20xx年xx月英语六级考前冲刺试题第五套

20xx年xx月英语六级考前冲刺试题第五套Part I Writing (30 minutes)Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition on the topic: Travel-mate Wanted. You should write at least 150 word following the outline given below:假设你是李明，假期即将到来，你打算做一次为期三周的旅行，希望找个外国朋友作为游伴(Travel-mate)。拟一个寻游伴的启事，交代清楚日程安排、费用分担情况、对对方的要求等，并说明对方和你一起出游的好处。Travel-mate WantedPart 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 1-4, markY (for YES) if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage;N (for NO) if the statement contradicts the information given in the passage;NG (for NOT GIVEN) if the information is not given in the passage.For questions 5-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.Is College Really Worth the Money?The Real WorldEste Griffith had it all figured out. When she graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in April 2001, she had her sights set on one thing: working for a labor union.The real world had other ideas. Griffith left school with not only a degree, but a boatload of debt. She owed $15,000 in student loans and had racked up $4,000 in credit card debt for books, groceries and other expenses. No labor union job could pay enough to bail her out.So Griffith went to work instead for a Washington, D.C. firm that specializes in economic development. Problem solved? Nope. At age 24, she takes home about $1,800 a month, $1,200 of which disappears to pay her rent. Add another $180 a month to retire her student loans and $300 a month to whittle down her credit card balance. You do the math, she says.Griffith has practically no money to live on. She brown-bags(自带午餐)her lunch and bikes to work. Above all, she fears shell never own a house or be able to retire. Its not that she regrets getting her degree. But they dont tell you that the trade-off is the next ten years of your income, she says.Thats precisely the deal being made by more and more college students. Theyre mortgaging their futures to meet soaring tuition costs and other college expenses. Like Griffith, theyre facing a one-two punch at graduation: hefty(深重的)student loans and smothering credit card debtnot to mention a job market that, for now anyway, is dismal.We are forcing our children to make a choice between two evils, says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law professor and expert on bankruptcy. Skip college and face a life of diminished opportunity. or go to college and face a life shackled(束缚)by debt.Tuition HikesFor some time, colleges have insisted their steep tuition hikes are needed to pay for cutting-edge technologies, faculty and administration salaries, and rising health care costs. Now theres a new culprit(犯人): shrinking state support. Caught in a severe budget crunch, many states have sharply scaled back their funding for higher education.Someone had to make up for those lost dollars. And you can guess whoespecially if you live in Massachusetts, which last year hiked its tuition and fees by 24 percent, after funding dropped by 3 percent, or in Missouri, where appropriations(拨款)fell by 10 percent, but tuition rose at double that rate. About one-third of the states, in fact, have increased tuition and fees by more than 10 percent.One of those states is California, and Janet Burrells family is feeling the pain. A bookkeeper in Torrance, Burrell has a daughter at the University of California at Davis Meanwhile, her sons attend two-year colleges because Burrell cant afford to have all of them in four-year schools at once.Meanwhile, even with tuition hikes, Californias community colleges are so strapped for cash they dropped thousands of classes last spring. The result: 54,000 fewer students.Collapsing InvestmentsMany families thought they had a surefire plan: even if tuition kept skyrocketing, they had invested enough money along the way to meet the costs. Then a funny thing happened on the way to Wall Street. Those investments collapsed with the stock market. Among the losers last year: the wildly popular 529 plansfederal tax-exempt college savings plans offered by individual states, which have attracted billions from families around the country. We hear from many parents that what they had set aside declined in value so much that they now dont have enough to see their students through, says Penn State financial aid director Anna Griswold, who witnessed a 10 percent increase in loan applications last year. Even with a market that may be slowly recovering, it will take time, perhaps several years, for people to recoup(补偿)their losses.Nadine Sayegh is among those who didnt have the luxury of waiting for her college nest egg to grow back. Her father had invested money toward her tuition, but a large chunk of it vanished when stocks went south. Nadine was then only partway through college. By graduation, she had taken out at least $10,000 in loans, and her mother had borrowed even more on her behalf. Now 22, Nadine is attending law school, having signed for yet more loans to pay for that. There wasnt any way to do it differently, she says, and Im not happy about it. Ive sat down and calculated how long it will take me to pay off everything. Ill be 35 years old. Thats if shes very lucky: Nadine based her calculation on landing a job right out of law school that will pay her at least $120,000 a year.Dependent on Loans and Credit CardsThe American Council on Education has its own calculation that shows how students are more and more dependent on loans. In just five years, from 1995 to 2000, the median loan debt at public institutions rose from $10,342 to $15,375. Most of this comes from federal loans, which Congress made more tempting in 1992 by expanding eligibility (home equity no