2010年12月英语六级真题及答案

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2010 年 12 月英语六级真题及答案

　2010 年 12 月大学英语六级考试真题

　　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.

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