【英语四六级考试阅读专题】六级快速快速阅读训练

大学英语四/六级考试Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes) Passage1:The Next SocietyThe new economy may or may not materialize, but there is no doubt that the next society will be with us shortly. In the developed world, and probably in the emerging countries as well, this new society will be a good deal more important than the new economy (if any). It will be quite different from the society of the late 20th century, and also different from what most people expect. Much of it will be unprecedented. And most of it is already here, or is rapidly emerging.In the developed countries, the dominant factor in the next society will be something to which most people are only just beginning to pay attention: the rapid growth in the older population and the rapid shrinking of the younger generation. Politicians everywhere still promise to save the existing pension system, but they--and their constituents--know perfectly well that in another 25 years people will have to keep working until their mid-70s, health permitting.What has not yet sunk in is that a growing number of older people--say those over 50--will not keep on working as traditional full time nine-to-five employees, but will participate in the labor force in many new and different ways: as temporaries, as part-timers, as consultants on special assignments, and so on. What used to be personnel and are now known as human resources departments still assume that those who work for an organization are full-time employees. Employment laws and regulations are based on the same assumption. Within 20 or 25 years, however, perhaps as many as half the people who work for an organization will not be employed by it, certainly not on a full-time basis. This will be especially true for older people. New ways of working with people at arm's length will increasingly become the central managerial issue of employing organizations, and not just of businesses.The shrinking of the younger population will cause an even greater upheaval, if only because nothing like this has happened since the dying centuries of the Roman Empire. In every single developed country, but also in China and Brazil, the birth rate is now well below the replacement rate of 2.2 live births per woman of reproductive age. Politically, this means that immigration will become an important and highly divisive issue in all rich countries. It will cut across all traditional political alignments. Economically, the decline in the young population will change markets in fundamental ways. Growth in family formation has been the driving force of all domestic markets in the developed world, but the rate of family formation is certain to fall steadily unless bolstered by large-scale immigration of younger people. The homogeneous mass market that emerged in all rich countries after the Second World War has been youth-determined from the start. It will now become middle-age-determined, or perhaps more likely it will split into two: a middle-age-determined mass market and a much smaller youth-determined one. And because the supply of young people will shrink, creating new employment patterns to attract and hold the growing number of older people (especially older educated people) will become increasingly important.Knowledge is allThe next society will be a knowledge society. Knowledge will be its key resource, and knowledge workers will be the dominant group in its workforce. Its three main characteristics will· Borderlessness, because knowledge travels even more effortlessly than money.· Upward mobility, available to everyone through easily acquired formal education.· The potential for failure as well as success. Anyone can acquire the "means of production",i. e, the knowledge required for the job, but not everyone can win.Together, those three characteristics will make the knowledge society a highly competitive one, for organizations and individuals alike. Information technology, although only one of many new features of the next society, is already having one hugely important effect: it is allowing knowledge to spread near-instantly, and making it accessible to everyone. Given the ease and speed at which information travels, every institution in the knowledge society--not only businesses, but also schools, universities, hospitals and increasingly government agencies too-- has to be globally competitive, even though most organizations will continue to be local in their activities and in their markets. This is because the Internet will keep customers everywhere informed on what is available anywhere in the world, and at what price.This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers. At present, this term is widely used to describe people with considerable theoretical knowledge and learning: doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, chemical engineers. But the most striking growth will be in "knowledge technologists" ~ computer technicians, software designers, analysts in clinical labs, manufacturing technologists, paralegals. These people are as much manual workers as they are knowledge workers; in fact, they usually spend far more time working with their hands than with their brains. But their manual work is based on a substantial amount of theoretical knowledge which can be acquired only through formal education, not through an apprenticeship. They are not, as a rule, much better paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see themselves as "professionals" . Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social--and perhaps also political--force over the next decades.The new protectionismStructurally, too, the next society is already diverging from the society almost all of us still live in. The 20th century saw the rapid decline 'of the sector that had dominated society for 10,000 years: agriculture. In volume terms, farm production now is at least four or five times what it was before the First World War. But in 1913 farm products accounted for 70% of world trade, whereas now their share is at most 17%. In the early years of the 20th century, agriculture in most developed countries was the largest single contributor to GDP; now in rich countries its contribution has dwindled to the point of becoming marginal. And the farm population is down to a tiny proportion of the total.Manufacturing has traveled a long way down the same road. Since the Second World War, manufacturing output in the developed world has probably tripled in volume, but inflation adjusted manufacturing prices have fallen steadily, whereas the cost of prime knowledge products-health care and education-has tripled, again adjusted for inflation. The relative purchasing power of manufactured goods against knowledge products is now only one-fifth or one-sixth of what it was 50 years ago. Manufacturing employment in America has fallen from 35% of the workforce in the 1950s to less than half that now, without causing much social disruption. But it may be too much to hope for an equally easy transition in countries such as Japan or Germany, where blue-collar manufacturing workers still make up 25--30% of the laborThe decline of farming as a producer of wealth and of livelihoods has allowed farm protectionism to spread to a degree that would have been unthinkable before the Second World War. In the same way, the decline of manufacturing will trigger an explosion of manufacturing protectionism-even as lip service continues to be paid to free trade. This protectionism may not necessarily take the form of traditional tariffs, but of subsidies, quotas and regulations of all kinds. Even more likely, regional blocks will emerge that trade freely internally but are highly protectionist externally. The European Union, NAFFA and Mercosur already point in that direction.The future of the corporationStatistically, multinational companies play much the same part in the world economy as they did in 1913. But they have become very different animals. Multinationals in 1913 were domestic firms with subsidiaries abroad, each of them self-contained, in charge of a politically defined territory, and highly autonomous. Multinationals now tend to be organized globally along product or service lines. But like the multinationals of 1913, they are held together and controlled by ownership. By contrast, the multinationals of 2025 are likely to be held together and controlled by strategy. There will still be ownership, of course. But alliances, joint ventures, minority stakes, know-how agreements contracts will increasingly be the building blocks of a confederation. This kind of organization will need a new kind of top management.In most countries, and even in a good many large and complex companies, top management is still seen as an extension of operating management. Tomorrow's top management, however, is likely to be a distinct and separate organ: it will stand for the company. One of the most important jobs ahead for the top management of {he big company of tomorrow, and especially of the multinational, will be to balance the conflicting demands on business being made by the need for both short-term and long-term results, and by the corporation's various constituencies: customers, shareholders, knowledge employees and communities.1. The new society will be much more important than the new economy only in the developed countries.2. In another 25 years people will have to keep working as full-time employees until their mid- 70s if health permits.3. Nowadays in China, because of the population policy, the birth rate has decreased.4. In developed countries, the issue of immigration will become important politically.5. The dominant part in the next society's work force is6. ______ makes knowledge spread rapidly and available to everyone.7. ______ had dominated society for 10,000 years but declined rapidly in the 20th century.8. In order to adjust for inflation, the cost of ______ which are the main knowledge products was tripled.9. Multinationals in 1913 were composed of a domestic firms and its self-contained and autonomous10. Top management in the Next society will be a ______ organ.Passage2:Rain forestsTropical rainforests are the most diverse ecosystem (生态系统) on Earth, and also the oldest.Today, tropical rainforests cover only 6 percent of the Earth's ground surface, but they are home to over half of the planet’s plant and animal species.What Is a Rainforest?Generally speaking, a rainforest is an environment that receives high rainfall and is dominated by tall trees. A wide range of ecosystems fall into this category, of course. But most of the time when people talk about rainforests, they mean the tropical rainforests located near the equator.These forests receive between 160 and 400 inches of rain per year. The total annual rainfall is spread pretty evenly throughout the year, and the temperature rarely dips below 60 degrees Fahrenheit.This steady climate is due to the position of rainforests on the globe. Because of the orientation of the Earth's axis, the