阅读理解(共30分)
第一节,阅读下列材料，从A、B、C、D四个选项中选出最佳答案，并把答题卡上对应题目的答案标号涂黑。(共15小题, 每小题2分, 共30分)
A
Europe is now the biggest market for organic food in the world, having grown by 25 percent a year over the past 10 years. Denmark’s agriculture minister is herself an organic farmer. The UK market for organic food grew by 55 percent in 2000, while the food market as a whole grew by only one percent. Yet only seven percent of British shoppers account for nearly 60 percent of organic sales. However popular the idea of organic farming may be, it is still an interest for only a few people.
So what makes the idea of organic farming popular? Organic farming means farming with natural materials, rather than with man-made fertilizers or pesticides. Organic farmers rely on many methods — such as crop rotation (农作物的轮作) and the use of resistant（有抵抗力的） varieties, because they are necessary for organic farmers to compensate for the shortage of man-made chemicals.
Organic farming is often supposed to be safer than traditional farming for the environment. Yet after a long research on organic farming worldwide for a number of years, science continues to be against this opinion. The House of Commons committee on agriculture publicized that, even with complete research work, it would fail to find any scientific evidence to prove “that any of claims （宣称） made for organic farming is always true”.
However, the talk about the benefits of organic farming is going on. This is partly because many people depend on their individual farm, the soil, the weather, and so on.
51. The first paragraph mainly tells us _____.
A. organic farming has been performed only in Europe over the past 10 years
B. governments of European countries have cared less about organic farming
C. organic farming is far from being as popular as expected
D. European countries need organic food more than the other countries in the world
52. The underlined words “compensate for” in the second paragraph probably mean “________”.
A. argue for B. care for C. struggle for D. pay for
53. What can we know about organic farming?
A. It refers to farming with natural materials, instead of chemical fertilizers.
B. It refers to farming with chemical fertilizers rather than natural fertilizers.
C. It refers to farming with soil rather than any other thing.
D. It refers to growing crops with man-made fertilizers and pesticides.
54. According to the third paragraph, _____.
A. organic farming is safer than traditional farming for the environment
B. the idea that organic farming is safer has not been proven by science
C. organic farming is accepted by the UK’s House of Commons committee
D. organic farming is preferred to traditional farming
55. Which of the following is TRUE, according to the passage?
A. The UK’s agriculture minister is an organic farmer.
B. Organic farming is popular with young people.
C. Farmers make use of many different kinds of methods to improve the organic sales system.
D. Ninety-three percent of British shoppers don’t buy organic products.
The scientists observed that the more junk food the rats ate, the more they wanted to eat – a behavior very similar to that of rats addicted(上了瘾的) to heroin, a dangerous drug. Johnson said the experiment shows that the brain chemistry of obesity(肥胖) and drug addiction may be quite similar.
In their experiment, Johnson and his team studied the “pleasure center” of rats’ brains. The pleasure center is a complicated network of nerve cells. If the animal exercises or eats, the cells reward the animal by releasing chemicals into the body that make it feel good. And when the body feels good, the animal – or person – will want to do the behavior again.
For the experiment, Johnson fed foods like cheesecake to one group of rats. Food like this is high in calories and fat. Another group of rats got a regular diet. The rats that ate junk food started to eat more and more.
“They’re taking in twice the amount of calories as the control rats,” says Paul Kenny, one of Johnson’s colleagues.
Kenny and Johnson wanted to know what was going on in the brains of these rats. They first designed a way to deliver a small electrical charge to the rats’ brains. This electrical charge would stimulate the pleasure centers to release pleasure-causing chemicals. The rats could control how much stimulation – and how much pleasure – they received by running on a wheel. The more the rat ran, the more pleasure it received.
The rats that had been eating junk food started running more and more. This behavior suggested that the junk-food-eating rats needed more brain stimulation to feel good compared with rats on a normal diet. In other words, their pleasure centers were becoming less sensitive and the junk food didn’t make them feel good unless they ate more and more.
Experiments like this one could help scientists understand how chemicals in the brain contribute to obesity. With that information, they may be able to help people avoid obesity in the first place.
