2016年6月英语六级阅读理解真题「第二套」

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　　还有两个多月，2017年大学英语六级就开考了。为了帮助大家备考，下面小编整理的2016年6月第二套大学英语六级，希望能帮到大家!

2016年6月英语六级阅读理解真题「第二套」

　　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 Street 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once. Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.

　　The robotics revolution is set to bring humans face to face with an old fear—man-made creations as smart and capable as we are but without a moral compass. As robots take on ever more complex roles, the question naturally 26__________ : Who will be responsible when they do something wrong? Manufacturers?Users?Software writers? The answer depends on the robot. Robots already save us time, money and energy. In the future, they will improve our health care, social welfare and standard of living. The 27__________ of computational power and engineering advances will 28__________ enable lower-cost in-home care for the disabled, 29__________ use of driverless cars that may reduce drunk- and distracted-driving accidents and countless home and service-industry uses for robots, from street cleaning to food preparation. But there are 30__________ to be problems. Robot cars will crash. A drone (遥控飞行器) operator will 31__________ someone's privacy. A robotic lawn mower will run over a neighbor's cat. Juries sympathetic to the 32__________ of machines will punish entrepreneurs with company-crushing 33__________ and damages. What should governments do to protect people while 34__________ space for innovation?

　　Big, complicated systems on which much public safety depends, like driverless cars, should be built, 35__________ and sold by manufacturers who take responsibility for ensuring safety and are liable for accidents. Governments should set safety requirements and then let insurers price the risk of the robots based on the manufacturer's driving record, not the passenger's.

　　A. arises B. ascends

　　C. bound D. combination

　　E. definite

　　F. eventually

　　G. interfere

　　H. invade

　　I. manifesting

　　J. penalties

　　K. preserving

　　L. programmed

　　M. proximately

　　N. victims

　　O. widespread

　　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 paragraphfrom which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Eachparagraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter onAnswer Sheet 2.

　　Reform and Medical Costs

　　[A] Americans are deeply concerned about the relentless rise in health care costs and healthinsurance premiums. They need to know if reform will help solve the problem. The answer isthat no one has an easy fix for rising medical costs. The fundamental fix—reshaping how careis delivered and how doctors are paid in a wasteful, abnormal system—is likely to be achievedonly through trial and error and incremental (渐进的)gains.

　　[B] The good news is that a bill just approved by the House and a bill approved by the SenateFinance Committee would implement or test many reforms that should help slow the rise inmedical costs over the long term. As a report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded, "Pretty much every proposed innovation found in the health policy literature these days iscontained in these measures." [C] Medical spending, which typically rises faster than wages and the overall economy, ispropelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and thevolume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lotmore tests and treatments than a patient really needs. [D] Here are some of the important proposals in the House and Senate bills to try to addressthose problems, and why it is hard to know how well they will work.

　　[E] Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals,nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savingsroutinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to organizework. This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade. Ifprivate plans demanded similar productivity savings from providers, and refused to letproviders shift additional costs to them, the savings could be much larger. Critics sayCongress will give in to lobbyists and let inefficient providers off the hook That is far less likelyto happen if Congress also adopts strong upaygo” rules requiring that any increase inpayments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.

　　[F] The Senate Finance bill would impose an excise tax(消费税)on health insurance plans thatcost more than $8,000 for an individual or $2

　　1,000 for a family. It would most likely causeinsurers to redesign plans to fall beneath the threshold. Enrollees would have to pay moremoney for many services out of their own pockets, and that would encourage them to thinktwice about whether an expensive or redundant test was worth it. Economists project thatmost employers would shift money from expensive health benefits into wages. The House billhas no similar tax. The final legislation should.

　　[G] Any doctor who has wrestled with multiple forms from different insurers, or patients whohave tried to understand their own parade of statements, know that simplification ought tosave money. When the health insurance industry was still cooperating in reform efforts, itstrade group offered to provide standardized forms for automated processing. It estimated thatstep would save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. The bills would lock thatpledge into law.

　　[H] The stimulus package provided money to convert the inefficient, paper-driven medicalsystem to electronic records that can be easily viewed and transmitted. This requires openinvestments to help doctors convert. In time it should help restrain costs by eliminatingredundant tests, preventing drug interactions, and helping doctors find the best treatments.

