攀岩运动大学英语六级阅读真题

2020年12月22日发(作者：计文波)
2015年12月大学英语六级阅读真题&答案

As it is, sleep is so undervalued that getting by on fewer hours has become
a badge o? Plus, we live in a culture that 36 to the late –nighter, from
24-hourgrocery store to ? shopping site that never close. It’s no surprise,
then, that more than half of American adults get the 7 to 9 hours of shut-eye
every night as 37 by sleep experts.

Whether or not we can catch up on sleep – on the weekend, say- is a hotly
38 among sleep researchers. The latest evidence suggests that while it isn’t
39 , it might ? when Liu, the UCLA sleep researcher and professor of medicine,
brought 40 sleep-rest people into the lab for a weekend of sleep during which
they lagged about 10 hours per night. ? showed 41 in the ability of insulin(胰
岛素) to process blood sugar. That suggests ? up sleep may undo some but not
all of the damage that sleep 42 causes, which is encouraging ? given how many
adults don’t get the hours they need each night. Still, Liu isn’t 43 to
end the habit of sleeping less and making up for it later.

Sleeping pills, while helpful for some, are not 44 an effective remedy
either. “A sleeping pill will 45 one area of the brain, but there’s never
going to be a perfect sleeping pill, because you couldn’t really replicate
（复制）the different chemicals moving in and out of different parts ? the
brain to go through the different stages of sleep,” says Dr. Nancy Collop,
director of the Em? University Sleep Center.

