2010年6月英语六级真题及答案

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2010 年 6 月英语六级真题及答案

Part I Writing (30 minutes)

　　　　Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the

topic of Due Attention Should Be Given to the Study of Chinese. You should write at least

120 words following the outline given below:

　　1.近年来在学生中出现了忽视中文学习的现象；

　　2.出现这种现象的原因和后果；

　　3.我认为…

Due Attention Should Be Given to the Study of Chinese

　　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.

　　Obama's success isn't all good news for black Americans

　　As Erin White watched the election results head towards victory for Barack Obama, she

felt a burden lifting from her shoulders. "In that one second, it was a validation for my

whole race," she recalls.

　　 "I've always been an achiever," says White, who is studying for an MBA at Vanderbilt

University in Nashville, Tennessee. "But there had always been these things in the back of

my mind questioning whether I really can be who I want. It was like a shadow, following me

around saying you can only go so far. Now it's like a barrier has been let down."

　　White's experience is what many psychologists had expected - that Obama would prove to

be a powerful role model for African Americans. Some hoped his rise to prominence would

have a big impact on white Americans, too, challenging those who still harbour racist

sentiments. "The traits that characterise him are very contradictory to the racial

stereotypes that black people are aggressive and uneducated," says Ashby Plant of Florida

State University. "He's very intelligent and eloquent."

　　Sting in the tail

　　Ashby Plant is one of a number of psychologists who seized on Obama's candidacy to test

hypotheses about the power of role models. Their work is already starting to reveal how the

"Obama effect" is changing people's views and behaviour. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not

all good news: there is a sting in the tail of the Obama effect.

　　 But first the good news. Barack Obama really is a positive role model for African

Americans, and he was making an impact even before he got to the White House. Indeed, the

Obama effect can be surprisingly immediate and powerful, as Ray Friedman of Vanderbilt

University and his colleagues discovered.

　　They tested four separate groups at four key stages of Obama's presidential campaign.

Each group consisted of around 120 adults of similar age and education, and the test

assessed their language skills. At two of these stages, when Obama's success was less than

certain, the tests showed a clear difference between the scores of the white and black

participants—an average of 12.1 out of 20, compared to 8.8, for example. When the Obama

fever was at its height, however, the black participants performed much better. Those who

had watched Obama's acceptance speech as the Democrats' presidential candidate performed

just as well, on average, as the white subjects.After his election victory, this was true

of all the black participants.

　　Dramatic shift

　　What can explain this dramatic shift? At the start of the test, the participants had to

declare their race and were told their results would be used to assess their strengths and

weaknesses. This should have primed the subjects with "stereotype threat" – an anxiety

that their results will confirm negative stereotypes, which has been shown to damage the

performance of African Americans.

　　 Obama's successes seemed to act as a shield against this. "We suspect they felt

inspired and energised by his victory, so the stereotype threat wouldn't prove a

distraction," says Friedman.

　　Lingering racism

　　If the Obama effect is positive for African Americans, how is it affecting their white

compatriots (同胞)? Is the experience of having a charismatic ( 有魅力的) black president

modifying lingering racist attitudes? There is no easy way to measure racism directly;

instead psychologists assess what is known as "implicit bias", using a computer-based test

that measures how quickly people associate positive and negative words—such as "love" or

"evil"—with photos of black or white faces. A similar test can also measure how quickly

subjects associate stereotypical traits—such as athletic skills or mental ability—with a

particular group.

　　In a study that will appear in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Plant's

team tested 229 students during the height of the Obama fever. They found that implicit

bias has fallen by as much as 90% compared with the level found in a similar study in 2006.

"That's an unusually large drop," Plant says.

　　While the team can't be sure their results are due solely to Obama, they also showed

that those with the lowest bias were likely to subconsciously associate black skin colour

with political words such as "government" or "president". This suggests that Obama was

strongly on their mind, says Plant.

　　Drop in bias

　　Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who runs a website that

measures implicit bias using similar test, has also observed a small drop in bias in the

700,000 visitors to the site since January 2007, which might be explained by Obama's rise

to popularity. However, his preliminary results suggest that change will be much slower

coming than Plant's results suggest.

　　Talking honestly

　　 "People now have the opportunity of expressing support for Obama every day," says

Daniel Effron at Stanford University in California. "Our research arouses the concern that

people may now be more likely to raise negative views of African Americans." On the other

hand, he says, it may just encourage people to talk more honestly about their feelings

regarding race issues, which may not be such a bad thing.

　　 Another part of the study suggests far more is at stake than the mere expression of

views. The Obama effect may have a negative side. Just one week after Obama was elected

president, participants were less ready to support policies designed to address racial

inequality than they had been two weeks before the election.

　　Huge obstacles

　　 It could, of course, also be that Obama's success helps people to forget that a

disproportionate number of black Americans still live in poverty and face huge obstacles

when trying to overcome these circumstances. "Barack Obama's family is such a salient ( 出色

的) image, we generalise it and fail to see the larger picture—that there's injustice in

every aspect of American life," says Cheryl Kaiser of the University of Washington in

Seattle. Those trying to address issues of racial inequality need to constantly remind

people of the inequalities that still exist to counteract the Obama's effect, she says.

　　Though Plant's findings were more positive, she too warns against thinking that racism

and racial inequalities are no longer a problem. "The last thing I want is for people to

think everything's solved."

　　These findings do not only apply to Obama, or even just to race. They should hold for

any role model in any country. "There's no reason we wouldn't have seen the same effect on

our views of women if Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin had been elected," says Effron. So the

election of a female leader might have a downside for other women.

　　Beyond race

　　We also don't yet know how long the Obama effect—both its good side and its bad—will

last.Political sentiment is notoriously changeable: What if things begin to go wrong for

Obama, and his popularity slumps?

　　And what if Americans become so familiar with having Obama as their president that they

stop considering his race altogether? "Over time he might become his own entity," says

Plant. This might seem like the ultimate defeat for racism, but ignoring the race of

certain select individuals—a phenomenon that psychologists call subtyping—also has an

insidious ( 隐伏的 ) side. "We think it happens to help people preserve their beliefs, so

they can still hold on to the previous stereotypes." That could turn out to be the

cruellest of all the twists to the Obama effect.

　　注意：此部分试题请在答题卡 1 上作答。

　　1. How did Erin White feel upon seeing Barack Obama's victory in the election?

　　A) Excited.

　　B) Victorious.

　　C) Anxious.

　　D) Relieved.

　　2. Before the election, Erin White has been haunted by the question of whether ______.

　　A) she could obtain her MBA degree

　　B) she could go as far as she wanted in life

　　C) she was overshadowed by her white peers

　　D) she was really an achiever as a student

　　3. What is the focus of Ashby Plant's study?

　　A) Racist sentiments in America.

　　B) The power of role models.

　　C) Personality traits of successful blacks.

　　D) The dual character of African Americans.

　　4. In their experiments, Ray Friedman and his colleagues found that ______.

　　A) blacks and whites behaved differently during the election

　　B) whites' attitude towards blacks has dramatically changed

　　C) Obama's election has eliminated the prejudice against blacks

　　D) Obama's success impacted blacks' performance in language tests

　　5. What do Brian Nosek's preliminary results suggest?

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