Northern and Southern hemispheres each spend part of the year tilted away from the sun. Since rainforests are at the middle of the globe, located near the equator, they arc not especially affected by this change. They receive nearly the same amount of sunlight, and therefore heat, all year. Consequently, the weather in these regions remains fairly constant.The consistently wet, warm weather and ample sunlight give plant life everything it needs to thrive. Trees have the resources to grow to tremendous heights, and they live for hundreds, even thousands, of years. These giants, which reach 60 to 150 ft in the air, form the basic structure of the rainforest. Their top branches spread wide in order to capture maximum sunlight. This creates a thick canopy (树冠) level at the top of the forest, with thinner greenery levels underneath. Some large trees grow so tall that they even tower over the canopy layer.As you go lower, down into the rainforest, you find less and less greenery. The forest floor is made up of moss, fungi, and decaying plant matter that has fallen from the upper layers. The reason for this decrease in greenery is very simple the overabundance of plants gathering sunlight at the top of the forest blocks most sunlight from reaching the bottom of the forest, making it difficult for robust plants to thrive.The, Forest for the TreesThe ample sunlight and extremely wet climate of many tropical areas encourage the growth of towering trees with wide canopies. This thick top layer of the rainforest dictates the lives of all other plants in the forest. New tree seedlings rarely survive to make it to the top unless some older trees die, creating a "hole" in the canopy. When this happens, all of the seedlings on the ground level compete intensely to reach the sunlight.Many plant species reach the top of the forest by climbing the tall trees. It is much easier to ascend this way, because the plant doesn't have to form its own supporting structure.Some plant species, called epiphytes, grow directly on the surface of the giant trees. These plants, which include a variety of orchids and ferns, make up much of the understory, the layer of the rainforest right below the canopy. Epiphytes are close enough to the top to receive adequate light, and the runoff from the canopy layer provides all the water and nutrients(养分)they need, which is important since they don't have access to the nutrients in the ground.Stranglers and ButtressesSome epiphytes eventually develop into stranglers. They grow long, thick roots that extend down the tree trunk into the ground. As they continue to grow, the roots form a sort of web structure all around the tree. At the same time, the strangler plant's branches extend upward, spreading out into the canopy. Eventually, the strangler may block so much light from above, andabsorb such a high percentage of nutrients from the ground below, that the host tree dies.Competition over nutrients is almost as intense as competition for light. The excessive rainfall rapidly dissolves nutrients in the soil making it relatively infertile except at the top layers. For this reason, rainforest tree roots grow outward to cover a wider area, rather than downward to lower levels. This makes rainforest trees somewhat unstable, since they don't have very strong anchors in the ground. Some trees compensate for this by growing natural buttresses. These buttresses are basically tree trunks that extend out from the side of the tree and clown to the ground, giving the tree additional support.Rainforest trees are dependent on bacteria that are continually producing nutrients in the ground. Rainforest bacteria and trees have a very close, symbiotic (共生的) relationship. The trees provide the bacteria with food, in the form of fallen leaves and other material, and the bacteria break this material down into the nutrients that the trees need to survive.One of the most remarkable things about rainforest plant life is its diversity. The temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest are mainly composed of a dozen or so tree species. A tropical rainforest, on the other hand, might have 300 distinct tree species.All Creatures, Great and SmallRainforests are home to the majority of animal species in the world. And a great number of species who now live in other environments, including humans, originally inhabited the rainforests. Researchers estimate that in a large rainforest area, there may be more than 10 million different animal species.Most of these species have adapted for life in the upper levels of the rainforest, where food is most plentiful. Insects, which can easily climb or fly from tree to tree, make up the largest group (ants are the most abundant animal in the rainforest). Insect species have a highly symbiotic relationship with the plant life in a rainforest. The insects move from plant to plant, enjoying the wealth of food provided there. As they travel, the insects may pick up the plants' seeds, dropping them some distance away. This helps to disperse the population of the plant species over a larger area.The numerous birds of the rainforest also play a major part in seed dispersal. When they eat fruit from a plant, the seeds pass through their digestive system. By the time they excrete (排泄) the seeds, the birds may have flown many miles away from the fruit-bearing tree.There are also a large number of reptiles and mammals in the rainforest. Since the weather is so hot and humid during the day, most rainforest mammals