2023年12月大学英语六级考试听力真题及答案（一）

Section A

Conversation One

M: Hello, doctor.

W: Hello, please take a seat. I have your test results here, and it's good news. The blood test came back clear.[1] There is no indication of any digestive issues.

M: So then why do I feel so poorly all the time?

W: It's probably due to overwork and stress.

M: No, it can't be. I' ve always been working hard, but I' ve never felt stress. Other people suffering complain about that, but I don't. It must be something else.

W: What you have just described is a common sentiment. [2] Many people who suffer from stress fail to recognise it.You told me you often work long into the night, right?

M: Yes, most days in fact. But I' ve been doing that for about 20 years now.

W: That doesn't matter. You could have been suffering from stress for 20 years without knowing it, and now it's catching up to you.

M: But what about my feeling tired all the time and not being able to sleep well at night?

W: Those are common consequences of stress. And if you don't sleep well, then of course you will feel fatigued. [3] I'm going to prescribe some special sleeping pills for you. They have a soft, gentle effect and are made from natural ingredients, so your stomach should tolerate them fine, and there shouldn't be any negative side effects. Take one with your dinner and come see me after a month. If there is no improvement, I'll give you something stronger.

M: Thank you, doctor.

W: That's not all. You should try and work less. Is there any way you can decrease your workload?

M: Um, I'd have to think about it.[4]I'm a restaurant manager and this industry is very competitive. There are many things to keep track of and stay on top of.

W: I recommend you think about delegating some responsibilities to someone else. I'm not asking you to retire. Just to slow down a bit. It's for your own health.

1. Wat do we learn about the man from his test results?

2. What does the woman think is a common phenomenon among many people?

3. What does the woman say she will do for the man?

4. What does the man say about the industry he is engaged in?

Conversation Two

W: Today on People in the News, our guest is John Williams. The name may not sound familiar to you, but John was once an acclaimed basketball player. John, you stunned fans by leaving the sport at just 25. Why did you retire so early?

M: Meg,I loved being an athlete, but I didn't love being a celebrity. I was in the limelight when I was still a high school student and went professional right after high school graduation, which was a mistake.[5] I was a shy kid and I wasn't ready for all the media attention.

W: But walking away from millions of dollars at the height of your career, most people wouldn't be able to resist the lure of such a high salary. When you left the sport, there was speculation that you were having issues with your teammates or even an injury.

M: Not at all. It was hard to quit. I was tempted to stay in the game, because I love basketball and I loved my team.As for money, I turned professional at 18. So I'd actually earned a lot and saved most of it, because I had great financial advisers. [6] I knew basketball wasn't a career with a lot of longevity for most players, so I wanted to change careers while I was still young.

W: [7] Okay, that was 20 years ago, and you' re back in the news. You've created a foundation that works to get more kids playing team sports. Why?

M: I went to university and I studied public health and learned about the seriousness of the obesity epidemic, particularly among kids and adolescents in poor communities. [8] I' ve spent the last two decades trying to alleviate the problem. The foundation is just the latest attempt.

W: The foundation uses private donations to support basketball teams for girls and boys in primary school, right?

M: Actually, we support teams for secondary school students, too, and also have some public funding.

5. Why did John Williams leave the sport of basketball at just 25?

6. What does the man say about basketball as a career for most players?

7. What do we learn from the woman about John Williams 20 years later?

8. What has the man spent the last two decades trying to do?

Section B

Passage One

Kate Atkinson was born in York, England, in 1951. She worked hard to gain her credentials as an author. She studied English Literature at University in Scotland. After graduating in 1974, she researched a doctorate on American Literature. Later, she taught at the university she graduated from, and began writing short stories in 1981. [9] She began writing for women's magazines after winning the 1986 Woman's Own Short Story Competition. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the 1995 UK Book of the Year award. The book is set in Yorkshire and has been adapted for radio, theatre, and TV. She has written two plays for a theatre in Edinburgh— the first was called Nice and the second Abandonment, performed as part of the Edinburgh Festival in August 2000.

