历年真题：2013年12月大学英语六级真题

section B

　Directions:In this section,you are going toread a passage wihe ten statements attached to it.Each statement containsinformation given in one of the paragraphs. Idetify the paragraph from whichthe information is derived.you may choose a paragraph more than once. Eachparagraph is marked with a letter.Answer the questions by marking thecorresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.

　The Uses of Difficulty

　The brain likes a challenge-and putting a fewobstacles in its way may well boost its creativity.

　A)jack white, the former frontman of thewhite stripe and an influential figure among fellow musicians, likes to makethings difficult for himself. He uses cheap guitars that won't stay in shape orin tune. When performing, he positions his instruments in a way that isdeliberately inconvenient, so that swiching from guitar to organ mid-songinvolves a way that is deliberately inconvenient, so that switching from guitarto organ mid-song involves a mad dash across the stage. Why? Because he's onthe run from what he describes as a disease that preys on everyartist:"ease of use". When making music gets too easy, says white, itbecomes harder to make it sing.

　B)It's an odd thought. Why would anyone maketheir work more difficult than it already is? Yet we know that difficulty canpay unexpected dividends. In 1966,soon after the Beatles had finished work on"Rubber Soul", Paul McCartney looked into the possibility of going toAmerica to record their next album. The equipment in American studios was moreadvaced than anything in Britain, which had led the Beatles' great rivals,theRolling Stones, to make their latest album, "Aftermath", in LosAngles .McCartney found that EMI's (百代唱片)contractualclauses made it prohibitively expensive to follow suit, and the Beatles had tomake do with the primitive technology of Abbey Road.

　C) Lucky for us .Over the next two years theymade their most groundbreaking work. tuming the recording studio into a magicalinstrument of its own.Precisely because they were working with old-fashionedmachines, George Martin of its own.Precisely because they were woring withold-fashioed machines, George Martin and his team of engineers were forced toapply every ouce of their creativity to solve the problems posed to them byLennon and McCartney. Songs like"Tomrrow Never Knows","Strawberry Fields Forever ",and"A Day in the Life"featuredrevolutionary sound effectss that dazzled and mystified Martin's Americancounterparts.

　D)sometimes it's only when a difficulty isremoved that we realise what it was doing for us. For More than two decades,starting in the 1960s,the poet Ted Hughes sat on the judging panel of an annualpoetry competition for British schoolchiildren. During the 1980s he noticed anincreasing number of long poems among the submissions, with some running to 70or 80pages.

　These poems wer verbally inventive andfluent, but also"strangely boring",After making inquiries Hughesdiscovered that they were being composed on computer, then just finding theirway into British homes.

　E)You might have thought any tool whichenables a writer to get words on to the page would be an advantage .But theremay be a cost to such facility. In an interview with the Paris Review Hughesspeculated that when a person puts pen to paper, "you meet the terribleresistance of what happened your first year at it,when you couldn't write atall".As the brain attempts to force the unsteady hand to do its bidding,the tension between the two results in a more compressed, psychologicallydenser expression. Remove that resistance and you are more likely to produce a70-page ramble(不着边际的长篇大论).

　F)Our brains respond better to difficultythan we imagine, In schools,teachers and pupils alike often assume that if aconcept has been easy to learn, then the lesson has been successful.Butnumerous studies have now found that when classroom material is made harder toabsorb,pupils retain more of it over the long term, and undersand it on adeeper level.

　G)As a poet,Ted Hughes had an acutesensitivity to the way in which constraints on self-expression.like thedisciplines of metre rhyme(韵律)，spurcreative theought.What applies to poets and musicians also applies to our dailylives,We tend to equate(等同)happinesswith freedom,but as the psyhotherapist and writer Adam Phillips hasobserved,without obstacles to our desires it's harder to know we want,or wherewe're heading.He tells the story of a patient,a first-time mother whocomplained that her young son war always clinging to her,wrapping himselfaround her legs wherever she went.she never had a momentto herself,shesaid,because her son was"always in the way".when phillips asked herwhere she would go if he wasn't in the way,she replied cheerfully."Oh,Iwouldn't know where I was!"

　H)Take another common obstacle:lack ofmoney.People often assume that more money will make them happier.But economistswho study the relationship between money and happiness have consistently foundthat,above a certain income,the two do not reliably correlate,Despite the easewith which the rich can acquire almost anything they desire,they are just aslikely to be unhappy as the middle classes.In this regard a least,F.ScottFitzgerald was wrong.

　I) Indeed,ease of acquisition is theproblem,The novelist Edward St Aubyn has a narrator remark of the very richthat,"not having to consider affordability,their desires rambled on likeunstoppable bores,relentless(持续不断的) andwhicsical(反覆无常的)at the same time" When Boston College,aprivate research university,wanted a better feel for its potential donors,itasked the psychologist Robert Kenny to inverstigate the mindset of the super-rich.Hesurveyed 165 households,most of which had a net worth of$25m or more.he foundthat many of his subjects were confused by the infinitepotions their money presented them with. They found it hard to know what towant, creating a kind of existential bafflement. One of them put it like this:?You know, Bob ,you can just buy so much stuff, and when you get tothe point where you can just buy so much stuff, now what are you going to do

　J) The internet makes informationbillionaires out of all of us, and the architects of our online experiences arecatching on to the need to make things creatively difficult. Twitter?s hugesuccess is rooted in the simple but profound insight that in a medium withinfinite space for self-expression, the most interesting thing we can do is restrictourselves to 140 characters. The music service This Is My Jam helps peoplenavigate the tens of millions of tracks now available instantly via Spotify andiTunes. Users pick their favourite song of the week to share with others . Theyonly get to choose one. The service was only launched this year but by the endof September 650,000 jams had been chosen, Its co-founder Matt Ogle explainsits raison detre(存在的理由)like this:?In anage of endless choice, we were missing a way to say:? This. This is the one youshould listen to

