2018年6月大学英语六级考试真题（第1套）Part IWriting(30 minutes)Directions:For this part,you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on the importance of building trust betweenemployers and employees.You can cite examples to illustrate your views.You should write at least 150 words but no morethan 200 words.Part IIListening Comprehension(30 minutes)SectionADirections:In this section,you will hear two long conversations At the end of each conversation,you will hear fourquestions.Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once.After you hear a question,you must choose thebest answer from the four choices marked A),B),C)and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 witha single line through the centre.Questionsl to 4 are based on the conversation you have just heard.1.A)It is a typical salad.C)It is a weird vegetable.B)It is a Spanish soup.D)It is a kind of spicy food.2.A)To make it thicker.C)To add to its appeal.B)To make it more nutritious.D)To replace an ingredient.3.A)It contains very little fat.C)It uses no artificial additives.B)It uses olive oil in cookingD)It is mainly made of vegetables.4.A)It does not go stale for two years.C)It comes from a special kind of pig.B)It takes no special skill to prepare.D)It is a delicacy blended with bread.Questions 5 to 8 are based on the conversation you have just heard.5.A)They come in a great variety.C)They do not vary much in price.B)They do not make decent gifts.D)They go well with Italian food.6.A)$30-$40.C)$50-$60.B)$40-$50.D)Around $150.7.A)They are a healthy choice for elderly people.C)They symbolize good health and longevityB)They are especially popular among Italians.D)They go well with different kinds of food.8.A)It is wine imported from California.C)It is far more expensive than he expected.B)It is less spicy than all other red wines.D)It is Italy's most famous type of red wine.Section BDirections:In this section,you will hear two passages.At the end of each passage,you will hear three or four questions.Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once.After you hear a question,you must choose the best answerfrom 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 9 to 11 are based on the passage you have just heard.9.A)Learning others'secrets.C)Decoding secret messages.B)Searching for information.D)Spreading sensational news.10.A)They helped the U.S.army in World War II.B)They could write down spoken codes promptly.C)They were assigned to decode enemy messages.D)They were good at breaking enemy secret codes.11.A)Important battles fought in the Pacific War.B)Decoding of secret messages in war times.C)A military code that was never broken.D)Navajo Indians'contribution to code breaking.Questions 12 to 15 are based on the passage you have just heard.12.A)All services will be personalized.B)A lot of knowledge-intensive jobs will be replaced.C)Technology will revolutionize all sectors of industry.D)More information will be available.13.A)In the robotics industry.C)In the personal care sector.B)In the information service.D)In high-end manufacturing.14.A)They charge high prices.C)They cater to the needs of young people.B)They need lots of training.D)They focus on customers'specific needs.15.A)The rising demand in education and healthcare in the next 20 years.B)The disruption caused by technology in traditionally well-paid jobs.C)The tremendous changes new technology will bring to people's lives.D)The amazing amount of personal attention people would like to have.Section CDirections:In this section,you will hear three recordings of lectures or talks followed by three or four questions.Therecordings will be played only once.After you hear a question,you must choose the best answer from the four choicesmarked A),B),C)and D).Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Questions 16 to 18 are based on the recording you have just heard.16.A)It was the longest road in ancient Egypt.C)It lay 8 miles from the monument sites.B)It was constructed some 500 years ago.D)It linked a stone pit to some waterways.17.A)Saws used for cutting stone.C)An ancient geographical map.B)Traces left by early explorers.D)Some stone tool segments.18.A)To transport stones to block floods.B)To provide services for the stone pit.C)To link the various monument sites.D)To connect the villages along the Nile.Questions 19 to 21 are based on the recording you have just heard.19.A)Dr.Gong didn't give him any conventional tests.B)Dr.Gong marked his office with a hand-painted sign.C)Dr.Gong didn't ask him any questions about his pain.D)Dr.Gong slipped in needles where he felt no pain.20.A)He had heard of the wonders acupuncture could work.B)Dr.Gong was very famous in New York's Chinatown.C)Previous medical treatments failed to relieve his pain.D)He found the expensive medical tests unaffordable.21.A)More and more patients ask for the treatment.B)Acupuncture techniques have been perfected.C)It doesn't need the conventional medical tests.D)It does not have any negative side effects.Questions 22 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.22.A)They were on the verge of breaking up.B)They were compatible despite differences.C)They quarreled a lot and never resolved their arguments.D)They argued persistently about whether to have children.23.A)Neither of them has any brothers or sisters.B)Neither of them won their parents'favor.C)They weren't spoiled in their childhood.D)They didn't like to be the apple of their parents'eyes.-2-24.A)They are usually good at making friends.B)They tend to be adventurous and creative.C)They are often content with what they have.D)They tend to be self-assured and responsible.25.A)They enjoy making friends.C)They are least likely to take initiative.B)They tend to be well adjusted.D)They usually have successful marriages.Reading Comprehension(40 minutes)SectionADirections:In this section,there is a passage with ten blanks.You are required to select one word for each blank from a listof choices given in a word bank following the passage.Read the passage through carefully before making your choices.Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter.Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2with a single line through the centre.You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.Scientists scanning and mapping the Giza pyramids say they've discovered that Great Pyramid of Giza is not exactlyeven.But really not by much.This pyramid is the oldest of the world's Seven Wonders.The pyramid's exact size has26experts for centuries,as the "more than 21 acres of hard,white casing stones"that originally covered it were 27 longResearch Associates,engineer Glen Dash says his team used a new measuring approach that involved finding any surviving29,of the casing in order to determine where the original edge was.They found the east side of the pyramid to be a30 of 5.5 inches shorter than the west side.The question that most31 him,however,isn't how the Egyptians who designed and built the pyramid got itwrong 4,500 years age,but how they got it so close to32"We can only speculate as to how the Egyptians could havelaid out these lines with such 33 using only the tools they had,"Dash writes.He says his 34 is that theEgyptians laid out their design on a grid,noting that the great pyramid is oriented only 35 away from the cardinaldirections(its north-south axis runs 3 minutes 54 seconds west of due north,while its east-west axis runs 3 minutes 51seconds north of due east)-an amount that's "tiny,but similar,"archeologist Atlas Obscura points out.A)chroniclesI)perfectB)completeJ)precisionC)establishedK)puzzledD)fascinatesL)remnantsE)hypothesisM)removedF)maximumN)revelationsG)momentumO)slightlyH)mysteriouslySection BDirections:In this section,you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it.Each statement containsinformation given in one of the paragraphs.Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived.You may choose aparagraph more than once.Each paragraph is marked with a letter.Answer the questions by marking the correspondingletter on Answer Sheet 2.Peer Pressure Has a Positive SideA.Parents of teenagers often view their children's friends with something like suspicion.They worry that theadolescent peer group has the power to push its members into behavior that is foolish and even dangerous.Such wariness iswell founded:statistics show,for example,that a teenage driver with a same-age passenger in the car is at higher risk of afatal crash than an adolescent driving alone or with an adult.B.In a 2005 study,psychologist Laurence Steinberg of Temple University and his co-author,psychologist Margo-3-Gardner,then at Temple,divided 306 people into three age groups:young adolescents,with a mean age of 14;olderadolescents,with a mean age of 19;and adults,aged 24 and older.Subjects played a computerized driving game in whichthe player must avoid crashing into a wall that materializes,without waming,on the roadway.Steinberg and Gardnerrandomly assigned some participants to play alone or with two same-age peers looking on.C.Older adolescents scored about 50 percent higher on an index of risky driving when their peers were in theroom-and the driving of early adolescents was fully twice as reckless when other young teens were around.In contrast,adults behaved in similar ways regardless of whether they were on their own or observed by others."The presence of peersmakes adolescents and youth,but not adults,more likely to take risks,"Steinberg and Gardner concluded.D.Yet in the years following the publication of this study,Steinberg began to believe that this interpretation did notcapture the whole picture.As he and other researchers examined the question of why teens were more apt to take risks in thecompany of other teenagers,they came to suspect that a crowd's influence need not always be negative.Now some expertsare proposing that we should take advantage of the teen brain's keen sensitivity to the presence of friends and leverage it toimprove education.E.In a 2011 study,Steinberg and his colleagues turned to functional MRI (to investigate how the presenceof peers affects the activity in the adolescent brain.They scanned the brains of 40 teens and adults who were playing avirtual driving game designed to test whether players would brake at a yellow light or speed on through the crossroad.F.The brains of teenagers,but not adults,showed greater activity in two regions associated with rewards when theywere being observed by same-age peers than when alone.In other words,rewards are more intense for teens when they arewith peers,which motivates them to pursue higher-risk experiences that might bring a big payoff (such as the thrill of justmaking the light before it turns red).But Steinberg suspected this tendency could also have its advantages.In his latestexperiment,published online in August,Steinberg and his colleagues used a computerized version of a card game called thelowa Gambling Task to investigate how the presence of peers affects the way young people gather and apply information.G.The results:Teens who played the lowa Gambling Task under the eyes of fellow adolescents engaged in moreexploratory behavior,learned faster from both positive and negative outcomes,and achieved better performance on the taskthan those who played in solitude."What our study suggests is that teenagers learn more quickly and more effectively whentheir peers are present than when they're on their own,"Steinberg says.And this finding could have important implicationsfor how we think about educating adolescents.H.Matthew D.Lieberman,a social cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California,Los Angeles,and author ofthe 2013 book Social:Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect,suspects that the human brain is especially adept at learningsocially salient information.He points to a classic 2004 study in which psychologists at Dartmouth College and HarvardUniversity used functional MRI to track brain activity in 17 young men as they listened to descriptions of people whileconcentrating on either socially relevant cues for example,trying to form an impression of a person based on thedescription)or more socially neutral information (such as noting the order of details in the description).The