2018年12月英语六级听力试题答案原文
2018年12月大学生英语六级考试真题卷一（听力部分）PartⅡ Listening Comprehension (30 minutes)Section ADirections: In this section, you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation, you will hear four questions. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose 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 line through the centre.Questions 1 to 4 are based on the conversation you have just heard.1. A) It can benefit professionals and non-professionals alike.B) It lists the various challenges physicists are confronting.C) It describes how some mysteries of physics were solved.D) It is one of the most fascinating physics books ever written.2. A) Physicists’ contribution to humanity.B) Stories about some female physicists.C) Historical evolution of modern physics.D) Women’s changing attitudes to physics.3. A)By exposing a lot of myths in physics.B) By describing her own life experiences.C) By including lots of fascinating knowledge.D) By telling anecdotes about famous professors.4. A) It avoids detailing abstract concepts of physics.B) It contains a lot of thought-provoking questions.C) It demonstrates how they can become physicists.D)It provides experiments they can do themselves.Questions 5 to 8 are based on the conversation you have just heard.5. A) He is too busy to finish his assignment in time.B) He does not know what kid of topic to write on.C) He does not understand the professor’s instructions.D) He has no idea how to proceed with his dissertation.6. A) It is too broad.B) It is outdated.C) It is challenging.D) It is interesting.7. A) Biography.B) Nature.C) Photography.D) Beauty.8. A) Improve his cumulative grade.B) Develop his reading ability.C) Stick to the topic assigned.-D) List the parameters first.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 answer from the four choices marked A)，B)，C) and D). Then mark the co rresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Questions 9 to 11 are based on the passage you have just heard.9. A) The unprecedented high temperature in Greenland.B) The collapse of ice on the northern tip of Greenland.C) The unusual clod spell in the Arctic area in October.D) The rapid change of Arctic temperature within a day.10. A) It has created a totally new climate pattern.B) It will pose a serious threat to many species.C) It typically appears about once every ten years.D) It has puzzled the climate scientists for decades.11. A) Extinction of Arctic wildlife.B) Iceless summers in the Arctic.C) Emigration of indigenous people.D) Better understanding of ecosystems.Questions 12 to 15 are based on the passage you have just heard.12. A) A good start.B) A detailed plan.C) A strong determination.D) A scientific approach.13. A) Most people get energized after a sufficient rest.B) Most people tend to have finite source of energy.C) It is vital to take breaks between demanding mental tasks.D) It is most important to have confidence in one’s willpower.14. A) They could keep on working longer.B) They could do more challenging tasks.C) They found it easier to focus on work at hand.D) They held more positive attitudes toward life.15. A) They are part of their nature.B) They are subject to change.C) They are related to culture.D) They are beyond control.Section CDirections: In this section, you will hear three recordings of lectures or talks followed by three or four questions. The recordings will be played only once. After you hear a question, you must choose 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 line through the centre.-Questions 16 to 18 are based on the recording you have just heard.16. A) About half of current jobs might be automated.B) The jobs of doctors and lawyers would be threatened.C) The jobs market is becoming somewhat unpredictable.D) Machine learning would prove disruptive by 2013.17. A) They are widely applicable for massive open online courses.B) They are now being used by numerous high school teachers.C) They could read as many as 10,000 essays in a single minute.D) They could grade high-school essays just like human teacher.18. A) It needs instructions throughout the process.B) It dose poorly on frequency, high-volume tasks.C) It has to rely on huge amounts of previous data.D) It is slow when it comes to tracking novel things.Questions 19 to 21 are based on the recording you have just heard.19. A) The engineering problems with solar power.B) The generation of steam with the latest technology.C) The importance of exploring new energy sources.D) The theoretical aspects of sustainable energy.20. A) Drive trains with solar energy.B) Upgrade the city’s train facilities.C) Build a new ten-kilometre railway line.D) Cut-down the city’s energy consumption.21. A) Build a tank for keeping calcium oxide.B) Find a new material for storing energy.C) Recover super-heated steam.D) Collect carbon dioxide gas.Questions 22 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.22. A) The lack of supervision by both the nation and local government.B) The impact of the current economics crisis at home and abroad.C) The poor management of day centres and home help services.D) The poor relation between national heath and social care services.23. A) It was mainly provided by voluntary services.B) It mainly caters to the need of privileged.C) It called for a sufficient number of volunteers.D) It has deteriorated over the past sixty years.24. A) Their longer lifespans.B) Fewer home helpers available.C) Their preference for private services.D) More of them suffering serious illness.25. A) They are unable to pay for health services.B) They have long been discriminated against.C) They are vulnerable to illness and diseases.D) They have contributed a great deal to society.参考答案1. A) It can benefit professionals and non-professionals alike.2. B) Stories about some female physicists.3. C) By including lots of fascinating knowledge.4. D) It provides experiments they can do themselves.5. D）He has not idea how to proceed with his dissertation.6. A) It is too broad.7. B) Nature.8. C) Stick to the topic assigned.9. A) The unprecedented high temperature in Greenland.10. C) It typiaclly appears about once every ten years.11. B) Iceless summers in the Arctic.12. C) A strong determination.13. D) It is most important to have confidence in one`s willpower.14. A) They could keep on working longer.15. B) They are subject to change.16. A) About half of current jobs might be automated.17. D) They could grade high-school essays just like human teachers.18. C) It has to rely on huge amounts of previous data.19. D) The theoretical aspects of sustainable energy.20. A) Drive trains with solar energy.21. B) Find a new material for storing energy.22. D) The poor relation between national health and social care services.23. A) It was mainly provided by voluntary services.24. C) Their preference for private services.25. B) They have long been discriminated against.听力原文Conversation 1A: Hey, I just read a great book about physics. I think you‘d like it. It’s called the physics of the world. It‘s written by a scientist named Sylvia Mendez.B: Oh, I read that book. It was great. The writer is a warm and competent guide to the mysteries of physics. I think it promises enrichment for any reader from those who know little about science to the career physicist.A: And it‘s refreshing to see a strong curious clever woman adding her voice to the scientific discourse and a field that has been traditionally dominated by men. I think she has to be commended for making an effort to include anecdotes about little known female scientists. You know they were often victims of a generation firmly convinced that the wom an’s place was in the home.B: I like how the book is clearly written with each chapter brought to life by pieces of fascinating knowledge. For example in one chapter she exposes a myth that I‘ve heard taught by university physics professors. I’ve often heard that medieval glass windows are thicker at the bottom because glass flows like a fluid. This, she shows, is not true. The distortion is actuallythanks to a peculiarity of the glassmakers process.A: Yeah I like how she cultivates scientific engagement by providing a host of Do It Yourself experiments that bring the same foundational principles of classical physics that govern everything from the solar system to your kitchen table. From using complex laws of physics to test whether a spinning egg is cooked to measuring atmospheric pressure by lifting a piece of cardboard. Her hands-on examples make her book a truly interactive read.B: Yes I must say this a equation-free book is an ideal read for scientists of all stripes, anyone teaching science and even people who dislike physics.Question 1. what does the woman say about the book the man recommended?A) It can benefit professionals and non-professionals alike.Question 2. what can we find in the book the man recommended?B) Stories about some female physicists.Question 3. How does the author bring her book to life?C) By including lots of fascinating knowledge.Question 4. How does the book cultivate readers interest in physics.D)It provides experiments they can do themselves.Conversation 2A: Hi professor. I was hoping I could have a moment of your time if you‘re not too busy. I’m having some problems getting started on my dissertation and I was hoping you could give me some advice on how to begin.B: Sure. I have quite a few students though. So can you remind me what your topic is?A: T he general topic I chose is aesthetics, but that’s as far as I’ve got I don‘t really know where to go from there.B: Yeah，that’s much too large a topic. You really need to narrow it down in order to make it more accessible. Otherwise you’ll be writing a book.A: Exactly. That’s what I wanted to ask you about. I was hoping it would be possible for me to change topics. I’m really more interested in nature than beauty.B: I‘m afraid you have to adhere to the assigned topic. Still, If you’re interested in nature, then that certainly can be worked into your dissertation. We‘ve talked about Hume before in class right.A: Oh yeah, he’s the philosopher who wrote about where our ide as of beauty come from.B: Exactly. I suggest you go to the library and get a copy of his biography. Start from there. But remember to stick to the parameters of the assignment. This paper is a large part of your cumulative grade. So make sure to follow the instructions. If you take a look at his biography. You can get a good idea of how his life experiences manifest themselves in his theories of beauty. specifically the way he looked towards nature as the origin of what we find beautiful.A: Great. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, Professor. I‘ll let you get back to class now.B: If there’s anything else you need, please come see me in my office any time.Question 5. What is the man‘s problem?D) He has not idea how to proceed with his dissertation.Question 6. What does the professor think of the man‘s topic?A) It is too broadQuestion 7. What’s the man really more interested in?B) Nature.Question 8. What does the professor say the man has to do?C) Stick to the topic assigned.Passage 1During the arctic winter from October to March, the average temperature in the frozen north typically hovers around minus 20 degrees Celsius. But this year the Arctic is experiencing much higher temperatures. On February the 20th the temperature in Greenland climbed above freezing or zero degrees Celsius and it stayed there for over 24 hours. Then on February the 24th the temperature on Greenland’ s northern tip reached six degrees Celsius. Climate scientists describe the phenomenon as stunning. Weather conditions that drive this bizarre temperature surge have visited the Arctic before. They typically appear about once in a decade. However, the last such increase in temperature took place two years ago. This is troubling as climbing arctic temperatures combined with rapid sea ice loss are creating a new type of climate feedback loop which could accelerate Arctic warming. Indeed, sea ice cover in the Arctic is melting faster than expected. Without those masses of cooling sea ice, warm air brought to the Arctic can penetrate further inland than it ever did before. The air can stay warmer longer too. This drives additional melting. Overall earth is warming at a rapid pace. 2014 through 2017 rank as the hottest years on record and the Arctic is warming twice as fast as any place else on earth. This raises unique challenges for Arctic wildlife and indigenous people who depend on Arctic ecosystems to survive. Previously climate forecasts predicted that Arctic summer ice would disappear entirely by around 2060, but based on what scientists are seeing now the Arctic may be facing summers without ice within 20 years.Question 9. What did climate scientists describe as stunning?A) The unprecedented high temperature in Greenland.Question 10. What does the passage say about that temperature surge in the Arctic?C) It typiaclly appears about once every ten years.Question 11. W hat may occur in 20 years according to scientists’ recent observations?B) Iceless summers in the Arctic.Passage2A good dose of willpower is often necessary to see any task through whether it’s sticking to a spending plan or finishing a great novel. And if you want to increase that willpower, a new study suggests you just simply have to believe you have it. According to this study, what matters most is what we think about our willpower. If we believe it’s a f inite resource, we act that way, we feel exhausted and need breaks between demanding mental tasks. However, people who view their willpower as a limitless resource get energized instead. The researchers used a psychological assessment tool to test the validity of the study. They asked 1100 Americans and 1600 Europeans to grade different statements such as after a challenging mental activity, my energy is depleted and I must rest to get it refueled again or I can focus on a mental task for long periods without feeling tired.Although there was little difference between men and women overall. Americans were more likely to admit to needing breaks after completing mentally challenging tasks European participants on the other hand claimed they were able to keep going. Based on the findings, the researchers suggest that the key to boosting your willpower is to believe that you have an abundant supply of it. Your feelings about your willpower affect the way you behave. But these feelings are changeable, they said. Changing your beliefs about the nature of your self-control canhave positive effects on character development. This leads to healthier behaviors and perceptions of other people.Question 12. What is often necessary for carrying through a task?C) A strong determination.Question 13. What is the finding of the new study?D) It is most important to have confidence in one`s willpower.Question 14. What do we learn about European participants as compared with their American counterparts?A) They could keep on working longer.Question 15. What do the research say concerning people‘s feelings about willpower?B) They are subject to change.Lecture 1Here is my baby niece Sarah. Her mum is a doctor and her dad is a lawyer. By the time Sarah goes to college the jobs her parents do are going to look dramatically different. In 2013，researchers at Oxford University did a study on the future of work. They concluded that almost one in every two jobs has a high risk of being automated by machines. Machine learning is the technology that’s responsible for most of this disruption. It’s the most powerful branch of artificial intelligence. It allows machines to learn from data and copy some of the things that humans can do. My company, Kaggle, operates on the cutting edge of machine learning. We bring together hundreds of thousands of experts to solve important problems for industry and academia. This gives us an unique perspective on what machines can do, what they can‘t do and what jobs they might automate or threaten. Machine learning started making its way into industry in the early 90s. It started with relatively simple tasks. It started with things like assessing credit risk from loan applications, sorting the mail by reading handwritten zip codes. Over the past few years, we have made dramatic breakthroughs. Machine