2014年6月大学英语6级真题（三套全）

possibilities for change when homeless people have a rich array of supports. In addition to more traditional social services, residents also make use of communal gardens, classes in things like cooking, yoga, theatre and photography, and job placement. Last year, 188 formerly homeless tenants in four of Common Ground’s residences, found jobs.

L) Because the properties have many services and are well-managed, Haggerty has found posthousing problems to be surprisingly rare. In the past 10 years, there have been only a handful of incidents of quarrels between tenants. There is very little graffiti(涂鸦) or vandalism(破坏). And the turnover is almost negligible. In the Prince George Hotel in New York, which is home to 208 formerly homeless people and 208 low-income tenants, the average length of tenancy is close to seven years. (All residents pay 30 percent of their income for rent; for the formerly homeless, this comes out of their government benefits.) When people move on, it is usually because they’ve found a preferable apartment.

M) “Tenants also want to participate in shaping the public areas of the buildings,” said Haggerty. “They formed a gardening committee. They want a terrace on the roof. Those are things I didn’t count on.” The most common tenant demand? “People always want more storage space—but that’s true of every New Yorker,” she adds. “In many ways, we’re a lot like a normal apartment building. Our tenants look like anyone else.”

N) As I mentioned, homelessness is a catch-all for a variety of problems. A number of readers asked whether the campaign will address family homelessness, which has different causes and requires a different solution. I’ve been following some of the promising ideas emerging to address and prevent family homelessness. Later in 2011, I’ll explore these ideas in a column. For now, I’ll conclude with an update on the 100,000 Homes Campaign. Since Tuesday, New Orleans and a few other communities have reported new results. The current count of people housed is 7,043. 46. Tenants in Common Ground’s residences all want more room for storage. 47. Homes Campaign provides first-hand proof that the homeless are not what they were once believed to be.

48. Common Ground’s residences are well-managed and by and large peaceful. 49. Housing the homeless is only the first step to solving all their problems. 50. A large percent of the chronically homeless have suffered from brain injury. 51. After being housed many homeless people become confused at first as to how to deal with life off the street.

52. Some people think the best way to help the homeless is to provide them with communal housing.

53. The homeless with health problems should be given regular support in their daily lives.

54. Until recently American society has failed to see what homelessness is all about.

55. Many formerly homeless tenants in New York’s Common Ground’s residences got hired. Section C

Directions: 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 centre. Passage One

Questions 56 to 60 are based on the following passage.

Technology can make us smarter or stupider, and we need to develop a set of principles to guide our everyday behavior and make sure that tech is improving and not hindering our mental processes. One of the big questions being debated today is: What kind of information do we need to have stored in our heads, and what kind can we leave “in the cloud,” to be accessed as necessary?

An increasingly powerful group within education are championing “digital literacy”. In their view, skills beat knowledge, developing “digital literacy” is more important than learning mere content, and all facts are now Google-able and therefore unworthy of committing to memory. But even the most sophisticated digital literacy skills won’t help students and workers navigate the world if they don’t have a broad base of knowledge about how the world actually operates. If you focus on the delivery mechanism and not the content, you’re doing kids a disservice. Indeed, evidence from cognitive science challenges the notion that skills can exist independent of factual knowledge. Data from the last thirty years leads to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts, and that’s true not only because you need something to think about. The very processes that teachers care about most—critical thinking processes—are intimately intertwined (交织) with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory.

In other words, just because you can Google the date of Black Tuesday doesn’t

mean you understand why the Great Depression happened or how it compares to our recent economic slump. There is no doubt that the students of today, and the workers of tomorrow, will need to innovate, collaborate and evaluate. But such skills can’t be separated from the knowledge that gives rise to them. To innovate, you have to know what came before. To collaborate, you have to contribute knowledge to the joint venture. And to evaluate, you have to compare new information against knowledge you’ve already mastered.

So here’s a principle for thinking in a digital world, in two parts. First, acquire a base of factual knowledge in any domain in which you want to perform well. This base supplies the essential foundation for building skills, and it can’t be outsourced (外包) to a search engine.

Second, take advantage of computers’ invariable memory, but also the brain’s elaborative memory. Computers are great when you want to store information that shouldn’t change. But brains are the superior choice when you want information to change, in interesting and useful ways: to connect up with other facts and ideas, to acquire successive layers of meaning, to steep for a while in your accumulated knowledge and experience and so produce a richer mental brew. 56. What is the author’s concern about the use of technology? A) It may leave knowledge “in the cloud”. B) It may misguide our everyday behavior.

C) It may cause a divide in the circles of education. D) It may hinder the development of thinking skills.

57. What is the view of educators who advocate digital literacy? A) It helps kids to navigate the virtual world at will. B) It helps kids to broaden their scope of knowledge. C) It increases kids’ efficiency of acquiring knowledge. D) It liberates kids from the burden of memorizing facts. 58. What does evidence from cognitive science show? A) Knowledge is better kept in long-term memory. B) Critical thinking is based on factual knowledge. C) Study skills are essential to knowledge acquisition. D) Critical thinking means challenging existing facts. 59. What does the author think is key to making evaluations? A) Gathering enough evidence before drawing conclusions. B) Mastering the basic rules and principles for evaluation.

C) Connecting new information with one’s accumulated knowledge. D) Understanding both what has happened and why it has happened. 60. What is the author’s purpose in writing the passage? A) To warn against learning through memorizing facts. B) To promote educational reform in the information age. C) To explain human brains’ function in storing information. D) To challenge the prevailing overemphasis on digital literacy. Passage Two

Questions 61 to 65 are based on the following passage.

America’s recent history has been a persistent tilt to the West—of people, ideas, commerce and even political power. California and Texas are the twin poles of the West, but very different ones. For most of the 20th century the home of Silicon Valley and Hollywood has been the brainier and trendier of the two. Texas has trailed behind: its stereotype has been a conservative Christian in cowboy boots. But twins can change places. Is that happening now?

It is easy to find evidence that California is in a panic. At the start of this month the once golden state started paying creditors in IOUs (欠条). The gap between projected outgoings and income for the current fiscal (财政的)year has leapt to a horrible $26 billion. With no sign of a new budget to close this gulf, one credit agency has already downgraded California’s debt. As budgets are cut, universities will let in fewer students, prisoners will be released early and schemes to protect the vulnerable will be rolled back.

By contrast, Texas has coped well with the recession, with an unemployment rate two points below the national average and one of the lowest rates of housing repossession. In part this is because Texan banks, hard hit in the last property bust, did not overexpand this time. Texas also clearly offers a different model, based on small government. It has no state capital-gains or income tax, and a business friendly and immigrant-tolerant attitude. It is home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other state.

Despite all this, it still seems too early to hand over America’s future to Texas. To begin with, that lean Texan model has its own problems. It has not invested enough in education, and many experts rightly worry about a “lost generation” of mostly Hispanic Texans with insufficient skills for the demands of the knowledge economy.

Second, it has never paid to bet against a state with as many inventive people