TheQueen’sEnglishisnowsounding-优题课

PLAYA GRANDE, COSTA RICA----This resort town was long known for Leatherback Sea Turtle（棱皮龟）National Park, nightly turtle beach tours and even a sea turtle museum. However, on a beach where dozens of turtles used to nest on a given night, scientists spied only 32 leatherbacks all of last year.
With leatherbacks threatened with extinction, Playa Grande’s turtle museum was abandoned （抛弃）three years ago and now sits among a sea of weeds. And the beachside ticket office for turtle tours was washed away by a high tide in September. “We do not promote that as a turtle tourism destination any more because we realize there are far too few turtles to please,” said Alvaro Fonseca, a park ranger.（管理员）
Even before scientists found temperatures going up over the past decade, sea turtles were threatened by beach development, drift net fishing and Costa Ricans’ interest in eating turtle eggs. But climate change may cause the most serious harm to an animal that has lived in the Pacific for 150 million years.
Sea turtles are sensitive to numerous effects of warming. They feed on reefs, which are dying in hotter seas. They lay eggs on beaches that are being covered by rising seas and more violent waves.
More uniquely（独特地）, their gender is determined not by genes but by the egg’s temperature during development. Small rises in beach temperatures can result in all-female populations, obviously problematic for survival. If the sand around the eggs hits 30 degrees Celsius, the gender balance shifts to female; at about 32 degrees they are all female. Above 34, you get boiled eggs.
On some nesting beaches, scientists are artificially cooling nests with shade or irrigation and trying to protect broader areas of coastal property from development to ensure that turtles have a place to nest as the seas rise.
Why does the resort town stop promoting its turtle tourism?

A．It decides not to disturb the turtles’ normal life.
B．Tourists have lost interest in watching turtles.
C．There are only very few turtles now.	D．The turtle museum was destroyed by a high tide.

Which of the following is the major factor in the turtles’ endangerment?

A．The locals’ eating habit.

B．Drift net fishing.

C．Beach development.

D．Global warming.

The underlined word “gender” in Paragraph 5 means ____.

A．the sex of turtles

B．the habit of turtles

C．the weight of turtles

D．the kind of turtles

We learn from the last paragraph that scientists ____.

A．are doing research on the sea rise	B．are moving turtles to new homes
C．are protecting turtles’ nests	D．are going rid of sea weeds

The passage intends to ____.

A．introduce a special kind of sea turtle	B．explain the mystery of turtles’ eggs
C．show the dangers a certain kind of sea turtle is facing
D．attract more visitors to a sea turtle museum

In 1995, Susan Boyle went to Glasgow to audition（试镜）for My Kind of People, a televised talent show popular in the UK. She was immediately rejected. She was nervous during the audition, and felt she didn’t perform well, but her brother said that she was rejected because of her plain looks. Susan was not discouraged and continued to sing at church and at the karaoke nights in a local pub.
Susan suffered a personal loss in 1997, when her father passed away. After his death, Susan put her big dreams on hold to care for her sick mother, Bridget Boyle. The mother and daughter often talked of Susan’s possible fame. Bridget Boyle encouraged her daughter to take part in singing competitions. “She was the one who said I should enter Britain’s Got Talent. We used to watch it together,” Susan later told reporters. “She thought I would win.”
In 1999, Susan used all of her savings to pay for a professional demo（样本唱片）tape, which she sent to record companies. In 2002, Susan began taking singing lessons from voice coach Fred O’Neil.
In 2007, her mother passed away at the age of 91. A neighbor reported that when Bridget Boyle died, her daughter “wouldn’t come out for three or four days or answer the door or phone”. She lived alone with her cat, Pebbles. For over a year, she refused to sing. But in August of 2008, O’Neil urged her to try out for Britain’s Got Talent. Convinced that the performance would be an honor to her mother, Susan auditioned in Glasgow, Scotland. She sang I Dreamed A Dream, a hit song from the musical Les Miserables（《悲惨世界》）, in the first round of the show, which was aired on April 11, 2009.
The 47-year-old Scottish woman's plain looks provided a sharp contrast（对比）to her powerfully beautiful voice. The performance astonished the audience and the judges. Online videos of her performance totaled over 40 million views within a week. Although she failed to win the final of Britain’s Got Talent, Susan Boyle became globally popular. Her first album I Dreamed A Dream has sold over five million copies.
Bridget Boyle’s attitude towards her daughter’s musical talent can be described as ___.