[10] Whatever genre Atkinson writes in, her books touch on the themes of love and loss and how to carry on. They are always presented with ingenuity and a wicked sense of humor. Her books tend to be populated by odd,sometimes sinful, and generally flawed eccentrics who become credible by virtue of being so fully realized. Her books have frequently been described as comedies of manners. That is to say, comedies that represent the complex and sophisticated code of behaviour current in fashionable circles of society, where appearances count more than true moral character. [11] A comedy of manners tends to reward its clever and deceitful characters, rather than punish their bad deeds. The humor of a comedy of manners relies on verbal wit and playful teasing.

9. When did Kate Atkinson begin to write for women's magazines?

10. What did Kate Atkinson's books touch on?

11. What do we learn about the clever and deceitful characters in a comedy of manners?

Passage Two

Why is adaptability an important skill to exercise in the workplace? Simply put,[12] adaptability is a skill employers are increasingly looking for. When you spend time learning a new task rather than resisting it, your productivity goes up. You can also serve as an example to your co-workers who may be having trouble adapting, and can help lead your team forward.[13] Strategy consultant, Dorie Clark, explains it to us this way. “I'd say that adaptability is an important skill in the workplace because frankly, circumstances change. Competitors introduce new products, economy might enter a recession, customer preferences differ over time, and more. If you shake your fist at the sky and say why can't it stay the same, that's not going to do very much good. Instead, you need to recognise when circumstances have changed, so you can take appropriate action based on what is, rather than how you wish the world would be.[13] That enables you to make more accurate, informed and effective choices.”

Also, the workplace itself has been evolving. [14] Today's work culture and management style is often based on teamwork, rather than a rigid hierarchy. Brainstorming, which requires creativity, flexibility, and emotional intelligence, is a typical problem-solving technique. Employees who are unable or unwilling to participate will not easily move forward in the company. Employees who are flexible demonstrate other skills too.[15] They can reprioritize quickly when changes occur and suggest additional modifications when something is not working. They can also regroup quickly when a setback occurs, adapting to the new situation confidently and without overreacting.

12. Why does the speaker say adaptability is an important skill to exercise in the workplace?

13. What does adaptability enable us to do according to strategy consultant Dorie Clark?

14. What do we learn about today's work culture from the passage?

15. What are employees with adaptability able to do when changes occur?

Section C

Recording One

[16] What makes humans different from other species? Some philosophers argue it's morals or ethics, while some scientists assert it's our greater cognitive development. But I argue that the main difference is our desire to combat routine. This makes being creative a biological mandate, as what we seek in art and technology is surprise, not simply a fulfillment of expectations.

As a result, a wild imagination has characterized the history of our species. We build intricate habitats, devise complex recipes for our food, wear clothes that reflect constant changes in fashion, communicate with elaborate signs, symbols, and sounds, and travel between habitats on wings and wheels of our own design. To satisfy our appetite for novelty, innovation is key. But who innovates?

Now, many people, both laymen and experts, believe that only geniuses innovate.[17] But I believe that innovation is not something that only a few people do. The innovative drive lives in every human brain, and the resulting war against the repetitive is what powers the massive changes that distinguish one generation from the next. The drive to create the new is a trait of being human. We build cultures by the hundreds and tell new stories by the millions. We create and surround ourselves with things that have never existed before, while animals do not. But where do our new ideas come from?

According to many, new ideas come from seemingly nowhere to great minds. From this perspective, new ideas are almost like magic. They come in a flash of inspiration to a select few. However, the reality is that, across the spectrum of human activities, prior work propels the creative process. We may think of innovation as being the result of inspiration or genius, but it's really the result of developing the ideas of others further. This happens in technology, where one invention enables or inspires further inventions. And it happens in the arts, as writers, composers, and painters use the work of previous artists in their own work.[18] The human brain works from precedent. We take the ideas we' ve inherited and put them together into some new shape.

What is a true creator? Is a creator a genius who makes something out of nothing? No. Creators are simply humans who use what they inherit, who absorb the past and manipulate it to create possible futures. Thus, humans are creators as a rule rather than as an exception.

