2011年12月英语六级听力短文原文

Section B

Passage One
The University of Tennessee’s Walters Life Sciences building, is a model animal facility, spotlessly clean, careful in obtaining prior approval for experiments from an animal care committee. Of the 15,000 mice house there in a typical year, most give their lives for humanity. These are good mice and as such won the protection of the animal care committee. At any given time however some mice escape and run free. These mice are pests. They can disrupt experiments with the bacteria organisms they carry. They are bad mice and must be captured and destroyed. Usually, this is accomplished by means of sticky traps, a kind of fly paper on which they become increasingly stuck. But the real point of the cautionary tale, says animal behaviorist Herzau, is that the labels we put on things can affect our moral responses to them. Using stick traps or the more deadly snap traps would be deemed unacceptable for good mice. Yet the killing of bad mice requires no prior approval. Once the research animal hits the floor and becomes an escapee, says Herza, its moral standard is instantly diminished. In Herzau’s own home, there was more ironic example when his young son’s pet mouse Willy died recently, it was accorded a tearful ceremonial burial in garden. Yet even as they mourned Willy, says Herzau, he and his wife were setting snap traps to kill the pest mice in their kitchen with the bare change in labels from pet to pest, the kitchen mice obtained totally different moral standards

Questions:
26, What does the passage say about most of the mice used for experiments?
27, Why did the so-called bad mice have to be captured and destroyed?
28, When are mice killed without prior approval?
29, Why does the speaker say what the Herzau’s did at home is ironical?

Passage Two

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is swallowed up by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last, the city of final destination, the city that has a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York's high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.

Questions 30 to 32 are based on the passage you have just heard.
30. What does the speaker say about the natives of New York?
31. What does the speaker say commuters give to New York?
32. What do we learn about the settlers of New York?

Passage Three

“If you asked me television is unhealthy”, I said to my roommate Walter, as I walked into the living room.“While you are sitting passively in front of the TV set, your muscles are turning to fat, your complexion is fading, and your eyesight is being ruined.”
“Shh~”Walter put his finger to his lips, “This is an intriguing murder mystery.”
“Really?” I replied.
“But you know, the brain is destroyed by TV viewing. Creativity is killed by that box. And people are kept from communicating with one another. From my point of view, TV is the cause of the declining interest in school and the failure of our entire educational system.”
“Ah ha, I can’t see your point.” Walter said softly. “But see? The woman on the witness stand in this story is being questioned about the murder that was committed one hundred years ago.”

Ignoring his enthusiastic description of the plot, I went on with my argument.

“As I see it,” I explained, “not only are most TV programs badly written and produced, but viewers are also manipulated by the mass media. As far as I am concerned, TV watchers are cut off from reality from nature, from the other people, from life itself! I was confident in my ability to persuade.

After a short silence, my roommate said, “Anyway, I’ve been planning to watch the football game. I am going to change the channel.”

“Don’t touch that dial!” I shouted, “I wanted to find out how the mystery turns out!”
I am not sure I got my point to cross.
Questions 33- 35 are based on the passage you have just heard.

33. As the speaker walked into the living room, what was being shown on TV?

34. What does the speaker say about watching television?

35. What can we say about the speaker?

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