2017年6月大学英语六级考试真题（第1套）Part IWriting(30 minutes)Directions:Suppose you are asked to give advice on whether to major in science or humanities atcollege,write an essay to state your opinion.You are required to write at least 150words but no more than 200 words.Listening Comprehension(30 minutes)Section Aconversation,you will hear four questions.Both the conversation and thequestions will be spoken only once.After you hear a question,you mustchoose the best answer from the four choices marked A),B),C)and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single linethrough the centre.Questions 1 to 4 are based on the conversation you have just heard.1.A)Doing enjoyable work.C)Eaming a competitive salary.B)Having friendly colleagues.D)Working for supportive bosses.2.A)31%.B)20%C)25%.D)73%3.A)Those of a small size.C)Those that are well managed.B)Those run by women.D)Those full of skilled workers.4.A)T hey can hop from job to job easily.B)T hey can win recognition of their work.C)T hey can better balance work and life.D)They can take on more than one job.Questions 5 to 8 are based on the conversation you have just heard.5.A)It is a book of European history.C)It is about the city of Bruges.B)It is an introduction to music.D)It is a collection of photos.6.A)When painting the concert hall of Bruges.B)When vacationing in an Italian coastal city.C)When taking pictures for a concert catalogue.D)When writing about Belgium's coastal regions.7.A)T he entire European coastline will be submerged.B)T he rich heritage of Europe will be lost completely.C)T he seawater of Europe will be seriously polluted.D)The major European scenic spots will disappear.8.A)I ts waterways are being increasingly polluted.B)P eople cannot get around without using boats.C)I t attracts large numbers of tourists from home and abroad.D)Tourists use wooden paths to reach their hotels in themorning.2017.6/1(第1套)Section BDirections:In this section,you will hear two passages.At the end of each passage,you will hearthree or four questions.Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once.After you hear a question,you must choose the best answer from the four choices markedA),B),C)and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with asingle line through the centre.Questions 9 to 12 are based on the passage you have just heard.9.A)They make careful preparations beforehand.B)They take too many irrelevant factors into account.C)They spend too much time anticipating their defeat.D)They try hard to avoid getting off on the wrong foot.10.A)A person's nervous system is more complicated than imagined.B)Golfers usually have positive mental images of themselves.C)Mental images often interfere with athletes'performance.D)Thinking has the same effect on the nervous system as doing.11.A)Anticipate possible problems.C)Picture themselves succeeding.B)Make a list of do's and don'tsD)Try to appear more professional12.A)She wore a designer dress.C)She did not speak loud enough.B)She won her first jury trial.D)She presented moving pictures.Questions 13 to 15 are based on the passage you have just heard.13.A)Its long-term effects are yet to be proved.B)Its health benefits have been overestimatedC)It helps people to avoid developing breast cancer.D)It enables patients with diabetes to recover sooner.14.A)It focused on their ways of life during young adulthood.B)It tracked their change in food preferences for 20 yearsC)It focused on their difference from men in fiber intake.D)It tracked their eating habits since their adolescence.15.A)Fiber may help to reduce hormones in the body.B)Fiber may bring more benefits to women than men.C)Fiber may improve the function of heart muscles.D)Fiber may make blood circulation more smooth.Section CDirections:In this section,you will hear three recordings of lectures or talks followed by three orfour questions.The recordings will be played only once.After you hear a question,youmust choose the best answer from the four choices marked A),B),C)and D).Thenmark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet I with a single line through the centre.Questions 16 to 18 are based on the recording you have just heard.16.A)Observing the changes in marketing.B)Conducting research on consumer behaviour.C)Studying the hazards of young people drinking.D)Investigating the impact of media on government.17.A)It is the cause of many street riots.C)It is a chief concern of parents.B)It is getting worse year by year.D)It is an act of socialising.18.A)They spent a week studying their own purchasing behaviour.B)They researched the impact of mobile phones on young people.C)They analysed their family budgets over the yearsD)They conducted a thorough research on advertising.2017.6/2(第1套)Questions 19 to 22 are based on the recording you have just heard.19.A)It is helping its banks to improve efficiency.B)It is trying hard to do away with dirty money.C)It is the first country to use credit cards in the world.D)It is likely to give up paper money in the near future.20.A)Whether it is possible to travel without carrying any physical currency.B)Whether it is possible to predict how much money one is going to spend.C)Whether the absence of physical currency causes a person to spend more.D)Whether the absence of physical currency is going to affect everyday life.21.A)There was no food service on the train.C)The restaurant