　K)Today?s world offers more opportunitythan ever to follow the advice of the Walker Brothers and make it easy onourselves. Compared with a hundred years ago, our lives are less tightly boundby social norms and physical constraints. Technology has cut out much of life?sdonkeywork, and we have more freedoms than ever. We can wear what we like andcommunicate with hundreds of friends at once at the click of a mouse. Obstaclesare everywhere disappearing. Few of us wish to turn the clock back, but perhapswe need to remind ourselves how useful the right obstacles can be. Sometimes,the best route to fulfillment is the path of more resistance.

　注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答

　46.The rigorous requirements placed on thewriting of poetry stimulate the poet?s creativity.

　47.With creativity , even old-fashionedinstruments may produce spectacular sound effects.

　48.It is a false assumption that lessonsshould be made easier to learn.

　49. It is a false assumption that lessonsshould be made easier to learn.

　50.Obstacles deliberately placed in thecreation of music contribute to its success.

　51.Those who enjoy total freedom may notfind themselves happy.

　52.Ted Hughes discovered many long poemssubmitted for poetry competition were composed on computers.

　53.Maybe we need to bear in mind that theright obstacles help lead us to greater achievements.

　54.An investigation found that many of thesuper-rich were baffled by the infinite choices their money made available.

　55.One free social networking websiteturned out to be successful because it limited each pasting to one hundred andforty characters.

　 SectionC

　Directions: There are 2 passages in thissection. 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 shoulddecide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2with a single line through the centre.

PassageOne

　Questions 56 to 60 are based on thefollowing passage.

　There was a time no long ago when newscience Ph.D.s in the United States were expected to pursue a career path inacademia(学术界).But today, mostgraduates end up working outside academia. not only in industry but also incareers such as science policy, communications, and patent law. Partly this isa result of how bleak the academic job market is, but there?s also a risingawareness of career options that Ph.D. scientists haven?t trained fordirectly-but for which they have useful knowledge, skills, and experience.Still, there?s a huge disconnect between the way we currently train scientistsand the actual employment opportunities available for them, and an urgent needfor dramatic improvements in training programs to help close the gap. Onecritical step that could help to drive change would be to require Ph.D.students and postdoctoral scientists to follow an individual developmentplan(IDP).

　In 2002,the U.S Federation of AmericanSocieties for Experimental Biology recommended that every postdoctoralresearcher put together an IDP in consultation with an adviser. Since then,several academic institutions have begun to require IDPs for postdocs. And inJune, the U.S. Na-tional Institutes of Health(NIH) Biomedical ResearchWorkforce Working Group recommended that the NIH require IDPs for theapproximately 32,000 postdoctoral researchers they support, Other fundingagencies, public and private, are moving in a similar direction.

　IDPs have long been used by governmentagencies and the private sector to achieve specific goals for the employee andthe organization. The aim is to ensure that employees have an explicit tool tohelp them understand their own abilities and aspirations, determine careerpossibilities, and set (usually short-term) goals. In science, graduatestudents and new Ph.D. scientists can use an IDP to identify and navigate aneffective career path.

　A free Web application for this purpose, called myIDP, has becomeavailable this week. It?s designed to guide carly-career scientists through aconfidential. rigorous process of introspection(内省) to create a customized career plan. Guided by expert knowledgefrom a panel of science focused career advisers, each trainee?s self-assessmentis used to rank a set of career trajectories(轨迹). After the user has identified a long-term career goal, myIDPwalks her or him through the process of setting short-term goals directedloward accumulating new skills and experiences important for that careerchoice.

　Although surverys reveal the IDPprocess to be useful. Trainees report a need for additional resources to helpthem identify a long-term career path and complete an IDP. Thus, myIDP will bemost effective when it?s embedded in larger career-development efforts. Forexample, universities could incorporate IDPs into their graduate curricula tohelp students discuss, plan, prepare for, and achieve their long-term careergoals.

　注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答.

　56. What do we learn about new science Ph.D.s in the United States today?

　A)They lack the skills and expertise needed for their jobs.

　B)They can choose from a wider range of well-paying jobs.

　C)They often have to seek jobs outside the academiccircle

　D)They are regarded as the nation?s driving force of change

　57.What does the author say about America?s Ph.D. training?

　A)It should be improved to better suit the job market.

　B)It is closely linked to future career requirements.

　C)It should be re-oriented to careers outside academia.

　D)It includes a great variety of practical courses.

　58. What was recommended for Ph.D.s and postdoctoral researchers?

　A)They meet the urgent needs of the corporate world.

　B)A long-term career goal be set as early as possible.

　C)An IDP be made in consultation with an adviser.

　D)They acquire an explicit tool to helpobtain jobs.

　59. Government agencies and the private sector often use IDPs to_________.

　A)bring into full play the skills and expertise of their postdoctoralresearchers

　B)help employees make the best use of their abilities to achieve their careergoals

　C)place employees in the most appropriate positions

　D)hire the most suitable candidates to work for them

　60. What do we know about myIDP?

　A)It is an effective tool of self-assessment and introspection for bettercareer plans.

　B)It enables people to look into various possibilities and choose the careerthey love.

　C)It promise a long-term career path.

　D)It is part of the graduate curricula