2014江苏高考英语——任务型阅读专练

任务型阅读专项练习

（1）

Children suffer from sleepwalking due to health problems like weakness and stress among the children. During a survey, it was found that nearly 14% of the children surveyed suffered from sleepwalking. Many children had more than one sleepwalking experiences and it was also observed that boys suffered more from this disease compared to girls. Many children who develop this disorder overcome it as they grow up and by adolescence they’re more or less cured. The disease of children sleepwalking can be cured by taking certain precautions (预防措施).

Children who suffer from sleepwalking face the condition in which the body can move even though the brain is half asleep. Sleepwalkers commonly get out of bed and roam (闲逛) all over the house. Some of them even get dressed and leave the house. Sleep walkers’ eyes remain open, and they can see what is in front of them. However, their expressions are blank and they’re unable to respond either to conversation or to their names being called out. Children suffering from sleepwalking don’t have any idea about their walk and don’t know any direction in which they’re moving.

Sleepwalking in children is a poorly developed sleep/wake cycle. In normal circumstances, the entire brain awakes at the same time. A sleepwalker’s brain, however, is different in the sens e that only a portion of it wakes up at a time. The portion of the brain that manages mobility awakens while the portion that deals with cognition and awareness is still asleep. A sleepwalking child is actually fast asleep and doesn’t have any idea of the sleepwalking session in the sleep. Children sleepwalking is the symptom of disorder in children due to improper diet or other health problems like weakness and stress among the children.

Certain precautions should be taken to protect sleepwalkers from dangerous situations. Make sure that sleepwalking children are in a safe place during their sleepwalking sessions. Take care to ensure that they will not get injured during a sleepwalking session. Parents should not keep any sharp or fragile objects in a chil d’s room. Lock the door of a sleepwalker’s room to prevent him or her from venturing out at night. Fixing a bell to alert a parent or caregiver if a child goes out of the room is a great idea. Large glass doors or windows should be covered by heavy curtains to prevent sleepwalkers from trying to walk through them during their sleepwalking sessions. Children who sleepwalk should be given ample protection till they overcome this disorder. There is a possibility of them running into dangerous situations during their sleepwalking sessions.

（2）

Getting work experience and climbing onto the career ladder has always been a difficult task, but in these hard economic times of high unemployment rates, you need a good resume to stand out from the crowd of people fighting for even the most basic jobs. College students are often particularly disadvantaged as they don’t have time to work a full-time job, and therefore, often have no relevant experience or marketable skills when they later fully enter the job market. Getting some work experience without having a full-time job is therefore essential for students who want to dive straight into the world of work after graduation. Well, i f you’re one of them, take the following tips into account.

Not everybody is lucky enough to have the right family connections, but sometimes, you can be surprised at how far you can get by asking your family and friends for some work experience. Just by putting the word out there, you might hear back from an over-concerned aunt or nice family friend about a work opportunity that would otherwise pass you by. For example, your brother’s girlfriend’s sister’s best friend’s husband might just be able to put a good word in for you for an intern (实习) position at his office if he happens to know you’re looking for some work.

Be persistent with your dream employers. There is no harm in dreaming big as long as you keep your expectations in check, so why not send a few emails, twitters or even snail-mail letters to your dream employers asking for work experience? Your pleas (恳求) may fall upon deaf ears, but some people get lucky if they’re persistent enough in their pursuit. In addition, you can shadow someone for a week or two to learn how things work in their particular business or industry. Shadowing is great because although it isn’t direct work experience, it allows you to

make connections and contacts while getting the feel for a particular industry or field.

If you cannot find the perfect part-time job or if you have no opportunities to get work experience, then why not create one for yourself? Whether you’re selling hand-knitted puppets on the Internet or printing and pressing T-shirts from your garage, turn it into an official incorporated business and put it on your resume. No matter how silly and small your business pursuit may seem, it says a lot to possible employers about your entrepreneurial skills, imagination, and willingness to take risks and pull yourself up.

Charities almost always need volunteers, so why not earn some good luck as well as good work experience by volunteering a couple of hours of your time each week? Doing something as simple as working in a charity shop, for example, can give you truly valuable retail (零售) experience. Best of all, most charities are pretty flexible with their volunteering hours, so you can fit the work around your own schedule.

