大学英语六级考试阅读理解专项训练

Passage 1

Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand, all at a rapidly rising cost. Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant, in his 1798 work The Conflict of the Faculties, wrote that universities should “handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee.”

Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization. In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields, with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems.

The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning. Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures (任期) will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.

The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs.

In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for pay to maintain life and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence (不妥协¬) of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.

The other obstacle to change is that colleges and universities are self-regulating or, in academic words, governed by peer review. While trustees and administrations theoretically have some oversight responsibility, in practice, departments operate independently. To complicate matters further, once a faculty member has been granted tenure he is functionally autonomous. Many academics who cry out for the regulation of financial markets strongly oppose it in their own departments. If American higher education is to thrive in the 21st century, colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured.

1. What does the author say about graduate education in America?

A) The best graduate education is in Detroit. B) Many graduates can’t find a job in their profession. C) Most graduate programs should be cancelled for good.

D) Most students receive graduate education just for a diploma.

2. The drawback of university education in large-scale production is that ______.

A) the division of subjects is vague B) it leads to the increase of education cost

C) it causes fierce competition among trustees D) the branches of the sciences are too specialized

3. What does the author mean by saying “research and publication become more and more about less and less” (Line 4, Para. 3)?

A) The university research field is full of ups and downs. B) Research is not compatible with publication in education. C) There are more researches but they’re into a narrower field. D) There are more research results but less are for publication.

4. An educational system focusing on narrow knowledge will eventually ______.

A) leave more faculty members laid off B) produce a lot of skillful full professors

C) boost research in every branch of the sciences D) hinder the development of students with potential

5. What may the following paragraph talk about? A) Steps to restructure the graduate education system. B) Ways to abolish tenure and retain outstanding teachers. C) The content of The Conflict of the Faculties. D) The development of Wall Street and Detroit.

Passage 2

Cigarettes are good for your throat, according to advertisements from half a century ago. Today such claims are unthinkable, as smokers face despiteful stares of contempt whenever they light up. Die-hards (顽固派) apart, society now accepts the huge damage to health caused by smoking, both to smokers themselves and to others through passive smoking — a change in attitudes with huge benefits for public health.

Now the World Health Organization is launching the first global war against alcohol abuse. Can it replicate (重复) the success of the anti-smoking campaign?

Some of the ways to curb excessive alcohol consumption are similar to those used against cigarettes, such as increasing taxes and reducing availability. And as with cigarettes, there may also be scope for making drinking less glamorous through clampdowns on marketing and advertising.

We have argued that these kinds of policies should be drawn up on the basis of evidence of harmfulness — to individuals and to society. But the problems of alcohol abuse have in the past been taken lightly. Excessive drinking has often been accepted, even celebrated, with hangovers (unpleasant after-effects of drinking too much alcohol) seen as

entertainments that lighten the daily grind. This attitude of casual acceptance is central to the challenge facing the WHO. It obscures a problem which killed 2.4 million people in 2004, half the toll of smoking, and is estimated to be behind 20 to 30 per cent of cases of cirrhosis of the liver (a chronic disease of the liver), killing and motor-vehicle accidents.

The first line of attack, as with smoking, will be to get everyone to accept that alcohol abuse takes a huge toll. We need to erase the jolly caricature (讽刺画¬) of the town drunk who occasionally falls off his seat. The WHO argues that we should borrow another aspect of the anti-smoking message and regulate so-called “passive drinking” — the effect on others of a person consuming alcohol — pointing to the role it plays in violence, family breakdown and road deaths. But “passive drinking” is a misleading term. While drinking is like smoking in that it causes collateral damage (附带损伤), no one else can passively consume the alcohol drunk by another. Any harm results from a drinker’s actions, not exposure to the substance itself.

Talk of passive drinking deviates attention from a more shocking aspect of the problem. The overall harm caused by alcohol is greater than that caused by LSD (an illegal drug) or ecstasy, and not far behind cocaine. When society stops thinking of alcohol as relaxing drink and regards it as another drug, that will signal the biggest change in thinking of all.

6. What is the passage mainly about?

A) The warning against “passive drinking”. B) Different attitudes towards smoking and drinking. C) The global war on alcohol abuse launched by WHO.

D) Similarities and differences between smoking and drinking.

7. Which of the following measures has been taken by WHO to restrict alcohol abuse? A) Cracking down the alcohol market. B) Taxing alcohol at a higher rate.

C) Banning the manufacture of hard liquor. D) Forbidding advertisements on alcohol.

8. What do people often think of heavy use of alcohol?

A) It is a normal way to celebrate one’s success. B) It can cause huge damage to people’s health.

C) It takes a heavy toll of human life every year. D) It can alleviate the tediousness of the routine work.

