初三英语培优

英语培优

1.完形填空

A Meaningful Gift

Emily was an eight grader. To pass her Civics course(公民课程), she

had to do some volunteer service in a nursing home for a week.

One Monday. Emily went to the nursing home after school. When

she arrived, she was told she would _______(31) an hour every

weekday with an elderly lady, Mrs. Blair. She was then led into a

room, where an old lady in a flowery dress was sitting on a sofa. Emily _______(32) awkwardly(别扭地) in front of the lady. She cleared her

throat and said, “Good afternoon. I’m Emily. ”

“Good afternoon, Emily. Take a seat, please.” Mrs. Blair replied.

Then _______(33) filled the space between them. Emily wondered what to say.

“Tell me about yourself, Emily,” Mrs. Blair said suddenly.

“Well,” Emily started, “I don’t have any grandparents, so I can’t relate

to elderly people much. I love the performing arts. I’m here mainly because I have to _______(34) here to get a good grade for my Civics class.”

Mrs. Blair didn’t seem to _______(35). “Many people, especially teens, don’t seem to care about old people like me. Now you’re here, and I’m going to change that about you. Ask me anything.”

Emily thought for a moment, and finally decided, “What was your job?”

“I was a Broadway star in the 1950s.” Mrs. Blair answered.

“Cool! Can you tell me about it?” Emily asked, amazed.

Mrs. Blair smiled. “Back then, only the lead actress had the honor to wear a

______(36) bracelet. I was the lead in almost all of the plays, so I always wore the bracelet. Till this way, I still have it.”

Emily smiled along with Mrs. Blair and listened to the other stories, attentively. She had become so interested in Mrs. Blair’s _______(37) that she decided to come earlier the next day.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday passed by quickly. Then came Friday. As she was leaving, Emily was really _______(38) to say goodbye.

“Don’t be sad. You can still visit me,” Mrs. Blair comforted her. She then handed a small box to Emily, “It’s my gift to you.”

Emily ________(39) opened the box and was surprised to see what was inside. “It’s the bracelet that you wore. Thank you!” Emily said, with tears in her eyes. “I’m sure to visit you whenever I’m free.”

On her way home, Emily thought of her own love for the performing arts. She touched the bracelet and made a ________(40) that she would keep her word to Mrs. Blair.

31. A. waste B. spend C. plan D. exercise

32. A. asked B. sat C. stood D. danced

33. A. warmth B. sadness C. happiness D. silence

34. A. study B. live C. volunteer D. play

35. A. mind B. fear C. insist D. regret 36. A. strange B. special C. common D. private

37. A. dreams B. hobbies C. stories D. jokes

38. A. upset B. confused C. surprised D. nervous

39. A. proudly B. secretly C. worriedly D. carefully

40. A. promise B. change C. judgment D. choice

2.阅读理解

A

Sometimes it seems that time is flying. Perhaps it doesn’t need to feel this way. Our experience of time can be possibly changed. By understanding the psychological (心理学的) processes behind our different experiences of time, we might be able to slow down time a little.

One basic law of psychological time is that time seems to slow down when we’re exposed(接触) to new environments and experiences. The law is caused by the relationship between our experience of time and the amount of information our minds process. The more information our minds take in, the slower time seems to pass.

It follows, then, that we have different experiences of time in different situations. In some situations, our life is full of new experiences. Our minds process a lot of information and time seems to slow down. In other situations, we have fewer new experiences and the world around us becomes more and more familiar(熟悉的). We become insensitive to our experience, which means we process less information, and time seems to speed up.

How can we slow down time? Here are two suggestions.

Firstly, since we know that familiarity makes time pass faster, we can expose ourselves to as many new experiences as possible. We can give ourselves new challenges, meet new people, and expose our minds to new information, hobbies and skills. This will increase the amount of information our minds process and expand (增加) our experience of time.

Secondly, and perhaps most effectively, we can give our whole attention to an experience-to what we are seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling or hearing. This means living through our senses rather than through our thoughts. For example, on the way home, focus your attention outside of yourself, instead of thinking about the problems you have to deal with. Look at the sky, or at the buildings you pass, traveling among them. This open attitude to your experiences helps take in more information and also has a time-expanding effect.

To a certain degree, we can understand and control our experience of time passing. It’s possible for us to slow down time by expanding our experience of time.

27. According to the writer, we can expand our experience of time by .

A. going to bed on time

B. traveling to new places

C. having dinner as usual

D. printing the same materials

28. What can we learn from the passage?

A. Being familiar with the world around helps us get more information.

B. Understanding psychological time makes life pass more quickly.

C. We can take in more information by living through our senses.

D. We should build a stronger relationship between time and us.

29. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

A. Slow Down Time

B. Only Time Will Tell

C. Race Against Time

D. Time Will Not Come Twice

B

How Much Can We Afford to Forget?

In 2018, Science magazine asked some young scientists what schools

should teach students. Most said students should spend less time memorizing

facts and have more space for creative activities. As the Internet grows

more powerful, students can access (获得) knowledge easily. Why should they

be required to carry so much of it around in their heads?

