英语六级阅读真题1.1990年A．Automation refers to the introduction of electronic control and automatic operation ofproductive machinery. It reduces the human factors, mental and physical, in production, and is designed to make possible the manufacture of more goods with fewer workers. The development of automation in American industry has been called the “Second Industrial Revolution”.Labour’s concern over automation arises from uncertainty about the effects on employment, and fears of major changes in jobs. In the main, labour has taken the view that resistance to technical change is unfruitful. Eventually, the result of automation may well be an increase in employment, since it is expected that vast industries will grow up around manufacturing, maintaining, and repairing automation equipment. The interest of labour lies in bringing about the transition with a minimum of inconvenience and distress to the workers involved. Also, union spokesmen emphasize that the benefit of the increased production and lower costs made possible by automation should be shared by workers in the form of higher wages, more leisure, and improved living standards.To protect the interests of their members in the era of automation, unions have adopted a number of new policies. One of these is the promotion of supplementary unemployment benefit plans. It is emphasized that since the employer involved in such a plan has a direct financial interest in preventing unemployment, he will have a strong drive for planning new installations so as to cause the least possible problems in jobs and job assignment. Some unions are working for dismissal pay agreements, requiring that permanently dismissed workers be paid a sum of money based on length of service. Another approach is the idea of the “improvement factor”, which calls for wage increases based on increases in productivity. It is possible, however, that labour will rely mainly on reduction in working time.21. Though labour worries about the effect of automation, it does not doubt that ________.A) automation will eventually prevent unemploymentB) automation will help workers acquire new skillsC) automation will eventually benefit the workers no less that the employersD) automation is a trend which cannot be stopped22. The idea of the “improvement factor” (Line 6, Para. 3) probably implies that________.A) wages should be paid on the basis of length of serviceB) the benefit of increased production and lower costs should be shared byworkersC) supplementary unemployment benefit plans should be promotedD) the transition to automation should be brought about with the minimum ofinconvenience and distress to workers23. In order to get the full benefits of automation, labour will depend mostly on________.A) additional payment to the permanently dismissed workersB) the increase of wages in proportion to the increase in productivityC) shorter working hours and more leisure timeD) a strong drive for planning new installations24. Which of the following can best sum up the passage?A) Advantages and disadvantages of automation.B) Labour and the effects of automation.C) Unemployment benefit plans and automation.D) Social benefits of automation.Questions 25 to 30 are based on the following passage.The case for college has been accepted without question for more than a generation. All high school graduates ought to go, says conventional wisdom and statistical evidence, because college will help them earn more money, become “better” people, and learn to be more responsible citizens than those who don’t go.But college has never been able to work its magic for everyone. And now that close to half our high school graduates are attending, those who don’t fit the pattern are becoming more numerous, and more obvious. College graduates are selling shoes and driving taxis; college students interfere with each other’s experiments and write false letters of recommendation in the intense competition for admission to graduate school. Others find no stimulation in their studies, and drop out-often encouraged by college administrators.Some observers say the fault! Is with the young people themselves-they are spoiled and they are expecting too much. But that’s a condemnation of the students as a whole, and doesn’t explain all campus unhappiness. Others blame the state of the world, and they are partly right. We’ve been told that young people have to go to college because our economy can’t absorb an army of untrained eighteen-year-olds. But disappointed graduates are learning that it can no longer absorb an army of trained twenty-two-year-olds, either.Some adventuresome educators and campus watchers have openly begun to suggest that college may not be the best, the proper, the only place for every young person after the completion of high school. We may have been looking at all those surveys and statistics upside down, it seems, and through the rosy glow of our own remembered college experiences. Perhaps college doesn’t make people intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal, quick-learning people are merely the ones who have been attracted to college in the first place. And perhaps all those successful collegegraduates would have been successful whether they had gone to college or not. This is heresy (异端邪说) to those of us who have been brought up to believe that if a little schooling is good, more has to be much better. But contrary evidence is beginning to mount up.25. According to the passage, the author believes that ________.A) people used to question the value of college educationB) people used to have full confidence in higher educationC) all high school graduates went to collegeD) very few high school graduates chose to go to college26. In the 2nd paragraph, “those who don’t fit the pattern” refers to ________.A) high