往年高考英语阅读理解练习题.

阅读下列短文,从每题所给的四个选项中,选出最佳选项。

A

To American visitors, Iceland is a very interesting country, partly because it is different in so many ways from what he or she is used to seeing at home. There are quite a few things that are not done, or that do not exist on the island —quite a few "No's".

There is no pollution, for instance. No dogs are permitted in Reykjavik, the capital. There is no television on Thursdays or during the entire month of July, and only three hours of black-and-white TV the rest of the time. There is no hard liquor on Wednesdays and no beer at any time. There are no handguns; only one jail of thirty-five cells in the entire land —an admirable figure, even for a small country of 313,376 people.

There is no army, air force or navy. There is no tipping for anything. There are no large stores open on Saturdays or Sundays. Since Iceland is situated just under the Arctic Circle, there is no darkness in summer and no daylight in winter. But thanks to Gulf Stream, the climate is rather mild, with temperatures ranging from 34 degrees Fahrenheit to 52 degrees in July.

The rules on television, liquor, and guns are the result of governmental decision. But the absence of pollution is due in great part to the fact that Iceland gets its power from the enormous geyser(间歇泉and the thousands of hot springs that come out of the ground. They provide all the energy needed by the country. In fact, Iceland uses only 3 percent of all its available power.

Iceland has been described as a democratic independent country where more fish are caught and more books published per person than anywhere else in the world. The Icelanders have always felt a particular love for literature. They composed their first works in the ninth and tenth centuries AD. These works were poems and tales about the kings, heroes, and heroines of Iceland and Norway. At first the stories were memorized and passed from generation to generation. They were finally written down between 1140 and 1220. The Icelanders have never stopped writing ever since. “Ra th er shoeless than bookless," they proudly say.

1. American visitors enjoy visiting Iceland probably because .

A. no dogs are permitted in the capital

B. the police do not carry handguns

C. the climate is rather mild.

D. it is very different from America

2. The following statements are true EXCEPT .

A. there are no soldiers in Iceland

B. the Icelanders don't drink beer

C. there is no service fee of any kind

D. there are no crimes in Iceland

3. There is no pollution in Iceland mainly because .

A. Iceland uses only 3 percent of all its available power

B. the Icelanders use hot water from the ground below as their energy

C. it is located just under the Arctic Circle

D. it is a democratic independent country

4. "Rather shoeless than bookless" means .

A. they prefer not to have shoes or books

B. they would rather have shoes on than write books

C. they prefer traveling to reading

D. they regard books more important than shoes

B

An old problem is getting new attention in the United States—bullying(恃强凌弱. Recent cases included the tragic case of a fifteen-year-old girl whose family moved from Ireland. She hanged herself in Massachusetts in January following months of bullying. Her parents criticized her school for failing to protect her. Officials have brought criminal charges against several teenagers.

Judy Kuczynski is president of an anti-bullying group called Bully Police USA. Her daughter Tina was the victim of severe bullying starting in middle school in the state of Minnesota. She said, "Our daughter was a very outgoing child. She had a bubbly personality, very involved in all kinds of things, had lots of friends. And over a

period of time her grades fell completely. She started having health issues. She couldn't sleep. She wasn't eating. She had terrible stomach pains. She started clenching her jaw and grinding her teeth at night. Didn't want to go to school."

Bullying is defined as negative behavior repeated over time against the same person. It can involve physical violence. Or it can be verbal — for example, insults or threats. Spreading lies about someone or excluding a person from a group is known as social or relational bullying.

And now there is cyber bullying, which uses the Internet, e-mail or text messages. It has easy appeal for the bully because it does not involve face-to-face contact and it can be done at any time.

The first serious research studies into bullying were done in Norway in the late 1970s. The latest government study in the United States was released last year. It

found that about one-third of students age twelve to eighteen were bullied at school.

Susan Sweater is a psychologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-director of the Bullying Research Network. She says schools should treat bullying as a mental health problem to get bullies and victims the help they need. She says bullying is connected to depression, anxiety and anti-social behavior, and bullies are often victims themselves.

5. From the case of Tina, we can know that .

A. bullying is rare in school

B. victims suffered a lot

C. schools are to blame for bullying

D. personalities are related with bullying

6. Cyber bullying is appealing to the bully because _________.

A. it can involve more people

B. it can create worse effects

C. it is more convenient

D. it can avoid cheating

7. According to Susan Sweater, .

A. bullies are anti-social

B. bullies should give victims help

C. victims are not equally treated

D. bullies themselves also need help

8. Which of the following can be the best title of the text?

A. 15-Year-Old Irish Girl Committed Suicide

B. Girl’s Suicide Brings Fresh Attention to Bullying

C. Cyber-Bullying Taking Off in Schools

D. How to Solve the Problem of Bullying Among Teens

C

Machines in the home have a short history. Sewing machines, washing machines and tumble dries are common enough today, but a hundred years ago, few people could even imagine such things. However, inventors have designed and built a wide range of household machines since then. In most cases the inventor tried to patent his machine, to stop anyone copying it. If the machine became popular, the inventor could make a lot of money.

In 1790 the first sewing machine was patented. The inventor was an Englishman called Thomas Saint. There was nothing to match his machine for forty years, and then someone built a similar device. He was a Frenchman, Bartelemy Thimonier. Neither of these early machines worked very well, however. It wasn’t until 1846 that an inventor came up with a really efficient sewing machine. He was an American, Elias Howe and his machine was good enough to beat five skilled sewing women. He

didn’t make much money from it, however. The first commercially successful sewing machine was patented by Isaac Singer five years later.

