第三部分：阅读理解（共20小题，每小题2分，计分40分）
阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项中（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。
America is growing older. Fifty-eight years ago, only 4 out of every 100 people in the United States were 65 years old or older. Today, 10 out of every 100 Americans are over 65 years old. The aging （老龄化） of the population will affect American society in many ways—education, medicine, and business. Quietly, the graying of America has given us a very different society— one in which people have different ideas of what kind of behavior is suitable at various ages.
A person’s age no longer tells you anything about his / her social position, marriage or health. There’s no longer a particular year in which one goes to school or goes to work or gets married or starts a family. The social clock that keeps us on time and tells us when to go to school, get a job, or stop working isn’t as strong as it used to be. It doesn’t surprise us to hear of a 29-year-old university president or a 35-year-old grandmother, or a 70-year-old man who has become a father for the first time. Public ideas are changing.
Many people say, “I am much younger than my mother or my father when she or he was at my age.” No one says “Act your age” any more. We’ve stopped looking with surprise at older people who act in youthful ways.
56. It can be learnt from the text that the aging of the population in America has _______.
A. made people feel younger B. changed people’s social position
C. changed people’s understanding of age
D. slowed down the country’s development
57. The underlined word “one” refers to ________.
A. a very different society B. America C. a place D. population
58. “Act your age” means people should ________.
A. be active when they are old B. do the right things at the right age
C. show respect for their parents
D. take more physical exercise suitable to their age
59. If a 25-year-old man becomes the manager of a big firm, the writer of the text would most probably consider it ________.
A. normal B. wonderful C. unbelievable D. strange
I am a psychologist. I first met Timothy, a quiet, overweight eleven-year-old boy, when his mother brought him to me to discuss his declining grades. A few minutes with Timothy were enough to confirm that his self-esteem(自尊) and general happiness were falling right along with them. I asked about Timothy’s typical day. He awoke every morning at six thirty so he could reach his school by eight and arrived home around four thirty each afternoon. He then had a quick snack, followed by either a piano lesson or a lesson with his math tutor. He finished dinner at 7 pm, and then he sat down to do homework for two to three hours. Quickly doing the math in my head, I found that Timothy spent an average of thirteen hours a day at a writing desk.
What if Timothy spent thirteen hours a day at a sewing machine instead of a desk? We would immediately be shocked, because that would be called children being horribly mistreated. Timothy was far from being mistreated, but the mountain of homework he faced daily resulted in a similar consequence —he was being robbed of his childhood. In fact, Timothy had no time to do anything he truly enjoyed, such as playing video games, watching movies, or playing board games with his friends.
Play, however, is a crucial part of healthy child development. It affects children’s creativity, their social skills, and even their brain development. The absence of play, physical exercise, and freefrom social interaction takes a serious toll on many children. It can also cause significant health problems like childhood obesity, sleep problems and depression.
Experts in the field recommend the minutes children spend on their homework should be no more than ten times the number of their grade level. As a fifthgrader, Timothy should have no more than fifty minutes a day of homework (instead of three times that amount). Having an extra two hours an evening to play, relax, or see a friend would soundly benefit any child’s life quality.What does the underlined word “them” in the first paragraph probably refer to?
| A．Timothy’s parents. | B．Timothy’s grades. |
| C．Psychologists. | D．The students. |
What did the writer think of Timothy after learning about his typical day?
| A．Timothy was very hardworking. |
| B．Timothy was being mistreated. |
| C．Timothy had a heavy burden. |
| D．Timothy was enjoying his childhood. |
Which of the following statements best describes the writer’s opinion?
| A．Children should be allowed enough time to play. |
| B．Playing board games works better than playing video games. |
| C．The more they play, the more creative children will become. |
| D．The depression caused by homework makes children unwilling to play. |
According to the passage, how long should a thirdgrader spend a day doing homework?
| A．About ten minutes. |
| B．No more than twenty minutes. |
| C．No more than thirty minutes. |
| D．About fifty minutes. |
Cast your mind back to the past twenty years and hardly did anyone have their own email account. The Internet had just taken off in 1991 and people were only using office and PCbased email exchanges.