A) alternatively I) negotiated

B) caters J) pierce

C) chronically K) presumption

D) debated L) ready

E) deprivation M) recommended

F) ideal N) surpasses

G) improvements O) target

H) necessarily

答案：BMDFO GELHJ

Climate change may be real, but it’s still not easy being green

How do we convince our inner caveman to be greener?We ask some outstanding
social scientists.
A)The road to climate hell is paved with our good intentions. Politicians may tackle
polluters while scientists do battle with carbon emissions. But the most pervasive
problem is less obvious: our own behaviour. We get distracted before we can turn down
the heating. We break our promise not to fly after hearing about a neighbor’s rip to India.
Ultimately, we can’t be bothered to change our attitude. Fortunately for the planet, social
science and behavioral economics may be able to do that for us.
B)Despite mournful polar bears and carts showing carbon emissions soaring, mot
people find it hard to believe that global warming will affect them personally. Recent polls
by the Pew Research Centre in Washington, DC, found that 75-80 per cent of
participants regarded climate change as an important issue. But respondents ranked it
last on a list of priorities.
C)This inconsistency largely stems from a feeling of powerlessness. “When we can’t
actually remove the source of our fear, we tend to adapt psychologically by adopting a
range of defense mechanisms,” says Tom Crompton, change strategist for the
environmental organization World Wide Fund for Nature.
D)Part of the fault lies with our inner caveman. Evolution has programmed humans to
pay most attention to issues that will have an immediate impact. “We worry most about
now because if we don’t survive for the next minute, we’re not going to be around in ten
years’ time,” says Professor Elke Weber of the Centre for Research on Environmental
Decisions at Columbia University in New York. If the Thames were lapping around Big
Ben, Londoners would face up to the problem of emissions pretty quickly. But in practice,
our brain discounts the risks—and benefits—associated with issues that lie some way
ahead.
E)Matthew Rushworth, of the Department of Experimental Psychology at the
University of Oxford, sees this in his lab every day. “One of the ways in which all agents
seem to make decisions is that they assign a lower weighting to outcomes that are going
to be further away in the future,” he says. “This is a very sensible way for an animal to
make decisions in the wild and would have been very helpful for humans for thousands of
years.”
F)Not any longer. By the time we wake up to the threat posed by climate change, it
could well be too late. And if we’re not going to make national decisions about the future,
others may have to help us to do so.
G)Few political libraries are without a copy of Nudge: Improving Decisions About
Health, Wealth and Happiness, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. They argue that
governments should persuade us into making better decisions—such as saving more in
our pension plans—by changing the default options. Professor Weber believes that
environmental policy can make use of similar tactics. If, for example, building codes
included green construction guidelines, most developers would be too lazy to challenge
them.
H)Defaults are certainly part of the solution. But social scientists are most concerned
about crafting messages that exploit our group mentality(心态). ”We need to understand
what motivates people, what it is that allows them to make change,” says Professor Neil
Adger, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich. ”It is actually
about what their peers think of them, what their social norms are, what is seen as
desirable in society.” In other words, our inner caveman is continually looking over his
shoulder to see what the rest of the tribe are up to.
I)The passive attitude we have to climate change as individuals can be altered by
counting us in—and measuring us against—our peer group. “Social norms are primitive
and elemental,” says Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of
Persuasion. “Birds flock together, fish school together, cattle herd together … just
perceiving norms is enough to cause people to adjust their behavior in the direction of the
crowd.”
J)These norms can take us beyond good intentions. Cialdini conducted a study in
San Diego in which coat hangers bearing messages about saving energy were hung on
people’s doors. Some of the messages mentioned the environment, some financial
savings, others social responsibility. But it was the one that mentioned the actions of
neighbours that drove down power use.
K)Other studies show that simply providing the facility for people to compare their
energy use with the local average is enough to cause them to modify their behaviour. The
Conservatives plan to adopt this strategy by making utility companies print the average
local electricity and gas usage on people’s bills.
L)Social science can also teach politicians how to avoid our collective capacity for
self-destructive behaviour. Environmental campaigns that tell us how many people drive
SUVs unwittingly (不经意地) imply that this behaviour is widespread and thus permissible.
Cialdini recommends some careful framing of the message. “Instead of normalising the
undesirable behaviour, the message needs to marginalise it, for example, by stating that
if even one person buys yet another SUV, it reduces our ability to be
energy-independent.”
M)Tapping into how we already see ourselves is crucial. The most successful
environmental strategy will marry the green message to our own sense of identity. Take
your average trade union member, chances are they will be politically motivated and be
used to collective action—much like Erica Gregory. A retired member of the Public and
Commercial Services Union, she is setting up one of 1,100 action groups with the support
of Climate Solidarity, a two-year environmental campaign aimed at trade unionists.
