第三部分阅读理解 (共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分)
请认真阅读下列短文，从短文后各题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Why You Should Celebrate Your Mistakes
When you make a mistake, big or small, cherish (珍视) it like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Because in some ways, it is.
Most of us feel bad when we make mistakes, beat ourselves up about it, feel like failures, get mad at ourselves.
And that’s only natural: most of us have been taught from a young age that mistakes are bad, that we should try to avoid mistakes. We’ve been scolded when we make mistakes—at home, school and work. Maybe not always, but probably enough times to make feeling bad about mistakes an unconscious reaction.
Yet without mistakes, we could not learn or grow. If you think about it that way, mistakes should be cherished and celebrated for being one of the most amazing things in the world: they make learning possible; they make growth and improvement possible.
By trial and error—trying things, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes—we have figured out how to make electric light, to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to fly.
Mistakes make walking possible for the smallest toddler, make speech possible, make works of genius possible.
Think about how we learn: we don’t just consume information about something and instantly know it or know how to do it. You don’t just read about painting, or writing, or computer programming, or baking, or playing the piano, and know how to do them right away. Instead, you get information about something, from reading or from another person or from observing usually … then you construct a model in your mind … then you test it out by trying it in the real world … then you make mistakes … then you revise the model based on the results of your real-world experimentation … and repeat, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, until you’ve pretty much learned how to do something. That’s how we learn as babies and toddlers, and how we learn as adults. Mistakes are how we learn to do something new—because if you succeed at something, it’s probably something you already knew how to do. You haven’t really grown much from that success—at most it’s the last step on your journey, not the whole journey. Most of the journey was made up of mistakes, if it’s a good journey.
So if you value learning, if you value growing and improving, then you should value mistakes. They are amazing things that make a world of brilliance possible.
56. Why do most of us feel bad about making mistakes?
A. Because mistakes make us suffer a lot.
B. Because it’s a natural part in our life.
C. Because we’ve been taught so from a young age.
D. Because mistakes have ruined many people’s careers.
57. According to the passage, what is the right attitude to mistakes?
A. We should try to avoid making mistakes.
B. We should owe great inventions mainly to mistakes.
C. We should treat mistakes as good chances to learn.
D. We should make feeling bad about mistakes an unconscious reaction.
58. The underlined word “toddler” in Paragraph Six probably means _______.
A. a small child learning to walk B. a kindergarten child learning to draw
C. a primary pupil learning to read D. a school teenager learning to write
59. We can learn from the passage that _______.
A. most of us can really grow from success
B. growing and improving are based on mistakes
C. mistakes are the most precious things in the world
D. we read about something and know how to do it right away
Early one morning, more than a hundred years ago, an American inventor called Elias Howe finally fell asleep. He had been working all night on the design of a sewing machine but he had run into a very difficult problem: It seemed impossible to get the thread to run smoothly around the needle.
Though he was tired, Howe slept badly. He turned and turned. Then he had a dream. He dreamt that he had been caught by terrible savages whose king wanted to kill him and eat him unless he could build a perfect sewing machine. When he tried to do so, Howe ran into the same problem as before. The thread kept getting caught around the needle. The king flew into the cage and ordered his soldiers to kill Howe. They came up towards him with their spears raised. But suddenly the inventor noticed something. There was a hole in the tip of each spear. The inventor awoke from the dream, realizing that he had just found the answer to the problem. Instead of trying to get the thread to run around the needle, he should make it run through a small hole in the center of the needle. This was the simple idea that finally made Howe design and build the first really practiced sewing machine.
Elias Howe was not the only one in finding the answer to his problem in this way.
Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light, said his best ideas came into him in dreams. So did the great physicist Albert Einstein. Charlotte Bronte also drew in her dreams in writing Jane Eyre.
To know the value of dreams, you have to understand what happens when you are asleep. Even then, a part of your mind is still working. This unconscious(无意识的), but still active part understands your experiences and goes to work on the problems you have had during the day. It stores all sorts of information that you may have forgotten or never have really noticed. It is only when you fall asleep that this part of the brain can send messages to the part you use when you are awake. However, the unconscious part acts in a special way. It uses strange images which the conscious part may not understand at first. This is why dreams are sometimes called “secret messages to ourselves”.According to the passage, Elias Howe was________.
| A．the first person we know of who solved problems in his sleep |
| B．much more hard-working than other inventors |
| C．the first person to design a sewing machine that really worked |
| D．the only person at the time who knew the value of dreams |
The problem Howe was trying to solve was________.
| A．what kind of thread to use |
| B．how to design a needle which would not break |
| C．where to put the needle |
| D．how to prevent the thread from getting caught around the needle |
Thomas Edison is spoken of because________.
| A．he also tried to invent a sewing machine |
| B．he got some of his ideas from dreams |
| C．he was one of Howe’s best friends |
| D．he also had difficulty in falling asleep |
Dreams are sometimes called “secret messages to ourselves” because ________.
| A．strange images are used to communicate ideas |
| B．images which have no meaning are used |
| C．we can never understand the real meaning |
| D．only specially trained people can understand them |
Shopping for clothes is not the same experience for a man as it is for a woman. A man goes shopping because he needs something. His purpose is settled and decided in advance. He knows what he wants, and his objective is to find it and buy it; the price is a secondary consideration. All men simply walk into a shop and ask the assistant for what they want. If the shop has it in stock, the salesman promptly produces it, and the business of trying it on follows at once. All being well, the deal can be and often is completed in less than five minutes, with hardly any chat and to everyone's satisfaction.
