr ently predict. Like swords, books have symbolic power. Lik e fireplaces, they induce a sense of comfort and warmth. A nd, perhaps, similar to sails, they make a useful backup f or when the lights go out.46. Authors still published in printed versions will be considered important ones.答案:D解析:对应D段末句。
2014年6月英语六级考试作文真题一
2014年6月英语六级考试作文真题一:For this part ,your are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay explaining why it is unwise to judge a person by their appearance 。
You can give explain to illustrate your point .You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words .It is a truth universally acknowledged that the criteria of judging a person are extremely complex.Various as the standards might be, judging a person by apperance is the most unreliable one. As a famous saying goes, it is unwise to judge a person by their appearance. This proverb aims to deliver the message that in order to truly know a person, we need to go beyond their looks and dresses and focus on more profound aspects.There are several reasons supportive of this statement. Firstly, people are so diverse that some of them are not willing to demonstrate themeselves by their apperance because they may dedicate more time to their work and their hobbies. Moreover, it is too busy for the modern urban people to maintain their appearance. If we judge a person by their appearance when he or she is in a bad state, we might lose a possible good friend or an opportunity. For instance, yesterday the dean of our department, on his way to the teaching building for an emergent meeting with an important investor, fell to the ground and got very dirty. But the new security, taking him for a beggar or a vendor, didn’t allow the dean to enter the building. Finally, the security was fired for his arbitrary judgment.To conclude, judging a person by their appearance is highly undependable. Therefore, we’d better draw a conclusion about a person through a long period of observations, interactions, and communication.这篇文章的题型没有很难,可以直接当做引言类的文章来写。
最新 2014年6月英语六级阅读理解预测题及答案1-精品
2014年6月英语六级阅读理解预测题及答案1According to the latest research in the' United States of America, men and women talk such different languages that it is like people from two different cultures trying to communicate. Professor Deborah Tannen of Georgetown University, has noticed the difference in the style of boy's and girl's conversations from an early age. She says that little girls' conversation is less definite than boys' and expresses more doubts. Little boys use conversation to establishstatus with their listeners.These differences continue into adult life, she says. In public conversations, men talk most and interrupt other speakers more. In private conversations, men and women speak in equal amounts—although they say things in a different style. Professor Tannen believes that, for woman, private talking is a way to establish and test intimacy. For men, private talking is a way to explore the power structure of a relationship.Teaching is one job where the differences between men's and women's ways of talking show. When a man teaches a woman, says Professor Tannen, he wants to show that he has more knowledge, and hence more power in conversation. When a woman teaches another woman, however, she is more likely to take a sharing approach and to encourage her student to join in. But Professor Tannen does not believe that women are naturally more helpful. She says women feel they achieve power by being able to help others. Although theresearch suggests men talk and interrupt people more than women, Professor Tannen says, women actually encourage this to happen because they believe it will lead to more intimacy and help to establish a relationship.Some scientists who are studying speech think that the brain is pre?programmed for language. As we are usually taught to speak by women, it seems likely that the brain must have a sexual bias(倾向性) in its programming,otherwise male speech patterns would not arise at all.1. In the opinion of the writer, women encourage men to talk because。
2014年6月大学英语六级考试真题及答案详解和听力原文第一套
2014年6月大学英语六级考试真题第一套Part I Writing (30 minutes)Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay explaining why it is unwise to judge a person by their appearance. You can give examples to illustrate your point. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.Part II Listening Comprehension (30 minutes)Section ADirections: In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, you must read the four choices marked A ),B., C.and D., and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet1 with a single line through the centre.1. A. They might be stolen goods.B.They might be fake products.C.They might be faulty products.D.They might be smuggled goods.2. A.They are civil servants. B.They are job applicants.C.They are news reporters. D.They are public speakers.3. A.The man has decided to quit his computer class. B.The woman wants to get a degree in administration. C.A computer degree is a must for administrative work. D.The man went to change the time of his computer class.4.A.A lot of contestants participated in the show. B.The fifth contestant won the biggest prize. C.It was not as exciting as he had expected. D.It was sponsored by a car manufacturer.5. A.Reading a newspaper column. B.Looking at a railway timetable.C.Driving from New York to Boston. D.Waiting for someone at the airport.6. A.He wears a coat bought in the mall. B.He got a new job at the barbershop.C.He had a finger hurt last night. D.He had his hair cut yesterday.7. A.He cannot appreciate the Picasso exhibition.B.Even his nephew can draw as well as Picasso.C.He is not quite impressed with modern paintings.D.Some drawings by kindergarten kids are excellent.8. A.He should not put the cart before the horse.B.His conduct does not square with his words.C.His attitude to student government has changed.D.He has long been involved in student government. Questions 9 to 11 are based on the conversation you have just heard.9. A.She left her own car in Manchester. B.Something went wrong with her car.C.She wants to go traveling on the weekend. D.Her car won't be back in a week's time.10.A.Safety. B.Comfort. C.Size.D.Cost.11.A.Third-party insurance. B.Value-added tax. C.Petrol. D.CDW.Questions 12 to 15 are based on the conversation you have just heard.12. A.How to update the basic facilities.B.What to do to enhance their position. C.Where to locate their plant. D.How to attract investments.13.A.Their road link to other European countries is fast.B.They are all located in the south of France.C.They are very close to each other.D.Their basic facilities are good.14.A.Try to avoid making a hasty decision.B.Take advantage of the train links.C.Talk with the local authorities. D.Conduct field surveys first.15.A.Future product distribution.B.Local employment policies. C.Road and rail links for small towns. D.Skilled workforce in the hilly region.Section BDirections.. In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A ) , B ) , C.and D ) . Then mark the corresponding letter on ,Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Passage OneQuestions 16 to 18 are based on the passage you have just heard. 16.A.One fifth of them were on bad terms with their sisters and brothers.B.About one eighth of them admitted to lingering bitter feelings.C.More than half of them were involved in inheritance disputes.D.Most of them had broken with their sisters and brothers.17.A.Less concern with money matters.B.More experience in worldly affairs. C.Advance in age. D.Freedom from work.18.A.They have little time left to renew contact with their brothers and sisters.B.They tend to forget past unhappy memories and focus on their present needs.C.They are more tolerant of one another.D.They find close relatives more reliable.Passage TwoQuestions 19 to 22 are based on the passage you have just heard.19.A.They have bright colors and intricate patterns.B.They can only survive in parts of the Americas.C.They are the only insect that migrates along fixed routes.D.They have strong wings capable of flying long distances.20.A.In a Michigan mountain forest.B.In a Louisiana mountain forest. C.In a Kentucky mountain forest. D.In a Mexican mountain forest.21.A.Each flock of butterflies lays eggs in the same states.B.They start to lay eggs when they are nine months old.C.Each generation in a cycle lays eggs at a different place.D.Only the strongest can reach their destination to lay eggs.22.A.Evolution of monarch butterflies.B.Living habits of monarch butterflies.C.Migration patterns of monarch butterflies.D.Environmental impacts on monarch butterfly life.Passage ThreeQuestions 23 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.23.A.Time has become more limited.B.Time has become more precious. C.Time is money. D.Time is relative.24.A.Americans now attach more importance to the effective use of time.B.Americans today have more free time than earlier generations.C.The number of hours Americans work has increased steadily.D.More and more Americans feel pressed for time nowadays.25.A.Our interpersonal relationships improve.B.Our work efficiency increases greatly. C.Our living habits are altered. D.Our behavior is changed.Section CDirections: 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.The first copyright law in the United States was passed by Congress in 1790. In 1976 Congress enacted the latest copyright law, (26) __________ the technological developments that had occurred since the passage of the Copyright Act of 1909. For example, in 1909, anyone who wanted to make a single copy of a (27) __________ work for personal use had to do so by hand. The very process (28) __________ a limitation on the quantity of materials copied. Today, a photocopier can do the work in seconds; the limitation has disappeared. The 1909 law did not provide full protection for films and sound recordings, nor did it (29) __________ the need to protect radio and television. As a result, (30) __________ of the law and abuses of the intent of the law have lessened the (31) __________ rewards of authors, artists, and producers. The 1976 Copyright Act has not prevented these abuses fully, but it has clarified the legal rights of the injured parties and given them an (32) __________ for remedy.Since 1976 the Act has been (33) __________ to include computer software, and guidelines have been adopted for fair use of television broadcasts. These changes have cleared up much of the confusion and conflict that followed (34) __________ the 1976 legislation.The fine points of the law are decided by the courts and by acceptable common practice over time. As these decisions and agreements are made, we modify our