car accepted cash only.B)The service on the train was not good.D)The cash in her handbag was missing.22.A)By putting money into envelopes.C)By limiting their day-to-day spending.B)By drawing money week by week.D)By refusing to buy anything on credit.Questions 23 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.23.A)Population explosion.C)Extinction of rare species.B)Chronic hunger.D)Environmental deterioration.24.A)They contribute to overpopulationC)They have been brought uder control.B)About half of them are unintended.D)The majority of them tend to end halfway.25.A)It is essential to the wellbeing of all species on earthB)It is becoming a subject of interdisciplinary research.C)It is neglected in many of the developing countries.D)It is beginning to attract postgraduates'attention.PartⅢReading Comprehension(40 minutes)Section ADirections:In this section,there is a passage with ten blanks.You are required to select one wordfor each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage.Read thepassage through carefully before making your choices.Each choice in the bank isidentified by a letter.Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on AnswerSheet 2 with a single line through the centre.You may not use any of the words in thebank more than once.Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.After becoming president of Purdue University in 2013,Mitch Daniels asked the faculty to provethat their students have actually achieved one of higher education's most important goals:criticalthinking skills.Two years before,a nationwide study of college graduates had shown that more than athird had made no 26 gains in such mental abilities during their school years.Mr.Daniels neededto 27 the high cost of attending Purdue to its students and their families.After all,the percentageof Americans who say a college degree is "very important"has fallen 28 in the last 5-6 years.Purdue now has a pilot test to assess students'critical thinking skills.Yet like many collegeteachers around the U.S.,the faculty remain 29 that their work as educators can be measured bya "leaming 30 such as a graduate's ability to investigate and reason.However,the professorsneed not worry so much.The results of a recent experiment showed that professors can use 31metrics to measure how well students do in three key areas:critical thinking,written communication,and quantitative literacy.Despite the success of the experiment,the actual results are worrisome,and mostly 32 earlierstudies.The organizers of the experiment concluded that far fewer students were achieving at highlevels on critical thinking than they were doing for written communication or quantitative literacy.Andthat conclusion is based only on students nearing graduation.American universities,despite their global 33 for excellence in teaching,have only begun todemonstrate what they can produce in real-world leaming.Knowledge-based degrees are still2017.6/3(第1套)important,but employers are 34 advanced thinking skills from college graduates.If the intellectualworth of a college degree can be 35 measured,more people will seek higher education-and comeout better thinkers.A)accuratelyI)predominanceB)confirmJ)presumingC)demandingK)reputationD)doubtfulL)significantE)drasticallyM)signifyF)justifyN)simultaneouslyG)monopolizedO)standardizedH)outcomeSection BDirections:In this section,you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it.Eachstatement contains information given in one of the paragraphs.Identify the paragraphfrom 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 thecorresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.The Price of Oil and the Price of Carbon[A]Fossil fuel prices are likely to stay "low for long.Notwithstanding important recent progress indeveloping renewable fuel sources,low fossil fuel prices could discourage further innovation in,and adoption of,cleaner energy technologies.The result would be higher emissions of carbondioxide and other greenhouse gases.[B]Policymakers should not allow low energy prices to derail the clean energy transition.Action torestore appropriate price incentives,notably through corrective carbon pricing,is urgently neededto lower the risk of irreversible and potentially devastating effects of climate change.Thatapproach also offers fiscal benefits.[C]Oil prices have dropped by over 60%since June 2014.A commonly held view in the oil industry isthat "the best cure for low oil prices is low oil prices."The reasoning behind this saying is thatlow oil prices discourage investment in new production capacity,eventually shifting the oil supplycurve backward and bringing prices back up as existing oil fields-which can be tapped atrelatively low marginal cost-are depleted.In fact,in line with past experience,capitalexpenditure in the oil sector has dropped sharply in many producing countries,including theUnited States.The dynamic adjustment to low oil prices may,however,be different this timearound.[D]Oil prices are expected to remain lower for longer.The advent of new technologies has addedabout 4.2 million barrels per day to the crude oil market,contributing to a global over-supply.Inaddition,other factors are putting downward pressure on oil prices:change in the strategicbehavior of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries,the projected increase in Iranianexports,the scaling-down of global demand especially from emerging markets),the long-termdrop in petroleum consumption in the United States,and some displacement of oil by substitutes.These likely persistent forces,like the growth of shale(页岩)oil,point to a“low for long”scenario.Futures markets,which show only a modest recovery of prices to around $60 a barrelby 2019,support this view.