In the mid 1990s external email providers appeared. The most famous of these was Hotmail, the first free email provider and webbased email service. Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched Hotmail on July 4, 1996. And Microsoft took note of and bought Hotmail for $400 million on December 30, 1997, a nice birthday present for Bhatia who turned 29 that day. It was relaunched as MSN Hotmail and in 2007 was relaunched again as Windows Live Hotmail.
Fast forward the present day and most of us have at least a personal webbased email account. It seems impossible to live without them. One of the biggest advantages of email is the fact that communication has become so much easier, especially with those across different time zones. Email takes seconds to send a message whereas letters, as we used to communicate by, could take weeks. Of course there was the fax, that beeping invention from the 1980s, but it wasn’t as secure as email and you never knew if the person on the other end had picked up your fax or if it had got lost somewhere in the office.
In conclusion, one of the best inventions from the 1990s has to be email. But sometimes people are too closely connected to their email and have a compulsion to check it several times a day. At work, people have become lazy and instead of going to speak to the person sitting next to them, they send an email，causing an in box to pile up with more time spent reading email and responding rather than working. Clearly, an invention that saved time because of its quick and speedy connection can now also cause us to waste a lot of time.The earliest web-based email came into being probably _______.
| A．in 1991 | B．in 1996 | C．in 1997 | D．in 2007 |
The author mentions “fax” in the third paragraph in order to tell us that _______.
| A．it is exactly as good as email |
| B．it is much better than email |
| C．it is less convenient than email |
| D．it is easier and faster than email |
The underlined word “compulsion” in Paragraph 4 probably means “_______”.
| A．strong desire | B．common sense | C．special curiosity | D．general idea |
Which is the main idea of the last paragraph?
| A．We should check email boxes frequently. |
| B．Lazy people like sending an email. |
| C．Email brings us great convenience. |
| D．Good inventions also cause problems. |
The UK has a well-respected higher education system and some of the top universities and research institutions in the world. But to those who are new to it all, sometimes it can be confusing.
October is usually the busiest month in the college calendar. Universities have something called Freshers’ Week for their newcomers. It’s a great opportunity to make new friends, join lots of clubs and settle into university life.
However, having just left the comfort of home and all your friends behind, the prospect (前景) of meeting lots of strangers in big halls can be nerve-wracking (令人焦虑不安的). Where do you start? Who should you make friends with? Which clubs should you join?
Luckily, there will be thousands of others in the same boat as you worrying about starting their university social life on the right foot. So just take it all in slowly. Don’t rush into anything that you’ll regret for the next three years.
Here are some top advice from past students on how to survive Freshers’ Week：
● Learn rules. Make sure you know British social etiquette (礼节). Have a few wine glasses and snacks handy for your housemates and friends.
● Be kind. Sometimes cups of tea or even slices of toast can give you a head start in making friends.
● Be sociable. The more active you are, the more likely you’ll be to meet new people than if you’re someone who never leaves his room.
● Bring a doorstop. Keep your door open when you’re in and that sends positive messages to your neighbors that you’re friendly.
So with a bit of clever planning and effort, Freshers’ Week can give you a great start to your university life and soon you’ll be passing on your experience to next year’s freshers.We can learn from the passage that ______.
| A．Freshers’ Week usually comes in September in UK |
| B．all the students are required to join certain clubs in UK |
| C．many freshers are worried about how to fit university life |
| D．most of the students in the UK spend three years in universities |
Why does the author suggest having wine glasses and snacks handy?
| A．To pass the busy university life. |
| B．To help make friends with other freshers. |
| C．To show yourself a drinker as others. |
| D．To enjoy the time in a happy way. |
The main purpose of the passage is to _______.
| A．tell the newcomers how to make a new start in universities |
| B．introduce something about higher education system of the UK |
| C．inform the freshers of British social etiquette |
| D．advise the freshmen how to behave well in the beginning |
This is a true story of how my car got stuck in water and how a stranger helped me during the worst rain storm.
Last Sunday, the sky was grey when I woke up. The weather report said rain was coming, but I couldn’t stay home just because of rain.
Around 8:00 am I had a doctor’s appointment. It wasn’t raining then. At 9:00 I left the doctor’s office to drive to work, and it was raining hard. I just had to go about 5-6 miles down one main road to get to a nearby school, where I could stay until the rain ended. Unfortunately, the road in front of the school was flooded, and my car stopped in the middle.
