2018年6月大学英语六级考试真题完整版附答案和听力音频原文（第2套）
（此文档分三部分：真题试卷、答案、听力原文）
一、真题试卷
Part I Writing (30 minutes)
For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the importance of building trust between teachers and students. You can cite examples to illustrate your views. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200words.
Part II Listening Comprehension (25 minutes)
音频在线收听：2018年6月英语六级听力音频第2套
Section A
Conversation 1
1. A) She advocates animal protection.
B) She sells a special kind of coffee.
C) She is going to start a café chain.
D) She is the owner of a special café.
2. A) They bear a lot of similarities.
B) They are a profitable business sector.
C) They cater to different customers.
D) They help take care of customers' pets.
3. A) By giving them regular cleaning and injections.
B) By selecting breeds that are tame and peaceful.
C) By placing them at a safe distance from customers.
D) By briefing customers on how to get along with them.
4. A) They want to learn about rabbits.
B) They like to bring in their children.
C) They love the animals in her café.
D) They give her café favorite reviews.
Conversation 2
5. A) It contains too many additives.
B) It lacks the essential vitamins.
C) It can cause obesity.
D) It is mostly garbage.
6. A) Its fancy design.
B) TV commercials.
C) Its taste and texture.
D) Peer influence.
7. A) Investing heavily in the production of sweet foods.
B) Marketing their products with ordinary ingredients.
C) Trying to trick children into buying their products.
D) Offering children more varieties to choose from.
8. A) They hardly ate vegetables.
B) They seldom had junk food.
C) They favored chocolate-coated sweets.
D) They liked the food advertised on TV.
Section B
Passage 1
9. A) Stretches of farmland.
B) Typical Egyptian animal farms.
C) Tombs of ancient rulers.
D) Ruins left by devastating floods.
10. A) It provides habitats for more primitive tribes.
B) It is hardly associated with great civilizations.
C) It has not yet been fully explored and exploited.
D) It gathers water from many tropical rain forests.
11. A) It carries about one fifth of the world's fresh water.
B) It has numerous human settlements along its banks.
C) It is second only to the Mississippi River in width.
D) It is as long as the Nile and the Yangtze combined.
Passage 2
12. A) Living a life in the fast lane leads to success.
B) We are always in a rush to do various things.
C) The search for tranquility has become a trend.
D) All of us actually yearn for a slow and calm life.
13. A) She had trouble balancing family and work.
B) She enjoyed the various social events.
C) She was accustomed to tight schedules.
D) She spent all her leisure time writing books.
14. A) The possibility of ruining her family.
B) Becoming aware of her declining health.
C) The fatigue from living a fast-paced life.
D) Reading a book about slowing down.
15. A) She started to follow the cultural norms.
B) She came to enjoy doing everyday tasks.
C) She learned to use more polite expressions.
D) She stopped using to-do lists and calendars.
Section C
Recording 1
16. A) They will root out native species altogether.
B) They contribute to a region's biodiversity.
C) They pose a threat to the local ecosystem.
D) They will crossbreed with native species.
17. A) Their classifications are meaningful.
B) Their interactions are hard to define.
C) Their definitions are changeable.
D) Their distinctions are artificial.
18. A) Only a few of them cause problems to native species.
B) They may turn out to benefit the local environment.
C) Few of them can survive in their new habitats.
D) Only 10 percent of them can be naturalized.
Recording 2
19. A) Respect their traditional culture.
B) Attend their business seminars.
C) Research their specific demands.
D) Adopt the right business strategies.
20. A) Showing them your palm.
B) Giving them gifts of great value.
C) Drinking alcohol on certain days of a month.
D) Clicking your fingers loudly in their presence.
21. A) They are very easy to satisfy.
B) They have a strong sense of worth.
C) They tend to be friendly and enthusiastic.
D) They have a break from 2:00 to 5:30 p.m.
Recording 3
22. A) He completely changed the company's culture.
B) He collected paintings by world-famous artists.
C) He took over the sales department of Reader's Digest.
D) He had the company's boardroom extensively renovated.
23. A) It should be sold at a reasonable price.
B) Its articles should be short and inspiring.
C) It should be published in the world's leading languages.
D) Its articles should entertain blue- and pink-collar workers.