are active only at night, dusk or dawn. The many rainforest bat species are especially well adapted for this lifestyle. Using their sonar, bats navigate easily through the mass of trees in the rainforest, feeding on insects and fruit.While most rainforest species spend their lives in the trees, there is also a lot of life on the forest floor. Great apes, wild pigs, big cats and even elephants can all be found in rainforests. There are a number of people who live in the rainforests, as well. These tribes--which, up until recently, numbered in the thousands--are being forced out of the rainforests at an alarming rate because of deforestation.DeforestationIn the past hundred years, humans have begun destroying rainforests at an alarming rate. Today, roughly 1.5 acres of rainforest are destroyed every second. People are cutting down the rainforests in pursuit of three major resources:· land for crops· lumber for paper and other wood products· land for livestock pasturesIn the current economy, people obviously have a need for all of these resources. But almost all experts agree that, over time, we will suffer much more from the destruction of the rainforests than we will benefit.The world's rainforests are an extremely valuable natural resource, to be sure, but not for their lumber or their land. They are the main cradle of life on Earth, and they hold millions of unique life forms that we have yet to discover. Destroying the rainforests is comparable to destroying an unknown planet we have no idea what we're losing. If deforestation continues at its current rate, the world's tropical rainforests will be wiped out within 40 years.1. Virtually all plant and animal species on Earth can be found in tropical rainforests.2. There is not much change in the weather in the tropical rainforests all the year round.3. The largest number of rainforests in the world are located on the African continent.4. Below the canopy level of a tropical rainforest grows an overabundance of plants.5. New tree seedlings will not survive to reach the canopy level unless ______.6. Epiphytes, which form much of the understory of the rainforest, get all their water and nutrients from ______.7. Stranglers are so called because they ______ by blocking the sunlight and competing for the nutrients.8. Since rainforest bacteria and trees depend on each other for life, the relationship they form is termed ______.9. Plant species are dispersed over a large area with the help of ______.10. As we are still ignorant of millions of unique life forms in the rainforest, deforestation can be compared to the destruction of ______.Passage3:Some Notes on Gender-Neutral LanguageGeneralThe practice of assigning masculine gender to neutral terms comes from the fact that every language reflects the prejudices of the society in which it evolved, and English evolved through most of its history in a male-centered, patriarchal society. Like any other language, however, English is always changing. One only has to read aloud sentences from the 19th century hooks assigned for this class to sense the shifts that have occurred in the last 150 years. When readers pick up something to read, they expect different conventions depending on the time in which the material was written. As writers in 1995, we need to be not only aware of the conventions that our readers may expect, but also conscious of the responses our words may elicit. In addition, we need to know how the shifting nature of language can make certain words awkward or misleading. "Man"Man once was a truly generic word referring to all humans, but has gradually narrowed in meaning to become a word that refers to adult male human beings. Anglo-Saxons used the word to refer to all people. One example of this occurs when an Anglo-Saxon writer refers to a seventh-century English princess as "a wonderful man". Man paralleled the Latin word homo, "a member of the human species." not vir, "an adult male of the species." The Old English word for adult male was waepman and the old English word for adult woman was wifman. In the course oftime, wifman evolved into the word "woman." "Man" eventually ceased to be used to refer to individual women and replaced waepman as a specific term distinguishing an adult male from an adult female. But man continued to be used in generalizations about both sexes.By the 18th century, the modern, narrow sense of man was firmly established as the predominant one. When Edmund Burke, writing of the French Revolution, used men in the old, inclusive way, he took pains to spell out his meaning: "Such a deplorable havoc is made in the minds of men (both sexes) in France..." Thomas Jefferson did not make the same distinction in declaring that "all men are created equal" and "governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." In a time when women, having no vote, could neither give nor withhold consent, Jefferson had to be using the word men in its principal sense of "males," and it probably never occurred to him that anyone would think otherwise. Looking at modern dictionaries indicate that the definition that links "man' with males is the predominant one. Studies of college students and school children indicate that even when the broad definitions of "msn" and "men" are taught, they tend to conjure up images of male people only. We would never use the sentence "A girl grows up to be a man," because we assume the narrower definition of the word man.The Pronoun ProblemThe first grammars of modern English were written