2018年12月英语六级听力真题及答案第1套

Section C

Directions: In this section, you will hear three recordings of lectures or talks followedby three or four qu estions. The recordings will be played only once. After you hear aquestion, you must choose the best ans wer from the four choices marked A, B, C andD. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 1 w ith a single line throughthe centre.

Questions 16 to 18 are based on the recording you have just heard.

16. A) About half of current jobs might be automated.

B) The jobs of doctors and lawyers would be threatened.

C) The job market is becoming somewhat unpredictable.

D) Machine learning would prove disruptive by 2013.

17. A) They are widely applicable for massive open online courses.

B) They are now being used by numerous high school teachers.

C) They could read as many as 10, 000 essays in a single minute.

D) They could grade high-school essays just like human teachers

18. A) It needs instructions throughout the process.

B) It does poorly on frequent, high-volume tasks.

C) It has to rely on huge amounts of previous data.

D) It is slow when it comes to tracking novel things.

Questions 19 to 21 are based on the recording you have just heard.

19. A) The engineering problems with solar power.

B) The generation of steam with the latest technology.

C) The importance of exploring new energy sources.

D) The theoretical aspects of sustainable energy.

20. A) Drive trains with solar energy.

B) Upgrade the city's train facilities.

C) Build a new ten-kilometre railway line.

D) Cut down the city's energy consumption

21. A) Build a tank for keeping calcium oxide.

B) Find a new material for storing energy.

C) Recover super-heated steam.

D) Collect carbon dioxide gas.

Questions 22 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.

22. A) The lack of supervision by both the national and local governments.

B) The impact of the current economic crisis at home and abroad.

C) The poor management of day centres and home help services.

D) The poor relation between national health and social care services.

23. A) It was mainly provided by voluntary services.

B) It mainly caters to the needs of the privileged.

C) It called for a sufficient number of volunteers.

D) It has deteriorated over the past sixty years.

24. A) Their longer lifespans.

B) Fewer home helpers available.

C) Their preference for private services.

D) More of them suffering serious illnesses.

25. A) They are unable to pay for health services.

B) They have long been discriminated against.

C) They are vulnerable to illnesses and diseases.

D) They have contributed a great deal to society.

16. A

17. D

18. C

19. D

20. A

21. B

22. D

23. A

24. C

25. B

Recording One

Here is my baby niece Sarah. Her mom is a doctor and her dad is a lawyer. By the time Sarah goes to college, the jobs her parents do are going to look dramatically different.

In 2013，researchers at Oxford University did a study on the future of work. They concluded that almost one in every two jobs has a high risk of being automated by machines.

Machine learning is the technology that's responsible for most of this disruption. It's the most powerful branch of artificial intelligence.

It allows machines to learn from data and copy some of the things that humans can do. My company, Kaggle, operates on the cutting edge of machine learning.

We bring together hundreds of thousands of experts to solve important problems for industry and academia.

This gives us a unique perspective on what machines can do, what they can't do and what jobs they might automate or threaten.

Machine learning started making its way into industry in the early'90s. It started with relatively simple tasks.

It started with things like assessing credit risk from loan applications, sorting the mail by reading handwritten zip codes. Over the past few years, we have made dramatic breakthroughs. Machine learning is now capable of far, far more complex tasks.

In 2012, Kaggle challenged its community to build a program that could grade high-school essays. The winning programs were able to match the grades given by human teachers.

Now, given the right data, machines are going to outperform humans at tasks like this. A teacher might read 10,000 essays over a 40-year career.

A machine can read millions of essays within minutes. We have no chance of competing against machines on frequent, high-volume tasks.

But there are things we can do that machines cannot. Where machines have made very little progress is in tackling novel situations.

Machines can't handle things they haven't seen many times before. The fundamental limitation of machine learning is that it needs to learn from large volumes of past data. But humans don't.

We have the ability to connect seemingly different threads to solve problems we've never seen before.

Questions 16 to 18 are based on the recording you have just heard.

16. What do the researchers at Oxford University conclude?

17. What do we learn about Kaggle company's winning programs?

18. What is the fundamental limitation of machine learning?

Recording 2

We've talked recently about the importance of sustainable energy. We've also talked about the different theories on how that can be done.