24. A) He knew how to make the magazine profitable.
B) He served as a church minister for many years.
C) He suffered many setbacks and misfortunes in his life.
D) He treated the employees like members of his family.
25. A) It carried many more advertisem*nts.
B) George Grune joined it as an ad salesman.
C) Several hundred of its employees got fired.
D) Its subscriptions increased considerably.
Part Ⅲ Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)
Section A 选词填空
Did Sarah Josepha Hale write "Mary's Little Lamb," the eternal nursery rhyme （儿歌） about a girl named Mary with a stubborn lamb? This is still disputed, but it's clear that the woman __26__ for writing it was one of America's most fascinating __27__. In honor of the poem's publication on May 24, 1830, here's more about the __28__ author's life.
Hale wasn't just a writer, she was also a __29__ social advocate, and she was particularly __30__ with an ideal New England, which she associated with abundant Thanksgiving meals that she claimed had "a deep moral influence." She began a nationwide __31__ to have a national holiday declared that would bring families together while celebrating the __32__ festivals. In 1863, after 17 years of advocacy including letters to five presidents, Hale got it. President Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War, issued __33__ setting aside the last Thursday in November for the holiday.
The true authorship of "Mary's Little Lamb" is disputed. According to the New England Historical Society, Hale wrote only part of the poem, but claimed authorship. Regardless of the author, it seems that the poem was __34__ by a real event. When young Mary Sawyer was followed to school by a lamb in 1816, it caused some problems. A bystander named John Roulstone wrote a poem about the event, then, at some point, Hale herself seems to have helped write it. However, if a 1916 piece by her great-niece is to be trusted, Hale claimed for the __35__ of her life that "some other people pretended that someone else wrote the poem".
A.campaign
B.career
C.characters
D.features
E.fierce
F.inspired
G.latter
H.obsessed
I.proclamation
J.rectified
K.reputed
L.rest
M.supposed
N.traditional
O.versatile
Section B 段落匹配
Grow Plants Without Water
[A]Ever since humanity began to farm our own food, we've faced the unpredictable rain that is both friend and enemy. It comes and goes without much warning, and a field of lush （茂盛的） leafy greens one year can dry up and blow away the next. Food security and fortunes depend on sufficient rain, and nowhere more so than in Africa, where 96% of farmland depends on rain instead of the irrigation common in more developed places. It has consequences: South Africa's ongoing drought-the worst in three decades-will cost at least a quarter of its corn crop this year.
[B]Biologist Jill Farrant of the University of Cape Town in South Africa says that nature has plenty of answers for people who want to grow crops in places with unpredictable rainfall. She is hard at work finding a way to take traits from rare wild plants that adapt to extreme dry weather and use them in food crops. As the earth's climate changes and rainfall becomes even less predictable in some places, those answers will grow even more valuable. "The type of farming I'm aiming for is literally so that people can survive as it's going to get more and more dry," Farrant says.
[C]Extreme conditions produce extremely tough plants. In the rusty red deserts of South Africa, steep-sided rocky hills called inselbergs rear up from the plains like the bones of the earth. The hills are remnants of an earlier geological era, scraped bare of most soil and exposed to the elements. Yet on these and similar formations in deserts around the world, a few fierce plants have adapted to endure under ever-changing conditions.
[D]Farrant calls them resurrection plants （复苏植物）. During months without water under a harsh sun, they wither, shrink and contract until they look like a pile of dead gray leaves. But rainfall can revive them in a matter of hours. Her time-lapse （间歇性拍摄的） videos of the revivals look like someone playing a tape of the plant's death in reverse.
[E]The big difference between "drought-tolerant" plants and these tough plants: metabolism. Many different kinds of plants have developed tactics to weather dry spells. Some plants store reserves of water to see them through a drought; others send roots deep down to subsurface water supplies. But once these plants use up their stored reserve or tap out the underground supply, they cease growing and start to die. They may be able to handle a drought of some length, and many people use the term "drought tolerant" to describe such plants, but they never actually stop needing to consume water, so Farrant prefers to call them drought resistant.