“Who is going to save me?” I wondered. I shut off the engine and turned on my flashers (车灯). I called 911. They were not helpful. I called my husband, even though he couldn’t come and help me. I was also very close to a police station. But I never saw even one police car. I decided to get out of the car, since it was still pouring.
My best decision of the day had been to wear rain boots. I took my umbrella and quickly got out and ran across the street to a shelter.
Before long, a tow truck(拖车) happened to pass by the street. The driver kindly offered to help me. At that moment, I really needed car pulled out quickly, so I trusted the stranger. He pulled my car and drove me home. After he had dropped my car off, he also helped me check the engine. He said the engine was most likely flooded, but fortunately there was no water inside the car.
Although many years have passed, I still remember that stormy day and the warm-hearted stranger clearly.How was the weather when the author got up?
| A．Rainy. | B．Cloudy. | C．Windy. | D．Sunny. |
Which of the following is the correct order about the things that the author did?
① Drove to work. ② Drove to the doctor’s office.
③ Ran to a shelter. ④ Called 911 for help.
| A．②①④③ | B．②③①④ | C．①②④③ | D．①③②④ |
What did the author do after her car had got stuck in the water?
| A．She turned off her flashers. |
| B．She tried to restart the engine. |
| C．She went to the police station nearby. |
| D．She got out of her car. |
How did the stranger help the author?
| A．He lent his car to her. |
| B．He pulled her car out of the water. |
| C．He drove her to school. |
| D．He helped her fix her engine. |
What if we could replace oil with a fuel which produced no pollution and which everybody had equal access to? The good news is that we can. In fact, we are swimming in it--- literally.
Hydrogen is one of the building blocks of the universe. Our own sun is basically a big, dense cloud of the stuff. And hydrogen can be used to create electricity for power, heat and light.
The problem is that hydrogen is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It does not exist as a material on its own, but is always part of something else. So it has to be separated before it can be used.
Most commercial hydrogen in use now is created from natural gas. As oil will start to run out in around the year 2030, it makes sense to produce as much hydrogen as possible as soon as we can. But natural gas supplies will also begin to run out soon after. Another source is needed.
Researchers are now using electricity to make water into hydrogen. Companies are working on the problem in their own areas. The first commercial hydrogen “fuel cells” for computers and mobile phones have already come on to the market. Auto companies have also invested over US $2 billion in the production of hydrogen fuelled cars.
The nations of a hydrogen fuelled planet would not fight over energy recourses. There would be a great reduction in pollution. The only by-product of creating hydrogen is pure drinking water--- something that is very scarce in many parts of the world. But that is not where the good news ends. Once the costs of producing hydrogen have been brought down, it will possibly provide power for a third of the Earth’s population that has no electricity.
And electricity creates wealth. In South Africa over the last decade there has been a large programme of electrification. Thanks to the programme, people do not have to spend their days looking firewood to burn for heat. And with electric light, they can work long into the night.
Some scientists see radical changes in the way the human race co-operates. Hydrogen creates electricity, and is also created by it. With dual use fuel cells, everyone who consumes energy could also produce it. Late at night, a man drives home in London and connects his car into the “world-wide hydrogen web,” which it supplies with electricity. A few hours later, a man in Beijing uses that electricity to power the hydrogen cell in his car. Hydrogen could be the first democratic energy source.
Like all dreams of the future, it seems very far away. But the threat of war and terrorism in the Middle East has made governments and businesses more aware of the need to end oil dependency and spend more time and money on hydrogen resource. So maybe the threat of war is not a completely bad thing for the future of the human race. What does the underlined word “it” in the last but one paragraph refer to?
| A．wealth | B．hydrogen | C．electricity | D．fuel |
What is the problem with using hydrogen as energy?
| A．It has by-products. |
| B．It has to be separated from other materials. |
| C．It will make energy too cheap. |
| D．It is too far away from us. |
Why does the author give the example in the last but one paragraph ?
| A．To tell us that we produce energy while using hydrogen power. |
| B．To tell us that hydrogen power does not produce pollution. |
| C．To show hydrogen power can stop war. |
| D．To show hydrogen power is cheap. |
What is the author’s attitude about the future?
| A．skeptical | B．negative | C．indifferent | D．positive |
What is the passage mainly about?
| A．war and energy | B．the future of hydrogen as an energy resource |
| C．the disadvantages of oil | D．How to end war |
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