in the 16th and 17th centuries. They were mainly intended to help boys from upper class families prepare for the study of Latin, a language most scholars considered superior to English. The male authors of these earliest English grammars wrote for male readers in an age when few women were literate. The masculine-gender pronouns(代词) did not reflect a belief that masculine pronouns could refer to both sexes. The grammars of this period contain no indication that masculine pronouns were sex-inclusive when used in general references. Instead these pronouns reflected the reality of male cultural dominance and the male-centered world view that resulted."He" started to be used as a generic pronoun by grammarians who were trying to change a long-established tradition of using "they" as a singular pronoun. In 1850 an Act of Parliament gave official sanction(批准)to the recently invented concept of the "generic" he. In the language used in acts of Parliament, the new law said, "words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females." Although similar language in contracts and other legal documents subsequently helped reinforce this grammatical edict in all English-speaking countries, it was often conveniently ignored. In 1879, for example, a move to admit female physicians to the all-male Massachusetts Medical Society was effectively blocked on the grounds 'that the society's by-laws describing membership used the pronoun he.Just as "man" is not truly generic in the 1990s, "he" is not a true generic pronoun. Studies have confirmed that most people understand "he" to refer to men only. Sentences like "A doctor is a busy person; he must be able to balance a million obligations at once" imply that all doctors are men. As a result of the fact that "he" is read by many as a masculine pronoun, many people, especially women, have come to feel that the generic pronouns excludes women. This means that more and more people find the use of such a pronoun problematic.Solving the Pronoun ProblemThey as a Singular -Most people, when writing and speaking informally, rely on singular they as a matter of course: "If you love someone, set them free" (Sting). If you pay attention to your own speech, you'll probably catch yourself using the same construction yourself. "It's enough todrive anyone out of their senses" (George Bernard Shaw). "I shouldn't like to punish anyone, even ii they'd done me wrong" (George Eliot). Some people are annoyed by the incorrect grammar that this solution necessitates, but this construction is used more and more frequently.He or She---Despite the charge of clumsiness, double-pronoun constructions have made a comeback: "To be black in this country is simply too pervasive an experience for any writer to omit from her or his work," wrote Samuel R. Delany. Overuse of this solution can be awkward, however.Pluralizing-A writer can often recast material in the plural. For instance, instead of "As he advances in his program, the medical student has increasing opportunities for clinical work," try "As they advance in their program, medical students have increasing opportunities for clinical work"Eliminating Pronouns--Avoid having to use pronouns at all; instead of "a first grader can feed and dress himself," you could write, "a first grader can eat find get dressed without assistance."Further Alternatives--he she or s/he, using one instead of he, or using a new generic pronoun (thon, co, E, try, hash, hit).1. "Man" could be used to refer to female human being in the past.2. In "all men are created equal" in Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, the word "men" refer to both males and females whether they have vote right or not.3. In 1879, Massachusetts Medical Society refused to admit more than ten female physicians because the society's by-laws describing membership used the pronoun he.4. The first grammars of modern English were written in order to help boys from the upper class prepare for the study of Latin.5. "Man" paralleled the Latin word "homo" 'which means ______.6. Studies show that even when students are taught the broad definition of "man" and "men", they think of ______.7. Grammarians started to use "he" as a generic pronoun because they were trying to change a tradition of using "they" as ______.8. When most people read the word "he", they would understand it to rater to ______.9. Although some people are annoyed by ______ of singular they, this construction is used more and more frequently to solve the pronoun problem.10. Another way of solving the pronoun problem is to use ______ instead of the singular. Passage4:Soichiro HondaThe founder of Honda, Soichiro Honda was a mechanical engineer with a passion for motorcycle and automobile racing. Honda started his company in 1946 by building motorized bicycles with small, war-surplus engines. Honda would grow to become the world's leading manufacturer of motorcycles and later one of the leading automakers. Following its founder's lead, Honda has always been a leader in technology, especially in the area of engine development.Soichiro Honda was described as a maverick(特立独行的人) in a nation of conformists. He made it a point to wear loud suits and wildly colored shirts. An inventor by nature who often joined the work on the floors of his factories and research laboratories, Honda developed engines that transformed the motorcycle into a worldwide means of transportation.Born in 1906, Honda grew up in the town of Tenryu, Japan. The eldest son of a blacksmith。