behavior accordingly. For now, we need to (35) __________ the law and its guidelines as accurately as we can and to act in a fair manner.Part III Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)Section ADirections: 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.Fear can be an effective way to change behavior. One study compared the effects of high-fear and low-fear appeals on changes in attitudes and behaviors related to dental hygiene(卫生). One group of subjects was shown awful pictures of ___36___ teeth and diseased gums; another group was shown less frightening materials such as plastic teeth, charts, and graphs. Subjects who saw the frightening materials reported more anxiety and a greater ___37___ to change the way they took care of their teeth than the low-fear group did.But were these reactions actually ___38___ into better dental hygiene practices? To answer this important question, subjects were called back to the laboratory on two ___39___ (five days and six weeks after the experiment). They chewed disclosing wafers(牙疾诊断片) that give a red stain to any uncleaned areas of the teeth and thus provided a direct ___40___ of how well they were really taking care of their teeth. The result showed that the high-fear appeal did actually result in greater and more ___41___ changes in dental hygiene. That is, the subjects ___42___ to high-fear warnings brushed their teeth more ___43___ than did those who saw low-fear warnings.However, to be an effective persuasive device it is very important that the message not be too frightening and that people be given ___44___ guidelines to help them to reduce the cause of the fear. If this isn’t done, they may reduce their anxiety by denying the message or the ___45___ of the communicator. If that happens, it is unlikely that either attitude or behavior change will occur.A) accustomedB) carefullyC) cautiously D) concreteE) credibilityF) decayedG) desireH) dimensionsI) eligibleJ) exposedK) indicationL) occasionsM) permanentN) sensitivityO) translatedSection BDirections: 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 Street-Level SolutionA.When I was growing up, one of my father's favorite sayings (borrowed from the humorist Will Rogers) was: "It isn't what we don't know that causes the trouble; it's what we think we know that just ain't so. "One of the main insights to be taken from the 100 000 Homes Campaign and its strategy to end chronic homelessness is that, until recently, our society thought it understood the nature of homelessness, but it didn't.B.That led to a series of mistaken assumptions about why people become homeless and what they need. Many of the errors in our homelessness policies have stemmed from the conception that the homeless are a homogeneous group. It's only in the past 15 years that organizations like Common Ground, and others, have taken a street-level view of the problem--distinguishing the "episodically homeless" from the," chronically homeless" in order to understand their needs at an individual level. This is why we can now envisage a different approach--and get better results.C.Most readers expressed support for the effort, although a number were skeptical, and a few utterly dismissive, about the chances of long-term homeless people adapting well to housing. This is to be expected; it's hard to imagine what we haven't yet seen. As Niccol6 Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, one of the major obstacles in any effort to advance systemic change is the "incredulity of men," which is to say that people "do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. " Most of us have witnessed homeless people on the streets for decades. Few have seen formerly homeless people after they have been housed successfully. We don't have reference points for that story. So we generalize from what we know--or think we know.D.But that can be misleading, even to experts. When I asked Rosanne Haggerty, founded of Common Ground, which currently operates 2 310 units of supportive housing (with 552 more under construction), what had been her biggest surprise in this work, she replied: "Fifteen years ago, I would not have believed that people who had been so broken and stuck in homelessness could thrive to the degree that they do in our buildings." And Becky Kanis, thecampaign's director, commented:"There is this sense in our minds that someone who's on the streets is almost in their DNA different from someone who has a house. The campaign is creating a first-hand experience for many people that that is really not the case."E.One of the startling realizations that I had while researching this column is that anybody could become like a homeless person--all it takes is a traumatic (创伤的) brain injury. A bicycle fall, a car accident, a slip on the ice, or if you're a soldier, a head wound--and your life could become unrecognizable. James O'Connell, a doctor who has been treating the most vulnerable homeless people on the streets of Boston for 25 years, estimates that 40 percent of the long-term homeless people he's met had such a brain injury. "For many it was a head injury prior to the time they became homeless," he said. "They became unpredictable. They'd have mood swings, fits of explosive behavior. They couldn't hold onto their jobs. Drinking made them feel better. They'd end up on the streets."F.Once homeless people return to housing, they're in a much better position to rebuild their lives. But it's important to note that housing alone is not enough. As with many complex social problems, when you get through the initial crisis, you have another problem to solve which is no less challenging. But it is a better problem.G.Over the past decade, O'Connell has seen this happen. "I spend half my time on the streets or in the hospital and the other half making house calls to people who lived for years on the streets," he said. "So from a doctor's point of view it's a delightful switch, but it's not as if putting someone in housing is the answer to addressing all of their problems. It's the first step."H.Once in housing, formerly homeless people can become isolated and lonely. If they've lived on the streets for years, they may have acquired a certain standing as well as a sense of pride in their survival skills. Now indoors, those aspects of their identity may be stripped away. Many also experience a profound disorientation at the outset. "If you're homeless for more than six months, you kind of lose your bearings," says Haggerty. "Existence becomes not about overcoming homelessness but about finding food, begging, looking for a job to survive another day. The whole process of how you define stability gets reordered."I.Many need regular, if not continuous, support with mental health problems, addictions and illnesses-and, equally important, assistance in the day-to-day challenges of life, reacquainting with family, building relationships with neighbors, finding enjoyable activities or work, managing finances, and learning how to eat healthy food.J.For some people, the best solution is to live in a communal (集体) residence, with special services. This isn't available everywhere, however. In Boston, for example, homeless people tend to be scattered in apartments throughout the city.K.Common Ground's large residences in New York offer insight into the possibilities for change when homeless people have a rich array of supports. In addition to more traditional social services, residents also make use of communal gardens, classes in things like cooking, yoga, theatre and photography, and job placement. Last year, 188 formerly homeless tenants in four of Common Ground's residences, found jobs.L.Because the properties have many services and are well-managed, Haggerty has found post housing problems to be surprisingly rare. In the past 10 years, there have been only a handful of incidents of quarrels between tenants. There is very little graffiti (破坏) or vandalism (涂鸦). And the turnover is almost negligible. In the Prince George Hotel in New York, which is home to 208 formerly homeless people and 208 low-income tenants, the average length of tenancy is close to seven years. (All residents pay 30 percent of their income for rent for the formerly homeless, this comes out of their government benefits. ) When people move on, it is usually because they've found a preferable apartment.M."Tenants also want to participate in shaping the public areas of the buildings," said Haggerty. "They formed a gardening committee. They want a terrace on the roof. Those are things I didn't count on." The most common tenant demand? "People always want more storage space--but that's true of every New Yorker," she adds. "In many ways, we're a lot like a normal apartment building. Our tenants look like anyone else."N.As I mentioned, homelessness is a catch-all for a variety of problems. A number of readers asked whether the campaign will address family homelessness, which has different causes and requires a different solution. I've been following some of the promising ideas emerging to address and prevent family homelessness. Later in 2011, I'll explore these ideas in a column. For now, l'11 conclude with an update on the 100 000 Homes Campaign. Since Tuesday, New Orleans and a few other communities have reported new results. The current count of people housed is 7 043.46. Tenants in Common Ground's residences all want more room for storage.47. Homes Campaign provides first-hand proof that the homeless are not what they were once believed to be.48. Common Ground's residences are well-managed and by and large peaceful.49. Housing the homeless is only the first step to solving all their problems.50. A large percent of the chronically homeless have suffered from brain injury.51. After being housed many homeless people become confused at first as to how to deal with life off the street.52. Some people think the best way to help the homeless is to provide them with communal housing.53. The homeless with health problems should be given regular support in their daily lives.54. Until recently American society has failed to see what homelessness is all about.55. Many formerly homeless tenants in New York's Common Ground's residences got hired.Section CDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four 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.Passage OneQuestions 56 to 60 are based on the following passage.Technology can make us smarter or stupider, and we need to develop a set of principles to guide our everyday behavior and make sure that tech is improving and not hindering our mental processes. One of the big questions being debated today is: What kind of information do we need to have stored in our