1、2018 年 12 月大学英语六级考试真题（第 2 套）Part I Writing (30 minutes)Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on how to balance job responsibilities and personal interests. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.Part III Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)Sect
2、ion ADirections: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter
3、. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.Surfing the Internet during class doesnt just steal focus from the educator;
4、 it also hurts students whore already struggling to 26 the material. A new study from Michigan State University, though, argues that all studentsincluding high achieverssee a decline in performance when they browse the Internet during class for non-academic purposes.To measure the effects of Interne
5、t-based distractions during class, researchers 27 500 students taking an introductory psychology class at Michigan State University. Researchers used ACT scores as a measure of intellectual 28 . Because previous research has shown that people with high intellectual abilities are better at 29 out dis
6、tractions, researchers believed students with high ACT scores would not show a 30 decrease in performance due to their use of digital devices. But students who surfed the web during class did worse on their exams regardless of their ACT scores, suggesting that even the academically smartest students
7、 are harmed when theyre distracted in class.College professors are increasingly 31 alarm bells about the effects smartphones, laptops, and tablets have on academic performance. One 2013 study of college students found that 80% of students use their phones or laptops during class, with the average st
8、udent checking their digital device 11 times in a 32 class. A quarter of students report that their use of digital devices during class causes their grades to 33 .Professors sometimes implement policies designed to 34 students use of digital devices, and some instructors even confiscate (没收) tablets
9、 and phones. In a world where people are increasingly dependent on their phones, though, such strategies often fail. One international study found that 84% of people say they couldnt go a day without their smartphones. Until students are able to 35 the pull of social networking, texting, and endless
10、ly surfing the web, they may continue to struggle in their classes.A)aptitude I）obscureB)eradication J)obsessC) evaluated K) raisingD)evaporated L） resistE)filtering M）significantF)grasp N) sufferG)legacy O）typicalH) minimizeSection BDirections: In this section, you are going to read a passage with
11、ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter
12、 on Answer Sheet 2.A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-Emerges after 300 YearsA Maria Sibylla Merian, like many European women of the 17th century, stayed busy managing a household and rearing children. But on top of that, Merian, a German-born woman who lived in the Netherlands, also managed a success
13、ful career as an artist, botanist, naturalist and entomologist （昆虫学家）.B “She was a scientist on the level with a lot of people we spend a lot of time talking about,” said Kay Etheridge, a biologist at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania who has been studying the scientific history of Merians work. “S
14、he didnt do as much to change biology as Charles Darwin, but she was significant.”C At a time when natural history was a valuable tool for discovery, Merian discovered facts about plants and insects that were not previously known. Her observations helped dismiss the popular belief that insects spont
15、aneously emerged from mud. The knowledge she collected over decades didnt just satisfy those curious about nature, but also provided valuable insights into medicine and science. She was the first to bring together insects and their habitats, including food they ate, into a single ecological composit
16、ion.D After years of pleasing a fascinated audience across Europe with books of detailed descriptions and life-size paintings of familiar insects, in 1699 she sailed with her daughter nearly 5,000 miles from the Netherlands to South America to study insects in the jungles of what is now known as Sur
17、iname. She was 52 years old. The result was her masterpiece, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium.E In her work, she revealed a side of nature so exotic, dramatic and valuable to Europeans of the time that she received much acclaim. But a century later, her findings came under scientific criticism
18、. Shoddy （粗糙的）reproductions of her work along with setbacks to womens roles in 18th- and 19th-century Europe resulted in her efforts being largely forgotten. “It was kind of stunning when she sort of dropped off into oblivion （遗忘）,” said Dr. Etheridge. “Victorians started putting women in a box, and
19、 theyre still trying to crawl out of it.”F Today, the pioneering woman of the sciences has re-emerged. In recent years, feminists, historians and artists have all praised Merians tenacity （坚韧） , talent and inspirational artistic compositions. And now biologists like Dr. Etheridge are digging into th
20、e scientific texts that accompanied her art. Three hundred years after her death, Merian will be celebrated at an international symposium in Amsterdam this June.G And last month, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium was republished. It contains 60 plates （插图） and original descriptions, along with
21、stories about Merians life and updated scientific descriptions. Before writing Metamorphosis, Merian spent decades documenting European plants and insects that she published in a series of books. She began in her 20s, making textless, decorative paintings of flowers with insects. “Then she got reall
22、y serious,” Dr. Etheridge said. Merian started raising insects at home, mostly butterflies and caterpillars. “She would sit up all night until they came out of the pupa （蛹） so she could draw them,” she said.H The results of her decades worth of careful observations were detailed paintings and descri
23、ptions of European insects, followed by unconventional visuals and stories of insects and animals from a land that most at the time could only imagine. Its possible Merian used a magnifying glass to capture the detail of the split tongues of sphinx moths （斯芬克斯飞蛾） depicted in the painting. She wrote
24、that the two tongues combine to form one tube for drinking nectar （花蜜） . Some criticized this detail later, saying there was just one tongue, but Merian wasnt wrong. She may have observed the adult moth just as it emerged from its pupa. For a brief moment during that stage of its life cycle, the ton
25、gue consists of two tiny half-tubes before merging into one.I It may not have been ladylike to depict a giant spider devouring a hummingbird, but when Merian did it at the turn of the 18th century, surprisingly, nobody objected. Dr. Etheridge called it revolutionary. The image, which also contained