learning is now capable of far, far more complex tasks. In 2012, Kaggle challenged its community to build a program that could grade high school essays. The winning programs were able to match the grades given by human teachers. Now given the right data, machines are going to outperform humans at tasks like this. A teacher might read 10000 essays over a 40-year career. A machine can read millions of essays within minutes. We have no chance of competing against machines on frequent high-volume tasks, but there are things we can do that machines cannot. Where machines have made very little progress is in tackling novel situations. Machines can’t handle things they haven’t seen many times before. The fundamental limitation of machine learning is that it needs to learn from large volumes of past data. But humans don’t. We have the ability to connect seemingly different threads to solve problems we’ve never seen before.Question 16. What did the researchers at Oxford University conclude?A) About half of current jobs might be automated.Question 17. What do we learn about Kaggle companies winning programs?D) They could grade high-school essays just like human teachers.Question 18. What is the fundamental limitation on machine learning?C) It has to rely on huge amounts of previous data.Lecture 2W e’ve talked recently about the importance of sustainable energy. We’ve also talked about the different theories on how that can be done. So far, our discussions have all been theoretical.Now I have a practical question for you all. Can you run a 140,000 kilogram train on just the steam generated by solar power? Well, one engineer, Tim Casselman, believes it‘s possible. And his home city of Sacramento, California should see the technology’s first test as part of the upgrading of its rail yard. Casselman, who is an inventor and self-proclaimed steam visionary, is campaigning for a new steam train that runs without any fire and could run on an existing 10 kilometer line drawing tourists and perhaps offering city commuters a green alternative to their cars. Casselman wants to build an array of solar magnifying mirrors at one end of the line to collect and focus heat onto water filled tubes. This would generate steam that could be used to fill tanks on a small steam train without the use of fire. Supplying power to trains in this way would offer the shortest distance from well to wheels he says with the least amount of energy lost. According to Harry Valentijn, a Canadian engineer who is researching modern steam technology, a special tank measuring 2 by 10 metres could store over 750 kilowatt hours of energy as high pressure steam enough to pull a two car train for an hour or so. Energy to drive a steam locomotive can be stored in other materials besides water for example a team at Tohoku University in Japan has studied materials that can store large amounts of heat when heated. These materials turn from a solid into a liquid absorbing energy as they change phase. The liquid is maintained above its melting point until steam is required at which point the liquid is allowed to turn back into a solid releasing its stored energy another team at Nagoya University in Japan has tested calcium compound as an energy storage material. Heating this chemical compound drives off carbon dioxide gas leaving calcium oxide the gas can be stored under pressure and attain to recover the energy the gas is fed back over the calcium oxide. In theory says Valentijn this can create a high enough temperature to generate superheated steam.Question 19. What has the speaker previously talked about?D) The theoretical aspects of sustainable energy.Question 20. What is Tim Casselman trying to do in Sacramento?A) Drive trains with solar energy.Question 21. What has a Japanese research team tried to do?B) Find a new material for storing energy.Lecture 3Today’s crisis in care for older people in England has two main causes.First，people are living longer with a lot more complex needs. Second, they rely on a system that has long been marked by a poor relation between national health and social-care services.Current services originate in two key measures. They are the National Health Service and the 1948 National Assistance Act. This required local government to provide residential accommodation for older people and supervise care homes run by independent organizations.They also provided home and community services including meals, day centers and home helpers and other subsidized services. The National Health Service was free and wholly publicly provided. It delivered the best health-care for all. No such vision guided residential and community care though. The care was substantially provided by voluntary services which worked together with local authorities as they long had with eligibility based on income. Today, life expectancy has risen from 66 for a male at birth in 1948 to around 80 now. In addition, there is better overall health and improved medical knowledge and care. This means an unprecedented number of people are surviving longer in conditions requiring expert support. Families provide at least as much care as they ever did. Even so, they can rarely without subsidised support address serious personal needs. Care for older people faced persistent criticism as these trends becameapparent. From the early 1960s, local authorities were required to plan health and welfare services. The aim was to enable older people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible, but this increased concern about the lack of coordination between free health and paid-for social care. Through the 1970s, a number of measures sought to improve matter. However at a time of financial crisis, funding diminished and little changed. In the 1980s, the government cut spending. Meanwhile, preference for private over public services made management even more difficult. Simultaneously, the number of sick older people grew. Governments emphasized the need to improve services. They did so though while doing little to stop the erosion of available aid. Services were irregular across authorities. Unless you were prepared to pay, they were increasingly difficult to obtain for any but the most severely disabled. Why has 60 years of criticism produced so little change. Discrimination against older people has a long history. Additionally, those affected by inadequate health and social care are too vulnerable to launch the protests that have addressed other forms of discrimination.Question 22. What is one cause of the current crisis in care for the elderly in England?D) The poor relation between national health and social care services.Question 23. What does the speaker say about residential and community care?A) It was mainly provided by voluntary services.Question 24. What made management of care for the elderly more difficult in the 1980s?C) Their preference for private services.Question 25. What does the speaker say about older people in England?B) They have long been discriminated against.。
2018年12月英语六级考试真题试卷附答案(完整版 第2套)
Part I Writing (30minutes)Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on ho w to balance jobresponsibilities and personal interests. You should write at lea st 150 words but no more than 200 words.______________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ __________Part II Listening Comprehension (30minutes)听力音频MP3文件，点击进入听力真题页面Section ADirections: In this section, you will hear two longconversations. At the end of each conversation, you will hear four questions. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you mustch oose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then m ark thecorresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Questions 1 to 4 are based on the conversation you have just heard.1. A) Stop worrying about him.B) Keep away from the statue.C) Take a picture of him.D) Pat on a smile for the photo.2. A) Gaining great fame on the Internet.B) Publishing a collection of his photos.C) Collecting the best photos in the world.D) Becoming a professional photographer.3. A) Surfing various websites and collecting photos.B) Editing his pictures and posting them online.C) Following similar accounts to compare notes.D) Studying the pictures in popular social media.4. A) They are far from satisfactory.B) They are mostly taken by her mom.C) They make an impressive album.D) They record her fond memories.Questions 5 to 8 are based on the conversation you have just heard.5. A) A journal reporting the latest progress in physics.B) An introductory course of modem physics.C) An occasion for physicists to exchange ideas.D) A series of interviews with outstanding physicists.6. A) The future of the physical world.B) The origin of the universe.C) Sources of radiation.D) Particle theory.7. A) How matter collides with anti-matter.B) Whether the universe will turn barren.C) Why there exists anti-matter.D) Why there is a universe at all8. A) Matter and anti-matter are opposites of each other.B) Anti-matter allowed humans to come into existence.C) The universe formed due to a sufficient amount of matter.D) Anti-matter exists in very high-temperature environments.Section BDirections: In this section, you will hear two passages. At the end of each pas sage, you will hear three or four questions. Both the passage and the questio ns will bespoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the b est answer fromthe four choices marked A, B, C and D. Then mark the corres ponding letter on AnswerSheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Questions 9 to 11 are based on the passage you have just heard.9. A) She found herself speaking a foreign language.B) She woke up speaking with a different accent.C) She found some symptoms of her illness gone.D) She woke up finding herself in another country.10. A) It is usually caused by a stroke or brain injury.B) It has not yet found any effective treatment.C) It leaves the patient with a distorted memory.D) It often happens to people with speech defects.11. A) British.B) Irish.C) Russian.D) Australian.Questions 12 to 15 are based on the passage you have just heard.12. A) Water sports.B) Racing in rivers.C) Stories about women swimmers.D) Books about swimming.13. A) She succeeded in swimming across the English Channel.B) She published a guide to London's best swimming spots.C) She told her story of adventures to some young swimmers.D) She wrote a book about the history of swimwear in the UK.14. A) They loved vacationing on the seashore.B) They had a unique notion of modesty.C) They were prohibited from swimming.D) They were fully dressed when swimming.15. A) She designed lots of appropriate swimwear for women.B) She once successfully competed against men in swimming.C) She was the first woman to swim across the English Channel.D) She was an advocate of women's right to swim in public pools.Section CDirections: In this section, you will hear three recordings of lectures or talks f ollowedby three or four questions. The recordings will be played only once. Af ter you hear aquestion, you must choose the best answer from the four choic es marked A, B, C andD. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Shee t 1 with a single line throughthe centre.Questions 16 to 18 are based on the recording you have just heard.16. A) Build a machine that can detect lies.B) Develop a magnetic brain scanner.C) Test the credibility of court evidence.D) Win people's complete trust in them.17. A) They are optimistic about its potential.B) They are sceptical of its reliability.C) They think it is but business promotion.D) They celebrate it with great enthusiasm.18. A) It is not to be trusted at all.B) It does not sound economical.C) It may intrude into people's privacy.D) It may lead to overuse in court trials.Questions 19 to 21 are based on the recording you have just heard.19. A) Most of its residents speak several languages.B) Some of its indigenous languages are dying out.C) Each village there speaks a totally different language.D) Its languages have interested researchers the world over.20. A) They are spread randomly across the world.B) Some are more difficult to learn than others.C) More are found in tropical regions than in the mild zones.D) They enrich and impact each other in more ways than one.21. A) They used different methods to collect and analyze data.B) They identified distinct patterns of language distribution.C) Their conclusions do not correspond to their original hypotheses.D) There is no conclusive account for the cause of language diversity.Questions 22 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.22. A) Its middle-class is disappearing.B) Its wealth is rationally distributed.C) Its population is rapidly growing.D) Its cherished dream is coming true.23. A) Success was but a dream without conscientious effort.B) They could realize their dreams through hard work.C) A few dollars could go a long way.D) Wealth was shared by all citizens.24. A) Better working conditions.B) Better-paying jobs.C) High social status.D) Full employment.25. A) Reduce the administrative costs.B) Adopt effective business models.C) Hire part-time employees only.D) Make use of the latest technology.Part III Reading Comprehension (40minutes)Section ADirections: In this section, there is a passage withten blanks. You are require d to select one word foreach blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passagethrough carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the co rresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line throught he centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.Surfing the Internet during class doesn't just steal focus from the educator；it also hurtsstudents who're already struggling to __26__ the material. A new study from Michigan StateUniversity, though, argues that all students—includ ing high achievers—see a decline in performance when they browse the Inte rnet during class for non-academic purposes.To measure the effects of Internet-based distractions during class, researche rs __27__500 students taking an introductory psychology class at Michigan State Unive rsity. Researchers usedACT scores as a measure of intellectual __28__ Bec ause previous research has shown thatpeople with high intellectual abilities are better at __29__ out distractions, researchersbelieved students with high ACT scores would not show a __30__ decrease in performance due to their use of digital devices. But students who surfed the web during class did worseontheir exams regardless of their ACT scores, suggesting that even the acade mically smarteststudents are harmed when they're distracted in class.College professors are increasingly __31__ alarm bells about the effects smar tphones, laptops, and tablets have on academic performance. One 2013 st udy of college students found that 80% of students use their phones or laptop s during class, with the average student checkingtheir digital device 11 times in a __32__ class. A quarter of students report that their use ofdigital device s during class causes their grades to __33__.Professors sometimes implement policies designed to __34__ students' use of digital devices, and world where people are increasingly some instructors e ven confiscate (没收）tablets andphones. In dependent on their phones, though, such strategies of ten fail. One internationalstudy found that 84% of people say they couldn't go a day without their smartphones. Untilstudents are able to __35__ the pull of social networking, texting, and endlessly surfing theweb, they may continue to straggle in their classes.A) aptitude B) eradication C) evaluated D) evaporated E) filtering F) grasp G) legacy H) minimize I) obscure J) obsess K) raising L) resist M) signific ant N) suffer O) typicalSection BDirections: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statemen ts attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the pa ragraphs. Identify the paragraphfrom which the information is derived. You m ay choose a paragraph more than once. Eachparagraph is marked with a lette r. