2014年12月大学英语六级真题试卷（三）

Certain phrases one commonly hears among Americans capture their devotion to individualism: “ Do your own thing. ” “ I did it my way. ” “ You’ll have to decide that for yourself. ” “ You made your bed, now【B1】______in it. ” “If you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will. ” “Look out for number one. “

Closely associated with the value they place on individualism is the importance Americans【B2】___privacy. Americans assume that people “ need some time to themselves” or “ some time alone” to【B3】things or recover their spent psychological energy. Americans have great【B4】___understanding foreigners who always want to be with another person, who dislike being alone.

If the parents can【B5】___it, each child will have his or her own bedroom. Having one’s own bedroom, even as an infant, fixes in a person the notion that she【B6】___a place of her own where she can be by herself, and keep her possessions. She will have her clothes, her toys, her books, and so on. These things will be hers and no one else’s.

Americans【B7】___that people will have their private thoughts that might never be shared with anyone. Doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, and others have rules governing “confidentiality” that【B8】___prevent information about their clients’ personal situations from becoming known to others.

Americans’ attitudes about【B9】___can be hard for foreigners to understand. Americans’ houses, yards, and even their offices can seem open and inviting. Yet in the minds of Americans, there are【B10】___that other people are simply not supposed to cross. When those boundaries are crossed, an American’s body will visibly stiffen and his manner will become cool and aloof.

It was 10 years ago, on a warm July night, that a newborn lamb took her first breath in a small shed in Scotland. From the outside, she looked no different from thousands of other sheep born on【C1】___farms. But Dolly, as the world soon came to realize, was no【C2】lamb. She was cloned from a single cell of an adult female sheep,【C3】___long-held scientific dogma that had declared such a thing biologically impossible.

A decade later, scientists are starting to come to grips with just how different Dolly was. Dozens of animals have been cloned since that first lamb—mice, cats, cows and, most recently, a dog—and it’s becoming【C4】______clear that they are all, in one way or another, defective.

It’s【C5】___to think of clones as perfect carbon copies of the original. It turns out, though, that there are various degrees of genetic【C6】. That may come as a shock to people who have paid thousands of dollars to clone a pet cat only to discover that the baby cat looks and behaves【C7】like their beloved pet—with a different-color coat of fur, perhaps, or a【C8】___different attitude toward its human hosts.

And these art just the obvious differences. Not only are clones【C9】___from the original template(模板)by time, but they are also the product of an unnatural molecular mechanism that turns out not to be very good at making【C10】____ copies. In fact, the process can embed small flaws in the genes of clones that scientists are only now discovering.

A)abstract I)nothing

B)completely J)ordinary

C)deserted K)overturning

D)duplication L)separated

E)everything M)surrounding

F)identical N)systematicaly

G)increasingly O)tempting

H)miniature

Should Single-Sex Education Be Eliminated?

[A]Why is a neuroscientist here debating single-sex schooling? Honestly, I had no fixed ideas on the topic when I started researching it for my book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain. But any discussion of gender differences in children inevitably leads to this debate, so I felt compelled to dive into the research data on single-sex schooling. I read every study I could, weighted the existing evidence, and ultimately concluded that single-sex education is not the answer to gender gaps in achievement—or the best way forward for today’s young people. After my book was published, I met several developmental and cognitive psychologists wnose work was addressing gender and education from different angles, and we published a peer-reviewed Education Forum piece in Science magazine with the provocative title, “The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Education. “

[B]We showed thai three lines of research used to justify single-sex schooling—educational, neuroscience, and social psychology—all fail to support its alleged benefits, and so the widely-held view that gender separation is somehow better for boys, girls, or both is nothing more than a myth.

The Research on Academic Outcomes

[C]First, we reviewed the extensive educational research that has compared academic outcomes in students attending single-sex versus coeducational schools. The overwhelming conclusion when you put this enormous literature together is that there is no clear academic advantage of sitting in all-female or all-male classes, in spite of much popular belief to the contrary. I base this conclusion not on any individual study, but on large-scale and systematic reviews of thousands of studies conducted in every major English-speaking country.

[D]Of course. there’re many excellent single-sex schools out there, but as these careful research reviews have demonstrated, it’s not their single-sex composition that makes them excellent. It’s all the other advantages that are typically packed into such schools, such as financial resources, quality of the faculty, and pro-academic culture, along with the family background and preselected ability of the students themselves that determine their outcomes.