N)Erica is proof that a great-grandmother can help to lead the revolution if your get
the psychology right—in this case, by matching her enthusiasm for the environment with
a fondness for organising groups. “I think there must be something in it.” She is expecting
up to 20 people at the first meeting she has called, at her local pub in the Cornish village
of Polperro.
O)Nick Perks, project director for Climate Solidarity, believes this sort of activity is
where the future of environmental action lies. “Using existing civil society structures or
networks is a more effective way of creating change … and obviously trade unions are
one of the biggest civil society networks in the UK,” he says. The “Love Food, Haste
Waste” campaign entered into a collaboration last year with another such network—the
Women’s Institute. Londoner Rachel Talor joined the campaign with the aim of making
new friends. A year on, the meetings have made lasting changes to what she throws
away in her kitchen. “It’s always more of an incentive if you’re doing it with other people,”
she says. “It motivates you more if you know that you’ve got to provide feedback to a
group.”
P) The power of such simple psychology in fighting climate change is attracting
attention across the political establishment. In the US, the House of Representatives
Science Committee has approved a bill allocating $$10 million a year to studying
energy-related behaviour. In the UK, new studies are in development and social
scientists are regularly spotted in British government offices. With the help of
psychologists, there is fresh hope that we might go green after all.
46. When people find they are powerless to change a situation, they tend to live with
it.
47. To be effective, environmental messages should be carefully framed.
48. It is the government’s responsibility to persuade people into making
environment- friendly decisions.
49. Politicians are beginning to realize the importance of enlisting psychologists’ help
in fighting climate change.
50. To find effective solutions to climate change, it is necessary to understand what
motivates people to make change.
51. In their evolution, humans have learned to pay attention to the most urgent issues
instead of long-term concerns.
52. One study shows that our neighbors’ actions are influential unchanging our
behavior.
53. Despite clear signs of global warming, it is not easy for most people to believe
climate change will affect their own lives.
would take our future into consideration in making decisions concerning
climate change before it is too late.
55. Existing social networks can be more effective in creating change in people’s
behaviour.
答案：CLGPH DJBFO
Passage One
More than a decade ago, cognitive scientists John Bransford and Daniel Schwartz,
both then at Vanderbilt University, found that what distinguished young adults from
children was not the ability to retain facts or apply prior knowledge to a new situation but
a quality they called “preparation for future learning.” The researchers asked fifth graders
and college students to create a recovery plan to protect bald eagles from extinction.
Shockingly, the two groups came up with plans of similar quality( although the college
students had better spelling skills). From the standpoint of a traditional educator, this
outcome indicated that schooling and failed to help students think about ecosystems and
extinction, major scientific ideas.
The researchers decided to go deeper, however. They asked both groups to
generate questions about important issues need to create recovery plans. On this task,
they found large differences. College students focused on critical issues of
interdependence between eagles and their habitats(栖息地). Fifth graders tended to
focus on features of individual eagles(“How big are they?” and “What do they eat?”). The
college students had cultivated the ability to ask questions, the cornerstone of critical
thinking. They had learned how to learn.
Museums and other institutions of informal learning may be better suited to teach this
skill than elementary and secondary schools. At the Exploratorium in San Francisco, we
recently studied how learning to ask good questions can affect the quality of people’s
scientific inquiry. We found that when we taught participants to ask “What if?” and “How
can?” questions that nobody present would know the answer to and that would spark
exploration, they engaged in better inquiry at the next exhibit —asking more questions,
performing more experiments and making better interpretations of their results.
Specifically, their questions became more comprehensive at the new exhibit. Rather than
merely asking about something they wanted to try, they tended to include both cause and
effect in their question. Asking juicy questions appears to be a transferable skill for
deepening collaborative inquiry into the science content found in exhibits.
This type of learning is not confined to museums or institutional settings. Informal
learning environments tolerate failure better than schools. Perhaps many teachers have
too little time to allow students to form and pursue their own questions and too much
ground to cover in the curriculum. But people must acquire this skill somewhere. Our
society depends on them being able to make critical decisions about their own medical
treatment, say, or what we must do about global energy needs and demands. For that,
we have a robust informal learning system that gives no grades, takes all comers, and is
available even on holidays and weekends.
56. What is traditional educators’ interpretation of the research outcome mentioned in
the first paragraph?
A)Students are not able to apply prior knowledge to new problems.
B)College students are no better than fifth grader in memorizing facts.
C)Education has not paid enough attention to major environmental issues.
D)Education has failed to lead students to think about major scientific ideas.
57. In what way are college students different from children?