[F]Resurrection plants, defined as those capable of recovering from holding less than 0.1 grams of water per gram of dry mass, are different. They lack water-storing structures, and their existence on rock faces prevents them from tapping groundwater, so they have instead developed the ability to change their metabolism. When they detect an extended dry period, they divert their metabolisms, producing sugars and certain stress-associated proteins and other materials in their tissues. As the plant dries, these resources take on first the properties of honey, then rubber, and finally enter a glass-like state that is "the most stable state that the plant can maintain," Farrant says. That slows the plant's metabolism and protects its dried-out tissues. The plants also change shape, shrinking to minimize the surface area through which their remaining water might evaporate. They can recover from months and years without water, depending on the species.
[G]What else can do this dry-out-and-revive trick? Seeds-almost all of them. At the start of her career, Farrant studied "recalcitrant seeds （顽拗性种子）," such as avocados, coffee and lychee. While tasty, such seeds are delicate-they cannot bud and grow if they dry out (as you may know if you've ever tried to grow a tree from an avocado pit). In the seed world, that makes them rare, because most seeds from flowering plants are quite robust. Most seeds can wait out the dry, unwelcoming seasons until conditions are right and they sprout （发芽）. Yet once they start growing, such plants seem not to retain the ability to hit the pause button on metabolism in their stems or leaves.
[H]After completing her Ph. D. on seeds, Farrant began investigating whether it might be possible to isolate the properties that make most seeds so resilient （迅速恢复活力的） and transfer them to other plant tissues. What Farrant and others have found over the past two decades is that there are many genes involved in resurrection plants' response to dryness. Many of them are .the same that regulate how seeds become dryness-tolerant while still attached to their parent plants. Now they are trying to figure out what molecular signaling processes activate those seed-building genes in resurrection plants-and how to reproduce them in crops. "Most genes are regulated by a master set of genes," Farrant says, "We're looking at gene promoters and what would be their master switch."
[I]Once Farrant and her colleagues feel they have a better sense of which switches to throw, they will have to find the best-way to do so in useful crops. "I'm trying three methods of breeding," Farrant says: conventional, genetic modification and gene editing. She says she is aware that plenty of people do not want to eat genetically modified crops, but she is pushing ahead with every available tool until one works. Farmers and consumers alike can choose whether or not to use whichever version prevails: "I'm giving people an option."
[J]Farrant and others in the resurrection business got together last year to discuss the best species of resurrection plant to use as a lab model. Just like medical researchers use rats to test ideas for human medical treatments, botanists use plants that are relatively easy to grow in a lab or greenhouse setting to test their ideas for related species. The Queensland rock violet is one of the best studied resurrection plants so far, with a draft genome （基因图谱） published last year by a Chinese team. Also last year, Farrant and colleagues published a detailed molecular study of another candidate, Xerophyta viscosa, a tough-as-nail South African plant with lily-like flowers, and she says that a genome is on the way. One or both of these models will help researchers test their ideas-so far mostly done in the lab-on test plots.
[K]Understanding the basic science first is key. There are good reasons why crop plants do not use dryness defenses already. For instance, there's a high energy cost in switching from a regular metabolism to an almost-no-water metabolism. It will also be necessary to understand what sort of yield farmers might expect and to establish the plant's safety. "The yield is never going to be high," Farrant says, so these plants will be targeted not at Iowa farmers trying to squeeze more cash out of high-yield fields, but subsistence farmers who need help to survive a drought like the present one in South Africa. "My vision is for the subsistence farmer," Farrant says. "I'm targeting crops that are of African value."
36. There are a couple of plants tough and adaptable enough to survive on bare rocky hills and in deserts.
37. Farrant is trying to isolate genes in resurrection plants and reproduce them in crops.
38. Farmers in South Africa are more at the mercy of nature, especially inconsistent rainfall.
39. Resurrection crops are most likely to be the choice of subsistence farmers.
40. Even though many plants have developed various tactics to cope with dry weather, they cannot survive a prolonged drought.
41. Despite consumer resistance, researchers are pushing ahead with genetic modification of crops.
42. Most seeds can pull through dry spells and begin growing when conditions are ripe, but once this process starts, it cannot be held back.
43. Farrant is working hard to cultivate food crops that can survive extreme dryness by studying the traits of rare wild plants.