9. What does the author say about “passive drinking” in the passage?

A) It means reluctantly consuming alcohol. B) It is completely similar to passive smoking. C) It does cause additional damage to non-drinkers. D) It brings worse damage than passive smoking.

10. The author suggests that, to win the war against alcohol abuse, ______.

A) we should emphasize the harm of passive drinking B) it’s important to change the current notion of alcohol C) alcohol should be treated the same way as smoking D) it’s necessary to classify alcohol as an illegal drug

Passage 3

In American high schools today, it’s taken as a given that extracurricular (课外的) activities bring students of different races together. What’s more, it’s on clubs and sports teams that the conditions of Allport’s Contact Theory are actually met — students are working together toward a single goal, rather than competing against each other.

If school districts can widely integrate their sports teams and clubs, then they might see less self-segregation in the hallways and lunchrooms.

It fell to a Duke University scholar, Dr. Charles Clotfelter, to figure out a way to measure how well schools are doing on this front.

Clotfelter could easily look up the racial composition of every school — those numbers are tracked by the National Center for Education Statistics. But the racial makeup of clubs and sports teams wasn’t as easy. How to go about getting a tabulation (列表) of who’s in the drama club, belongs to the engineering society, and runs the school newspapers?

Then Clotfelter landed on an ingenious solution. In nearby Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was a printing company called Jostens, Inc. Jostens is one of the biggest printers of high school yearbooks. Clotfelter got permission to drive over and haul away a huge random sample of yearbooks from the previous year, which represented a fairly good mix of public, private independent, and Catholic high schools throughout the Midwest, Northeast and South.

Then his graduate students found every photograph of every track team, French club and Yearbook Club that existed in those yearbooks. This was over 4,400 sports teams and another 4,400 more clubs, each with roughly a couple dozen members on average — ultimately equivalent to a poll of over 150,000 students. It was painstaking work to catalog the race of every kid in every photo.

Clotfelter found that extracurricular activities were far from the desegregating force they should be. The average club was 39% less diverse than the school itself. Fully one-third of all clubs and teams are mono-racial. In fact, there seemed to be a curious phenomenon: white students almost never belonged to a team or a club that was less than ¾ white. If a club’s racial composition got too diverse, it was hard to find a white face, save for clubs in the most diverse schools. There were also a small proportion of ethnic-identity clubs that whites probably did not feel welcome to join.

We couldn’t help but wonder what if school districts were more proactively (积极地) getting kids involved in these activities — making sure that their participation includes kids from all races, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds? To do so, districts and schools would need to actively recruit students into various clubs and activities. They would need to make sure that fees for participation don’t prohibit children from low-income families from joining. Bus schedules, too, would likely also have to be addressed, since they often make it hard for kids from other neighborhoods to participate.

It would take a real effort, but so many good things come from diverse extracurricular activities, shouldn’t these be fostered?

11. What do we know about extracurricular activities in American high schools?

A) Students are united and work to reach the same goal. B) There still exists prejudice and race discrimination. C) Students from different races have equal access. D) They are organized according to Allport’s Theory.

12. What problem did Clotfelter face when he studied the effect of schools’ extracurricular activities? A) Students were unwilling to cooperate when he conducted the poll. B) There is no available data of the racial composition of every school.

C) He found it impossible to catalogue the structural feature of all high schools. D) It was difficult to compare the racial makeup of the clubs and sports teams.

13. How did Clotfelter manage to solve the problem in the end?

A) By seeking cooperation with heads of the school clubs and sports teams. B) By hiring some graduate students to carry out a poll in the schools. C) By cataloging the races from the pictures presented in the yearbooks.

D) By getting the racial data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

14. What did Clotfelter’s study reveal about the extracurricular activities? A) Most of them were exclusive to white and rich students only. B) They contributed to the forming of interracial friendships. C) They didn’t help eliminate racial segregation as expected. D) They seemed to be neglected by American school districts.

15. To promote extracurricular mixing, the author suggests districts and schools .

A) rearrange the school shuttles B) set stricter rules for the activities C) offer free buses for poor students D) make some curricular changes

Passage 4

The debate over spanking (打屁股) goes back many years, but the essential question often escapes discussion: Does spanking actually work? In the short term, yes. You can correct immediate misbehavior with a slap or two on the rear end or hand. But what about the long-term impact? Can spanking lead to permanent, hidden scars on children years later?

On Sept. 25, a sociologist from the University of New Hampshire, Murray Straus, presented a paper at the International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma (创伤) in San Diego suggesting that corporal punishment (体罚) does leave a long-lasting mark — in the form of lower IQ. Straus, who is 83 and has been studying corporal punishment since 1969, found that kids who were physically punished had up to a five-point lower IQ score than kids who weren’t. So how might getting spanked on the bottom actually affect the workings of the brain? Straus notes that being spanked or hit is associated with fright and stress; kids who experience that kind of Trauma have a harder time focusing and learning. In another recent paper that he co-authored with Paschall, Straus writes that previous research has found that even after you control for parental education and occupation, children of parents who use corporal punishment are less likely than other kids to graduate from college.

