2026年大学英语六级考试考前点题卷二

Questions 1 to 10 are based on the following passage.Using a computer or smartphone at night can cause us to pile on the pounds, new research has revealed.The study found a link between blue light exposure—blue light is____1____by smartphones and tablets—and increased hunger.It found that exposure to the light increases hunger levels for several hours and even increases hunger levels after eating a meal.Results of the US study show that blue-enriched light exposure, compared with____2____light exposure, was____3____with an increase in hunger that began 15 minutes after light onset and was still present almost two hours after the meal.Blue light exposure has also already been shown to decreased____4____ in the evening increasing the risk of insomnia.Study co-author Ivy Cheung, of Northwestern University, in Chicago, said: “A single three-hour exposure to blue-enriched light in the evening____5____impacted hunger and glucose metabolism.”“These results are important because they suggest that manipulating environmental light exposure for humans may represent a novel____6____ of influencing food intake patterns and metabolism.” The study group____7____10 healthy adults with regular sleep and eating schedules who received_____8___carbohydrate-rich meals.They completed a four-day trial under dim light conditions, which involved exposure to less than 20 lux during 16 hours____9____and less than three lux during eight hours of sleep.On day three they were exposed to three hours of 260 lux, blue-enriched light starting 10.5 hours after waking up, and the effects were compared with dim light exposure on day two.Ms Cheung said more research is needed to determine the____10____of action involved in the relationship between light exposure, hunger and metabolism.

A Class Apart(A)Housed in a jumble of ancient buildings in the shadow of Westminster Abbey, Westminster School has been educating boys since it was founded in 1560 by Queen Elizabeth I to provide lessons for 40 poor scholars.It has evolved since then—its 750 pupils now include some girls, and with fees of ￡39,252 a year for boarders and￡27,174 for day pupils, poor scholars are thin on the ground—but for nearly half a millennium, these historical premises defined its geographical limits.(B)That is about to change.A ground-breaking ceremony on April 9th marked the start of the con-struction of Westminster Chengdu, the first stage in a venture with a local partner, Hong Kong Melodious Education Technology Group.The school is due to open in September 2020 and will have 2,500 pupils from the ages of3 to 18.It will be followed by a further five establishments of a similar size in other Chinese cities over the next ten years, by the end of which Westminster will be educating 20 times as many children in China as in the heart of London.(C)A slice of the Chinese operation's income will flow back to the mother ship, enabling Westmin-ster to increase the share of pupils on bursaries in Britain from around 5% to 20%.“It w ill give us a revenue stream that will allow us to go back to our roots,” says Rodney Harris, deputy head-master in London, who is moving to Chengdu in September to take the top job there.By extend- ing its model to China, the school thus hopes to mitigate the inequality to which it contributes in Britain.(D)Education used to be provided by entrepreneurs and religious organizations, but starting in Prus-sia in the 18th century, governments began to take over.In more recent years the state has domi- nated education in the rich world, with the private sector restricted to the elite and the pious.In the developing world, too, new states created from crumbling empires were keen to provide (and control)education, both to respond to their people's ambitions and to shape the minds of the next generation.(E)But now the private sector is enjoying a resurgence.Enrolment in private schools has risen glob- ally over the past 15 years, from 10-17% at primary level and from 19-27% at secondary level;the increases are happening not so much in the rich world as in low- and middle-income coun-tries.People are pouring money into schooling, tuition and higher education (see chart).(F)Four factors are driving the increase.First, incomes are rising, especially among the better-off.Since birth rates are falling, the amount of money available for each child is rising even faster than incomes.In China the one-child policy has meant that in many families six people (four grandparents and two parents)are prepared to invest in the education of a single child.(G)Second, thanks to the relative decline and increasing capital intensity of manufacturing, job op-portunities for the less well-educated are shrinking.Even good factory jobs require qualifica-tions.The returns to education have risen despite the rise in the supply of well-educated people.In developing countries, which have fewer of them, the returns are higher than in the rich world,making it even more important for young people there to go to school.(H)Third, the output of education also provides some of the input: the more children that are educat-ed, the more teachers will be available to bring on the next lot.This is especially true in countries in which job opportunities for women are limited: lots of educated women translate into a ready supply of cheap teachers.(I)Fourth, technology is creating a demand for new skills which the private sector seems better at providing.It is also opening up new markets as the Intemet enables people to get educated in dif-ferent ways and at different times in their lives.(J)The dividing line between private and public is often unclear—many countries have government schools that are partly privately financed, for instance, and private schools that are publicly fi-nanced—and the size and growth of the private sector varies from country to country.Broadly,the more developed the country, the smaller the private sector's role tends to be.In Haiti about 80% of primary-school pupils are being educated privately; in Germany, just 5%.In mainland Europe, the quality of state education is generally high, so the private sector tends to play a smallish role—though there are wrinkles.For example, a history of religious divisions in the Netherlands has meant that three-quarters of pupils go to private schools, the great majority of them publicly financed; in Sweden, 10% do.In America and Britain the quality of government schools is variable, which explains sizeable elite private sectors and a growing number of pri-vately managed, publicly funded schools—“charters” in America, “academies” in Britain.In the tertiary sector, private institutions have a big role in America, both at the top and the bottom of the market; in Britain, the tertiary sector is now largely privately financed.(K)In Latin America the Catholic church's big role in schooling, the low quality of state provision and the rapid growth in demand for tertiary education have all contributed to a big role for the private sector.In much of South Asia and Africa, poverty, migration and population growth make it hard for governments to provide schooling in many cities, so the private sector is big,and growing fast.The elites have already left the public systems, and many middle-class and poorer people are following.(L)Like Europe, South and East Asia has generous and mostly good state provision, but unlike Eu-rope they also has a fast-growing private sector.Vietnam has both the best state-school system in a low-income country and probably the world's fastest-growing private-school sector.The mar-ket capitalization of Chinese education companies, bigger than those of any other country, sug-gests that investors see it as a golden opportunity.(M)The Chinese state is clamping down on the private sector's role between the ages of 6 and 16,but there is still room for growth.If the child goes to a private nursery and a private university,and receives two hours of private tuition on each school day and eight at the weekends, with a summer maths camp thrown in-a fairly standard routine for a child of Chinese professionals he or she will spend as much time in the private as in the state sector.(N)All of this makes education attractive to investors, says Ashwin Assomull of L.E.K.Consulting.Demand is growing faster than incomes and holds up well in economic downturns.Technology is creating new markets.Schooling is fragmented, but there are large and growing chains, such as GEMS Education, a Dubai-based company with 47 schools mostly in the Middle East; Cognita, a British company with 73 schools in eight countries; and Beaconhouse School Systems, a Pak-istani company with 200 schools in seven countries.(O)The main downside is the sector's political sensitivity.Private investment in education makes governments uncomfortable because it pits a private good against a social one.Governments, like parents, want children to learn, but they also want to maximise social mobility and minimise in-equality, whereas parents simply want to ensure that their children do better than anyone else' s.(P)These objectives inevitably conflict, so governments regulate and restrict the private sector, con-trolling what is taught, banning profits, outlawing selection, cutting fees and generally making the business unattractive to investors.Yet they need it, too, so they work with it, channelling its skills, inventiveness and capital and pouring taxpayers' money into it.

Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.Using Facebook makes people sadder, at least according to some research.But just what is it about the social network that takes a hit on our mood? A study of the different ways of interacting with the site now offers an answer:[Grazing] on the content of other people's idealized lives may make reality painful.Scientists have long debated Facebook's impact on users' in-the-moment mood as well as their deeper satisfaction with life.Some studies have found that the site makes us happier; others, sadder.One of the problems is that most studies were cross-sectional, taking a snapshot of people at one point of time.But that makes it difficult to separate our use of Facebook from the many other factors known to affect well-being, from overwork to romantic meltdowns.A 2013 study led by Ethan Kross, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, sidestepped [this problem] by studying people's use of Facebook over time, surveying them about their well-being five times per day for 2weeks.The conclusion was that the more you use Facebook, the sadder you get.That study generated an enormous amount of attention.But the results offered no clue to what it is about the social network, or how people are using it, that might have this negative effect.Since then, a collaboration of labs including Kross's has tried to tease apart the mechanisms.The researchers performed an “intervention”, using subjects' personal Facebook accounts in specific ways.After all, interaction with Facebook consists of a whole set of activities, from browsing photos and “liking” websites to directly interacting with others through messages and comments.Last week, Kross shared a sneak preview of his team's results.Their findings suggest that there is no effect on well-being ifone “actively” uses Facebook.When subjects directly interacted with the social network by posting status updates, sharing content, and messaging others, their mood stayed the same over the course of a day.But the negative impact on well-being that Kross discovered in his 2013 study reappeared for individuals who were made to “passively” use the site-just browsing through photographs of other people's happy moments, reading people's conversations, and not contributing anything.“Using Facebook is not bad for well-being per se,” Kross concluded, but “grazing” its content is.Possible reasons for this were bounced around by the audience of psychologists.For example, one theory holds that people post idealized versions of themselves on Facebook, and comparing those to your own real-world life is toxic if you don't take part in the online theater.

Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.Latino youths need better education for Arizona to take full advantage of the possibilities their exploding population offers.Arizona's fast-growing Latino population offers the state tremendous promise and a challenge.Even more than the aging of the baby boomers, the Latino boom is fundamentally reorienting the state's economic and social structure.Immigration and natural increase have added 600,000 young Latino residents to the state's population in the past decade.Half of the population younger than 18 in both Phoenix and Tucson is now Latino.Within 20 years, Latinos will make up half of the homegrown entry-level labour pool in the state ' s two largest labour markets.What is more, Hispanics are becoming key economic players.Most people don't notice it, but Latinos born in Arizona make up much of their immigrant parents' economic and educational deficits.For example, second-generation Mexican-Americans secure an average of 12 grades of schooling where their parents obtained less than nine.That means they erase 70 percent of their parents' lag behind third-generation non-Hispanic Whites in a single generation.All of this hands the state a golden opportunity.At a time when many states will struggle with labour shortages because of modest population growth, Arizona has a priceless chance to build a populous, hardworking and skilled workforce on which to base future prosperity.The problem is that Arizona and its Latino residents may not be able to seize this opportunity.Far too many of Arizona's Latinos drop out of high school or fail to obtain the basic education needed for more advanced study.As a result, [educational deficits] are holding back many Latinos—and the state as well.To be sure,construction and low-end service jobs continue to absorb tens of thousands of Latino immigrants with little formal education.But over the long term, most of Arizona's Latino citizens remain ill-prepared to prosper in an increasingly demanding knowledge economy.For the reason, the educational uplift of Arizona's huge Latino population must move to the centre of the state's agenda.After all, the education deficits of Arizona's Latino population will severely cramp the fortunes of hard-working people if they go unaddressed and could well undercut the state's ability to compete in the new economy.At the entry level, slower growth rates may create more competition for low-skill jobs, displacing Latinos from a significant means of support.At the higher end, shortages of Latinos educationally ready to move up will make it that much harder for knowledge-based companies staff high-skill positions.