2007年新東方大學英語六級講義（閱讀部分）

　　新東方在線六級閱讀電子教材

　　主講：張登

　　第一部分 閱讀理解全真題

　　Unit 1

　　Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension

　　(35 minutes)

　　Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. 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 the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.

　　Passage One

　　Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage:

　　What has the telephone done to us, or for us, in the hundred years of its existence? A few effects suggest themselves at once. It has saved lives by getting rapid word of illness, injury, or fire from remote places. By joining with the elevator to make possible the multi-story residence or office building, it has made possible — for better or worse — the modern city. By bringing about a great leap in the speed and ease with which information moves from place to place, it has greatly accelerated the rate of scientific and technological changes and growth in industry. Beyond doubt it has seriously weakened if not killed the ancient art of letter writing. It has made living alone possible for persons with normal

; by so doing, it has played a role in one of the greatest social changes of this century, the breakup of the multi-generational household. It has made the war chillingly more efficient than formerly. Perhaps, though not provably (可證實)，it has prevented wars that might have arisen out of international misunderstanding caused by written communication. Or perhaps — again not provably — by magnifying and extending irrational personal conflicts based on voice contact, it has caused wars. Certainly it has extended the scope of human conflicts, since it impartially disseminates (傳播) the useful knowledge of scientists and the nonsense of the ignorant, the affection of the affectionate and the malice (惡意) of the malicious.

　　21. What is the main idea of this passage?

　　A) The telephone has helped to save people from illness and fire.

　　B) The telephone has helped to prevent wars and conflicts.

　　C) The telephone has made the modern city neither better nor worse.

　　D) The telephone has had positive as well as negative effects on us.

　　22. According to the passage, it is the telephone that .

　　A) has made letter writing an art

　　B) has prevented wars by avoiding written communication

　　C) has made the world different from what it was

　　D) has caused wars by magnifying and extending human conflicts

　　23. The telephone has intensified conflicts among people because .

　　A) it increases the danger of war

　　B) it provides services to both the good and the malicious

　　C) it makes distant communication easier

　　D) it breaks up the multi-generational household

　　24. The author describes the telephone as impartial because it .

　　A) saves lives of people in remote places

　　B) enables people to live alone if they want to

　　C) spreads both love and ill will

　　D) replaces much written communication

　　25. The writer's attitude towards the use of the telephone is .

　　A) affectionate C) approving

　　B) disapproving D) neutral

　　Passage Two

　　Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage:

　　To say that the child learns by imitation and that the way to teach is to set a good example oversimplifies. No child imitates every action he sees. Sometimes, the example the parent wants him to follow is ignored while he takes over contrary patterns from some other example. Therefore we must turn to a more subtle theory than “Monkey see, monkey do.”

　　Look at it from the child's point of view. Here he is in a new situation, lacking a ready response. He is seeking a response which will gain certain ends. If he lacks a ready response for the situation, and cannot reason out what to do, he observes a model who seems able to get the right result. The child looks for an authority or expert who can show what to do.��

　　There is a second element at work in this situation. The child may be able to attain his immediate goal only to find that his method brings criticism from people who observe him. When shouting across the house achieves his immediate end of delivering a message, he is told emphatically that such a racket(叫嚷) is unpleasant, that he should walk into the next room and say his say quietly. Thus, the desire to solve any objective situation is overlaid with the desire to solve it properly. One of the early things the child learns is that he gets more affection and approval when his parents like his response. Then other adults reward some actions and criticize others. If one is to maintain the support of others and his own self-respect, he must adopt responses his social group approves.

　　In finding trial responses, the learner does not choose models at random. He imitates the person who seems a good person to be like, rather than a person whose social status he wishes to avoid. If the pupil wants to be a good violinist, he will observe and try to copy the techniques of capable players; while some other person may most influence his approach to books.��

　　Admiration of one quality often leads us to admire a person as a whole, and he becomes an identifying figure. We use some people as models over a wide range of situations, imitating much that they do. We learn that they are dependable and rewarding models because imitating them leads to success.

　　26. The statement that children learn by imitation is incomplete because .

　　A) they only imitate authorities and experts

　　B) they are not willing to copy their parents

　　C) the process of identification has been ignored

　　D) the nature of their imitation as a form of behaviour has been neglected

　　27. For a child the first element in his learning by imitation is .

　　A) the need to find an authority

　　B) the need to find a way to achieve the desired result

　　C) the need for more affection from his parents

　　D) the desire to meet the standards of his social group

　　28. Apart from achieving his desired results, a child should also learn to .

　　A) behave properly C) show his affection for his parents

　　B) attain his goal as soon as possible D) talk quietly

　　29. Children tend to imitate their models .

　　A) who do not criticize them

　　B) who bring them unexpected rewards

　　C) whom they want to be like

　　D) whose social status is high

　　30. “An identifying figure”(Line 2, Para. 5) refers to a person .

　　A) who serves as a model for others

　　B) who is always successful

　　C) who can be depended upon

　　D) who has been rewarded for his success

　　Passage Three

　　Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage:

　　When imaginative men turn their eyes towards space and wonder whether life exist in any part of it, they may cheer themselves by remembering that life need not resemble closely the life that exists on Earth. Mars looks like the only planet where life like ours could exist, and even this is doubtful. But there may be other kinds of life based on other kinds of chemistry, and they may multiply on Venus or Jupiter. At least we cannot prove at present that they do not.

