2008年CET6英语六级仿真题（试卷1）速读

Part 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 the questions on Answer Sheet 1.

For questions 1-4, markY (for YES)if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage;
N (for NO)，if the statement contradicts the information given in the passage;
NG (for NOT GIVEN) if the information is not given in the passage.
For questions 5-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.

Is a girl named Gloria likely to be more attractive than a girl named Bertha? Is it possible to discern a great deal about someone’s personality on the basis of hearing his voice briefly over the telephone? Can one accurately decide the nationality of a person from a photograph? Are criminals more apt to be dark than blond?

The obvious answer to each of these questions is no. From all the evidence at hand, however, most persons believe these things. Ask a college boy whether his chances on a blind date with a Gloria or Bertha, or ask a girl whether she’d rather meet a Richard than a Cuthbert. Actually there is no need to ask. College students have revealed in questionnaires that names alone conjure up the same images in their minds that they probably do in yours—and for as little valid reason.

The word Italian calls up the image of a swarthy, hot-blooded individual, and intellectual brings to mind a slender, quiet man with thick, horn-rimmed glasses. Criminal seems to imply a dark, foreign-looking person, badly dressed; mother-in-law and stepmother give the impression of cruel-looking women.

Creating standardized pictures, or stereotypes, is an easy method of describing sight unseen, members of professions, occupations, nationalities, religions and races. Thus we need only hear a word and we have a ready-made description. We need not bother to use our minds, or even our eyes. Without considering for a moment, we visualize talkative Irishmen, thrifty Scotsmen, penurious Jews, stolid Swedes, tall and wealthy Texans, excitable Latins, stuffy bank executives, tough truck drivers, dumb cops, and clumsy women drivers. But suddenly we are confronted with a woman driver of superior ability, and a banker who spends his evenings listening to jazz. There’s a cop with a master’s degree and a poverty-stricken, midget Texan. There’s a spendthrift Scotsman and an imperturbable Latin and an inarticulate Irishman. Will we discard our stereotypes then? On the contrary, we brush the exceptions aside, consciously or not, as “exceptions that prove the rule” and await individuals who do fit our stereotypes.

We all stereotype. We typecast the world in order to make it appear as we desire it to appear—even if it means that the characters that populate our world all seem to have stepped out of a second-rate motion picture. Stereotypes, then, may be called a kind of gossip about the world that makes us prejudge people before we ever lay eyes on them. Prejudgment and prejudice are similar; at the root of most prejudices is a cruel, quickly conceived stereotype.

How can these stereotypes blind our vision and exert their influence, even more our own better judgment? A number of Columbia and Barnard college students recently were shown pictures of thirty attractive but unidentified girls and asked to rate each girl in such terms as "general likeability","beauty," and "intelligence."Just two months later, the students were shown the very same pictures. But this time each photo had been given a fictitious Irish, Italian, Jewish, or so-called American name. Again the students were asked to rate the girls in the photographs. When the ratings were compared, it was discovered that the rating for faces now seen as representing national or minority groups had gone down in beauty and even farther down in likeability, while the American girls suddenly seemed prettier and nicer.

Look at a few reports from persons who have claimed to see “suspicious characters” and you will find the majority of the characters were described as dark and foreign-looking. But criminologists testify that criminals do not tend to be dark, foreign, and wild-eyed any more than they tend to be blond, American, and fawn-eyed. Many of us are sure we can pick a Swede or Italian out of a crowd. But when a group of Nebraska students tried to match faced from fifteen European countries with their nationalities, 93 per cent of their guesses were wrong. And optometrists will happily testify that the only significance of thick, horn-rimmed glasses is that they distinguish persons with bad eyes—be either intellectual or illiterate.

Stereotypes often remain in our minds even when they are contradicted by our own observation. Why do we persist in this careless typing of the world in general? It starts in our childhood; early in life we learn to tell at a glance the difference between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” on television. Children soon develop their own convenient catalog of the popular and unpopular, and these stereotypes are hard to erase.

We leave childhood with these standard images formed in our minds, and later have them thrust upon us constantly in movies, books, and other amusements. A Columbia university study has unearthed the statistic that 40 per cent of the national population of the United States is made up of members of some racial, religious, or national minority group. Yet only 10 per cent of American magazines fiction heroes belong to these groups. The countless jokes we hear and repeat that have all sorts of stock characters are another good example of the stereotype.

