第三部分阅读理解(共20小题;每小题2分,满分40分)
阅读下列短文,从每题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中,选出最佳选项。
When Paul was a boy growing up in Utah,he happened to live near a copper smelter(炼铜厂),and the chemicals that poured out had made a wasteland out of what used to he a beautiful forest. One day a young visitor looked at this wasteland and called it an awful area. Paul knocked him down. From then on,something happened inside him.
Years later Paul was back in the area,and he went to the smelter office. He asked if they had any plans or if they would let him try to bring the trees back. The answer from that big industry was“No”.
Paul then went to college to study the science of plants. Unfortunately,his teachers said there weren't any birds or squirrels to spread the seeds. It would be a waste of his life to try to do it. Everyone knew that,he was told. Even if he was knowledgeable as he had expected,he wouldn’t get his idea accepted.
Paul later got married and had some kids. But his dream would not die. And then one night he did what he could with what he had. As Samuel Johnson wrote,“It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote. Attainable good is often ignored by minds busied in wide ranges.”Under the cover of darkness,he went secretly into the wasteland and started planting.
And every week,he made his secret journey into the wasteland and planted trees and grass. For fifteen years he did this against the plain common sense. Slowly rabbits appeared. Later,as there was legal pressure to clean up the environment,the company actually hired Paul to do what he was already doing.
Now the place is fourteen thousand acres of trees and grass and bushes,and Paul has received almost every environmental award Utah has. It took him until his hair turned white,but he managed to keep that impossible vow he made to himself as a child.
51.When Paul was a boy,______________.
A.he had decided never to leave his hometown
B.the economy of Utah depended wholly on the copper smelter
C.no laws were made to protect the environment against pollution
D.he had determined to stop the copper smelter polluting the area
52.Why did Paul go to college to study the science of plants?
A.Because he wanted to find out the best way to save the area himself.
B.Because he was interested in planting trees since he was young.
C.Because he wanted to get more knowledgeable people to help him.
D.Because he thought his knowledge would make his advice more persuasive.
53.What does the underlined phrase“the plain common sense”probably refer to?
A.That it was impossible for trees to grow on the wasteland.
B.That his normal work and life would be greatly affected.
C.That no one would like to join him in the efforts.
D.That he had to keep everything he did secret.
54.The message of the passage is that _____________.
A.action speaks louder than words
B.perseverance(持之以恒)will work wonders
C.God helps those who help themselves
D.many hands make light work
It is reasonable to say that every teenager can be affected by peer pressure (从众心理) at some point. Every day, in any high school, peer pressure has a major influence over the behavior of teenagers. It can be as subtle (微妙的) as being persuaded to be late for class or as extreme as a dangerous drug. Whether subtle or extreme, peer pressure can have damaging, sometimes life changing, and even serious results.
“Teens don’t often consider the long-term results that some behavior can cause,” said Terri Price, a researcher. “Peer pressure can be very difficult to handle for many teens because of their fears of not fitting in”. Peer pressure has always been part of teen life, but teens experience it differently than their former generations did in the past. Sources of peer pressure have increased because of the Internet and other electronic communications.
Recognizing peer pressure can be as simple as noticing that you have been asked to do something that you are not comfortable with. “Listen to your instinct (直觉) , which is a sign for whether something is right or wrong. If it feels wrong, then most likely it is. ”says Price.
Teens are in a time of life when they are still discovering who they are. Many teens are influenced by peer pressure because of their insecurities (不安全感). This can make them helpless especially when their self-control is weak or they lack healthy support, causing them to take risky behavior or turn to unhealthy support.