[E]A case in point is the study by Linda Sax at UCLA, who used data froma large national survey of college freshmen to evaluate the effect of single-sex versus coeducational high schools. Commissioned by the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools, the raw findings look pretty good for the funders—higher SAT scores and a stronger academic orientation among women who had attended all girls’ high schools(men weren’t studied). However, once the researchers controlled for both student and school attributes—measures such as family income, parents’ education. and school resources—most of these effects were erased or diminished.

[F]When it comes to boys in particular, the data show that single-sex education is distinctly unhelpful for them. Among the minority of studies that have reported advantages of single-sex schooling, virtually all of them were studies of girls. There’re no rigorous studies in the United States that find single-sex schooling is better for boys, and in fact. a separate line of research by economists has shown both boys and girls exhibit greater cognitive growth over the school year based on the “dose” of girls in a classroom. In fact, boys benefit even more than girls from having larger numbers of female classmates. So single-sex schooling is really not the answer to the current “boy crisis” in education.

Brain and Cognitive Development

[G]The second line of research often used to justify single-sex education falls squarely within my area of expertise; brain and cognitive development. It’s been more than a decade now since the “ brain sex movement” began infiltrating(渗入)our schools, and there are literally hundreds of schools caught up in the fad(新潮). Public schools in Wisconsin, Indiana, Florida and many other states now proudly declare on their websites that they separate boys and girls because “research solidly indicates that boys and girls learn differently.” due to “hard-wired” differences in their brains, eyes, ears, autonomic nervous systems, and more.

[H]All of these statements can be traced to just a few would-be neuroscientists. especially physician Leonard Sax and therapist Michael Gurian. Each gives lectures, runs conferences, and does a lot of professional development on so-called “ gender-specific learning. ” I analyzed their various claims about sex differences in hearing, vision, language, math, stress responses, and “ learning styles” in my book and a long peer-reviewed paper. Other neuroscientists and psychologists have similarly exposed their work. In short, the mechanisms by which our brains learn language, math, physics, and every other subject don’t differ between boys and girls. Of course, learning does vary a lot between individual students, but research reliably shows that this variance is far greater within populations of boys or girls than between the two sexes.

[I]The equal protection clause of the US Constitution prohibits separation of students by sex in public education that’s based on precisely this kind of “ overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females. ” And the reason it is prohibited is because it leads far too easily to stereotyping and sex discrimination.

Social Developmental Psychology

[J]That brings me to the third area of research which fails to support single-sex schooling and indeed suggests the practice is actually harmful: social developmental psychology.

[K]It’s a well-proven finding in social psychology that segregation promotes stereotyping and prejudice, whereas intergroup contact reduces them—and the results are the same whether you divide groups by race, age, gender, body mass index, sexual orientation, or any other category. What’s more, children are especially vulnerable to this kind of bias, because they are dependent on adults for learning which social categories are important and why we divide people into different groups.

[L]You don’t have to look far to find evidence of stereotyping and sex discrimination in single-sex schools. There was the failed single-sex experiment in California, where six school districts used generous state grants to set up separate boys’ and girls’ academics in the late 1990s. Once boys and girls were segregated, teachers resorted to traditional gender stereotypes to run their classes. and within just three years, five of the six districts had gone back to coeducation.

[M]At the same time, researchers are increasingly discovering benefits of gender interaction in youth. A large British study found that children with other-sex older siblings(兄弟姐妹)exhibit less stereotypical play than children with same-sex older siblings, such as girls who like sports and building toys and boys who like art and dramatic play. Another study of high school social networks found less bullying and aggression the higher the density of mixed-sex friendships within a given adolescent network. Then there is the finding we cited in our Science paper of higher divorce and depression rates among a large group of British men who attended single-sex schools as teenagers, which might be explained by the lack of opportunity to learn about relationships during their formative years.

[N]Whether in nursery school, high school, or the business world, gender segregating narrows our perceptions of each other, facilitating stereotyping and sexist attitudes. It’s very simple: the more we structure children and adolescents’ environment around gender distinctions and separation, the more they will use these categories as the primary basis for understanding themselves and others.

[O]Gender is an important issue in education. There are gaps in reading, writing, and science achievement that should be narrower. There are gaps in career choice that should be narrower—if we really want to maximize human potential and American economic growth. But stereotyping boys and girls and separating them in the name of fictitious(虚构的)brain differences is never going to close these gaps.