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter onAnswer Sheet2.A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-Emerges after 300 YearsA) Maria Sibylla Merian, like many European women of the 17th century, stay ed busy managinga household and rearing children. But on top of that, Meria n, a German-born woman who livedin the Netherlands, also managed a succe ssful career as an artist, botanist, naturalist andentomologist (昆虫学家).B)"She was a scientist on the level with a lot of people we spend a lot of time ta lking about," said Kay Etheridge, a biologist at Gettysburg College in Pennsylv ania who has been studying thescientific history of Merian's work."She didn't do as much to change biology as Charles Darwin, but she was sig nificant. "C) At a time when natural history was a valuable tool for discovery, Merian d iscovered factsabout plants and insects that were not previously known. Her observations helped dismiss the popular belief that insects spontaneouslyemerged from mud. The knowledge she collectedover decades didn't just sati sfy those curious about nature, but also provided valuable insights into medi cine and science. She was the first to bring together insects and theirhabitats, including food they ate, into a single ecological composition.D) After years of pleasing a fascinated audience across Europe with books of detailed descriptions and life-size paintings of familiar insects, in 1699 she s ailed with her daughternearly 5,000 miles from the Netherlands to South America to study insects in the jungl es ofwhat is now known as Suriname. She was 52 years old. The result was h er masterpiece, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium.E) In her work, she revealed a side of nature so exotic, dramatic and valua ble to Europeansof the time that she received much acclaim. But a century l ater, her findings came underscientific criticism. Shoddy（粗糙的）reproductions of her work along with setbacks to women'sroles in 18th- and 1 9th- century Europe resulted in her efforts being largely forgotten."It waskind of stunning when she sort of dropped off into oblivion（遗忘）," said Dr. Etheridge."Victorians started putting women in a box, and they're still trying to crawl o ut of it."F) Today, the pioneering woman of the sciences has re-emerged. In recent ye ars, feminists，historians and artists have all praised Merian's tenacity（坚韧）, talent andinspirational artistic compositions. And now biologists like Dr. Etheridge are digging into thescientific texts that accompanied her art. Three hundred years after her death, Merian will be celebrated at an international symposium in Amsterdam this June.G) And last month, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium was republish ed. It contains 60 plates (插图）and original descriptions, along with stories about Merian's life and updateds cientific descriptions. Before writing Metamorphosis, Merian spent decades do cumentingEuropean plants and insects that she published in a series of books. She began in her 20s, making textless, decorative paintings of flowers with insects."Then she got really serious," Dr. Etheridge said. Merian started raising insect s at home, mostly butterflies and caterpillars."Shewould sit up all night until they came out of the pupa (桶）so she could draw them," she said.H) The results of her decades' worth of careful observations were detailed pa intings anddescriptions of European insects, followed by unconventional vis uals and stories of insects andanimals from a land that most at the time could only imagine. It's possible Merian used amagnifying glass to capture the det ail of the split tongues of sphinx moths (斯芬克斯飞蛾）depicted in the painting. She wrote that the two tongues combine to form one tube fordrinking nectar (花蜜）. Some criticized this detail later, saying there was just one tongue, but Merian wasn't wrong. She may have observed the adult moth just as it emer ged from its pupa. For a brief moment during that stage of its life cycle, the t ongue consists of two tiny half-tubesbefore merging into one.I) It may not have been ladylike to depict a giant spider devouring a hummi ngbird, but whenMerian did it at the turn of the 18th century, surprisingly, no body objected. Dr. Etheridge calledit revolutionary. The image, which also c ontained novel descriptions of ants, fascinated aEuropean audience that was more concerned with the exotic story unfolding before them thanthe gender of the person who painted it.J)"All of these things shook up their nice, neat little view," Dr. Etheridge said. B ut later, peopleof the Victorian era thought differently. Her work had been rep roduced, sometimes incorrectly. A few observations were deemed impossibl e."She'd been called a silly woman for saying thata spider could eat a bird," Dr . Etheridge said. But Henry Walter Bates, a friend of CharlesDarwin, observed it and put it in book in 1863, proving Merian was correct.K) In the same plate, Merian depicted and described leaf-cutter ants for the fi rst time."InAmerica there are large ants which can eat whole trees bare as a broom h andle in a singlenight, she wrote in the description. Merian noted how the a nts took the leaves below groundto their young. And she wouldn't have know n this at the time, but the ants use the leaves tofarm fungi (菌类）underground to feed their developing babies.L) Merian was correct about the giant bird-eating spiders, ants building bridge s with theirbodies and other details. But in the same drawing, she incorrectly l umped together army andleaf-cutter ants. And instead of showing just the ty pical pair of eggs in a hummingbird nest, she painted four. She made other mistakes in Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium aswell: not every cat erpillar and butterfly matched.M) Perhaps one explanation for her mistakes is that she cut short her Surina me trip aftergetting sick, and completed the book at home in Amsterdam. An d errors are common amongsome of history's most- celebrated scientific min ds, too."These errors no more invalidate Ms. Merian's work than do well- known mis conceptions published by Charles Darwin or IsaacNewton," Dr. Etheridge wrote in a paper that argued that too many have wrongly focu sed onthe mistakes of her work.N) Merian's paintings inspired artists and ecologists. In an 1801 drawing fro m his book, General Zoology Amphibia, George Shaw, an English botanist and zoologist, credited Merian fordescribing a frog in the account of her South A merican expedition, and named the young treefrog after her in his portraya l of it. It wouldn't be fair to give Merian all the credit. Shereceived assistanc e naming plants, making sketches and referencing the work of others. Herdau ghters helped her color her drawings.O) Merian also made note of the help she received from the natives of Surina me, as well asslaves or servants that assisted her. In some instances she wro te moving passages that includedher helpers in descriptions. As she wrote in her description of the peacock flower,"TheIndians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds t o abort their children, so that they will not become slaves like themselves. Th e black slaves from Guinea and Angolahave demanded to be well treated, thr eatening to refuse to have children. In fact, theysometimes take their own li ves because they are treated so badly, and because they believethey will be b orn again, free and living in their own land. They told me this themselves. " P) Londa Schiebinger, a professor of the history of science at Stanford Univer sity, called thispassage rather astonishing. It's particularly striking centurie s later when these issues are still prominent in public discussions about soci al justice and women's rights."She was ahead ofher time," Dr. Etheridge said.36. Merian was the first scientist to study a type of American ant.37. The European audience was more interested in Merian's drawings than he r gender.38. Merian's masterpiece came under attack a century after its publication.39. Merian's mistakes in her drawings may be attributed to her shortened sta y in SouthAmerica.40. Merian often sat up the whole night through to observe and draw insects.41. Merian acknowledged the help she got from natives of South America.42. Merian contributed greatly to people's better understanding of medicine a nd science.43. Merian occasionally made mistakes in her drawings of insects and birds.44. Now, Merian's role as a female forerunner in sciences has been re-establi shed.45. Merian made a long voyage to South America to study jungle insects over three centuriesago.Section CDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by s ome questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four cho ices marked A), B), C) and D). Youshould decide on the best choice and markthe corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with asingle line through the cen tre.Passage OneQuestions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.While human achievements in mathematics continue to reach new levels of c omplexity, manyof us who aren't mathematicians at heart (or engineers by t rade) may struggle to rememberthe last time we used calculus (微积分）.It's a fact not lost on American educators, who amid rising math failure rates are debating howmath can better meet the real-life needs of students. Should we change the way math is taughtin schools, or eliminate some courses enti rely?Andrew Hacker, Queens College political science professor, thinks that advan ced algebra andother higher-level math should be cut from curricula in favor of courses with more routine usefulness, like statistics."We hear on all sides that we're not teaching enough mathematics, and the C hinese are runningrings around us," Hacker says."I'm suggesting we're teaching too much mathematics to toomany people. . . not everybody has to know calculus. If you're going to become an aeronautic al (航空的）engineer, fine. But most of us aren't."Instead, Hacker is pushing for more courses like the one he teaches at Queen s College： Numeracy 101. There, his students of "citizen statistics" learn to a nalyze public information likethe federal budget and corporate reports. Suc h courses, Hacker argues, are a remedy for thenumerical illiteracy of adults who have completed high-level math like algebra but are unableto calculat e the price of, say, a carpet by area.Hacker's argument has met with opposition from other math educators who say what's neededis to help students develop a better relationship with math earlier, rather than teaching themless math altogether.Maria Droujkova is a founder of Natural Math, and has taught basic calculus concepts to 5-year-olds. For Droujkova, high-level math is important, and wh at it could use in Americanclassrooms is an injection of childlike wonder. "Make mathematics more available," Droujkova says."Redesign it so it's more accessible tomore kinds of people: young children, adults who worry about it, adults who may have had badexperiences. " Pamela Harris, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, has a similar p erspective. Harrissays that American education is suffering from an epidemi c of "fake math"一an emphasis onrote memorization (死记硬背）of formulas and steps, rather than an understanding of how mathcan influenc e the ways we see the world.Andrew Hacker, for the record, remains skeptical."I'm going to leave it to those who are in mathematics to work out the ways t o make theirsubject interesting and exciting so students want to take it," Hac ker says."All that I ask is thatalternatives be offered instead of putting all of us on the road to calculus. "46. What does the author say about ordinary Americans?A) They struggle to solve math problems.B) They think math is a complex subject.C) They find high-level math of little use.D) They work hard to learn high-level math.47. What is the general complaint about America's math education according to Hacker?A) America is not doing as well as China.B) Math professors are not doing a good job.C) It doesn't help students develop their literacy.D) There has hardly been any innovation for years.48. What does Andrew Hacker's Numeracy 101 aim to do?A) Allow students to learn high-level math step by step.B) Enable students to make practical use of basic math.C) Lay a solid foundation for advanced math studies.D) Help students to develop their analytical abilities.49. What does Maria Droujkova suggest math teachers do in class?A) Make complex concepts easy to understand.B) Start teaching children math at an early age.C) Help children work wonders with calculus.D) Try to arouse students' curiosity in math.50. What does Pamela Harris think should be the goal of math education?A) To enable learners to understand the world better.B) To help learners to tell fake math from real math.C) To broaden Americans' perspectives on math.D) To exert influence on world development.Passage TwoQuestions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.For years, the U. S. has experienced a shortage of registered nurses. The B ureau of LaborStatistics projects that while the number of nurses will increase by 19 percent by 2022, demandwill grow faster than supply, and that there will be over one million unfilled nursing jobs bythen.So what's the solution? Robots.Japan is ahead of the curve when it comes to this trend. Toyohashi Universit y of Technologyhas developed Terapio, a robotic medical cart that can makehospital rounds, delivermedications and other items, and retrieve records. It follows a specific individual, such as adoctor or nurse, who can use it to reco rd and access patient data. This type of robot will likelybe one of the first to b e implemented in hospitals because it has fairly minimal patient contact.Robots capable of social engagement help with loneliness as well as cogni tive functioning, but the robot itself doesn't have to engage directly—it can s erve as an intermediary for human communication. Telepresence robots suc h as MantaroBot, Vgo, and Giraff can be controlled through a computer, smar tphone, or tablet, allowing family members or doctors to remotelymonitor pati ents or Skype them, often via a screen where the robot's ' face' would be. If youcan't get to the nursing home to visit grandma, you can use a telepresenc e robot to hang outwith her. A 2016 study found that users had a "consisten tly positive attitude" about the Giraffrobot's ability to enhance communicati on and decrease feelings of loneliness.A robot's appearance affects its ability to successfully interact with humans, which is why theRIKEN-TRI Collaboration Center for Human-Interactive Robot Research decided to develop arobotic nurse that looks like a huge teddy bear . RIBA (Robot for Interactive Body Assistance), also known as ‘Robear', can h elp patients into and out of wheelchairs and beds with its strongarms.On the less cute and more scary side there is Actroid F, which is so human-lik e that somepatients may not know the difference. This conversational robot c ompanion has cameras in itseyes, which allow it to track patients and use a ppropriate facial expressions and bodylanguage in its interactions. During a month- long hospital trial, researchers asked 70 patientshow they felt being around the robot and "only three or four said they didn't like having itaround. "It's important to note that robotic nurses don't decide courses of treatment or make diagnoses (though robot doctors and surgeons may not be far off). Ins tead, they perform routine andlaborious tasks, freeing nurses up to attend t o patients with immediate needs. This is oneindustry where it seems the int egration of robots will lead to collaboration, not replacement.51. What does the author say about Japan?A) It delivers the best medications for the elderly.B) It takes the lead in providing robotic care.C) It provides retraining for registered nurses.D) It sets the trend in future robotics technology.52. What do we learn about the robot Terapio?A) It has been put to use in many Japanese hospitals.B) It provides specific individualized care to patients.C) It does not have much direct contact with patients.D) It has not revolutionized medical service in Japan.53. What are telepresence robots designed to do?A) Directly interact with patients to prevent them from feeling lonely.B) Cater to the needs of patients for recovering their cognitive capacity.C) Closely monitor the patients' movements and conditions around the clock.D) Facilitate communication between patients and doctors or family membe rs.54. What is one special feature of the robot Actroid F?A) It interacts with patients just like a human companion.B) It operates quietly without patients realizing its presence.C) It likes to engage in everyday conversations with patients.D) It uses body language even more effectively than words.55. What can we infer from the last paragraph?A) Doctors and surgeons will soon be laid off.B) The robotics industry will soon take off.C) Robots will not make nurses redundant.D) Collaboration will not replace competition.Part IV Translation (30minutes)Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage f rom Chinese intoEnglish. You should write your answer on AnswerSheet 2.中国越来越重视公共图书馆，并鼓励人们充分加以利用。