Still, it’s not clear if spanking causes lower cognitive ability or if lower cognitive ability might somehow lead to more spanking. It’s quite possible that kids with poor reasoning skills misbehave more often and therefore bring harsher punishment. “It could be that lower IQ causes parents to get very annoyed and hit more,” Straus says, although he notes that a recent Duke University study of low-income families found that toddlers’ low mental ability did not predict an increase in spanking. (The study did find, however, that kids who were spanked at age 1 displayed more aggressive behavior by age 2 and scored lower on cognitive development tests by age 3.)

“I believe the relationship [between corporal punishment and IQ] is probably bidirectional,” says Straus. “There has to be something the kid is doing that’s wrong that leads to corporal punishment. The problem is, when the parent does that, it seems to have counterproductive results to cognitive ability in the long term.”

The preponderance (优势) of evidence points away from corporal punishment, which the European Union and the U.N. have recommended against, but the data suggest that most parents, especially those in the U.S., still spank their kids. It’s most common among African-American families, Southern families, parents who were spanked as children themselves and those who identify themselves as conservative Christians.

Sometimes spanking seems like the only way to get through to an unruly toddler. But the price for fixing his poor

short-term conduct might be an even more troublesome outcome in the future.

16. What should be discussed on spanking according to the author?

A) Which part of body should be hit. B) What potential side effects it has.

C) Whether parents have rights to spank. D) How to prevent injury when spanking.

17. According to Murray Straus, what’s the influence of spanking on kids in the long run?

A) It helps correct kids’ bad behaviors for good. B) Kids spanked are more likely to commit a crime. C) It leaves permanent physical scars on kids. D) Kids spanked are not as smart as those not.

18. What can we infer from the third paragraph?

A) Spanking has nothing to do with brain hurt. B) It’s not children’s fault not going to college. C) Physical punishment can affect kids emotionally. D) Parental education plays no part in kids’ study.

19. What did a recent Duke University study reveal?

A) Kids poor in cognition were more likely to be spanked. B) Corporal punishment did bring about wounds to kids. C) The earlier kids were spanked, the lower IQs they had. D) Low-IQ kids may display misbehaviors more often.

20. What’s the attitude of the U.N. towards physical punishment? A) Disapproved. B) Concerned. C) Indifferent. D) Recommended.

Passage 5

It is becoming increasingly clear that the story of the global economy is a tale of two worlds. In one, there is only gloom and doom, and in the other there is light and hope. In the traditional centers of wealth and power — America, Europe and Japan — it is difficult to find much good news. But there is a new world out there — China, India, Indonesia, Brazil — in which economic growth continues to power ahead, in which governments are not buried under a mountain of debt and in which citizens remain remarkably optimistic about their future.

Compare the two worlds. On the one side is the West (plus Japan), with banks that are over-utilized and thus dysfunctional (无法正常工作的), governments groaning under debt, and consumers who are rebuilding their broken balance sheets. America is having trouble selling its IOUs at attractive prices (the last three Treasury auctions have gone badly); its largest state, California, is heading toward total fiscal collapse; and its budget deficit is going to surpass 13 percent of GDP — a level last seen during World War II. With all these burdens, even if there is a recovery, the United States might not return to fast-paced growth for a while. And it’s probably more dynamic than Europe or Japan.

Meanwhile, emerging-market banks are largely healthy and profitable. (Every Indian bank, government-owned and private, posted profits in the last quarter of 2008!) The governments are in good fiscal shape. China’s strengths are well known — $2 trillion in reserves, a budget deficit that is less than 3 percent of GDP — but consider Brazil, which is now posting a current account surplus. Or Indonesia, which has reduced its debt from 100 percent of GDP nine years ago to 30 percent today. And unlike in the West — where governments have run out of ammunition (弹药) and are now praying that their medicine will work — these countries still have options. Only a year ago, their chief concern was an overheated economy and inflation. Brazil has cut its interest rate substantially, but only to 10.25 percent, which means it can drop it further if things deteriorate even more.

The mood in many of these countries remains surprisingly optimistic. Their currencies are appreciating against the dollar because the markets see them as having better fiscal discipline as well as better long-term growth prospects than the United States. Their bonds are rising. This combination of indicators, all pointing in the same direction, is unprecedented. The United States remains the richest and most powerful country in the world. Its military spans the globe. But from the Spanish Empire of the 16th century to the British Empire in the 20th century, great global powers have always found that

their fortunes begin to turn when they get overburdened with debt and stuck in a path of slow growth. These are early warnings. Unless the United States gets its act together, and fast, the ground will continue to shift beneath its feet, slowly but surely.

