2007年6月英語六級(jí)真題精講：閱讀理解

Section A

Directions: In this section, there is a short passage with 5 questions or incomplete statements. Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete statements in the fewest possible words. Please write your answers on Answer Sheet 2.

Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.

Google is a world-famous company, with its headquarters in Mountain View, California. It was set up in a Silicon Valley garage in 1998, and inflated (膨脹) with the Internet bubble. Even when everything around it collapsed the company kept on inflating. Google's search engine is so widespread across the world that search became Google, and google became a verb. The world fell in love with the effective, fascinatingly fast technology.

Google owes much of its success to the brilliance of S. Brin and L. Page, but also to a series of fortunate events. It was Page who, at Stanford in 1996, initiated the academic project that eventually became Google's search engine. Brin, who had met Page at a student orientation a year earlier, joined the project early on. They were both Ph.D. candidates when they devised the search engine which was better than the rest and, without any marketing, spread by word of mouth from early adopters to, eventually, your grandmother.

Their breakthrough, simply put, was that when their search engine crawled the Web, it did more than just look for word matches, it also tallied (統(tǒng)計(jì)) and ranked a host of other critical factors like how websites link to one another. That delivered far better results than anything else. Brin and Page meant to name their creation Googol (the mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes), but someone misspelled the word so it stuck as Google. They raised money from prescient (有先見之明的) professors and venture capitalists, and moved off campus to turn Google into business. Perhaps their biggest stroke of luck came early on when they tried to sell their technology to other search engines, but no one met their price, and they built it up on their own.

The next breakthrough came in 2000, when Google figured out how to make money with its invention. It had lots of users, but almost no one was paying. The solution turned out to be advertising, and it's not an exaggeration to say that Google is now essentially an advertising company, given that that's the source of nearly all its revenue. Today it is a giant advertising company, worth ＄100 billion.

47. Apart from a series of fortunate events, what is it that has made Google so successful?

48. Google's search engine originated from ____________________ started by L. Page.

49. How did Google's search engine spread all over the world?

50. Brin and Page decided to set up their own business because no one would ______.

51. The revenue of the Google company is largely generated from ____________.

Section B

Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C), and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

Passage One

Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.

You hear the refrain all the time: the U.S. economy looks good statistically, but it doesn't feel good. Why doesn't ever-greater wealth promote ever-greater happiness? It is a question that dates at least to the appearance in 1958 of The Affluent (富裕的) Society by John Kenneth Galbraith, who died recently at 97.

The Affluent Society is a modern classic because it helped define a new moment in the human condition. For most of history, "hunger, sickness, and cold" threatened nearly everyone, Galbraith wrote. "Poverty was found everywhere in that world. Obviously it is not of ours." After World War II, the dread of another Great Depression gave way to an economic boom. In the 1930s unemployment had averaged 18.2 percent; in the 1950s it was 4.5 percent.

To Galbraith, materialism had gone mad and would breed discontent. Through advertising, companies conditioned consumers to buy things they didn't really want or need. Because so much spending was artificial, it would be unfulfilling. Meanwhile, government spending that would make everyone better off was being cut down because people instinctively-and wrongly-labeled government only as "a necessary evil."

It's often said that only the rich are getting ahead; everyone else is standing still or falling behind. Well, there are many undeserving rich-overpaid chief executives, for instance. But over any meaningful period, most people's incomes are increasing. From 1995 to 2004, inflation-adjusted average family income rose 14.3 percent, to ＄43,200. People feel "squeezed" because their rising incomes often don't satisfy their rising wants-for bigger homes, more health care, more education, faster Internet connections.

The other great frustration is that it has not eliminated insecurity. People regard job stability as part of their standard of living. As corporate layoffs increased, that part has eroded. More workers fear they've become "the disposable American," as Louis Uchitelle puts it in his book by the same name.

Because so much previous suffering and social conflict stemmed from poverty, the arrival of widespread affluence suggested utopian (烏托邦式的) possibilities. Up to a point, affluence succeeds. There is much less physical misery than before. People are better off. Unfortunately, affluence also creates new complaints and contradictions.

Advanced societies need economic growth to satisfy the multiplying wants of their citizens. But the quest for growth lets loose new anxieties and economic conflicts that disturb the social order. Affluence liberates the individual, promising that everyone can choose a unique way to self-fulfillment. But the promise is so extravagant that it predestines many disappointments and sometimes inspires choices that have anti-social consequences, including family breakdown and obesity (肥胖癥). Statistical indicators of happiness have not risen with incomes.

Should we be surprised? Not really. We've simply reaffirmed an old truth: the pursuit of affluence does not always end with happiness.