(Note: Answer the questions or complete the statements in NO MORE THAN TEN WORDS.) The scientists suggested it was actually ___________________ that made the rats feel good.
How did the scientist know what was happening in the brains of the junk-food-eating rats?
What was the purpose of the experiment mentioned in the article?
Every time you go to the supermarket you come away with your purchases packed in plastic bags. But wouldn’t it be kinder to the environment if you asked for paper bags instead?
The answer is not as easy as it might seem. Environmentalists say there are drawbacks to using both plastic bags and paper bags.
80 percent of groceries in the US are packed in plastic bags and the numbers are becoming huge. Consumers use between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags per year worldwide.
Some experts believe that all these bags harm the environment. Plastic takes hundreds of years to break down and, as it does so, poisonous materials are released into the water and soil.
Further damage is caused if plastic bags enter the sea. For example, endangered sea turtles cannot tell the bags from jellyfish, their main source of food, and often choke on them.
However, this kind of bag does have its advantages.
Paper bags use more energy and create more waste than plastic bags. Plastic bags require 40 percent less energy to produce and cause 70 percent less air pollution. They also release as much as 94 percent less waste into the water than paper ones do.
But paper bags do break down more quickly than plastic bags. They don’t endanger wildlife, either.
So what should we do? One possible solution would be to use biodegradable plastic bags. “Biodegradable” means that the bags break down naturally just like a piece of banana peel when it is left outside.
But until biodegradable technology improves, it might be easier to pack things you buy in reusable cloth bags.Compared to paper bags, plastic bags ______.
| A．produce 6 percent more waste |
| B．can be made biodegradable more easily |
| C．can be used as a source of food |
| D．save 40 percent of the energy |
By saying “The answer is not as easy as it might seem,” (in paragraph 2) the writer means _____.
A. biodegradable plastic bags can compete with paper
B. paper bags seem to be kind to environment
C. it’s difficult to say whether plastic or paper bags are better for the environmentWhat does the author suggest people use at the present time?
| A．Paper bags | B．Plastic bags |
| C．Biodegradable plastic bags. | D．Cloth bags. |
Without proper planning, tourism can cause problems. For example, too many tourists can crowd public places that are also enjoyed by the inhabitants of a country. If tourists create too much traffic, the inhabitants become annoyed and unhappy. They begin to dislike tourists and to treat them impolitely. They forget how much tourism can help the country and how tourism affects them. Tourism should help a country keep the customs and beauty that attract tourists. Tourism should also advance the well-being (health and happiness) of local inhabitants.
Too much tourism can be a problem. If tourism grows too quickly, people must leave other jobs to work in the tourism industry. This means that other parts of the country’s economy can suffer.
On the other hand, if there is not enough tourism, people can lose jobs. Businesses can also lose money. It costs a great deal of money to build large hotels, airports, air terminals, first-class roads, and other support facilities needed by tourist attractions. For example, a major international-class tourism hotel can cost as much as 50 thousand dollars per room to build. If this room is not used most of the time, the owners of the hotel lose money.
Building a hotel is just a beginning. There must be many support facilities as well, including roads to get to the hotel, electricity, sewers（阴沟） to handle waste, arid water. All of these support facilities cost money. If they are not used because there are not enough tourists, jobs and money are lost. Which of the following has most probably been discussed in the paragraph that goes before the passage?
| A．It is extremely important to develop tourism. |
| B．Building roads and hotels is essential. |
| C．Support facilities are highly necessary. |
| D．Planning is of great importance to tourism. |
Too much tourism can cause all these problems EXCEPT ______.
| A．a bad impact on other industries |
| B．A change of tourists’ customs |
| C．overcrowdedness of places of interest |
| D．pressure on traffic |
It is good for local people to be well aware that tourism will _____.
| A．use up a large amount of water |
| B．weaken their economy |
| C．help establish their traditions |
| D．help improve their life |
What I like to advise people is to find out what it is that makes them happy. What do you love to do? If you truly love what you do just go ahead and try to make a living by doing it. People will throw money at you to do it. But you will always have to work hard at it. I have to draw every single day of my life. I have to draw about 20 ideas. My advice is to put aside a certain amount of time every day and make you draw or whatever, especially when you don’t feel like it. Only in this way will you be able to perfect your talent.
