2015年12月大学英语六级真题（第3套）及答案解析

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 Buss 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 the 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 Buss 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. communicate with each other across a solid barrier.

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 a visitor notices about Harrogate is the large area of open parkland 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 cattle stray on the area, which was common land. W: Oh, I see. M: Then, with 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. There's a special law: no one can build anything on the Stray. It's protected forever. W: So it'll always be parkland? 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. bath in the mineral waters.

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 the 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 the 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. there and at Indiana University, discovered an intriguing academic effect.

In a small laboratory 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 Institute of Health won't fund it, and 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. amounts of land available for growing meat the old-fashioned way.

Moderator: Good morning, everybody. It is my pleasure to introduce our speaker for today's lecture, Dr. Howard Walcott. Dr. Walcott has written numerous articles on the topic of stress management. Today he will talk about how to deal with stress and pressure. Welcome, Dr. Walcott. Dr.

Hello, everyone. Last time we talked about the history of television. Today, I'd like to talk about the roles television has been playing in Americans' political life. Television has transformed politics in the United States by changing the way in which information is spread, by altering political campaigns, and by changing citizens' patterns of response to politics. By giving citizens independent access to the candidates, television diminished the role of the political party in the selection of the major party candidates. By centering politics on the person of the candidate, television accelerated the citizens' focus on character rather than issues. Television has altered the forms of political communication as well. The messages on which most of us rely are briefer than they once were. The stump speech, a political speech given by travelling politicians and lasting hours, which characterized nineteenth-century political discourse, has given way to the 30-second advertisement and the 10-second sound bite in broadcast news. Increasingly the audience for speeches is not that standing in front of the politician but rather the viewing audience who will hear and see a part of the speech on the news. In these abbreviated forms, much of what constituted the traditional political discourse of earlier ages has been lost. In 15 or 30 seconds, a speaker cannot establish the historical context that shaped the issue in question, cannot detail the probable causes of the problem, and cannot examine alternative proposals to argue that one is preferable to others. Politicians assert but do not argue. Because television is an intimate medium, speaking through it requires a changed political style that is more conversational, personal, and visual than that of the old-style stump speech. Reliance on television means that increasingly our political world contains memorable pictures rather than memorable words. Schools teach us to analyze words and print. However, in a world in which politics is increasingly visual, informed citizenship requires a new set of skills. Recognizing the power of television's pictures, politicians craft televisual, staged events, called pseudo- events, designed to attract media coverage. Much of the political activity we see on television news has been crafted by politicians, their speechwriters, and their public relations advisers for televised consumption. Sound bites in news and answers to questions in debates increasingly sound like advertisements. political party in the selection of the major party candidates.

A survey is a study, generally in the form of an interview or a questionnaire that provides information concerning how people think and act. In the United States, the best-known surveys are the Gallup poll and the Harris poll. As anyone who watches the news during presidential campaigns knows, these polls have become an important part of political life in the United States. North Americans are familiar with the many person-on-the-street interviews on local television news shows. While such interviews can be highly entertaining, they are not necessarily an accurate indication of public opinion. First, they reflect the opinions of only those people who appear at a certain location. Thus, such samples can be biased in favour of commuters, middle-class shoppers, or factory workers, depending on which area the news people select. Second, television interviews tend to attract outgoing people who are willing to appear on the air, while they frighten away others who may feel intimidated by a camera. A survey must be based on a precise, representative sampling if it is to genuinely reflect a broad range of the population. In preparing to conduct a survey, sociologists must exercise great care in the wording of questions. An effective survey question must be simple and clear enough for people to understand it. It must also be specific enough so that there are no problems in interpreting the results. Even questions that are less structured must be carefully phrased in order to elicit the type of information desired. Surveys can become indispensable sources of information, but only if the sampling is done properly and the questions are worded accurately. There are two main forms of surveys: the interview and the questionnaire. Each of these forms of survey research has its advantages. An interviewer can obtain a high response rate because people find it more difficult to turn down a personal request for an interview than to throw away a written questionnaire. In addition, an interviewer can go beyond written questions and probe for a subject's underlying feelings and reasons. However, questionnaires have the advantage of being cheaper and more consistent. indication of public opinion.