2011年12月英语六级考试大作战-模拟题(2)_第2页

　　29. A) It has grown too tall for its designated space.

　　B) It may be diseased.

　　C) Its branches are being broken off.

　　D) It no longer hears from.

Passage two

　　Questions 30 to 32 are based on the passage you have just heard.

　　30. A) Jefferson's views about commercialized agriculture.

　　B) International trade in the nineteenth century

　　C) Improvements in farm machinery in the United States.

　　D) Farmers' loss of independence

　　31. A) Crop production became increasingly specialized.

　　B) Economic depressions lowered the prices of farm products.

　　C) New banking laws made it easy to buy farmland.

　　D) The United States increased its agricultural imports.

　　32. A) Prices for farm products rose.

　　B) Farmers became more dependent on loans from banks.

　　C) Jefferson established government programs to assist farmers.

　　D) Farmers relied less on foreign markets.

　　Passage three

　　Questions 33 to 35 are based on the passage you have just heard.

　　33. A) In place of physical therapy.

　　B) To control brain seizures.

　　C) To prevent heat disease.

　　D) To relieve tension.

　　34. A) They like to have music in the operating room.

　　B) They solved problems better while listening to music they liked.

　　C) They preferred classical music.

　　D) They performed better when they used headphones.

　　35. A) It increased the students’ white blood cell amount.

　　B) It increased some students’ energy level.

　　C) It improved the students’ ability to play musical instruments.

　　D) It released a natural painkiller in some students’ bodies.

Section C

　　Directions: In this section, you will hear a passage three times. When the passage is read for the first time, you should listen carefully for its general idea. When the passage is read for the second time, you are required to fill in the blanks numbered from 36 to 43 with the exact words you have just heard. For blanks numbered from 44 to 46 you are required to fill in the missing information. For these blanks, you can either use the exact words you have just heard or write down the main points in your own words. Finally, when the passage is read for the third time, you should check what you have written.

　　Sleep is part of a person's daily 36 cycle. There are several different stages of sleep and they occur in cycles, If you are an 37 sleeper, your sleep cycle is as follows. When you first drift off into slumber, your eyes will roll about a bit, your

　　38 will drop slightly, your 39 will relax, and your 40 will slow and become quite 41 Your brain waves slow down a bit too with the alpha rhythm of rather fast waves 42 for the first few minutes. This is called stage 1 sleep. For the next half hour or so as you relax more and more you will drift down through stage 2 and stage 3 sleep. The lower your stage of sleep the slower your brain waves will be. Then about 40 to 60 minutes after you lose 43 you will have reached the deepest sleep of all.

　　44. This is stage 4 sleep.

　　You do not remain at this deep fourth stage all night long, but instead about 80 minutes after you fall into slumber, your brain activity level will increase again slightly. The delta rhythm will disappear to be replaced by the activity pattern of brain waves. 45.

　　This period of rapid eye movement lasts for some ~ to 15 minutes and is called REM sleep. It is during REM sleep that most dreams seem to occur. 46 .You will slip gently back from stage I to 4.

　　Part IV Reading Comprehension (Reading in Depth) (25 minutes)

　　Section A

　　Directions: In this section, there is a short passage with 5 questions or incomplete statements. Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete the statements in the fewest possible words. Please write your answers on Answer sheet 2.

　　Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.

　　Every Western doctor is required to take the Hippocratic oath，by which they swear to never harm their patients.Unfortunately，as medical history shows，many doctors did not make good on this promise.Instead，they resorted to quackery(庸医的医术)，and made a living out of fooling people who sought medical help.

　　In the past，quack doctors claimed to have“fixed”problems from poor eyesight to cancer and smallpox (天花).They claimed to be able to work medical miracles，relying on public ignorance of medicine for their “success”.In addition，well-meaning doctors often advocated treatments that harmed their patients instead of helping them：procedures such as bloodletting often made worse the suffering they were intended to ease.

