大学英语六级分类模拟题314及答案解析.doc

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1、大学英语六级分类模拟题 314 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)Why the Mona Lisa Stands OutA. Have you ever fallen for a novel and been amazed not to find it on lists of great books? Or walked around a sculpture renowned as a classic, struggling to see what the fuss is about? If so,

2、 you“ve probably pondered the question a psychologist, James Cutting, asked himself: how does a work of art come to be considered great? BThe intuitive answer is that some works of art are just great: of intrinsically superior quality. The paintings that win prime spots in galleries, get taught in c

3、lasses and reproduced in books are the ones that have proved their artistic value over time, If you can“t see they“re superior, that“s your problem. It“s an intimidatingly neat explanation. But some social scientists have been asking awkward questions of it, raising the possibility that artistic can

4、ons(名作目录)are little more than fossilised historical accidents. CCutting, a professor at Cornell University, wondered if a psychological mechanism known as the “mere-exposure effect“ played a role in deciding which paintings rise to the top of the cultural league. Cutting designed an experiment to te

5、st his hunch(直觉). Over a lecture course he regularly showed undergraduates works of impressionism for two seconds at a time. Some of the paintings were canonical, included in art-history books. Others were lesser known but of comparable quality. These were exposed four times as often. Afterwards, th

6、e students preferred them to the canonical works, while a control group of students liked the canonical ones best. Cutting“s students had grown to like those paintings more simply because they had seen them more. DCutting believes his experiment offers a clue as to how canons are formed. He points o

7、ut that the most reproduced works of impressionism today tend to have been bought by five or six wealthy and influential collectors in the late 19th century. The preferences of these men bestowed (给予)prestige on certain works, which made the works more likely to be hung in galleries and printed in c

8、ollections. The fame passed down the years, gaining momentum from mere exposure as it did so. The more people were exposed to, and the more they liked it, the more it appeared in books, on posters and in big exhibitions. Meanwhile, academics and critics created sophisticated justifications for its p

9、reeminence(卓越). After all, it“s not just the masses who tend to rate what they see more often more highly. As contemporary artists like Warhol and Damien Hirst have grasped, critics“ praise is deeply entwined (交织) with publicity. “Scholars“, Cutting argues, “are no different from the public in the e

10、ffects of more exposure.“ E. The process described by Cutting evokes a principle that the sociologist Duncan Watts calls “cumulative advantage“: once a thing becomes popular, it will tend to become more popular still. A few years ago, Watts, who is employed by Microsoft to study the dynamics of soci

11、al networks, had a similar experience to Cutting in another Paris museum. After queuing to see the “Mona Lisa“ in its climate-controlled bulletproof box at the Louvre, he came away puzzled: why was it considered so superior, to the three other Leonardos in the previous chamber to which nobody seemed

12、 to be paying the slightest attention? F. When Watts looked into the history of “the greatest painting of all time“, he discovered that, for most of its life, the “Mona Lisa“ remained in relative obscurity. In the 1850s, Leonardo da Vinci was considered no match for giants of Renaissance art like Ti

13、tian and Raphael, whose works were worth almost ten times as much as the “Mona Lisa“. It was only in the 20th century that Leonardo“s portrait of his patron“s wife rocketed to the number-one spot. What propelled it there wasn“t a scholarly re-evaluation, but a theft. G. In 1911 a maintenance worker

14、at the Louvre walked out of the museum with the “Mona Lisa“ hidden under his smock (工作服). Parisians were shocked at the theft of a painting to which, until then, they had paid little attention. When the museum reopened, people queued to see the gap where the “Mona Lisa“ had once hung in a way they h

15、ad never done for the painting itself. From then on, the “Mona Lisa“ came to represent western culture itself. H. Although many have tried, it does seem improbable that the painting“s unique status can be attributed entirely to the quality of its brushstrokes. It has been said that the subject“s eye

16、s follow the viewer around the room. But as the painting“s biographer, Donald Sassoon, dryly notes, “In reality the effect call be obtained from any portrait.“ Duncan Watts proposes that the“ Mona Lisa“ is merely an extreme example of a general rule. Paintings, poems and pop songs are buoyed(使浮起) or

