第三节 阅读理解（共25小题，第一节每小题2分，第二节每小题1分；满分45分）
第一节 阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项A、B、C、D中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
In 1955, Susan Boyle went to Glasgow to audition（试演）for My King of People, a televised talent show popular in the UK. She was immediately rejected.
She was nervous during the audition, and felt she didn’t perform well, but her brother said that she was rejected because of plain looks. Boyle was not discouraged and continued to sing at church and at the karaoke nights in a local pub.
Boyle suffered a personal loss in 1997, when her father passed away. After his death, Boyle put her big dreams on hold to care for her sick mother Bridget Boyle. The mother and daughter often talked of Susan’s possible fame. Bridget Boyle encouraged her daughter to take part in singing competitions. “She was the one who said I should enter Britain’s Got Talent. We used to watch it together”, Susan later told reporters. “She thought I would win.”
In 1999, Boyle used all of her saving to pay for a professional demo（样本唱片）tape, which she went to record companies. In 2002, Bolye began taking singing lessons from voice coach Fred O’ Neil.
In 2007, Boyle’s mother passed away at the age of 91. A neighbour reported that when Bridget Boyle died, her daughter “wouldn’t come out for three or four days or answer the door or phone.” She lived alone with her cat, Pebbles. For over a year, she refused to sing. But in August of 2008, O’Neil urged her to try out for Britain’s Got Talent. Convinced that the performance would be an honour to her mother, Boyle auditioned in Glasgow, Scotland. She sang I Dreamed A Dream in the first round of the show, which was aired on 11 April 2009.
The 47-year-old Scottish woman’s plain looks provided a sharp contrast to her powerfully beautiful voice. The performance astonished the audience and the judges. Online videos of her performance totaled over 40 million views within a week. Although she failed to win the final of Britain’s Got Talent, Susan Boyle became globally popular. Her first album I Dreamed A Dream has sold over five million copies.
1．Bridget Boyle’s attitude towards her daughter’s musical talent can be described as _________.
A．critical B．doubtful C．indifferent D．optimistic
2．From Para. 4 we learn that Boyle______.
A．was slightly discouraged by her voice coach
B．entered Britain’s Got Talent to prove her ability
C．decided to give up her singing career.
D．was deeply affected by her mother’s death.
3．Which of the following is TRUE about Susan Boyle?
A．Her international fame grew rapidly in 2008.
B．Her audition for My Kind of People failed.
C．She has never stopped singing since 1995.
D．She was the winner of Britain’s Got Talent
4．In writing this passage, the author mainly intends to______.
A．tell us how Bolye’s dream came true
B．let us know more about Boyle’s personal life.
C．show how Boyle was influenced by her family.
D．explain how to enter and win a talent show.
When I was fourteen, I earned money in the summer by cutting lawns（草坪）, and within a few weeks I had built up a body of customers. I got to know people by the flowers they planted that I had to remember not to cut down, by the things they lost in the grass or struck in the ground on purpose. I reached the point with most of them when I knew in advance what complaint was about to be spoken, which request was most important. And I learned something about the measure of my neighbors by their preferred method of payment: by the job, by the month—or not at all.
Mr. Ballou fell into the last category, and he always had a reason why. On one day, he had no change for a fifty, on another he was flat out of checks, on another, he was simply out when I knocked on his door. Still, except for the money apart, he was a nice enough guy, always waving or tipping his hat when he’d seen me from a distance. I figured him for a thin retirement check, maybe a work-related injury that kept him from doing his own yard work. Sure, I kept track of the total, but I didn’t worry about the amount too much. Grass was grass, and the little that Mr. Ballou’s property comprised didn’t take long to trim (修剪).
Then, one late afternoon in mid-July, the hottest time of the year, I was walking by his house and he opened the door, mentioned me to come inside. The hall was cool, shaded, and it took my eyes a minute to adjust to the dim light.