So far, our discussions have all been theoretical. Now I have a practical question for you all.

Can you run a 140, 000 kilogram train on just the steam generated by solar power? Well, one engineer, Tim Castleman, believes it's possible.

And his home city of Sacramento, California should see the technology's first test.

As part of the upgrading of its rail yard, Castleman, who is an inventor and self-proclaimed steam visionary, is campaigning for a new steam train that runs without any fire and could run on an existing ten-kilometre line, drawing tourists and perhaps offering city commuters a green alternative to their cars.

Castleman wants to build an array of solar magnifying mirrors at one end of the line to collect and focus heat onto water-filled tubes.

This would generate steam that could be used to fill tanks on a small steam train without the use of fire. "Supplying power to trains in this way would offer the shortest distance from well to wheels," he says, "with the least amount of energy lost."

According to Harry Valentine, a Canadian engineer who is researching modern steam technology, a special tank measuring 2 by 10 metres could store over 750 kilowatt hours of energy as high-pressure steam, enough to pull a 2-car train for an hour or so.

Energy to drive a steam locomotive can be stored in other materials besides water.

For example, a team at Tohoko University in Japan has studied materials that can store large amounts of heat. When heated, these materials turned from a solid into a liquid absorbing energy as they change phase.

The liquid is maintained above its melting point until steam is required, at which point the liquid is allowed to turn back into a solid, releasing its stored energy.

Another team at Nagoya University in Japan has tested calcium compound as an energy storage material.

Heating this chemical compound drives off carbon dioxide gas, leaving calcium oxide. The gas can be stored under pressure in a tank.

To recover the energy, the gas is fed back over the calcium oxide. "In theory," says Valentine, "this can create a high enough temperature to generate superheated steam."

Questions 19 to 21 are based on the recording you have just heard.

19. What has the speaker previously talked about?

20. What is Tim Castleman trying to do in Sacramento?

21. What has a Japanese research team tried to do?

Recording 3

Today's crisis in care for older people in England has two main causes.

First, people are living longer with a lot more complex needs.

Second, they rely on a system that has long been marked by a poor relation between national health and social care services.

Current services originate in two key measures. They are the National Health Service and the 1948 National Assistance Act.

This required local governments to provide residential accommodation for older people and supervise care homes run by independent organizations.

They also provided home and community services, including meals, day centres and home helpers and other subsidized services.

The National Health Service was free and wholly publicly provided. It delivered the best health care for all.

No such vision guided residential and community care though.

The care was substantially provided by voluntary services which worked together with local authorities as they long had, with eligibility based on income.

Today, life expectancy has risen from 66 for a male at best in 1948 to around 80 now. In addition, there is better overall health and improved medical knowledge in care.

This means an unprecedented number of people are surviving longer in conditions requiring experts' support. Families provide at least as much care as they ever did.

Even so, they can rarely, without subsidized support, address serious personal needs. Care for older people faced persistent criticism as these trends became apparent.

From the early 1960s, local authorities were required to plan health and welfare services. The aim was to enable older people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible.

But this increased concern about the lack of coordination between free health and paid-for social care. Through the 1970s, a number of measures sought to improve matters.

However, at a time of financial crisis, funding diminished and little changed. In the 1980s, the government cut spending. Meanwhile, preference for private over public services made management even more difficult. Simultaneously, the number of sick older people grew.

Governments emphasized the need to improve services. They did so, though, while doing little to stop the erosion of available aid. Services were irregular across authorities.

Unless you were prepared to pay, they were increasingly difficult to obtain for any but the most severely disabled. Why has 60 years of criticism produced so little change? Discrimination against older people has a long history. Additionally, those affected by inadequate health and social care are too vulnerable to launch the protests that have addressed other forms of discrimination.

Questions 22 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.

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22. What is one cause of the current crisis in care for the elderly in England?

23. What does the speaker say about residential and community care?

24. What made management of care for the elderly more difficult in the 1980s?

25. What does the speaker say about older people in England?