21. It can be drawn from the first paragraph that .

A) most of the eastern countries enjoy fast-paced economic growth B) trade conflicts may be foreseen between two parts of the world

C) sharp differences exist between some once-rich and once-poor countries D) the traditional rich countries have come bottom in the world economy

22. One of the problems that the West faces now is .

A) impossible economic recovery B) debt-dragged governments C) fiscal breakdown D) extremely high inflation

23. What do we learn about Japan from the passage?

A) It now belongs to the western hemisphere B) Its economic situation goes even worse than the US. C) Its financial systems collapsed as other western countries did. D) Its economy will recover sooner than other Asian countries.

24. What does the author say about countries in the new world?

A) Most of the banks are still making a gain. B) The growth of economy is slowing down. C) The governments are free from foreign debt. D) Consumers lose confidence in the economy.

25. Spain and UK are mentioned in the passage to indicate that .

A) traditional powerful countries are doomed to fade B) too much debt will surely slow the economic growth C) The US will survive and maintain its global presence D) America might follow suit if it failed to react quickly

Passage 6

Google must be the most ambitious company in the world. Its stated goal, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” deliberately omits the word “web” to indicate that the company is reaching for absolutely all information everywhere and in every form. From books to health records and videos, from your friendships to your click patterns and physical location, Google wants to know. To some people this sounds uplifting, with promises of free access to knowledge and help in managing our daily lives. To others, it is somewhat like another Big Brother, no less frightening than its totalitarian (极权主义的) ancestors for being in the private information.

Randall Stross, a journalist at the New York Times, does a good job of analyzing this unbounded ambition in his book “Planet Google”. One chapter is about the huge data centers that Google is building with a view to storing all that information, another about the sets of rules at the heart of its web search and advertising technology, another about its approach to information bound in books, its vision for geographical information and so forth. He is at his best when explaining how Google’s mission casually but fatally smashes into long-existing institutions such as, say, copyright law or privacy norms.

And yet, it’s puzzling that he mostly omits the most fascinating component of Google, its people. Google is what it is because of its two founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who see themselves as kindly elites and embody the limitless optimism about science, technology and human nature that is native to Silicon Valley. The world is perfectible, and they are the ones who will do much of the perfecting, provided you let them.

Brin and Page set out to create a company and an entire culture in their image. From the start, they professed that they would innovate as much in managing — rewarding, feeding, motivating, entertaining and even transporting (via Wi-Fi-enabled free shuttle buses) their employees — as they do in internet technology. If Google is in danger of becoming a caricature (讽刺画), this is first apparent here — in the over-engineered day-care centers, the shiatsu

massages and kombucha teas (康普茶). In reality Googlers are as prone to power struggle and office politics as anyone else.

None of that makes it into Mr. Stross’ account, which at times reads like a diligent summary of news articles. At those moments, “Planet Google” takes a risk similar to trying to board a speeding train: the Google story changes so fast that no book can stay up to date for long. Even so, a sober description of this moment in Google’s quest is welcome. Especially since Google fully expects, as its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, says at the end of the book, to take 300 years completing it.

26. What does the author mean by “it is somewhat like another Big Brother” (Lines 6-7, Para. 1)? A) Google controls people completely. B) Google fails to keep its promise of free access. C) Google is violating people’s privacy. D) Google improves people’s lives greatly.

27. How does Randall Stross see Google’s influence on copyright law? A) It is not intentional. B) It is extended deliberately. C) There is no doubt that it is immense. D) It won’t last for long.

28. According to the passage, Sergey Brin and Larry Page .

A) are highlighted in Randall Stross’ book B) bring Silicon Valley the most advanced technology C) are pioneers in the technology industry D) never stop trying to make the world better

29 We learn from the passage that actually employees in Google . A) are equally kind and optimistic as their bosses

B) appreciate and feel encouraged by the benefits package

C) can’t escape the unpleasant competition for power in the office

D) are far away from office competition thanks to the innovation in managing

30. What can be inferred from the last paragraph? A) It is impossible that Google can fulfill its ambition. B) “Planet Google” covers only a limited part of Google.

C) Eric Schmidt seems to be unsatisfied with Randall Stross’ description. D) “Planet Google” will add information with the development of Google.

1. B) 2. D) 3. C) 4. D) 5. A) 6. C) 7. B) 8. D) 9. C) 10. B) 11. B) 12. D) 13. C) 14. C) 15. A) 16. B) 17. D) 18. C) 19. B) 20. A) 21. C) 22. B) 23. B) 24. A) 25. D) 26. C) 27. A) 28. D) 29. C) 30. B)