1、大学英语六级分类模拟题 353 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、Reading Comprehensio(总题数：0，分数：0.00)Bosses Say “Yes“ to Home WorkA. Rising costs of office space, time lost to stressful commuting, and a slow recognition that workers have lives beyond the officeall are strong arguments for letting staff work from home. B
2、. For the small business, there are additional benefits toostaff are more productive, and happier, enabling firms to keep their headcounts (员工数) and their recruitment costs to a minimum. It can also provide competitive advantage, especially when small businesses want to attract new staff but don“t h
3、ave the budget to offer huge salaries. C. While company managers have known about the benefits for a long time, many have done little about it, sceptical of whether they could trust their employees to work to full capacity without supervision, or concerned about the additional expenses teleworking p
4、olicies might incur as staff start charging their home phone bills to the business. D. Yet this is now changing. When communications provider Inter-Tel researched the use of remote working solutions among small-and-medium-sized UK businesses in April this year, it found that 28% more companies claim
5、ed to have introduced flexible working practices than a year ago. E. The UK network of Business Links confirms that it too has seen a growing interest in remote working solutions from small businesses seeking its advice, and claims that as many as 60%-70% of the businesses that come through its door
6、s now offer some form of remote working support to their workforces. F. Technology advances, including the widespread availability of broadband, are making the introduction of remote working a piece of cake. G. “If systems are set up properly, staff can have access to all the resources they have in
7、the office wherever they have an internet connection,“ says Andy Poulton, e-business advisor at Business Link for Berkshire and Wiltshire. “There are some very exciting developments which have enabled this.“ H. One is the availability of broadband everywhere, which now covers almost all of the count
8、ry (BT claims that, by July, 99.8% of its exchanges will be broadband enabled, with alternative plans in place for even the most remote exchanges). “This is the enabler,“ Poulton says. I. Yet while broadband has come down in price too, those service providers targeting the business market warn again
9、st consumer services masquerading (伪装) as business-friendly broadband. J. “Broadband is available for as little as 15 a month, but many businesses fail to appreciate the hidden costs of such a service,“ says Neil Stephenson, sales and marketing director at Onyx Internet, an internet service provider
10、 based in the north-east of England. “Providers offering broadband for rock-bottom prices are notorious for poor service, with regular breakdowns and heavily congested (拥堵的) networks. It is always advisable for businesses to look beyond the price tag and look for a business-only provider that can of
11、fer more reliability, with good support.“ Such services don“t cost too muchquality services can be found for upwards of 30 a month. K. The benefits of broadband to the occasional home worker are that they can access email in real time, and take full advantage of services such as internet-based backu
12、p or even internet-based phone services. L. Internet-based telecoms, or VOIP (Voice over IP) to give it its technical title, is an interesting tool to any business supporting remote working. Not necessarily because of the promise of free or reduced price phone calls (which experts point out is misle
13、ading for the average business), but because of the sophisticated voice services that can be exploited by the remote workerfacilities such as voicemail and call forwarding, which provide a continuity of the company image for customers and business partners. M. By law, companies must “consider seriou
14、sly“ requests to work flexibly made by a parent with a child under the age of six, or a disabled child under 18. It was the need to accommodate employees with young children that motivated accountancy firm Wright Vigar to begin promoting teleworking recently. The company, which needed to upgrade its
15、 IT infrastructure (基础设施) to provide connectivity with a new, second office, decided to introduce support for remote working at the same time. N. Marketing director Jack O“Hern explains that the company has a relatively young workforce, many of whom are parents: “One of the triggers was when one of
16、our tax managers returned from maternity leave. She was intending to work part time, but could only manage one day a week in the office due to childcare. By offering her the ability to work from home, we have doubled her capacitynow she works a day a week from home, and a day in the office. This is
17、great for her, and for us as we retain someone highly qualified.“ O. For Wright Vigar, which has now equipped all of its fee-earners to be able to work at maximum productivity when away from the offices (whether that“s from home, or while on the road), this strategy is not just about saving on commu