（3）

A muscle up is when you do a pull-up and lift yourself over the bar into a chest-dip and lock your arms. You’ve probably seen someone do this move before. In fact, it’s a common technique used in gymnastics. So if you’ve ever watched a gymnast do his/her routine on the rings or the high bar, you’ve definitely seen a muscle up. When you watch a professional do muscle ups, it looks easy, but the reality is that most people — even very fit individuals — cannot do one.

If you want to be able to do muscle ups, you can’t just go for it; you must follow a clear progression.

Step 1

The first thing you will need to do is master pull-ups. The first step in a proper muscle up is a good pull-up. So until you can do at least one perfect pull-up, you have no chance of doing a muscle up. You should practice pull-ups until you can do at least six to eight before moving on.

Step 2

Now that you’re a pull-up professional, you have to start mastering the second move: dips.You’ll need to go to a gym that has a dip bar, or build your own at home, using a pair of chairs or stools. Just like pull-ups, practice dips until you can do at least six to eight with perfect form before moving on.

Step 3

Now you can do pull-ups and dips, but you still can’t manage to do a muscle up. Believe it or not, the hardest part of doing a muscle up is the transition from pull-up to dip. You’ll need to find a park or a gym that has pull-u p bars set at different heights. You’ll need a low bar, a medium bar, and a high bar.

Start with the lowest bar, which should be equal to your shoulders or chin in height, and just work on pushing yourself up over the bar and locking your arms, and then slowly lowering yourself back down. It’s perfectly okay to jump up to help you get over the bar if you have to.

Next, move on to the medium-height bar which should be just a little higher than your head. Just like with the low bar, work on getting yourself over the bar, locking your arms and lowering yourself back down.

Lastly, move over to the highest bar — the one you might actually have to jump up to just grab. This time, you’ll have to jump and do a full pull-up before you push yourself over the bar. You might be thinking, ―Well, isn’t that a muscle up?‖ Not quite. You’ll need to keep practicing this until you can start from a dead-hang and transition from a pull-up to a dip. Once you can do about 10 repetitions by jumping and using your momentum to get y ou over the bar, you’ll want to move up to a higher bar or start attempting a muscle up from a dead-hang. You can also practice on gymnastic rings if you prefer.

（4）

Are you convinced you can create an incredibly popular life-changing product? Don’t wait! You can make your own invention by taking some steps. The first step is to brainstorm ideas and then choose your best idea for an invention. For this, try making a list of all the things you’re interested in. These could be hobbies, jobs, or products you use on a regular basis. For each activity or item of interests, make a sublist (子表) of possible improvements that could be made in the form of an invention. After considering all possible options, you can draw some sketches of what you imagine your invention will look like, and then consider all aspects of your invention including all the required parts, and important details about how it works. Keep these answers and ideas in your journal so you can refer back to them.

When you feel confident in your chosen idea, research it to make sure it’s truly unique. You can search online for products that match the description of your invention. If you have a name for your product created already, search this too to make sure it isn’t already being used. Also visit stores that offer products similar to what you will do. More importantly, you need to get a professional patent search done to verify (核实) there are truly no other inventions on the market similar to yours.

After making the above good preparations, it’s a good time to create a working model of your invention. Don’t worry about making i t with expensive materials or going through an extensive process. Just make a version of your invention yourself. If you can’t manage to make the prototype (原型) on your own, you can pay a company to make one for you.

With your prototype in hand, you’re on the road to success! The next step is making a presentation that completely covers the bases of your invention. You can use this to show to both potential manufacturers and buyers, although you may create slightly different versions of your presentation for each purpose. Make sure your presentation is professional, no matter what way you create it. Use lots of useful information, diagrams, and images. Be sure to cover the specifications of your product, uses, and long-term results or benefits.

Finally it’s time to present your invention to a manufacturer and produce it. Find local manufacturers that create products similar to yours and persuade them to produce your invention for you. You may have to send them an introductory letter to begin with, explaining who you are

and what you want from them. Especially, emphasize why and how your invention will not only help people, but help them earn lots of money. Once you get a manufacturer on board with your invention, start mass-producing it!

（5）

A passion for shopping can often be a draining(消耗的) experience on your wallet. The excitement that buying new clothes brings can often be washed away by the despair that an empty pocket causes. But what if shopping could promote your cash inflow rather than draining it? If that seems like something you would be excited, then try your hand at the rather profitable career of becoming a personal shopper, whose job is to help people decide what to buy, or to go shopping for them. It’s a field that usually focuses on (but isn’t restricted to) clothes.

