2010年12月英语六级真题快速阅读原文及解析_大学英语阅读

2010年12月英语六级真题快速阅读原文及解析

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.

Into the Unknown

The world has never seen population ageing before. Can it cope?

Until the early 1990s nobody much thought about whole populations getting older. The UN had the foresight to convene a world assembly on ageing back in 1982, but that came and went. By 1994 the World Bank had noticed that something big was happening. In a report entitled Averting the Old Age Crisis, it argued that pension arrangements in most countries were unsustainable.

For the next ten years a succession of books, mainly by Americans, sounded the alarm. They had titles like Young vs Old, Gray Dawn and The Coming Generational Storm, and their message was blunt: health-care systems were heading for the rocks, pensioners were taking young people to the cleaners, and soon there would be intergenerational warfare.

Since then the debate has become less emotional, not least because a lot more is known about the subject. Books, conferences and research papers have multiplied. International organisations such as the OECD and the EU issue regular reports. Population ageing is on every agenda, from G8 economic conferences to NATO summits. The World Economic Forum plans to consider the future of pensions and health care at its prestigious Davos conference early next year. The media, including this newspaper, are giving the subject extensive coverage.