　　[I] Virtually all experts agree that the fee-for-service system—doctors are rewarded for thequantity of care rather than its quality or effectiveness—is a primary reason that the cost ofcare is so high. Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments tocare for a particular illness or for a patient's needs over a year. No one knows how to makethat happen quickly. The bills in both houses would start pilot projects within Medicare. Theyinclude such measures as accountable care organizations to take charge of a patient's needswith an eye on both cost and quality, and chronic disease management to make sure theseriously ill, who are responsible for the bulk of all health care costs, are treated properly. Forthe most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.

　　[J] Testing innovations do no good unless the good experiments are identified and expandedand the bad ones are dropped. The Senate bill would create an independent commission tomonitor the pilot programs and recommend changes in Medicare's payment policies to urgeproviders to adopt reforms that work. The changes would have to be approved or rejected as awhole by Congress, making it hard for narrow-interest lobbies to bend lawmakers to their will.

　　[K] The bills in both chambers would create health insurance exchanges on which smallbusinesses and individuals could choose from an array of private plans and possibly a publicoption. All the plans would have to provide standard benefit packages that would be easy tocompare. To get access to millions of new customers, insurers would have a strong incentiveto sell on the exchange. And the head-to-head competition might give them a strongincentive to lower their prices, perhaps by accepting slimmer profit margins or demandingbetter deals from providers.

　　[L] The final legislation might throw a public plan into the competition, but thanks to thefierce opposition of the insurance industry and Republican critics, it might not save muchmoney. The one in the House bill would have to negotiate rates with providers, rather thanusing Medicare rates, as many reformers wanted.

　　[M] The president's stimulus package is pumping money into research to compare how wellvarious treatments work. Is surgery, radiation or careful monitoring best for prostate (前列腺)cancer? Is the latest and most expensive cholesterol-lowering drug any better than its commoncompetitors? The pending bills would spend additional money to accelerate this effort.

　　[N] Critics have charged that this sensible idea would lead to rationing of care.

　　(That would betrue only if you believed that patients should have an unrestrained right to treatments provento be inferior.) As a result, the bills do not require, as they should, that the results of thesestudies be used to set payment rates in Medicare.

　　[O] Congress needs to find the courage to allow Medicare to pay preferentially for treatmentsproven to be superior. Sometimes the best treatment might be the most expensive. Butoverall, we suspect that spending would come down through elimination of a lot ofunnecessary or even dangerous tests and treatments.

　　[P] The House bill would authorize the secretary of health and human services to negotiatedrug prices in Medicare and Medicaid. Some authoritative analysts doubt that the secretarywould get better deals than private insurers already get. We believe negotiation could work. Itdoes in other countries. [Q] Missing from these bills is any serious attempt to rein in malpractice costs. Malpracticeawards do drive up insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties, and there is someevidence that doctors engage in "defensive medicine" by performing tests and treatmentsprimarily to prove they are not negligent should they get sued.

　　注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。

　　36. With a tax imposed on expensive health insurance plans, most employers will likelytransfer money from health expenses into wages.

　　37. Changes in policy would be approved or rejected as a whole so that lobbyists would find ithard to influence lawmakers.

　　38. It is not easy to curb the rising medical costs in America.

　　39. Standardization of forms for automatic processing will save a lot of medical expenses.

　　40. Republicans and the insurance industry are strongly opposed to the creation of a publicinsurance plan.

　　41. Conversion of paper to electronic medical records will help eliminate redundant tests andprevent drug interactions.

　　fresh waterconsumption.

　　In poor, dry regions, untreated wastewater is the only viable irrigation source to keep fannersin business. In some cases, water is so scarce that farmers break open sewage pipestransporting waste to local rivers.

　　Irrigation is the primary agricultural use of human waste in the developing world. Butfrequently untreated human waste harvested from lavatories is delivered to farms and spreadas fertilizer.

　　In most cases, the human waste is used on grain crops, which are eventually cooked,minimizing the risk of transmitting water-borne diseases. With fertilizer prices jumping nearly50% per metric ton over the last year in some places, human waste is an attractive, and oftennecessary, alternative. In cases where sewage mud is used, expensive chemical fertilizer use can be avoided. The mudcontains the same critical nutrients.

　　"Overly strict standards often fail," James Bartram, a WHO water-health expert, said.

　　"We needto accept that fact across much of the planet, so waste with little or no treatment will be usedin agriculture for good reason."