The path to becoming a successful personal shopper can be a difficult one. A good personal shopper doesn’t need just creativity and gift for shopping well, but should also have good organizational skills and the ability to put their customers at ease. In addition, the two qualities a good personal shopper needs the most are patience and energy. Anyhow, the job may seem charming, but at the core of it lies a lot of hard work and the readiness to be available for your customers at almost any time.

To get started on your journey to becoming a personal shopper, first of all you should do research about the field well. Are you going to focus only on fashion and clothes? Take up a course that teaches you about the basics of fashion so that you understand styles, periods of fashion, body types, etc. While your personal sense and taste will help you more, being comfortable with the foundation and backbone of the field can take you a long way. In addition, always be aware of what’s happening in the industry, and keep your mind open to new trends and update what you make available to your customers.

When in a field like personal shopping, it may be a good idea to initially work with someone who has a few years of experience in the field. This helps you understand the industry and gain some hands-on training which reflects well on your resume. The way to do this would be to call up personal shoppers who stay/work in your vicinity (邻近地区) and ask them about internship (实习的) opportunities. You could also contact bigger department stores, which provide personal shopping services. In this way, you’ll find a good mentor (导师). Well, when you are with a mentor, try to figure out what you’re good at and what areas you need to improve.

While working with someone is a good way to start your journey as a personal shopper, you need to chart out how you’re going to move forward. You’ll need to figure out whether you want to work for a big retailer or branch out to become an independent shopper who works with customers on a private basis. You’ll need to work according to your future plans.

（6）

Many people are in the habit of saying that ―life is not fair‖. It never is. Life is more unpredictable than it seems. Human beings cannot stop life from unfolding the way it does. Yet, depending on your attitude, you can spend your life miserably or happily. Even rich people aren’t always happy. One of the keys to coping with the unpredictability and seeming unfairness of life is acceptance –– accepting that this is the way things are and that you need to work around it and find pathways that allow you to thrive (振奋) better.

Then, how can we accept life the way it is? Well, the first step is acknowledging your point of view about life. So you need to ask yourself about your view of life: Is this right? Why can’t I do it? Is there something wrong with me? It is also okay to ask a friend or an adult about your feelings and impressions. Spend time listening to other people to learn what they really mean behind their commonplace words. This is a skill that will help you understand your own behavior at times. Additional ly, we’re emotional beings and denying our emotions serves us poorly, so you also should think about your emotions and feelings.

In addition, you should look beyond your point of view. In other words, look around you to see the world in both its beauty and non-beauty. What is beautiful to you? What is not? Your thought is unique to you and whether or not something is beautiful or bearable or soul-destroying is impacted by your view. So try changing your perspective, look up and down, and straight ahead. An d don’t limit where you look –– walk around things, and seek meaning beyond what is right in front of you. In this way, you won’t miss the things that change the ordinary into extraordinary. Furthermore, you can ask about your friends’ or family members’ v iews, which may be very different from your own. Yet, try to accept these views instead of resisting them, and meanwhile, seek to understand why they hold the views they have.

It’s also essential for you to hold a positive attitude about the society you’re part of. When you feel uncomfortable with it, find your own way to work around what you don’t much like about your society. Try to see the broader picture that you’re a part of humanity and that it is a wonder to be part of consciousness (意识观念). Protect your own right to thrive through education, learning, connecting with people in your community in positive ways and finding the tools and skills to achieve the things that matter to you. Seek your own pathways to being happy and smile as oft en as you can. Ultimately, you’ll accept life for what it is and learn to thrive within what you have.

（7）

Green is not always referring to the color. In some cases, it is the term used for being environmentally friendly. If you’ve been looking to replace your furniture, consider going green because environmentally friendly furniture offers many benefits. Here are a few tips to get you started on your hunt for the perfect eco-friendly furniture.

First, environmentally friendly furniture isn’t harmful to your health. Also its manufacturing (生产) process doesn’t cause damage to the environment in any way. Besides, by purchasing eco-friendly products, you prevent deforestation and global warming to some extent in your own way. You do your part in protecting the environment. Environmentally friendly furniture is cost-effective as well.

