2018届上海市各高中学校高三英语试题分类汇编--阅读理解C篇(带答案精准校对提高版)

Section B

Directions: Read the following three passages. Each passage is followed by several questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the

one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you have read.

(C)

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) has positioned itself as the premier champion of investor rights, regularly singling out bad managers at some of the nation's largest companies in its annual corporate-governance focus lists. And with $153 billion under management, Wall Street tends to listen when CalPERS speaks out. But the country's largest pension fund has never taken on as big a fish as it did Dec. 16, when it filed a class action against the New York Stock Exchange and seven of its member firms. CalPERS' suit charges the NYSE and specialist firms with fraud, alleging that the exchange skirted its regulatory duties and allowed its members to trade stocks at the expense of investors.

The move is a major slap in the face for the NYSE's recently appointed interim Chairman John Reed. The former Citibank chairman and CEO came on board in September after the exchange's longtime head, Richard Grasso, resigned under pressure over public outrage about his excessive compensation.

Reed has been widely criticized by CalPERS and other institutional investors for not including representatives of investors on the exchange's newly constituted board and not clearly separating the exchange's regulatory function from its day-to-day operations. The CalPERS lawsuit is evidence that the investment communities' dissatisfaction hasn't ebbed. "Our hopes were dashed when Mr. Reed didn't perform," says Harrigan.

The suit alleges that seven specialist firms profited by abusing and overusing a series of trading tactics. The tactics, which are not currently illegal, include "penny jumping," where a firm positions itself between two orders to capture a piece of the price differential, "front running," which involves trading in advance of customers based on confidential information obtained by their orders, and "freezing" the firm's order book so that the firm can make trades on its own account first.

Many of the suit's allegations are based on a previously disclosed investigation of the exchange conducted by the Securities & Exchange Commission. According to the suit, the

October SEC report found "serious deficiencies in the NYSE's surveillance and investigative procedures, including a habit of ignoring repeat violations by specialist firms."

The suit highlights the growing frustration that institutional investors have expressed with what they perceive as a system that needs to be revamped --if not eliminated. According to California State Comptroller Steve Westley, a CalPERS board member who participated in the Dec. 16 press conference, he has repeatedly called on the NYSE to end its use of specialist firms to facilitate trades and move to a system of openly matching of buyers and sellers. BLIND EYE? "There's no reason not to move to a fully automated exchange," Westley says. "Every exchange in the world is using such a system. The time is now for the NYSE to move into the 21st century and remove the cloud that there's self-dealing working against investors."

62.What does the word “ a fish” (Para. 1) probably refer to ?

A. CalPERS.

B.pension fund.

C. Wall Street.

D. NYS

63. The CalPERS lawsuit indicates that ________.

A. the NYSE did ignore its regulatory duties

B. John Reed should resign like his predecessor

C. the investors were dissatisfied with the NYSE

D. the exchange should have its board reelected

64.Which of the following statements is Not true ?

A.Investors were not sufficiently represented on NYSE’s board.

B. The seven specialist firms made profits by illegal procedures.

C. CalPERS’ suit against the NYSE resulted largely from a SEC’s report.

D. NYSE had ignored the firms’ improper operations for a long time.

65.According to Westley, NYSE’s problem results from ________.

A.its reliance on specialist firms

B. its system of matching traders

C. its automated exchange

D. its violation of investors’ interest

66.The best title for the text may be __________.

A．Champion of investor rights

B．Seven specialist firms

C．CalPERS speaks out to Wall Street

D．Lawsuits against NYSE

Keys 62-66 CBAA

Section B

Directions: Read the following three passages. Each passage is followed by several questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the

one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you have read.

(C)

Some of the world’s most significant problems never hit headlines. One example comes from agriculture. Food riots and hunger make news. But the trend lying behind these matters is rarely talked about. This is the decline in the growth in yields of some of the world’s major crops. A new study by the University of Minnesota and McGill University in Montreal looks at where, and how far, this decline is occurring.

