2009年12月大學英語六級考試模擬演練題(二)

　　M: Very true, but the large cities of Europe and the United States grew relatively slowly. London had a population of more than a million at the beginning of the nineteenth century and this number of more than eight million. And this growth was parallel to industrial growth throughout the country. The same is true of New York, for example.

　　W: But this is not true if Mexico city or Buenos Aires ?

　　M: No, it is not. Throughout Latin America and in parts of Asia, cities have grown much faster than industry, or agriculture for that matter. Some of these cities have quadrupled in size in less than two decades, while industrial growth over the same period may have only reached thirty to forty percent.

　　W: What does this mean ?

　　M: Essentially the population growth is not equal to the number of employment opportunities. Much of the increase is due to immigration from the countryside, a movement of people in search of better conditions.

　　19. What is the relationship between the two speakers ?

　　20. In which period did the population of London reach about 1 million ?

　　21. Where have many large cities sprung up so quickly ?

　　Conversation Two

　　M: So how come you chose psychology ?

　　W: Well, at first I didn’t have any clear idea of what I wanted to do after university. I didn’t say to myself “I want to be a clinical psychologist or a researcher or anything like that.” I suppose I have just always been interested in people and the way they act.

　　M: And what was the course like ?

　　W: It was just great. The teachers were all really friendly and they had this special approach to teaching. The whole course was based on a problem solving approach.

　　M: I see from your CV that you graduated in 1997 and after that, let me see…

　　W: I got a job with the deparment of employment. It was only a temporary thing for about six months. I used to have to design questionnaires and things like that for surveys that they carried out. And I guess the psychology course at college helped me a lot.

　　M: So why did you leave ?

　　W: Well, four years is a long time to be asking people questions You know those sorts of questions about washing powder and shampoo. After two years of doing that I felt that while I could do it well, now I want to do something else that’s a little different. It just wasn’t challenging for me any more and because I needed a challenge I decided to move when I heard about the position of Senior Researcher here at institute I knew that’s exactly what I want.