school graduates who aren’t suitable for college educationB) college graduates who are selling shoes and driving taxisC) college students who aren’t any better for their higher educationD) high school graduates who failed to be admitted to college27. The drop-out rate of college students seems to go up because ________.A) young people are disappointed with the conventional way of teaching atcollegeB) many young people are required to join the armyC) young people have little motivation in pursuing a higher educationD) young people don’t like the intense competition for admission to graduateschool28. According to the passage the problems of college education partly arise from thefact that ________.A) society cannot provide enough jobs for properly trained college graduatesB) high school graduates do not fit the pattern of college educationC) too many students have to earn their own livingD) college administrators encourage students to drop out29. In this passage the author argues that ________.A) more and more evidence shows college education may not be the best thingfor high school graduatesB) college education is not enough if one wants to be successfulC) college education benefits only the intelligent, ambitious, and quick-learningpeopleD) intelligent people may learn quicker if they don’t go to college30. The “surveys and statistics” mentioned in the last paragraph might have shownthat ________.A) college-educated people are more successful than non-college-educatedpeopleB) college education was not the first choice of intelligent peopleC) the less schooling a person has the better it is for himD) most people have sweet memories of college lifeQuestions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage.Ours has become a society of employees. A hundred years or so ago only one out of every five Americans at work was employed, i.e., worked for somebody else. Today only one out of five is not employed but working for himself. And when fifty years ago “being employed” meant working as a factory labourer or as a farmhand, the employee of today is increasingly a middle-class person with a substantial formal education, holding a professional or management job requiring intellectual and technical skills. Indeed, two things have characterized American society during these fifty years: middle-class and upper-class employees have been the fastest-growing groups in our working population-growing so fast that the industrial worker, that oldest child of the Industrial Revolution, has been losing in numerical importance despite the expansion of industrial production.Yet you will find little if anything written on what it is to be an employee. You can find a great deal of very dubious advice on how to get a job or how to get a promotion. You can also find a good deal of work in a chosen field, whether it be the me chanist’s trade or bookkeeping (簿记). Every one of these trades requires different skills, sets different standards, and requires a different preparation. Yet they all have employeeship in common. And increasingly, especially in the large business or in government, employeeship is more important to success than the special professional knowledge or skill. Certainly more people fail because they do not know the requirements of being an employee than because they do not adequately possess the skills of their trade; the higher you climb the ladder, the more you get into administrative or executive work, the greater the emphasis on ability to work within the organization rather than on technical abilities or professional knowledge.31. It is implied that fifty years ago ________.A) eighty per cent of American working people were employed in factoriesB) twenty per cent of American intellectuals were employeesC) the percentage of intellectuals in the total work force was almost the same asthat of industrial workersD) the percentage of intellectuals working as employees was not so large as thatof industrial workers32. According to the passage, with the development of modern industry, ________.A) factory labourers will overtake intellectual employees in numberB) there are as many middle-class employees as factory labourersC) employers have attached great importance to factory labourersD) the proportion of factory labourers in the total employee population hasdecreased33. The word “dubious” (L. 2, Para. 2) most probably means ________.A) valuable B) useful C) doubtful D) helpful34. According to the writer, professional knowledge or skill is ________.A) less importance than awareness of being a good employeeB) as important as the ability to deal with public relationsC) more important than employer-employee relationsD) more important as the ability to co-operate with others in the organization35. From the passage it can be seen that employeeship helps one ________.A) to be more successful in his career B) to be more specialized in his fieldC) to solve technical problems D) to develop his professional skill Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage.We all know that the normal human daily cycle of activity is of some 7-8 hours’ sleep alternation with some 16-17 hours’ wakefulness and that, broadly speaking, the sleep normally coincides with the hours of darkness. Our present concern is with how easily and to what extent this cycle can be modified.The question is no mere academic one. The ease, for example, with which people can change from working in the day to working at night is a question of growing importance in industry where automation calls for round-the-clock working of machines. It normally takes from five days to one week for a person to adapt to reversed routine of sleep and wakefulness, sleeping during the day and working at night. Unfortunately, it is often the case in industry that shifts