A) They have learned to think critically.
B) They are concerned about social issues.
C) They are curious about specific features.
D) They have learned to work independently.
58. What is the benefit of asking questions with no ready answers?
A)It arouses students’ interest in things around them.
B)It cultivates students’ ability to make scientific inquiries.
C)It trains students’ ability to design scientific experiments.
D)It helps students realize not every question has an answer.
59. What is said to be the advantage of informal learning?
A)It allows for failures.
B)It charges no tuition.
C)It is entertaining.
D)It meets practical needs.
60. What does the author seem to encourage educators to do at the end of the
passage?
A)Train students to think about global issues.
B)Design more interactive classroom activities.
C)Make full use of informal learning resources.
D)Include collaborative inquiry in the curriculum
Passage Two
“There’s an old saying in the space world: amateurs talk about technology,
professionals talk about insurance.” In an interview last year with The Economist, George
Whitesides, chief executive of space-tourism firm Virgin Galactic, was placing his
company in the latter category. But insurance will be cold comfort following the failure on
October 31st of VSS Enterprise, resulting in the death of one pilot and the severe injury to
another.
On top of the tragic loss of life, the accident in California will cast a long shadow over
the future of space tourism, even before it has properly begun.
The notion of space tourism took hold in 2001 with a &29million flight aboard a
Russian spacecraft by Dennis Tito, a millionaire engineer with an adventurous streak.
Just half a dozen holiday-makers have reached orbit since then, for similarly
astronomical price tags. But more recently, companies have begun to plan more
affordable “suborbital” flights—briefer ventures just to the edge of space’s vast darkness.
Virgin Galactic had, prior to this week’s accident, seemed closet to starting regular flights.
The company has already taken deposits from around 800 would be space tourists,
including Stephen Hawking.
After being dogged by technical delays for years, Sir Richard Branson, Virgin
Galactic’s founder, had recently suggested that a SpaceShipTwo craft would carry its first
paying customers as soon as February 2015. That now seems an impossible timeline. In
July, a sister craft of the crashed spaceplane was reported to be about half-finished. The
other half will have to wait, as authorities of America’s Federal Aviation
Administration(FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board work out what went
wrong.
In the meantime, the entire space tourism industry will be on tenterhooks(坐立不安).
The 2004 Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act, intended to encourage private
space vehicles and services, prohibits the transportation secretary (and thereby the FAA)
from regulating the design or operation of private spacecraft, unless they have resulted in
a serious or fatal injury to crew or passengers. That means that the FAA could suspend
Virgin Galactic’s license to fly. It could also insist on checking private manned spacecraft
as thoroughly as it does commercial aircraft.; While that may make suborbital travel safer,
it would add significant cost and complexity to an emerging industry that has until now
operated largely as the playground of billionaires and dreamy Virgin
Glactic, regulators and the public respond to this most recent tragedy will determine
whether and how soon private space travel can transcend that playground. There is no
doubt that spaceflight entails risks, and to pioneer a new mode of travel is to face those
risks, and to reduce them with the benefit of hard-won experience.
61. What is said about the failure of VSS Enterprise?
A)It may lead to the bankruptcy of Virgin Galactic.
B)It has a strong negative impact on space tourism.
C)It may discourage rich people from space travel.
D)It has aroused public attention to safety issues.
62. What do we learn about the space-tourism firm Virgin Galactic?
A)It has just built a craft for commercial flights.
B)It has sent half a dozen passengers into space.
C)It was about ready to start regular business.
D)It is the first to launch “suborbital” flights.
63. What is the purpose of the 2004 Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act?
A)To ensure space travel safety.
B)To limit the FAA’s functions.
C)To legalize private space explorations.
D)To promote the space tourism industry.
64. What might the FAA do after the recent accident in California?
A)Impose more rigid safety standards.
B)Stop certifying new space- tourist agencies.
C)Amend its 2004 Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act
D)Suspend Virgin Galactic’s license to take passengers into space.
65. What does the author think of private space travel?
A)It is worth promoting despite the risks involved.
B)It should not be confined to the rich only.
C)It should be strictly regulated.
D)It is too risky to carry on.
答案：DABAC BCDDA
2015年12月英语6级翻译真题&答案【汇总版】
Translation
Direction：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.
在帮助国际社会于2030年前消除极端贫困过程中，中国正扮演着 越来越重要的角色。
自20世纪70年代末实施改革开放以来，中国已使多达四亿人摆脱了贫困。在未来 五年中，
中国将向其他发展中国家在减少贫困、发展教育、农业现代化、环境保护和医疗保健等方
面提供援助。
中国在减少贫困方面取得了显着进步，并在促进经济增长方面做出了不懈努力，这将< br>鼓励其他贫困国家应对自身发展中的挑战。在寻具有自身特色的发展道路时，这些国家可
以借鉴中 国的经验
Translation
Direction：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.
在中国，父本总是竭力帮助孩子， 甚至为孩子做重要决定，而不管孩子想要什么，因
为他们相信这样做是为孩子好。结果，孩子的成长和教 育往往屈从于父母的意愿。
如果父母决定为孩子报名参加一个课外班，以增加其被重点学校录取的机会 ，他们会
坚持自己的决定，即使孩子根本不感兴趣。
然而在美国，父母可能会尊重孩子的意见，并在决策时更注重他们的意见。
中国父母十分重视 教育或许值得称赞。然而，他们应该向美国父母学习在涉及教育时
如何平衡父母与子女间的关系。
Translation
Direction：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.
最近，中国政府决定将其工业升级，中国现在 涉足建造高速列车、远洋船舶、机器人，
甚至飞机。不久前，中国获得了再印度尼西亚（Indones ia）建造一条高铁的合同；中国还
与马来西亚（Malaysia）签署了为其提供高速列车的合同。 这证明人们信赖中国造产品。
中国造产品越来越受欢迎。中国为此付出了代价，但这确实有助于消除贫 困，同时还
为世界各地的人们提供了就业机会。这是一件好事，值得称赞。下次你去商店时，可能想看一看你所购商品的出产国名。很有可能这件商品是中国造的。