The first step you take is to go to your local library and ask for the publications issued in the current years. When you get these publications, try to find the names of the top people concerned and their presidents. After you find these, write down their names and addresses. Keep this list and update it every year. Next thing you want to do is to create at least 40 cartoons. Get a grid（格子） from one of the strips in the newspapers, enlarge it to whatever size you wish and draw inside this grid. Now take the best 20 of your ideas and make them into finished pieces. To do this, you would want to copy them in ink because if you were a professional cartoonist, that was what you should do. Now you can reduce the size of the finished cartoons to fit onto a regular comic’s page. By comparing yours with the others already in print, it gives you a good idea of clarity to your cartoon.
The next step is to write letters to presidents of the publication. In the letters, explain who you think would read your work, or in other words, what group do you think you would target. After you complete these, send all of your information enclosed with letters in the appropriate envelope.
Now as soon as you send out these letters, start to create a brand new strip with all new characters. Don’t get married to one idea because if your idea gets turned down then you will give up. And always remember. If you receive a rejection from any of them, keep in mind that you are working on something better. You will be working on something new and more exciting and the rejection letter will not have any impact. With this in mind…What is the advice from the writer in the first paragraph when you want to succeed in your life?
| A．Stop doing anything until you find something quite suitable for your future career. |
| B．Put aside a certain amount of time every day to consider how to make a living. |
| C．Make a living by something that you truly like to do as your profession and work hard at it. |
| D．Perfect your talent only by drawing some cartoons. |
The purpose of writing a letter to the president was to ____.
| A．get some money to support the later career |
| B．enclose the information on how to become cartoonists with the letter |
| C．focus his attention on the work |
| D．explain who would be the readers of the work |
The underlined phrase “get married to one idea” in the last paragraph probably refers to ______.
| A．having a strong desire to get married |
| B．fixing all attention on one idea |
| C．marrying someone is a good ideas |
| D．refusing one idea to get married |
You have to log on to your school's online system to check your grades, but you find the system is kind of inconvenient．What do you do?
When Daniel Brooks was a senior at Pioneer High School in the US, he came up with a Silicon Valley-style solution; he developed an iPhone app（application, 应用程序）I C Connector．
When he tried out his school's new Web-based student information system earlier this year, he immediately noticed some shortcomings．He could no longer view his current grades for all his classes at once．Checking several classes required several clicks-which for a teenager is so much work．To save himself all this trouble, Brooks developed the app and sold it on the Apple app store．Now it has 2,300 users who have downloaded it across the US．
"It ended up on every iPhone and iPad and portable device that any student and teacher had on campus," said Scott Peterson, the campus tech support worker at Pioneer High．
Brooks said he didn't create the app to get rich - it is free．"A student is not going to want to pay 99 cents," Brooks said．"They just want to see their grades more easily．"
However, in the months that followed, Brooks experienced highs and lows．His app is now so successful that users want more, in particular, his teachers have started pushing him to develop a version for them．However, the company Infinite Campus, which developed the information system, has been less positive．
The company said in an e-mail that he was confusing users and violating the company's copyright by using Infinite Campus' name and logo in the app’s name．Brooks' father, Michael Brooks, has offered to change the name, but says he needs time to get Apple's approval．Daniel also e-mailed and called Infinite Campus．They got no response．
Daniel Brooks starts at a California university this autumn．Despite Infinite Campus' attitude, he continues to try to improve the app and hopes to put out an Android version soon．Why did Daniel Brooks develop an iPhone app IC Connector? （No more than 8 words）
_______________________________________________________What is Brooks' teachers' attitude towards the app he developed? （No more than 14 words）
________________________________________________________What does Paragraph 7 talk about between Infinite Campus and Brooks? （No more than 7 words）
________________________________________________________What does Brooks’ aim to do now? （No more than 10 words）
________________________________________________________Use one word to describe Brooks.