注意：此部分試題在答題卡2上作答。

52. What question does John Kenneth Galbraith raise in his book The Affluent Society?

A) Why statistics don't tell the truth about the economy.

B) Why affluence doesn't guarantee happiness.

C) How happiness can be promoted today.

D) What lies behind an economic boom.

53. According to Galbraith, people feel discontented because _________.

A) public spending hasn't been cut down as expected

B) the government has proved to be a necessary evil

C) they are in fear of another Great Depression

D) materialism has run wild in modern society

54. Why do people feel squeezed when their average income rises considerably?

A) Their material pursuits have gone far ahead of their earnings.

B) Their purchasing power has dropped markedly with inflation.

C) The distribution of wealth is uneven between the rich and the poor.

D) Health care and educational costs have somehow gone out of control.

55. What does Louis Uchitelle mean by "the disposable American" (Line 3, Para.5)?

A) Those who see job stability as part of their living standard.

B) People full of utopian ideas resulting from affluence.

C) People who have little say in American politics.

D) Workers who no longer have secure jobs.

56. What has affluence brought to American society?

A) Renewed economic security.??????????

B) A sense of self-fulfillment.

C) New conflicts and complaints.?

D) Misery and anti-social behavior.

Passage Two

Questions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.

The use of deferential (敬重的) language is symbolic of the Confucian ideal of the woman, which dominates conservative gender norms in Japan. This ideal presents a woman who withdraws quietly to the background, subordinating her life and needs to those of her family and its male head. She is a dutiful daughter, wife, and mother, master of the domestic arts. The typical refined Japanese woman excels in modesty and delicacy; she "treads softly (謹(jǐn)言慎行) in the world," elevating feminine beauty and grace to an art form.

Nowadays, it is commonly observed that young women are not conforming to the feminine linguistic (語言的) ideal. They are using fewer of the very deferential "women's" forms, and even using the few strong forms that are known as "men's." This, of course, attracts considerable attention and has led to an outcry in the Japanese media against the defeminization of women's language. Indeed, we didn't hear about "men's language" until people began to respond to girls' appropriation of forms normally reserved for boys and men. There is considerable sentiment about the "corruption" of women's language-which of course is viewed as part of the loss of feminine ideals and morality-and this sentiment is crystallized by nationwide opinion polls that are regularly carried out by the media.

Yoshiko Matsumoto has argued that young women probably never used as many of the highly deferential forms as older women. This highly polite style is no doubt something that young women have been expected to "grow into"-after all, it is a sign not simply of femininity, but of maturity and refinement, and its use could be taken to indicate a change in the nature of one's social relations as well. One might well imagine little girls using exceedingly polite forms when playing house or imitating older women-in a fashion analogous to little girls' use of a highpitched voice to do "teacher talk" or "mother talk" in role play.

The fact that young Japanese women are using less deferential language is a sure sign of change-of social change and of linguistic change. But it is most certainly not a sign of the "masculization" of girls. In some instances, it may be a sign that girls are making the same claim to authority as boys and men, but that is very different from saying that they are trying to be "masculine." Katsue Reynolds has argued that girls nowadays are using more assertive language strategies in order to be able to compete with boys in schools and out. Social change also brings not simply different positions for women and girls, but different relations to life stages, and adolescent girls are participating in new subcultural forms. Thus what may, to an older speaker, seem like "masculine" speech may seem to an adolescent like "liberated" or "hip" speech.

注意：此部分試題在答題卡2上作答。

57. The first paragraph describes in detail ________.

A) the standards set for contemporary Japanese women

B) the Confucian influence on gender norms in Japan

C) the stereotyped role of women in Japanese families

D) the norms for traditional Japanese women to follow

58. What change has been observed in today's young Japanese women?

A) They pay less attention to their linguistic behavior.

B) The use fewer of the deferential linguistic forms.

C) They confuse male and female forms of language.

D) They employ very strong linguistic expressions.

59. How do some people react to women's appropriation of men's language forms as reported in the Japanese media?

A) They call for a campaign to stop the defeminization.

B) They see it as an expression of women's sentiment.

C) They accept it as a modern trend.

D) They express strong disapproval.

60. According to Yoshiko Matsumoto, the linguistic behavior observed in today's young women _________.

A) may lead to changes in social relations

B) has been true of all past generations

C) is viewed as a sign of their maturity

D) is a result of rapid social progress

61. The author believes that the use of assertive language by young Japanese women is _________.

A) a sure sign of their defeminization and maturation

B) an indication of their defiance against social change

C) one of their strategies to compete in a male-dominated society

D) an inevitable trend of linguistic development in Japan today