The authors take a vast number of data points for the four most important crops: rice, wheat, corn and soya beans. They find that on between 24% and 39% of all harvested areas, the improvement in yields that took place before the 1980s slowed down in the 1990s and 2000s.

There are two worrying features of the slowdown. One is that it has been particularly sharp in the world’s most populous(人口多的)countries, India and China. Their ability to feed themselves has been an important source of relative stability both within the countries and on world food markets. That self-sufficiency cannot be taken for granted if yields continue to slow down or reverse.

Second, yield growth has been lower in wheat and rice than in corn and soybeans. This is problematic because wheat and rice are more important as foods, accounting for around half of all calories consumed. Corn and soya beans are more important as feed grains. The authors note that “we have preferentially focused our crop improvement efforts on feeding animals and cars rather than on crops that feed people and are the basis of food security in much of the world.”

The report qualifies the more optimistic findings of another new paper which suggests that the world will not have to dig up a lot more land for farming in order to feed 9 billion people in 2050, as the Food and Agriculture Organization has argued.

Instead, it says, thanks to slowing population growth, land currently ploughed up for crops might be able to revert(回返)to forest or wilderness. This could happen. The trouble is that the forecast assumes continued improvements in yields, which may not actually happen.

63．What does the author try to draw attention to?

A.Food riots and hunger in the world.

B.News headlines in the leading media.

C.The decline of the grain yield growth.

D.The food supply in populous countries.

64．Why does the author mention India and China in particular?

A.Their self-sufficiency is vital to the stability of world food markets.

B.Their food yields have begun to decrease sharply in recent years.

C.Their big populations are causing worldwide concerns.

D.Their food self-sufficiency has been taken for granted.

65．What does the new study by the two universities say about recent crop improvement efforts?

A.They fail to produce the same remarkable results as before the 1980s.

B.They contribute a lot to the improvement of human food production.

C.They play a major role in guaranteeing the food security of the world.

D.They focus more on the increase of animal feed than human food grains.

66．What does the Food and Agriculture Organization say about world food production in the coming decades?

A.The growing population will greatly increase the pressure on world food supplies.

B.The optimistic prediction about food production should be viewed with caution.

C.The slowdown of the growth in yields of major food crops will be reversed.

D.The world will be able to feed its population without increasing farmland.

67．How does the author view the argument of the Food and Agriculture Organization?

A.It is built on the findings of a new study.

B.It is based on a doubtful assumption.

C.It is backed by strong evidence.

D.It is open to further discussion.

Keys: 63-67 CADDB

Section B

Directions: Read the following three passages. Each passage is followed by several questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you have read.

(C)

Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo’s boss, hardly spoke a word of English until he was about 40. But when Lenovo bought IBM’s personal-computer division in 2005 he decided to immerse himself in English: he moved his family to North Carolina, hired a language tutor and spent hours watching cable-TV news. He conducted all his business in English except for briefing for the Chinese press.

Lenovo is one of a growing number of multinationals from the non-Anglophone world that have made English their official language. The fashion began in places with small populations but global ambitions such as Singapore, which kept English as its lingua franca (通用语) when it left the British empire n 1963, and Switzerland. Goran Lindahl, a former boss of ABB, a Swiss-Swedish engineering giant, once described its official language as “poor English” d its official language as “poor English. The practice spread to the big European countries: numerous German and French multinationals now use English in board meetings and official documents. Audi may use a German phrase—Vorsprung durch Technik, or progress through engineering—in its advertisements, but it is impossible to progress through its management ranks without good English. When Christoph Franz became boss of Lufthansa in 2011 he made English its official language even though all but a handful of the airline’s 50 most senior managers were German.

There are some obvious reasons why multinational companies want a lingua franca. Adopting English makes it easier to recruit global stars (including board members), reach global markets, assemble global production teams and integrate foreign acquisitions. Such steps are especially important to companies in Japan, where the population is shrinking.