The materials that are used in furniture are what make them green. Materials can be good for the environment either because they are materials that are considered renewable resources or they are all natural. A lack of chemicals and toxins (毒素) in green furniture also means it is a better choice for the environment. It may be hard to imagine that a sofa or a table could actually be a green product but they really can be depending on what they’re made of.

There are a lot of renewable sources that manufacturers could use when building the furniture, so you should be keeping an eye out for them. Bamboo can be an excellent replacement for wood and can also replace plastics and metals in some furnishings. Cotton is a soft fabric that is safe for the environment and it can be replenished (补充) often. Hemp (大麻) is also a renewable source that can be used for fabric and twine.

Recycled materials also can be made into green furniture. Metals can be recovered and remade into new things such as frames and foundations for sofas. Recycled plastic can also be made into furniture such as tables and chairs. Touching up old furniture instead of buying new items is a very cheap way to be green. Yard sales and second-hand stores sell furniture too and buying the used means new things won’t be made, so no more damage has to happen to the earth.

Therefore, when you want to hunt for the perfect environmentally friendly furniture, you

should try to know the type of materials which are used in building the furniture.

（8）

Are you interested in writing a novel? Well, if you want to be a good novelist, you’re supposed to avoid some common writing mistakes, the first one of which is not having a thunderous start. The first word, first sentence, and first page of your novel will decide if the reader wants to turn the page and keep reading. Having too much unnecessary information at the start and keeping the reader waiting for the real story can make him lose interest and give up on the book. You don’t want that to happen. All is well that ―starts‖ well.

It’s also wrong not to have decided on an audience before writing your novel. Decide what kind of an audience your novel will cater to. O nce you’re sure who will be reading it, you’ll know what style of writing you should adopt, the kind of language you will have to use. This gives you a direction and enables you to write better.

Another writing mistake is writing with your head, not with your heart. Every kind of reader should be pleased, every character should be perfect, every character should be likable, and the novel should have a happy ending. If these are your thoughts when writing a novel, you are probably not thinking straight. Writing with business or monetary gains as your aim should be discouraged as that affects what you really want to express. Write because you want to, not because you have to.

You also need to avoid writing too quickly or too slowly. If you are writing too slowly, it either means you are just too lazy or procrastinating (延迟). If you are writing too fast, you are

either rushing it or are not giving yourself enough time to shape it. Neither of the two is healthy for your novel or you as a writer. Some sections might take longer than others and vice versa. Just maintain the required pace.

Using words and sentences that are neither appropriate nor rich is also a common writing mistake you should avoid. Words are all you have to make the readers feel what the character is feeling, to visualize what the protagonist (主人公) is looking at, or to imagine the coldness in the eyes of the criminal. If you confine (限制) your vocabulary to a limited set of words, you limit the experience of the reader. Anger is not the only word which can be used to express that emotion. Make use of words like fury, wrath, vengeance, rage and frenzy to express anger. Similarly, if a scene needs a dialog, don’t write a report or an essay there. Instead, spice it up by involving an animated, energized dialog.

参考答案：

（1）

1. Facts

2. likely

3. growing

4. common

5. response

6. where 7 Reasons/ Causes 8. Ensure 9. out 10. Cover

（2）

1. employed

2. full-time

3. advantage

4. related

5. means/ways

6. Follow

7. Create

8. proves/ indicates/reflects

9. Devote 10. flexibly

（3）

1. locked

2. included

3. hard

4. based

5. dips

6. perfect

7. height

8. Begin/ Start 9 higher 10. grab

（4）

1. Choosing/Selecting

2. List

3. imagination

4. uniqueness

5. cost

6. Presenting

7. professional

8. included

9. production 10. mass-produce

(5)

1. exciting

2. shop

3. Requirements 4 organizing 5. energetic

6. understanding

7. updated

8. experienced

9. working/ staying 10. business

(6)

1. Introduction

2. determined/affected/influenced/decided

3. handle

4. listener

5. deny

6. directions/aspects

7. differ

8. positive

9. important 10. smiling

(7)

1. Benefits/Advantages

2. harmless

3. damaging/harming

4. save

5. contain

6. replace

7. Recycled

8. reused

9. second-hand/used/old 10. important/ necessary/better

(8)

1. weak/poor

2. unnecessary

3. potential/possible

4. style

5. money

6. force

7. requirements

8. Improper/Inappropriate

9. understanding 10. enrich