Dealing with peer pressure is a topic of concern for teens. People can say, “Just say no,” but the truth is that the statement is easier said than done.The underlined word “it” in Paragraph 2 refers to .
| A.the Internet | B.teen life |
| C.peer pressure | D.the fear of not fitting in |
You can know whether a teen suffers peer pressure by watching.
| A.whether he often surfs the Internet |
| B.whether he can get security |
| C.whether it is subtle or extreme |
| D.whether he feels comfortable with it |
Why are teens easily influenced by peer pressure?
| A.Because they don’t have the feeling of safety. |
| B.Because they are afraid of fitting in or being accepted. |
| C.Because they need support for their health. |
| D.Because they have nobody to turn to when in trouble. |
According to the passage, we can know that dealing with peer pressure is
| A.easy | B.hard | C.a new topic | D.an impossible task |
I began to grow up that winter night when my parents and I were returning from my aunt's house, and my mother said that we might soon be leaving for America. We were on the bus then . I was crying, and some people on the bus were turning around to look at me. I remember that I could not bear the thought of never hearing again the radio program for school children to which I listened every morning.
I do not remember myself crying for this reason again. In fact, I think I cried very little when I was saying goodbye to my friends and relatives. When we were leaving I thought about all the places I was going to see-the strange and magical places I had known only from books and pictures. The country I was leaving never to come back was hardly in my head then.
The four years that followed taught me the importance of optimism, but the idea did not come to me at once. For the first two years in New York I was really lost-having to study in three schools as a result of family moves. I did not quite know what I was or what I should be. Mother remarried, and things became even more complex for me. Some time passed before my stepfather and I got used to each other. I was often sad, and saw no end to "the hard times".
My responsibilities in the family increased a lot since I knew English better than everyone else at home. I wrote letters, filled out forms, translated at interviews with Immigration officers, took my grandparents to the doctor and translated there, and even discussed telephone bills with company representatives.
From my experiences I have learned one important rule: almost all common troubles eventually go away! Something good is certain to happen in the end when you do not give up , and just wait a little! I believe that my life will turn out all right, even though it will not be that easy.What can we learn about the author from paragraph 4?
| A.She worked as a translator. |
| B.She attended a lot of job interviews. |
| C.She paid telephone bills for her family. |
| D.She helped her family with her English. |
The author believes that _________________ .
| A.her future will be free from troubles |
| B.it is difficult to learn to become patient |
| C.there are more good things than bad things |
| D.good things will happen if one keeps trying |
What is the best title of the passage?
A, how I turn to be optimisticB. I am leaving for America
C. my life in AmericaD. the importance of optimism
下面文章中有5处(第61~65题)需要添加小标题,请从以下选项中选出符合各段意思的小标题,并在答题卡上将该项涂黑,选项中一项为多余选项.
| A.Learn Everyday |
| B.Agree to Disagree |
| C.Respect Each Other |
| D.Arrange Some Time to Go Out |
E.Develop Healthy Relationships
F.Learn to Listen and Speak
Healthy Relationship Tips
Healthy relationships are effortless, if both the people involved take equal effort to maintain it. Here are a few healthy relationship tips to help you build the dream of your life.
61. ________________
Communication is an art of putting your thoughts into words, so that they are exactly understood by the opposite person. Communication does not mean going on talking unnecessarily. This is the first mistake that couples make. One person in the relationship assumes the role of talker and the other becomes the listener. Their roles remain so forever. The talker forgets to listen and the listener becomes used to listening and not reacting. If your partner takes time to open up, help them out by asking questions. So hear them out and give proper reactions. You will obtain the benefits of a healthy relationship through increased confidence in both of you to open up and hear things out.
62. ________________
Regular conversations take the form of heated arguments amongst many couples. Understand that not every statement needs a reaction. Maybe a certain reaction may lead to an argument with your partner. Just agree with whatever it is and there will be no harm done. Try and reach a mutual (相互的) agreement. If that’s not possible leave the topic for later. If you give it time, maybe both of you will be able to think about it rationally.
63. ________________
Every single day is a blessing. Each moment with your partner is a moment to learn something new and discover the finer nuances (细微差别) of your relationships. Each one of us keep changing everyday, the circumstances around us change everyday and with that our attitude also needs to change. The same applies when you are living with a person. Learning everyday and taking everyday as a challenge will help you perfect healthy relationship tips.
64. ________________
This tip is especially meant for couples with children to maintain healthy relationships. After a certain period, couples complain about romance being lost. To keep your relationship healthy, take some time out from your day-to-day routines to spend some quality time with your partner. This can be done as dinners, indulging in outdoor activities or just hanging out at a coffee shop like old times.