18、te time or cutting them loose from the office, but enabling them to work more flexible hours that fit around their home life. P. O“Hern says: “Although most of our work is client-based and must fit around this, we can“t see any reason why a parent can“t be on hand to deal with something important at
19、 home, if they have the ability to complete a project later in the day.“ Q. Supporting this new way of working came with a price, though. Although the firm was updating its systems anyway, the company spent 10-15% more per user to equip them with a laptop rather than a PC, and about the same to upgr
20、ade to a server that would enable remote staff to connect to the company networks and access all their usual resources. R. Although Wright Vigar hasn“t yet quantified the business benefits, it claims that, in addition to being able to retain key staff with young families, it is able to save fee-earn
21、ers a substantial amount of “dead“ time in their working days. S. That staff can do this without needing a fixed telephone line provides even more efficiency savings. “With Wi-Fi (fast, wireless internet connections) popping up all over the place, even on trains, our fee-earners can be productive as
22、 they travel, and between meetings, instead of having to kill time at the shops,“ he adds. T. The company will also be able to avoid the expense of having to relocate staff to temporary offices for several weeks when it begins disruptive office renovations soon. U. Financial recruitment specialist L
23、ynne Hargreaves knows exactly how much her firm has saved by adopting a teleworking strategy, which has involved handing her company“s data management over to a remote hosting company, Datanet, so it can be accessible by all the company“s consultants over broadband internet connections. V. It has en
24、abled the company to dispense with its business premises altogether, following the realization that it just didn“t need them any more. “The main motivation behind adopting home working was to increase nay own productivity, as a single mum to an 11-year-old,“ says Hargreaves. “But I soon realized tha
25、t, as most of our business is done on the phone, email and at off-site meetings, we didn“t need our offices at all. We“re now saving 16,000 a year on rent, plus the cost of utilities, not to mention what would have been spent on commuting.“（分数：20.00）(1).The advancement of technology and broadband is
26、 making the introduction of working at a long distance extremely easier.（分数：2.00）(2).Managers have doubts that employees won“t work efficiently under no supervision and suspect that the extra costs may incur if staff charge their home phone fees to the business.（分数：2.00）(3).Cheap broadband services
27、provided by some businessmen are not reliable for disadvantages like regular breakdowns and heavily congested networks.（分数：2.00）(4).The concept that working at home has been paid attention to for increasing rent fees, wasting time during commuting hours and balance between work and life.（分数：2.00）(5)
28、.Teleworking is beneficial to managers because they can save money on rent, utilities and also time.（分数：2.00）(6).There are several reasons for the small company manager to adopt teleworking, such as reducing costs on recruitment and offering competitive strength.（分数：2.00）(7).Provided that systems ar
29、e equipped correctly, all the resources employees have in the office are all available to them no matter where they search on the Internet.（分数：2.00）(8).According to the research conducted by Inter-Tel, twenty-eight percent more companies have adopted flexible working practices before a year.（分数：2.00
30、）(9).As long as Wi-Fi can be connected, fee-earners are able to work during travelling or between meetings rather than waste time at shops.（分数：2.00）(10).The reason why Wright Vigar starts to promote teleworking is the need to satisfy employees with young or disabled children.（分数：2.00）The Invisible F
31、uel Provides Ensurance for Energy Security in the FutureA. When energy economists gaze into their crystal balls to see what the world will look like in 20 years“ time, some things are clearer than others. Clearest of all is that the global population will grow and with it the world economy. As count
32、ries get richer, their demand for energy will rise, placing ever new strains on the planet“s natural resources. B. A closer look at forecasts for energy demand, however, reveals some surprising conclusions. Consider ExxonMobil“s annual energy outlook to 2040. The company says that total energy deman
33、d is growing: the world will need 35 percent more energy in 2040 than it does now. That growth rate pales in comparison with that of the world economy as a whole: Exxon says global GDP will expand by 135 percent over the same period. What is more, in the world“s advanced economiesEurope, North Ameri