There are less obvious reasons too. Rakuten’s boss, Hiroshi Mikitani, argues that English promotes free thinking because it is free from the status distinctions which characterise Japanese and other Asian languages. Antonella Mei-Pochtler of the Boston Consulting Group notes that German firms get through their business much faster in English than in laborious German. English can provide a neutral language in a merger(合并而成的公司): when Germany’s Hoechst and

France’s Rh?ne-Poulenc combined in 1999 to create Aventis, they decided it would be run in English, in part to avoid choosing between their respective languages.

Tsedal Neeley of Harvard Business School says that “Englishnisation”, a word she borrows from Mr Mikitani, can stir up a hornet’s nest (马蜂窝)of emotions. Slow learners lose their self-confidence, worry about their job security. Cliques(小团体) of the fluent and the non-fluent can develop. So can lawsuits: in 2004 workers at a French subsidiary of GE took it to court for requiring them to read internal documents in English; the firm received a hefty fine. In all, a policy designed to bring employees together can all too easily have the opposite effect.

63.Why does the author mention Yang Y uanqing in the first para?

A.To argue against a viewpoint

B. To introduce the topic

C. To illustrate a received opinion

D. To raise a question

64.Which of the following is TRUE about Audi according to the passage？

A.German is seldom used in its advertisements.

B.Most of its senior managers are based on Germany.

C.Employees who can’t speak English are less likely to be promoted.

D.It is an auto maker most famous for the technology that it has developed.

65.Why do multinational companies adopt English?

A.English makes it easier for them to go global.

B.English is most widely used in advanced countries.

C.English bridges the gap between managers from different countries.

D.English helps them to distinguish between junior and senior employees.

66.Tsedal Neeley is most likely to argue that________.

https://www.360docs.net/doc/c27779699.html,ing English as a company’s official language may not achieve its intended purpose

B.emotional anxiety is very common in a company before English is officially used

C.slow learners shouldn’t be punished in an English-speaking company

D.it is better for internal documents to be written in English

Keys: 63-66 BCAA

Section B

(C)

Polls can provide important guidance for politicians, but there are times when it is foolish and dangerous to rely on a temporarily misinformed public for a political compass. The current debate over Social Security provides one of the most compelling examples in modern history of the pitfalls of poll-driven political strategy.

Yesterday two leading Democratic strategists publicly took their party to task for their"just say no" approach to the new President's program. "To say there is no problem simply puts Democrats out of the conversation for the great majority of the country that want political leaders to secure this very important retirement program," they warned, "V oters are looking for reform, change, and new ideas, but Democrats seem stuck in concrete."

Stuck, indeed. To be more exact, they are holding their ground and refusing to surrender to a president who is once again manufacturing a "crisis" for a political purpose. And why should they do otherwise, when this strategy is clearly working?

Let's start with the facts. According to the new President, Social Security can pay all promised benefits for the next 37 years without any changes at all. Even if nothing were done by 2043, the program would still pay a higher real benefit than what people receive today.

And even looking into the future of the 75-year planning period, the shortfall is less than what we fixed in the '50s, '60s, and '80s. In other words, Social Security is financially stronger today than it has been throughout most of its history.

So this attack on Social Security has nothing to do with the solvency (偿付能力) of the program. Nonetheless last week, a Quinnipiac University poll found that respondents, by a 49 to 42 percent margin, believed that Social Security would not be able to pay them a benefit when they retire. But this is a ridiculous idea, based completely on misinformation. It is even more far fetched（牵强的）than the notion, which also commanded a majority before the invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the massacre of 9/11.

In the case of Social Security, there is no dispute about the facts. There are just a few cheap verbal and accounting tricks that have been used to convince the public that Social Security faces serious problems. These are easily refuted.

The same Quinnipiac poll showed that 59 percent of Americans disapprove of the way the president is handling Social Security, with only 28 percent approving. It makes no political sense to pretend that this attack on our nation's most successful and popular government program is actually an attempt to insure its solvency. Even in politics, there are times when honesty is the best policy.

