2010年12月英语六级真题

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2010 年12 月大学英语六级(CET-6)真题试卷

Part I Writing (30 minutes)

Direction: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled My Views on

University Ranking. You should write at least 150 words following the outline given

below.

1. 目前高校排名相当盛行;

2. 对于这种做法人们看法不一;

3. 在我看来……

My Views on University Ranking

Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)

Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the

questions on Answer Sheet 1. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four

choices marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. For questions 8-10, complete the sentences

with the information given in the passage.

Into the Unknown

The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope?

Until the early 1990s nobody much thought about whole populations getting older. The UN

had the foresight to convene a “world assembly on ageing” back in 1982, but that came and went.

By 1994 the World Bank had noticed that something big was happening. In a report entitled

“Averting the Old Age Crisis”, it argued that pension arrangements in most countries were

unsustainable.

For the next ten years a succession of books, mainly by Americans, sounded the alarm. They

had titles like Young vs Old, Gray Dawn and The Coming Generational Storm, and their message

was blunt: health-care systems were heading for the rocks, pensioners were taking young people to

the cleaners, and soon there would be intergenerational warfare.

Since then the debate has become less emotional, not least because a lot more is known about

the subject. Books, conferences and research papers have multiplied. International organisations

such as the OECD and the EU issue regular reports. Population ageing is on every agenda, from G8

economic conferences to NATO summits. The World Economic Forum plans to consider the future

of pensions and health care at its prestigious Davos conference early next year. The media,

including this newspaper, are giving the subject extensive coverage.

Whether all that attention has translated into sufficient action is another question.

Governments in rich countries now accept that their pension and health-care promises will soon

become unaffordable, and many of them have embarked on reforms, but so far only timidly. That is

not surprising: politicians with an eye on the next election will hardly rush to introduce unpopular

measures that may not bear fruit for years, perhaps decades.

The outline of the changes needed is clear. To avoid fiscal (财政) meltdown, public pensions

and health-care provision will have to be reined back severely and taxes may have to go up. By far

the most effective method to restrain pension spending is to give people the opportunity to work

longer, because it increases tax revenues and reduces spending on pensions at the same time. It may

even keep them alive longer. John Rother, the AARP’s head of policy and strategy, points to

studies showing that other things being equal, people who remain at work have lower death rates

than their retired peers.

Younger people today mostly accept that they will have to work for longer and that their

pensions will be less generous. Employers still need to be persuaded that older workers are worth

holding on to. That may be because they have had plenty of younger ones to choose from, partly

thanks to the post-war baby-boom and partly because over the past few decades many more women

have entered the labour force, increasing employers’ choice. But the reservoir of women able and

willing to take up paid work is running low, and the baby-boomers are going grey.

In many countries immigrants have been filling such gaps in the labour force as have already

emerged (and remember that the real shortage is still around ten years off). Immigration in the

developed world is the highest it has ever been, and it is making a useful difference. In still-fertile

America it currently accounts for about 40% of total population growth, and in fast-ageing western

Europe for about 90%.

On the face of it, it seems the perfect solution. Many developing countries have lots of young

people in need of jobs; many rich countries need helping hands that will boost tax revenues and

keep up economic growth. But over the next few decades labour forces in rich countries are set to

shrink so much that inflows of immigrants would have to increase enormously to compensate: to at

least twice their current size in western Europe’s most youthful countries, and three times in the

older ones. Japan would need a large multiple of the few immigrants it has at present. Public

opinion polls show that people in most rich countries already think that immigration is too high.

Further big increases would be politically unfeasible.

To tackle the problem of ageing populations at its root, “old” countries would have to

rejuvenate (使年轻 ) themselves by having more of their own children. A number of them have

tried, some more successfully than others. But it is not a simple matter of offering financial

incentives or providing more child care. Modern urban life in rich countries is not well adapted to

large families. Women find it hard to combine family and career. They often compromise by

having just one child.