heads, and what kind can we leave "in the cloud," to be accessed as necessary?An increasingly powerful group within education are championing “digital literacy”. In their view, skills beat knowledge, developing “digital literacy” is more important than learning mere content, and all facts are now Google-able and therefo re unworthy of committing to memory. But even the most sophisticated digital literacy skills won’t help students and workers navigate the world if they don’t have a broad base of knowledge about how the world actually operates. If you focus on the delivery mechanism and not the content, you’re doing kids a disservice.Indeed, evidence from cognitive science challenges the notion that skills can exist independent of factual knowledge. Data from the last thirty years leads to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts, and that’s true not only because you need something to think about. The very processes that teachers care about most—critical thinking processes—are intimately intertwined (交织) with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory.In other words, just because you can Google the date of Black Tuesday doesn't mean you understand why the Great Depression happened or how it compares to our recent economic slump. There is no doubt that the students of today, and the workers of tomorrow, will need to innovate, collaborate and evaluate. But such skills can't be separated from the knowledge that gives rise to them. To innovate, you have to know what came before. To collaborate, you have to contribute knowledge to the joint venture. And to evaluate, you have to compare new information against knowledge you've already mastered.So here’s a principle for thinking in a digital world, in two parts. First, acquire a base of factual knowledge in any domain in which you want to perform well. This base supplies the essential foundation for building skills, and it can’t be outsourced (外包) to a search engine.Second, take advantage of computers’ invariable memory, but also the brain’s elaborative memory. Computers are great when you want to store information that shou ldn’t change. But brains are the superior choice when you want information to change, in interesting and useful ways: to connect up with other facts and ideas, to acquire successive layers of meaning, to steep for a while in your accumulated knowledge and experience and so produce a richer mental brew.56. What is the author's concern about the use of technology?A.It may leave knowledge "in the cloud".B.It may misguide our everyday behavior.C.It may cause a divide in the circles of education.D.It may hinder the development of thinking skills.57. What is the view of educators who advocate digital literacy?A.It helps kids to navigate the virtual world at will.B.It helps kids to broaden their scope of knowledge.C.It increases kids' efficiency of acquiring knowledge.D.It liberates kids from the burden of memorizing facts.58. What does evidence from cognitive science show?A.Knowledge is better kept in long-term memory.B.Critical thinking is based on factual knowledge.C.Study skills are essential to knowledge acquisition.D.Critical thinking means challenging existing facts.59. What does the author think is key to making evaluations?A.Gathering enough evidence before drawing conclusions.B.Mastering the basic rules and principles for evaluation.C.Connecting new information with one's accumulated knowledge.D.Understanding both what has happened and why it has happened.60. What is the author's purpose in writing the passage?A.To warn against learning through memorizing facts.B.To promote educational reform in the information age.C.To explain human brains' function in storing information.D.To challenge the prevailing overemphasis on digital literacy.Passage TwoQuestions 61 to 65 are based on the following passage.America's recent history has been a persistent tilt to the West--of people, ideas, commerce and even political power. California and Texas are the twin poles of the West, but very different ones. For most of the 20th century the home of Silicon Valley and Hollywood has been the brainier and trendier of the two. Texas has trailed behind: its stereotype has been a conservative Christian in cowboy boots. But twins can change places. Is that happening now?It is easy to find evidence that California is in a panic. At the start of this month the once golden state started paying creditors in IOUs (欠条). The gap between projected outgoings and income for the current fiscal (财政的) year has leapt to a horrible $26 billion. With no sign of a new budget to close this gulf, one credit agency has already downgraded California's debt. As budgets are cut, universities will let in fewer students, prisoners will be released early and schemes to protect the vulnerable will be rolled back.By contrast, Texas has coped well with the recession, with an unemployment rate two points below the national average and one of the lowest rates of housing repossession. In part this is because Texan banks, hard hit in the last property bust, did not overexpand this time. Texas also clearly offers a different model, based on small government. It has no state capital-gains or income tax, and a business-friendly and immigrant-tolerant attitude. It is home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other state.Despite all this, it still seems too early to hand over America's future to Texas. To begin with, that lean Texan model has its own problems. It has not invested enough in education, and many experts rightly worry about a "lost generation" of mostly Hispanic Texans with insufficient skills for the demands of the knowledge economy.Second, it has never paid to bet against a state with as many inventive people as California. Even if Hollywood has gone into depression, it still boasts an unequalled array of sunrise industries and the most brisk venture-capital industry on the planet. The state also has an awesome ability to reinvent itself--as it did when its defence industry collapsed at the end of the cold war.The truth is that both states could learn from each other. Texas still lacks California's great universities and lags in terms of culture. California could adopt not just Texas's leaner state, but also its more bipartisan (两党的) approach to politics. There is no perfect model of government: it is America's genius to have 50 public-policy laboratories competing to find out what works best.61. What does the author say about California and Texas in Paragraph 17A.They have been competing for the leading position.B.California has been superior to Texas in many ways.C.They are both models of development for other states.D.Texas's cowboy culture is less known than California's.62. What does the author say about today's California?A.Its debts are pushing it into bankruptcy. B.Its budgets have been cut by $26 billion. C.It is faced with a serious financial crisis. D.It is trying hard to protect the vulnerable.63. In what way is Texas different from California?A.It practices small government. B.It is home to traditional industries. C.It has a large Hispanic population. D.It has an enviable welfare system.64. What problem is Texas confronted with?A.Its Hispanic population is mostly illiterate.B.Its sunrise industries are shrinking rapidly.C.Its education cannot meet the needs of the knowledge economy.D.Its immigrants have a hard time adapting to its cowboy culture.65. What do we learn about American politics from the passage?A.Each state has its own way of governing.B.Most states favor a bipartisan approach.C.Parties collaborate in drawing public policies.D.All states believe in government for the people.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.中文热词通常反映社会变化和文化,有些在外国媒体上愈来愈流行。
6月英语四级阅读段落匹配题真题及答案【VIP专享】
2014年6月英语四级阅读段落匹配题真题及答案The End of the Book? By John Steele Gordon A). Amazon, by far the largest bookseller in the count ry, reported on May 19 that it is now selling more books i n its electronic Kindle format than in the old paper-and-i nk format. That is remarkable, considering that the Kindle has only been around for four years. E-books now account f or 14 percent of all book sales in this country and are in creasing far faster than overall book sales. E-book sales are up 146 percent over last year, while hardback sales in creased 6 percent and paperbacks decreased 8 percent. B). Does this spell the doom of the physical book? Cer tainly not immediately, and perhaps not at all. What it do es mean is that the book business will go through a transf ormation in the next decade or so more profound than any i t has seen since Gutenberg introduced printing from moveab le type in the 1450s. C). Physical books will surely become much rarer in th e marketplace. Mass market paperbacks, which have been dec lining for years anyway, will probably disappear, as willhardbacks for mysteries, thrillers, "romance fiction," etc. Such books, which only rarely end up in permanent collecti ons either private or public, will probably only be availa ble as e-books within a few years. Hardback and trade pape rbacks for "serious" nonfiction and fiction will surely last longer. Perhaps it will become the mark of an author to reckon with that he or she is still published in hard copy. D). As for children's books, who knows? Children's boo ks are like dog food in that the purchasers are not the co nsumers, so the market (and the marketing) is inherently s trange. E). For clues to the book’s future, let’s look at so me examples of technological change and see what happened to the old technology. F). One technology replaces another only because the n ew technology is better, cheaper, or both. Thee greater the differential, the sooner and more thoroughly the new tec hnology replaces the old. Printing with moveable type on p aper reduced the cost of producing a book by orders of mag nitude compared with the old-fashioned ones handwritten on vellum, which comes from sheepskin. A Bible—to be sure, a long book—required vellum made from 300 sheepskins and untold man-hours of scribe labor. Before printing arrived, a Bible cost more than a middle-class house. There were perh aps 50,000 books in all of Europe in 1450. By 1500 there w ere 10 million. G). But while printing quickly caused the handwritten book to go extinct, handwriting lingered on well into the 16th century in the practice of "rubricating" books, or ha nd drawing elaborate initial letters (often in red ink, he nce the term). Very special books are still occasionally p roduced on vellum, but they are one-of-a-kind show pieces. H). Sometimes a new technology doesn't drive the old o ne extinct, but only parts of it while forcing the rest to evolve. The movies