16. What question does the speaker address in this talk?

17. What does the speaker believe about innovation?

18. How does the human brain work according to the speaker?

Recording Two

[19] Many dog owners would tell you that their dog somehow knows when they' re ill or upset, and according to researchers who study dog cognition, those pet owners are right. Dogs do know when their human companions are having a rough time. Not only can your dog sense when you have a cold, but domestic dogs have shown an aptitude for detecting both much smaller mood fluctuations and far more serious physical conditions. This is because dogs are extremely sensitive to changes in the people they' re familiar with, and illness causes change. [20] If a person is infected with a virus or bacteria, for example, their odor will be abnormal, and dogs are able to smell that change even if the human can't, because dogs have a much more powerful sense of smell than humans.

Researchers have also found that a person's mood, which can be an indicator of a larger illness, triggers a dog's sense of smell. Human emotions manifest physically in chemical signals that are emitted by the body, and dogs are able to smell those as well. Beyond smell, dogs gather information from a person's voice in order to sense changes.

In 2014, researchers discovered that dogs have an area of the brain similar to one in humans that allows them to understand emotional cues in the tone of a speaker's voice, beyond what they'd be able to pick up from familiar words alone. A person's voice can also carry indicators of illness. What's not understood quite so well is what dogs understand about these changes. Humans send out lots of cues, but whether dogs know some of these cues mean illness isn't clear. What we perceive as concern on a dog's part might be more like increased curiosity or suspicion that something is wrong with us, and sticking close by is a great way to gather more information about the situation.

Some researchers assert dogs will one day help doctors diagnose diseases, as some dogs have already demonstrated the ability to detect an assortment of ailments, including diabetes and certain types of cancer. But those researchers concede that's probably in the distant future.[21] For now, research suggests dog ownership can have an array of benefits in and of itself. Keeping a pet dog has been shown to bolster health and boost mood. Dogs also help people relax, and they can be a particular comfort to those with chronic diseases.

19. What view of many dog owners win support from researchers studying dog cognition?

20. Why can dogs detect their owner's abnormal odor according to the speaker?

21. What does research suggest for now about dog ownership?

Recording Three

Earlier this month, the think-tank called Onward published a report, “A Question of Degree”, which argues that degrees in the creative arts are not good value for money.[22] Ministers, according to Onward, should“crack down on courses that offer extremely limited value for money to students ten years after graduation”, restricting the ability of such courses to recruit new students, if the average graduate earns below the student loans payment threshold. Courses like science, technology, engineering, and math, and economics, where the average graduate earns a lot, should be favored.

The report provides insight into a government review which looks at how to reform technical education and how to ensure students get good value for money.[23] At first glance, it might even seem like Onward have a point. According to their data, the majority of creative arts students earn less than 25,000 pounds a year, ten years after graduation. The average male creative arts students, indeed, apparently earn much less than they would, had they simply never gone to university. This isn't really good for anyone, and it's certainly no good for graduates, who are forced to endure a lifestyle where they can never save up, never buy a house, never hope to retire.

Onward have identified a real problem. Creative arts graduates from top universities— like Oxford, with a high proportion of privately-educated students— have fairly good work prospects.[24] Well,40 percent of all graduates— regardless of their degree— are on less than 25,000 pounds a year,5 years after graduation. [25] This suggests that the problem isn't really to do with specific students studying specific degrees, but really with the economy as a whole. Regardless of what they' ve studied, young people find it hard to get ahead unless they' re lucky enough to be born with successful parents.

If ministers want to make education pay for young people, they need to look beyond the higher education sector, towards the wider world. The rewards that education gives us are not measurable. They are not always instantly obvious, and certainly not always direct. An education makes you a different person from the one you would have been if you hadn't received it. We need to look at the value of education not in the context of a bank balance, but of a life. If we continue to allow ourselves to be distracted with talk of“value for money”, we will all be made poorer as a result.