17、 sunk by random events or preferences that turn into waves of influence, passing down the generations. I. “Saying that cultural objects have value,“ Brian Eno once wrote, “is like saying that telephones have conversations.“ Nearly all the cultural objects we consume arrive wrapped in inherited opini

18、on; our preferences are always, to some extent, someone else“s. Visitors to the “Mona Lisa“ know they are about to visit the greatest work of art ever and come away appropriately impressedor let down. An audience at a performance of “Hamlet“ know it is regarded as a work of genius, so that is what t

19、hey mostly see. Watts even calls the preeminence of Shakespeare a “historical accident“. J. Although the rigid high-low distinction fell apart in the 1960s, we still use culture as a badge of identity. Today“s fashion for eclecticism(折中主义)“I love Bach, Abba and Jay Z“is, Shamir Khan, a Columbia Univ

20、ersity psychologist, argues, a new way for the middle class to distinguish themselves from what they perceive to be the narrow tastes of those beneath them in the social hierarchy. K. The intrinsic quality of a work of art is starting to seem like its least important attribute. But perhaps it“s more

21、 significant than our social scientists allow. First of all, a work needs a certain quality to be eligible to be swept to the top of the pile. The “Mona Lisa“ may not be a worthy world champion, but it was in the Louvre in the first place, and not by accident. Secondly, some stuff is simply better t

22、han other stuff. Read “Hamlet“ after reading even the greatest of Shakespeare“s con-temporaries and the difference may strike you as unarguable. L. A study in the British Journal of Aesthetics suggests that the exposure effect doesn“t work the same way on everything and points to a different conclus

23、ion about how canons are formed. The social scientists are right to say that we should be a little sceptical of greatness, and that we should always look in the next room. Great art and mediocrity (平庸) can get confused, even by experts. But that“s why we need to see, and read, as much as we can. The

24、 more we“re exposed to the good and the bad, the better we are at telling the difference. The eclecticists have it.（分数：25.00）(1).According to Duncan Watts, the superiority of the “Mona Lisa“ to Leonardo“s other works resulted from the cumulative advantage.（分数：2.50）(2).Some social scientists have rai

25、sed doubts about the intrinsic value of certain works of art.（分数：2.50）(3).It is often random events or preferences that determine the fate of a piece of art.（分数：2.50）(4).In his experiment, Cutting found that his subjects liked lesser known works better than canonical works because of more exposure.（

26、分数：2.50）(5).The author thinks the greatness of all art work still lies in its intrinsic value.（分数：2.50）(6).It is true of critics as well as ordinary people that the popularity of artistic work is closely associated with publicity.（分数：2.50）(7).We need to expose ourselves to more art and literature in

27、 order to tell the superior from the inferior.（分数：2.50）(8).A study of the history of the greatest paintings suggests even a great work of art could experience years of neglect.（分数：2.50）(9).Culture is still used as a mark to distinguish one social class from another.（分数：2.50）(10).Opinions about and p

28、references for cultural objects are often inheritable.（分数：2.50）Meaning Is Healthier Than HappinessA. For at least the last decade, the happiness craze has been budding. In the last three months alone, over 1,000 books on happiness were released on Amazon, including Happy Money, Happy-People-Pills Fo

29、r All, and, for those just starting out, Happiness for Beginners. B. One of the consistent claims of books like these is that happiness is associated with all sorts of good life outcomes, includingmost promisinglygood health. Many studies have noted the connection between a happy mind and a healthy

30、bodythe happier you are, the better health out-comes we seem to have. In an overview of 150 studies on this topic, researchers put it like this: “Inductions of well-being lead to healthy functioning, and inductions of ill-being lead to compromised health.“ C. But a new study, just published in the P

31、roceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) challenges the rosy picture. Happiness may not be as good for the body as researchers thought. It might even be bad. D. Of course, it“s important to first define happiness. A few months ago, I wrote a piece called “There“s More to Life Than Being

32、 Happy“ about a psychology study that dug into what happiness really means to people. It specifically explored the difference between a meaningful life and a happy life. E. It seems strange that there would be a difference at all. But the researchers, who looked at a large sample of people over a mo

