2012年06月大学英语六级听力真题原文和答案

【听力原文】

Section A

11.W: Did you hear that Anna needs to stay in bed for 4 weeks?

M: Yeah. She injured her spine in a fall and a doctor told her to lie flat on her back for a month so it can mend.

Q: What can we learn from the conversation?

12.M: A famous Russian ballet is coming to town next weekend. But I can’t find a ticket anywhere.

W: Don’t be upset. My sister just happened to have one and she can’t go since she has got some sort of conflict in her schedule.

Q: What does the woman mean?

13.W: Hello, my bathroom drain is blocked and I’m giving a party tonight. Do you think you could come and fix it for me?

M: Sorry, ma’am. I’m pretty busy right now. But I can put you on my list.

Q: What does the man mean?

14.W: We’re taking up a collection to buy a gift for Jemma. She’ll have been with the company 25 years next week.

M: Well, count me in. But I’m a bit short on cash now. When do you need it?

Q: What is the man going to do?

15.W: Tony’s mother has invited me to dinner. Do you think I should tell her in advance that I’m a vegetarian?

M: Of course. I think she’d appreciate it. Imaging how you both feel if she fixed the turkey dinner or something.

Q: What does the man suggest the woman do?

16.M: Just look at this newspaper, nothing but robbery, suicide and murder. Do you still believe people are basically good?

W: Of course. But many papers lack interest in reporting something positive like peace, love and generosity.

Q: What are the speakers talking about?

17.M: I can’t believe so many people want to sign up for the Korea Development Conference.We will have to limit the registration.

W: Yeah, otherwise we won’t have room for the more.

Q: What are the speakers going to do?

18.W: Hi, I’m calling about the ad for the one bedroom apartment.

M: Perfect timing! The person who was supposed to rent it just backed town to take a room on campus.

Q: What do we learn from the conversation?

Conversation 1

W: One of the most interesting experiments with dolphins must be one done by Doctor Jarvis Bastian. What he tried to do was to teach a male dolphin called Bass and a female called Doris to communicate with each other across a solid barrier.

M: So how did he do it exactly?

W: Well, first of all, he kept the two dolphins together in the same tank and taught them to press levers whenever they saw a light. The levers were fitted to the side of the tank next to each other. If the light flashed on and off several times, the dolphins were supposed to press the left-hand lever followed by the right-hand one. If the light was kept steady, the dolphins were supposed to press the levers in reverse order. Whenever they responded correctly, they were rewarded with fish.

M: Sounds terribly complicated.

W: Well, that was the first stage. In the second stage, Doctor Bastian separated the dolphins into two tanks. They could still hear one another, but they couldn’t actually see each other. The levers and light were set up in exactly the same way except that this time it was only Doris who could see the light indicating which lever to press first. But in order to get their fish, both dolphins had to press the levers in the correct order. This meant of course that Doris had to tell Bass whether it was a flashing light or whether it was a steady light.

M: So did it work?

W: Well, amazingly enough, the dolphins achieved a 100 % success rate.

Questions 19-21 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

Q19. What is the purpose of Doctor Jarvis Bastian’s experiment?

Q20. What were the dolphins supposed to do when they saw a steady light?

Q21. How did the second stage of the experiment differ from the first stage?

Conversation 2

W: This week’s program Up Your Street takes you to Harrogate, a small town in Yorkshire. Harrogate became a fashionable resort during Victorian times, when people came to take a bath in the mineral waters. Today, few people come to visit the town for its mineral waters. Instead, Harrogate has become a popular town for people to retire to. Its clean air, attractive parks, and the absence of any industry, make this an ideal spot for people looking for a quiet life. Now, to tell us more about Harrogate, I have with me Tom Percival, President of the Chamber of Commerce. Tom, one of the things visitor notices about Harrogate is the large area of open park land right down into the middle of the town. Can you tell us more about it?

M: Yes, certainly. The area is called the Stray.

W: Why the Stray?

M: It’s called that because in the old days, people let their cattles stray on the area, which was common land.

W: Oh, I see.

M: Then, we’ve changes in farming and in land ownership. The Stray became part of the land owned by Harrogate.

W: And is it protected?

M: Oh, yes, indeed. As a special law, no one can build anything on the stray. It’s protected forever.

W: So it will always be park land?

M: That’s right. As you can see, some of the Stray is used for sports fields.

W: I believe it looks lovely in the spring.

M: Yes, it does. There’re spring flowers on the old trees, and people visit the town just to see the flowers.

Question 22-25 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

Q22. Where does this conversation most probably take place?

Q23. What do we learn about modern Harrogate?

Q24. What does the man say about the area called the Stray?

Q25. What attracts people most in the Stray during the spring time?

Section B

Passage One

Russell Fazio, an Ohio State psychology professor who has studied interracial roommates there and at Indiana University, discovered an intriguing academic effect. In a study analyzing data on thousands of Ohio State freshmen who lived in dorms, he found that black freshmen who came to college with high standardized test scores earned better grades if they had a white roommate — even if the roommate’s test scores were low. The roommate’s race had no effect on the grades of white students or low-scoring black students. Perhaps, the study speculated, having a white roommate helps academically prepared black students adjust to a predominantly white university.