A．critical

B．doubtful

C．indifferent

D．confident

From Paragraph 4, we can learn that Susan _____.

A．was slightly discouraged by her voice coac	B．entered Britain’s Got Talent to prove her ability
C．decided to give up her singing career	D．was deeply affected by her mother’s death

Which of the following is TRUE about Susan Boyle?

A．Her international fame grew rapidly in 2008.	B．Her audition for My Kind of People failed.
C．She has never stopped singing since 1995.	D．She was the winner of Britain’s Got Talent.

We can infer from the passage that ______.

A．Susan Boyle was convinced by her brother that her plain looks were disadvantageous to her success

B．It was at the age of forty that Susan Boyle established a student-teacher relationship with O’Neil.

C．Susan Boyle was so struck by her father’s death that she shut herself out from the neighborhood.

D．The online views of Les Miserables numbered over 40 million within a week in 2009.

In writing this passage, the author mainly intends to ______.

A．tell us how Susan’s dream come true	B．let us know more about Susan’s personal life
C．show how Susan was influenced by her family	D．explain how to enter and win a talent show

I took the bus to work for many years. No one knew each other; the passengers all sat there sleepily in the morning. The bus was cheerless and silent.
One of the passengers was a small grey man who took the bus to the center for senior citizens every morning. No one ever paid very much attention to him. One July morning he said good morning to the driver and smiled. The driver nodded guardedly. The rest of us were silent.
The next day, the old man boarded with a big smile and said in a loud voice, “A very good morning to you all!” Some of us looked up, amazed, and murmured “ good morning” in reply.
The following weeks, our friend was dressed in a nice old suit and tie. The thin hair had been carefully combed. He said good morning to us every day and we gradually began to nod and talk to each other.
One morning he even had a bunch of wild flowers in his hand. The driver turned around smilingly and asked, “Have you got yourself a girlfriend, Charlie?” We never got to know if his name really was “Charlie”, but he nodded shyly and said yes. The other passengers whistled and clapped at him. Charlie waved the flowers before he sat down on his seat.
Every morning after that Charlie always brought flowers. Some passengers also brought flowers for him. The bus became a happy place.
Then, one morning, as autumn was closing in, Charlie wasn’t waiting at his usual stop. When he wasn’t there the next day and the day after that, we started wondering if he was sick or hopefully---on holiday somewhere. When we came nearer to the center for senior citizens, one of the passengers even asked the driver to wait.
We all held our breaths when he went to the door. The old gentleman was fine, but one of his close friends had died over the weekend. How silent we were the rest of the way to work.
The next Monday Charlie was waiting at the stop, and without a tie. Inside the bus was silent.
The story is mainly developed by ______.

A．time

B．logic

C．comparison

D．cause and result

Greeted with “good morning” from the old man, people aboard the bus at first _____.

A．felt tired and sleepy and didn’t want to talk	B．greeted him back loudly and politely
C．guarded against the conversation from strangers	D．felt surprised and became angry with him.

When the passengers found the old man was not waiting at the bus stop as usual, they did NOT _____.

A．buy flowers and wait for him to come	B．feel anxious and worried about him
C．miss him and expect to see him	D．hope he was going on holiday rather than falling ill

It can be inferred from the text that _____.

A．the driver didn’t like the old man at first	B．people usually wear a tie when they are happy
C．passengers brought flowers to express gratitude（感激） to the old man
D．the old man had a great influence on the passengers’ emotion

The purpose of the passage is to _____.