33、nth-long period, found that happiness is associated with selfish “taking“ behavior and that having a sense of meaning in life is associated with selfless “giving“ behavior. F. “Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well,

34、needs and desires are easily satisfied, and complicated relationships are avoided,“ the authors of the study wrote. “If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need.“ While being happy is about feeling good, meaning is derived from contributing to others or to society in a bigger

35、 way. As Roy Baumeister, one of the researchers, told me, “Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy.“ G. The new PNAS study also sheds light on the difference between meaning and happine

36、ss, but on the biological level. Barbara Fredrickson, a psychological researcher at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Steve Cole, a genetics and psychiatry(精神病学) researcher at UCLA, examined the self-reported levels of happiness and meaning in 80 research subjects. H. Happiness was d

37、efined, as in the earlier study, by feeling good. The researchers measured happiness by asking subjects questions like “How often did you feel happy?“ “How often did you feel interested in life?“ and “How often did you feel satisfied?“ The more strongly people endorsed these measures of “hedonic(享乐主

38、义的)well-being,“ or pleasure, the higher they scored on happiness. I. Meaning was defined as an orientation to something bigger than the self. They measured meaning by asking questions like “How often did you feel that your life has a sense of direction or meaning to it?“ and“ How often did you feel

39、that you had something to contribute to society?“ The more people endorsed these measures of “eudaimonic (幸福论的) well-being“or, simply put, virtuethe more meaning they felt in life. J. After noting the sense of meaning and happiness that each subject had, Fredrickson and Cole, with their research col

40、leagues, looked at the ways certain genes expressed themselves in each of the participants. Like neuroscientists who use fMRI (功能磁共振成像)scanning to determine how regions in the brain respond to different stimuli, Cole and Fredrickson are interested in how the body, at the genetic level, responds to f

41、eelings of happiness and meaning. K. Cole“s past work has linked various kinds of chronic adversity to a particular gene expression pattern. When people feel lonely, are grieving the loss of a loved one, or are struggling to make ends meet, their bodies go into threat mode. This triggers the activat

42、ion of a stress-related gene pat-tern that has two features: an increase in the activity of pro-inflammatory(促炎症的)genes and a decrease in the activity of genes involved in anti-viral responses. L. Cole and Fredrickson found that people who are happy but have little to no sense of meaning in their li

43、ves have the same gene expression patterns as people who are responding to and enduring chronic adversity. That is, the bodies of these happy people are preparing them for bacterial threats by activating the pro-inflammatory response. Chronic inflammation is, of course, associated with major illness

44、es like heart disease and various cancers. M. “Empty positive emotions“like the kind people experience during manic (狂喜的)episodes or artificially induced euphoria (欣快)from alcohol and drugs “are about as good for you for as adversity,“ says Fredrickson. N. It“s important to understand that for many

45、people, a sense of meaning and happiness in life overlap; many people score jointly high (or jointly low) on the happiness and meaning measures in the study. But for many others, there is a dissonance(不一致)they feel that they are low on happiness and high on meaning or that their lives are very high

46、in happiness, but low in meaning. This last group, which has the gene expression pattern associated with adversity, formed 75 percent of study participants. Only one quarter of the study participants had what the researchers call “eudaimonic predominance“that is, their sense of meaning outpaced thei

47、r feelings of happiness. O. This is too bad given the more beneficial gene expression pattern associated with meaningfulness. People whose levels of happiness and meaning line up, and people who have a strong sense of meaning but are not necessarily happy, showed a deactivation of the adversity stre

48、ss response. Their bodies were not preparing them for the bacterial infections that we get when we are alone or in trouble, but for the viral infections we get when surrounded by a lot of other people. P. Fredrickson“s past research, described in her two books, Positivity and Love 2.0, has mapped th

49、e benefits of positive emotions in individuals. She has found that positive emotions broaden a person“s perspective and help protect people against adversity. So it was surprising to her that hedonic well-being, which is associated with positive emotions and pleasure, did so badly in this study compared with eudaimonic well-being. Q. “It“s not the amount of hedonic happiness that“s a problem,“ Fredrickson tells me, “It“s that it“s not matched by eudaimonic well-being. It“s great when both are in step. But if you have more hedonic well-being than would be expected, that“s when th