are changed every week;a person may work from 12 midnight to 8 a.m. one week, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. the next, and 4 p.m. to 12 midnight the third and so on. This means that no sooner has he got used to one routine than he has to change to another, so that much of his time is spent neither working nor sleeping very efficiently.The only real solution appears to be to hand over the night shift to a number of permanent night workers. An interesting study of the domestic life and health of night-shift workers was carried out by Brown in 1957. She found a high incidence (发生率) of disturbed sleep and other disorders among those on alternating day and nightshifts, but no abnormal occurrence of these phenomena among those on permanent night work.This latter system then appears to be the best long-term policy, but meanwhile something may be done to relieve the strains of alternate day and night work by selecting those people who can adapt most quickly to the changes of routine. One way of knowing when a person has adapted is by measuring his body temperature. People engaged in normal daytime work will have a high temperature during the hours of wakefulness and a low one at night; when they change to night work the pattern will only gradually go back to match the new routine and the speed with which it does so parallels, broadly speaking, the adaptation of the body as a whole, particularly in terms of performance. Therefore, by taking body temperature at intervals of two hours throughout the period of wakefulness it can be seen how quickly a person can adapt to a reversed routine, and this could be used as a basis for selection. So far, however, such a form of selection does not seem to have been applied in practice.36. Why is the question of “how easily people can get used to working at night” nota mere academic question?A) Because few people like to reverse the cycle of sleep and wakefulness.B) Because sleep normally coincides with the hours of darkness.C) Because people are required to work at night in some fields of industry.D) Because shift work in industry requires people to change their sleeping habits.37. The main problem of the round-the-clock working system lies in ________.A) the inconveniences brought about to the workers by the introduction ofautomationB) the disturbance of the daily life cycle of workers who have to change shiftstoo frequentlyC) the fact that people working at night are often less effectiveD) the fact that it is difficult to find a number of good night workers38. The best solution for implementing the 24-hour working system seems to be________.A) to change shifts at longer intervals B) to have longer shiftsC) to arrange for some people to work on night shifts onlyD) to create better living conditions for night workers39. It is possible to find out if a person has adapted to the changes of routine bymeasuring his body temperature because ________.A) body temperature changes when the cycle of sleep and wakefulness alternatesB) body temperature changes when he changes to night shift or backC) the temperature reverses when the routine is changedD) people have higher temperatures when they are working efficiently40. Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE?A) Body temperature may serve as an indication of a worker’s performance.B) The selection of a number of permanent night shift workers has proved to bethe best solution to problems of the round-the-clock working system.C) Taking body temperature at regular intervals can show how a person adapts tothe changes of routine.D) Disturbed sleep occurs less frequently among those on permanent night orday shifts.Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.One day in January 1913. G. H. Hardy, a famous Cambridge University mathematician received a letter from an Indian named Srinivasa Ramanujan asking him for his opinion of 120 mathematical theorems (定理) that Ramanujan said he had discovered. To Hardy, many of the theorems made no sense. Of the others, one or two were already well-known. Ramanujan must be some kind of trickplayer, Hardy decided, and put the letter aside. But all that day the letter kept hanging round Hardy. Might there be something in those wild-looking theorems?That evening Hardy invited another brilliant Cambridge mathematician, J. E. Littlewood, and the two men set out to assess the Indian’s worth. That incident was a turning point in the history of mathematics.At the time, Ramanujan was an obscure Madras Port Trust clerk. A little more than a year later, he was at Cambridge University, and beginning to be recognized as one of the most amazing mathematicians the world has ever known. Though he died in 1920, much of his work was so far in advance of his time that only in recent years is it beginning to be properly understood.Indeed, his results are helping solve today’s problems in computer science and physics, problems that he could have had no notion of.For Indians, moreover, Ramanujan has a special significance. Ramanujan, though born in poor and ill-paid accountant’s family 100 years ago, has inspired many Indians to adopt mathematics as career.Much of Ramanujan’s work is in number theory, a branch of mathematics that deals with the subtle (难以捉摸的) laws and relationships that govern numbers. Mathematicians describe his results as elegant and beautiful but they are much too complex to be appreciated by laymen.His life, though, is full of drama and sorrow. It is one of the great romantic stories of mathematics, a distressing reminder that genius can surface and rise in the most unpromising circumstances.21. When Hardy received the 120 theorems from Ramanujan, his attitude at firstmight be best described as ________.A) uninterested B) unsympathetic C) suspicious D) curious22. Ramanujan’s