The typical feature of quackery is ignorance.Unwary people are easily taken in by claims of the doctors they trust.For example，in the 1800s，psychologists commonly used basket-shaped devices to determine personality，with questionable benefit.Based on the idea that different parts of the brain control different character traits, the devices determined personality by measuring the size and shape of people’s heads!

　　Of all the ridiculous devices created by quacks，the most inventive was perhaps the“radionic”machine.Inthe early 1900s，quacks claimed radionics could diagnose any sickness，even though the devices were just wooden boxes with lights inside.After radionic diagnosis，patients were sent home with the assurance that they would get well.No medicine was prescribed because，quacks claimed，the radionic machine would broadcast the cure to patients，much like radio stations broadcast music!

　　The quackery of the 19th and early 20th centuries was not limited to the use of strange devices，nor to crooked doctors.Nor were quack procedures anything new.

　　The practice of bloodletting had been a popular treatment for over a millennium. In the name of medicine, large volumes of blood were drained from people’s bodies to cure their sicknesses.Death，more often than not,

　　was the outcome, though usually the disease was blamed rather than the loss of blood.

　　It’s easy to look back on the past and brand questionable medical procedures as quackery.However, hindsight(事后诸葛亮)is 20/20.Perhaps in the future，people will look back on some of today’s medical practices with similar suspicion.

　　47. In the past, many doctors managed to fool patients by taking advantage of ___________

　　48. Using a basket-shaped device, psychologists in the 1800s would measure the size and shape of one’s head to ___________.

　　49. Why didn’t the quacks prescribe any medicine for their patients after radionic diagnosis?

　　50. As a popular medical treatment in the past, bloodletting usually caused death instead of __________.

　　51. What is the possible conclusion of the article?

　　Section B

　　Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. 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 Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

　　Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.

　　Every Western doctor is required to take the Hippocratic oath, by which they swear to never harm their patients. Unfortunately, as medical history shows, many doctors did not make good on this promise. Instead, they resorted to quackery(庸医的医术),and made a living out of fooling people who sought medical help.

　　In the past, quack doctors claimed to have“fixed”problems from poor eyesight to cancer and smallpox (天花).They claimed to be able to work medical miracles, relying on public ignorance of medicine for their “success”. In addition, well-meaning doctors often advocated treatments that harmed their patients instead of helping them：procedures such as bloodletting often made worse the suffering they were intended to ease.

The typical feature of quackery is ignorance. Unwary people are easily taken in by claims of the doctors they trust. For example, In the 1800s,psychologists commonly used basket-shaped devices to determine personality, with questionable benefit. Based on the idea that different parts of the brain control different character traits, the devices determined personality by measuring the size and shape of people’s heads!

　　Of all the ridiculous devices created by quacks, the most inventive was perhaps the“radionic”machine. Inthe early 1900s,quacks claimed radionics could diagnose any sickness, even though the devices were just wooden boxes with lights inside. After radionic diagnosis, patients were sent home with the assurance that they would get well. No medicine was prescribed because, quacks claimed, the radionic machine would broadcast the cure to patients, much like radio stations broadcast music!

　　The quackery of the 19th and early 20th centuries was not limited to the use of strange devices, nor to crooked doctors. Nor were quack procedures anything new.

　　The practice of bloodletting had been a popular treatment for over a millennium. In the name of medicine, large volumes of blood were drained from people’s bodies to cure their sicknesses. Death, more often than not, was the outcome, though usually the disease was blamed rather than the loss of blood.

　　It’s easy to look back on the past and brand questionable medical procedures as quackery. However, hindsight(事后诸葛亮)is 20/20.Perhaps in the future, people will look back on some of today’s medical practices with similar suspicion.

　　47. In the past, many doctors managed to fool patients by taking advantage of ___________

　　48. Using a basket-shaped device, psychologists in the 1800s would measure the size and shape of one’s head to ___________.

　　49. Why didn’t the quacks prescribe any medicine for their patients after radionic diagnosis?

　　50. As a popular medical treatment in the past, bloodletting usually caused death instead of __________.

　　51. What is the possible conclusion of the article?

　　Section B

　　Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. 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 Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

　　Passage One

　　Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.

