2021 年 06 月大学英语六级考试真题（第 2 套）

A)Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris was within "15 to 30 minutes" of complete destruction as firefighters battled to stop flames reaching its bell towers on Monday evening, French authorities have revealed. A greater disaster was averted by members of the Paris fire brigade, who risked their lives to remain inside the burning monument to create a wall of water between the raging fire and the two towers on the west of the building.

B)The revelation of how close. France came to lose its most famous cathedral emerged as police investigators questioned workers involved in the restoration of the monument to try to establish the cause of the devastating blaze. Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz said that an initial fire alert was sounded at 6:20 pm on Monday evening but no fire was found. The second alert was sounded at 6:43 pm, and the blaze was discovered on the roof.

C)More than € 650 million was raised in a few hours on Tuesday as French business leaders and global corporations announced they would donate to a restoration campaign launched by the president, Emmanuel Macron. But as the. emergency services picked through the burnt debris, a row was resurfacing over accusations that the beloved cathedral, immortalised in Victor Hugo's novel, was already crumbling before the fire.

D)The cathedral is owned by the French state and has been at the centre of a years-long dispute over who should finance restoration work of the collapsing staircases, crumbling statues and cracked walls. Jean Michel Leniaud, the president of the scientific council at the National Heritage Institute, said: "What happened was bound to happen. The lack of adequate maintenance and daily attention to such a majestic building is the cause of this catastrophe." After the blaze was declared completely extinguished, 15 hours after it started, the junior interior minister, Laurent Nunez, said the structure had been saved but remained vulnerable. He praised the actions of the firefighters but admitted the fate of the cathedral had been uncertain. "They saved the main structure, but it all came down to 15-30 minutes," Nunez said.

E)In a surprise televised address on Tuesday evening, Macron said he wanted to see the cathedral rebuilt within five years. "The fire at Notre Dame reminds us that we will always have challenges to overcome," Macron said, "Notre Dame is our history, our literature, the centre of our life. It is the standard by which we measure our distances. It's so many books, so many paintings. It's the cathedral of every French person, even those who have never visited it. This history is ours and so we will rebuild Notre Dame. It is what the French people expect; it is what our history deserves. It is our deep destiny. We will rebuild Notre Dame so it is even more beautiful than before. I want it done in the next five years. We can do it. After the time of testing comes a time of reflection and then of action."

F)The fire, which had started at the base of the 93-metre spire (尖塔) at about 6:40 pm on Monday, spread through the cathedral's roof, made up of hundreds of oak beams, some dating back to the 13th century. These beams, known as la foret (the forest) because of their density, formed the cross-shaped roof that ran the length of the central part of the cathedral. As hundreds of tourists and Parisians stood and watched the flames leaping from the roof, there was shock and tears as the cathedral spire caught fire, burned and then collapsed into itself.

G)A collection of dramatic videos and photos quickly spread across social media, showing the horrifying destruction, and attracting emotional responses from people all over the world. Indeed, within minutes the fire occupied headlines of every major global newspaper and television network. This is not surprising given Notre Dame Cathedral, meaning "Our Lady", is one of the most recognised symbols of the city of Paris attracting millions of tourists every year.

H)While the world looked on, the 500 firefighters at the scene then battled to prevent the flames from reaching the two main towers, where the cathedral bells hang. If the wooden frame of the towers had caught fire, it could have sent the bells-the largest of which, the Emmanuel Bell, weighing 13 tons crashing down, potentially causing the collapse of both towers. Police and fire services will spend the next 48 hours assessing the "security and safety" of the 850-year-old structure. Nunez said: "We have identified vulnerabilities throughout the structure, all of which still need securing." As a result, residents of five buildings around the northern side of the cathedral were being temporarily evacuated, he added. Architects have identified three main holes in the structure, in the locations of the spire, the main hall and the upper rooms to the north of the central aisle. Most of the wooden roof beams have been burned, and parts of the concrete holding up the roof have collapsed.

I)The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, visited the cathedral on Tuesday afternoon to see the extent of the devastation. Ash covered the marble diamond-patterned floor and floated in large pools of grey water from the fire hoses. Behind a heap of blackened oak beams that lay piled up where they had fallen, daylight from vast holes in the cathedral roof lit a golden cross over a statue by Nicolas Coustou, which appeared to have escaped damage. Preliminary inspections also suggested the three ornate (装饰华丽的) stained glass "rose" windows appeared to have survived the fire, officials said. However, fire officers have said a complete inventory of the damage will not be possible until the cathedral structure has been deemed safe.

J)The culture minister, Franck Riester, said religious relics saved from the cathedral were being securely held at the Hotel de Ville, and works of art that sustained smoke damage were being taken to the Louvre, the world's largest art museum, where they would be dried out, repaired and stored. Sixteen copper statues that decorated the spire had been removed for restoration only a few days before the fire. Relics at the top of the spire are believed lost as the spire was destroyed. As well as damage from the heat, which firefighters said reached more than 800°c, experts also need to assess damage from the vast quantities of water firefighters poured into the cathedral. One casualty of this was The Great Organ constructed in the 1730s, which was said to have escaped the flames but been significantly damaged by water.