“I owe you,” Mr Ballou said, “but…”
I thought I’d save him the trouble of thinking of a new excuse. “No problem. Don’t worry about it.”
“The bank made a mistake in my account,” he continued, ignoring my words. “It will be cleared up in a day or two. But in the meantime I thought perhaps you could choose one or two volumes for a down payment.
He gestured toward the walls and I saw that books were stacked (堆放) everywhere. It was like a library, except with no order to the arrangement.
“Take your time,” Mr. Ballou encouraged. “Read, borrow, keep, or find something you like. What do you read?”
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I generally read what was in front of me, what I could get from the paperback stack at the drugstore, what I found at the library, magazines, the back of cereal boxes, comics. The idea of consciously seeking out a special title was new to me, but, I realized, not without appeal--- so I started to look through the piles of books.
“You actually read all of these?”
“This isn’t much,” Mr. Ballou said. “This is nothing, just what I’ve kept, the ones worth looking at a second time.”
“Pick for me, then.”
He raised his eyebrows, cocked his head, and regarded me as though measuring me for a suit. After a moment, he nodded, searched through a stack, and handed me a dark red hardbound book, fairly thick.
“The Last of the Just,” I read. “By Andre Schwarz-Bart. What’s it about?”
“You tell me,” he said. “Next week.”
I started after supper, sitting outdoors on an uncomfortable kitchen chair. Within a few pages, the yard, the summer, disappeared, and I was plunged into the aching tragedy of the Holocaust, the extraordinary clash of good, represented by one decent man, and evil. Translated from French, the language was elegant, simple, impossible to resist. When the evening light finally failed I moved inside, read all through the night.
To this day, thirty years later, I vividly remember the experience. It was my first voluntary encounter with world literature, and I was amazed by the concentrated power a novel could contain. I lacked the vocabulary, however, to translate my feelings into words, so the next week. When Mr. Ballou asked, “Well?” I only replied, “It was good?”
“Keep it, then,” he said. “Shall I suggest another?”
I nodded, and was presented with the paperback edition of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa (a very important book on the study of the social and cultural development of peoples—anthropology (人类学) ).
To make two long stories short, Mr. Ballou never paid me a cent for cutting his grass that year or the next, but for fifteen years I taught anthropology at Dartmouth College. Summer reading was not the innocent entertainment I had assumed it to be, not a light-hearted, instantly forgettable escape in a hammock (吊床) (though I have since enjoyed many of those, too). A book, if it arrives before you at the right moment, in the proper season, at an internal in the daily business of things, will change the course of all that follows.Before his encounter with Mr. Ballou, the author used to read _____________.
| A．anything and everything | B．only what was given to him |
| C．only serious novels | D．nothing in the summer |
The author found the first book Mr. Ballou gave him _____________.
| A．light-hearted and enjoyable | B．dull but well written |
| C．impossible to put down | D．difficult to understand |
From what he said to the author we can guess that Mr. Ballou _______________.
| A．read all books twice | B．did not do much reading |
| C．read more books than he kept | D．preferred to read hardbound books |
The following year the author _______________.
| A．started studying anthropology at college |
| B．continued to cut Mr. Ballou’s lawn |
| C．spent most of his time lazing away in a hammock |
| D．had forgotten what he had read the summer before |
The author’s main point is that _____________.
| A．summer jobs are really good for young people |
| B．you should insist on being paid before you do a job |
| C．a good book can change the direction of your life |
| D．books are human beings’ best friends |
When you meet someone for the first time, you will form an impression in your mind of that person in the first moment. Your reactions to other people, however, are really just barometers (晴雨表) for how you perceive(理解) yourself. Your reactions to others say more about you than they do about others. You cannot really love or hate something about another unless it reflects something you love or hate yourself. We are usually drawn to those who are most like us and tend to dislike those who display those aspects of ourselves that we dislike.
Therefore, you can allow others to be the mirror to illuminate (阐明;照亮) more clearly your own feelings of self-worth. Conversely, you can view the people you judge negatively as mirrors to show you what you are not accepting about yourself.