　　Even more interesting is the possibility that life on their planets may be in a more advanced stage of evolution. Present-day man is in a peculiar and probably temporary stage. His individual units retain a strong sense of personality. They are, in fact, still capable under favorable circumstances of leading individual lives. But man's societies are already sufficiently developed to have enormously more power and effectiveness than the individuals have.

　　It is not likely that this transitional situation will continue very long on the evolutionary time scale. Fifty thousand years from now man's societies may have become so close-knit that the individuals retain no sense of separate personality. Then little distinction will remain between the organic parts of the multiple organism and the inorganic parts (machines) that have been constructed by it. A million years further on man and his machines may have merged as closely as the muscles of the human body and the nerve cells that set them in motion.

　　The explorers of space should be prepared for some such situation. If they arrive on a foreign planet that has reached an advanced stage (and this is by no means impossible), they may find it being inhabited by a single large organism composed of many closely cooperating units.

　　The units may be “secondary” — machines created millions of years ago by a previous form of life and given the will and ability to survive and reproduce. They may be built entirely of metals and other durable materials. If this is the case, they may be much more tolerant of their environment, multiplying under conditions that would destroy immediately any organism made of carbon compounds and dependent on the familiar carbon cycle.

　　Such creatures might be relics(遺物) of a past age, many millions of years ago, when their planet was favorable to the origin of life, or they might be immigrants from a favored planet.

　　31. What does the word “cheer” (Line 2, Para. 1) imply?

　　A) Imaginative men are sure of success in finding life on other planets.

　　B) Imaginative men are delighted to find life on other planets.

　　C) Imaginative men are happy to find a different kind of life existing on other planets.

　　D) Imaginative men can be pleased with the idea that there might exist different forms of life on other planets.

　　32. Humans on Earth today are characterized by .

　　A) their existence as free and separate beings

　　B) their capability of living under favorable conditions

　　C) their great power and effectiveness

　　D) their strong desire for living in a close-knit society

　　33. According to this passage, some people believe that eventually .

　　A) human societies will be much more cooperative

　　B) man will live in a highly organized world

　　C) machines will replace man

　　D) living beings will disappear from Earth

　　34. Even most imaginative people have to admit that .

　　A) human societies are as advanced as those on some other planets

　　B) planets other than Earth are not suitable for life like ours to stay

　　C) it is difficult to distinguish between organic parts and inorganic parts of the human body

　　D) organism are more creative than machines

　　35. It seems that the writer .

　　A) is interested in the imaginary life forms

　　B) is eager to find a different form of life

　　C) is certain of the existence of a new life form

　　D) is critical of the imaginative people

　　Passage Four

　　Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage:

　　The American baby boom after the war made unconvincing U.S. advice to poor countries that they restrain their births. However, there has hardly been a year since 1957 in which birth rates have not fallen in the United States and other rich countries, and in 1976 the fall was especially sharp. Both East Germany and West Germany have fewer births than they have deaths, and the United States is only temporarily able to avoid this condition because the children of the baby boom are now an exceptionally large group of married couples.

　　It is true that Americans do not typically plan their births to set an example for developing nations. We are more affected by women's liberation: once women see interesting and well-paid jobs and careers available, they are less willing to provide free labor for child raising. From costing nothing, children suddenly come to seem impossibly expensive. And to the high cost of children are added the uncertainties introduced by divorce; couples are increasingly unwilling to subject children to the terrible experience of marital (婚姻的) breakdown and themselves to the difficulty of raising a child alone.

　　These circumstances — women working outside the home and the instability of marriage — tend to spread with industrial society and they will affect more and more countries during the remainder of this century. Along with them goes social mobility, ambition to rise in the urban world, a main factor in bringing down the births in Europe in the nineteenth century.

　　Food shortage will happen again when the reserves resulting from the good harvests of 1976 and 1977 have been consumed. Urbanization is likely to continue, with the cities of the developing nations struggling under the weight of twice their present populations by the year 2000. The presently rich countries are approaching a stable population largely because of the changed place of women, and they incidentally are setting an example of restraint to the rest of the world. Industrial society will spread to the poor countries, and aspirations (渴望) will exceed resources. All this will lead to a population in the twenty-first century that is smaller than was feared a few years ago. For those anxious to see world population brought under control the news is encouraging.

　　36. During the years from 1957 to 1976, the birth rate of the United States .

　　A) increased C) experienced both falls and rises

　　B) was reduced D) remained stable

　　37. What influences the birth rate most in the United States is .

　　A) highly paid jobs C) expenses of child raising

　　B) women's desire for independence D) high divorce rate

　　38. The sentence “From costing nothing, children suddenly come to seem impossibly expensive.” (Line 4, Para. 2) implies that .

　　A) food and clothing for babies are becoming incredibly expensive

　　B) prices are going up dramatically all the time

　　C) to raise children women have to give up interesting and well-paid jobs

　　D) social development has made child-raising inexpensive

　　39. A chief factor in bringing down the births in Europe in the 19th century is .

　　A) birth control C) the instability of marriage

　　B) the desire to seek fortune in cities D) the changed place of women

　　40. The population in the 21st century, according to the writer, .

　　A) will be smaller than a few years ago

　　B) will not be as small as people expect

　　C) will prove to be a threat to the world

　　D) will not constitute as serious a problem as expected