四六级

　　一、将自己的校名、姓名、准考证号写在答题卡1和答题卡2上，将本试卷代号划在答题卡2上。

　　二、试题册、答题卡1和答题卡2均不得带出考场，考试结束，监考员收卷后考生才可离开。

　　三、仔细读懂题目的说明。

　　四、在30分钟内做完答题卡1上的作文题。30分钟后，考生按指令启封试题册，在接着的15分钟内完成快速阅读理解部分的试题，然后监考员收取答题卡1，考生在答题卡2上完成其余部分的试题。全部答题时间为125分钟，不得拖延时间。

　　五、考生必须在答题卡上作答，凡是写在试题册上的答案一律无效。

　　六、多项选择题每题只能选一个答案;如多选，则该题无分。选定答案后，用HB-2B浓度的铅笔在相应字母的中部划一横线。正确方法是：[A][B][C][D]，使用其它符号答题者不给分。划线要有一定粗度，浓度要盖过字母底色。

　　七、在考试过程中要注意对自己的答案保密。若被他人抄袭，一经发现，后果自负。

　　全国大学英语四、六级考试委员会

　　Part I Writing (30 minutes)

　　注意：此部分试题在答题卡1上。

　　Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the topic of Due Attention Should Be Given to the Study of Chinese. You should write at least 120 words following the outline given below:

　　1.近年来在学生中出现了忽视中文学习的现象;

　　2.出现这种现象的原因和后果;

　　3.我认为…

　　Due Attention Should Be Given to the Study of Chinese

　　__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

　　Part II Reading 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, choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.

　　Obama's success isn't all good news for black Americans

　　As Erin White watched the election results head towards victory for Barack Obama, she felt a burden lifting from her shoulders. "In that one second, it was a validation for my whole race," she recalls.

　　"I've always been an achiever," says White, who is studying for an MBA at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. "But there had always been these things in the back of my mind questioning whether I really can be who I want. It was like a shadow, following me around saying you can only go so far. Now it's like a barrier has been let down."

　　White's experience is what many psychologists had expected - that Obama would prove to be a powerful role model for African Americans. Some hoped his rise to prominence would have a big impact on white Americans, too, challenging those who still harbour racist sentiments. "The traits that characterise him are very contradictory to the racial stereotypes that black people are aggressive and uneducated," says Ashby Plant of Florida State University. "He's very intelligent and eloquent."

　　Sting in the tail

　　Ashby Plant is one of a number of psychologists who seized on Obama's candidacy to test hypotheses about the power of role models. Their work is already starting to reveal how the "Obama effect" is changing people's views and behaviour. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not all good news: there is a sting in the tail of the Obama effect.

　　But first the good news. Barack Obama really is a positive role model for African Americans, and he was making an impact even before he got to the White House. Indeed, the Obama effect can be surprisingly immediate and powerful, as Ray Friedman of Vanderbilt University and his colleagues discovered.

　　They tested four separate groups at four key stages of Obama's presidential campaign. Each group consisted of around 120 adults of similar age and education, and the test assessed their language skills. At two of these stages, when Obama's success was less than certain, the tests showed a clear difference between the scores of the white and black participants—an average of 12.1 out of 20, compared to 8.8, for example. When the Obama fever was at its height, however, the black participants performed much better. Those who had watched Obama's acceptance speech as the Democrats' presidential candidate performed just as well, on average, as the white subjects.After his election victory, this was true of all the black participants.

　　Dramatic shift

　　What can explain this dramatic shift? At the start of the test, the participants had to declare their race and were told their results would be used to assess their strengths and weaknesses. This should have primed the subjects with "stereotype threat" – an anxiety that their results will confirm negative stereotypes, which has been shown to damage the performance of African Americans.

　　Obama's successes seemed to act as a shield against this. "We suspect they felt inspired and energised by his victory, so the stereotype threat wouldn't prove a distraction," says Friedman.

　　Lingering racism

　　If the Obama effect is positive for African Americans, how is it affecting their white compatriots (同胞)? Is the experience of having a charismatic (有魅力的) black president modifying lingering racist attitudes? There is no easy way to measure racism directly; instead psychologists assess what is known as "implicit bias", using a computer-based test that measures how quickly people associate positive and negative words—such as "love" or "evil"—with photos of black or white faces. A similar test can also measure how quickly subjects associate stereotypical traits—such as athletic skills or mental ability—with a particular group.

　　In a study that will appear in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Plant's team tested 229 students during the height of the Obama fever. They found that implicit bias has fallen by as much as 90% compared with the level found in a similar study in 2006. "That's an unusually large drop," Plant says.

　　While the team can't be sure their results are due solely to Obama, they also showed that those with the lowest bias were likely to subconsciously associate black skin colour with political words such as "government" or "president". This suggests that Obama was strongly on their mind, says Plant.

　　Drop in bias

　　Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who runs a website that measures implicit bias using similar test, has also observed a small drop in bias in the 700,000 visitors to the site since January 2007, which might be explained by Obama's rise to popularity. However, his preliminary results suggest that change will be much slower coming than Plant's results suggest.

　　Talking honestly

　　"People now have the opportunity of expressing support for Obama every day," says Daniel Effron at Stanford University in California. "Our research arouses the concern that people may now be more likely to raise negative views of African Americans." On the other hand, he says, it may just encourage people to talk more honestly about their feelings regarding race issues, which may not be such a bad thing.

　　Another part of the study suggests far more is at stake than the mere expression of views. The Obama effect may have a negative side. Just one week after Obama was elected president, participants were less ready to support policies designed to address racial inequality than they had been two weeks before the election. Huge obstacles

　　It could, of course, also be that Obama's success helps people to forget that a disproportionate number of black Americans still live in poverty and face huge obstacles when trying to overcome these circumstances. "Barack Obama's family is such a salient (出色的) image, we generalise it and fail to see the larger picture—that there's injustice in every aspect of American life," says Cheryl Kaiser of the University of Washington in Seattle. Those trying to address issues of racial inequality need to constantly remind people of the inequalities that still exist to counteract the Obama's effect, she says.

　　Though Plant's findings were more positive, she too warns against thinking that racism and racial inequalities are no longer a problem. "The last thing I want is for people to think everything's solved."

These findings do not only apply to Obama, or even just to race. They should hold for any role model in any