To survive together peacefully with others, you will need to learn tolerance. A big challenge is to shift your perspective from judgment of others to a lifelong exploration of yourself. Your task is to assess all the decisions, judgments you make onto others and to begin to view them as clues to how you can heal yourself and become whole.
Several days ago I had a business lunch with a man who displayed objectionable table manners. My first reaction was to judge him as rude and his table manners as annoying. When I noticed that I was judging him, I stopped and asked myself what I was feeling. I discovered that I was embarrassed to be seen with someone who was chewing with his mouth open and loudly blowing his nose. I was astonished to find how much I cared about how the other people in the restaurant perceived me.
Remember that your judgment of someone will not serve as a protective shield against you becoming like him. Just because I judge my lunch partner as rude does not prevent me from ever looking or acting like him. In the same way, extending tolerance to him would not cause me to suddenly begin chewing my food with my mouth open.
When you approach life in this manner, those with whom you have the greatest dissatisfactions as well as those you admire and love can be seen as mirrors, guiding you to discover parts of yourself that you reject and to embrace your greatest quality.The purpose of the author writing this passage is to advise people to _______.
| A．avoid inappropriate manners |
| B．learn tolerance towards others |
| C．pay attention to others’ needs and feelings |
| D．judge others favorably in any case |
The underlined word “objectionable” in Paragraph 4 has the closest meaning to __________.
| A．discouraging | B．disappointing | C．disgusting | D．disturbing |
According to the passage, the following statements are all true except ______.
| A．You can’t really love or hate others if they are similar to you. |
| B．We are easily attracted by someone who is similar to us. |
| C．Our first judgment of a person mostly comes from our personal opinion. |
| D．The moment we see a stranger, our mind forms an impression of that person. |
It can be implied from the text that __________.
| A．the writer’s first reaction to the man was to judge him as offensive |
| B．we will need to learn tolerance to co-exist with others |
| C．we shouldn’t focus on judging others but should constantly reflect on our own |
| D．the writer didn’t care about other people’s view of him |
To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians (基督教徒) ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil. So when Colu brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.
What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell. What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Though the tomato and the man were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.
Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father's house had been the "introduction of this wonderful new fruit -- or is it a vegetable?" As late as the twentieth century some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an "evil fruit".
But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. "What are you afraid of?" he shouted. "I'll show you fools these things are good to eat!" Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because _______.
| A．it made Christians evil | B．it was the apple of Eden |
| C．it came from a forbidden land | D．it was religiously unacceptable |
What can we infer from the underlined part in Paragraph 3?
| A．The process of ignoring the tomato slowed down. |
| B．There was little progress in the study of the tomato. |
| C．The tomato was still refused in most western countries. |
| D．Most western people continued to get rid of the tomato. |
What is the main reason for Robert Johnson to eat the tomato publicly?
| A．To make himself a hero. |
| B．To remove people's fear of the tomato. |
| C．To speed up the popularity of the tomato. |
| D．To persuade people to buy products from his factory. |
What is the main purpose of the passage?
| A．To challenge people's fixed concept of the tomato. |
| B．To give an explanation to people's dislike of the tomato. |
| C．To present the change of people's attitudes to the tomato. |
| D．To introduce the establishment of the first tomato-canning factory. |
William Butler Yeats, a most famous Irish writer, was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865. His childhood lacked the harmony that was typical of a happy family. Later, Yeats shocked his family by saying that he remembered "little of childhood but its pain". In fact, he inherited (继承) excellent taste in art from his family — both his father and his brother were painters. But he finally settled on literature, particularly drama and poetry.
Yeats had strong faith in the coming of new artistic movements. He set himself the fresh task in founding an Irish national theatre in the late 1890s. His early theatrical experiments, however, were not received favorably at the beginning. He didn't lose heart, and finally enjoyed success in his poetical drama.