International governments’ inaction concerning sustainable development is clearly worrying but the proactive(主动出击的)approaches of some leading-edge companies are encouraging. Toyota, Wal-Mart, DuPont, M&S and General Electric have made tackling environmental wastes a key economic driver.

DuPont committed itself to a 65% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the 10 years prior to 2010. By 2007, DuPont was saving $ 2.2 billion a year through energy efficiency, the same as its total declared profits that year. General Electric aims to reduce the energy intensity of its operations by 50% by 2015. They have invested heavily in projects designed to change the way of using and conserving energy.

Companies like Toyota and Wal-Mart are not committing to environmental goals out of the goodness of their hearts. The reason for their actions is a simple yet powerful realisation that the environmetal and economic footprints fit well together. When M&S launched its “Plan A” sustainability programme in 2007, it was believed that it would cost over ￡200 million in the first five years. However, the initiative had generated ￡105 million by²⁰¹¹⁄₁₂.

When we prevent physical waste, increase energy efficiency or improve resource productivity, we save money, improve profitability and enhance competitiveness. In fact, there are often huge “quick win” opportunities, thanks to years of neglect.

However, there is a considerable gap between leading-edge companies and the rest of the pack. There are far too many companies still delaying creating a lean and green business system, arguing that it will cost money or require sizable capital investments. They remain stuck in the “ environment is cost” mentality. Being environmentally friendly does not have to cost money. In fact, going beyond compliance saves cost at the same time that it generates cash, provided that management adopts the new lean and green model.

Lean means doing more with less. Nonetheless, in most companies, economic and environmental continuous improvement is viewed as being in conflict with each other. This is one of the biggest opportunities missed across most industries. The size of the opportunity is enormous. The 3% Report recently published by World Wildlife Fund and CDP shows that the economic prize for curbing carbon emissions in the US economy is $780 billion between now and 2020. It suggests that one of the biggest levers for delivering this opportunity is “ increased efficiency through management and behavioural change”—in other words, lean and green management.

Some 50 studies show that companies that commit to such aspirational goals as zero waste, zero harmful emissions, and zero use of non-renewable resources are financially outperforming their competitors. Conversely, it was found that climate disruption is already costing $1. 2 trillion annually, cutting global GDP by 1.6%. Unaddressed, this will double by 2030.

If you asked me to describe the rising philosophy of the day, I’d say it is data-ism. We now have the ability to gather huge amounts of data. This ability seems to carry with it certain cultural assumptions—that everything that can be measured should be measured; that data is a transparent and reliable lens that allows us to filter out emotionalism and ideology; that data will help us do remarkable things—like foretell the future.

Over the next year, I’m hoping to get a better grip on some of the questions raised by the data revolution; In what situations should we rely on intuitive pattern recognition and in which situations should we ignore intuition and follow the data? What kinds of events are predictable using statistical analysis and what sorts of events are not?

I confess I enter this in a skeptical frame of mind, believing that we tend to get carried away in our desire to reduce everything to the quantifiable. But at the outset let me celebrate two things data does really well.

First, it’s really good at exposing when our intuitive view of reality is wrong. For example, nearly every person who runs for political office has an intuitive sense that they can powerfully influence their odds of winning the election if they can just raise and spend more money. But this is largely wrong.

After the 2006 election, Sean Trende constructed a graph comparing the incumbent(在任的)campaign spending advantages with their eventual margins of victory. There was barely any relationship between more spending and a bigger victory.

Likewise, many teachers have an intuitive sense that different students have different learning styles; some are verbal and some are visual; some are linear, some are holistic(整体的). Teachers imagine they will improve outcomes if they tailor their presentations to each student. But there’s no evidence to support this either.

Second, data can illuminate patterns of behavior we haven’t yet noticed. For example, I’ve always assumed people who frequently use words like “ I,” “ me,” and “ mine ” are probably more self-centered than people who don’t. But as James Pennebaker of the University of Texas notes in his book, The Secret Life of Pronouns, when people are feeling confident, they are focused on the task at hand, not on themselves. High-status, confident people use fewer “I” words, not more.

Our brains often don’t notice subtle verbal patterns, but Pennebaker’s computers can. Younger writers use more negative and past-tense words than older writers who use more positive and future-tense words.

In sum, the data revolution is giving us wonderful ways to understand the present and the past. Will it transform our ability to predict and make decisions about the future? We’ll see.