大学英语六级深度阅读专项训练5篇

Y ou might ask why it is that women decided to go after jobs in ever greater numbers. Y ou might equally ask why not. The idea of the nuclear family, with the breadwinner father out at work and the housekeeper and child-minder mother at home, is neither as old as obvious as it seems. In predominantly agricultural societies, both father and mother worked on the land. Children saw plenty of both of them, and were expected to start helping out at a tender age. With the industrial revolution, formal work largely moved away from home, but both parents commonly had jobs to make ends meet; the children managed as best they could. It takes a fairly sophisticated society with a comfortable middle class, and a belief in an extended period of education for th e young, to devise the “traditional” family model that enjoyed such a vogue (时尚) in developed countries in the late 1940s to early 1960s.

That traditional model ran out of stream for a number of reasons. Single women, either up until marriage or up until the birth of the first child, have always worked; the novelty is that in the past few decades growing numbers of marriage women have been taking paid jobs too. One thing that has helped to make this possible is readily available contraception (避孕). Children arrive ever later in their mother’s life, and in ever smaller numbers. Except for America and some of the Nordic countries, the rich world produces far too few children to keep up its present population; in some countries the one-child family is becoming the norm, and many women remain childless.

Y et even women who do have families are working in far greater numbers than before. In America, at least three out of four mothers of school-age children have jobs. Working mothers used to be criticized for neglecting their children; now it is mothers staying at home who have to explain themselves. Combining work and family, however, makes for hectic (繁忙的) lives, despite the array of gadgets that be, but nowhere near enough. Working women’s biggest single complaint is lack of time.

But what they lose in time, they gain in spending power. Their earnings are not just pin money. For the growing number of single mothers they are essential, and in dual-earner families they often make the difference between just getting by and living comfortably. They also offer an insurance policy in the increasingly likely event of a divorce. In America, one marriage in two eventually breaks up. Elsewhere the proportion is lower, but rising.

1.According to the author, the family model in the late 1940s to early 1960s was that

the father went out working while the mother

2.In the past few decades the increasing numbers of married women taking jobs

outside home have attributed to having children

3.Although there are some modern facilities which help Mothers with housework

and sometimes Fathers give a hand, working mothers are still

4.The phrase “pin money” in Line2, Para.4 means

5.The passage is mainly about

Standing up straight and keeping your body centered may seem like second nature to most of us. But for people with balance disorders, it is anything b ut easy. Wobbly(摇晃的) and unsure on their feet, they often have difficulty walking and are 1 to falls, a leading cause of injury and death in the elderly.

Certain diseases and medications, or the normal course of aging, can 2 the sensory signals transmitted to the part of the brain that governs gravitational stability, which is why people become unsteady, dizzy or 3 .

Now scientists have developed a novel balance feedback device that weighs less than a pound and can be worn on a belt like a pager. It may help correct balance difficulties by providing sufferers with the sensory data they are missing.

An estimated 20% of Americans suffer from balance disorders. These difficulties can be 4 by various infections, head injuries, aging, illnesses such as multiple sclerosis (硬化症)and Parkinson’s disease, or inner ear damage, which can be caused by Ménière’s disease, poor blood circulation or some antibiotics(维生素) .

Although maintaining balance may seem effortless, keeping your body stable is a gravity-defying skill that requires input from three main senses. The brain 5 information from our vision, from the vestibular (balance) system in the inner ear from the somatosensory system—the sense receptors in our muscles, joints, skin and feet—that tells us where our body is in 6 to surfaces that we contact.

If a person doesn’t receive enough information from the 7 balance sensors, especially from the balance system that regulates our sense of gravity, he or she can become quite wobbly without realizing it. As a consequence, he may 8 too far and fall. It’s basic physics, and the bigger the sway, the more likely it is to fall.

The balance feedback device can help 9 a person’s damaged sensory system. The lightweight appliance, which contains sensors, is hooked to a belt and connected to a pair of headphones. The device acts much like a carpenter’s level and emits auditory 10 to let users know when their body is swaying too much so they can make corrections. Different tones and intensities tell subjects which way they are learning: a high-pitched tone, for example, signals that they are learning forward and grows louder if they bend farther; a lower sound tells them they’re swaying backward.

Name-calling and teasing are overwhelmingly the main type of classroom bullying, says a study funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education. The study, an international programme looking into the 1 of bullying, has also been sponsored by UNESCO（联合国教科文组织）.

However, the study does reveal some good news. The research in the British part of the programme has found that the problem of bullying in schools has decreased. A decade of anti-bullying initiatives has led to the first recorded drop in the number of victims and a 2 fall in the number of young bullies. This is the first 3 study to show school bullying on the decrease. The research, being published in the year 2000, was carried out by psychologist Peter Smith, of Goldsmith’s College, London. The war on violence and name-calling has been so successful that Britain is no longer the bullying capital of Europe, 4 major improvements in comparison with other European countries.