A．introduce the old gentleman and praise his good deeds

B．persuade us to become friendly and considerate to people around

C．tell us to keep silent when somebody passes away

D．criticize those who remain silent when they are greeted

Tourism probably started in Roman times. Rich Romans visited friends and family who were working in another part of the Roman Empire. But when the empire broke down, this kind of tourism stopped.
In the early 17^th century, the idea of the “Grand Tour” was born. Rich young English people sailed across the English Channel（英吉利海峡）. They visited the most beautiful and important European cities of the time, including Paris in France, and Rome and Venice in Italy. Their tours lasted for two to four years, and the tourists stayed a few weeks or months in each city. The “Grand Tour” was an important part of young people’s education---but only for the rich.
In the 18^th century, tourism began to change. For example, people in the UK started to visit some towns, such as Bath to “take the waters”. They believed that the water there was good for their health. So large and expensive hotels were built in these towns.
In the 19^th century, travel became much more popular and faster. When the first railways were built in the 1820s, it was easier for people to travel towns, so they started to go for holidays by the sea. And some started to have holidays in the countryside as cities became larger, noisier and dirtier.
Traveling by sea also became faster and safer when the first steamships were built. People began to travel more to faraway countries.
The 20^th century saw cars become more and more popular among ordinary people. Planes were made larger, so ticket prices dropped and more people used them.
Thus tourism grew. In 1949, Russian journalist Vladimir Raitz started a company called Horizon Holidays. The company organizes everything---plane tickets, hotel rooms, even food----and tourists pay for it all before they leave home. The package tour and modern tourist industry was born.
The first travel agency in China was set up as early as 1949. But tourism did not take off until 1978. In 2002, the industry was 500 billion yuan and became an important part of China’s social development.
In the early times, the travelers _____.

A．all came from Roman	B．were very young and strong
C．had lots of money	D．traveled by boat

Which is NOT true about “Grand Tour”?

A．It was a long journey.	B．The young men learned a lot from it.
C．Those who took the tour weren’t rich.	D．Most of its destinations were in Europe.

_____ played the most important role in the tourism development.

A．Education

B．Money

C．Transportation

D．People’s ideas

Modern tourism was born _______.

A．in 1949

B．in Roman times

C．in the early 17^th century

D．in the early 19^th century

The underlined phrase “take off” in the last paragraph means ______.

A．a plane rising into the air	B．develop very fast
C．remove hats and clothes	D．bring down the prices

US bees operation keeping groups have been attacked seriously by so called Colony Collapse Disorder (蜂群衰竭失调)．Almost 1/2 of their worker bees have vanished during the past season．This disorder has also been reported in Israel, Europe and South America．Bees fly away from the hive and never return．Sometimes they are found dead; other times they are never found．Many crops and trees depend on pollination--- by bees to help them grow．
A new report says a virus may be at least partly responsible for the disorder in honey bee colonies in the United States．This virus is called Israeli acute paralysis virus．It was first found in Israel in 2004．Lan Lipkin at Columbia University in New York and a team reported the new findings in Science Magazine．Doctor Lipkin says the virus may not be the only cause．He says it may work with other causes to produce the collapse disorder．
The team found the virus in colonies with the help of a map of honey bee genes that was published last year．They examined thirty colonies affected by the disorder．They found evidence of the virus in twenty-five of them, and in one healthy colony．The next step is further testing of healthy hives．
The researchers suggested that the United States may have imported the disorder in bees from Australia．They say the bees may carry the virus but not be affected．
The idea is that unlike many American bees, the ability of Australian bees to fight disease has not been hurt by the varroasis mite．This insect attacks honey bees, which could make the disorder more likely to affect a hive．Australian bee producers object to these suspicions．
And some researchers suspect that bee production in the United States is down mainly because of the weather．Honey bees gather nectar from flowers and trees．The sweet liquid gives them food and material to make honey．But cold weather this spring in the Midwest reduced the flow of nectar in many flowers．Many bees may have starved．Dry weather in areas of the country could also be playing apart．
Wayne Esaias is a NASA space agency scientist who keeps bees in his free time．He lives in central Maryland, where he has found that flowers are blooming a month earlier than they did in 1970, which may be partly responsible for the disorder. Wayne Esaias is organizing a group of beekeepers to document nectar flow around the country.
What is the author’s attitude toward the cause of this disorder?