44. By adjusting their metabolism, resurrection plants can recover from an extended period of drought.
45. Resurrection plants can come back to life in a short time after a rainfall.
Section C 仔细阅读
Passage One
Questions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.
Human memory is notoriously unreliable. Even people with the sharpest facial-recognition skills can only remember so much.
It's tough to quantify how good a person is at remembering. No one really knows how many different faces someone can recall, for example, but various estimates tend to hover in the thousands—based on the number of acquaintances a person might have.
Machines aren't limited this way. Give the right computer a massive database of faces, and it can process what it sees—then recognize a face it's told to find—with remarkable speed and precision. This skill is what supports the enormous promise of facial-recognition software in the 21st century. It's also what makes contemporary surveillance systems so scary.
The thing is, machines still have limitations when it comes to facial recognition. And scientists are only just beginning to understand what those constraints are. To begin to figure out how computers are struggling, researchers at the University of Washington created a massive database of faces—they call it MegaFace—and tested a variety of facial-recognition algorithms (算法) as they scaled up in complexity. The idea was to test the machines on a database that included up to 1 million different images of nearly 700,000 different people—and not just a large database featuring a relatively small number of different faces, more consistent with what's been used in other research.
As the databases grew, machine accuracy dipped across the board. Algorithms that were right 95% of the time when they were dealing with a 13,000-image database, for example, were accurate about 70% of the time when confronted with 1 million images. That's still pretty good, says one of the researchers, Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. "Much better than we expected," she said.
Machines also had difficulty adjusting for people who look a lot alike—either doppelgangers (长相极相似的人), whom the machine would have trouble identifying as two separate people, or the same person who appeared in different photos at different ages or in different lighting, whom the machine would incorrectly view as separate people.
"Once we scale up, algorithms must be sensitive to tiny changes in identities and at the same time invariant to lighting, pose, age," Kemelmacher-Shlizerman said.
The trouble is, for many of the researchers who'd like to design systems to address these challenges, massive datasets for experimentation just don't exist—at least, not in formats that are accessible to academic researchers. Training sets like the ones Google and Facebook have are private. There are no public databases that contain millions of faces. MegaFace's creators say it's the largest publicly available facial-recognition dataset out there.
"An ultimate face recognition algorithm should perform with billions of people in a dataset," the researchers wrote.
46. Compared with human memory, machines can ________.
A) identify human faces more efficiently
B) tell a friend from a mere acquaintance
C) store an unlimited number of human faces
D) perceive images invisible to the human eye
47. Why did researchers create MegaFace?
A) To enlarge the volume of the facial-recognition database.
B) To increase the variety of facial-recognition software.
C) To understand computers' problems with facial recognition.
D) To reduce the complexity of facial-recognition algorithms.
48. What does the passage say about machine accuracy?
A) It falls short of researchers' expectations.
B) It improves with added computing power.
C) It varies greatly with different algorithms.
D) It decreases as the database size increases.
49. What is said to be a shortcoming-of facial-recognition machines?
A) They cannot easily tell apart people with near-identical appearances.
B) They have difficulty identifying changes in facial expressions.
C) They are not sensitive to minute changes in people's mood.
D) They have problems distinguishing people of the same age.
50. What is the difficulty confronting researchers of facial-recognition machines?
A) No computer is yet able to handle huge datasets of human faces.
B) There do not exist public databases with sufficient face samples.
C) There are no appropriate algorithms to process the face samples.
D) They have trouble converting face datasets into the right format.
Passage Two
Questions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.
There're currently 21.5 million students in America, and many will be funding their college on borrowed money. Given that there's now over $1.3 trillion in student loans on the books, it's pretty clear that many students are far from sensible. The average student's debt upon graduation now approaches $40,000, and as college becomes ever more expensive, calls to make it "free" are multiplying. Even Hillary Clinton says that when it comes to college, "Costs won't be a barrier."
But the only way college could be free is if the faculty and staff donated their time, the buildings required no maintenance, and campuses required no utilities. As long as it's impossible to produce something from nothing, costs are absolutely a barrier.
The actual question we debate is who should pay for people to go to college. If taxpayers are to bear the cost of forgiving student loans, shouldn't they have a say in how their money is used?
