-
2013
年
12
月大学
英语六级考试真题（第
3
套）
Part I
Writing
(30
minutes)
Directions:
For
this
part,
you
are
allowed
30
minutes
to
write
an
essay
about
the
impact
of
the
information
explosion
by
referring
to
the
saying
“A
wealth
of
information
creates
a
poverty
of
attention.
”
You
can
give
examples
to
illustrate
your
point
and
then
explain
what
you
can
do
to
avoid
being
distracted
by
irrelevant
information.
You
should
write
at
least
150
words but no more than
200
words.
Part
II
Listening Comprehension
(30 minutes)
说明：
2013
年
12
月六级真题全国共考了两套听力。本套（即第三套）的听力内
容与第二套的完全一样，
只是选项的顺序不一样而已，
故在本套中不再重复给出。
Part III
Reading Comprehension
(40 minutes)
Section A
Directions:
In this section,
there is
a passage with ten blanks. You
are required to
select one word for
each blank from a list of choices given in a word
bank
following the passage. Read the
passage through carefully before making
your choices. Each choice in the bank
is identified by a letter. Please mark
the
corresponding
letter
for
each
item
on
Answer
Sheet
2
with
a
single
line
through
the
centre.
You
may
not
use
any
of
the
words
in
the
bank
more than once.
Questions 36
to 45 are based on the following passage.
Some
performance
evaluations
require
supervisors
to
take
action.
Employees
who
receive
a
very
favorable
evaluation
may
deserve
some
type
of
recognition
or
even a promotion. If supervisors do not
acknowledge such outstanding performance,
employees may either lose their
36
and reduce their effort or search for a
new job
at a firm that will
37
them for high
performance. Supervisors should acknowledge
high performance so that the employee
will continue to perform well in the future.
Employees
who
receive
unfavorable
evaluations
must
also
be
given
attention.
Supervisors
must
38
the
reasons
for
poor
performance.
Some
reasons,
such
as
a
family
illness,
may
have
a
temporary
adverse
39
on
performance
and
can
be
corrected.
Other
reasons,
such
as
a
bad
attitude,
may
not
be
temporary.
When
supervisors give employees
an unfavorable evaluation, they must
decide whether to
take any
40
actions. If
the employees were unaware of their own
deficiencies, the
unfavorable
evaluation
can
pinpoint
(
指出
)
the
deficiencies
that
employees
must
correct. In this case,
the supervisor may simply need to monitor the
employees
41
and ensure that the deficiencies are
corrected.
If the employees were
already aware of their deficiencies before the
evaluation
period, however, they may be
unable or unwilling to correct them. This
situation is
more serious,
and the supervisor may need to take action. The
action should be
42
with
the
firm’s
guidelines
and
may
include
reassigning
the
employees
to
new
jobs,
43
them
temporarily,
or
firing
them.
A
supervisor’s
action
toward
a
poorly
performing
worker
can
44
the
attitudes
of
other
employees.
If
no
45
is
imposed
on
an
employee
for
poor
performance,
other
employees
may
react
by
reducing their productivity as well.
注意：此部分题请在
答题卡
2
上作答。
A) additional
I) identify
B) affect
J) impact
C) aptly
K) penalty
D) assimilate
L) reward
E) circulation
M) simplifying
F) closely
N) suspending
G) consistent
O) vulnerable
H) enthusiasm
Section B
Directions:
In
this
section,
you
are
going
to
read
a
passage
with
ten
statements
attached
to
it.
Each
statement
contains
information
given
in
one
of
the
paragraphs.
Identify
the
paragraph
from
which
the
information
is
derived. You may choose a paragraph
more than once. Each paragraph
is
marked
with
a
letter.
Answer
the
questions
by
marking
the
corresponding letter on
Answer Sheet 2
.
The College Essay: Why Those 500 Words
Drive Us Crazy
A)
Meg
is
a
lawyer-mom
in
suburban
Washington,
D.C.,
where
lawyer-moms
are
thick on the ground. Her
son Doug is one of several hundred thousand high-
school
seniors who had a painful fall.