That same study found that randomly assigned interracial roommates at Ohio State broke up before the end of the quarter about twice as often as same-race roommates.

Because interracial roommate relationships are often problematic, Dr. Fazio said, many students would like to move out, but university housing policies may make it hard to leave.

“At Indiana University, where housing was not so tight, more interracial roommates split up,” he said. “Here at Ohio State, where housing was tight, they were told to work it out. The most interesting thing we found was that if the relationship managed to continue for just 10 weeks, we could see an improvement in racial attitudes.”

Dr. Fazio’s Indiana study found that three times as many randomly assigned interracial roommates were no longer living together at the end of the semester, compared with white roommates. The interracial roommates spent less time together, and had fewer joint activities than the white pairs.

Question 26-29

26. What do we know about Russell Fazio ?

27. Who benefited from living with a white roommate according to Fazio’s study?

28. What did the study find about randomly assigned interracial roommates at Ohio State University?

29. What did Dr. Fazio find interesting about interracial roommates who had lived together for 10 weeks?

Passage two

In a small liboratory at the Medical University of South Carolina, Dr. Vladimir Mironov has been working for a decade to grow meat. A developmental biologist and tissue engineer, Dr. Mironov, is one of only a few scientists worldwide involved in bioengineering 'cultured' meat.

It's a product he believes could help solve future global food crises resulting from shrinking amounts of land available for growing meat the old-fashioned way.

“Growth of cultured meat is also under way in the Netherlands”, Mironov told Reuters in an interview, “but in the United States, it is science in search of funding and demand.”

The new National Institute of Food and Agriculture won't fund it, the National Institutes of Health won't fund it, and the NASA funded it only briefly, Mironov said.

"It's classic disruptive technology," Mironov said. "Bringing any new technology on the market, on average, costs $1 billion. We don't even have $1 million."

Director of the Advanced Tissue Biofabrication Center in the Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology at the medical university, Mironov now primarily conducts research on tissue engineering, or growing, of human organs.

"There's an unpleasant factor when people find out meat is grown in a lab. They don't like to associate technology with food," said Nicholas Genovese, a visiting scholar in cancer cell biology.

"But there are a lot of products that we eat today that are considered natural that are produced in a similar manner," Genovese said.

30. What does Dr. Mironov think of bioengineering cultured meat?

31. What does Dr. Mironov say about the funding for their research?

32. What does Nicholas Genovese say about a lot of products we eat today?

Passage 3

Bernard Jackson is a free man today, but he has many bitter memories. Jackson spent five years in prison after a jury wrongly convicted him of raping two women. At Jackson's trial, although two witnesses testified that Jackson was with them in another location at the times of the crimes, he was convicted anyway. Why? The jury believed the testimony of the two victims, who positively identified Jackson as the man who has attacked them. The court eventually freed Jackson after the police found the man who had really committed the crimes. Jackson was similar in appearance to the guilty man. The two women has made a mistake in identity. As a result, Jackson has lost five years of his life.

The two women in this case were eyewitnesses. They clearly saw the man who attacked them, yet they mistakenly identified an innocent person. Similar incidents have occurred before. Eyewitnesses to other crimes have identified the wrong person in a police lineup or in photographs.

Many factors influence the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. For instance, witnesses sometimes see photographs of several suspects before they try to identify the person they saw in a lineup of people. They can become confused by seeing many photographs or similar faces. The number of people in the lineup, and whether it is a live lineup or a photograph, may also affect a witness's decision. People sometimes have difficulty identifying people of other races. The questions the police ask witnesses also have an effect on them.

Question 33: What do we learn about Bernard Jackson?

Question 34: What led directly to Jackson’s sentence?

Question 35: What lesson do we learn from Jackson’s case?

Section C Compound Dictation

About 700,000 children in Mexico dropped out of school last year as recession-stricken families pushed kids to work, and a weak economic recovery will allow only slight improvement in the drop-out rate in 2010, a top education official said.

Mexico's economy suffered more than any other in Latin America last year, shrinking an estimated 7 percent due to a plunge in U.S. demand for Mexican exports such as cars.

The decline led to a 4 percent increase in the number of kids who left primary or middle school in 2009, said Juan de Dios Castro, who heads the nation's adult education program and keeps a close watch on drop-out rates.

"Poverty rose and that is a factor that makes our job more difficult," Castro told Reuters in an interview earlier this month.

Hindered by higher taxes and weak demand for its exports, Mexico's economy is seen only partially recovering this year. As a result, drop-out rates will not improve much, Castro said.

"There will be some improvement, but not significant," Castro said.

Mexicohas historically had high drop-out rates as poor families pull kids out of school to help put food on the table, and children often sell candy and crafts in the streets or work in restaurants.

The nation's drop-out problem is just the latest bad news for the long-term competitiveness of the Mexican economy. Mexico's politicians have resisted mending the country's tax, energy and labor laws for decades, leaving its economy behind countries such as Brazil and Chile.