At least taxpayers should be able to decide what students will study on the public dime. If we're going to force taxpayers to foot the bill for college degrees, students should only study those subjects that're of greatest benefit to taxpayers. After all, students making their own choices in this respect is what caused the problem in the first place. We simply don't need more poetry, gender studies, or sociology majors. How do we know which subjects benefit society? Easy.
Average starting salaries give a clear indication of what type of training society needs its new workers to have. Certainly, there're benefits to a college major beyond the job a student can perform. But if we're talking about the benefits to society, the only thing that matters is what the major enables the student to produce for society. And the value of what the student can produce is reflected in the wage employers are willing to pay the student to produce it.
A low wage for elementary school teachers, however, doesn't mean elementary education isn't important. It simply means there're too many elementary school teachers already.
Meanwhile, there're few who're willing and able to perform jobs requiring a petroleum engineering major, so the value of one more of those people is very high.
So we can have taxpayers pick up students' tuition in exchange for dictating what those students will study. Or we can allow students both to choose their majors and pay for their education themselves. But in the end, one of two things is true:
Either a college major is worth its cost or it isn't. If yes, taxpayer financing isn't needed. If not, taxpayer financing isn't desirable. Either way, taxpayers have no business paying for students' college education.
51. What does the author think of college students funding their education through loans?
A) They only expect to get huge returns.
B) They are acting in an irrational way.
C) They benefit at taxpayers' expense.
D) They will regret doing so someday.
52. In the author's opinion, free college education is ________.
A) impractical
B) unsustainable
C) a goal to strive for
D) a way to social equality
53. What should students do if taxpayers are to bear their college costs?
A) Work even harder to repay society.
B) Choose their subjects more carefully.
C) Choose majors that will serve society's practical needs.
D) Allow taxpayers to participate in college administration.
54. What does the author say about the value of a student's college education?
A) It is underestimated by profit-seeking employers.
B) It is to be proved by what they can do on the job.
C) It is well reflected in their average starting salary.
D) It is embodied in how they remove social barriers.
55. What message does the author want to convey in the passage?
A) Students should think carefully whether to go to college.
B) Taxpayers should only finance the most gifted students.
C) The worth of a college education is open to debate.
D) College students should fund their own education.
Part I Translation (30minutes)
Directions： For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to translate a passage from Chinese into English. You should write your answer on Answer Sheet 2.
中国目前拥有世界上最大最快的高速铁路网。高铁列车的运行速度还将继续提升，更多的城市将
修建高铁站。高铁大大缩短了人们出行的时间。相对飞机而言，高铁列车的突出优势在于准时，因为 基本不受天气或交通管制的影响。高铁极大地改变了中国人的生活方式。如今，它已经成了很多人商 务旅行的首选交通工具。越来越多的人也在假日乘高铁外出旅游。还有不少年轻人选择在一个城市工 作而在邻近城市居住，每天乘高铁上下班。
二、答案
1、【作文答案】参考范文
The Importance of Building Trust Between Teachers and Students
A good relationship between a teacher and a student can have a major influence on a kid's development, and trust is crucial and indispensable in maintaining the relationship.
To begin with, only when a student believes in his or her teacher is he or she willing to learn from the teacher or look to the teacher for guidance and support. In reality, too many students are weary of study and even drop out of school only because they dislike their teachers, which may transform their whole life. Besides, a teacher who has the full trust of his or her students is more motivated to help them improve the consciousness and initiative of learning, which in turn benefits the students most. However, the credibility between teachers and students is not something that can be built in a day. On the one hand, teachers should comprehend the students' actual demands and offer timely help. On the other hand, students should always be respectful to their teachers.
All in all, trust in a teacher-student relationship is a must to achieve effective teaching an learning.