　　You’re in trouble if you have to buy your own brand-name prescription drugs. Over the past decade, prices leaped by more than double the inflation rate. Treatments for chronic conditions can easily top $2,000 a month-no wonder that one in four Americans can’t afford to fill their prescriptions. The solution? A hearty chorus of “O Canada.” North of the border, where price controls reign, those same brand-name drugs cost 50% to 80% less.

　　The Canadian option is fast becoming a political wake-up call, “If our neighbors can buy drugs at reasonable prices, why can’t we? Even to whisper that thought provokes anger. “Un-American!” And-the propagandists’ trump card (王牌)—“Wreck our brilliant health-care system.” Super size drug prices, they claim, fund the research that sparks the next generation of wonder drugs. No sky-high drug price today, no cure for cancer tomorrow. So shut up and pay up.

Common sense tells you that’s a false alternative. The reward for finding, say, a cancer cure is so huge that no one’s going to hang it up. Nevertheless, if Canada-level pricing came to the United States, the industry’s profit margins would drop and the pace of new-drug development would slow. Here lies the American dilemma. Who is all this splendid medicine for? Should our health-care system continue its drive toward the best of the best, even though rising numbers of patients can’t afford it? Or should we direct our wealth toward letting everyone in on today’s level of care? Measured by saved lives, the latter is almost certainly the better course.

　　To defend their profits, the drug companies have warned Canadian wholesalers and pharmacies (药房) not to sell to Americans by mail, and are cutting back supplies to those who dare.

　　Meanwhile, the administration is playing the fear card. Officials from the Food and Drug Administration will argue that Canadian drugs might be fake, mishandled, or even a potential threat to life.

　　Do bad drugs fly around the Internet? Sure-and the more we look, the more we’ll find, But I haven’t heard of any raging epidemics among the hundreds of thousands of people buying cross border.

　　Most users of prescription drugs don’t worry about costs a lot. They’re sheltered by employee insurance, owing just a $20 co-pay. The financial blows rain, instead, on the uninsured, especially the chronically ill who need expensive drugs to live, This group will still include middle-income seniors on Medicare, who’ll have to dig deeply into their pockets before getting much from the new drug benefit that starts in 2006.

　　52. What is said about the consequence of the rocketing drug prices in the U.S.?

　　A) A quarter of Americans can’t afford their prescription drugs.

　　B) Many Americans can’t afford to see a doctor when they fall ill.

　　C) Many Americans have to go to Canada to get medical treatment.

　　D) The inflation rate has been more than doubled over the years.(A)

　　53. It can be inferred that America can follow the Canadian model and curb its soaring drug prices by ________.

　　A) encouraging people to buy prescription drugs online

　　B) extending medical insurance to all its citizens

　　C) importing low-price prescription drugs from Canada

　　D) exercising price control on brand-name drugs(D)

　　54. How do propagandists argue for the U.S. drug pricing policy?

　　A) Low prices will affect the quality of medicines in America.

　　B) High prices are essential to funding research on new drugs.

　　C) Low prices will bring about the anger of drug manufacturers.

　　D) High-price drugs are indispensable in curing chronic diseases.(B)

55. What should be the priority of America’s health-care system according to the author?

　　A) To resolve the dilemma in the health-care system.

　　B) To maintain America’s lead in the drug industry.

　　C) To allow the vast majority to enjoy its benefits.

　　D) To quicken the pace of new drug development.(C)

　　56. What are American drug companies doing to protect their high profits?

　　A) Labeling drugs bought from Canada as being fakes.

　　B) Threatening to cut back funding for new drug research.

　　C) Reducing supplies to uncooperative Canadian pharmacies.

　　D) Attributing the raging epidemics to the ineffectiveness of Canadian drugs.(C)

　　Passage Two

　　Questions 57 to 61 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(遗物) 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.

57. 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.

　　58. 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

　　59. 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

　　60. 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