2018年12月英语六级听力试题答案原文
2018年12月大学生英语六级考试真题卷一（听力部分）PartⅡ Listening Comprehension (30 minutes)Section ADirections: In this section, you will hear two long conversations. At the end of each conversation, you will hear four questions. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose 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 line through the centre.Questions 1 to 4 are based on the conversation you have just heard.1. A) It can benefit professionals and non-professionals alike.B) It lists the various challenges physicists are confronting.C) It describes how some mysteries of physics were solved.D) It is one of the most fascinating physics books ever written.2. A) Physicists’ contribution to humanity.B) Stories about some female physicists.C) Historical evolution of modern physics.D) Women’s changing attitudes to physics.3. A)By exposing a lot of myths in physics.B) By describing her own life experiences.C) By including lots of fascinating knowledge.D) By telling anecdotes about famous professors.4. A) It avoids detailing abstract concepts of physics.B) It contains a lot of thought-provoking questions.C) It demonstrates how they can become physicists.D)It provides experiments they can do themselves.Questions 5 to 8 are based on the conversation you have just heard.5. A) He is too busy to finish his assignment in time.B) He does not know what kid of topic to write on.C) He does not understand the professor’s instructions.D) He has no idea how to proceed with his dissertation.6. A) It is too broad.B) It is outdated.C) It is challenging.D) It is interesting.7. A) Biography.B) Nature.C) Photography.D) Beauty.8. A) Improve his cumulative grade.B) Develop his reading ability.C) Stick to the topic assigned.D) List the parameters first.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 answer from the four choices marked A)，B)，C) and D). Then mark the co rresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 with a single line through the centre.Questions 9 to 11 are based on the passage you have just heard.9. A) The unprecedented high temperature in Greenland.B) The collapse of ice on the northern tip of Greenland.C) The unusual clod spell in the Arctic area in October.D) The rapid change of Arctic temperature within a day.10. A) It has created a totally new climate pattern.B) It will pose a serious threat to many species.C) It typically appears about once every ten years.D) It has puzzled the climate scientists for decades.11. A) Extinction of Arctic wildlife.B) Iceless summers in the Arctic.C) Emigration of indigenous people.D) Better understanding of ecosystems.Questions 12 to 15 are based on the passage you have just heard.12. A) A good start.B) A detailed plan.C) A strong determination.D) A scientific approach.13. A) Most people get energized after a sufficient rest.B) Most people tend to have finite source of energy.C) It is vital to take breaks between demanding mental tasks.D) It is most important to have confidence in one’s willpower.14. A) They could keep on working longer.B) They could do more challenging tasks.C) They found it easier to focus on work at hand.D) They held more positive attitudes toward life.15. A) They are part of their nature.B) They are subject to change.C) They are related to culture.D) They are beyond control.Section CDirections: In this section, you will hear three recordings of lectures or talks followed by three or four questions. The recordings will be played only once. After you hear a question, you must choose 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 line through the centre.Questions 16 to 18 are based on the recording you have just heard.16. A) About half of current jobs might be automated.B) The jobs of doctors and lawyers would be threatened.C) The jobs market is becoming somewhat unpredictable.D) Machine learning would prove disruptive by 2013.17. A) They are widely applicable for massive open online courses.B) They are now being used by numerous high school teachers.C) They could read as many as 10,000 essays in a single minute.D) They could grade high-school essays just like human teacher.18. A) It needs instructions throughout the process.B) It dose poorly on frequency, high-volume tasks.C) It has to rely on huge amounts of previous data.D) It is slow when it comes to tracking novel things.Questions 19 to 21 are based on the recording you have just heard.19. A) The engineering problems with solar power.B) The generation of steam with the latest technology.C) The importance of exploring new energy sources.D) The theoretical aspects of sustainable energy.20. A) Drive trains with solar energy.B) Upgrade the city’s train facilities.C) Build a new ten-kilometre railway line.D) Cut-down the city’s energy consumption.21. A) Build a tank for keeping calcium oxide.B) Find a new material for storing energy.C) Recover super-heated steam.D) Collect carbon dioxide gas.Questions 22 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.22. A) The lack of supervision by both the nation and local government.B) The impact of the current economics crisis at home and abroad.C) The poor management of day centres and home help services.D) The poor relation between national heath and social care services.23. A) It was mainly provided by voluntary services.B) It mainly caters to the need of privileged.C) It called for a sufficient number of volunteers.D) It has deteriorated over the past sixty years.24. A) Their longer lifespans.B) Fewer home helpers available.C) Their preference for private services.D) More of them suffering serious illness.25. A) They are unable to pay for health services.B) They have long been discriminated against.C) They are vulnerable to illness and diseases.D) They have contributed a great deal to society.参考答案1. A) It can benefit professionals and non-professionals alike.2. B) Stories about some female physicists.3. C) By including lots of fascinating knowledge.4. D) It provides experiments they can do themselves.5. D）He has not idea how to proceed with his dissertation.6. A) It is too broad.7. B) Nature.8. C) Stick to the topic assigned.9. A) The unprecedented high temperature in Greenland.10. C) It typiaclly appears about once every ten years.11. B) Iceless summers in the Arctic.12. C) A strong determination.13. D) It is most important to have confidence in one`s willpower.14. A) They could keep on working longer.15. B) They are subject to change.16. A) About half of current jobs might be automated.17. D) They could grade high-school essays just like human teachers.18. C) It has to rely on huge amounts of previous data.19. D) The theoretical aspects of sustainable energy.20. A) Drive trains with solar energy.21. B) Find a new material for storing energy.22. D) The poor relation between national health and social care services.23. A) It was mainly provided by voluntary services.24. C) Their preference for private services.25. B) They have long been discriminated against.听力原文Conversation 1A: Hey, I just read a great book about physics. I think you‘d like it. It’s called the physics of the world. It‘s written by a scientist named Sylvia Mendez.B: Oh, I read that book. It was great. The writer is a warm and competent guide to the mysteries of physics. I think it promises enrichment for any reader from those who know little about science to the career physicist.A: And it‘s refreshing to see a strong curious clever woman adding her voice to the scientific discourse and a field that has been traditionally dominated by men. I think she has to be commended for making an effort to include anecdotes about little known female scientists. You know they were often victims of a generation firmly convinced that the woman’s place was in the home.B: I like how the book is clearly written with each chapter brought to life by pieces of fascinating knowledge. For example in one chapter she exposes a myth that I‘ve heard taught by university physics professors. I’ ve often heard that medieval glass windows are thicker at the bottom because glass flows like a fluid. This, she shows, is not true. The distortion is actually thanks to a peculiarity of the glassmakers process.A: Yeah I like how she cultivates scientific engagement by providing a host of Do It Yourself experiments that bring the same foundational principles of classical physics that govern everything from the solar system to your kitchen table. From using complex laws of physics to test whether a spinning egg is cooked to measuring atmospheric pressure by lifting a piece of cardboard. Her hands-on examples make her book a truly interactive read.B: Yes I must say this a equation-free book is an ideal read for scientists of all stripes, anyone teaching science and even people who dislike physics.Question 1. what does the woman say about the book the man recommended?A) It can benefit professionals and non-professionals alike.Question 2. what can we find in the book the man recommended?B) Stories about some female physicists.Question 3. How does the author bring her book to life?C) By including lots of fascinating knowledge.Question 4. How does the book cultivate readers interest in physics.D)It provides experiments they can do themselves.Conversation 2A: Hi professor. I was hoping I could have a moment of your time if you‘re not too busy. I’m having some problems getting started on my dissertation and I was hoping you could give me some advice on how to begin.B: Sure. I have quite a few students though. So can you remind me what your topic is?A: The general topic I chose is aesthetics, but that’s as far as I’ve got I don‘t really know where to go from there.B: Yeah，that’s much too large a topic. You really need to narrow it down in order to make it more accessible. Otherwise you’ll be writing a book.A: Exactly. That’s what I wanted to ask you about. I was hoping it would be possible for me to change topics. I’m really more interested in nature than beauty.B: I‘m afraid you have to adhere to the assigned topic. Still, If you’re interested in nature, then that certainly can be worked into your dissertation. We‘ve talked about Hume before in class right.A: Oh yeah, he’s the philosopher who wrote about where our ideas of beauty come from.B: Exactly. I suggest you go to the library and get a copy of his biography. Start from there. But remember to stick to the parameters of the assignment. This paper is a large part of your cumulative grade. So make sure to follow the instructions. If you take a look at his biography. You can get a good idea of how his life experiences manifest themselves in his theories of beauty. specifically the way he looked towards nature as the origin of what we find beautiful.A: Great. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, Professor. I‘ll let you get back to class now.B: If there’s anything else you need, please come see me in my office any time.Question 5. What is the man‘s problem?D) He has not idea how to proceed with his dissertation.Question 6. What does the professor think of the man‘s topic?A) It is too broadQuestion 7. What’s the man really more interested in?B) Nature.Question 8. What does the professor say the man has to do?C) Stick to the topic assigned.Passage 1During the arctic winter from October to March, the average temperature in the frozen north typically hovers around minus 20 degrees Celsius. But this year the Arctic is experiencing much higher temperatures. On February the 20th the temperature in Greenland climbed above freezing or zero degrees Celsius and it stayed there for over 24 hours. Then on February the 24th the temperature on Greenland’ s northern tip reached six degrees Celsius. Climate scientists describe the phenomenon as stunning. Weather conditions that drive this bizarre temperature surge have visited the Arctic before. They typically appear about once in a decade. However, the last such increase in temperature took place two years ago. This is troubling as climbing arctic temperatures combined with rapid sea ice loss are creating a new type of climate feedback loop which could accelerate Arctic warming. Indeed, sea ice cover in the Arctic is melting faster than expected. Without those masses of cooling sea ice, warm air brought to the Arctic can penetrate further inland than it ever did before. The air can stay warmer longer too. This drives additional melting. Overall earth is warming at a rapid pace. 2014 through 2017 rank as the hottest years on record and the Arctic is warming twice as fast as any place else on earth. This raises unique challenges for Arctic wildlife and indigenous people who depend on Arctic ecosystems to survive. Previously climate forecasts predicted that Arctic summer ice would disappear entirely by around 2060, but based on what scientists are seeing now the Arctic may be facing summers without ice within 20 years.Question 9. What did climate scientists describe as stunning?A) The unprecedented high temperature in Greenland.Question 10. What does the passage say about that temperature surge in the Arctic?C) It typiaclly appears about once every ten years.Question 11. What may occur in 20 years according to scientists’ recent observations?B) Iceless summers in the Arctic.Passage2A good dose of willpower is often necessary to see any task through whether it’s sticking to a spending plan or finishing a great novel. And if you want to increase that willpower, a new study suggests you just simply have to believe you have it. According to this study, what matters most is what we think about our willpower. If we believe it’s a finite resource, we act that way, we feel exhausted and need breaks between demanding mental tasks. However, people who view their willpower as a limitless resource get energized instead. The researchers used a psychological assessment tool to test the validity of the study. They asked 1100 Americans and 1600 Europeans to grade different statements such as after a challenging mental activity, my energy is depleted and I must rest to get it refueled again or I can focus on a mental task for long periods without feeling tired.Although there was little difference between men and women overall. Americans were more likely to admit to needing breaks after completing mentally challenging tasks European participants on the other hand claimed they were able to keep going. Based on the findings, the researchers suggest that the key to boosting your willpower is to believe that you have an abundant supply of it. Your feelings about your willpower affect the way you behave. But these feelings are changeable, they said. Changing your beliefs about the nature of your self-control can have positive effects on character development. This leads to healthier behaviors and perceptions of other people.Question 12. What is often necessary for carrying through a task?C) A strong determination.Question 13. What is the finding of the new study?D) It is most important to have confidence in one`s willpower.Question 14. What do we learn about European participants as compared with their American counterparts?A) They could keep on working longer.Question 15. What do the research say concerning people‘s feelings about willpower?B) They are subject to change.Lecture 1Here is my baby niece Sarah. Her mum is a doctor and her dad is a lawyer. By the time Sarah goes to college the jobs her parents do are going to look dramatically different. In 2013，researchers at Oxford University did a study on the future of work. They concluded that almost one in every two jobs has a high risk of being automated by machines. Machine learning is the technology that’s responsible for most of this disruption. It’s