The research, an international study sponsored by UNESCO, shows that there has been a decline of at least 72 000 in the number of English teenagers who say they have been bullied, compared with 10 years ago. Meanwhile the number of perpetrators(作恶者，行凶者) has more than halved, 5 from 560 000 to 240 000 over the same period. Psychologist Smith said there has been change in the way the issue is 6 in British schools. The findings were an indication of a tough anti-bullying attitude in schools which would not tolerate this kind of behavior, and the result of such initiatives as peers 7 , where students are encouraged to 8 in their fellow pupils.

Physical violence against the children accounted for just over one quarter of all reports with boys twice as likely as girls to be kicked, 9 or threatened. Smith found one in seven of all victims suffered racist bullies and being called hurtful names.

10 , nearly one-third of the victims told no one. But this is better than ten years ago when Smith found that one half of all the children who were bullied kept it to themselves.

The findi ngs were given a cautious welcome by the children’s safety charity Kidscape, which takes 16 000 calls a year from concerned parents. “Some anti-bullying policies are really taking hold, but where it’s bad it’s still very, very bad,” said director Michelle Elliott.

At the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, psychology professor Bella DePaulo got 77 students and 70 townspeople to volunteer for an unusual project. All kept diaries for a week, recording the numbers and details of the lies they told.

One student and six Charlottesville residents 1 to have told no falsehoods. The other 140 participants told 1 535.

The lies were most often not what most of us would call 2 . Someone would pretend to be more positive or supportive of a spouse or friend than he or she really was, or feign (假装) agreement with a relative’s opinion. According to DePaulo, women in their 3 with other women lied mostly to spare the other’s feelings. Men lied to other men generally for self-promoting reasons.

For example, 20 000 middle-and high-schoolers 4 devoted themselves to character education. 92 percent of the teenagers admitted having lied to their parents in the previous year, and 73 percent 5 themselves as “serial liars”, meaning they told lies weekly. Despite these admissions, 91 percent of all respondents said they were “satisfied with my own 6 and character”.

Little white lies have become ubiquitous(无处不在的) and the reasons we give each other for telling fibs (小慌)are familiar. Consider, for example, a Southern California corporate executive whom I’ll call Tom. He goes with his wife and son to his mother-in-law’s home for Thanksgiving dinner every year. Tom dislikes her “special” pumpkin pie intensely. 7 he tells her how wonderful it is, to avoid hurting her feelings.

How often do we 8 people on how well they look, or express our appreciation for gifts when we don’t really mean it? Surely, these nice li es are harmless and well intended, a necessary social lubricant.

Even seemingly harmless falsehoods can have unforeseen consequences. Philosopher Sissela Bok warns us that they can put us on a slippery slope. “After the first lies, others can come more eas ily,” she wrote in her book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. Psychological barriers wear down; the ability to make more distinctions can coarsen; the liar’s 9 of his chances of being caught may warp(歪曲).

Take the pumpkin-pie lies. In the f irst place, it wasn’t just that he wanted his mother-in-law to feel good. Whether he realized it or not, he really wanted her to think highly of him. And after the initial 10 he needed to tell more lies to cover up the first one.

Today, some critics argue that progress on environment problems has been elusive(难以捉摸的，难以理解的). There is some truth in that. In the last decade, environment problems have 1 across the globe.

Y et over the same 10 years, society has 2 its resources to address these challenges. The original response was slow. But it is gathering speed, with technological breakthroughs and a growing awareness that a clean environment is essential for development.

Of course, we should greatly intensify efforts to tackle poverty and environment 3 .

They endanger our health, security and the innumerable benefits that come to us from nature.

But we should also remember our real accomplishments. We have slashed emissions of chemicals that 4 the ozone layer and threaten human health. Industrialized nations largely eliminated chlorofluoro-carbons and halons, the major ozone-threatening gases. And many developing countries are ahead of the timetable that gives them until 2010 to phase out those gases.

We are relying less on dirty fuels. Five million energy-efficient lights have been installed in poor countries and those with 5 economies. Wind power generation capacity has increased from near zero to 1 700 megawatts. Virtually unknown in 1992, solar home systems using photo-voltaic technology now provide power to more than a million rural households. At least 30 major companies have 6 to investing $10 to $15 billion in renewable energy over the next five years.

The private sector is playing an increasingly constructive role. This is an acknowledgement that preserving the environment is both good business and a moral 7 . Companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, Dupont and BP Amoco are working to reduce their negative impact on climate change and increase the options for cleaner energy. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has helped to launch the global alliance for improved nutrition, an innovative public-private partnership that seeks to 8 food in a cost-effective way to improve the health, 9 development and productivity of people in poor countries.

We can build on the strengths we have developed over the past 10 years and move ahead with confidence that 10 development goals are indeed achievable.