were widely predicted to drive live the ater out of the marketplace, but they didn't, because thea ter turned out to have qualities movies could not reproduc e. Equally, TV was supposed to drive movies extinct but, a gain, did not. I). Movies did, however, fatally impact some parts of live theater, such as vaudeville. (Ironically, TV gave vau deville a brief revival in the 1950s in such shows as “Th e Ed Sullivan Show” and brought many of the old vaudevill e stars—Sophie Tucker, Jimmy Durante, Ben Blue—out of retirement.) And while TV didn't kill movies, it did kill B pictures, shorts, and, alas, cartoons. J). Nor did TV kill radio. Comedy and drama shows (“J ack Benny,” “Amos and Andy,” “The Shadow”) all migrat ed to television. But because you can’t drive a car and w atch television at the same time, radio prime time became rush hour, while music, talk, and news radio greatly enlar ged their audiences. Radio is today a very different busin ess than in the late 1940s and a much larger one. K). Sometimes old technology lingers for centuries bec ause of its symbolic power. Mounted cavalry replaced the c hariot on the battlefield around 1000 BC. But chariots mai ntained their place in parades and triumphs right up until the end of the Roman Empire 1,500 years later. The sword h asn't had a military function for a hundred years, but is still part of an officer's full-dress uniform, precisely b ecause a sword always symbolized "an officer and a gentlem an." L). Sometimes new technology is a little cranky at fir st. Television repairman was a common occupation in the 19 50s, for instance. And so the old technology remains as a back up. Steam captured the North Atlantic passenger business from sail in the 1840s because of its much greater spe ed. But steamships didn't lose their rigging and sails unt il the 1880s, because early marine engines had a nasty hab it of breaking down. Until ships became large enough (and engines small enough) to mount two engines side by side, t hey needed to keep sails. (The high cost of steam and the lesser need for speed kept the majority of the world’s oc ean freight moving by sail until the early years of the 20 th century.) M). Then there is the fireplace. Central heating was u biquitous in upper- and middle-class homes by the second h alf of the 19th century. But functioning fireplaces remain to this day a powerful selling point in a house or apartme nt. I suspect the reason is a deeply ingrained, atavistic love of fire. Fire was one of the earliest major technolog ical advances for humankind, providing heat, protection, a nd cooked food (which is much easier to eat and digest). H uman control of fire goes back far enough (over a million years) that evolution could have produced a genetic predis position towards fire as a central aspect of a human habit ation (just consider the phrase "hearth and home"). N). Books—especially books the average person could afford—haven’t been around long enough to produce evoluti onary change in humans. But they have a powerful hold on m any people nonetheless, a hold extending far beyond their literary content. At their best, they are works of art and there is a tactile pleasure in books necessarily lost in e -book versions. The ability to quickly flip through pagesis also lost. And a room with books in it induces, at least in some, a feeling not dissimilar to that of a fire in t he fireplace on a cold winter’s night. O). For these reasons I think physical books will have a longer existence as a commercial product than some curre ntly predict. Like swords, books have symbolic power. Like fireplaces, they induce a sense of comfort and warmth. And, perhaps, similar to sails, they make a useful backup for w hen the lights go out. 46. Authors still published in printed versions will be considered important ones. 答案:D 解析:对应D段末句。
CET6长篇阅读(段落匹配)练习题(一).doc
CET6长篇阅读(段落匹配)练习题(一)Passage OneEarthquakesA)An earthquake is one of the most terrifying phenomena that nature can dish up. We generally think of the ground we stand on as "rock-sol id" and completely stable・ An earthquake can shatter (粉碎)that perception instantly, and often with extreme violence・B) Up until relatively recently, scientists only had unproven guesses as to what actually caused earthquakes. Even today there is still a certain amount of mystery surrounding them, but scientists have a much clearer understanding・ There has been enormous progress in the past century. Scientists have identified the forces that cause earthquakes, and developed technology that can tell us an earthquake^ s magnitude and origin. The next hurdle is to find a way of predicting earthquakes, so they don't catch people by surprise- Tn this article, we' 11 find out what causes earthquakes, and we,11 also find out why they can have such a devastating effect on us.C)An earthquake is a vibrati or)(震动)that travels through the earth's crust. Technically, a large truck that rumbles down the street is causing a mini-earthquake, if you feel your house shaking as it goes by; but we tend to think of earthquakes as events that affect a fairly large area, such as an entire city. Al 1 kinds of things can cause earthquakes: volcanic eruptions, meteor(流星)impacts, underground explosions (an underground nuclear test, for example), collapsing structures (such as a collapsing mine). But the majority of naturally-occurring earthquakes are caused by movements of the earth's plates・D)We only hear about earthquakes in the news every once in a whi1e, but they are actual 1y an everyday occurrenee on our planet. According to the United States Geological Survey, more than 3 mil 1 ion earthquakes occur every year. That's about 8,000 a day, or one every 11 seconds! The vast majority of these 3 million quakes are extremely weak・ The law of probability also causes a good number of stronger quakes to happe n in unin habited places where no ono feels them ・ It is the bigquakes that occur in highly populated areas that get our attention.E)Earthquakes have caused a great deal of property damage over the years, and they have claimed many lives. In the last hundred years alone, there have been more than 1.5 million earthquake-related fatalities・ Usually, it,s not the shaking ground itself that claims lives; it's the associated destruction of man-made structures and other natural disasters it causes, such as tsunamis, avalanches(雪崩)and Iandslides・F)The biggest scientific breakthrough in the history of seismology一the study of earthquakes一came in the middle of the 20th century, with the development of the theory of plate tectonics (筑造学).Scientists proposed the idea of plate tectonics to explain a number of peculiar phenomena on earth, such as the apparent movement of continents over time, the clustering of volcanic activity in certain areas and the presenee of huge ridges at the bottom of the ocean.G)The basic theory is that the surface layer of the earth一the lithosphere一is comprised of many plates that slide over the lubricating(润滑的)asthenosphere layer. At the boundaries between these huge plates of soil and rock, three different things can happen.H)Plates can move apart. Tf two plates are moving apart from each other, hot, molten rock flows up from the layers of man tie below the lithosphere ・ This magma comes out on the surface (mostly at the bottom of the ocean), where it is called 1 ava(熔岩).As the lava cools, it hardens to form new 1 ithosphere material, filling in the gap. This is called a divergent plate boundary.I)Plates can push together. If the two plates are moving toward each other, one plate typically pushes un der the other one. This plate be 1 ow sinks into the lower man tie layers, where it me Its ・ At some boundarieswhere two plates meet, neither plate is in a position to push under the other, so they both push against each other to form mountains. The lines where plates push toward each other are cal led convergent plate boundaries.J) Plates slide against each other. At other boundaries, plates simply slide by each other一one moves north and one moves south, for example. While the plates don,t drift directly into each other at these transform boundaries, they are pushed tightly together. A great deal of tension builds at the boundary.K) We understand earthquakes a lot better than we did even 50 years ago, but we still can,t do much about them. They are caused by fundamental, powerful geological processes that are far beyond our contro1. These processes are al so fairly unpredictabl e, so it's not possibl e at this time to tel 1 people exactly when am earthquake is going to occur. The first detected earthquake waves will tell us that more powerful vibrations are on their way, but this only gives us a few minutes' warning, at most.L)So what can we do about earthquakes? The major advances over the past 50 years have been in preparedness, particularly in the field of construction engineering. In 1973, the Uniform Building Code, an international set of standards for building construction, 7 added7 specifications7 to7 strengthen7 buildings7 against7 the7 force7 of7 earthquake7 waves. 7 This7 includes7 strengthening? support7 material? as7 well7 as7 designing buildings so they are flexible enough to absorb vibrations without falling or deteriorating・ It/ s very important to design structures that can undergo this sort of attack, particularly in earthquake -prone areas.M) An other compo nent of prepared ness is educating the public. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) and other government agencies have produced several brochures explaining the processes involved in an earthquake and giving instructions on how to prepare your house for a possible earthquake, as well as what to do when a quake hits.N) Tn the future, improvements in prediction and preparedness should further minimi^e the 1 oss of 1 ife and property associated with earthquakes. But it wi 11 be a long time, if ever, before we'll be ready for every substantial earthquake that might occur. Just like severe weather and disease, earthquakes are an unavoidable force generated by the powerful natural processes that shape our planet. All we can do is increase our undorstanding of the phonomcnon and develop better ways to deal with it.L Earthquake-related fatalities are usually caused by buildings, collapse and other ensuing natural disasters, not by the shaking ground itself.2.Besides movements of the earth" s plates, other forces such as volcanic eruptions,meteor impacts and so on, canalso cause earthquakes.3.Earthquakes actually occur every day; most of them are not big enough to get our attention.4.People generally think the ground beneath their feet is completely stable, but earthquakes shatter that idea in notime.5.We cannot prevent earthquakes but we can actively find better ways to face them.6.Earthquakes are hardly predictable, and people cannot be told when an earthquake is going to occur.7.Scientists have found out forces that cause earthquakes through years of efforts.8.Architects now have designed flexible buildings to minimize the damages of earthquakes.9.Scientists use the theory of plate tectonics to explain the apparent movement of continents over time.10.The convergent plate boundaries refer to the lines where plates push toward each other.Passage TwoPaper--More than Meets the EyeA)We are surrounded by so much paper and card that it is easy to forget just how complex it is. There are manyvarieties and grades of paper materials, and whilst it is fairly easy to spot the varieties, it is far more difficult to spot the grades・B)Tt needs to be understood that most paper and card is manufactured for a specific purpose, so thatHowever, the reality is rather more complicated, makers will add bleach and other materials such A further problem with wood is that it con tains 1ignin. This isessential for the tree since it Tn order to give us our white paper and card, the aschina clay and additional chemicals.a material that is not cellulose ・ Something called holds the cellulosefibres together, but if it iswhi1st the corn-flake packet may look smart, it is clearly not something destined for the archives ・ It is made to 1 ook good, but only needs a 1 imited 1 ife span ・ It is also much cheaper to manufacture than high grade card.C) Paper can be made from an almost endless variety of cellulose-based material which will include many woods,cottons and grasses or which papyrus is an example and from where we get the word "paper". Many of these are very special ized, but the preponderance of paper making has been from soft wood and cotton or rags, with the bulk being wood-based ・Paper from WoodD) In order to make wood into paper it needs to be broken down into fine strands. Firstly by powerful machinery and then boiled with strong alkalies such as caustic soda, until a fine pulp of cellulose fibers is produced ・ It is from this pulp that the final product is made, relying on the bonding together of the cellulose into layers. That, in a very small nutshel 1, is the essence of paper making from wood.incorporated into the manufactured paper it presents archivists with a problem ・ Lignin eventually breaksdown and releases acid products into the paper. This wi 11 weaken the bond between the cel lulose fibers and the paper will become brittle and look rather brown and careworn. We have all seen this in old newspapers and cheap paperback books ・ It has been estimated that most paper back books will have a 1ife of not greater than fifty years ・ Not what we need for our archives.F) Since the 1 ignin can be removed from the paper pulp during manufacture, the obvious question is 〃why is it left in the paper?" The answer 1 ies in the fact that lignin makes up a considerable part of the tree. By leaving the lignin in the pulp a papermaker can in crease his paper yield from a tree to some 95%・ Removing it means a yield of only 35%. It is clearly uneconomic to remove the lignin for many paper and card applicat ions.G) Tt al so means, of course, that 1 ignin-free paper i s going to be more expensive, but that i s nevertheless what the archivist must look for in his suppl ies. There is no point whatsoever in careful ly placing our valuable artifacts in paper or card that is going to hasten their demise. Acid is particularly harmful to photographic materials, causing them to fade and is some cases simply vanish!H) So, how do we tel 1 a piece of suitable paper or card from one that is unsuitable? You cannot do it by simply looking, and rather disappointingly, you cannot always rely on the labe1. 〃Acid-free 〃 might be true in asmuch as a test on the paper may in di cate that it is a n eutral mat erial at this time. But lignin can take years before it starts the inevitable process of breaking down, and in the right conditions it will speed up enormous1y ・I) Added to this, as T have indicated earlier, paper may also contain other materials added during nuinu facture such as bleach, china clay, chemical white nets and size ・ This looks like a bleak picture, and it would be but for the fact that there are suppl iers who will guarantee the material that they selL If you want to be absolutely sure that you are storing in, or printing on, the correct material then this is probably the only way.J) Tncidentally, acids can migrate from material to material. Lining old shoe boxes with good quality acid-free paper will do little to guard the contents. The acid will get there in the end.Paper from RagK) Paper is also comm only made from cotton and rag waste. This has the advantage of being lign in-fro® but because there is much less cotton and rag than trees, it also tends to be much more expensive than wood pulp paper ・ You wi 11 sti 11 need to purchase from a reliable source though, since even rag paper and card can contain undesirable additives.L) A rel iable source for qual i ty rag papers is a recogni/ed art stockiest ・ Many water color artists insist on using only fine quality rag paper and board.M)The main lesson to learn from this information is that you cannot rely on purchasing archival materials from the high street. The only safe solution is to purchase from specialist suppliers. It may cost rather more, but in the end you will know that your important and valuable data and images have the best home possible.IL The corn-flake packet is cheaper than high grade card.12.There are a lot of mat erials which can be used for making paper, but the superior ity ones are soft wood,cotton and rags.13.During the whole manufacturing process, the final product is made from a pulp of cellulose fibres.14.In order to make white paper and card, the makers will add bleach.15.Liguin is essential for the tree but it will make paper easy to break.16.Many paper producers will preserve lignin during manufacture, because leaving the lignin will make more paperfrom a tree.17.Acid is particularly harmful to photographic materials.18.If the lignin is removed from the paper, the paper will be more expensive.19.Although free of lignin, paper made from cotton and rag waste can also cost more money than wood pulp paperbecause there is much less cotton and rag than trees>20.What we can learn from "Paper from Rag" is that you had bet ter buy archival materials from specialist suppliers.Passage ThreeInto the UnknownThe world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope?A)Un til the earl y 1990s nobody much thought about whole populati ons getti ng older. The UN had the foresight toconvene 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. Tn a report entitled “Averting the 01 d Age Crisis", it argued that pension arrangements in most countries were unsustainable.B)For the next ten years a succession of books, mainly by Americans, sounded the alarm・ They had titles 1 ikeYoung Old, Gray Dawn and The Coming Goncrational 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 i ntergenerati onal warfare-C)Since then the debate has become loss emotional, not least because a lot more is known about the subject・ Books,conferences and research papers have multiplied・ International organizations such as the OECD and the EU issue regular reports・ Population ageing is on every agenda, from G8 economic conferencos to NATO summits. The World Economic Forum plans to consider the future of pensions and health care at its presti^ious Davos conference early next year. The media, including this newspaper, are giving the subject extensive coverage.D)Whether all that altontion has translated into sufficient action is another question. Governments in richcountrios now accept that their pension and health-care promises wi11 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 outlinc of the changes needed is cl ear. To avoid fiscal (M®C0\l)nielldown, public pensions and health-careprovision wi 11 have to be reined back severely and taxes may have to go up. By far the most effective method to restrain pension spending is to give people the opportunity to work Ionger, because it increases tax revonues and reduces spending on pensions at the same timc. It may oven keep them al i ve Ion ger. John Rother, the AARP' s head of pol icy and strategy, points to studies showing that other things being equal, people who remain at work have 1ower 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 lessgenerous・ Employers still need to be persuaded that 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 becauseover the past few decades many more women have entered the 1 abour 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)Tn many countries immigrants have been filling such gaps in the labour force as have already emerged (and rememberthat 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. Tn sti 11-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 people in need ofjobs; many rich countries need helping hands that will boost tax revenues and keep up economic growth. But over the next few decades 1 abour 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 ag eing populations at its root, “old” countries would have to rejuvenate 年轻)themselves by having more of their own children. A number of them have tried, some more successfullythanothers・ But it is not a simple matter of offering financial inccnlivos or providing more chi Id care・ Modern urbsn life in rich countries is not we 11 adapted to large fami 1 ies. Women find it hard to combine family and career. They often compromise by having just one child.J)And if fertility in ageing countries docs not pick up? It will not be the end of the world, at least not for quitea while yet, but the world will slowly become a different place・ Older societies may be less inno vativc and morestr on gly disincl inod to take risks tha n younger ones. By 2025 at the latest, about half the voters in America and most of those in western European countries wi 11 be over 50一and older peopl e turn out to vote in much greater rm mb er tha n 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 sig n of the in ter generational warfare predicted in the 1990s. After all, older people themselves mostly have families. In a recent study of parents and grown-up children in 11 European countries, Karsten Hank of Mannheim University found that 85% of them 1 ived within 25km of each other and the majority of them were in touch at least once a week.L)Evon so, the shift in the centre of gravity to older age groups is bound to have a profound effect on societies, n ot just economical ly a nd pol i