2、【听力答案】
1. D
2. A
3. A
4. C
5. D
6. B
7. C
8. C
9. C
10. B
11. A
12.B
13. C
14. D
15. B
16. C
17. D
18. A
19. A
20. C
21.D
22. D
23. B
24 D
25 C
3、【阅读理解答案】
1) Section A【选词填空】答案
(26)K.reputed
(27)C.characters
(28)M.supposed
(29)E.fierce
(30)H.obsessed
(31)A.campaign
(32)N.traditional
(33)I.proclamation
(34)F.inspired
(35)L.rest
2) Section B【段落匹配】答案
36.C
37.H
38.A
39.K
40.E
41.I
42.G
43.B
44.F
45.D
3) Section B【仔细阅读】答案
Passage one
46.A
47.D
48.C
49.A
50.B
Passage two
51.B
52.A
53.C
54.C
55.D
4、【翻译答案】参考译文
China now has the largest and fastest high-speed rail network in the world. The speed of the CRH (China Railway High-Speed) train will continue to increase and more cities will build high-speed rail stations, The CRH train has greatly reduced people's travel time. Compared with the airplane, the outstanding advantage of the CRH train is punctuality, because it is basically not affected by weather or traffic control. It has transformed the way people live and become the favorite option for business travelers today. More and more people also travel by CRH train during holidays. Many young people choose to work in one city but live in a nearby one since they can commute by CRH train every day.
三、听力原文
Conversation 1
A Tonight we have a special guest from the local establishment the Prage Café。 Welcome.
B：Hi， thanks for have a meal on your show.
A：Thank you for joining us. So please tell us why do decide to open a café。
B：Well，we saw the opportunity to offer something a little special and different from other establishments. Cafe certainly is a very competitive market sector. There are more than plenty in our city， and we thought they are all rather similar to each other. Wouldn‘t you agree？
A：Certainly yes. So how is your establishment any different？
B：Well， since people we have rabbits wandering freely on the place； our customers come in and enjoy their food and drinks， while a little rabbit playing on their legs. There is no other place like it.
A：That‘s amazing. How do you come up with the idea？
B：So we thought why not rabbit？ People love the rabbits， they are very cute animals.
A：But it is safe？ Do the rabbit ever bite people or do any customer ever hurt the rabbits？
B：It is perfectly safe both for rabbits and our customers. Rabbits are very peaceful and safe. They don‘t bite. Our rabbits are regularly cleaned. So there is no risks ever. And as for our customers，they are all animals lovers. We will never try to hurt the rabbits. Sometimes some young child may get over excited and be a little too rough. But is never a serious matter. On the contrary， the café is a great experience for children. A chance they learn how to take care of the animals.
A：Well it is certainly the first time I heard of a café like that.
1. What do we learn about the woman？
2. What does the woman say about the café in her city？
3. How did Prage café guarantee the rabbit does not post a harmful threat？
4. What did the woman say about their customers？
Conversation 2
M：Hey， there. How are you？
W：Oh，hi. I‘m great，thanks. And you look great too.
M： Thank you. It‘s good to see you shopping in the organic section. I see you got a lot of healthy stuff. I wish I could buy more organic produce from here. But I find that kids don’t like it. I don‘t know about yours， but mine are all about junk food.
W：Oh，trust me. I know exactly how you feel. My children are the same. What is it with kids these days that all like junk food they eat. I think it‘s all that advertising on TV. That’s where they get it.
M：Yes，it must be. My children see something on TV and they immediately want it. It‘s like they don’t realize it‘s just an advertisem*nt.
W：Right，and practically everything that advertises for children is unhealthy processed food. No surprise then，it becomes a battle for us parents to feed our children ordinary food and vegetables.
M： That‘s just the thing. One never sees ordinary ingredients being advertised on TV. It’s never a carrot or a peach，it‘s always some garbage like chocolate covered sweets. So unhealthy.
W：Exactly. And these big food cooperations have so much money to spend on clever tactic design to make young people want to buy their products. Children never stand the chance，it‘s really not fair.
M：You are so right. When we were children，we barely had any junk food available and we turned out just fine.
W： Yes， my parents don‘t understand any of it. Both TV commercials and the supermarkets are alien to them. Their worlds were so different back to when they are young.
M： I don‘t know what will happen to the next generation.
W： The world is going crazy.
M： You bet.
