大学英语六级阅读训练带答案

大学英语六级阅读训练带答案

Like most parents, geologist Brain Atwater worries about his daughter's safety. But these days, he has an unusual concern; The public school she 11 in Seattle has unreinforced brick walls, a 12 being easy to collapse during earthquakes. The same 13 of walls crushed hundreds of thousands of people during the 1976 Tangshan quake in China.

A decade ago, Atwater would have paid little notice to schoolroom walls. But over the last several years, he and other scientists have found 14 signs that the Pacific Northwest has experienced giant quakes in the distant past and that the area may be headed for a destructive shock in the near future.

At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December, researchers discussed the 15 uncovered evidence of quake potential in the Pacific Northwest. While some remain unconvinced that huge earthquakes—with magnitudes of 8 or higher—do indeed 16 this region, a growing number consider such shocks a serious possibility.

What's worrisome, they say, is that northwestern cities such as Portland, Seattle and Vancouver have not prepared for earthquakes of this magnitude, which could shake the region's 17 centers with enough force to make the recent San Francisco area damage seem 18 in comparison.

"I think it's quite true to say that nothing has really been designed with one of these earthquakes in mind," says seismologist Paul Somerville of Woodward. At the meeting, Somerville and his colleagues 19 estimates of the degree of shaking. Portland and Seattle would suffer during such a 20 earthquake.

A. massive

B. recently

C. construction

D. displayed

E. relatively

F. attends

G. type

H. strike

I. structure

J. participates

K. excessive

L. mild

M. disturbing

N. population

0. presented

II. F 12. C 13. G 14. M 15. B 16. H 17. N 18. L 19. O 20. A

What do we think with? Only the brain? Hardly. The brain is like a telephone exchange. It is the switchboard, but not the whole system. Its function is to receive incoming signals, make proper connection, and send the messages through to their destination. For efficient service, the body must function as a whole.

But where is the "mind"? Is it in the brain? Or perhaps in the nervous system? After all, can we say that the mind is in any particular place? It is not a thing, like a leg, or even the brain. It is a function, an activity. Aristotle, twenty-three hundred years ago, observed that the mind was to the body what cutting was to the ax. When the ax is not in use, there is no cutting. So with the mind. "Mind," said Charles H. Woolbert, "is what the body is doing. "

If this activity is necessary for thinking, it is also necessary for carrying thought from one person to another. Observe how people go about the business of ordinary conversation. If you have never done this painstakingly, you have a surprise in store, for good conversationalists are almost constantly in motion. Their heads are continually nodding and shaking sometimes so vigorously that you wonder how their necks can stand the strain.

Even the legs and feet are active. As for the hands and arms, they are seldom still for more than a few seconds at a time.

These people, remember, are not making speeches. They are merely common folk trying to make others understand what they have in mind. They are not