tical ly but in al 1 sorts of other ways to o・ Richard Jackso n 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 developed countries 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 few they have to mi 1itary service・ In the decades to 2050, America wi11 find itself playing an ever-increasing role in the developed world? sdefence effort. Because America^ s population will still be growing when that of most other developed countries is shrinking, America wi 11 be the only developed country that stil 1 matters geopolitically(地缘政治上).Ask me in 2020N)There is little that can be done to stop population ageing, so the world will have to live with it. But some of the consequences can be alleviated・ Many experts now believe that given the right policies, the effects, though grave, need not be catastrophic・ Most countries have recognizod 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 unprecedented・ Ronald Lee, director of the Centre on the Economics and Demography of Ageing at the University of California, Berkeley, puts it briefly and clearly: “We don' t really kn ow what population ageing will be like, because nobody has done it yet. ”21.Employers should realize it is important to keep older workers in the workforce.22. A recent study found that most old people in some European countries had regular weekly contact with their adultchildren.23.Few governments in rich countries have launched bold reforms to tackle the problem of population ageing.24.In a report published some 20 years ago, the sustainab订ity of old age pension systems in most countries wascalled into doubt.25.Countries that have a shortage of young aduIts will be less willing to send them to war.26.One-child families are more common in ageing societies due to the stress of urban life and the difficulties ofbalancing family and career.27. A series of books, mos tly aut hored by Americans, warned of conflicts bet ween the older and youngergenerations.pared with younger ones, older societies tend to be less innovative and take fewer risks.29.The best solution to the pension crisis is to postpone the retirement age.30.Immigration as a means to boost the shrinking labour force may meet with resistance in some rich countries.CET6长篇阅读(段落匹配)练习题(一)答案Passage one1.E本题是对E段最后一句话的同义转述。
2014年6月份六级段落匹配练习
Words: 1,062Sugar—Friend VS EnemyA) Sugar is everywhere. It‟s in our drinks, it‟s in our foods, and it‟s hidden in places we never would think of. Many would call sugar their friend in time of need, but in fact their so-called “good friend” could tur n out to be their worst enemy in disguise. Sugar for many is something they may have been battling with for a long time. Here‟s a simple three-step process to help you start to win back the battle for your health.B) The first step is to be aware of what sugar really does to your body. Most people will say they “know” that they shouldn‟t have sugar, but they really can‟t help it. To me that is a lack of true awareness of what sugar does to oneself. I don+t think many people will say that they want to hurt their body on purpose, but unless they know it‟s really happening they will continue down that road. Sugar is slower to impact our health, and it,s that slow destructive process that is the most dangerous. Unfortunately, most people don‟t know the damage until it has already been done.C) Sugar increases fat storing. Possibly the most important hormone in the body is insulin (胰岛素),when it comes to weight loss and health. Insulin is the main hormone that we have full control over daily through our diet and lifestyle. When we eat sugar and it enters into our bloodstream too quickly, we have a spike in blood sugar levels. Now in times of high activity we are able to burn it off, but if we are sitting around this is not a good thing. So in response to that high level of blood sugar, the body will release more insulin into the bloodstream. Insulin will then take the excess glucose (葡萄糖)and try to find a place to store it. If your muscles are all full or have insulin resistance) then the best place to put the excess glucose is fat cells. When insulin is high, the fat cells are told to shut down any process of releasing stored fat into the blood for burning. With chronic high insulin spikes comes a resistance to it by your cells, leading to more insulin production, leading to more fat storing, and more resistance, eventually going down a road of diabetes and ill health for the whole body.D) Sugar also disrupts normal brain function. I think most people can relate to mood swings and energy highs/lows that come after a high sugar meal. Sugar can also be the source of many people‟s increased anxiety and depression. Let us not also forget the kids with ever-increasing attention “disorders” and behavioral issues. Sugar is not helping with that, either. In fact, there have been many studies that show when taking sugar out of a kid‟s diet and increasing fat intake, their attention ability increases, their behavior changes for the better.E) Sugar decreases your overall health and makes you age quicker. Too much sugar will lower your overall immune system increase destructive inflammation, lead to essential mineral deficiencies in the body, feed bad bacteria growth in your gut and other wonderful stuff. Aging is just a fancy word for the body breaking down quicker than it can repair itself, as that is what happens when we get older. Aging also is accelerated by the increasing risks of all degenerative diseases such as diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease and cancers. We are all going to get older, but it doesn‟t mean that we have to “age” quicker.F) The second step is to realize you are in 100% control of your actions. This could be the most underrated yet the most important step, as we are the only person who controls what we put into our body. Everything starts in what we choose to put in our mouths. Some people may say they can‟t control their sugar cravings, but that is already admitting defeat and giving up power to some “cosmic sugar influence” out there. We can pass on dessert, we don‟t need to buy a candy bar, we can drink water instead of soda, but the choice is ours to make.G) Also many like to call it an “addiction”. This is just another way to give up your own personal power of choice. While sugar can have “addictive like” qualities, it‟s not something tha t you own or is a part of you. Fight the battle and you will get over the addictive feelings, they will go away. But if you call it an addiction and make it part of you, then it is yours to keep forever. Be free from it, let go. Take back control and anything is possible.H) The third step is to just live the daily journey one choice at a time. Life is just a series of present moments, and the choices we make in those moments. So let,s just focus on what we can do right now instead of worrying about what has happened in the past or may or may not happenin the future. “Now” is all we have and all we need to focus on.I) Choose to eat more natural foods. Choose whole food proteins, healthy fats and natural sources of carbohydrates. If it wasn‟t around a t housand years ago or is made by man (and not nature), chances are you don‟t need it. Note how it says “Choose” above, as it is your choice. Find the hidden sources of sugars and remove them. Sugar is hidden in places such as sauces, ketchup, soups, processed foods, drinks, so called health bars, and more. Become a label reader and see how much sugar you are consistently putting into your body. Don‟t fall for the marketing trick either of “low fat”, because that usually means “more sugar”.1. We are able to lower blood sugar levels by taking part in intense activities.2. If you consider sugar as an addiction and call it something that you own, you won"t get rid of it forever.3. In the author‟s opinion, the reason why many people can$t help having suga r is that they are unaware of its danger.4. When insulin in the bloodstream is high, fat cells will stop releasing stored fat.5. The author believes that sugar which we called “good friend” in time of need in fact is a hidden enemy.6. Many studies show that sugar-free diets with more fat can improve children‟s attention ability.7. The truth that we get older is that our body breaks down faster than it can be self?repaired.8. You yield to your addictive feelings, which means you give up your own personal power of choice.9. The author believes that taking high sugar meals may result in mood fluctuation.10. To be healthy, what we should do now is to eat natural foods and get rid of the hidden sources of sugars.Higher Grades Challenge College Application ProcessA) Josh Zalasky should be the kind of college applicant with little to worry about. The high school senior is taking three Advanced Placement courses. Outside the classroom, he,s involved in mock trial, two Jewish youth groups and has a job with a restaurant chain. He,s a National Merit semifinalist and scored in the top ? percent of all students who take the ACT.B) But in the increasingly frenzied world of college admissions, even Zalasky is nervous about his prospects. He doubts he#ll get into the University of Wisconsin, a top choice. The reason: his grades. It$s not that they%re bad. It&s that so many of his classmates are so good. Zalasky‟s GPA is nearly an A minus, and yet he ranks only about in the middle of his senior class of 543 atEdina High School outside Minneapolis, Minnesota. That means he will have to find other ways to stand out.C) “It‟s extremely difficult,” he said. “I spent all summer writing my essay. We even hired a private tutor to make sure that essay wa s the best it can be. But even with that, it‟s like I*m just kind of leveling the playing field.” Last year, he even considered transferring out of his highly competitive public school, to some place where his grades would look better.D) Some call the p henomenon that Zalasky‟s fighting “grade inflation”—implying the boost is undeserved. Others say students are truly earning their better marks. Regardless, it‟s a trend that‟s been building for years and may only be accelerating: many students are getting very good grades. So many, in fact, it is getting harder and harder for colleges to use grades as a measuring stick for applicants.E) Extra credit for AP courses, parental lobbying and genuine hard work by the most competitive students have combined to shatter any semblance of a Bell curve, one in which A,s are reserved only for the very best. For example, of the 47,317 applications the University of California, Los Angeles, received for this fall‟s freshman class, nearly 23,000 had GPAs of 4.0 or above.F) That‟s also making it harder for the most selective