1、英语六级真题第一套Part III Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)Section 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 ch
2、oices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on ,Answer Street 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.Innovation, the el
3、ixir (灵丹妙药 ) of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution hand weavers were 36 aside by the mechanical loom. Over the past 30 years the digitalrevolution has 37 many of the mid-skill jobs that supported 20th-century middle-class life. Typists,ticket agents, bank telle
4、rs and many production-line jobs have been dispensed with, just as the weavers were.For those who believe that technological progress has made the world a better place, such disruption is a natural part of rising 38. Although innovation kills some jobs, it creates new and better ones, as a more 39 s
5、ocietybecomes richer and its wealthier inhabitants demand more goods and services. A hundred years ago one in three American workers was 40 on a farm. Today less than 2% of them produce far more food. The millions freed from the land were not rendered 41, but found better- paid work as the economy g
6、rew more sophisticated. Today the pool of secretaries has 42, but there are ever more computer programmers and web designers.Optimism remains the right starting-point, but for workers the dislocating effects of technology may make themselves evident faster than its 43. Even if new jobs and wonderful
7、 products emerge, in the short term income gaps will widen, causing huge social dislocation and perhaps even changing politics.Technologys 44 will feel like a tornado (旋风), hitting the rich world first, but 45 sweeping through poorer countries too. No government is prepared for it.注意:此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
8、A. benefits F) jobless K) rhythmB. displaced G) primarily L) sentimentsC. employed H) productive M) shrunkD. eventually I) prosperity N) sweptE) impact J) responsive O) withdrawnSection BDirections: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement c
9、ontains 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 on Answer Sheet 2.Why the Mona Lisa Stands Out
10、A. Have you ever fallen for a novel and been amazed not to find it on lists ofgreat books? Or walked around a sculpture renowned as a classic, struggling to see what the fuss is about? If so, youve probably pondered the question a psychologist, James Cutting, asked himself: How does a work of art co
11、me to be considered great?B. The intuitive answer is that some works of art are just great: of intrinsically superior quality. The paintings that win prime spots in galleries, get taught in classes and reproduced in books are the ones that have proved their artistic value over time. If you cant see
12、theyre superior, thats your problem.Its an intimidatingly neat explanation. But some social scientists have been asking awkward questions of it, raising the possibility that artistic canons (名作目录) are little more than fossilised historical accidents.C. Cutting, a professor at Cornell University, won
13、dered if a psychological mechanism known as the mere-exposure effect played a role in deciding which paintings rise to the top of the cultural league. Cutting designed an experiment to test his hunch (直觉). Over a lecture course he regularly showed undergraduates works of impressionism for two second
14、s at a time. Some of the paintings were canonical, included in art-history books. Others were lesser known but of comparable quality. These were exposed four times as often. Afterwards, the students preferred them to the canonical works, while a control group of students liked the canonical ones bes
15、t. Cuttings students had grown to like those paintings more simplybecause they had seen them more.D. Cutting believes his experiment offers a clue as to how canons are formed. Hereproduced works of impressionism today tend to have been bought by five or six wealthy and influential collectors in the
16、late 19th century. The preferences of these men bestowed (给予) prestige on certain works, which made the works more likely to be hung in galleries and printed in collections. The fame passed down the years, gaining momentum from mere exposure as it did so. The more people were exposed to, the more th
17、ey liked it, and the more they liked it, the more it appeared in books, on posters and in big exhibitions. Meanwhile, academics and critics created sophisticated justifications for its preeminence (卓越). After all, its not just the masses who tend to rate what they see more often more highly. As cont
18、emporary artists like Warhol and Damien Hirst have grasped, critics praise is deeply entwined (交织) with publicity. Scholars, Cutting argues, are no different from the public in the effects of mere exposure.E. The process described by Cutting evokes a principle that the sociologist Duncan Watts calls
19、 cumulative advantage: once a thingbecomes popular, it will tend to become more popular still. A few years ago,Watts, who is employed by Microsoft to study the dynamics of social networks, had a similar experience to Cuttings in another Paris museum. After queuing to see the Mona Lisa in its climate
20、- controlled bulletproof box at the Louvre, he came away puzzled: why was it considered so superior to the three other Leonardos in the previous chamber, to which nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention?F. When Watts looked into the history of thegreatest painting of all time, he discover
21、ed that, for most of its life, theMona Lisaremained in relative obscurity. In the 1850s, Leonardo da Vinci was considered no match for giants of Renaissance art like Titian and Raphael, whose works were worth almost ten times as much as the Mona Lisa. It was only in the 20th century that Leonardos p
22、ortrait of his patrons wife rocketed to the number-one spot. What propelled it there wasnt a scholarly re-evaluation, but a theft.G. In 1911 a maintenance worker at the Louvre walked out of the museum with the Mona Lisa hidden under his smock (工作服). Parisians were shocked at the theft of a painting
23、to which, until then, they had paid little attention. When the museum reopened, people queued to see the gap where the Mona Lisa had once hung in a way they had never done for the painting itself. From then on, the Mona Lisa came to represent Western culture itself.H. Although many have tried, it do
24、es seem improbable that the paintings unique status can be attributed entirely to the quality of its brushstrokes. It has been said that the subjects eyes follow the viewer around the room. But as the paintings biographer, Donald Sassoon, dryly notes, In reality the effect can be obtained from any p
25、ortrait. Duncan Watts proposes that the Mona Lisa is merely an extreme example of a general rule. Paintings, poems and pop songs are buoyed (使浮起) orevents or preferences that turn into waves of influence, passing down the generations.I. Saying that cultural objects have value, Brian Eno once wrote,
26、is like saying that telephones have conversations. Nearly all the cultural objects we consume arrive wrapped in inherited opinion; our preferences are always, to some extent, someone elses. Visitors to the Mona Lisa know they are about to visit thegreatest work of art ever and come away appropriatel
27、y impressed-or let down. An audience at a performance of Hamlet know it is regarded as a work of genius, so that is what they mostly see. Watts even calls the preeminence of Shakespeare a historical accident.J. Although the rigid high-low distinction fell apart in the 1960s, we still use culture as
28、a badge of identity. Todays fashion for eclecticism (折中主义) I love Bach, Abba and Jay Z is, Shamus Khan, a Columbia University psychologist, argues, a new way for the middle class to distinguish themselves from what they perceive to be the narrow tastes of those beneath them in the social hierarchy.K
29、. The intrinsic quality of a work of art is starting to seem like its least important attribute. But perhaps its more significant than our social scientists allow. First of all, a work needs a certain quality to be eligible to be swept to the top of the pile. The Mona Lisa may not be a worthy world
30、champion, but it was in the Louvre in the first place, and not by accident. Secondly, some stuff is simply better than other stuff. Read Hamlet after reading even thegreatest of Shakespeares contemporaries, and the difference may strike you as unarguable.L. A study in the British Journal of Aestheti
31、cs suggests that the exposure effect doesnt work the same way on everything, and points to a different conclusion about how canons are formed. The social scientists are right to say that we should be a little sceptical of greatness, and that we should always look in the next room. Great art and medi
32、ocrity (平庸) can get confused, even by experts. But thats why we need to see, and read, as much as we can. The more were exposed to the good and the bad, the better we are at telling the difference. The eclecticists have it.注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。46. According to Duncan Watts, the superiority of the Mona Lisa to Leonardos other works resulted from the cumulative advantage.47. Some social scientists have raised doubts about the intrinsic value of certain works of art.48. It is often random events or preferences that determine