Today, we take washing machines for granted, but there was none before 1869. The revolving drum (旋转桶 of that first machine set a pattern for the future, but it was crude by today’s standards. The drum was turned by hand, and needed a lot of effort. Eight years passed before someone produced an electric washing machine. The

world had to wait even longer for a machine to dry clothes. The first spin-drier was another American invention, patented in 1924; but it was 20 years before such machines were widely used.

It was yet another American, called Bissell, who introduced the carpet sweeper. He patented the original machine back in 1876. It didn’t pick up dirt very well, but it was quicker than a dustpan and brush. Thirty-six years later, even the carpet sweeper was old-fashioned: modern homes now have a vacuum cleaner with an electric motor to suck the dust.

9. Inventors patent the inventions so as to ______.

A. produce more new machines

B. avoid being copied by others

C. make the inventions more popular

D. make more money

10. According to the article, modern inventors ______.

A. had to wait for the first spin-drier for a long time

B. only imitated the first washing machine

C. powered the first ever-made washing machine by electricity

D. followed the pattern of the first revolving drum but improve it much

11. The underlined wo rd “crude” in paragraph 3 means

______.

A. quite useless

B. ugly-looking

C. much tougher

D. not skillfully made

12. The article mainly tells us about ______.

A. the great inventors in the world

B. the important inventions in the world

C. the short history of household machines

D. the importance of the machines used in the home

D

People fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor in 1944, when she starred in National Velvet—the story of Velvet Brown, a young girl who wins first place in a famous horse race. At first, the producers of the movie told Taylor that she was too small to

play the part of Velvet. However, they waited for her for a few months as she exercised and trained—and added three inches to her height in four months! Her acting in National Velvet is still considered the best by a child actress.

Elizabeth Taylor was born in London in 1932. Her parents, both Americans, had moved there for business reasons. When World War II started, the Taylor moved to Beverly Hills, California, and there Elizabeth started acting in movies. After her success as a child star, Taylor had no trouble moving into adult roles and won twice for Best Actress: Butterfield 8(1960 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966 Taylor's fame and popularity gave her a lot of power with the movie industry, so she was able to demand very high pay for her movies. In 1963, she received $1 million for her part in Cleopatra—the highest pay received by any star up to that time.

Elizabeth Taylor is a legend of our time. Like Velvet Brown in National Velvet, she has been lucky; she has beauty, fame and wealth. But she is also a hard worker. Taylor seldom acts in movies any more. Instead, she puts her time and efforts into her businesses, and into helping others —several years ago, she founded an organization that has raised more than $40 million for research and education.

13. The producers didn't let Taylor play the part of Velvet at first because they

thought she ________.

A. was small in size

B. was too young

C. did not play well enough

D. did not show much interest

14. What Elizabeth Taylor and Velvet Brown had in common was that they were

both ________.

A. popular all their lives

B. famous actresses

C. successful when very young

D. rich and kind-hearted

15. Taylor became Best Actress at the age of ________.

A. 12

B. 28

C. 31

D. 34

16. In her later life, Elizabeth Taylor devoted herself to

________.

A. doing business and helping others

B. turning herself into a legend

C. collecting money for the poor

D. going about research and education work

E

Technology: Taking the good without the bad? Very soon, unimaginably powerful technologies will remake our lives. This could have dangerous consequences, especially because we may not even understand the basic science underlying them. There’s a growing gap between our technological capability and our basic scientific understanding. We can do very clever things with the technology of the future without necessarily understanding some of the science underneath, and that is very dangerous. The technologies that are particularly dangerous over the next hundred years are nanotechnology ( 纳米技术 , artificial intelligence and biotechnology. The benefits that they will bring are beyond doubt. But they are going to be very, very dangerous. I’m working in the field of artificial intelligence. I have a model design for something that might be 50,000 million times smarter than the human brain. Target date is 2010. The only thing that's not possible in the film Terminator( 终结者 is that the people win. If you're fighting against technology which is 50,000 million times smarter than you, you probably will not win. Nanotechnology. We've all heard of the grey glue problem, that self-replicating nanotech devices might keep on copying until the world has become sticky glue. And certainly in biotechnology, we've really got a big problem because it's converging with nanotechnology and IT. Once you start mixing nanotech with organisms and you start feeding nanotech-enabled bacteria, we can really go an awful lot further than the Borg in Star Trek(星际迷航. And those superhuman organisms might not like us very much. Eventually these technologies will become routine. That’s a threat to humanity. I don’t think it’s possible to slow it down. So what

we need to do is accelerate the scientific research and try to get some extra tools. The problems facing us in the future are getting bigger and bigger. I think if we don’t get some proper science done, the future is hopeless indeed. 17. From the text, we know that the author’s greatest concern is A. our l ack of technological understanding of the process involved B. our lack of technological capability C. creating technology without really understanding the basic science D. Our refusal to face the consequences of the technology we create 18. It can be inferred from the text that the author . A. thinks people overestimate (高估 the capabilities of technology . 第 6页共 8页

B. is not optimistic that artificial intelligence will always be used positively

C. thinks that we should take science fiction movies more seriously

D. believes artificial intelligence is the greatest threat we face technologically 19. Why does the author say it is not possible in the film Terminator that the humans win? A. Because the power of the technology is exaggerated(夸大. B. Because the strength of the machines is much greater. C. Because machines with that much intelligence can easily defeat humans. D. Because human beings are not courageous enough to win the battle. 20. The author’s attitude toward the advanced technologies is A. worried B. positive C. interested D. scared . 第 7页共 8页

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