longer counts against your assets) and raising loan limits (a dependent undergraduate can now borrow up to $23,000 from the federal government).But students arent stopping there. The College Board estimates that they also borrowed $4.5 billion from private lenders in the 2000-2001 academic year, up from $1.5 billion just five years earlier.For lots of students, the worst of it isnt even the weight of those direct student loans. Its what they rack up on all those plastic cards in their wallets. As of two years ago, according to a study by lender Nellie Mae, more than eight out of ten undergrads had their own credit cards, with the typical student carrying four. Thats no big surprise, given the in-your-face marketing by credit card companies, which set up tables on campus to entice(诱惑)students to sign up. Some colleges ban or restrict this hawking, but others give it a boost. You know those credit cards emblazoned with a schools picture or its logo? For sanctioning such a carda must-have for some studentsa college department or association gets payments from the issuer. Meanwhile, from freshman year to graduation, according to the Nellie Mae study, students triple the number of credit cards they own and double their debt on them. As of 2001, they were in the hole an average $2,327.A Wise Choice?One day, Moyer sat down with his mother, Janne ODonnell, to talk about his goal of going to law school. Dont count on it, ODonnell told him. She couldnt afford the cost and Moyer doubted he could get a loan, given how much he owed already. He said he felt like a failure, ODonnell recalls. He didnt know how he had gotten into such a mess.A week later, the 22-year-old hanged himself in his bedroom, where his mother found him. ODonnell is convinced the money pressures caused his suicide. Sean tried to pay his debts off, she says. And he couldnt take it.To be sure, suicides are exceedingly rare. But despair is common, and it sometimes leads students to rethink whether college was worth it. In fact, there are quite a few jobs that dont require a college degree, yet pay fairly well. On average, though, college graduates can expect to earn 80 percent more than those with only a high school diploma. Also, all but two of the 50 highest paying jobs (the exceptions being air traffic controllers and nuclear power reactor operators) require a four-year college degree. So foregoing a college education is often not a wise choice.Merit Mikhail, who graduated last June from the University of California, Riverside, is glad she borrowed to get through school. But she left Riverside owing $20,000 in student loans and another $7,000 in credit card debt. Now in law school, Merit hopes to become a public-interest attorney, yet she may have to postpone that goal, which bothers her. To handle her debt, shell probably need to start with a more lucrative(有利的)legal job.Like so many other students. Mikhail took out her loans on a kind of blind faith that she could deal with the consequences. You say to yourself, I have to go into debt to make it work, and whatever it takes later, Ill manage. Later has now arrived, and Mikhail is finding out the true cost of her college degree.1. Griffith worked for a firm that specialized in economic development in Washington D.C. because she needed money to pay for her debt.2. The only problem the students are facing at graduation is the dismal job market.3. One reason why colleges increase tuition and fees is that the state support is shrinking.4. Nearly all the families can manage to meet the soaring tuition costs through various investment plans.5. According to Nadines calculation, she can pay off all her debt when she is if she can get a salary of $120,000 a year right out of law school.6. Students get money from not only federal loans but also .7. The college department or association can get payments from the issuer if it sanctions credit cards decorated with .8. ODonnell thinks that the cause of her 22-year-old sons suicide is .9. The author says that foregoing a college education is often not a wise choice because of the 50 highest paying jobs require a four-year college degree except for air traffic controllers and nuclear power reactor operators.10. Merit will have to start with a more lucrative legal job instead of her favorite positiona public-interest attorney because she has to .Part IV Reading Comprehension (Reading in Depth) (25 minutes)Section ADirections: In this section, there is a short passage with 5 questions or incomplete statements. Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete the statements in the fewest possible words on Answer Sheet 2.Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.Scientists say they have high hopes for a drug that could one day provide a new form of treatment for HIV-AIDS. A compound, which interferes with an elusive protein used by the HIV virus to infect human cells, has worked extremely well in monkeys. If the drug proves effective in human trials, scientists say, it could bolster(加强)the effectiveness of two existing AIDS drugs, particularly in fighting drug-resistant strains of the virus.Researchers at the pharmaceutical(制药的)company Merck are very excited about an experimental drug, which has worked as well in monkeys infected with a primate version of the virus as any of the existing anti-AIDS drugs.It works by blocking one of three proteins, or enzymes, the HIV virus uses to gain entrance into and infect human immune system cells.Inhibitor drugs have been developed to block two of the proteins, to slow progression of the disease after infection. They have become standard therapy as a cocktail for people infected with HIV.Those enzymes are