descriptionswere the same in each condition,but people could better remember these statements when given a social motivation.I.The study also found that when subjects thought about and later recalled descriptions in terms of their informationalcontent,regions associated with factual memory,such as the medial temporal lobe,became active.But thinking about orremembering descriptions in terms of their social meaning activated the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex-part of the brain'ssocial network-even as traditional memory regions registered low levels of activity.More recently,as he reported in a2012 review,Lieberman has discovered that this region may be part of a distinct network involved in socially motivatedleaming and memory.Such findings,he says,suggest that "this network can be called on to process and store the kind ofJ.If humans are generally geared to recall details about one another,this pattem is probably even more powerfulamong teenagers who are very attentive to social details:who is in,who is out,who likes whom,who is mad at whom.Theirpenchant for social drama is not-or not only-a way of distracting themselves from their schoolwork or of driving adultscrazy.It is actually a neurological (sensitivity,initiated by hormonal changes.Evolutionarily speaking,people inthis age group are at a stage in which they can prepare to find a mate and start their own family while separating fromparents and striking out on their own.To do this successfully,their brain prompts them to think and even obsess aboutothers.K.Yet our schools focus primarily on students as individual entities.What would happen if educators instead tookadvantage of the fact that teens are powerfully compelled to think in social terms?In Social,Lieberman lays out a numberof ways to do so.History and English could be presented through the lens of the psychological drives of the people involved.One could therefore present Napoleon in terms of his desire to impress or Churchill in terms of his lonely melancholy.Lessinherently interpersonal subjects,such as math,could acquire a social aspect through team problem solving and peertutoring.Research shows that when we absorb information in order to teach it to someone else,we learn it more accuratelyand deeply,perhaps in part because we are engaging our social cognition.L.And although anxious parents may not welcome the notion,educators could turn adolescent recklessness toacademic ends."Risk taking in an educational context is a vital skill that enables progress and creativity,"wroteSarah-Jayne Blakemore,a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London,in a review published last year.Yet,shenoted,many young people are especially risk averse at school-afraid that one low test score or mediocre grade could costthem a spot at a selective university.We should assure such students that risk,and even peer pressure,can be a goodthing-as long as it happens in the classroom and not the car.36.It is thought probable that the human brain is particularly good at picking-up socially important information.37.It can be concluded from experiment that the presence of peers increases risk-taking by adolescents and youth.38.Students should be told that risk-taking in the classroom can be something positive.39.The urge of finding a mate and getting married accounts for adolescents'greater attention to social interactions.40.According to Steinberg,the presence of peers increases the speed and effectiveness of teenagers'leaning.41.Teenagers'parents are often concerned about negative peer influence.42.Activating the brain's social network involved in socially motivated learning and memory may allow students totap unused mental powers.43.The presence of peer intensifies the feeling of rewards in teens'brains.44.When we absorb information for the purpose of imparting it to others,we do so with greater secretary and depth.45.Some experts are suggesting that we tum peer influence to good use in education.Section CDirections:There are 2 passages in this section.Each passage is followed by some question or unfinished statements.Foreach of them there are four choices marked A),B),C)and D).You should decide on the best choice and mark thecorresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.Passage OneQuestions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.The Ebro Delta,in Spain,famous as a battleground during the Spanish Civil War,is now the setting for a differentcontest,one that is pitting rice farmers against two enemies:the rice-eating giant apple snail,and rising sea levels.Whathappens here will have a bearing on the future of European rice production and the overall health of southern Europeanwetlands.Located on the Mediterranean just two hours south of Barcelona,the Ebro Delta produces 120 million kilograms ofrice a year,making it one of the continent's most important rice-growing areas.As the sea creeps into these freshwatermarshes,however,rising salinity (is hampering rice production.At the same time,this sea-water also kills off thegreedy giant apple snail,an introduced pest that feeds on young rice plants.The most promising strategy has become tohamess one foe against the other.The battle is currently being waged on land,in greenhouses at the University of Barcelona.Scientists working underthe banner "Project Neurice"are seeking varieties of rice that can withstand the increasing salinity without losing theabsorbency that makes European rice ideal for traditional Spanish and Italian dishes."The project has two sides,"says Xavier Serrat,Neurice project manager and researcher at the University of Barcelona."The short-term fight against the snail,and a mid-to long-term fight against climate change.But the snail has given theproject greater urgency."Originally from South America,the snails were accidentally introduced into the Ebro Delta by Global AquaticTechnologies,a company that raised the snails for fresh-water aquariums ()but failed to prevent their escape.Fornow,the giant apple snail's foothold in Europe is limited to the Ebro Delta.But the snail continues its march to new territory,-5-