colleges—who often call grades the single most important factor in admissions—to join in a growing movement to lessen the influence of standardized tests.G) “We,re seeing 30, 40 valedictorians at a high school because they don,t want to create these distinctions between students,” said Jess Lord, dean of admission and financial aid at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. “ If we don‟t have enough information, there‟s a chance we‟ll become more heavi ly reliant on test scores, and that‟s a real negative to me.”H) Standardized tests have endured a heap of bad publicity lately, with the SAT raising anger about its expanded length and recent scoring problems. A number of schools have stopped requiring test scores, to much fanfare.I) But lost in the developments is the fact that none of the most selective colleges have dropped the tests. In fact, a national survey shows overall reliance on test scores is higher in admissions than it was a decade ago. “It‟s the only thing we have to evaluate students that will help us tell how they compare to each other,” said Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania.J) Grade inflation is hard to measure, and experts,caution numbers are often misleading because standards and scales vary so widely. Different practices of “weighting” GPAs for AP work also play havoc. Still, the trend seems to be showing itself in a variety of ways.K) The average high school GPA increased from 2.68 to 2.94 between 1990 and 2000, according to a federal study. Almost 23 percent of college freshmen in 2005 reported their average grade in high school was an A or better, according to a national survey by UCLA‟s Higher Education Research Institute. In 1975, the percentage was about half that.L) GPAs reported by students on surveys when they take the SAT and ACT exams have also risen—and faster than their scores on those tests. That suggests their classroom grades aren‟t rising just because students are getting smarter. Not surprisingly, the test-owners say grade inflation shows why testing should be kept: it gives all students an equal chance to shine.M) The problems associated with grade inflation aren‟t limited to elite college applicants. More than 70 percent of schools and districts analyzed by an education audit company calledSchoolMatch had average GPAs significantly higher than they should have been based on their standardized test scores—including the school systems in Chicago, Illinois, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Denver, Colorado, San Bernardino, California, and Columbus, Ohio. That raises concerns about students graduating from those schools unprepared for college. “They get mixed in with students from more rigorous schools and they just get blown away,” said SchoolMatch CEO William Bainbridge.N) In Georgia, high school grades rose after the state began awarding HOPE scholarships to students with a 3.0 high school GPA. But the scholarship requires students to keep a 3.0 GPA in college, too, and more than half who received the HOPE in the fall of 1998 and entered the University of Georgia system lost eligibility before earning 30 credits. Next year, Georgia is taking a range of steps to tighten eligibility, including calculating GPA itself rather than relying on schools, and no longer giving extra GPA weight to vaguely labeled “honors” classes.O) Among those who work with students gunning for the more selective colleges, opinions differ as to why there seem to be so many straight-A students. “I think th ere are more pressures now than there used to be, because 20 or 30 years ago kids with a B plus average got into some of the best colleges in the country,” said William Shain, dean of admissions and financial aid at Bowdoin College in Maine. “It didn,t matter if you had a 3.9 instead of a 3.95. I don,t know if it matters now either, but people are more likely to think it does.”P) Lord, the Haverford dean, sees grade inflation as the outcome of an irrational fear among students to show any slip up—in grades or discipline. In fact, colleges like his are often more interested in students who have overcome failure and challenge than robots who have never been anything less than perfect. “There,s a protection and encouragement of self-esteem that I don‟t agree with, but I think it‟s a lot of what‟s going on here,” he said. “And the college admissions process feeds into that.”Q) Back in Minnesota, Edina may join a growing number of schools that no longer officially rank students—a move that could help students like Zalasky, who says he was told by Wisconsin his class rank makes him a longshot. “They feel they‟re being left behind or not getting into the schools that they‟re applying to because of a particular class rank,” says Edina counselor Bill Hicks. “And there is some validity with respect to some certain schools that use certain formulas.”R) But the colleges most popular with Edina students already know how strong the school is: students‟ median verbal and math SAT scores are 1170 out of 1600. Hicks isn‟t willing to blame the concentration grades at the top on spineless teachers, or on grade-grubbing by parents and students. Expectations are high, and grades are based on student mastery of the material, not a curve. Wherever teachers place the bar for an A, the students clear it.S) “Everyone here is like, … if I can get a 98 why would I get a 93? said Lavanya Srinivasan, who was ranked third in her Edina class last year. Far from being pushovers, she says, Edina teachers are tougher than those in a course she took at Harvard last summer. Zalasky agrees the students work hard for their high grades. “The mentality of this school is, if you‟re not getting straight A,s you‟re not doing well,” he said. “There‟s just so much pressure on us day in and day out to get straight A‟s that everybody does.” Hicks compares the atmosphere at Edina to the World Series expectations that always surround the superstar lineup of the New York Yankees. “If they don‟t win it,” he said, “then it‟s failure.”1. Nearly half of the applications that the University of California received this autumn had GPAs of 4.0 or above.2. It,s also harder for the most selective colleges to lessen the effect of standardized tests.3. More than 30 years ago, about 11.5 percent of college freshmen reported their average grade in high school was an A or better.4. Because of the negative effects of standardized tests recently, a lot of universities have no longer required test scores.5. Some think Zalasky‟s improvement unworthy, while ot hers think his high grades win the praise for him.6. Because many of his classmates are so outstanding, Zalasky is nervous about his college application.7. Some colleges would like to admit students who have conquered failure and challenge rather than those who have never been anything less than perfect.8. In the next year, Georgia is taking a series of measures to tighten qualification, including calculating GPA itself and avoiding paying too much attention to vaguely labeled “honors” classes.9. In Zalasky,s opinion, students are put under great pressure to work hard to get straight A"s, or they will be regarded as losers.10. More and more schools no longer officially rank students by grade, which can help students like Zalasky.Words: 1,103How Ozone Pollution WorksA) The weather report on the radio or TV tells you that it is going to be sunny and hot and that an orange ozone alert has been issued. What is ozone? What does an orange alert mean? Why should you be concerned about it? In this article, we will examine what ozone is, how it is produced, what health hazards it poses and what you can do to reduce ozone pollution.B) Ozone is a molecule of three oxygen atoms bound together (O3). It is unstable and highly reactive. Ozone is used as a bleach, a deodorizing agent, and a sterilization agent for air and drinking water. At low concentrations, it is toxic. Ozone is found naturally in small concentrations in the stratosphere, a layer of Earth‟s upper atmosphere. In this upper atmos phere, ozone is made when ultraviolet light from the sun splits an oxygen molecule (O2), forming two single oxygen atoms. If a freed atom collides with an oxygen molecule, it becomes ozone. Stratospheric ozone has been called “good” ozone because it protects the Earth‟s surface from dangerous ultraviolet light.C) Ozone can also be found in the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere. Tropospheric ozone (often termed “ bad ” ozone) is man - made, a result of air pollution from internal combustion engines and power plants. Automobile exhaust and industrial emissions release a family of nitrogen oxide gases (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC), by-products of burning gasoline and coal. NOx and VOC combine chemically with oxygen to form ozone during sunny, high- temperature conditions of late spring, summer and early fall. High levels of ozone are usually formed in the heat of the afternoon and early evening, dissipating during the cooler nights.D) Although ozone pollution is formed mainly in urban and suburban areas, it ends up inrural areas as well, carried by prevailing winds or resulting from cars and trucks that travel into rural areas. Significant levels of ozone pollution can be detected in rural areas as far as 250 miles downwind from urban industrial zones.E) You can make ozone test strips to detect and monitor ozone levels in your own backyard or around your school. You will need corn starch, filter paper (coffee filters work well) and potassium iodide (can be ordered from a science education supplier such as Carolina Biological Supply or Fisher Scientific). Basically, you make a paste from water, corn starch and potassium-iodide, and you paint this paste on strips of filter paper. You then expose the strips to the air for eight hours. Ozone in the air will react with the potassium iodide to change the color of the strip. You will also need to know the relative humidity, which you can get from a newspaper, weather broadcast or home weather station.F) When you inhale ozone, it travels throughout your respiratory tract. Because ozone is very corrosive, it damages the bronchioles and alveoli in your lungs, air sacs that are important for gas exchange. Repeated exposure to ozone can inflame lung tissues and cause respiratory infections.G) Ozone exposure can aggravate existing respiratory conditions such as asthma, reduce your lung function and capacity for exercise and cause chest pains and coughing. Young children, adults who are active outdoors and people with respiratory diseases are most susceptible to the high levels of ozone encountered during the summer. In addition to