III。阅读理解（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分）
阅读下列短文，从每篇短文后所给各题的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
They say there are three ways to experience the Grand Canyon; on foot, on mules（骡子）or by air. We chose the first. Up early, my husband and I and our three children couldn’t wait to get started. We decided to walk along a lovely path named Bright Angel Trail.
As we set out, I was shocked at how narrow the path was. And I couldn’t help noticing that the other tourists weren’t like us. They had heavy backpacks, water bottles, and hats. But as usual we were dressed, As the sun rose higher, Arizona’s famous heat seemed to roast us. There was no shade and our legs were aching. We decided to go back, with the girl on my back and the boys far behind. By the time we finally got back, our legs were like jelly.
The next day, after we’d had a long rest and a good breakfast, we were ready for another view of the Canyon – by air. After our last walk, this would be the easiest thing in the world.
We called to each other excitedly as the plane took off and circled around the Canyon. But the smiles on our faces disappeared as the pilot tossed（翻转）the plane around, pretending he was going to hit the ground. I shouted, “STOP, TAKE US BACK!” When we finally arrived back on land, once again our legs were like jelly. We hardly spoke as we drove back.
As I said, there are three ways to view the Grand Canyon. We never tried the mules, but personally I’d suggest a fourth: buy yourself a good magazine like National Geographic. That way, you can see the Canyon, without fear or tiredness.
1. Which of the following is true according to the second paragraph?
A. They made a careful preparation before the trip.
B. The children were more joyful than their parents.
C. Bright Angel Trail was not as lovely as they expected.
D. The summer heat prevented them from enjoying the view.
2. The underlined expression “Our legs were like jelly” probably means _____ .
A. we were weak B. we were unhappy
C. we were dissatisfied D. we were disappointed
3. Which of the following best describes their Canyon trip by air?
A. It proved to be frightening. B. It was more comfortable.
C. It turned out to be exciting. D. It made each of them tired.
4. We can infer from the passage that _____.
A. experiencing the Canyon on mules would be the best way.
B. one needs to dress less when visiting the Grand Canyon.
C. the writer was not serious when she made the suggestion.
D. the whole family narrowly escaped from the air accident.
Nowadays, girls are so mean to each other. Many girls are becoming the victims of the harmful behaviors of the female bully.
Emma Tracey was a popular 17-year-old and a well-liked athlete who had already won a soccer scholarship to college. But none of that stopped Emma from becoming the target of online girl on girl bullying (欺凌). Emma began to receive hundreds of online unpleasant comments via the latest social networking site called www.formspring.com.
In March 2011, Emma committed suicide and although all agreed that the online bother was not the single factor that led to Emma’ death, everyone did agree that it was a contributory factor.
Unfortunately, Emma’ story is not unique. A 2010 study conducted by the Cyberbullying Research Center states “Cyberbullying victims were almost twice as likely to have attempted suicide compared to youth who had not experienced cyberbullying. Girls are 57% more likely to be victims of aggressive cyberbullying and 92% more likely to be the criminals.”
Suicide is obviously the extreme and no one can minimize the tragedy of it. However, there are other damages that occur as a result of aggressive bullying. It can damage self-confidence and lead to feelings of worthlessness, and also increase social isolation and make victims become withdrawn, depressed, anxious, and unsafe. So what causes girls to be so unkind towards each other?
A term known as relational aggression may best describe the cause of girl on girl bullying. It starts with a clique (派系) usually led by a girl with a high level of social status and popularity. In order not to lose her position, she will control girls within the clique and take action if she feels threatened. At the leader’s directive the girls within the clique will spread rumors and lies and annoy other girls continuously.