Compared with his dramatic works, Yeats's poems attract much admiring notice. The subject matter includes love, nature, history, time and aging. Though Yeats generally relied on very traditional forms, he brought modern sensibility to them. As his literary life progressed, his poetry grew finer and richer, which led him to worldwide recognition.
He had not enjoyed a major public life since winning the Nobel Prize in 1923. Yet, he continued writing almost to the end of his life. Had Yeats stopped writing at age 40, he would probably now be valued as a minor poet, for there is no other example in literary history of a poet who produces his greatest works between the ages of 50 and 75. After Yeats's Death in 1939, W. H. Auden wrote, among others, the following lines:
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel (船) lie
Emptied of its poetry.Which of the following can describe Yeats's family?
| A．It filled Yeats's childhood with laughter. |
| B．It was shocked by Yeats's choice. |
| C．It was a typically wealthy family. |
| D．It had an artistic atmosphere. |
According to the passage, what do we know about Yeats's life?
| A．Yeats founded the first Irish theater. |
| B．Yeats stuck to modern forms in his poetry. |
| C．Yeats began to produce his best works from the 1910s. |
| D．Yeats was not favored by the public until the 1923 Noble Prize. |
What kind of feeling is expressed in W. H. Auden's lines?
| A．Envy | B．Sympathy | C．Emptiness | D．Admiration |
What is the passage mainly about?
| A．Yeats's literary achievements | B．Yeats's historical influence |
| C．Yeats's artistic ambition | D．Yeats's national honor |
Some years ago, a Miami woman walking through an office building noticed two men standing together．Several minutes after her leaving, the men murdered a person working in the building．The police determined that the woman was the only witness and could possibly describe them．However, her memory of the men proved disappointingly unclear．Several days later, psychologist Ronald Fisher was brought in to obtain a more complete account from the woman．His interview produced a breakthrough—the woman reported a clear picture of one of the suspects．The important information enabled the police to arrest the suspect and close the case．
The police asked Fisher for help because of his rich knowledge in cognitive(认知) interview, a kind of memory - rebuilding process．Memory researchers have found that people trying to remember a past event often only recall part of the relevant information．Human memory is selective and it is often distorted by stress．But a person's accurate recall of an event or understanding of a question can be improved using specific interviewing techniques．The "cognitive interview" was developed in the late 1990s．It encourages the witness to take an active role in recalling information rather than giving answers only to someone else's questions．The witness first describes what happened in his or her own words, with no interviewer interruptions．The interviewer then goes further with specific techniques, such as having the witness tell the details of what happened from different perspectives （角度） ．
The cognitive interview focuses on guiding witnesses through four general recalling techniques: thinking about physical surroundings and personal feelings that existed at the time of past events; reporting everything that connects to mind about those events, no matter how broken it is retelling events in a variety of time orders, such as from beginning to end, end to beginning, forward or backward; and adopting different perspectives while recalling events．
Experiments with police detectives trained in this demanding interview method find that they obtain nearly 50% more information from witnesses than before training, while error rates remain about the same．It is proved that cognitive interviews are quite important tools in improving the accuracy and completeness of witness testimony （证词）．The purpose of the passage is to _____．
| A．give an account of a murder case. |
| B．introduce an idea of cognitive interview. |
| C．prove Fisher was an expert in cognitive interview. |
| D．help a witness to recall information in a cognitive interview. |
What is required to recall in a cognitive interview for a witness?
| A．The exact time at which a murder took place． |
| B．The information about the event in the time order． |
| C．The important things that come to his or her mind． |
| D．The surroundings and feelings at the time of the event． |
The key point in a cognitive interview is that .
| A．the witness is encouraged to take part in recalling information. |
| B．the interviewer should interrupt the witness from time to time. |
| C．the interview should take place outside the police station. |
| D．the witness should recall details at the scene of the event. |
The underlined word "distorted" in the passage probably means " ____
| A．arranged | B．balanced | C．changed | D．examined |
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