2022 年 12 月大学英语六级考试真题（第 1 套）

During the summer, when I was a visiting poet at a residency out of state, an angry, confused woman wandered into my class and said: "I have three guns and I want to use them." We all __26__. It wasn't clear if she had the guns, but we each know that, when we teach in America, we are already in danger.

I was dizzy with fear. The woman, who later turned out to be a schizophrenic (精神分裂症患者) without __27__ to her medications, was, by some force, wrestled out and __28__ away, then put in a hospital for observation, in a step that was actually safer for everyone than any one of us pressing charges. My class went on; we talked about poems. But despite the fact that the rest of our days on campus passed __29__, I was rattled. I couldn't shake the sense that in this country we always live at __30__ risk.

A few months later, crisis __31__ again. While my husband was locking his bike to drop off our 3-year-old daughter for her preschool-aged day camp, a different woman approached. Swiftly and for no __32__ reason, she bent down, picked up our daughter, and began to carry her down the street. It was so fast and confusing that my daughter __33__ cried. My husband, in a burst of speed, chased the woman and reclaimed our daughter. The woman, clearly confused, retreated into the public library. A __34__ of homeless people who generally know the other homeless in the area said they did not recognize the woman. The woman was so clearly unwell that when she was taken into custody she was incoherent. Heartbreakingly, she called our daughter by the name of someone else's child. Each part of the episode was haunting as it was __35__.

Many people associate their self-worth with their work. The more successful their career, the better they feel about themselves. Work-related self-esteem is therefore a worthy ideal to pursue with vigor, right? Well, not always. According to recent research, in which psychologists interviewed 370 full-time workers over a period of three weeks, the reality is a little more complicated. And it involves negative as well as positive consequences.

It's natural to be drawn towards pleasure and to step away from pain. In the workplace, if that pleasure comes from a triumph which swells our self-respect, people will try to repeat the accomplishment. But repeating that accomplishment is often not realistic, which can lead to severe negative emotional consequences when it doesn't reoccur. This form of motivation is widely regarded as a negative type of motivation. It can hinder other more positive motivation types, such as completing a task purely because it's fulfilling or enjoyable.

What consumes the employee instead is a pressing need to feel mighty and sure of themselves. They then take on only tasks and objectives which serve that ego-driven need. As a result, to avoid feelings of shame and worthlessness associated with failure, they extend themselves to such a degree that there's a subsequent adverse effect on their well-being. This internal pressure to succeed at all costs demands a lot of effort. It depletes their energy, culminating in disproportionate levels of damaging sentiment.

Those negative emotions mount into heightened anxiety, impacting their ability to make the most of their personal life. Their desire to avoid feeling inferior ends up making them feel inferior when it comes to their diminished capacity for friendship and leisure. They end up dissatisfied both at work and outside of it.

But thankfully, for those people compelled almost entirely by this specific form of motivation, the news isn't all bad, or bad at all. The study also discovered several positive outcomes that can actually outweigh the harmful ones. Though these types of employees are motivated by the desire to avoid negative consequences, they are also motivated by the excitement of pursuing emotional rewards. This excitement makes pursuing goals enjoyable and stimulates pleasure and pride that would result from success. An effect of the positive motivation is that it neutralizes the existence of negative motivation.

Sure, it affects people's personal lives to what could be deemed an unhealthy extent, because leisure activities are often seen as a part of life that must be sacrificed to manage work and family demands. However, the way people feel about their work has less to do with whether they're motivated by the preservation of self-esteem but more with the fact that they're simply motivated.

Degradation of the world's natural resources by humans is rapidly outpacing the planet's ability to absorb the damage, a recent UN environmental study has found. The study concludes that without radical action the level of prosperity that millions of people in the developed world count on will be impossible to maintain or extend to poorer countries.

Water scarcity is the curse of some of the poorest regions on Earth, leaving developing countries increasingly unable to feed themselves, and causing hardship for millions of people. There appears little prospect of this desperate situation being remedied without radical action being taken. Water resources are under increasing threat from population growth, climate change, rapid urbanization, rising levels of consumption, and the degradation of lands that previously provided a natural replenishment (补充) of water resources.

The rate of damage to the natural environment was found to increase globally, despite concerted efforts to persuade governments to take measures to improve the condition. "If current trends continue, and the world fails to improve patterns of production and consumption, then the state of the world's environment will continue to decline," warned UN executive director Achim Steiner.

He said the tools for improving the environment for millions of people existed in developed countries, but were in danger of not being used.

The study found that basic measures to tackle some of the key causes of environmental damage were still not being taken. These included measures to reduce air pollution, to control the damage to marine eco-systems, which can have a huge effect on fish stocks on which hundreds of millions of people depend; and to curb the degradation of land where modern agricultural methods were pursued without regard to the longer-term consequences.

Despite the recent global agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, global carbon output continues to rise. This will put a long-term strain on the ability of developing economics to feed their own people. Climate change is aggravated by the emissions of greenhouse gases from chemical and natural fertilisers used in agriculture which increased by more than a quarter between 2000 and 2010. Other problem areas identified in the report included glaciers, which provide vital water resources for millions of people, but which are shrinking as the climate warms.

In rich countries, these problems have built up over decades and centuries while economic growth was pursued at the expense of the environment. Subsequent efforts to remedy the environment have met with partial success. But in developing countries, the path of future development has more potential to change, which has encouraged international institutions to devise more sustainable growth pathways that are supposed both to alleviate poverty and preserve the environment.