2009年12月大学英语六级试题及答案_第3页

Section C
The ancient Greeks developed basic memory systems called mnemonics.
The name is 36          from their Goddess of memory “Mnemosyne”. In the ancient world, a trained memory was an 37       asset, particularly in public life. There were no 38        devices for taking notes, and early Greek orators(演说家) delivered long speeches with great 39           because they learned the speeches using mnemonic systems.
The Greeks discovered that human memory is 40         an associative process—that it works by linking things together. For example, think of an apple. The 41          your brain registers the word “apple”, it 42            the shape, color, taste, smell and 43              of that fruit. All these things are associated in your memory with the word “apple”.
44                                         . An example could be when you think about a lecture you have had. This could trigger a memory about what you’re talking about through that lecture, which can then trigger another memory. 45                                                                        . An example given on a website I was looking at follows: Do you remember the shape of Austria, Canada, Belgium, or Germany? Probably not. What about Italy, though? 46                                                                        . You made an association with something already known, the shape of a boot, and Italy’s shape could not be forgotten once you had made the association.

Part Ⅳ Reading Comprehension(Reading in Depth)(25 minutes)
Section A  Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.
Many countries have made it illegal to chat into a hand-held mobile phone while driving. But the latest research further confirms that the danger lies less in what a motorist’s hands do when he takes a call than in what the conversation does to his brain. Even using a “hands-free” device can divert a driver’s attention to an alarming extent.
Melina Kunar of the University of Warwick, and Todd Horowitz of the Harvard Medical School ran a series of experiments in which two groups of volunteers had to pay attention and respond to a series of moving tasks on a computer screen that were reckoned equivalent in difficulty to driving. One group was left undistracted while the other had to engage in a conversation using a speakerphone. As Kunar and Horowitz report, those who were making the equivalent of a hands-free call had an average reaction time 212 milliseconds slower than those who were not. That, they calculate, would add 5.7 metres to the braking distance of a car travelling at 100kph. They also found that the group using the hands-free kit made 83% more errors in their tasks than those who were not talking.
To try to understand more about why this was, they tried two further tests. In one, members of a group were asked simply to repeat words spoken by the caller. In the other, they had to think of a word that began with the last letter of the word they had just heard. Those only repeating words performed the same as those with no distraction, but those with the more complicated task showed even worse reaction times—an average of 480 milliseconds extra delay. This shows that when people have to consider the information they hear carefully, it can impair their driving ability significantly.
Punishing people for using hand-held gadgets while driving is difficult enough, even though they can be seen from outside the car. Persuading people to switch their phones off altogether when they get behind the wheel might be the only answer. Who knows, they might even come to enjoy not having to take calls.
47.Carrying on a mobile phone conversation while one is driving is considered dangerous because it seriously distracts.
48. In the experiments, the two groups of volunteers were asked to handle a series of moving tasks which were considered.
49. Results of the experiments show that those who were making the equivalent of a hands-free call took to react than those who were not.
50. Further experiments reveal that participants tend to respond with extra delay if they are required to do.
51. The author believes persuasion, rather than, might be the only way to stop people from using mobile phones while driving.

Section B
Passage One  Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.
There is nothing like the suggestion of a cancer risk to scare a parent, especially one of the over-educated, eco-conscious type. So you can imagine the reaction when a recent USA Today investigation of air quality around the nation’s schools singled out those in the smugly（自鸣得意的）green village of Berkeley, Calif., as being among the worst in the country. The city’s public high school, as well as a number of daycare centers, preschools, elementary and middle schools, fell in the lowest 10%. Industrial pollution in our town had supposedly turned students into living science experiments breathing in a laboratory’s worth of heavy metals like manganese, chromium and nickel each day. This in a city that requires school cafeterias to serve organic meals. Great, I thought, organic lunch, toxic campus.
Since December, when the report came out, the mayor, neighborhood activists（活跃分子）and various parent-teacher associations have engaged in a fierce battle over its validity: over the guilt of the steel-casting factory on the western edge of town, over union jobs versus children’s health and over what, if anything, ought to be done. With all sides presenting their own experts armed with conflicting scientific studies, whom should parents believe? Is there truly a threat here, we asked one another as we dropped off our kids, and if so, how great is it? And how does it compare with the other, seemingly perpetual health scares we confront, like panic over lead in synthetic athletic fields? Rather than just another weird episode in the town that brought you protesting environmentalists, this latest drama is a trial for how today’s parents perceive risk, how we try to keep our kids safe—whether it’s possible to keep them safe—in what feels like an increasingly threatening world. It raises the question of what, in our time, “safe” could even mean.
“There’s no way around the uncertainty,” says Kimberly Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit group that studies children’s health. “That means your choices can matter, but it also means you aren’t going to know if they do.” A 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics explained that nervous parents have more to fear from fire, car accidents and drowning than from toxic chemical exposure. To which I say: Well, obviously. But such concrete hazards are beside the point. It’s the dangers parents can’t—and may never—quantify that occur all of sudden. That’s why I’ve rid my cupboard of microwave food packed in bags coated with a potential cancer-causing substance, but although I’ve lived blocks from a major fault line(地质断层) for more than 12 years, I still haven’t bolted our bookcases to the living room wall.
52. What does a recent investigation by USA Today reveal?
A) Heavy metals in lab tests threaten children’s health in Berkeley.
B) Berkeley residents are quite contented with their surroundings.
C) The air quality around Berkeley’s school campuses is poor.
D) Parents in Berkeley are over-sensitive to cancer risks their kids face.
53. What response did USA Today’s report draw?
A) A heated debate.  B) Popular support.  C) Widespread panic.  D) Strong criticism.
54. How did parents feel in the face of the experts’ studies?
A) They felt very much relieved.      B) They were frightened by the evidence.
C) They didn’t know who to believe.  D) They weren’t convinced of the results.
55. What is the view of the 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics?
A) It is important to quantify various concrete hazards.
B) Daily accidents pose a more serious threat to children.
C) Parents should be aware of children’s health hazards.
D) Attention should be paid to toxic chemical exposure.
56. Of the dangers in everyday life, the author thinks that people have most to fear from __________.
A) the uncertain  B) the quantifiable  C) an earthquake   D) unhealthy food