22. What does Onward's report propose ministers should do? 

23. What does the speaker think of Onward's arguments? 

24. What do we learn about British college graduates five years after graduation?

25. What does the speaker say actually accounts for the problem identified by Onward?

1.B)【解析】对话开头交代了男士的检查结果，医生对男士说：“我这有你的检查结果，是个好消息。验血结果没有问题。没有任何消化问题的迹象。”由此可知，B项与对话内容相符。

2.C}【解析】对话中间，女士说男士感觉不舒服可能是因为过于繁重的工作和压力，男士却反驳说自己从没感到过压力，女士说男士描述的这种看法是普遍的，随后指明这一普遍看法是指“许多承受压力的人没有意识到这一点”，故C项与对话内容相符。

3.A)【解析】对话中间，男士询问女士自己总觉得很累，晚上睡不好觉是怎么回事，女士解释说这些症状都是压力带来的常见后果，并说：“我将给你开一些专门的安眠药。”由此可知，A项与对话内容相符。

4.D)【解析】对话最后，女士建议男士应该少干点活，并询问男士有什么办法可以减少他的工作量，男士回答说：“我是一名餐厅经理，这个行业竞争非常激烈。”由此可知，男士所从事的行业充满了竞争，D项与对话内容相符。

5.A)【解析】对话开头，女士问男士为什么这么早退役，男士回答说自己不喜欢当名人，并说道：“我是一个害羞的孩子，而且我还没有准备好接受所有媒体的关注。”由此可知，约翰年纪轻轻就从篮球运动退役，是为了避免成为焦点，A项与对话内容相符。

6.C)【解析】对话中间，男士说：“我知道对大多数球员来说， (打)篮球并不是一项长久的职业，所以我想在还年轻的时候改变职业。”由此可知，C项与对话内容相符。

7.D)【解析】对话中女士对男士说：“好吧，那是20年前的事了，现在你又上新闻了。”由此可知，D项与对话内容相符。A项是根据男士所说的financial advisers设置的干扰项，男士原话是他有很棒的财务顾问，而不是他自己成为了财务顾问，故排除。

8.B)【解析】对话最后，男士说自己大学的专业是公共卫生，他了解到肥胖症流行的严重性，在过去的20年里，一直都致力于缓解这一问题。由此可知，B项与对话内容相符。

9.D)【解析】文章开头部分提到，1986年，她在“女性自己的短篇小说比赛”中获奖，之后开始为女性杂志写文章。由此可知，凯特·阿特金森是在作品获奖之后开始为女性杂志撰稿的，故选项D正确。文中并未提到她所任教的大学的名字，故选项A排除；文中虽然提到她1974年毕业后攻读了美国文学博士学位，以及后来出版第一部小说《博物馆的幕后故事》，但前者是她在为女性杂志撰稿之前，后者是她在为女性杂志撰稿之后，故选项B、C都排除。

10.A)【解析】文章中间部分提到，无论阿特金森以何种体裁写作，她的作品都涉及爱与失去，以及如何继续下去的主题，选项A是文中的原词，故为正确选项。其他三项都是根据文中的个别词汇code of behaviour、eccentrics、fashionable circles等设置的干扰项, 故均排除。

11.C)【解析】文章后半部分介绍了阿特金森的文章风格，被称为风俗喜剧，并在结尾处指出了风俗喜剧的一个特点：风俗喜剧往往会奖励那些聪明而又狡诈的人物，而不是惩罚他们的恶行。选项C是对reward its clever and deceitful characters, rather than punish their bad deeds的同义转述, 故为正确选项。其他三项文中都没有提到，故均排除。

12.B)【解析】文章开头便提出问题：为什么说适应能力是在职场中要锻炼的一项重要技能? 接下来第二句就回答了这个问题：适应能力是雇主越来越追求的一项技能。因此，选项B正确，选项中的seeking after是文中 looking for的同义转述。

13.A)【解析】文章开头在提出了适应能力的重要性之后，引出了战略顾问多莉·克拉克的解释。她的解释很长，还列举了几个例子，最后才得出结论——适应能力能让你根据实际情况采取适当的行动，做出更准确、更明智和更有效的选择。选项A是对这个结论的概括，为正确选项。其他三个选项文中都未提及，故均排除。