Besides these outer forces that lead us into stereotyping, or prejudging, we resort to it by ourselves as we try to “define” a most confusing world by classifying the infinite variety of human beings into a convenient handful of types, toward which we become accustomed to acting in a standard way. We do not accept the challenge of slowly getting to know people, since this would make life much more difficult and wearing. Thus we save on tiring mental effort. As Walter Lippmann puts it, “For the most part we do not first see, and then define; we define first, and then we see.” Stereotypes save us the trouble of trying to understand what the world is really like; they give it the simple appearance we wish it to have.

Even when we do take the trouble to observe the world, stereotypes block our vision and obstruct our judgment, in addition to promoting mental laziness. Our rigid ideas do not change when contrary before us. Eventually we run into the danger of becoming stereotypes ourselves. We lose the ability to be ourselves and view the world in our own unique, independent ways. Instead, we have lumped the world into a simple set of categories. Our stereotypes never surprise us, because we have people so completely typed that we are nearly blind to them when they diverge from our standards. Thus we limit ourselves when we typecast all labor leaders as racketeers, all poets as dreamers, all politicians as gladhanders, and all Harvard men as snobs.
As our habit of stereotyping continues through the years, it becomes harder to abandon it. Although the characters in our typecast world may turn out to be no more interesting than those in a bad movie, we at least have the comfortable feeling of being able to predict, mistakenly or not, what we may expect of them.

If we do recognize stereotyping as a result, can we do anything to eliminate it from our way of thinking? We can—by being aware of what our own and other people’s stereotypes are: by being careful not to generalize about people. For when we stereotype the world, we are not really generalizing about people at all. We are only revealing the embarrassing facts about the pictures that hang in our mental gallery of stereotypes.(注意：此部分试题请在答题卡1上作答。)

1. Stereotypes may make people like those who have attractive names.
2. Some exceptions could make the people no longer believe the stereotypes.
3. For most prejudices, they are similar with cruel, quickly conceived stereotypes.
4. We can infer that in the passage the author is strongly against stereotypes.
5. People describe “suspicious character” as dark and foreign-looking because they have a ____________ of a “bad guy.”
6. The reason why we believe in stereotypes probably isthat the stereotype starts ________________, so it exerts us deep influence.
7. __________may help people “define” a most confusing world by classifying the infinite variety of human beings into a convenient handful of types, toward which we become accustomed to acting in a standard way.
8. For the disadvantages of stereotypes, they may promote mental laziness, ____________, obstruct our judgment.
9. Finally, the stereotypes may lead us to ______________and failure to view the world in an independent way.
10. According to the author, we can eliminate stereotype by _____________________________.

1. [答案] Y. 2. [答案] N. 3. [答案] Y. 4. [答案] Y.
5. [答案] standard picture 参考第七段中的 “Look at a few reports from persons who have claimed to see ‘suspicious characters’ and you will find the majority of the characters were described as dark and foreign-looking.” 一提到被怀疑的对象，人们就会把他们描述成脑海中的既定形象：dark and foreign-looking, 因此把这看作是“坏蛋”的标志。
6. [答案] in early childhood 参考文章第八段中的 “Why do we persist in this careless typing of the world in general? It starts in our childhood; early in life we learn to tell at a glance the difference between the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’on television.”人们之所以总是用模式化思维处理问题是因为它在少儿时期就已形成。
7. [答案] Stereotype 参考文章第十段的第一句 “...we resort to it by ourselves as we try to ‘define’ a most confusing world by classifying the infinite variety of human beings into a convenient handful of types, toward which we become accustomed to acting in a standard way.” 有时我们也可以利用模式化思维来区分各种人。这里的it指代的就是前文提到的stereotype。
8. [答案] block our vision 参考文章倒数第三段的第一句“ Even when we do take the trouble to observe the world, stereotypes block our vision and obstruct our judgment, in addition to promoting mental laziness.”说到思维模式化的弊端，作者指出它会妨°¬我们的视野，阻°¬我们做出正确的判断，纵容思维的懒惰。
9. [答案] losing ourselves 参考倒数第三段中的“ We lose the ability to be ourselves and view the world in our own unique, independent ways. ”模式化思维方式会使人失去自我，失去独立思考的能力。
10. [答案] knowing what our own and other people’s stereotypes are “ We can—by being aware of what our own and other people’s stereotypes are...” 想要摒除模式化思维，我们就应该知道自己和他人有什么样的模式化思维方式。