the most powerful branch of artificial intelligence. It allows machines to learn from data and copy some of the things that humans can do. My company, Kaggle, operates on the cutting edge of machine learning. We bring together hundreds of thousands of experts to solve important problems for industry and academia. This gives us an unique perspective on what machines can do, what they can‘t do and what jobs they might automate or threaten. Machine learning started making its way into industry in the early 90s. It started with relatively simple tasks. It started with things like assessing credit risk from loan applications, sorting the mail by reading handwritten zip codes. Over the past few years, we have made dramatic breakthroughs. Machine learning is now capable of far, far more complex tasks. In 2012, Kaggle challenged its community to build a program that could grade high school essays. The winning programs were able to match the grades given by human teachers. Now given the right data, machines are going to outperform humans at tasks like this. A teacher might read 10000 essays over a 40-year career. A machine can read millions of essays within minutes. We have no chance of competing against machines on frequent high-volume tasks, but there are things we can do that machines cannot. Where machines have made very little progress is in tackling novel situations. Machines can’t handle things they haven’t seen many times before. The fundamental limitation of machine learning is that it needs to learn from large volumes of past data. But humans don’t. We have the ability to connect seemingly different threads to solve problems we’ve never seen before.Question 16. What did the researchers at Oxford University conclude?A) About half of current jobs might be automated.Question 17. What do we learn about Kaggle companies winning programs?D) They could grade high-school essays just like human teachers.Question 18. What is the fundamental limitation on machine learning?C) It has to rely on huge amounts of previous data.Lecture 2We’ve talked recently about the importance of sustainable energy. We’ve also talked about the different theories on how that can be done. So far, our discussions have all been theoretical. Now I have a practical question for you all. Can you run a 140,000 kilogram train on just the steam generated by solar power? Well, one engineer, Tim Casselman, believes it‘s possible. And his home city of Sacramento, California should see the technology’s first test as part of the upgrading of its rail yard. Casselman, who is an inventor and self-proclaimed steam visionary, is campaigning for a new steam train that runs without any fire and could run on an existing 10 kilometer line drawingtourists and perhaps offering city commuters a green alternative to their cars. Casselman wants to build an array of solar magnifying mirrors at one end of the line to collect and focus heat onto water filled tubes. This would generate steam that could be used to fill tanks on a small steam train without the use of fire. Supplying power to trains in this way would offer the shortest distance from well to wheels he says with the least amount of energy lost. According to Harry Valentijn, a Canadian engineer who is researching modern steam technology, a special tank measuring 2 by 10 metres could store over 750 kilowatt hours of energy as high pressure steam enough to pull a two car train for an hour or so. Energy to drive a steam locomotive can be stored in other materials besides water for example a team at Tohoku University in Japan has studied materials that can store large amounts of heat when heated. These materials turn from a solid into a liquid absorbing energy as they change phase. The liquid is maintained above its melting point until steam is required at which point the liquid is allowed to turn back into a solid releasing its stored energy another team at Nagoya University in Japan has tested calcium compound as an energy storage material. Heating this chemical compound drives off carbon dioxide gas leaving calcium oxide the gas can be stored under pressure and attain to recover the energy the gas is fed back over the calcium oxide. In theory says Valentijn this can create a high enough temperature to generate superheated steam.Question 19. What has the speaker previously talked about?D) The theoretical aspects of sustainable energy.Question 20. What is Tim Casselman trying to do in Sacramento?A) Drive trains with solar energy.Question 21. What has a Japanese research team tried to do?B) Find a new material for storing energy.Lecture 3Today’s crisis in care for older people in England has two main causes.First，people are living longer with a lot more complex needs. Second, they rely on a system that has long been marked by a poor relation between national health and social-care services.Current services originate in two key measures. They are the National Health Service and the 1948 National Assistance Act. This required local government to provide residential accommodation for older people and supervise care homes run by independent organizations.They also provided home and community services including meals, day centers and home helpers and other subsidized services. The National Health Service was free and wholly publicly provided. It delivered the best health-care for all. No such vision guided residential and community care though. The care was substantially provided by voluntary services which worked together with local authorities as they long had with eligibility based on income. Today, life expectancy has risen from 66 for a male at birth in 1948 to around 80 now. In addition, there is better overall health and improved medical knowledge and care. This means an unprecedented number of people are surviving longer in conditions requiring expert support. Families provide at least as much care as they ever did. Even so, they can rarely without subsidised support address serious personal needs. Care for older people faced persistent criticism as these trends became apparent. From the early 1960s, local authorities were required to plan health and welfare services. The aim was to enable older people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible, but this increased concern about the lack of coordination between free health and paid-for social care. Through the 1970s, a number of measures sought to improve matter. However at a time of financial crisis, funding diminished and little changed. In the 1980s, the government cut spending. Meanwhile, preference for private over public services made management even more difficult. Simultaneously, the number of sick olderpeople grew. Governments emphasized the need to improve services. They did so though while doing little to stop the erosion of available aid. Services were irregular across authorities. Unless you were prepared to pay, they were increasingly difficult to obtain for any but the most severely disabled. Why has 60 years of criticism produced so little change. Discrimination against older people has a long history. Additionally, those affected by inadequate health and social care are too vulnerable to launch the protests that have addressed other forms of discrimination.Question 22. What is one cause of the current crisis in care for the elderly in England?D) The poor relation between national health and social care services.Question 23. What does the speaker say about residential and community care?A) It was mainly provided by voluntary services.Question 24. What made management of care for the elderly more difficult in the 1980s?C) Their preference for private services.Question 25. What does the speaker say about older people in England?B) They have long been discriminated against.。
2018年12月四六级答案完整版对照
四六级终于考完了很多同学说今年考试很难也有很多同学直接说来年再战为此阿策整理了18年12月四六级答案大家快来对照参考一下吧▽▽▽01四级听力答案Section A1. C) Set up a mobile phone network on the moon.2. A) It is stable.3. B) No injuries were yet reported.4. B) Pull down the deserted shopping mall.5. D) Insufficient potato supply.6. C) It is afraid of the spread of disease.7. A) Global warming.Section B8. C) Dull9. D) she takes notes10. A) it keeps her mind active11. B) it helps her better remember what she learns.12. A) To spend her honeymoon.13. A) In memory of a princess.14. D) It has walls decorated with jewels.15. B) They are mostly crowded.16. C) They provide residents with the resources they need.17. B) By inspiring their creativity.18. D) Their number increased modestly.19. C) It is an unusual cross breed.20. A) They are as loyal as dogs.21. C) They shower with them22. D) Excited but somewhat sad.23. D) It starts the moment they are born.24. D) Set a good example for them to follow.25. B) Their home life.第二套Section A1. A) A man was pulled to safety after a building collapse.2. C) He was collecting building materials.3. B) Change British people’s negative view of math.4. D) Primary school teachers understand basic maths concepts.5. D) He held a part-time job for over 20 years.6. B) He can change his focus of attention.7. C) They rarely recognized him.Section B8. D) They saw a business opportunity there.9. A) Provide foreign investment to expand business.10. C) They all come from Romania.11. B) Throughout the world.12. B) Try out a new restaurant together in town.13. D) It provides information on local events.14. C) They go to eat at different stylish restaurants.15. B) This year’s Restaurant Week will start soon.Section C16. B) Exposing them to vegetables repeatedly.17. A) They were disliked most by children.18. B) Children’s eating habits can be changed.19. D) A lot of garbage has been left on the moon.20. A) It is costly to bring back.21. C) Study the effect of radiation and vacuum on its materials.22. A) It is likely to remain a means of business communication.23. B) Make a timely response.24. C) It requires no reply.25. D) Avoid using capitals for emphasis. 02四级阅读答案选词填空-第一篇26. F damage27. B associated28. M sources29. D constant30. G described31. E control32. H equals33. K regularly34. I exclusively35. O vehicles选词填空-第二篇26. I remedies27. D inconvenience28. H recommended29. C hesitant30. 0 worse31. B experiences32. J scared33. M pressured34. L sink35. E lessen选词填空-第三篇26. I warning27. B convenience28. F particularly29. L surveyed30. C effectively31. E intimate32. J unfriendly33. K specific34. G primary35. A avoid匹配-第一套：36-40 DBGFI 41-45 FCJEG36. More than half of the food Americans eat is factory-produced37. There is a special program that assigns doctors to give advice to shoppers in food stores.38. There is growing evidence from research that food helps patients recover from various illnesses.39. A healthy breakfast can be prepared quickly and easily.40. Training a patient to prepare healthy food can change their life.41. One food-as-medicine program not only prescribes food for treatment but teaches patientshow to cook it.42. Scott is nat keen on cooking food herself thinking it would simply be a waste of time.43. Diabetes patients are advised to eat more plant-based food44. Using food as medicine is no novel idea but the movement is making headway these days.45. Americans high rates of various illesses result from the way they eat.匹配-第二套36-40 FCLEA 41-45 NMDKH36. A research project found bacteria made their way to the food on the floor in five seconds.37. Whether food is contaminated depends much on the number of bacteria that get onto it.38. Food contamination may result from various factors other than food dropping on the floor39. Males are less likely than females to eat focd that may have been contaminated.40. The author's research centers around how faod gets contaminated.41. Keeping everything clean is the best way to stay healthy.42. Chances are you will not fall sick because of eating food picked up from the floor.43. For a long time people have had the experience of deciding whether or not to eat food pickedup from the floor.44. Some strains of bacteria are so harmful that a tiny few can have deadly consequences.45. Researchers found how manv bacteria got into the food did not have much to do with howlong the food stayed on a contaminated floor.匹配-第三套36-40 GMFCE DAHKB36. Careme was among the first chefs who stressed both the appearance and flavor of dishes.37. Careme wanted to show to later generations that French chefs of his time were most world.38. Careme benefited greatly from serving a French diplomat and his connections.39. Careme learned his trade frorm a farmous dessert chef in Paris.40. Careme's creative works were exhibited in the shop windows by his master.41. Careme's knowledge of art and architecture helped him create extraordinary desserts outofordinary ingredient.42. Many people in Paris were eager ta have a look at the latest sweet food made by Care.43. Careme became extremely wealthy by cooking for rich and socially ambitious families.44. Careme's writing dealt with fundamental cooking principles in a systematic way.45. Careme's contribution to French cooking was revolutionary.仔细阅读-第一套46. How could california's drought crisis be solved according to some researchers？B - By drawing water from the depths of the earth47. What can be inferred about extracting water from deep aquifers?B - It was not considered worth the expense48. What is mentioned as a consequence of extracting water from deep underground?A - The sinking of land surface49. What does the author say about deep wells?D - They provide a steady supply of freshwater50. What may happen when deep aquiters are used as water sources?C - The cost may go up due to desalination.51. What does the author want to show with the example of AlphaGo's victory?D - Computers can become highly inelilence52. What does the author 'mean by Al machines acting ethically?C - They make sensible decisions when facing moral dilemmas.53. What is said to be the bigger challenges facing humans in the AI age?B - How to ensure that super- intllient AI machines act ethically.54. What do we learn about Microsoft's 'chatbot' Taylor?A - She could not distinguish good from bad.55. What does Eric Schmidt think of artificial intlligence?D - It will be here to stay whatever the outcome.仔细阅读-第二套46. What do we learn from a newly published study about cats?C - They have a natural ability to locate animais they hunt.47. What may account for the cats' response to the noise from the containers?D - Their mastery of cause and effect48. What is characteristic of the way cats hunt, according to the Japanese researchers?B - They rely mainly on their hearing.49. In what way do babies behave like cats?A - They focus on what appears odd.50. What can we conclude about cats from the passage?B - They interact with the physical world much like humans.51. What would be the impact of the extensive use of driveress cars?A - People would be driving in a more civilized way.52. How would the elderly and the disabled benefit from driverless cars?A - They could enjoy greater mobility53. What would be the negative impact of driveress cars?D - Numerous professional drivers would have to find new ways of earning a living.54. What is the result of the introduction of new technologies in energy industries?B - Retaining of employees.55. What does the author suggest businesses and the govemment do?C - Enable everyone to benefit from new technologies.仔细阅读-第三套46. For what reason may your friends feel reluctant to visit your home?A - The security camera installde may intrude into their privacy47. What does Lizzie Post say is new teritory?D - Etiquette around home security cameras.48. What is Lizzie Post mainly discussing with regard to the use of home security cameras?C - Likes and dislikes of individuals.49. What is a host's responsibility regarding security cameras, according to Lizzie Post?A - Making their guests feel at ease.50. In what way can the home security camera benefit visitors to your home?B - It can prove their innocence.51. Why is PepsiCo making a policy change?C - to satisfy the growing needs for healthy foods.52. What does PepsiCo think it will have to do in the future?D - Keep on improving its products.53. Why does PepsiCo plan to alter its products. according to Indra Nooyi?A - To ensure the company's future development54. What does Indra Nooyi say about the obesity epidemic?C - it is atributable to people's changed lifestyles.55. What has PepsiCo been doing to achieve its objective?B - Increasing its research funding.03四级翻译答案翻译-第一套由于通信网络的快速发展，中国智能手机用户数量近年来以惊人度增长。