effects on humans, the corrosive nature of ozone can damage plants and trees. High levels of ozone can destroy agricultural crops and forest vegetation.H) To protect yourself from ozone exposure, you should be aware of the Air Quality Index (AQI) in your area every day—you can usually find it in the newspaper or on a morning weather forecast on TV or radio. You should also be familiar with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guide for ozone-alert values.I) What do the numbers in the AQI mean? The AQI measures concentrations of five air pollutants: ozone, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. The EPA has chosen these pollutants as criteria pollutants, but these are not all of the pollutants in the air. These concentrations are compared to a standard set out in federal law. An index value of 100 means that all of the criteria pollutants are at the maximum level that is considered safe for the majority of the population. To reduce your exposure to ozone, you should avoid exercising during afternoon and early evening hours in the summer.J) There are several ways you can help to decrease ozone pollution. Limit using your automobile during afternoon and early evening hours in the late spring, summer and early fall. Do not use gasoline-powered lawn equipment during these times. Do not fuel your car during these times. Do not light fires or outdoor grills during these times. Keep the engine of your car or boat tuned. Make sure that your tires are properly inflated. Use environmentally safe paints, cleaning and office products (some of these chemicals are sources of VOC).K) Besides personal attempts to reduce ozone pollution, the EPA has initiated more stringent air-quality standards (such as the Clean Air Act and its modifications) to reduce air pollution. Compliance with these standards by industries, manufacturers and state and local governments has significantly reduced the levels of many common air pollutants.L) With continued conservation and reduction practices, adherence to ozone-pollution warnings, research and government regulation, ozone-pollution levels shouldcontinue to fall. Perhaps future generations will not be threatened by this environmentalpollutant.M) The thing that determines whether ozone is good or bad is its location. Ozone is ……good,,when it is in the stratosphere. The stratosphere is a layer of the atmosphere starting at the level of about 6 miles (about 10 kilometers) above sea level. The stratosphere naturally contains about six parts per million of ozone, and this ozone is very beneficial because it absorbs UV radiation and prevents it from reaching us.N) Ozone is “bad” when it is a t ground level. Ozone is a very reactive gas that is hard on lung tissue. It also damages plants and buildings. Any ozone at ground level is a problem. Unfortunately, chemicals in car exhaust and chemicals produced by some industries react with light to produce lots of ozone at ground level. In cities, the ozone level can rise to a point where it becomes hazardous to our health. That‟s when you hear about an ozone warning on the news.1. When ultraviolet rays from the sun separate an oxygen molecule into two single oxygen atoms in the stratosphere, the combination of a single oxygen atom and an oxygen molecule forms ozone.2. You can make ozone test strips by yourself to find out about ozone levels in your own locale.3. Long-time exposure to ozone is badly harmful to our respiratory system.4. Chemicals in industrial waste gas and vehicle exhaust react with light to form lots of ozone at ground level.5. Internal combustion engines and power plants cause the artificial tropospheric ozone, also know n as “bad” ozone.6. Ozone is very helpful because it absorbs UV radiation and separates us from it.7. Using gasoline-powered lawn equipment in the late spring, summer and early fall may increase ozone pollution.8. Ozone pollution occurs in urban and suburban areas as well as in rural areas.9.In order to decrease ozone pollution, the EPA has set up more rigorous air-quality standards.10. Pay close attention to the Air Quality Index in your area every day can keep you away from ozone exposure.EarthquakesA) An earthquake is one of the most terrifying phenomena that nature can dish up. We generally think of the ground we stand on as “rock-solid” and completely stable. An earthquake can shatter (粉碎)that perception instantly, and often with extreme violence.B) Up until relatively recently, scientists only had unproven guesses as to what actually caused earthquakes. Even today there is still a certain amount of mystery surrounding them, but scientists have a much clearer understanding. There has been enormous progress in the past century. Scientists have identified the forces that cause earthquakes, and developed technology that can tell us an earthquake"s magnitude and origin. The next hurdle is to find a way of predicting earthquakes, so the y don‟t catch people by surprise. In this article, we‟ll find out what causes earthquakes, and we‟ll also find out why they can have such a devastating effect on us.C) An earthquake is a vibration(震动)that travels through the earth‟s crust. Technically, a large truck that rumbles down the street is causing a mini-earthquake, if you feel your house shaking as it goes by; but we tend to think of earthquakes as events that affect a fairly large area,such as an entire city. All kinds of things can cause earthquakes: volcanic eruptions, meteor(流星)impacts, underground explosions (an underground nuclear test, for example), collapsing structures (such as a collapsing mine). But the majority of naturally-occurring earthquakes are caused by movements of the earth‟s plates.D) We only hear about earthquakes in the news every once in a while, but they are actually an everyday occurrence on our planet. According to the United States Geological Survey, more than 3 million earthquakes occur every year. That‟s about 8,000 a day, or one every 11 seconds! The vast majority of these 3 million quakes are extremely weak. The law of probability also causes a good number of stronger quakes to happen in uninhabited places where no one feels them. It is the big quakes that occur in highly populated areas that get our attention.E) Earthquakes have caused a great deal of property damage over the years, and they have claimed many lives. In the last hundred years alone, there have been more than 1.5 million earthquake-related fat alities. Usually, it‟s not the shaking ground itself that claims lives; it‟s the associated destruction of man-made structures and other natural disasters it causes, such as tsunamis, avalanches (雪崩)and landslides.F) The biggest scientific breakthrough in the history of seismology—the study of earthquakes—came in the middle of the 20th century, with the development of the theory of plate tectonics(筑造学).Scientists proposed the idea of plate tectonics to explain a number of peculiar phenomena on earth, such as the apparent movement of continents over time, the clustering of volcanic activity in certain areas and the presence of huge ridges at the bottom of the ocean.G) The basic theory is that the surface layer of the earth—the lithosphere—is comprised of many plates that slide over the lubricating (润滑的)asthenosphere layer. At the boundaries between these huge plates of soil and rock, three different things can happen.H) Plates can move apart. If two plates are moving apart from each other, hot, molten rock flows up from the layers of mantle below the lithosphere. This magma (岩浆) comes out on the surface (mostly at the bottom of the ocean), where it is called lava (熔岩).As the lava cools, it hardens to form new lithosphere material, filling in the gap. This is called a divergent plate boundary.I) Plates can push together. If the two plates are moving toward each other, one plate typically pushes under the other one. This plate below sinks into the lower mantle layers, where it melts. At some boundaries where two plates meet, neither plate is in a position to push under the other, so they both push against each other to form mountains. The lines where plates push toward each other are called convergent plate boundaries.J) Plates slide against each other. At other boundaries, plates simply slide by each other—one moves north and one moves south, for example. While the plates don‟t drift directly into each other at these transform boundaries, they are pushed tightly together. A great deal of tension builds at the boundary.K) We understand earthquakes a lot better than we did even 50 years ago, but we still can‟t do much about them. They are caused by fundamental, powerful geological processes that are far beyond our control. These processes are also fa irly unpredictable, so it‟s not possible at this time to tell people exactly when an earthquake is going to occur. The first detected earthquake waves will tell us that more powerful vibrations are on their way, but this only gives us a few minutes‟ warning, at most.L) So what can we do about earthquakes? The major advances over the past 50 years have。
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2014年6月英语六级长篇阅读匹配练
习题(一)
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.
Six Steps to Tackling Your Student Loans
[A] Any payment is a good debt payment, but a strategy can be useful too-even if your strategy means opening the envelope.
Open the envelope
[B] This is the hardest thing to do. The bills come with the "Sallie Mae" or "Discover" logo on them and you toss them aside, hoping to deal with them when you feel less besieged (围攻). You know you started owing some amount- $20,000, $50,000, $100,000—and that the interest is piling up, but you don't know exactly how much or how. When faced with heavy debt, many people try to avoid seeing the numbers.
[C] This doesn't work, even psychologically. Anyone who has let credit-card bills or mortgage bills pile up, 1reopened, knows that avoiding the envelope does not reduce your anxiety; it increases it. As those envelopes multiply, they take over your psychological state. In horror movies, it's like the monster in the room behind the door. You don't know what it looks like, but it keeps you scared and immobile. So, open the envelope.
[D] Or, even better, log in online. All student loan providers have a web site where you can see what you owe, your interest rates, and your payment schedules. SallieMae. com is no-frills, but still allows you to see your loans on one screen, including your interest rates. Discover. corn also has a pretty basic site. Citibank has a more complex site. Get used to logging into these sites pretty often; ff you need motivation, think of it as visiting your money while it's in prison.。