65. ________________
Respect has to be earned. It can only be earned only if you learn to respect. Often, one of the partners plays the role of a dictator to give orders, while the other simply follows. Both sides involved are equally responsible for this mistake. Learn to respect each other and understand that both of you are equally responsible for the relationship.
Creating a healthy relationship takes equal effort from both sides. Sharing, caring, being apologetic, forgiving and having realistic expectations are some of the important ingredients to the recipe of a healthy relationship.
Poet Dean Young has dealt with impermanence( 无常)a lot in his career, but it's a particularly strong theme in Young's latest collection, Fall Higher.The new collection was published in April, just days after the poet received a life-saving heart transplant (移植) after about a decade of living with a weakening heart condition.
Young, whose work is often frank and rich with twisted humor, tells NPR's Renee Montaigne that as he recovers from operation, he's also slowly returning to his everyday writing habits.
"I'm getting back to it," Young says."Not with the sort of concentration and sort of flame that I look forward to in the future, but I am blackening some pages."
And on those blackened pages you'll find poems like " How Grasp Green," which carries themes of springtime and rebirth.It's one of the first poems Young has written since his transplant.
It's easy to spot clues (线索) to Young's awful health situation in the lines of his poetry. Fall Higher's "Vintage" opens with, "Because I will die soon, I fall asleep, during the lecture on the ongoing emergency." And the poem "-The Rhythms Pronounce Themselves Then Vanish—published in The /Vew Barker in February —opens with the CT scan that revealed Young's heart condition.
Young says "Rhythms" was written about the beginning of his illness.
"I had been having a lot of physical pain so that I could hardly walk a block.I got sent to a gastroenterologist and he did a series of tests, and then the tests came back to me and it was all heart related," he says." And the outlook wasn't good.
Hearts tend to come up a lot in poetry, and that's especially true of Young's work, which has clearly been influenced by the troubles of his own heart,
"A lot of times, it's not just a metaphor (比喻) ," Young says."For me, it's an actual concern because I've been living with this disease for over 10 years.My father died of heart problems when he was 49, so it's been a sort of shadowy concern for me my whole life.
But Young's poems also deal with more abstract matters of the heart.He wrote Fall Higher's, "Late Valentine" for his wife."We've been married since late November and most of it has been spent in the hospital," Young says of his marriage to poet Laurie Saurborn Young, who says " 'Late Valentine' is very sweet.
Today, Young says, his friends can't help but comment on how pink his cheeks have become—the result of a new heart and better circulation (循环).But Young wrote the poems of Fall Higher before the transplant, at a time when, at its weakest point, his old heart was pumping at 8 percent of what it should have been.
He was staring death in the face—but he was still able to look at his life and see art
in it.
Young's work also touches on themes of randomness and fate —two factors that contributed to him getting a second chance in the form of a new heart from a 22-year-old student.
"Everything in life is molecules (分子) bouncing against molecules," Young says, and having a successful transplant is no different." Somebody had to die; it had to be a fit; my blood and his blood had to not have an argument; the heart had to be transported; I had to get it."
There were, in short, an amazing number of variables (变量) that led to Young
being here today.
"I just feel enormous gratitude," he says of his donor (捐献者)."He gave me a heart so I'm still alive-"I'm sure I'm going to think about this person for the rest of my life."The poetry collection Fall Higher _______.
| A.was published in February |
| B.refers darkness as its main theme |
| C.is Young's latest collection of poetry |
| D.was written after Young's heart transplant |
We can learn from the text that Young _______.
| A.was born with heart disease |
| B.received a heart transplant in February |
| C.married a female poet after he wrote "Late Valentine" |
| D.wrote a poem for his wife in his collection |
What does the writer try to say in Paragraph 3?
| A.The writer expected some bright future, but he was disappointed. |
| B.The writer had less enthusiasm than before, but he still kept on writing. |
| C.The writer devoted more time to poems, so he grasped a good chance. |
| D.The writer wrote poems with less enthusiasm, so he quitted for a while. |
Which of the following statements is TRUE?