The bullying starts at school but will quickly go to cyberbullying due to anonymity (匿名) and lack of punishment. Girls will easily do so in the anonymity of the Internet. Finally the cause will be summarized as the unsafety and jealousy of one girl and the twisted loyalty of members within her clique. Underneath the confident exterior (外表) of a female bully lie desperate unsafety.The example of Emma Tracey is given to show.
| A．popular youth are not easy to become the target of bullying |
| B．today’s youth don’t like to study any more |
| C．suicide is a serious problem among youth |
| D．cyberbullying is quite common among teenagers |
The bullying will quickly go to cyberbullying mainly because .
| A．it’s free to post comments online |
| B．the bullies don’t have to give their names online |
| C．it will not attract much attention |
| D．it will not affect their real life |
Which of the following is NOT the cause of bullying?
| A．Lack of safety |
| B．The twisted loyalty of members within a clique |
| C．Jealousy of others |
| D．Trying to be friendly |
We can infer from the last paragraph that a female bully .
| A．has strong self-confidence |
| B．has strong leadership skills |
| C．is actually weak inside |
| D．is usually good at study |
EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) —they arrived before polling stations even opened, dressed for the school day in striped ties and blazers, dress slacks and tartan skirts, book bags over their shoulders —and, for the first time in British history, ballot (选票) cards in hands on September 18.
Scotland’s experiment of allowing more than 109,000 Scottish teenagers aged 16 to 17 took part in the Scottish independence referendum (公民投票), in which Scotland finally decided not to become independent.
The age group only made up a small part of the 4.29 million total voters, but they have “demonstrated how the youngest voters can be some of the most enthusiastic in a mature democracy”, commented The Associated Press. Casting their ballots, they were “proud and passionate” to help their nation decide whether to break away from the UK after 307 years in union.
At age 16, Scottish residents are allowed to join the military, get married, and work. Eighteen is the legal drinking age, as well as the UK’s voting age. But in 2013, Scottish law was changed to allow 16- and 17-year-olds in Scotland to vote in the referendum. The government pushed for the change because “younger voters are more likely to vote with their hearts, not their heads—and embrace fundamental change by voting for the pro-independence Yes Scotland campaign”, NBC News said.
But when the decision was handed down, some worried that high school students might not be as informed as adult voters. However, many experts said that assumption was wrong.
Professor Jan Eichhorn of the University of Edinburgh insisted that Scottish teenagers were as likely to read newspaper articles and campaign materials as their parents. They would simply get these resources through social media.
“There’s no evidence to suggest that they’re less capable than adults of voting, from a research point of view,” Eichhorn told NPR.
Scotland’s move to let younger teenagers vote in the referendum has led to a discussion about whether the voting age ought to be lowered to 16, both in the UK and the US.
“By 16, most people have about as stable an ideology (思想意识) as they are going to get,” Professor Jason Brennan of Georgetown University wrote for CNN, arguing that the US should also think about allowing younger US citizens to vote.The Scottish independence referendum was held on Sept. 18 ______.
| A．to encourage youngsters to be concerned with politics |
| B．to lower the minimum voting age to 16 for the referendum |
| C．to decide whether Scotland would become independent from the UK |
| D．to elect who would be the new leader of Scotland |
According to the passage, we can learn ______.
| A．Scotland gained its independence from the UK eventually. |
| B．It is possible for the USA to lower the voting age to 16 in the future. |
| C．All the people in Scotland thought highly of the government’s decision to lower the voting age to 16. |
| D．Scottish teenagers aged 16 are allowed to join the military, get married, work and drink alcohol now. |
What does the underlined word “embrace” (in para.4) probably mean?
| A．Admit to | B．Object to |
| C．Know about | D．Approve of |
What is Jan Eichhorn’s opinion of the Scottish teenagers aged 16 to 17?
| A．They are as informed and capable as adults of voting. |
| B．They make no difference to the voting result. |
| C．They are too enthusiastic to make informed decisions. |
| D．They are unwilling to be involved in the decision of the country’s future. |
If you go to Ethiopia, you’ll find a strange palm-like structure, which is called WarkaWater. It gathers water from fog and condensation（水珠）and is invented by an Italian firm.