2018年12月大学英语六级真题试卷(二)(题后含答案及解析)
2018年12月大学英语六级真题试卷（二）(题后含答案及解析)题型有：1. Writing 2. Listening Comprehension 3. Reading Comprehension 4. TranslationPart I Writing1．For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on how to balance job responsibilities and personal interests. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.正确答案：How to Balance Job Responsibilities and Personal Interests When it comes to the issue of how to balance job responsibilities and personal interests, the majority of people will be confused. Since both of them have a significant impact on our life, then how to strike a balance between the two. Here are my views. On the one hand, we should attach primary importance to job responsibilities, as our job can provide us regular income with which we can live the life we like. Besides, now that we’ve taken this job, we should regard it as our mission and be conscientious about it. On the other hand, important as it is, job is not everything of our life. It’ s also necessary for us to spend due time on our personal interests, so that we can take a rest from work. What’ s more, whether we can develop our personal interests also has a great effect on our life quality. All in all, it is high time that we placed great emphasis on the balance of job responsibilities and personal interests. We are supposed to ensure the time to develop our interests on the condition of finishing our job.解析：这是一篇议论文写作，话题是如何平衡工作责任与个人兴趣。
2018年12月英语六级听力原文
2018年12月英语六级听力原文Conversation 11. Q: what does the woman say about the book the man recommended?原文：Oh I read that book. It was great. The writer is a warm and competent guide to the mysteries of physics. I think it promises enrichment for any reader from those who know little about science to the career physicist.答案：D. It can benefit professional and non-professionals alke.解析：通过benefit关键词入手.2. Q: what can we find in the book the man recommended?答案：A. Stories about some female physicists.3. Q: How does the author bring her book to life?原文I like how the book is clearly written with each chapter brought to life by pieces of fascinating knowledge.答案：B. By including lots of fascinating knowledge.解析：通过选项信号词by得知,需听原文或by直接重现或听一个方式.4. Q: How does the book cultivate readers interest in physics?原文：Yeah I like how she cultivates scientific engagement by providing a host of Do It Yourself experiments that bring the same foundational principles of classical physics that govern everything from the solar system to your kitchen table.答案：C. It provides experiment they can do themselves解析：视听一致,通过experiment定位选项.Conversation 25. Q：What is the man‘s problem?原文: A：the general topic I chose is aesthetics, but that‘s as far as I’ve got I don‘t really know where to go from there.答案：A. He has no idea how to proceed with his dissertation.6. Q: What does the professor think of the man‘s topic?原文：B：Yeah, that‘s much too large a topic. You really need to narrow it down in order to make it more accessible. Otherwise you’ll be writing a book.答案：C. It is too board.7 .Q: What’s the man really more interested in?原文：I’m really more interested in nature than beauty.答案：B. Nature8.Q: what does the professor say the man has to do?原文：I‘m afraid you have to adhere to the assigned topic答案：Stick to the topic assigned.Passage 19. What did climate scientists describe as stunning?原文：Then on February the 24th the temperature on Greenland‘s northern tip reached six degrees Celsius. Climate scientists describe the phenomenon as stunning.答案：A. The unprecedented high temperature in Greenland.10.Q: What does the passage say about that temperature surge in the Arctic?答案：A. It typically appears about once every ten years.11.Q: what may occur in 20 years according to scientists’recent observations?原文：Previously climate forecasts predicted that Arctic summer ice would disappear entirely by around 2060, but based on what scientists are seeing now the Arctic may be facing summers without ice within 20 years.答案：C. iceless summers in the Arctic.Passage 212. Q:What is often necessary for carrying through a task?答案：D. A strong determination13. Q: What is the finding of the new study?答案：B. It is vital to take breaks between demanding mental tasks.14.Q: What do we learn about European participants as compared with their American counterparts?原文：They asked 1100 Americans and 1600 Europeans to grade different statements such as after a challenging mental activity, my energy is depleted and I must rest to get it refueled again or I can focus on a mental task for long periods without feeling tired.Although there was little difference between men and women overall. Americans were more likely to admit to needing breaks after completing mentally challenging tasks European participants on the other hand claimed they were able to keep going答案：D. They could keep on working longer.15. Q: What do the research say concerning people‘s feelings about willpower?答案：A. They are subject to change.Lecture 116. Q:what did the researchers at Oxford University conclude?原文：In 2013, researchers at Oxford University did a study on the future of work. They concluded that almost one in every two jobs has a high risk of being automated by machines. Machine learning is the technology that‘s responsible for most of this disrup tion. It’s the most powerful branch of artificial intelligence. It allows machines to learn from data and copy some of the things that humans can do.答案：A. About half of current jobs might be automated.17. Q: What do we learn about Kaggle companies winning programs?原文：In 2012, Kaggle challenged its community to build a program that could grade high school essays. The winning programs were able to match the grades given by human teachers.答案：D. They could grade high-school essays just like human teachers.18. Q: What is the fundamental limitation on machine learning?原文：The fundamental limitation of machine learning is that it needs to learn from large volumes of past data. But humans don’t. We have the ability to connect seemingly different threads to solve problems we‘ve never seen before.答案：C. It has to rely on huge amounts of previous data.Lecture 219. Q:What has the speaker previously talked about?原文：we‘ve talked recently about the importance of sustainable energy. We’ve also talked about the different theories on how that can be done. So far, our discussions have all been theoretical.答案：D. The theoretical aspects of sustainable energy.20. Q: What is Tim Casselman trying to do in Sacramento?原文：Well, one engineer, Tim Casselman, believes it‘s possible. And his home city of Sacramento, California should see the technology’s first test as part of the upgrading of its rail yard. Casselman, who is an inventor and self-proclaimed steam visionary, is campaigning for a new steam train that runs without any fire and could run on an existing 10 kilometer line drawing tourists and perhaps offering city commuters a green alternative to their cars. Casselman wants to build an array of solar magnifying mirrors at one end of the line to collect and focus heat onto water filled tubes.答案：A. Drive train with solar energy,21. Q:what has a Japanese research team tried to do?原文：University in Japan has studied materials that can store large amounts of heat when heated. These materials turn from a solid into a liquid absorbing energy as they change phase. The liquid is maintained above its melting point until steam is required at which point the liquid is allowed to turn back into a solid releasing its stored energy another team at Nagoya University in Japan has tested calcium compound as an energy storage material. Heating this chemical compound drives off carbon dioxide gas leaving calcium oxide the gas can be stored under pressure and attain to recover the energy the gas is fed back over the calcium oxide. In theory says Valentijn this can create a high enough temperature to generate superheated steam.答案：B. Find a new material for storing energy.Lecture 322. Q:what is one cause of the current crisis in care for the elderly in England?原文：First, people are living longer with a lot more complex needs. Second, they rely on asystem that has long been marked by a poor relation between national health and social-careservices.答案：D. The poor relation between national health and social care services.23. Q: What does the speaker say about residential and community care?原文：The care was substantially provided by voluntary services which worked together with local authorities as they long had with eligibility based on income.答案：A. It was mainly provided be voluntary services.24. Q: What made management of care for the elderly more difficult in the 1980s?答案：B. Their reference for private services.25.Q:What does the speaker say about older people in England?原文：Why has 60 years of criticism produced so little change. Discrimination against older people has a long history. Additionally, those affected by inadequate health and social care are too vulnerable to launch the protests that have addressed other forms of discrimination.答案：C. They have long been discriminated against.听力原文六级听力conversation 1Hey I just read a great book about physics. I think you‘d like it. It’s called the physics of the world. It‘s written by a scientist named Sylvia Mendez.Oh I read that book. It was great. The writer is a warm and competent guide to the mysteries of physics. I think it promises enrichment for any reader from those who know little about science to the career physicist.And it‘s refreshing to see a strong curious clever woman adding her voice to the scientific discourse and a field that has been traditionally dominated by men. I think she has to be commended for making an effort to include anecdotes about little known female scientists.You know they were often victims of a generation firmly convinced that the woman’s place was in the home.I like how the book is clearly written with each chapter brought to life by pieces of fascinating knowledge. For example in one chapter she exposes a myth that I‘ve heard taught by university physics professors. I’ve often heard that medieval glass windows are thicker at the bottom because glass flows like a fluid. This, she shows, is not true. The distortion is actually thanks to a peculiarity of the glassmakers process.Yeah I like how she cultivates scientific engagement by providing a host of Do It Yourself experiments that bring the same foundational principles of classical physics that govern everything from the solar system to your kitchen table. From using complex laws of physics to test whether a spinning egg is cooked to measuring atmospheric pressure by lifting a piece of cardboar, Her hands-on examples make her book a truly interactive read.Yes I must say this a equation-free book is an ideal read for scientists of all stripes, anyone teaching science and even people who dislike physics.Question 1：what does the woman say about the book the man recommended?Question 2：what can we find in the book the man recommended?Question 3：How does the author bring her book to life?Question 4：How does the book cultivate readers interest in physics?conversation 2A：Hi professor. I was hoping I could have a moment of your time if you‘re not too busy. I’m having some problems getting started on my dissertation and I was hoping you could give me some advice on how to begin.B：Sure. I have quite a few students though. So can you remind me what your topic is?A：the general topic I chose is aesthetics, but that‘s as far as I’ve got I don‘t really know where to go from there.B：Yeah, that‘s much too large a topic. You really need to narrow it down in order to make it more accessible. Otherwise you’ll be writing a book.A：Exactly. That‘s what I wanted to ask you about. I was hoping it would be possible for me to change topics. I’m really more interested in nature than beauty.B：I‘m afraid you have to adhere to the assigned topic. Still, If you’re interested in nature, then that certainly can be worked into your dissertation. We‘ve talked about Hume before in class right.A：Oh yeah, he‘s the philosopher who wrote about where our ideas of beauty come from.B：Exactly. I suggest you go to the library and get a copy of his biography. Start from there. But remember to stick to the parameters of the assignment. This paper is a large part of your cumulative grade. So make sure to follow the instructions. If you take a look at his biography. You can get a good idea of how his life experiences manifest themselves in his theories of beauty. specifically the way he looked towards nature as the origin of what we find beautiful.A：Great. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, Professor. I‘ll let you get back to class now.B：If there‘s anything else you need, please come see me in my office any time.Question 5：What is the man‘s problem?Question 6 What does the professor think of the man‘s topic?Question 7 What’s the man really more interested in?Question 8 what does the professor say the man has to do?passage 1During the arctic winter from October to March, the average temperature in the frozen north typically hovers around minus 20 degrees Celsius. But this year the Arctic is experiencing much higher temperatures. On February the 20th the temperature in Greenland climbed above freezing or zero degrees Celsius and it stayed there for over 24 hours. Then on February the 24th the temperature on Greenland‘s northern tip reached six degrees Celsius. Climate scientists describe the phenomenon as stunning. Weather conditions that drive this bizarre temperature surge have visited the Arctic before. They typically appear about once in a decade. However, the last such increase in temperature took place two years ago. This is troubling as climbing arctic temperatures combined with rapid sea ice loss are creating a new type of climate feedback loop which could accelerate Arctic warming. Indeed, sea ice cover in the Arctic is melting faster than expected. Without those masses of cooling sea ice, warm air brought to the Arctic can penetrate further inland than it ever did before. The air can stay warmer longer too. This drives additional melting. Overall earth is warming at a rapid pace. 2014 through 2017 rank as the hottest years on record and the Arctic is warming twice as fast as any place else on earth. This raises unique challengesfor Arctic wildlife and indigenous people who depend on Arctic ecosystems to survive. Previously climate forecasts predicted that Arctic summer ice would disappear entirely by around 2060, but based on what scientists are seeing now the Arctic may be facing summers without ice within 20 years.Question 9.What did climate scientists describe as stunning?A) The unprecedented high temperature in Greenland.Question 10. What does the passage say about that temperature surge in the Arctic?Question 11. what may occur in 20 years according to scientists’recent observations?Passage2A good dose of willpower is often necessary to see any task through whether it‘s sticking to a spending plan or finishing a great novel. And if you want to increase that willpower. A new study suggests you just simply have to believe you have it. According to this study, what matters most is what we think about our willpower. If we bel ieve it’s a finite resource, we act that way, we feel exhausted and need breaks between demanding mental tasks. However, people who view their willpower as a limitless resource get energized instead. The researchers used a psychological assessment tool to test the validity of the study. They asked 1100 Americans and 1600 Europeans to grade different statements such as after a challenging mental activity, my energy is depleted and I must rest to get it refueled again or I can focus on a mental task for long periods without feeling tired.