For a man, slight problems may begin when the shop does not have what he wants, or does not have exactly what he wants. In that case the salesman, as the name implies, tries to sell the customer something else, he offers the nearest he can to the article required. No good salesman brings out such a substitute impolitely; he does so with skill: “I know this jacket is not the style you want, sir, but would you like to try it for size? It happens to be the color you mentioned.” Few men have patience with this treatment, and the usual response is: “This is the right color and may be the right size, but I should be wasting my time and yours by trying it on.”
Now how does a woman go about buying clothes? In almost every respect she does so in the opposite way. Her shopping is not often based on need. She has never fully made up her mind what she wants, and she is only “having a look round”. She is always open to persuasion; indeed she sets great store by what the saleswoman tells her, even by what companions tell her. She will try on any number of things. Uppermost in her mind is the thought of finding something that everyone thinks suits her. Contrary to a lot of jokes, most women have an excellent sense of value when they buy clothes. They are always on the lockout for the unexpected bargain. Faced with a roomful of dresses, a woman may easily spend an hour going from one rail to another, to and fro, often retracing her steps, before selecting the dresses she wants to try on. It is a laborious process, but apparently an enjoyable one. Most dress shops provide chairs for the waiting husbands.The passage mainly talks about ________.
| A．differences between men and women shoppers |
| B．A man goes shopping because he needs something |
| C．How women go about buying clothes. |
| D．Women are better at shopping than men |
The underlined sentence “the price is a secondary consideration” in the first paragraph means when a man is shopping ________.
| A．he buys good quality things, so long as they are not too dear |
| B．he buys whatever he likes without considering its value |
| C．he does not mind how much he has to pay for the right things |
| D．he often buy things without giving the matter proper thought. |
What does a man do when he can not get exactly what he wants?
| A．He buys a similar thing because of the color he wants. |
| B．He usually does not buy anything. |
| C．At least two of his requirements must be met before he buys. |
| D．So long as the style is right, he buys the thing. |
What is the most obvious difference between men and women shoppers?
| A．Men do not try clothes on in a shop while women do. |
| B．Women bargain for their clothes, but men do not. |
| C．The time they take over buying clothes. |
| D．Men go shopping based on need, but women never. |
About a third of all common cancers in the United States, China and Britain could be prevented each year if people ate healthier food, drank less alcohol and exercised more, health experts said on Friday.
Reports from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) suggest that making simple lifestyle changes could prevent some 40 percent of breast cancers alone in Britain and the United States, as well as tens of thousands of stomach cancers.
“Even in 2011, people are dying unnecessarily from cancers that could be prevented through keeping a healthy weight, diet, physical activity and other lifestyle factors,” said a WCRF medical and scientific adviser.
WCRF findings are supported by World Health Organization (WHO) reports, which say regular exercise can prevent many diseases such as cancers and heart diseases.
Cancer is a leading cause of death around the world and its incidence(发病率) is rising. Each year around 12.7 million people discover they have cancer and 7.6 million people die from some form of the disease. There are about 200 known types of cancer.
Rachel Thompson, the WCRF’s head of science, said that while the message was simple — that not smoking, eating good food and being a healthy weight can help ward off many cancers — it was still a difficult one to get across.
The WHO says adults should do at least 150 minutes of exercise a week. This could be done by walking for 30 minutes five times per week or by cycling to work every day.
Peter Baldini, head of the World Lung Foundation, also called on all governments to introduce smoke-free laws and raise the price of cigarettes. Tobacco kills millions of smokers every year, and tobacco-related lung cancers also kill hundreds of thousands of people who don’t smoke but have been exposed to it second-hand.
“There isn’t a magic bullet to cure all forms of cancer, but we have the opportunity and the duty to protect people from developing cancer wherever possible,” Baldini said.Which of the following words can best take the place of the phrase “ward off” in the sixth paragraph?
| A．protect | B．prevent | C．develop | D．cure。 |
Which of the following statements is Not true according to the text?
| A．Exercising and eating healthily can help to reduce cancer risk. |
| B．Each year about 12.7 million people are diagnosed with cancer around the world. |
| C．Every year millions of people die from smoking and lung cancers. |
| D．Adults should walk for fifty minutes three times per week. |
Which of the following can be the best title of this text?
| A．Simple life changes could stop millions of cancers |
| B．Cancer is a leading cause of death |
| C．Our bad lifestyle caused many diseases |
| D．The incidence of common cancers is rising |
By writing the passage, the author mainly intends to ____.
| A．advise people to develop healthier lifestyle. |
| B．warn people of the danger of cancers |
| C．explain why many people die from cancers every year. |
| D．introduce the ways to protect people from developing cancers |
We can infer from Peter Baldini’s opinion in the last two paragraphs that ____.
| A．all the lung cancers are linked to smoking |
| B．there is no medicine to cure the cancers but it’s our duty to find one |
| C．all governments should take measures to control smokers and protect people’s health |
| D．it’s our opportunity and duty to persuade people to give up smoking |
It is often said that you cannot “teach an old dog new tricks”, but three New Zealand dogs have decided to prove otherwise by learning a skill --- driving a car!