| A."How Grasp Green" is the first poem in Fall Higher. |
| B.Young began all his poems with his illness. |
| C.Young's father died when Young was 49 years old. |
| D.Young's health situation is mentioned in his poetry. |
What is the text mainly about?
| A.Dean Young and his latest collection. |
| B.Dean Young and his heart problems. |
| C.The meaning of Fall Higher. |
| D.An analysis of Dean Young's poems. |
The ability to memorize things seems to be a vanishing (消失的) technique.So what can we do to bring out brain cells back into action? A newly published book on memory, Moomvalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, by American journalist Joshua Foer, makes a telling point, one that is an analysis of the importance of memorising events and stories in human history; the decline of its role in modem life; and the techniques that we need to adopt to restore the art of remembering.
As For points out, we no longer need to remember telephone numbers.Our mobile phones do that for us.We don't recall addresses either.We send emails from computers that store electronic addresses.Nor do we bother to remember multiplication tables (乘法表) .Pocket calculators do the job of multiplying quite nicely.Museums, photographs, the digital media and books also act as storehouses for memories that once we had to keep in mind.
As a result, we no longer remember long poems or folk stories by heart, feats (技艺) of memory that were once the cornerstones of most people's lives.Indeed, society has changed so much that we no longer know what techniques we should employ to remember such lengthy works.We are, quite simply, forgetting how to remember.
And let's face it, there is nothing sadder than someone who has lost their mobile phone and who finds they cannot even phone home or call their parents or partners because they cannot remember a single telephone number.That is a sad example of loss of personal independence.So, yes, there is a need for us to he able to remember certain things in life.
Therefore, Foer's book outlines the methods that need to be mastered in order to promote our memories and regain the ability to recall long strings of names, numbers or faces.In the process, he adds, we will become more aware of the world about us.
The trick, Foer says, is to adopt a process known as " elaborative encoding", which involves transforming information, such as a shopping list, into a series of "absorbing visual images".If you want to remember a list of household objects—potatoes, cottage cheese, sugar and other items, then visualise them in an unforgettable manner, he says.Start by creating an image of a large jar of potatoes standing in the garden.Next to it, imagine a giant tub of cottage cheese—the size of an outdoor pool—and then picture Lady Gaga swimming in it.And so on.Each image should be as fantastic and memorable as possible.
Using methods like this, it becomes possible to achieve great feats of memory quite easily, Foer says.It certainly seems to have worked for him: he won the annual US Memory Championships after learning how to memorize 120 random digits in five minutes; the first and last names of 156 strangers in 15 minutes; and a deck of cards in under two minutes."What I had really trained my brain to do, as much as to memorise, was to be more mindful and to pay attention to the world around," he says.
These techniques employed by Foer to master his memory were developed by Ed Cooke—a British writer and a world memory championship grandmaster.He acted as Foer's trainer during preparations for the book and helped him achieve his championship performances." Memory techniques do just one thing: they make information more meaningful to the mind, making the things we try to learn unforgettably bright and amusing," said Cooke.Which of the following is conveyed in this article?
| A.People become more independent with modern equipment. |
| B.The memory's role in life is declining in modem society. |
| C.Memory techniques can make information less meaningful. |
| D.Ed Cooke is the first one who benefited from Foer's techniques. |
According to Joshua Foer, people no longer memorize information today because________.
| A.museums can do everything for them. |
| B.they no longer have the ability to memorize things. |
| C.they have things that can act as storehouses for memories. |
| D.it is not necessary to memorize anything in modem life. |
One method of memorizing things mentioned in the passage is to ________.
| A.link things to famous pop stars |
| B.find the connection between different things |
| C.form vivid, unforgettable images of certain things |
| D.use advanced digital imaging technology to help |
The underlined word "visualise" in the last paragraph most probably means "_______".
| A.imagine | B.undertake | C.remark | D.indicate |
This passage can be sorted as ________.
| A.a news report | B.an advertisement |
| C.a scientific discovery | D.a book review |