When Italian designer Arturo Vittori and Swiss architect Andreas Vogler first visited Ethiopia in 2012, they were shocked to see women and children forced to walk miles to access what, for them, had always been within easy reach, water.
Only 34 percent of Ethiopians have access to a reliable water supply. Some travel for up to six hours a day to fetch some or, even worse, has to use pond water polluted by human waste, subject to the spread of disease.
Worldwide, about 768 million people—two and a half times the U.S. population—don’t have access to safe drinking water. So just imagine if we could just pull water out of thin air? That’s what Vittori and Vogler asked once they saw the severe problem and promised to take action. Their firm, Architecture and Vision, has since come up with WarkaWater, a grand palm-like structure that may look like something you’d see in a modern art museum, but it’s been designed to harvest water from the air.
WarkaWater, which is named after an Ethiopian fig tree, is composed of a 30-foot bamboo frame containing a fog-harvesting nylon net that can catch water easily, can be easily lowered for repairs and allow communities to measure the water level. Collecting water through condensation is hardly a new technique, but the creators of WarkaWater say their tree-inspired design is more effective, maximizing surface and perfecting every angle to produce up to 26 gallons of drinkable water a day—enough for a family of seven.
Western organizations have been working to provide clean water access in Africa for decades, so WarkaWater joins a very long list of earlier attempts. So far, high-tech solutions, like the once promising Playpump, have failed, mostly due to high costs and maintenance issues.
This is where WarkaWater stands apart—a lower-tech solution that is easy to repair and far more affordable than digging wells in the rocky Ethiopian plateau.What does the underlined phrase “subject to” in the third paragraph most probably mean?
| A．Owing to | B．Opposite to |
| C．Sensitive to | D．Giving rise to |
WarkaWater is designed mainly to ______.
| A．gather clean water efficiently |
| B．reduce water supply costs |
| C．simplify maintenance |
| D．preserve water supplies |
According to Paragraph 6, what caused Playpump to fail?
| A．Lack of advanced technology |
| B．Unsuccessful designs |
| C．Lack of money and maintenance issues |
| D．Unreasonable structures |
Marianne Hardwick was timid and unadventurous, her energy consumed by physical activity and longing, her intelligence by indecisiveness, but this had less to do with the inborn characteristics of her weaker sex ( as her father, Creighton Montgomery, called it) than with the enfeebling(使人衰弱的) circumstances of her upbringing. Creighton Montgomery had enough money to mould (塑造) his daughters according to his misconceptions that girls were not meant to fend for themselves so he protected them from life. What is to say is that Marianne Montgomery grew up without making any vital choices for herself. Prevented from acquiring the habits of freedom and strength of character which grow from decision-making, very rich girls, whose parents have the means to protect them in such a crippling fashion, are the last representatives of Victorian womanhood. Though they may have the boldest manners and most up-to-date ideas, they share their great grandmothers’ humble dependence.
Most parents these days have to rely on their force of personality and whatever love and respect they can inspire to exert any influence over their children at all, but there is still an awful lot of parental authority that big money can buy. Multi- millionaires have more of everything than ordinary people, including more parent power, and their sons and daughters have about as much opportunity to develop according to their own inclinations(意向) as they would have had in the age of absolute monarchy (君主专制) .
The rich still have families. The great divide between the generations is the state of the lower and middle classes, whose children begin to drift away as soon as they are old enough to go to school. The parents cannot control the school, and have even less say as to what company and ideas the child will be exposed to; nor can they isolate him from the public mood, the spirit of the age. It is an often heard complaint of the middle-class mother, for instance, that she must let her children watch television for hours on end every day if she is to steal any time for herself. The rich have no such problems; they can keep their offspring busy from morning to night without being near them for a minute more than they choose to be, and can exercise almost total control over their environment.