Q5. What do the speakers say about the food their children like？
Q6. According to the speakers， what affects children‘s choice of food most？
Q7. What do the speakers believe big food cooperations are doing？
Q8. What do we know about the speakers when they were children？
Section B
Passage 1
At some 2300 miles in length，the Mississippi is the longest river in the United States. At some 1000 miles，the Mackenzie is the longest river in Canada. But these waterways seem mute in comparison to the world‘s two longest rivers —— the Nile and the Amazon. The Nile，which begins in central Africa and flows over 4100 miles north into the Mediterranean. Host to one of the world’s great ancient civilizations along its shores，Calm and peaceful for most of the year， the Nile used to flood annually. Their by creating，irrigating and caring new top soil to the nearby farmland on which ancient Egypt depended for a livelihood. As a means of transportation，the river carried various vessels up and down its length. A journey through the unconstructed part of this waterway today would pass by the splendid valley of the kings with tombs of many of these ancient monarchs，having stood for over 3000 years. Great civilizations and intensive settlements are hardly associated with the Amazon. Yet this 4000 mile-long south American river carries about 20% of the world‘s fresh water，more than the Mississippi，Nile and the Mackenzie combined. Other statistics are equally astonishing. the Amazon is so wide at some points that from its center neither shore can be seen. Each second the Amazon pours some 55 million gallons of water into the Atlantic. There，at it’s mouth stands one island larger than Switzland. Most important of all，the Amazon irrigates the largest tropical rainforest on earth.
9. What can be found in the valley of the kings？
10. In what way is the Amazon different from other big rivers？
11. What does the speaker say about the Amazon？
Passage Two
How often do you say to people “I‘m busy” or “I haven’t got time for that.” It‘s inevitable true that all of us live a life in the far slain，even though we know that being busy is not always particular healthy. Growing-up in New Zealand，everything was always calm and slow，people enjoy the tranquility of a slower pace of life. After I moved to the Tokyo and lived there in a number of years，I got used to having a pilot to do lists. And my calendar always looks like a mass with lots of things to do. Return across it，I found myself feeling my timer with endless work meetings in social events. Russian along as busy as it be. Then，one day，I came across a book， called in praise of slowness and realized that being busy is not only detrimental， but also has the danger of turning life into endless race. So I started practicing various practical steps， mentioned by the author of the book，and began to revolt against every idea of being too busy. It doesn’t mean that to do lists no longer exist，but I become more aware of the important of slowing down and making sure that I enjoy the daily activities as I care about. From now on，when someone asked how your life is，try your responding with the words like “exciting and fun”，instead of the culture norm that says busy. Say if your experience that tranquility that follows.
12. What does the speaker think is inevitable truth？
13. What does the speaker about her life in Tokyo？
14. What makes the speaker change her life style？
15. What happened after the speaker changed her life style？
Section C
Recording 1
Government‘s private groups and indivisuals spend billions of dollars a year trying to route out non-native organisms that are considered dangerous to ecosystems and to prevent the introduction of new intruders.
But a number of scientists question the assumption that the presence of alien species can nevr be acceptable in a natural ecosystem.
They say that portraying introduced species as inherently bad is an unscientific approach. “Distinctions between exotic and native species are artificial”，said Dr. Michael Rosenspeek， a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona.
“Because they depend on pegging a date and calling the plans on animals that show up after the date， exotic.”
Ecosystems free of species to find as exotic are by default consider the most natural.
“You can‘t roll back the clock and remove all the exotics or fix habitats，” Dr. Rosenspeek said， “Both native and exotic species can become invasive，and so they all have to be monitored and controlled when they begin to get out of the hand ”
At its core， the debate is about how to manage the world‘s remaining natural ecosystems and how and how much to restore other habitats.
Species that invade a territory can harm ecosystems，agriculture and human health.
They can threaten some native species or even destroy and replace others.
Next habitat loss，these evasive species represents the greatest threat to bio-diversity worldwide， many ecologists say.
Ecologists generally define an alien species as one that people accidentally or deliberately carried to its new location.
Across the American continents，exotic species are those introduced after the first European contact.
That date rounded of to 15 AD， represents what ecologist considered to have been a major shift in the spread of species including crops and life stock as they began to migrate with humans from continent to continent.
“Only a small percentage of alien species calls problems in their new habitats，”said Don Smith，professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the Univiersity of Tenacy.
“Of the 7000 alien species in the United States，out of a total of 150 species，only about 10% are invasive，”he pointed out，“The other 90% have fit into their environments and are considered naturalized. ”
“Yet appearances can deceive，”ecologiest caution，“and many these exotics may be considered acceptable only because no one has documented their harmful affects .What is more， non native species can appear harmless then turn invasive.”