position in Cambridge University owed much to ________.A) the judgement of his work by Hardy and LittlewoodB) his letter of application accepted by HardyC) his work as a clerk at Madras Port TrustD) his being recognized by the world as a famous mathematician23. It may be inferred from the passage that the author ________.A) feels sorry for Ramanujan’s early deathB) is dissatisfied with the slow development of computer scienceC) is puzzled about the complexity of Ramanujan’s theoremsD) greatly appreciates Ramanujan’s mathematical genius24. In the last paragraph, the author points out that ________.A) Ramanujan’s mathematical theorems were not appreciated by othermathematiciansB) extremely talented people can prove their worth despite difficultcircumstancesC) Ramanujan also wrote a number of stories about mathematicsD) Ramanujan had worked out an elegant but complicated method of solvingproblems25. The word “laymen” (Last Para, Lind 6) most probably means ________.A) people who do not specialize in mathematical scienceB) people who are carelessC) people who are not interested in mathematicsD) people who don’t like to solve complicated problemsQuestions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage.Even if all the technical and intellectual problems can be solved, there are major social problems inherent in the computer revolution. The most obvious is unemployment, since the basic purpose of commercial computerization is to get more work done by fewer people. OneBr itish study predicts that “automation induced unemployment” in Western Europe could reach16~, 6 in the next decade, but most analyses are more optimistic. The general rule seems to be that new technology eventually creates as many jobs as it destroys, and often more. “People who put in computers usually increase their staffs as well” says CPT’s Scheff. “Of course,” he adds,“one industry may kill another industry.That’s tough on some people.”Theoretically, all unemployed workers can be retrained, but retraining programs are not high on the nation’s agenda (议事日程). Many new jobs, moreover, will require an ability in using computers, and the retraining needed to use them will have to be repeated as the technology keeps improving. Says a chilling report by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment:“Lifelong retraining is expected to become the standard for many people. “There is a already considerable evidence that the school children now being educated in the use of computers are generally the children of the white middle class. Young blacks, whose unemployment rate stands today at 50 96, will find another barrier in front of them.Such social problems are not the fault of the computer, of course, but a consequence of the way the American society might use the computer. “Even in the days of the Big, main-frame computers, when they were a machine for the few.” says Katherine Davis Fishman, author ofThe Computer Establishment, “it was a tool to help the rich get richer. It still is to a large extent. One of the great values of the personal computer is that smaller firms, smaller organizations can now have some of the advantages of the bigger organizations.”26. The closest restatement of “one industry may kill another industry” (Para. 1 Line11) is that ________.A) industries tend to compete with one anotherB) one industry might be driven out of business by another industryC) one industry may increase its staff at the expense of anotherD) industries tend to combine into bigger ones27. The word “chilling” (Para. 2, Line 5) most probably means ________.A) misleading B) convincing C) discouraging D) interesting28. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage?A) Computers are efficient in retraining unemployed workers.B) Computers may offer more working opportunities than they destroy.C) Computers will increase the unemployment rate of young blacks.D) Computers can help smaller organizations to function more effectively.29. From the passage it can be inferred that ________.A) all school children are offered a course in the use of computersB) all unemployed workers are being retrainedC) retraining programmes are considered very important by the governmentD) in reality only a certain portion of unemployed workers will be retrained30. The major problem discussed in the passage is ________.A) the importance of lifelong retraining of the unemployed workersB) the social consequences of the widespread use of computers in the UnitedStatesC) the barrier to the employment of young peopleD) the general rule of the advancement of technologyQuestions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage.Mobility of individual members and family groups tends to split up family relationships.Occasionally the movement of a family away from a situation which has been the source of friction results in greater family organization, but on the whole mobility is disorganizing.Individuals and families are involved in three types of mobility: movement in space, movement up or down in social status, and the movement of ideas. These are termed respectively spatial, vertical, and ideational mobility.A great increase in spatial mobility has gone along with improvements in rail and water transportation, the invention and use of the automobile, and the availability of airplane passenger service. Spatial mobility results in a decline in the importance of the traditional home with its emphasis on family continuity and stability. It also means that when individual family members or the family as a whole move away from a community, the person or the family is removed from the pressures of relatives, friends, and community institutions for conventionality and stability. Even more important is the fact that spatial mobility permits some members of a family