2009年12月大学英语六级考试真题及答案
Part ⅠWriting (30 minutes)
脑畔上Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Should Parents Send Their Kids to Art Class? You should write at least 150 words following the outline given below.
1. 现在有不少家长送孩子参加各种艺术班
2. 对这种做法有人表示支持，也有人并不赞成
3. 我认为……
Should Parents Send Their Kids to Art Class?
Part ⅡReading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes) Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1. For questions 1-7, choo the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). For questions 8-10, complete the ntences with the information given in the passage.
Boss Say “Yes” to Home Work
Rising costs of office space, time lost to stressful commuting, and a slow recognition that workers have lives beyond the office—all are strong arguments for letting staff work from home.
For the small business, there are additional benefits too—staff 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 business want to attract new staff but don’t have the budget to offer huge salaries.
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 expens teleworking policies might incur as staff start charging their home phone bills to the business.
Y et this is now changing. When communications provider Inter-Tel rearched the u of remote working solutions among small-and-medium-sized UK business in April this year, it found that 28% more companies claimed to have introduced flexible working practices than a year ago.
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The UK network of Business Links confirms that it too has en a growing interest in remote working solutions from small business eking its advice, and claims that as many as 60-70% of the busin
ess that come through its doors now offer some form of remote working support to their workforces.
Technology advances, including the widespread availability of broadband, are making the introduction of remote working a piece of cake.
“If systems are t up properly, staff can have access to all the resources they have in 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.”
One is the availability of broadband everywhere, which now covers almost all of the country (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.
Y et while broadband has come down in price too, tho rvice providers targeting the business market warn against consumer rvices masquerading (伪装) as business-friendly broadband.
“Broadband is available for as little as ￡15 a month, but many business fail to appreciate the hidden costs of such a rvice,” says Neil Stephenson, sales and marketing director at Onyx Internet,
an internet rvice provider bad in the north-east of England. “Providers offering broadband for rock-bottom prices are notorious for poor rvice, with regular breakdowns and heavily congested (拥堵的) networks. It is always advisable for business to look beyond the price tag and look for a business-only provider that can offer more reliability, with good support.” Such rvices don’t cost too much—quality rvices can be found for upwards of ￡30 a month.
The benefits of broadband to the occasional home worker are that they can access email in real time, and take full advantage of rvices such as internet-bad backup or even internet-bad phone rvices.
Internet-bad telecoms, or V oIP (V oice over IP) to give it its technical title, is an interesting tool to any business supporting remote working. Not necessarily becau of the promi of free or reduced price phone calls (which experts point out is misleading for the average business), but becau of the sophisticated voice rvices that can be exploited by the remote worker—facilities such as voicemail and call forwarding, which provide a continuity of the company image for customers and business partners.
By law, companies must “consider riously”requests to work flexibly made by a parent with a child u
nder 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 IT infrastructure (基础设施) to provide connectivity with a new, cond office, decided to introduce support for remote working at the same time.
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 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 capacity—now she works a day a week from home, and a day in the office. This is great for her, and for us as we retain someone highly qualified.”
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 commute time or cutting them loo from the office, but enabling them to work more flexible hours that fit around their home life.
O’Hern says: “Although most of our work is client-bad and must fit around this, we can’t e any re实心球教案
ason why a parent can’t be on hand to deal with something important at home, if they have the ability to complete a project later in the day.”
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 ur to equip them with a laptop rather than a PC, and about the same to upgrade to a rver that would enable remote staff to connect to the company
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networks and access all their usual resources.
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-earners a substantial amount of “dead” time in their working days.
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 they travel, and between meetings, instead of having to kill time at the shops,” he adds.
The company will also be able to avoid the expen of having to relocate staff to temporary offices for veral weeks when it begins disruptive office renovations soon.
Financial recruitment specialist Lynne 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.
It has enabled the company to dispen with its business premis altogether, following the realisation that it just didn’t need them any more. “The main motivation behind adopting home working was to increa my own productivity, as a single mum to an 11-year-old,” says Hargreaves. “But I soon realid that, 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.”
1. What is the main topic of this passage?
A) How business managers view hi-tech.
B) Relations between employers and employees.
C) How to cut down the costs of small business.
郑州小吃D) Benefits of the practice of teleworking.
2. From the rearch conducted by the communications provider Inter-Tel, we learn that .
A) more employees work to full capacity at home
B) employees show a growing interest in small business
C) more business have adopted remote working solutions
小书桌D) attitudes toward IT technology have changed
3. What development has made flexible working practices possible according to Andy Poulton?
A) Reduced cost of telecommunications.
B) Improved reliability of internet rvice.
C) Availability of the V oIP rvice.
D) Access to broadband everywhere.
4. What is Neil Stephenson’s advice to firms contracting internet rvices?
A) They look for reliable business-only providers.
B) They contact providers located nearest to them.
C) They carefully examine the contract.
D) They contract the cheapest provider.
5. Internet-bad telecoms facilitates remote working by __________.
A) offering sophisticated voice rvices
B) giving access to emailing in real time
C) helping clients discuss business at home
D) providing calls completely free of charge
6. The accountancy firm Wright Vigar promoted teleworking initially in order to __________.
A) prent a positive image to prospective customers
B) support its employees with children to take care of
C) attract young people with IT experti to work for it
D) reduce operational expens of a cond office
7. According to marketing director Jack O’Hern, teleworking enabled the company to __________.
A) enhance its market image
B) reduce recruitment costs
C) keep highly qualified staff
D) minimi its office space
8. Wright Vigar’s practice of allowing for more flexible working hours not only benefits the
company but helps improve employees’ .
9. With fast, wireless internet connections, employees can still be __________ while traveling.
10. Single mother Lynne Hargreaves decided to work at home mainly to __________.
大学有什么专业适合女生Part ⅢListening Comprehension (35 minutes)
Section A
1980属什么Directions: In this ction, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pau. During the pau, you must read the four choices marked A), B), C) and D), and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.
11. A) They would rather travel around than stay at home.
B) They prefer to carry cash when traveling abroad.
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C) They usually carry many things around with them.
D) They don’t like to spend much money on traveling.
12. A) The lection process was a little unfair.
B) He had long dreamed of the dean’s position.
C) Rod was eliminated in the lection process.
D) Rod was in charge of the admissions office.
13. A) Applau encourages the singer.
B) She regrets paying for the concert.
C) Almost everyone loves pop music.
D) The concert is very impressive.
14. A) They have known each other since their schooldays.
B) They were both chairpersons of the Students’ Union.
C) They have been in clo touch by email.
D) They are going to hold a reunion party.
15. A) Cook their dinner.
B) Rest for a while.
C) Get their car fixed.
D) Stop for the night.
16. A) Newly-launched products.
B) Consumer preferences.
C) Survey results.
D) Survey methods.
17. A) He would rather the woman didn’t buy the blou.
B) The woman needs blous in the colors of a rainbow.
C) The information in the catalog is not always reliable.
D) He thinks the blue blou is better than the red one.
18. A) The cour is open to all next mester.
B) The notice may not be reliable.
C) The woman has not told the truth.
D) He will drop his cour in marketing.
Questions 19 to 22 are bad on the conversation you have just heard.