14.D)【解析】文章开头在提出了适应能力的重要性之后，引出了战略顾问多莉·克拉克的解释。她的解释很长，还列举文章后半部分提到，如今的工作文化和管理方式往往基于团队合作，而不是过于严格的等级制度。因此，选项D正确, work in teams是对文中based on teamwork的同义转述。其他三个选项文中都未提及, 故均排除。

15.C)【解析】文章最后指出，灵活的员工能在变化发生时迅速调整优先次序，并在某些事情行不通时提出额外的调整建议。因此选项C正确, 选项中的Decide on new priorities和speedily分别对应原文中的reprioritize和 quickly。

16.A)【解析】在讲座开头，讲话者便提出了“是什么让人类与其他物种不同”这个问题。由此很容易得出正确答案为选项A。

17.D)【解析】讲话者在中间部分提到，许多人都认为只有天才才能创新，但讲话者相信，创新不是只有少数人才能做到的事情。由此可知，选项D为正确答案。

18.C)【解析】讲话者提到，人类的大脑是依托先例运作的。我们把继承下来的想法组合在一起，形成新的形态。由此可知, 选项C为正确答案, 同时可直接排除选项D。选项A中的inspiration和 inventions讲座中虽然也有提到,但这不是本题所提问的内容，故选项A排除。讲座中虽有提及absorb，但描述的是创造者吸收过去的经验， 不符合题意，故选项B排除。

19.A)【解析】讲话者在开头就提到，许多养狗人士会告诉你，当他们生病或心烦意乱时，他们的狗不知怎么就会知道，而且根据研究狗认知的研究人员的说法，这些宠物主人的感觉是对的。由此很容易得出，选项A为正确答案。

20.D)【解析】讲话者在前半部分提到，如果一个人感染了病毒或细菌，他们的气味就会有异常，即使人类不能，狗也能闻出这种气味的变化，因为狗的嗅觉比人类强大得多。由此可知，选项D为正确答案。

21.B)【解析】讲话者在最后提到，目前，有研究表明，养狗本身就有很多好处，可以促进健康和改善情绪。由此可知，选项B为正确答案, “身心受益”是对原文bolster health and boost mood的概括。选项A是强干扰项, 其中的chronic diseases讲座中虽然也有提到，但讲的是对那些患有慢性疾病的人来说，狗是一种特别的安慰，而非能确保主人少患慢性病，故排除。

22.B)【解析】讲话者在开头提到，智库Onward发表了一份题为“学位问题”的报告，该报告认为创意艺术专业的学位并非物有所值。Onward认为，部长们应该“严厉打击那些为毕业10年后的学生提供的性价比极其有限的课程”，如果毕业生的平均收入低于学生贷款支付门槛，就应该限制这类课程招收新生的能力。由此可知，Onward认为创意艺术专业给学生提供的课程性价比极其有限，应该限制创意艺术课程招收新生的能力，故选项B为正确答案。讲话者明确提到，根据 Onward的报告，科学、技术、工程、数学以及经济学等毕业生平均收入较高的课程应受到青睐，故选项A错误。其余两个选项在讲话中并未提及，可排除。

23.A)【解析】讲话者提到，乍一看，Onward的观点似乎有道理，故选项A为正确答案。其余三个选项在讲话中并未提及，可排除。

24.C)【解析】讲话者提到，40%的毕业生——无论什么样的学位——毕业5年后的年薪还不到2.5万英镑，故选项C为正确答案，同时排除选项D。讲话者提到，毕业生们不得不忍受一种永远无法存钱，永远无法买房、永远无法指望退休的生活方式，这里指的是全体毕业生，而且原文表述的是客观上低收入导致的“不能”， 而不是主观上的“不想”，故排除选项A和B。

25.B)【解析】讲话者在后半部分提到，问题并不真正在于那些攻读特定学位的学生，而在于整个经济。由此可知， 选项B为正确答案，同时排除选项C。其余两个选项在讲话中并未提及，可排除。