2008年大学英语六级冲刺模拟题（试卷2）阅读

Section B
Passage One

The British psychoanalyst John Bowlby maintains that separation from the parents during the sensitive “attachment” period from birth to three may scar a child’s personality and predispose to emotional problems in later life. Some people have drawn the conclusion from Bowlby’s work that children should not be subjected to day care before the age of three because of the parental separation it entails, and many people do believe this. But there are also arguments against such a strong conclusion.

Firstly, anthropologists point out that the insulated love affair between children and parents found in modern societies does not usually exist in traditional societies. For example, we saw earlier that among the Ngoni the father and mother of a child did not rear their infant alone--far from it. Secondly, common sense tells us that day care would not so widespread today if parents, care takers found children had problems with it. Statistical studies of this kind have not yet been carried out, and even if they were, the results would be certain to be complicated and controversial. Thirdly, in the last decade, there have been a number of careful American studies of children in day care, and they have uniformly reported that day care had a neutral or slightly positive effect on children's development. But tests that have had to be used to measure this development are not widely enough accepted to settle the issue.

But Bowlby’s analysis raises the possibility that early day care has delayed effects. The possibility that such care might lead to, say, more mental illness or crime 15 or 20 years later can only be explored by the use of statistics. Whatever the long-term effects, parents sometimes find the immediate effects difficult to deal with. Children under three are likely to protest at leaving their parents and show unhappiness. At the age of three or three and a half almost all children find the transition to nursery easy, and this is undoubtedly, why more and more parents make use of child care at this time. The matter, then, is far from clear-cut, though experience and available evidence indicate that early care is reasonable for infants.

52. This passage mainly centers on ______.
A) infants under the age of three should not be sent to nursery schools
B) whether children under the age of three should go to nursery schools
C) there is not negative long-term effect on infants who are sent to school before they are three
D) there is some negative effect on children who are sent to school after the age of three

53. The phrase “predispose to” in the first of paragraph most probably means ____
A) relieve B) influence favourably
C) dispose of D) tend to suffer

54. According to Bowlby’s belief, it is quite possible that _____.
A) men’s personalities will be changed to some extent through separation from their parents
B) early day care can delay the occurrence of mental illness in children
C) children will be exposed to potential negative effects from early day care later on
D) some long-term effects can hardly be predicted

55. Those who are against the conclusion drawn from Bowlby think that _____.
A) traditional societies separate the child from the parent at an early age
B ) day care does not necessarily have a negative effect on children
C) a child did not live together with parents among Ngoni
D) children do emotional problems when separated from parents

56. The writer concludes that ______.
A) it is difficult to make clear what is the right age for nursery school
B) it is not settled now whether early care is reasonable for children
C) it is not beneficial for children to be sent to nursery school
D) it is reasonable to subject a child above three to nursery school

Passage 2
Anthropology is the study of human beings as creatures of society. It fastens its attention upon those physical characteristics and industrial techniques, those conventions and values, which distinguish one community from all others that belong to a different tradition.

The distinguishing mark of anthropology among the social sciences is what it includes for serious study of other societies than our own. For its purposes any social regulation of mating and reproduction is as significant as our own, though it may be that of the Sea Dyaks(文莱土著), and have no possible historical relation to that of our civilization. To the anthropologist, our customs and those of a New Guinea tribe are two possible social schemes for dealing with a common problem, and in so far as he remains an anthropologist he is bound to avoid any weighting of one in favor of the other. He is interested in human behavior, not as it is shaped by one tradition, our own, but as it has been shaped by any tradition whatsoever. He is interested in a wide range of custom that is found in various cultures, and his object is to understand the way in which these cultures change and differentiate, the different forms through which they express themselves and the manner in which the customs of any peoples function in the lives of the individuals.

Now custom has not been commonly regarded as a subject of any great moment. The inner workings of our own brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation, but custom, we have a way of thinking, is behavior at its most commonplace. As a matter of fact, it is the other way round. Traditional custom is a mass of detailed behavior more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions. Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter. The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and belief, and the very great varieties it may manifest.

57. According to the passage, we can say that anthropology______.
A) can deal with human beings as one group of the creatures in living world
B) can reveal an enormous diversity of traditions
C) can provide insights into the relationship between human beings and nature
D) can distinguish the human race from other creatures

58. For serious study, an anthropologist ______.
A) must not study
B) is not supposed to have a prejudice against any society
C) should focus on those societies which are historically related to each other
D) should not take an interest in

59. In the third paragraph, the author is trying _____.
A) to be critical of custom
B) to say that anthropology is more important than psychology
C) to strengthen the role custom plays in experience and belief
D) to draw our attention to the importance of custom

60. Which of the following does the author most probably agree with?
A) The goal of the to understand the way in which people express themselves
B) The anthropologist tries to understand why cultures are carried on without any change.
C) The anthropologist's professional interest is as wide as the variety of customs.
D) All of the above.

61. Which of the following is the best title for the Passage?
A) Human behavior. B) Creatures of Society.
C) The Study of Customs D) The Functions of Cultures.