The deadline for applying to his favorite college
was Nov. 1, and by early October he had
yet to fill out the application. More to the
point, he had yet to settle on a
subject for the personal essay accompanying the
application. According to college
folklore,
a well-turned essay has the
power to
seduce
(
诱惑
) an
admiss
ions committee. “He wanted to do
one thing at a time,”
Meg
says, explaining her son’s delay. “But really, my
son is a huge
procrastinator
(
拖延者
)
.
The
essay
is
the
hardest
thing
to
do,
so
he’s
put
it
off
the
longest.”
Friends
and other veterans of the process have warned Meg
that the back and forth
between editing
parent and writing student can be
traumatic
(
痛苦的
).
B)
Back
in
the
good
old
days
—
say,
two
years
ago,
when
the
last
of
my
children
suffered
the
ordeal
(
折磨
)
—
a
high-
school
student
applying
to
college
could
procrastinate all the way to New Year’s
Day of their senior year, assuming they
could
withstand
the
parental
pestering
(
烦扰
).But
things
change
fast
in
the
nail-biting
world
of
college
admissions.
The
recent
trend
toward
early
decision
and
early
action
among
selective
colleges
and
universities
has
pushed
the
traditional deadline of January up to
Nov. 1 or early December for many students.
C) If the time for heel-dragging has
been shortened, the true source of the anxiety and
panic
remains
what
it
has
always
been.
And
it’s
not
the
application
itself.
A
college
application
is
a
relatively
straightforward
questionnaire
asking
for
the
basics:
name, address, family history employment history.
It would all be innocent
enough
—
20 minutes
of busy work
—
except it comes
attached to a personal essay.
D)
“There
are
good
reasons
it
causes
such
anxiety,”
says
Lisa
Sohmer,
director
of
college counseling at the Garden School
in Jackson Heights, N.Y. “It’
s not just
the
actual writing. By now everything
else is already set. Your course load is set, your
grades
are set,
your test scores are set.
But
the
essay is
something
you
can
still
control, and it’s
open
-
ended. So the
temptation is to write and rewrite and rewrite.”
Or stall and stall and stall.
E) The application essay, along with
its mythical importance, is a recent invention. In
the 1930s, when only one in 10
Americans had a degree from a four-year college,
an
admissions
committee
was
content
to
ask
for
a
sample
of
applicants’
school
papers to assess
their writing ability. By the 1950s, most schools
required a brief
personal
statement
of
why
the
student
had
chosen
to
apply
to
one
school
over
another.
F)
Today nearly 70 percent of graduating seniors go
off to college, including two-year
and
four-year
institutions.
Even
apart
from
the
increased
competition,
the
kids
enter a process that
has been utterly transformed from the one baby
boomers knew.
Nearly
all
application
materials
are
submitted
online,
and
the
Common
Application
provides
a
one-
size-fits
form
accepted
by
more
than
400
schools,
including the nation’s most
selective.
G)
Those
schools
usually
require
essays
of
their
own,
but
the
longest
essay,
500
words
maximum,
is
generally
attached
to
the
Common
Application.
Students
choose one of six questions. Applicants
are asked to describe an ethical dilemma
they’ve faced and its impact on them,
or discuss a public issue of special concern
to
them,
or
tell
of
a
fictional
character
or
creative
work
that
has
profoundly
influenced them.
Another question invites them to write about the
importance (to
them,
again)
of
diversity―a
word
that
has
assumed
magic
power
in
American
higher education. The most popular
option: write on a topic of your choice.
H)
“
Boys
in
particular
look
at
the
other
questions
and
say,
‘Oh,
that’s
too
much
work,
’” says John Boshoven,
a counselor in the Ann Arbor, Mich., public
schools.
“They think if they do a topic
of their choice, “I’ll just go get that history
paper I
did last year on the Roman
Empire and turn it into a first-person application
essay!
