2006年12月大学英语新六级考试试题及参考答案_第8页

Section C
注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
    Adults are getting smarter about how smart babies are. Not long ago, researchers learned that 4-day-olds
could understand (36)____ and subtraction. Now, British research (37)____Graham Schafer has discovered that infants
can learn words for uncommon things long before they can speak. He found that 9-month-old infants could be taught,
through repeated show-and-tell, to (38)_______the names of objects that were foreign to them, a result that
(39)________in some ways the received (40)______that, apart from learning to (41)______things common to their
daily lives, children don’t begin to build vocabulary until well into their second year. “It’s no (42)______that children
learn words, but the words they tend to know are words linked to (43)_________situations in the home,” explains
Schafer.” (44)__________________________with an unfamiliar voice giving instructions in an unfamiliar setting.”
    Figuring out how humans acquire language may shed light on why some children learn to read and write later
than others, Schafer says, and could lead to better treatments for developmental problems. (45)__________________.
“Language is a test case for human cognitive development,” says Schafer. But parents eager to teach their infants
should take note: (46)_________________________ . “This is not about advancing development,” he says. “It’s just
about what children can do at an earlier age than what educators have often thought.”

Part IV Reading Comprehension (Reading in Depth) (25 minutes)
Section A
Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.
    I’ve heard from and talked to many people who described how Mother Nature simplified their lives for them.
They’d lost their home and many or all of their possessions through fires, floods, earthquakes, or some other disaster.
Losing everything you own under such circumstances can be distressing, but the people I’ve heard from all saw their
loss, ultimately, as a blessing.
    “The fire saved us the agony of deciding what to keep and what to get rid of,” one woman wrote. And once all
those things were no longer there, she and her husband saw how they had weighed them down and complicated their
lives.
    “There was so much stuff we never used and that was just taking up space. We vowed when we started over, we’d
replace only what we needed, and this time we’d do it right. We’ve kept our promise: we don’t have much now, but
what we have is exactly what we want.”
    Though we’ve never had a catastrophic loss such as that, Gibbs and I did have a close call shortly before we
decided to simplify. At that time we lived in a fire zone. One night a firestorm raged through and destroyed over six
hundred homes in our community. That tragedy gave us the opportunity to look objectively at the goods we’d
accumulated.
    We saw that there was so much we could get rid of and not only never miss, but be better off without. Having
almost lost it all, we found it much easier to let go of the things we knew we’d never use again.
    Obviously, there’s a tremendous difference between getting rid of possessions and losing them through a natural
disaster without having a say in the matter. And this is not to minimize the tragedy and pain such a loss can generate.
    But you might think about how you would approach the acquisition process if you had it to do all over again. Look
around your home and make a list of what you would replace.
    Make another list of things you wouldn’t acquire again no matter what, and in fact would be happy to be rid of.
    When you’re ready to start unloading some of your stuff, that list will be a good place to start.
注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
47. Many people whose possessions were destroyed in natural disasters eventually considered their loss_______________.
48. Now that all their possessions were lost in the fire, the woman and her husband felt that their lives had been ______________.
49. What do we know about the author’s house from the sentence. “Gibbs and I did have a close call…”(Lines 1-2, Para.4)?
50. According to the author, getting rid of possessions and losing them through a natural disaster are vastly ________________.
51. What does the author suggest people do with unnecessary things?