[00：01：08] Although there was little difference between men and women overall. Americans were more likely to admit to needing breaks after completing mentally challenging tasks European participants on the other hand claimed they were able to keep going. Based on the findings, the researchers suggest that the key to boosting your willpower is to believe that you have an abundant supply of it. Your feelings about your willpower affect the way you behave. But these feelings are changeable, they said. Changing your beliefs about the nature of your self-control can have positive effects on character development. This leads to healthier behaviors and perceptions of other people.Question 12 What is often necessary for carrying through a task?Question 13 What is the finding of the new study?Question 14 What do we learn about European participants as compared with their American counterparts?Question 15 What do the research say concerning people‘s feelings about willpower?lecture 1Here is my baby niece Sarah. Her mum is a doctor and her dad is a lawyer. By the time Sarah goes to college the jobs her parents do are going to look dramatically different. In 2013,researchers at Oxford University did a study on the future of work. They concluded that almost one in every two jobs has a high risk of being automated by machines. Machine learning is the technology that‘s responsible for most of this disruption. It’s the most powerful branch of artificial intelligence. It allows machines to learn from data and copy some of the things that humans can do. My company, Kaggle, operates on the cutting edge of machine learning. We bring together hundreds of thousands of experts to solve important problems for industry and academia. This gives us an unique perspective on what machines can do, what they can‘t do and what jobs they might automate or threaten. Machine learning started making its way into industry in the early 90s. It started with relatively simple tasks. It started with things like assessing credit risk from loan applications, sorting the mail by reading handwritten zip codes. Over the past few years, we have made dramatic breakthroughs. Machine learning is now capable of far, far more complex tasks. In 2012, Kaggle challenged its community to build a program that could grade high school essays. The winning programs were able to match the grades given by human teachers. Now given the right data, machines are going to outperform humans at tasks like this. A teacher might read 10000 essays over a 40-year career. A machine can read millions of essays within minutes. We have no chance of competing against machines on frequent high-volume tasks, but there are things we can do that machines cannot. Where machines have made very little progress is in tackling novel situations. Machines can’t handle things they haven‘t seen many times before. The fundamental limitation of machine learning is that it needs to learn from large volumes of past data. But humans don’t. We have the ab ility to connect seemingly different threads to solve problems we‘ve never seen before.Question 16. what did the researchers at Oxford University conclude?Question 17. What do we learn about Kaggle companies winning programs?Question 18. What is the fundamental limitation on machine learning?lecture 2we‘ve talked recently about the importance of sustainable energy. We’ve also talked about the different theories on how that can be done. So far, our discussions have all been theoretical. Now I have a practical question for you all. Can you run a 140,000 kilogram train on just the steam generated by solar power? Well, one en gineer, Tim Casselman, believes it‘s possible. And his home city of Sacramento, California should see the technology’s first test as part of the upgrading of its rail yard. Casselman, who is an inventor and self-proclaimed steam visionary, is campaigning for a new steam train that runs without any fire and could run on an existing 10 kilometer line drawing tourists and perhaps offering city commuters a green alternative to their cars. Casselman wants to build an array of solar magnifying mirrors at one end of the line to collect and focus heat onto water filled tubes. This would generate steam that could be used to filltanks on a small steam train without the use of fire. Supplying power to trains in this way would offer the shortest distance from well to wheels he says with the least amount of energy lost. According to Harry Valentijn, a Canadian engineer who is researching modern steam technology, a special tank measuring 2 by 10 metres could store over 750 kilowatt hours of energy as high pressure steam enough to pull a two car train for an hour or so. Energy to drive a steam locomotive can be stored in other materials besides water for example a team at Tohoku University in Japan has studied materials that can store large amounts of heat when heated. These materials turn from a solid into a liquid absorbing energy as they change phase. The liquid is maintained above its melting point until steam is required at which point the liquid is allowed to turn back into a solid releasing its stored energy another team at Nagoya University in Japan has tested calcium compound as an energy storage material. Heating this chemical compound drives off carbon dioxide gas leaving calcium oxide the gas can be stored under pressure and attain to recover the energy the gas is fed back over the calcium oxide. In theory says Valentijn this can create a high enough temperature to generate superheated steam.Question 19：What has the speaker previously talked about?Question 20：What is Tim Casselman trying to do in Sacramento?Question 21：what has a Japanese research team tried to do?Lecture 3Today‘s crisis in care for older people in England has two main causes.First,people are living longer with a lot more complex needs. Second, they rely on a system that has long been marked by a poor relation between national health and social-care services.Current services originate in two key measures. They are the National Health Service and the 1948 National Assistance Act. This required local government to provide residential accommodation for older people and supervise care homes run by independent organizations.They also provided home and community services including meals, day centers and home helpers and other subsidized services. The National Health Service was free and wholly publicly provided. It delivered the best health-care for all. No such vision guided residential and community care though. The care was substantially provided by voluntary services which worked together with local authorities as they long had with eligibility based on income. Today, life expectancy has risen from 66 for a male at birth in 1948 to around 80 now. In addition, there is better overall health and improved medical knowledge and care. This means an unprecedented number of people are surviving longer in conditions requiring expert support. Families provide at least as much care as they ever did. Even so, they can rarely without subsidised support address serious personal needs. Care for older people faced persistent criticism as these trends became apparent. From the early 1960s, local authorities were required to plan health and welfare services. The aim was to enable older people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible, but thisincreased concern about the lack of coordination between free health and paid-for social care. Through the 1970s, a number of measures sought to improve matter. However at a time of financial crisis, funding diminished and little changed. In the 1980s, the government cut spending. Meanwhile, preference for private over public services made management even more difficult. Simultaneously, the number of sick older people grew. Governments emphasized the need to improve services. They did so though while doing little to stop the erosion of available aid. Services were irregular across authorities. Unless you were prepared to pay, they were increasingly difficult to obtain for any but the most severely disabled. Why has 60 years of criticism produced so little change. Discrimination against older people has a long history. Additionally, those affected by inadequate health and social care are too vulnerable to launch the protests that have addressed other forms of discrimination.Question 22 what is one cause of the current crisis in care for the elderly in England?Question 23. What does the speaker say about residential and community care?Question 24. What made management of care for the elderly more difficult in the 1980s?Question 25. What does the speaker say about older people in England?。
2018年12月英语六级考试真题试卷附答案(完整版第3套)
2018年12月英语六级考试真题试卷附答案(完整版第3套)2018年12月英语六级考试真题试卷附答案(完整版第3套)※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※Section I Use of EnglishDirections:Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by extreme weather. I could sit for hours watching __1__ form or snowstorms take shape on radar (雷达). This passion for weather has __2__ me to pursue a degree in meteorology (气象学) and __3__ me to go to great lengths to fulfill my dream job of becoming a storm chaser.As an intern with a local meteorological office, I would assist meteorologists in data collection and analysis. But I __4__ hoped to be invited along as the third person on a storm chasing team before the __5__ of the summer.1. A. thunderstorms B. snowflakes C. raindropsD. fog2. A. invited B. driven C. limitedD. challenged3. A. forced B. urged C. inspiredD. allowed4. A. eventually B. insincerely C. frequentlyD. fiercely5. A. temperature B. appointment C. arrival D. beginningSection II Reading Comprehension Part ADirections:Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)Text 1The measures taken by countries around the world in recent years to cut greenhouse gas emissions have fallen well short of what is needed to avoid dangerous climate change, according to research led by the International Energy Agency. The study indicates that global emissions have risen 65% since 1990, but estimates that a decrease of 51% by 2030 is needed to limit warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The research also found that the number of people without electricity access in the developing world fell to 1billion for the first time last year, but that population growth could enable this to rise again. It concluded that countries must increase their use of renewable energy to meet climate targets.6. What does the research conducted by the International Energy Agency find?A. Countries worldwide have successfully reduced greenhouse gas emissions.B. Worldwide measures on greenhouse gas emissions have fallen shortof the target.C. Global emissions have declined 65% since 1990.D. The earth is unlikely to warm 2°C by 2030.7. What does the International Energy Agency suggest countries to do to meet climate targets?A. Cut greenhouse gas emissions by 65%.B. Limit warming to 2°C above industrial levels.C. Increase the use of renewable energy.D. Reduce population growth in developing countries.Text 2American drivers who want to save on their gas bills should take a good look at the country's pump prices. Although they are cheap compared with many other countries ― around half the cost in much of Europe ― they still vary widely across America, which is costing some drivers thousands ofdollars each year. The differences can be explained by a combination of tax rates, transport costs and government environmental compliance regulations. Some of the key factors affecting the prices are outlined below.- Tax rates: Each state has different rates of tax on gasoline. Federal taxes account for 18.4 cents per gallon.- Transport costs: Remote areas often have higher fuel prices due to the high cost of transporting it there.- Environmental regulations: Federal regulations require at least 10% ethanol (乙醇) to be added to the gasoline supply. However, the target is harder to meet in some regions due to a lack of refineries and pipelines.8. Why is gasoline cheaper in America than in Europe?A. Gasoline is taxed less in America.B. Transport costs are lower in America.C. Environmental regulations are stricter in America.D. There are more refineries and pipelines in America.9. What does the underlined word "outlined" in the second paragraph mean?A. DrawnB. DiscussedC. AnalyzedD. DesiredText 3Sofia Coppola, the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, was born into a film-making family on May 14, 1971 in New York City. She made her screen debut in 1972's "The Godfather" when she was an infant, playing thebaby being christened (给...施洗礼) in the climatic Baptism (施洗礼) Massacre (大屠杀) sequence (片段). As a girl she didn't want to become an actress, citing an aversion (厌恶) to the trappings (陷阱) of the movie business. There was also the fact that her parents divorced when she was 3 years old (leading to her mother's going off to live in France and Sofia's living with her father in northern California).She studied Fine Art at the prestigious California Institute of Arts in Los Angeles, preferring painting to film-making, but also making an experimental short, "Bed Demon," in her spare time. This attracted the attention of George Lucas, who hired her to work on the final chapter of "Star Wars," "Return of the Jedi." During the production of the film, she met Spike Jonze, a director who shared her love of fashion and pop music. They were married at the tender age of 27, but soon separated because, some say, her fame eclipsed (使黯然失色) his.10. When did Sofia Coppola appear in "The Godfather"?A. In 1971.B. When she was an infant.C. When she was 3 years old.D. In the climatic sequence of the film.11. Why did Sofia Coppola study Film Art?A. She wanted to be an actress.B. She was inspired by her family.C. She wanted to be a director.D. She preferred painting to film-making.。
2018年12月英语六级考试听力真题及答案
2018年12月英语六级考试听力真题及答案1。
A）It can benefit professionals and non-professionals alike。
2。
B）Stories about some female physicists。
3。
C）By including lots of fascinating knowledge。
4。
D）It provides experiments they can do themselves。
5。
D）He has not idea how to proceed with his dissertation。
6。
A）It is too broad。
7。
B）Nature。
8。
C）List the parameters first。
9。
A）The unprecedented high temperature in Greenland。
10。
C）It typiaclly appears about once every ten years。
11。
B）Iceless summers in the Arctic。
12。
C）A strong determination。
13。
D）It is most important to have confidence in one`s willpower。
14。
A）They could keep on working longer。
15。
B）They are subject to change。
16。
A）About half of current jobs might be automated。
17。
D）They could grade high-school essays just like human teachers。
18。
C）It has to rely on huge amounts of previous data。
18年12月六级听力第二套原文
18年12月六级听力第二套原文Section AConversation OneW: Hi, could you tell me what you’ve been up to since welast met?M: Sure, I started my own business.W: That's wonderful! What kind of business is it?M: I'm helping companies develop better products and services by testing their ideas with customers.W: Interesting. So how did you come up with the idea?M: Well, I was working with a company as an intern, and I saw an opportunity to create a better product for their customers. So I decided to start my own consulting business.Conversation TwoW: Hi, Jim. Have you finished packing for your trip yet?M: Not quite. I still have to buy some snacks and drinks for the flight.W: Did you remember your passport?M: Yeah, I checked that off my list already.W: What about your camera and charger?M: Yep, they're all packed and ready to go.Section BPassage OneGlobal warming is one of the most urgent problems facing humanity today. Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, trapping heat and warming the planet. Scientists estimate that global temperatures will increase by at leasttwo degrees Celsius by the end of this century, withpotentially devastating consequences for human civilization and the environment. To avoid these dangerous consequences, countries around the world have committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.Passage TwoMany people believe that the best way to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels is by utilizing renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Renewable energy is energy that can be generated from natural sources and does not deplete over time. Unlike fossil fuels, it does not release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming. Additionally, renewable energy sources are generally cheaper to produce and more reliable thantraditional sources of energy. As a result, governments around the world are investing heavily in renewable energy research and development.。
2018年12月英语六级听力真题及答案第1套
unpredictable
.