reverse transcriptase (转录酶)and protease(蛋白酶). The first converts the virus genetic material into that of its host cells. The second chops up the resulting larger proteins into smaller pieces, producing smaller viral particles that infect new cells.The third prong of cellular attack is a protein called integrase(整合酶), which experts say has been harder to block. Once HIV fools host cells by changing its genetic information so it can enter them, integrase acts like a cut and paste operation in a word processor, deleting an immune cells genetic material and replacing it with its own.An integrase inhibitor would give doctors a third line of attack against HIV infection, according to virologist Daria Hazuda of the division of Virus and Cell Biology at Merck.This would offer a third class of anti-retroviral medications that can be combined with reverse transcriptase inhibitors and protease inhibitors. And since it is a new mechanism of action, these compounds are active against multi-drug resistant variants. So variants that are resistant to all current therapies have been selected in HIV-patients, she said.Current anti-AIDS drugs eventually become resistant to therapy, or stop working, because the virus changes its shape.While researchers are encouraged by the success with the compounds effectiveness in monkey trials, developing a drug that is equally effective in humans can be difficult.Steven Young is executive director of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at Merck. He says, if scientists find a compound that is equally effective in people, the company would ask U.S. regulators to speed approval of the drug.Yeah, I really think thats what were hoping for, he said. I mean, we need to get data that show it has robust anti-viral effects in people. And if were able to get that data, I think we would petition for fast track status.Dr. Young says an integrase inhibitor has the potential to prevent drug resistance.To ensure our best chance of preventing resistance, we would give this as part of a cocktail therapy, he added. And I think its really our plan that we would test this with reverse transcriptase inhibitors and protease inhibitors, as well.47. If the drug proves effective in human trials, it could enhance the effectiveness of existing AIDS drugs in _.48. What has become standard cocktail therapy?49. While integrase deletes an immune cells genetic material and replaces it with its own, it acts like _ in a word processor.50. Why would anti-AIDS drugs stop working?51. According to Steven Young, if scientists get the data that _, they would petition for fast track status.Section BDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. 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 center.Passage OneQuestions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.Occasional self-medication has always been part of normal living. The making and selling of drugs have a long history and are closely linked, like medical practice itself, with the belief in magic. Only during the last hundred years or so has the development of scientific techniques made it possible for some of the causes of symptoms to be understood, so that more accurate diagnosis has become possible. The doctor is now able to follow up the correct diagnosis of many illnesses with specific treatment of their causes. In many other illnesses, of which the causes remain unknown, it is still limited, like the unqualified prescriber, to the treatment of symptoms. The doctor is trained to decide when to treat symptoms only and when to attack the cause: this is the essential difference between medical prescribing and self-medication.The advance of technology has brought about much progress in some fields of medicine, including the development of scientific drug therapy. In many countries public health organization is improving and peoples nutritional standards have risen. Parallel with such beneficial trends have two adverse effects. One is the use of high-pressure advertising by the pharmaceutical industry, which has tended to influence both patients and doctors and has led to the overuse of drugs generally. The other is the emergence of the sedentary society with its faulty ways of life: lack of exercise, over-eating, unsuitable eating, insufficient sleep, excessive smoking and drinking. People with disorders arising from faulty habits such as these, as well as from unhappy human relationships, often resort to self-medication and so add the taking of pharmaceuticals to the list. Advertisers go to great lengths to catch this market.Clever advertising, aimed at chronic sufferers who will try anything because doctors have not been able to cure them, can induce such faith in a preparation, particularly if steeply priced, that it will produceby suggestiona very real effect in some people. Advertisements are also aimed at people suffering from mild complaints such as simple colds and coughs, which clear up by themselves within a short time.These are the main reasons why laxatives, indigestion remedies, painkillers, tonics, vitamin and iron tablets and many other preparations are found in quantity in many households. It is doubtful whether taking these things ever improves a persons health; it may even make it worse. Worse because the preparation may contain unsuitable ingredients; worse because the taker may become dependent on them; worse because they might be taken in excess; worse because they may cause poisoning, and worse of all because symptoms of some serious underlying cause may be masked and therefore medical help may not be sought.52. The first paragraph is intended to _.A suggest that self-medication has a long historyB define