K)French political commentators noted the devastating fire had succeeded where Macron had failed in uniting the country. But criticism over the original state of the building is likely to intensify over coming days. Leniaud told La Croix newspaper: "This is not about looking for people to blame. The responsibility is collective because this is the most loved monument in the country." Alexandre Gady, an art historian, agreed. "We've been saying for years that the budget for maintaining historic monuments is too low," Gady said. The Paris prosecutor's office has opened an inquiry into "involuntary destruction by fire", indicating they believe the cause of the blaze was accidental rather than criminal.

We often think of drawing as something that takes inborn talent, but this kind of thinking stems from our misclassification of drawing as, primarily, an art form rather than a tool for learning. Researchers, teachers, and artists are starting to see how drawing can positively impact a wide variety of skills and disciplines. Most of us have spent some time drawing before, but at some point, most of us stop drawing. There are people who don't, obviously, and thank god for that: a world without designers and artists would be a very shabby one indeed. Some argue that so many adults have abandoned drawing because we've miscategorized it and given it a very narrow definition. In his book, Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice, Professor D. B. Dowd argues that we have misfiled the significance of drawing because we see it as a professional skill instead of a personal capacity. We mistakenly think of "good" drawings as those which work as recreations of the real world, as realistic illusions. Rather, drawing should be recategorized as a symbolic tool. Human beings have been drawing for 73,000 years. It's part of what it means to be human. We don't have the strength of chimpanzees (大猩猩) because we've given up animal strength to manipulate subtle instruments, like hammers, spears, and-later-pens and pencils. The human hand is an extremely dense network of nerve endings. In many ways, human beings are built to draw. Some researchers argue that doodling (涂画) activates the brain's so-called default circuit-essentially, the areas of the brain responsible for maintaining a baseline level of activity in the absence of other stimuli. Because of this, some believe that doodling during a boring lecture can help students pay attention. In one study, participants were asked to listen to a list of names while either doodling or sitting still. Those who doodled remembered 29 percent more of the names than those who did not. There's also evidence that drawing talent is based on how accurately someone perceives the world. The human visual system tends to misjudge size, shape, color, and angles but artists perceive these qualities more accurately than non-artists. Cultivating drawing talent can become an essential tool to improve people's observational skills in fields where the visual is important. Rather than think of drawing as a talent that some creative people are gifted in, we should consider it as a tool for seeing and understanding the world better -- one that just so happens to double as an art form. Both absent-minded doodling and copying from life have been shown to positively affect your memory and visual perception, so complain loudly the next time your school board slashes the art department's budget.

The car has reshaped our cities. It seems to offer autonomy for everyone. There is something almost delightful in the detachment from reality of advertisements showing mass-produced cars marketed as symbols of individuality and of freedom when most of their lives will be spent making short journeys on choked roads. For all the fuss made about top speeds, cornering ability and acceleration, the most useful gadgets on a modern car are those which work when you're going very slowly: parking sensors, sound systems, and navigation apps which will show a way around upcoming traffic jams. This seems to be one of the few areas where the benefit of sharing personal information comes straight back to the sharer: because these apps know where almost all the users are, and how fast they are moving almost all the time, they can spot traffic congestion (堵塞) very quickly and suggest ways round it. The problem comes when everyone is using a navigation app which tells them to avoid everyone else using the same gadget. Traffic jams often appear where no one has enough information to avoid them. When a lucky few have access to the knowledge, they will benefit greatly. But when everyone has perfect information, traffic jams simply spread onto the side roads that seem to offer a way round them. This new congestion teaches us two things. The first is that the promises of technology will never be realised as fully as we hope; they will be limited by their unforeseen and unintended consequences. Sitting in a more comfortable car in a different traffic jam is pleasant but hardly the liberation that once seemed to be promised. The second is that self-organisation will not get us where we want to go. The efforts of millions of drivers to get ahead do not miraculously produce a situation in which everyone does better than before, but one in which almost everyone does rather worse. Central control and collective organisation can produce smoother and fairer outcomes, though even that much is never guaranteed. Similar limits can be foreseen for the much greater advances promised by self-driving cars. Last week, one operated by the taxi company Uber struck and killed a woman pushing her bicycle across a wide road in Arizona. This was the first recorded death involving a car which was supposed to be fully autonomous. Experts have said that it suggests a "catastrophic failure" of technology. Increasingly, even Silicon Valley has to acknowledge the costs of the intoxicating (邻人陶醉的) hurry that characterises its culture. What traffic teaches us is that reckless and uncontrolled change is as likely to harm us as it is to benefit us, and that thoughtful regulation is necessary for a better future.