to come in contact with and possibly adopt attitudes, values, and ways of thinking different from those held by other family members. The presence of different attitudes, values, and ways of thinking with in a family may, and often does, result in conflict and family disorganization. Potential disorganization is present in those families in which the husband, wife, and children are spatially separated over a long period, or are living together but see each other only briefly because of different work schedules.One index of the increase in vertical mobility is the great increase in the proportion of sons, and to some extent daughters, who engage in occupations other than those of the parents.Another index of vertical mobility is the degree of intermarriage between racial classes. This occurs almost exclusively between classes which are adjacent to each other. Engaging in a different occupation, or intermarriage, like spatial mobility, allows one to come in contact with ways of behavior different from those of the parental home, and tends to separate parents and their children.The increase in ideational mobility is measured by the increase in publications, such as newspapers, periodicals, and books, the increase in the percentage of thepopulation owning radios, and the increase in television sets. All these tend to introduce new ideas into the home.When individual family members are exposed to and adopt the new ideas, the tendency is for conflict to arise and for those in conflict to become psychologically separated from each other.31. What the passage tells us can be summarized by the statement:A) social development results in a decline in the importance of traditionalfamiliesB) potential disorganization is present in the American familyC) family disorganization is more or less the result of mobilityD) the movement of a family is one of the factors in raising its social status32. According to the passage, those who live in a traditional family ________.A) are less likely to quarrel with others because of conventionality and stabilityB) have to depend on their relatives and friends if they do not move away from itC) can get more help from their family members if they are in troubleD) will have more freedom of action and thought if they move away from it33. Potential disorganization exists in those families in which ________.A) the husband, wife, and children work too hardB) the husband, wife, and children seldom get togetherC) both parents have to work full timeD) the family members are subject to social pressures34. Intermarriage and different occupations play an important role in familydisorganization because ________.A) they enable the children to travel around without their parents’ permissionB) they allow one to find a good job and improve one’s social statusC) they enable the children to better understand the ways of behavior of theirparentsD) they permit one to come into contact with different ways of behavior andthinking35. This passage suggests that a well-organized family is a family whose members________.A) are not psychologically withdrawn from one anotherB) never quarrel with each other even when they disagreeC) often help each other with true love and affectionD) are exposed to the same new ideas introduced by books, radios, and TV sets Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage.To call someone bird-brained in English means you think that person is silly or stupid.But will this description soon disappear from use in the light of recent research? It seems the English may have been unfair in association bird’s brains with stupidity.In an attempt to find out how different creatures see the world, psychologists at Brown University in the USA have been comparing the behaviour of birds and humans. One experiment has involved teaching pigeons to recognize letters of the English alphabet. The birds study in “classrooms”, which are boxes equipped with a computer. After about four days of studying a particular letter, the pigeon has to pick out that letter from several displayed on the computer screen. Three male pigeons have learnt to distinguish all twenty-six letters of the alphabet in this way.A computer record of the birds’ four-month study period has shown surprising similarities between the pigeons’and human performance. Pigeons and people find the same letters easy, or hard, to tell apart. For example, 92 per cent of the time the pigeons could tell the letter D from the letter Z. But when faced with U and V (often confused by English children), the pigeons were right only 34 per cent of the time.The results of the experiments so far have led psychologists to conclude that pigeons and humans observe things in similar ways. This suggests that there is something fundamental about the recognition process. If scientists could only discover just what this recognition process is it could be very useful for computer designers. The disadvantage of a present computer is that it can only do what a human being has programmed it to do and the programmer must give the computer precise, logical instructions. Maybe in the future, though, computers will be able to think like human beings.36. The writer suggests that the expression “bird-brained” might be out of use soonbecause it is ________.A) silly B) impolite C) unnecessary D) inappropriate37. Psychologists have been experimenting with pigeons to find out whether thebirds ________.A) are really silly or stupid B) can learn to make ideas known to peopleC) see the world as human beings do D) learn more quickly than children38. U and V are confused by ________.A) 92 per cent of pigeons B) many English childrenC) most people learning English D) 34 per cent of English children39. There are similarities in observing things by pigeons and humans ________.。