26、novel descriptions of ants, fascinated a European audience that was more concerned with the exotic story unfolding before them than the gender of the person who painted it.J “All of these things shook up their nice, neat little view,” Dr. Etheridge said. But later, people of the Victorian era though
27、t differently. Her work had been reproduced, sometimes incorrectly. A few observations were deemed impossible. “Shed been called a silly woman for saying that a spider could eat a bird,” Dr. Etheridge said. But Henry Walter Bates, a friend of Charles Darwin, observed it and put it in book in 1863, p
28、roving Merian was correct.K In the same plate, Merian depicted and described leaf-cutter ants for the first time. “In America there are large ants which can eat whole trees bare as a broom handle in a single night,” she wrote in the description. Merian noted how the ants took the leaves below ground
29、 to their young. And she wouldnt have known this at the time, but the ants use the leaves to farm fungi （菌类） underground to feed their developing babies.L Merian was correct about the giant bird-eating spiders, ants building bridges with their bodies and other details. But in the same drawing, she i
30、ncorrectly lumped together army and leaf-cutter ants. And instead of showing just the typical pair of eggs in a hummingbird nest, she painted four. She made other mistakes in Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium as well: not every caterpillar and butterfly matched.M Perhaps one explanation for her
31、 mistakes is that she cut short her Suriname trip after getting sick, and completed the book at home in Amsterdam. And errors are common among some of historys most-celebrated scientific minds, too. “These errors no more invalidate Ms. Merians work than do well-known misconceptions published by Char
32、les Darwin or Isaac Newton,” Dr. Etheridge wrote in a paper that argued that too many have wrongly focused on the mistakes of her work.N Merians paintings inspired artists and ecologists. In an 1801 drawing from his book, General Zoology Amphibia, George Shaw, an English botanist and zoologist, cred
33、ited Merian for describing a frog in the account of her South American expedition, and named the young tree frog after her in his portrayal of it. It wouldnt be fair to give Merian all the credit. She received assistance naming plants, making sketches and referencing the work of others. Her daughter
34、s helped her color her drawings.O Merian also made note of the help she received from the natives of Suriname, as well as slaves or servants that assisted her. In some instances she wrote moving passages that included her helpers in descriptions. As she wrote in her description of the peacock flower
35、, “The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds to abort their children, so that they will not become slaves like themselves. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. In fact, they sometimes take
36、their own lives because they are treated so badly, and because they believe they will be born again, free and living in their own land. They told me this themselves.”P Londa Schiebinger, a professor of the history of science at Stanford University, called this passage rather astonishing. Its particu
37、larly striking centuries later when these issues are still prominent in public discussions about social justice and womens rights. “She was ahead of her time,” Dr. Etheridge said.36. Merian was the first scientist to study a type of American ant.37. The European audience was more interested in Meria
38、ns drawings than her gender.38.Merians masterpiece came under attack a century after its publication.39. Merians mistakes in her drawings may be attributed to her shortened stay in South America.40. Merian often sat up the whole night through to observe and draw insects.41. Merian acknowledged the h
39、elp she got from natives of South America.42. Merian contributed greatly to peoples better understanding of medicine and science.43. Merian occasionally made mistakes in her drawings of insects and birds.44. Now, Merians role as a female forerunner in sciences has been re-established.45.Merian made
40、a long voyage to South America to study jungle insects over three centuries ago.Section CDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some question or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C)and D). You should decide on the bes
41、t choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.Passage OneQuestions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.While human achievements in mathematics continue to reach new levels of complexity, many of us who arent mathematicians at heart (or eng
42、ineers by trade) may struggle to remember the last time we used calculus (微积分).Its a fact not lost on American educators, who amid rising math failure rates are debating how math can better meet the real-life needs of students. Should we change the way math is taught in schools, or eliminate some co
43、urses entirely?Andrew Hacker, Queens College political science professor, thinks that advanced algebra and other higher-level math should be cut from curricula in favor of courses with more routine usefulness, like statistics.“We hear on all sides that were not teaching enough mathematics, and the C
44、hinese are running rings around us,” Hacker says. “Im suggesting were teaching too much mathematics to too many peoplenot everybody has to know calculus. If youre going to become an aeronautical (航空的) engineer, fine. But most of us arent.”Instead, Hacker is pushing for more courses like the one he t
45、eaches at Queens College： Numeracy 101. There, his students of “citizen statistics” learn to analyze public information like the federal budget and corporate reports. Such courses, Hacker argues, are a remedy for the numerical illiteracy of adults who have completed high-level math like algebra but
46、are unable to calculate the price of, say, a carpet by area.Hackers argument has met with opposition from other math educators who say whats needed is to help students develop a better relationship with math earlier, rather than teaching them less math altogether.Maria Droujkova is a founder of Natu
47、ral Math, and has taught basic calculus concepts to 5-year-olds. For Droujkova, high-level math is important, and what it could use in American classrooms is an injection of childlike wonder.“Make mathematics more available,” Droujkova says. “Redesign it so its more accessible to more kinds of peopl
48、e: young children, adults who worry about it, adults who may have had bad experiences.”Pamela Harris, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, has a similar perspective. Harris says that American education is suffering from an epidemic of “fake math”an emphasis on rote memorization (死记硬背) of
49、 formulas and steps, rather than an understanding of how math can influence the ways we see the world.Andrew Hacker, for the record, remains skeptical.“Im going to leave it to those who are in mathematics to work out the ways to make their subject interesting and exciting so students want to take it,” Hacker says. “All that I ask is that alternatives be offered instead of putting all of us on the road to calculus.”46.
