2012年6月英語六級聽力原文—短文

Passage One

Russell Fazio, an Ohio State psychology professor who has studied interracial roommates there and at Indiana University, discovered an intriguing academic effect. In a study analyzing data on thousands of Ohio State freshmen who lived in dorms, he found that black freshmen who came to college with high standardized test scores earned better grades if they had a white roommate — even if the roommate’s test scores were low. The roommate’s race had no effect on the grades of white students or low-scoring black students. Perhaps, the study speculated, having a white roommate helps academically prepared black students adjust to a predominantly white university.

That same study found that randomly assigned interracial roommates at Ohio State broke up before the end of the quarter about twice as often as same-race roommates.

Because interracial roommate relationships are often problematic, Dr. Fazio said, many students would like to move out, but university housing policies may make it hard to leave.

“At Indiana University, where housing was not so tight, more interracial roommates split up,” he said. “Here at Ohio State, where housing was tight, they were told to work it out. The most interesting thing we found was that if the relationship managed to continue for just 10 weeks, we could see an improvement in racial attitudes.”

Dr. Fazio’s Indiana study found that three times as many randomly assigned interracial roommates were no longer living together at the end of the semester, compared with white roommates. The interracial roommates spent less time together, and had fewer joint activities than the white pairs.

Question 26-29

26. What do we know about Russell Fazio ?

27. Who benefited from living with a white roommate according to Fazio’s study?

28. What did the study find about randomly assigned interracial roommates at Ohio State University?

29. What did Dr. Fazio find interesting about interracial roommates who had lived together for 10 weeks?

【點(diǎn)評】：本文節(jié)選自2009年7月的《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》，原文標(biāo)題為Interracial Roommates Can Reduce Prejudice。文章屬于社會類話題，大意為俄亥俄州立大學(xué)的一位名為Russell Fazio的心理學(xué)教授研究不同人種混居的有趣現(xiàn)象以及結(jié)論。無獨(dú)有偶，2011年6月四級真題閱讀理解Section B的Passage 1也選用了相同的話題，大家平時(shí)在備考中要對真題重視起來哦!

Passage two

In a small liboratory at the Medical University of South Carolina, Dr. Vladimir Mironov has been working for a decade to grow meat. A developmental biologist and tissue engineer, Dr. Mironov, is one of only a few scientists worldwide involved in bioengineering 'cultured' meat.

It's a product he believes could help solve future global food crises resulting from shrinking amounts of land available for growing meat the old-fashioned way.

“Growth of cultured meat is also under way in the Netherlands”, Mironov told Reuters in an interview, “but in the United States, it is science in search of funding and demand.”

The new National Institute of Food and Agriculture won't fund it, the National Institutes of Health won't fund it, and the NASA funded it only briefly, Mironov said.

"It's classic disruptive technology," Mironov said. "Bringing any new technology on the market, on average, costs $1 billion. We don't even have $1 million."

Director of the Advanced Tissue Biofabrication Center in the Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology at the medical university, Mironov now primarily conducts research on tissue engineering, or growing, of human organs.

"There's an unpleasant factor when people find out meat is grown in a lab. They don't like to associate technology with food," said Nicholas Genovese, a visiting scholar in cancer cell biology.

"But there are a lot of products that we eat today that are considered natural that are produced in a similar manner," Genovese said.

30. What does Dr. Mironov think of bioengineering cultured meat?

31. What does Dr. Mironov say about the funding for their research?

32. What does Nicholas Genovese say about a lot of products we eat today?

【點(diǎn)評】

這是路透社2011年初的一篇報(bào)道，題目為“South Carolina scientist works to grow meat in lab”。本文為食品科技類題材。大意為生物工程技術(shù)應(yīng)用在實(shí)驗(yàn)室生產(chǎn)肉，可改變傳統(tǒng)肉類獲得方式，解決將來的食物危機(jī)，不過還需資金支持，同時(shí)人們還難以完全接受這種方式。

Passage 3

Bernard Jackson is a free man today, but he has many bitter memories. Jackson spent five years in prison after a jury wrongly convicted him of raping two women. At Jackson's trial, although two witnesses testified that Jackson was with them in another location at the times of the crimes, he was convicted anyway. Why? The jury believed the testimony of the two victims, who positively identified Jackson as the man who has attacked them. The court eventually freed Jackson after the police found the man who had really committed the crimes. Jackson was similar in appearance to the guilty man. The two women has made a mistake in identity. As a result, Jackson has lost five years of his life.

The two women in this case were eyewitnesses. They clearly saw the man who attacked them, yet they mistakenly identified an innocent person. Similar incidents have occurred before. Eyewitnesses to other crimes have identified the wrong person in a police lineup or in photographs.

Many factors influence the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. For instance, witnesses sometimes see photographs of several suspects before they try to identify the person they saw in a lineup of people. They can become confused by seeing many photographs or similar faces. The number of people in the lineup, and whether it is a live lineup or a photograph, may also affect a witness's decision. People sometimes have difficulty identifying people of other races. The questions the police ask witnesses also have an effect on them.

Question 33: What do we learn about Bernard Jackson?

Question 34: What led directly to Jackson’s sentence?

Question 35: What lesson do we learn from Jackson’s case?

Passage 3

本篇文章講述了Jackson因?yàn)楸荒繐糇C人誤認(rèn)而被判刑，雖然最后洗清了罪名，但是卻留下了慘痛的記憶。文章接著論述了為什么會出現(xiàn)這樣的問題?？赡苁且?yàn)楸缓φ邔Ψ缸锵右扇水a(chǎn)生的混淆的記憶，或者在指認(rèn)犯罪嫌疑人的過程中出現(xiàn)了不確定的情況。

雖然總體來說這篇文章難度不大，但是因?yàn)樯婕皩I(yè)知識，有一些詞匯可能會成為考生的障礙。例如：testimony: 證人證言;witness: 目擊證人;jury: 陪審團(tuán);sentence :刑期。如果考生平時(shí)能對這些單詞有所接觸，這篇文章在理解上就不會出現(xiàn)太大的問題。