What's even more impressive is that the three who have become skilled in just eight weeks are not special dogs that belong to some rich owners, but abandoned ones at New Zealand's SPCA.
To get their training started, 10-month old Porter, 18-month-old Monty and one-year-old Ginny were selected from a pool of seven potential candidates and moved to Animal Q, a talent agency that teaches animals tricks for movies and television shows.
The driving classes began with teaching the dogs some basic driving techniques like turning the steering wheels（方向盘）and applying the brakes. After that the dogs practiced everything they had learnt behind the wheels of a motorized（装上发动机的）car. Then finally, it was time for the big test--- driving a real car!
Human cars are not really built for four-legged animals, so the car they drove was adjusted so that the dogs could sit comfortably and easily reach the steering wheel with their paws.
Though they all seemed to do very well, the real test came on Monday night when Monty, the best driver of the three, showed his great driving skill on live television.
Why would the SPCA go through so much trouble to highlight the skills of homeless dogs? The reason is to show that adopting a dog from a shelter does not mean owners are getting a pet that is worse than one purchased from a keeper. The CEO of the SPCA is hoping that this unusual event will be enough to convince the residents of New Zealand to consider them, when searching for a pet.
We surely hope so, meanwhile we are almost certain that these three pioneers have at least landed their names in the Guinness World Records, creating a category that probably does not even exist today! Who do the three dogs belong to?
| A．Some rich owners. | B．Animal Q. | C．A shelter. | D．A zoo. |
The car the dogs drove was adjusted ______.
| A．because is was too big for the dogs to drive |
| B．because it had no steering wheels and brakes |
| C．to ensure the dogs could sit comfortably and drive easily |
| D．to motorize the car and turn it to be a real one |
Which is the right order of the following events?
a. Teaching the dogs some basic driving techniques.
b. Selecting three dogs and moving them to Animal Q.
c. The dogs practiced everything they had learnt in a motorized car.
d. Choosing the best driver to show his great driving skill on live television.
e. Driving a real car.
| A．a-b-c- d-e | B．b-a-c-e-d | C． b- d- a-c-e | D．a- e- c-b-d |
Why does the SPCA decide to teach the three dogs to learn to drive a car?
| A．To prove old dogs can learn new tricks. |
| B．To teach them performing tricks for movies and television shows. |
| C．To provide amusing performances for homeless children |
| D．To encourage people to adopt the abandoned dogs. |
What can we learn from the passage?
| A．A new Guinness category for driving dogs will probably be created. |
| B．Abandoned dogs are much cleverer than house-kept ones. |
| C．All the dogs at New Zealand’s SPCA will soon be adopted. |
| D．New Zealand has the most homeless dogs among all countries |
I received a call today asking if I would be willing to bring food to a family in need. The mother was having a major operation and would be lying down for several weeks. Of course, I responded with an immediate “Yes！”. As I planned the meal in my head, I reflected on how many times over the years I had been asked to prepare food. I have done so countless times with a very open heart.
But the truly amazing thing is that I have received double over the course of my life. When my mother passed away, our house was filled with fresh dinners for weeks. A woman from the church of our community stopped by each evening with some food. The gift of food was her small way of trying to ease our pain.
Later in my life, when I was on bed rest during my pregnancy with twins, women of the church again stepped in to help. They arranged babysitting for my twoyearold daughter, and brought lovely dinners to our house. Even when I was put in the hospital, my husband would bring cooked meals to my hospital room. How we relied on these dinners to feed my tired husband and young daughter.
Food is all about comfort. It feeds our bodies, but it can also feed our souls. When you hear people talking about their favourite holidays, it usually includes their feelings connected with sharing food. I know that I will have many more opportunities in my lifetime to prepare food for others. It is truly a gift I want to prepare and deliver to someone in need.The author has given lots of food to others because________．
| A．she is poor at cooking |
| B．she is a church member |
| C．she is friendly to others |
| D．she has received others' food |
We can learn from the first paragraph that the author________．
| A．had to stay in bed for several weeks |
| B．knew the family in need very well |
| C．was glad to be able to lend a hand |
| D．was tired of preparing food |
Which of the following is TRUE about the author?
| A．Her mother died when she was in hospital. |
| B．She didn't get enough food during her pregnancy. |
| C．She received food as well as comfort in her hard times. |
| D．She thinks offering food is the best way to show love. |
What do we know about the author's family?
| A．Her family is too poor to buy enough food. |
| B．Her family lives not far from a church. |
| C．Her husband is not good at cooking. |
| D．She has a babysitter taking care of her twins. |
According to the passage, which of the following conclusions can we get?
| A．A good beginning makes a good ending. |
| B．One good turn deserves another. |
| C．Actions speak louder than words. |
| D．Every man has his faults. |
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