16.What assumption about introduced species is challenged by a number of scientists？
17.What does Dr. Michael Rosenspeek think of exotic native species ？
18. What does Professor Don Smith say about alien species？
Recording 2
Good morning，ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the third in our cities of business seminars in the program doing business abroad. 19.Today we are going to look for different culture awareness. That is the fact that not everyone is in British. Not everyone speaks in English and not everyone does business in the British way. And why should they？If overseas business people are selling to us and they will make every effort to speak English and to expect our tradition methods. It is only polite for us to do the same when we visit them. It is not only polite but it is central if we want to sell British projects overseas.
First， a short quiz. Let‘s see how to in cultivate where we are. Question one ： where must you not drink alcohol in the first and second of every month. Question two： Where should you never admire your host positions？Question three：how should you attract the waiter during the business lunch in banquet. And question four：Where should you try to make all your appointments either before 2 or after 5：30 pm ？
Okay，everyone has the chance to make some notes. Right，here are the answers. Although I‘m sure the information could equally well apply to countries other than your chosen. So No.1 ， you must long drink alcohol in the first and second in Indian. 20.And in that hotels you may find that served but if you had a meal with an Indian colleague. Remember to avoid asking for a beer. No.2 ，In other countries，the politeness in general society is that people without power all. If you admire your colleague beautiful golden bowls you may well find yourself being present with them .This is not the cheat yourself way，however，as your host will find the equal words and beauty. In Thailand，keeping the fingers clapping your hands or shouting at the waiter will embarrass your hosts，fellow diners，waiter himself most of all-you.Place you palm down to make an implicit gesture and sacrificing the results，21.And finally，in Spain， some businesses may stay working until 2 o’clock and returning to the office from 5：30 to 8 or 9 in the evening.
19.What should you do when you do business with foreigners？
20.What you must avoid doing with your Indian colleague？
21.What do we learn about some Spanish people？
Recording 3
Shortly after he took over the Reader‘s Digest Association in 1984， George Grune unlocked the company’s boardroom and announced that the room was now open to the employees. It was a symbolic act，indicating that under Grune‘s leadership，Reader’s Digest was going to be different. True to his word，Grune has shaken up the culture here. To get an idea of the culture we‘re talking about，consider the boardroom Grune opened up，it has artworks that any museum in the world would want to collect，paintings by many world famous artists like Monet and Picasso.
Its headquarters‘houses sum 3，000 works of art.The Main building is topped with a Georgian Tower with four sculptures of the mythical winged horse， the magazine corporate logo. It sits on 127 acres of well trimmed lawns. The editor’s office used to be occupied by founder Dewitt Wallace， who along with his wife Lila Acheson Wallace， launched Reader‘s Digest in 1922 with condensed articles from other publications.It has become the world’s most widely read magazine，selling 28 million copies each month in 17 languages and 41 different editions. The Wallaces，both children of church ministers，had a clearly defined formula for their little magazine. As Reader‘s Digest was originally subtitled，articles were to be short，readable and uplifting. Subjects were picked to inspire or entertain. The Wallaces didn’t accept advertising in the US edition until 1955 and even then they didn‘t allow any ads for cigarettes，liquor or drugs. The Wallaces also had a clear sense of the kind of workplace they wanted. It started as a mama and papa operation and the childless Wallaces always considered employees to be part of their family.Employees still tell stories of how the Wallaces would take care of their employees who had met with misfortunes and they showered their employees with unusual benefits like a turkey on Thanksgiving and Fridays off in May. This cozy workplace is no longer exists here.The Wallaces both died in their nineties in the early 1981s. George Grune，a former ad salesman who joined Reader’s Digest in 1960 has his eyes focused on the bottom line. In a few short years， he turned the magazine on its head， he laid off several hundred workers，especially hard hit where the blue and paint color departments such as subscription fulfillment.
Question22. What did George Grune do in 1984？
Question23. How did the Wallaces find the formula for Reader‘s Digest？
Question24. What do we learn about the founder of Reader‘s Digest Dewitt Wallace？
Question25. What change took place in Reader‘s Digest after the Wallaces death？