63. What can we know about the Democrats, according to the author?

A. they want to help secure the retirement program.

B. they refuse to admit that the Social Security program has been successful.

C. they are making efforts to solve the crisis of the Social Security program.

D. they organize polls in order to gain political interests.

64. The author raised the example of Saddam Hussein in order to show that ________.

A. the invasion of Iraq represented the wills of common people.

B. no evidence had come up to prove the relationship between Saddam Hussein and the massacre of 9/11.

C. sometimes the public without proper information will draw foolish conclusions.

D. it was wrong for the government to rely on the public for important political decisions.

65. According to the author, which of the following is correct?

A. There is no point in worrying about the solvency of the Social Security program.

B. The majority of the public will accept the Social Security program in the near future.

C. Only the baby boomers should worry about the future days when they grow old.

D.The Democrats attack the Social Security program in order to question its solvency.

66. By saying "honesty is the best policy", the author seems to disapprove of _______.

A. the Quinnipiac University who organized the poll.

B. the present administration who initiated the Social Security program.

C. the ill-informed public who worried about their future.

D. those Democrats who wanted to gain political interests through this incident.

Keys: 63---66 BCAD

Section B

(C)

While still catching-up to men in some spheres of modern life, women appear to be way ahead in at least one undesirable category. “Women are particularly susceptible to developing depression and anxiety disorders in response to stress compared to men,” according to Dr. Yehuda, chief psychiatrist at New York’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital.

Studies of both animals and humans have shown that sex hormones somehow affect the stress response, causing females under stress to produce more of the trigger chemicals than do males under the same conditions.In several of the studies, when stressed-out female rats had their ovaries (the female reproductive organs) removed, their chemical responses became equal to those of the males.

Adding to a woman’s increased dose of stress chemicals, are her increased “opportunities” for stress. “It’s not necessarily that women don’t cope as well. It’s just that they have so much more to cope with,” says Dr. Yehuda. “Their capacity for tolerating stress may even be greater than men’s,” she observes, “it’s just that they’re dealing with so many more things that they become worn out from it more visibly and sooner.”

Dr. Yehuda notes another difference between the sexes. “I think that the kinds of things that women are exposed to tend to be in more of a chronic or repeated nature. Men go to war and are exposed to combat stress. Men are exposed to more acts of random physical violence. Dr. Yehuda notes another difference between the sexes. “I think that the kinds of things that women are exposed to tend to be in more of a chronic or repeated nature. Men go to war and are exposed to combat stress. Men are exposed to more acts of random physical violence.

Adeline Alvarez married at 18 and gave birth to a son, but was determined to finish college. “I struggled a lot to get the college degree. I was living in so much frustration that that was my escape, to go to school, and get ahead and do better.” Later, her marriage ended and she became a single mother. “It’s the hardest thing to take care of a teenager, have a job, pay the rent, pay the car payment, and pay the debt. I lived from paycheck to paycheck.”

Not everyone experiences the kinds of severe chronic stresses Alvarez describes. But most

women today are coping with a lot of obligations, with few breaks, and feeling the strain. Alvarez’s experience demonstrates the importance of finding ways to diffuse stress before it threatens your health and your ability to function.

63. Which of the following is true according to the first two paragraphs?

A. Women are biologically more vulnerable to stress.

B. Women are still suffering much stress caused by men.

C. Women are more experienced than men in coping with stress.

D. Men and women show different inclinations when faced with stress.

64. According to Paragraph 4, the stress women confront tends to be_________.

A. domestic and temporary.

B. irregular and violent.

C. durable and frequent.

D. trivial and random.

65. The sentence “I lived from paycheck to paycheck.” (Line 6, Para. 5) shows that________.

A. Alvarez cared about nothing but making money.

B. Alvarez’s salary barely covered her household expenses.

C. Alvarez got paychecks from different jobs.

D. Alvarez paid practically everything by check.

66. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

A. Strain of Stress: No Way Out?

B. Responses to Stress: Gender Difference

C. Stress Analysis: What Chemicals Say

D. Gender Inequality: Women Under Stress

Keys: 63-66 ACBD

Section B

Directions: Read the following three passage.Each passage is followed by several questions or