As for schooling, they can handpick tutors with sound views to come to the children, who may never leave the grounds their parents own, in town, in the country, by the sea, unless for an exceptionally secure boarding school or a well- chaperoned (伴护着的) trip abroad. It would have been easier for little Marianne Montgomery to go to Cairo than to the nearest newsstand.The author implies that Marianne Hardwick’s timidity were closely associated with ______.
| A．the inborn characteristics of the weaker sex |
| B．the conditions where she was brought up |
| C．the consumption of her energy |
| D．her physical activity and longing |
Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．Rich girls always share their ideas with their grandmothers. |
| B．Wealthy children learn at home instead of going to school. |
| C．Middle-class mothers usually steal time for their children. |
| D．Rich parents may have more control over their children than the middle-class parents do |
What can we know about Creighton Montgomery's daughters from the passage?
| A．They did not have up-to-date ideas. |
| B．They were unintelligent. |
| C．They did not have much freedom. |
| D．They had no physical activity. |
It can be learned from the passage that multimillionaires’ children have ______.
| A．little opportunity to develop according to their own inclinations |
| B．absolute opportunity to develop according to their own inclinations |
| C．more opportunity to develop according to their own inclinations than ordinary children |
| D．as much opportunity to develop according to their own inclinations as ordinary children |
What is the main idea of this passage?
| A．The rich control their children's lives without being near them. |
| B．The generation gap only occurs in the lower and middle classes. |
| C．Rich parents have more authority over their children than poor parents. |
| D．Rich girls who are being overprotected by their parents are rather dependent. |
You may not pay much attention to your daily elevator ride. Many of us use a lift several times during the day without really thinking about it. But Lee Gray, PhD, of the University of North Carolina, US, has made it his business to examine this overlooked form of public transport. He is known as the “Elevator Guy”.
“The lift becomes this interesting social space where etiquette (礼仪) is sort of odd,” Gray told the BBC. “They are socially very interesting but often very awkward places.”
We walk in and usually turn around to face the door. If someone else comes in, we may have to move. And here, according to Gray, liftusers unthinkingly go through a set pattern of movements. He told the BBC what he had observed.
He explained that when you are the only one inside a lift, you can do whatever you want – it’s your own little box.
If there are two of you, you go into different corners, standing diagonally (对角线地) across from each other to create distance.
When a third person enters, you will unconsciously form a triangle. And when there is a fourth person it becomes a square, with someone in every corner. A fifth person is probably going to have to stand in the middle.
New entrants(新进入者) to the lift will need to size up the situation when the doors slide open and then act decisively. Once in, for most people the rule is simple – look down, or look at your phone.
Why are we so awkward in lifts?
“You don’t have enough space,” Professor Babette Renneberg, a clinical psychologist at the Free University of Berlin, told the BBC. “Usually when we meet other people we have about an arm’s length of distance between us. And that’s not possible in most elevators.”
In such a small, enclosed space it becomes very important to act in a way that cannot be construed (理解) as threatening or odd. “The easiest way to do this is to avoid eye contact,” she said.The main purpose of the article is to______.
| A．remind us to enjoy ourselves in the elevator |
| B．tell us some unwritten rules of elevator etiquette |
| C．share an interesting but awkward elevator ride |
| D．analyze what makes people feel awkward in an elevator |
According to Gray, when people enter an elevator, they usually _____.
| A．turn around and greet one another |
| B．look around or examine their phone |
| C．make eye contact with those in the elevator |
| D．try to keep a distance from other people |
Which of the following describes how people usually stand when there are at least
two people in an elevator?
The underlined phrase “size up” in Paragraph 7 is closest in meaning to _____.
| A．judge | B．ignore |
| C．put up with | D．make the best of |
According to the article, people feel awkward in lifts because of _____.
| A．someone’s odd behaviors |
| B．the lack of space |
| C．their unfamiliarity with one another |
| D．their eye contact with one another |