[E]Natural gas and coal-also fossil fuels-have similarly seen price declines that look to be long-lived.Coal and natural gas are mainly used for electricity generation,whereas oil is used mostlyto power transportation,yet the prices of all these energy sources are linked.The North Americanshale gas boom has resulted in record low prices there.The recent discovery of the giant Zohr gasfield off the Egyptian coast will eventually have impact on pricing in the Mediterranean region andEurope,and there is significant development potential in many other places,notably Argentina.2017.6/4(第1套)Coal prices also are low,owing to over-supply and the scaling-down of demand,especially fromChina,which burns half of the world's coal.[F]Technological innovations have unleashed the power of renewables such as wind,hydro,solar,and geothermal ()Even Africa and the Middle East,home to economies that are heavilydependent on fossil fuel exports,have enormous potential to develop renewables.For example,the United Arab Emirates has endorsed an ambitious target to draw 24%of its primary energyconsumption from renewable sources by 2021.[G]Progress in the development of renewables could be fragile,however,if fossil fuel prices remainlow for long.Renewables account for only a small share of global primary energy consumption,which is still dominated by fossil fuels-30%each for coal and oil,25%for natural gas.Butrenewable energy will have to displace fossil fuels to a much greater extent in the future to avoid[H]Unfortunately,the current low prices for oil,gas,and coal may provide little incentive forresearch to find even cheaper substitutes for those fuels.There is strong evidence that bothinnovation and adoption of cleaner technology are strongly encouraged by higher fossil fuel prices.The same is true for new technologies for alleviating fossil fuel emissions.[I]The current low fossil fuel price environment will thus certainly delay the energy transition fromfossil fuel to clean energy sources.Unless renewables become cheap enough that substantialcarbon deposits are left underground for a very long time,if not forever,the planet will likely beexposed to potentially catastrophic climate risks.[J]Some climate impacts may already be discernible.For example,the United Nations Children'sFund estimates that some 11 million children in Africa face hunger,disease,and water shortagesas a result of the strongest El Nino(厄尔尼诺)weather phenomenon in decades.Many scientistsbelieve that El Nino events,caused by warming in the Pacific,are becoming more intense as aresult of climate change.[K]Nations from around the world have gathered in Paris for the United Nations Climate ChangeConference,COP 21,with the goal of a universal and potentially legally-binding agreement onreducing greenhouse gas emissions.We need very broad participation to fully address the globaltragedy that results when countries fail to take into account the negative impact of their carbonemissions on the rest of the world.Moreover,non-participation by nations,if sufficientlywidespread,can udermine the political will of participating countries to act.[L]The nations participating at COP 21 are focusing on quantitative emissions-reductioncommitments.Economic reasoning shows that the least expensive way for each country is to put aprice on carbon emissions.The reason is that when carbon is priced,those emissions reductionsthat are least costly to implement will happen first.The International Monetary Fund calculatesthat countries can generate substantial fiscal revenues by eliminating fossil fuel subsidies andlevying carbon charges that capture the domestic damage caused by emissions.A tax on upstreamcarbon sources is one easy way to put a price on carbon emissions,although some countries maywish to use other methods,such as emissions trading schemes.In order to maximize globalwelfare,every country's carbon pricing should reflect not only the purely domestic damage fromemissions,but also the damage to foreign countries.M]Setting the right carbon price will therefore efficiently align the costs paid by carbon users with thetrue social opportunity cost of using carbon.By raising relative demand for clean energy sources,a carbon price would also help align the market return to clean-energy innovation with its socialretum,spurring the refinement of existing technologies and the development of new ones.And itwould raise the demand for technologies such as carbon capture and storage,spurring their furtherdevelopment.If not corrected by the appropriate carbon price,low fossil fuel prices are notaccurately signaling to markets the true social profitability of clean energy.While altemativeestimates of the damage from carbon emissions differ,and it's especially hard to reckon the likelycosts of possible catastrophic climate events,most estimates suggest substantial negative effects.[N]Direct subsidies to research and development have been adopted by some govemments but are a2017.6/5(第1套)