’
And they end up
producing something utterly
ridiculous.”
I)
Talking
to
admissions
professionals
like
Boshoven,
you
realize
that
the
list
of
“don’ts”
in
essay
writing
is
much
longer
than
the
“dos.”
“No
book
reports,
no
history papers, no character
studies,”
says Sohmer.
J)
“It drives you cra
zy, how easily kids
slip into
cliché
s
(
老生常谈
)
,”
< br>says Boshoven.
“They don’t realize
how typical their experiences arc. ‘
I
scored the winning goal
in soccer
against our arch-rival.
’
‘
My grandfather served in
World War II, and I
hope to be just
like him someday.
’
That may
mean a lot to that particular kid. But
in
the
world
of
the
application
essay,
it’s
nothing.
You’ll
lose
the
reader
in
the
first paragraph.”
K) “The greatest strength you bring to
this essay,” says the College Board’s
how
-to
book, “is 17 years or
so of familiarity with the topic: YOU.
The form and style are
very
familiar,
and
best
of
all,
you
are
the
world-class
expert
on
the
subject
of
YOU ...
It
has
been the
subject
of
your
close scrutiny every morning since
you
were tall enough to see
into the b
athroom mirror.”
The
key word in the Common
Application prompts is
“you.”
L)
The
college
admission
essay
contains
the
grandest
American
themes―status
anxiety, parental
piety
(
孝顺
),
intellectual standards
—
and
so it is only a matter of
time before
it becomes
infected by the country’s
culture of excessive concern with
self-
esteem. Even if the question is
ostensibly
(
表面上
) about
something outside
the self (describe a
fictional character or solve a problem of
geopolitics), the essay
invariably
returns to the favorite topic: what is its impact
on YOU?
M)
“For
all
the
anxiety
the
essay
causes,”
says
Bill
McClintick
of
Mercers
burg
Academy in Pennsylvania, “it’s a very
small piece of the puzzle. I was in college
admissions for 10 years. I saw kids and
parents beat themselves up over this. And
at
the
vast
majority
of
places,
it
is
simply
not
a
big
variable
in
the
college’s
decision-
making
process.”
N) Many admissions
officers say they spend less
than a
couple of minutes on each
application,
including
the
essay.
According
to
a
recent
survey
of
admissions
officers,
only
one
in
four
private
colleges
say
the
essay
is
of
“considerable
importance”
in
judging
an
application.
Among
public
colleges
and
universities,
the
number
drops
to
roughly
one
in
10.
By
contrast,
86
percent
place
“considerable
importance”
on
an
applicant’s
grades,
70
percent
on
“strength
of
curriculum.”
O)
Still,
at
the
most
selective
schools,
where
thousands
of
candidates
may
submit
identically high
grades and test scores, a marginal item like the
essay may serve as
a
tie-
breaker
between
two
equally
qualified
candidates.
The
thought
is
certainly
enough to keep the
pot
boiling under parents like Meg, the
lawyer-mom, as she
tries
to
help
her
son
choose
an
essay
topic.
For
a
moment
the
other
day,
she
thought
she might have hit on a good one. “His father’s
from France,” she says. “I
said
maybe
you
could
write
about
that,
as
something
that
makes
you
different.
You
know:
half
French,
half
American.
I
said,
‘
You
could
write
about
your
identity issues
.’
He said,
‘I don’t have any identity
issues!’
And he’s right.
He’s a
well-adjusted, normal kid.
But that doesn’t make for a good essay,
does it?”
注意：此部分试题请在
< br>答题卡
2
上作答。
46. Today many universities require
their applicants
to
write an
essay of up to
five
hundred
words.
47. One recent change in college
admissions is that selective colleges and
universities
have moved the traditional
deadline to earlier dates.
48.
Applicants and their parents are said to believe
that the personal essay can sway
the
admissions committee.
49. Applicants
are usually better off if they can write an essay
that distinguishes them
from the rest.