　　46. What does the author say about the use of raw sewage for farming? A. Its risks cannot be overestimated.

　　B. It should be forbidden altogether.

　　C. Its benefits outweigh the hazards involved.

　　D. It is polluting millions of acres of cropland.

　　47. What is the main problem caused by the use of wastewater for irrigation?

　　A. Rivers and lakes nearby will gradually become contaminated.

　　B. It will drive producers of chemical fertilizers out of business.

　　C. Farmers and consumers may be affected by harmful bacteria.

　　D. It will make the farm produce less competitive on the market.

　　48. What is environmental scientist Pay Drechsel's attitude towards the use of untreatedhuman waste in agriculture?

　　A. Favorable.

　　B. Skeptical. C. Indifferent.

　　D. Responsible.

　　49. What does Pay Drechsel think of the risks involved in using untreated human waste forfarming?

　　A. They have been somewhat exaggerated.

　　B. They can be dealt with through education.

　　C. They will be minimized with new technology.

　　D. They can be addressed by improved sanitation.

　　50. What do we learn about James Bartram's position on the use of human waste for farming?

　　A. He echoes Pay Drechsel's opinion on the issue.

　　B. He challenges Liqa Raschid-Sally's conclusion.

　　C. He thinks it the only way out of the current food crisis.

　　D. He deems it indispensable for combating global poverty.

　　Passage Two

　　Questions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage. These days, nobody needs to cook. Families graze on high-cholesterol take-aways andmicrowaved ready-meals. Cooking is an occasional hobby and a vehicle for celebrity chefs.Which makes it odd that the kitchen has become the heart of the modem house: what thegreat hall was to the medieval castle, the kitchen is to the 21st-century home. The money spent on kitchens has risen with their status. In America the kitchen market is nowworth $170 billion, five times the country's film industry. In the year to August 2007, IKEA, aSwedish furniture chain, sold over one million kitchens worldwide. The average budget for a"major" kitchen overhaul in 2006, calculates Remodeling magazine, was a staggering $54,000;even a "minor" improvement cost on average $18,000.

　　Exclusivity, more familiar in the world of high fashion, has reached the kitchen: Robinson& Cornish, a British manufacturer of custom-made kitchens, offers a Georgian-style onewhich would cost ￡145,000-155,000—excluding building, plumbing and electrical work. Its bigselling point is that nobody else will have it: "You won't see this kitchen anywhere else in theworld."

　　The elevation of the room that once belonged only to the servants to that of design showcasefor the modem family tells the story of a century of social change. Right into the early 20thcentury, kitchens were smoky, noisy places, generally located underground, or to the back ofthe house, and as far from living space as possible. That was as it should be: kitchens were forservants, and the aspiring middle classes wanted nothing to do with them.

　　But as the working classes prospered and the servant shortage set in, housekeeping became amatter of interest to the educated classes. One of the pioneers of a radical new way of thinkingabout the kitchen was Catharine Esther Beecher, sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In AmericanWoman's Home, published in 1869, the Beecher sisters recommended a scientific approach tohousehold management, designed to enhance the efficiency of a woman's work and promoteorder.

　　Many contemporary ideas about kitchen design can be traced back to another American,Christine Frederick, who set about enhancing the efficiency of the housewife. Her 1919 work,Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home, was based on detailedobservation of a housewife's daily routine. She borrowed the principle of efficiency on thefactory floor and applied it to domestic tasks on the kitchen floor.

　　Frederick's central idea, that stove, sink and kitchen table must be placed in such a relationthat useless steps are avoided entirely", inspired the first fully fitted kitchen, designed in the1920s by Margarete Schütter-Lihotsky. It was a modernist triumph, and many elementsremain central features of today's kitchen.

　　51. What does the author say about the kitchen of today?

　　A. It is where housewives display their cooking skills.

　　B. It is where the family entertains important guests. C. It has become something odd in a modem house.

　　D. It is regarded as the center of a modem home.

　　52. Why does the Georgian-style kitchen sell at a very high price?

　　A. It is believed to have tremendous artistic value.

　　B. No duplicate is to be found in any other place. C. It is manufactured by a famous British company.

　　D. No other manufacturer can produce anything like it.

　　53. What does the change in the status of the kitchen reflect?

　　A. Improved living conditions.

　　B. Women's elevated status. C. Technological progress.

　　D. Social change.