Civilizations（文明）develop through forgetting life skills that were once necessary. In the Agricultural（农业的）Age, a farmer could afford to forget hunting skills. When societies industrialized, the knowledge of farming could be safe to forget. Nowadays, smart machines give us access to most human knowledge. It seems that we no longer need to remember most things. Does it matter?

Researchers have recognized several problems that may happen. For one, human beings have biases（偏见），and smart machines are likely to increase our biases. Many people believe smart machines are necessarily correct and objective, but machines are trained through a repeated testing and scoring process．In the process, human beings still decide on the correct answers.

Another problem relates to the ease of accessing information. When there were no computers, efforts were required to get knowledge from other people, or go to the library. We know what knowledge lies in other brains or books, and what lies in our heads. But today, the Internet gives us the information we need quickly. This can lead to the mistaken belief—the knowledge we found was part of what we knew all along.

In a new civilization rich in machine intelligence, we have easy access to smart memory networks where information is stored. But dependency on a network suggests possibilities of being harmed easily. The collapse of any of the networks of relations our well-being（健康）depends upon, such as food and energy, would produce terrible results. Without food we get hungry; without energy we feel cold. And it is through widespread loss of memory that civilizations are at risk of falling into a dark age.

We forget old ways to free up time and space for new skills．As long as the older forms of knowledge are stored somewhere in our networks, and can be found when we need them, perhaps they’re not really forgotten. Still, as time goes on, we gradually but unquestionably become strangers to future people.

30·Why are smart machines likely to increase our biases?

A ．Because they go off course in testing and scoring.

B ．Because we control the training process on them.

C ．Because we offer them too much information.

D ．Because they overuse the provided answers.

31 ．The ease of accessing information from the Internet ________·

A. frees us from making efforts to learn new skills

B. prevents civilizations from being lost at a high speed

C. misleads us into thinking we already knew the knowledge

D. separates the facts we have from those in the smart machines

32．The word “collapse” in Paragraph 5 probably means “_______”.

A. a sudden failure

B. the basic rule

C. a disappointing start

D. the gradual development

33．What is the writer's main purpose in writing this passage?

A ．To question about the standards of information storage.

B ．To discuss our problems of communication with machines.

C ．To stress the importance of improving our memorizing ability.

D ．To remind us of the risk of depending on machines to remember.

3. 选词填空

根据短文内容，用方框中所给单词的适当形式填入短文空格中，使短文意思正确、通顺，每success pay teach since in customer draw she real two

Everybody has a dream．Catherine's is to own a bakery（蛋糕店）．

The 14-year-old American girl became fond (喜爱) of baking and decorating (装饰) cakes when her mother first 71 her how to do it．Her parents found that she is talented 72 making cakes．She made her first cake for her sister's birthday．"I had never 73 done anything like it before，"she said．"It was pretty good and I actually realized how much I liked cake decorating."After making her sister's birthday cake, Caroline tried making the 74 one for herself.

Caroline had been thinking about starting 75 own business years ago, but she didn’t start receiving orders until she put pictures of her cake designs

on Facebook.

A few hours later, somebody saw Catherine's cake designs and called to order a cake for $15. That was her first 76 cake. It proved to be a 77 experience.

Realizing the public's interest in Catherine's designs, her family decided to create a business for her. She has made about 35 cakes 78 she started, including birthday cakes and wedding cakes. And she made her cakes without 79 sketch (草稿) first.

Catherine’s 80 were surprised that she could create such impressive (印

象深刻的) designs at such a young age.

4.任务型阅读。

Bamboo is one of the nature’s most surprising plants. (61) 许多人称这种植物为树，但它是一种草。

Like other kinds of grass, a bamboo plant may be cut very low to the ground, but

it will grow back very quickly. A Japanese scientist recorded one bamboo plant that

grew almost 1.5 meters in 24 hours! Bamboo grows almost everywhere in the world except Europe. (62) There are more than 1,000 kinds of bamboo that grow around the world on both mountains and plains (平原).

Not all bamboo looks the same. Some bamboo plants are very thin. They may only grow to be a few centimeters wide while others may grow to more than 30 centimeters across. This plant also comes in different colors, from yellow to black to green.

Many Asian countries have been using bamboo for hundreds of years. They often use bamboo for building new buildings. As a matter of fact, the cables (绳索) that hold up the hanging bridge across the Min River in Sichuan are made of bamboo. The bridge has been in use for more than 1,000 years, and is still holding strong.

In Africa, (63) engineers are teaching poor farmers how to use bamboo to find water . These African countries need cheap ways to find water because (64) they have no money, and their fields often die from no rain and no water. It seems that bamboo is one of the best things they can use. Bamboo pipes and drills (钻) can help to make the poor thirsty fields be watered.

任务一：将61处翻译成英文。

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任务二：将62处翻译成中文。

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任务三：将63处改成复合句。

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任务四：写出64处“they”指代的内容。

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任务五：(65) 找出该文段的中心句。

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