34、ca and Japanenergy demand will not grow at all. C. The reason for this is energy efficiency. “The greatest source of energy in the future will be using it more efficiently,“ says Bill Colton, Exxon“s vice-president for corporate strategy, and one of the authors of the outlook. “Huge amounts of energ
35、y will be saved in this way.“ D. In the battle against climate change, renewables were long seen as the silver bullet. The argument was that replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar power would reduce carbon emissions and thereby slow or even stop global warming, as well as curb consuming countrie
36、s“ huge dependence on expensive imported oil and gas. But in the debate about our energy future, the theme of energy efficiencycalled the “invisible fuel“ by someis taking on a new prominence. Consumers are starting to understand that the energy they do not use can have almost as much impact as the
37、energy they do. E. The result is a shift in thinking about everything from building design to street lighting. That means the future of energy is no longer the preserve of oil companies, wind farm developers and government officials, but of everyone from architects and appliance manufacturers to civ
38、il engineers and carmakers. Big energy savings have been achieved by seemingly minor technological changes such as moving from gas boilers for space heating to heat pumps. F. The potential prize is enormous. A recent report by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Germany f
39、ound that the EU“s energy requirements could end up being 57 percent lower in 2050 than they were in 1990, offering the tantalizing prospect of 500bn a year in energy savings. G. The institute says energy use in buildings could be cut by 71 percent, mainly through better insulation, modern construct
40、ion technology and energy efficient heating and hot water systems. In transportation, improvements in traffic management and better logistics could result in energy savings of 53 percent, while more efficient steam generation and electric motors could help reduce industrial energy demand by 52 perce
41、nt. H. Cumulative spending on such measures is growing fast. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that in 2011 $180bn was invested globally in projects aimed at improving energy efficiency. Yet that is a paltry sum compared to the money flowing into traditional energy production. The IEA says
42、more than three times that amountnearly $600hnwas invested the same year in expanding or maintaining the world“s supply of fossil fuels. I. The problem is that there are still significant barriers. With assets such as buildings, the payback time for investing in an improvement in energy efficiency c
43、an be several yearsolden longer than the buyer plans to own the asset. Also, it can be hard to measure success. The EU recently said it would not meet its target of saving 20 percent of its primary energy consumption by 2020, partly because of the “lack of appropriate tools for monitoring progress a
44、nd measuring impacts on the member state level“. J. There is another potential dangerthe so-called “rebound effect“. If you save money on electricity by installing a heat pump, for example, but spend what you save on air travel, the improvement in energy efficiency is meaningless. The EU has identif
45、ied rebound losses of 10-30 percent. K. Still, despite the potential dangers, companies involved in energy efficiency are becoming a new and attractive asset class for investors. Alastair Bishop, portfolio manager of BlackRock“s natural resources team, singles out companies such as Schneider Electri
46、c and Johnson Controls, specialists in building automation systems that monitor and control the heating, ventilation, air conditioning and lighting in an office block. Such companies install sensors that turn off lights in a room when it is empty or shut down heating overnight, steps that can contri
47、bute to big savings. L. “If you look at the larger energy story, before the financial crisis it was all about producing more energy,“ Mr. Bishop says. “But since the crisis, there“s been more awareness of the sustainability and affordability of power.“ Nevertheless, he stresses that investments need
48、 government support to work. This is happeningon a large scale. In recent years, all the major energy-consuming countries have passed laws to encourage energy efficiency. The US has introduced new fuel-economy standards for vehicles; the EU has its target of reducing energy demand by 20 per cent by
49、2020; Japan wants to cut electricity demand by 10 percent in 2030 compared to 2010; and China has a goal of cutting energy intensity by 16 percent between 2011 and 2015. “There“s a theme here,“ says Exxon“s Mr. Colton. “The improvement in efficiency that we“ve been seeing is mostly being driven by government policy. Consumers would not get there on their own.“ M. Some policies are highly specific. In 2010, the EU adopted a directive on the energy performance of buildings. It requires all new buildings to be “nearly zero energy“ by 2021. On a national scale, too, governments ar
