2010年12月大学英语六级(CET-6)真题试卷Part IWriting(30 minutes)Direction:For this part,you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled My Views onUniversity Ranking.You should write at least 150 words following the outline givenbelow.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 RankingPart 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 thequestions on Answer Sheet 1.For questions 1-7,choose the best answer from the fourchoices marked [A],[B],[C]and [D].For questions 8-10,complete the sentenceswith the information given in the passage.Into the UnknownThe world has never seen population ageing before.Can it cope?Until the early 1990s nobody much thought about whole populations getting older.The UNhad 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 wereunsustainable.For the next ten years a succession of books,mainly by Americans,sounded the alarm.Theyhad titles like Young vs Old,Gray Dawn and The Coming Generational Storm,and their messagewas blunt:health-care systems were heading for the rocks,pensioners were taking young people tothe cleaners,and soon there would be intergenerational warfare.Since then the debate has become less emotional,not least because a lot more is known aboutthe subject.Books,conferences and research papers have multiplied.International organisationssuch as the OECD and the EU issue regular reports.Population ageing is on every agenda,from G8economic conferences to NATO summits.The World Economic Forum plans to consider the futureof pensions and health care at its prestigious Davos conference early next year.The media,including this newspaper,are giving the subject extensive coverage.1/26Whether all that attention has translated into sufficient action is another question.Governmentsin rich countries now accept that their pension and health-care promises will soon becomeunaffordable,and many of them have embarked on reforms,but so far only timidly.That is notsurprising:politicians with an eye on the next election will hardly rush to introduce unpopularmeasures that may not bear fruit for years,perhaps decades.The outline of the changes needed is clear.To avoid fiscal (meltdown,public pensionsand health-care provision will have to be reined back severely and taxes may have to go up.By farthe most effective method to restrain pension spending is to give people the opportunity to worklonger,because it increases tax revenues and reduces spending on pensions at the same time.It mayeven keep them alive longer.John Rother,the AARP's head of policy and strategy,points to studiesshowing that other things being equal,people who remain at work have lower death rates than theirretired peers.Younger people today mostly accept that they will have to work for longer and that theirpensions will be less generous.Employers still need to be persuaded that older workers are worthholding on to.That may be because they have had plenty of younger ones to choose from,partlythanks to the post-war baby-boom and partly because over the past few decades many more womenhave entered the labour force,increasing employers'choice.But the reservoir of women able andwilling 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 alreadyemerged (and remember that the real shortage is still around ten years off).Immigration in thedeveloped world is the highest it has ever been,and it is making a useful difference.In still-fertileAmerica it currently accounts for about 40%of total population growth,and in fast-ageing westernEurope for about 90%.On the face of it,it seems the perfect solution.Many developing countries have lots of youngpeople in need of jobs;many rich countries need helping hands that will boost tax revenues andkeep up economic growth.But over the next few decades labour forces in rich countries are set toshrink so much that inflows of immigrants would have to increase enormously to compensate:to atleast twice their current size in western Europe's most youthful countries,and three times in theolder ones.Japan would need a large multiple of the few immigrants it has at present.Publicopinion 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 torejuvenate (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 orproviding more child care.Modern urban life in rich countries is not well adapted to large familiesWomen find it hard to combine family and career.They often compromise by having just one childAnd if fertility in ageing countries does not pick up?It will not be the end of the world,at leastnot for quite a while yet,but the world will slowly become a different place.Older societies may beless 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 over50-and older people turn out to vote in much greater number than younger ones.Academic studieshave found no evidence so far that older voters have used their power at the ballot box to push forpolicies that specifically benefit them,though if in future there are many more of them they mightstart doing so.Nor is there any sign of the intergenerational warfare predicted in the 1990s.After all,olderpeople themselves mostly have families.In a recent study of parents and grown-up children in 11European countries,Karsten Hank of Mannheim University found that 85%of them lived within25km 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 profoundeffect on societies,not just economically and politically but in all sorts of other ways too.RichardJackson and Neil Howe of America's CSIS,in a thoughtful book called The Graying of the GreatPowers,argue that,among other things,the ageing of the developed countries will have a number ofserious security implications.For example,the shortage of young adults is likely to make countries more reluctant to committhe few they have to military service.In the decades to 2050,America will find itself playing anever-increasing role in the developed world's defence effort.Because America's population willstill be growing when that of most other developed countries is shrinking,America will be the onlydeveloped country that still matters geopolitically(地缘政治上)Ask me in 2020There 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 rightpolicies,the effects,though grave,need not be catastrophic.Most countries have recognised theneed to do something and are beginning to act.But even then there is no guarantee that their efforts will work.What is happening now ishistorically unprecedented.Ronald Lee,director of the Centre on the Economics and Demographyof Ageing at the University of California,Berkeley,puts it briefly and clearly:"We don't reallyknow 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 crisis2.What message is conveyed in books like Young vs Old?[A]The generation gap is bound to narrow.[B]Intergenerational conflicts will intensify[C]The younger generation will beat the old[D]Old people should give way to the young3.One reason why pension and health care reforms are slow in coming is that[A]nobody is willing to sacrifice their own interests to tackle the problem[B]most people are against measures that will not bear fruit immediately[C]the proposed reforms will affect too many people's interests[D]politicians are afraid of losing votes in the next election4.The author believes the most effective method to solve the pension crisis is to[A]allow people to work longer[C]cut back on health care provisions[B]increase tax revenues[D]start reforms right away5.The reason why employers are unwilling to keep older workers is that3/26