D) Machine learning would prove
disruptive by 2013.
17. A) They are widely
applicable for massive open online courses.
B) They are now being used by
recording you have just heard.
16. A) About half of
current jobs might be automated.
B) The jobs of doctors and lawyers would be threatened.
C) The job market is becoming somewhat
Section C Directions: In this section, you will hear three recordings of lectures or talks followedby three or four qu
estions. The recordings will be played only once. After you hear aquestion, you must choose the best ans
24. A) Their longer lifespans.
B) Fewer home helpers
available .
C) Their preference for private services.
D) More of them suffering serious illnesses.
-
2018年12月六级英语听力原文第一套
2018年12月六级英语听力原文（完整版）Conversation 1A: Hey I just read a great book about physics. I think you’d like it. It’s called the physics of the world. It‘s written by a scientist named Sylvia Mendez.B: Oh I read that book. It was great. The writer is a warm and competent guide to the mysteries of physics. I think it promises enrichment for any reader from those who know little about science to the career physicist.A: And it‘s refreshing to see a strong curious clever woman adding her voice to the scientific discourse and a field that has been traditionally dominated by men. I think she has to be commended for making an effort to include anecdotes about little known female scientists. You know they were often victims of a generation firmly convinced that the woman’s place was in the home.B: I like how the book is clearly written with each chapter brought to life by pieces of fascinating knowledge. For example in one chapter she exposes a myth that I‘ve heard taught by university physics professors. I’ve often heard that medieval glass windows are thicker at the bottom because glass flows like a fluid. This, she shows, is not true. The distortion is actually thanks to a peculiarity of the glassmakers process.A: Yeah I like how she cultivates scientific engagement by providing a host of Do It Yourself experiments that bring the same foundational principles of classical physics that govern everything from the solar system to your kitchen table. From using complex laws of physicsto test whether a spinning egg is cooked to measuring atmospheric pressure by lifting a piece of cardboard. Her hands-on examples make her book a truly interactive read.B: Yes, I must say this, a equation-free book is an ideal read for scientists of all stripes, anyone teaching science and even people who dislike physics.Question 1: What does the woman say about the book the man recommended? Question 2: What can we find in the book the man recommended?Question 3: How does the author bring her book to life?Question 4: How does the book cultivate readers interest in physics.Conversation 2A:Hi professor. I was hoping I could have a moment of your time if you‘re not too busy. I’m having some problems getting started on my dissertation and I was hoping you could give me some advice on how to begin.B:Sure. I have quite a few students though.So can you remind me what your topic is?A:The general topic I chose is aesthetics, but that‘s as far as I’ve got I don‘t really know where to go from there.B:Yeah, that‘s much too large a topic. You really need to narrow it down in order to make it more accessible. Otherwise you’ll be writing a book.A:Exactly. That‘s what I wanted to ask you about. I was hoping it would be possible for me to change topics. I’m really more interested in nature than beauty.B:I‘m afraid you have to adhere to the assigned topic. Still, If you’re interested in nature, then that certainly can be worked into your dissertation. We‘ve talked about Hume before in class right.A:Oh yeah, he‘s the philosopher who wrote about where our ideas of beauty come from. B:Exactly. I suggest you go to the library and get a copy of his biography. Start from there. But remember to stick to the parameters of the assignment. This paper is a large part of your cumulative grade. So make sure to follow the instructions. If you take a look at his biography. You can get a good idea of how his life experiences manifest themselves in his theories of beauty, specifically the way he looked towards nature as the origin of what we find beautiful.A:Great. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, Professor. I‘ll let you get back to class now.B:If there‘s anything else you need, please come see me in my office any time. Question 5: What is the man‘s problem?Question 6: What does the professor think of the man‘s topic?Question 7: What’s the man really more interested in?Question 8: What does the professor say the man has to do?Passage 1During the arctic winter from October to March, the average temperature in the frozen north typically hovers around minus 20 degrees Celsius. But this year the Arctic is experiencing much higher temperatures. On February the 20th the temperature in Greenland climbed above freezing or zero degrees Celsius and it stayed there for over 24 hours. Then on February the 24th the temperature on Greenland‘s northern tip reached six degrees Celsius. Climate scientists describe the phenomenon as stunning. Weather conditions that drive this bizarre temperature surge have visited the Arctic before. They typically appear about once in a decade. However, the last such increase in temperature took place two years ago. This is troubling as climbing arctic temperatures combined with rapid sea ice loss are creating a new type of climate feedback loop which could accelerate Arctic warming. Indeed, sea ice cover in the Arctic is melting faster than expected. Without those masses of cooling sea ice, warm air brought to the Arctic can penetrate further inland than it ever did before. The air can stay warmer longer too. This drives additional melting. Overall earth is warming at a rapid pace. 2014 through 2017 rank as the hottest years on record and the Arctic is warming twice as fast as any place else on earth. This raises unique challenges for Arctic wildlife and indigenous people who depend on Arctic ecosystems to survive. Previously climate forecasts predicted that Arctic summer ice would disappear entirely by around 2060, but based on what scientists are seeing now the Arctic may be facing summers without ice within 20 years.Question 9: What did climate scientists describe as stunning?Question 10: What does the passage say about that temperature surge in the Arctic? Question 11: What may occur in 20 years according to scientists’recent observations? Passage 2A good dose of willpower is often necessary to see any task through whether it‘s sticking to a spending plan or finishing a great novel. And if you want to increase that willpower. A new study suggests you just simply have to believe you have it. According to this study, what matters most is what we think about our willpower. If we believe it’s a finite resource, we act that way, we feel exhausted and need breaks between demanding mental tasks. However, people who view their willpower as a limitless resource get energized instead. The researchers used a psychological assessment tool to test the validity of the study. They asked 1100 Americans and 1600 Europeans to grade different statements such as after a challenging mental activity, my energy is depleted and I must rest to get it refueled again or I can focus on a mental task for long periods without feeling tired.Although there was little difference between men and women overall. Americans were more likely to admit to needing breaks after completing mentally challenging tasks European participants on the other hand claimed they were able to keep going. Based on the findings, the researchers suggest that the key to boosting your willpower is to believe that you have an abundant supply of it. Your feelings about your willpower affect the way you behave. But these feelings are changeable, they said. Changing your beliefs about the nature of your self-control can have positive effects on character development. This leads to healthier behaviors and perceptions of other people.Question 12: What is often necessary for carrying through a task?Question 13: What is the finding of the new study?Question 14: What do we learn about European participants as compared with their American counterparts?Question 15: What do the research say concerning people‘s feelings about willpower? Lecture 1Here is my baby niece Sarah. Her mum is a doctor and her dad is a lawyer. By the time Sarah goes to college the jobs her parents do are going to look dramatically different. In 2013, researchers at Oxford University did a study on the future of work.They concluded that almost one in every two jobs has a high risk of being automated by machines. Machine learning is the technology that‘s responsible for most of this disruption. It’s the most powerful branch of artificial intelligence. It allows machines to learn from data and copy some of the things that humans can do. My company, Kaggle, operates on the cutting edge of machine learning. We bring together hundreds of thousands of experts to solve important problems for industry and academia. This gives us an unique perspective on what machines can do, what they can‘t do and what jobs they might automate or threaten. Machine learning started making its way into industry in the early 90s. It started with relatively simple tasks. It started with things like assessing credit risk from loan applications, sorting the mail by reading handwritten zip codes. Over the past few years, we have made dramatic breakthroughs. Machine learning is now capable of far, far more complex tasks. In2012, Kaggle challenged its community to build a program that could grade high school essays. The winning programs were able to match the grades given by human teachers. Now given the right data, machines are going to outperform humans at tasks like this. A teacher might read 10000 essays over a 40-year career. A machine can read millions of essays within minutes. We have no chance of competing against machines on frequent high-volume tasks, but there are things we can do that machines cannot. Where machines have made very little progress is in tackling novel situations. Machines can’t handle things they haven‘t seen many times before. The fundamental limitation of machine learning is that it needs to learn from large volumes of past data. But humans don’t. We have the ability to connect seemingly different threads to solve problems we‘ve never seen before.Question 16 What did the researchers at Oxford University conclude?Question 17. What do we learn about Kaggle companies winning programs?Question 18. What is the fundamental limitation on machine learning?Lecture 2we‘ve talked recently about the importance of sustainable energy. We’ve also talked about the different theories on how that can be done. So far, our discussions have all been theoretical. Now I have a practical question for you all. Can you run a 140,000 kilogram train on just the steam generated by solar power? Well, one engineer, Tim Casselman, believes it ‘s possible. And his home city of Sacramento, California should see the technology’s first test as part of the upgrading of its rail yard. Casselman, who is an inventor andself-proclaimed steam visionary, is campaigning for a new steam train that runs without any fire and could run on an existing 10 kilometer line drawing tourists and perhaps offering city commuters a green alternative to their cars. Casselman wants to build an array of solar magnifying mirrors at one end of the line to collect and focus heat onto water filled tubes. This would generate steam that could be used to fill tanks on a small steam train without the use of fire. Supplying power to trains in this way would offer the shortest distance from well to wheels he says with the least amount of energy lost. According to Harry Valentijn, a Canadian engineer who is researching modern steam technology, a special tank measuring 2 by 10 metres could store over 750 kilowatt hours of energy as high pressure steam enough to pull a two car train for an hour or so. Energy to drive a steam locomotive can be stored in other materials besides water, for example, a team at Tohoku University in Japan has studied materials that can store large amounts of heat when heated. These materials turn from a solid into a liquid absorbing energy as they change phase. The liquid is maintained above its melting point until steam is required at which point the liquid is allowed to turn back into a solid releasing its stored energy. Another team at Nagoya University in Japan has tested calcium compound as an energy storage material. Heating this chemical compound drives off carbon dioxide gas, leaving calcium oxide. The gas can be stored under pressure and attain to recover the energy. The gas is fed back over the calcium oxide. In theory, says Valentijn, this can create a high enough temperature to generate superheated steam.Question 19: What has the speaker previously talked about?Question 20: What is Tim Casselman trying to do in Sacramento?Question 21: What has a Japanese research team tried to do?Lecture 3Today‘s crisis in care for older people in England has two main causes.First,people are living longer with a lot more complex needs. Second, they rely on a system that has long been marked by a poor relation between national health and social-care services.Current services originate in two key measures. They are the National Health Service and the 1948 National Assistance Act. This required local government to provide residential accommodation for older people and supervise care homes run by independent organizations.They also provided home and community services including meals, day centers and home helpers and other subsidized services. The National Health Service was free and wholly publicly provided. It delivered the best health-care for all. No such vision guided residential and community care though. The care was substantially provided by voluntary services which worked together with local authorities as they long had with eligibility based on income. Today, life expectancy has risen from 66 for a male at birth in 1948 to around 80 now. In addition, there is better overall health and improved medical knowledge and care. This means an unprecedented number of people are surviving longer in conditions requiring expert support. Families provide at least as much care as they ever did. Even so,they can rarely without subsidised support address serious personal needs. Care for older people faced persistent criticism as these trends became apparent. From the early 1960s, local authorities were required to plan health and welfare services. The aim was to enable older people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible, but this increased concern about the lack of coordination between free health and paid-for social care. Through the 1970s, a number of measures sought to improve matter. However, at a time of financial crisis, funding diminished and little changed. In the 1980s, the government cut spending. Meanwhile, preference for private over public services made management even more difficult. Simultaneously, the number of sick older people grew. Governments emphasized the need to improve services. They did so though while doing little to stop the erosion of available aid. Services were irregular across authorities. Unless you were prepared to pay, they were increasingly difficult to obtain for any but the most severely disabled. Why has 60 years of criticism produced so little change? Discrimination against older people has a long history. Additionally, those affected by inadequate health and social care are too vulnerable to launch the protests that have addressed other forms of discrimination. Question 22: What is one cause of the current crisis in care for the elderly in England? Question 23: What does the speaker say about residential and community care? Question 24: What made management of care for the elderly more difficult in the 1980s? Question 25: What does the speaker say about older people in England?。