And if fertility in ageing countries does not pick up? It will not be the end of the world, at least

not for quite a while yet, but the world will slowly become a different place. Older societies may be

less innovative and more strongly disinclined to take risks than younger ones. By 2025 at the latest,

about half the voters in America and most of those in western European countries will be over

50—and older people turn out to vote in much greater number than younger ones. Academic

studies have found no evidence so far that older voters have used their power at the ballot box to

push for policies that specifically benefit them, though if in future there are many more of them

they might start doing so.

Nor is there any sign of the intergenerational warfare predicted in the 1990s. After all, older

people themselves mostly have families. In a recent study of parents and grown-up children in 11

European countries, Karsten Hank of Mannheim University found that 85% of them lived within

25km of each other and the majority of them were in touch at least once a week.

Even so, the shift in the centre of gravity to older age groups is bound to have a profound

effect on societies, not just economically and politically but in all sorts of other ways too. Richard

Jackson and Neil Howe of America’s CSIS, in a thoughtful book called The Graying of the Great

Powers, argue that, among other things, the ageing of the developed countries will have a number

of serious security implications.

For example, the shortage of young adults is likely to make countries more reluctant to

commit the few they have to military service. In the decades to 2050, America will find itself

playing an ever-increasing role in the developed world’s defence effort. Because America’s

population will still be growing when that of most other developed countries is shrinking, America

will be the only developed country that still matters geopolitically (地缘政治上).

Ask me in 2020

There is little that can be done to stop population ageing, so the world will have to live with it.

But some of the consequences can be alleviated. Many experts now believe that given the right

policies, the effects, though grave, need not be catastrophic. Most countries have recognised the

need to do something and are beginning to act.

But even then there is no guarantee that their efforts will work. What is happening now is

historically unprecedented. Ronald Lee, director of the Centre on the Economics and Demography

of Ageing at the University of California, Berkeley, puts it briefly and clearly: “We don’t really

know what population ageing will be like, because nobody has done it yet. “

注意：此部分试题请在答题卡 1上作答。

1. In its 1994 report, the World Bank argued that the current pension system in most countries

could ______.

[A] not be sustained in the long term

[B] further accelerate the ageing process

[C] hardly halt the growth of population

[D] help tide over the current ageing crisis

2. What message is conveyed in books like Young vs Old?

[A] The generation gap is bound to narrow.

[B] Intergenerational conflicts will intensify.

[C] The younger generation will beat the old.

[D] Old people should give way to the young.

3. One reason why pension and health care reforms are slow in coming is that ______.

[A] nobody is willing to sacrifice their own interests to tackle the problem

[B] most people are against measures that will not bear fruit immediately

[C] the proposed reforms will affect too many people’s interests

[D] politicians are afraid of losing votes in the next election

4. The author believes the most effective method to solve the pension crisis is to ______.

[A] allow people to work longer [C] cut back on health care provisions

[B] increase tax revenues [D] start reforms right away

5. The reason why employers are unwilling to keep older workers is that ______.

[A] they are generally difficult to manage

[B] the longer they work, the higher their pension

[C] their pay is higher than that of younger ones

[D] younger workers are readily available

6. To compensate for the fast-shrinking labour force, Japan would need ______.

[A] to revise its current population control policy

[B] large numbers of immigrants from overseas

[C] to automate its manufacturing and service industries

[D] a politically feasible policy concerning population

7. Why do many women in rich countries compromise by having only one child?

[A] Small families are becoming more fashionable.

[B] They find it hard to balance career and family.

[C] It is too expensive to support a large family.

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2010年12月大学英语六级(CET-6)真题试卷PartIWriting(30minutes)Direction:Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessayentitledMyViewsonUniversityRanking.Youshouldwriteatleast150wordsfollowingtheoutlinegivenbelow.1.目前高校排名相当盛行;2.对于这种做法人们看法不一;3.在我看来……MyViewsonUniversityRankingPartIIReadingComprehension(Skimmin...

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2010年12月英语六级真题

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