试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

四六级英语

Neon (霓虹) is to Hong Kong as red phone booths are to London and fog is to San Francisco. When night falls, red and blue and other colors（） a hazy (雾蒙蒙的)glow over a city lit up by tens of thousands of neon signs. But many of them are going dark, （） by more practical, but less romantic, LEDs (发光二极管).Changing building codes, evolving tastes, and the high cost of maintaining those wonderful old signs have businesses embracing LEDs, which are energy （） , but still carry great cost. To me, neon represents memories of the past,” says photographer Sharon Blance, whose series Hong Kong Neon celebrates the city’s famous signs. “Looking at the signs now I get a feeling of amazement, mixed with sadness.”Building a neon sign is an art practiced by （） trained on the job to mold glass tubes into （） shapes and letters. They fill these tubes with gases that glow when （） Neon makes orange, while other gases make yellow or blue. It takes many hours to craft a single sign.Blance spent a week in Hong Kong and （） more than 60 signs; 22 of them appear in the series that capture the signs lighting up lonely streets — an （） that makes it easy to admire their colors and craftsmanship. “I love the beautiful, handcrafted, old-fashioned （） of neon,” says Blance. The signs do nothing more than （） a restaurant, theater, or other business, but do so in the most striking way possible.

Directions: For this part，you are allowed 30 minutes to wtite a short essay on the importance of writing ability and how to develop it. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. 公交车曾是中国人出行的主要交通工具。近年来，由于私家车数量不断增多，城市的交通问题越来越严重。许多城市为了鼓励更多人乘坐公交车出行，一直在努力改善公交车的服务质量。车辆的设施不断更新，车速也有了显著提高。然而，公交车的票价却依然相当低廉。现在，在大多数城市，许多当地老年市民都可以免费乘坐公交车。

A new batch of young women—members of the so-called Millennial (千禧的)generation—has been entering the workforce for the past decade. At the starting line of their careers, they are better educated than their mothers and grandmothers had been—or than their young male counterparts are now. But when they look ahead, they see roadblocks to their success. They believe that women are paid less than men for doing the same job. They think it’s easier for men to get top executive jobs than it is for them. And they assume that if and when they have children, it will be even harder for them to advance in their careers.While the public sees greater workplace equality between men and women now than it did 20-30 years ago, most believe more change is needed. Among Millennial women, 75% say this country needs to continue making changes to achieve gender equality in the workplace, compared with 57% of Millennial men. Even so, relatively few young women (15%) say they have been discriminated against at work because of their gender.As Millennial women come of age they share many of the same views and values about work as their male counterparts. They want jobs that provide security and flexibility, and they place relatively little importance on high pay. At the same time, however, young working women are less likely than men to aim at top management jobs: 34% say they’re not interested in becoming a boss or top manager; only 24% of young men say the same. The gender gap on this question is even wider among working adults in their 30s and 40s, when many women face the trade-offs that go with work and motherhood.These findings are based on a new Pew Research Center survey of 2,002 adults, including 810 Millennials (ages 18-32), conducted Oct. 7-27, 2013. The survey finds that, in spite of the dramatic gains women have made in educational attainment and labor force participation in recent decades, young women view this as a man’s world—just as middle-aged and older women do.What do we learn from the first paragraph about Millennial women starting their careers?How do most Millennial women feel about their treatment in the workplace?What do Millennial women value most when coming of age?What are women in their 30s and 40s concerned about?What conclusion can be drawn about Millennial women from the 2013 survey?

For thousands of years, people have known that the best way to understand a concept is to explain it to someone else. “While we teach, we learn,” said Roman philosopher Seneca. Now scientists are bringing this ancient wisdom up-to-date. They’re documenting why teaching is such a fruitful way to learn, and designing innovative ways for young people to engage in instruction.Researchers have found that students who sign up to tutor others work harder to understand the material, recall it more accurately and apply it more effectively. Student teachers score higher on tests than pupils who’re learning only for their own sake. But how can children, still learning themselves, teach others? One answer: They can tutor younger kids. Some studies have found that first-born children are more intelligent than their later-born siblings (兄弟姐妹).This suggests their higher IQs result from the time they spend teaching their siblings. Now educators are experimenting with ways to apply this model to academic subjects. They engage college undergraduates to teach computer science to high school students, who in turn instruct middle school students on the topic.But the most cutting-edge tool under development is the “teachable agent”—a computerized character who learns, tries, makes mistakes and asks questions just like a real-world pupil. Computer scientists have created an animated (动画的)figure called Betty’s Brain, who has been “taught” about environmental science by hundreds of middle school students. Student teachers are motivated to help Betty master certain materials. While preparing to teach, they organize their knowledge and improve their own understanding. And as they explain the information to it, they identify problems in their own thinking.Feedback from the teachable agents further enhances the tutors’ learning. The agents’ questions compel student tutors to think and explain the materials in different ways, and watching the agent solve problems allows them to see their knowledge put into action.Above all, it’s the emotions one experiences in teaching that facilitate learning. Student tutors feel upset when their teachable agents fail, but happy when these virtual pupils succeed as they derive pride and satisfaction from someone else’s accomplishment.What are researchers rediscovering through their studies?What do we learn about Betty’s Brain?How does teaching others benefit student tutors?What do students do to teach their teachable agents?What is the key factor that eases student tutors’ learning?

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