阅读理解
阅读下列四篇短文，从每小题后所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该选项涂黑。
A family story is like a puzzle. Each family member leaves some clues. Family members come together because they have a common tie with one another, sharing a name and special traditions. Exploring family roots and sharing past memories ensure each tradition lives on.
Ancestory.com has created customized (订做的) “Our Name is History” books to give your family a look into your history by learning about your last name. By visiting it, you can check if information is available for your last name. Ancestory.com researchers have collected more than 5 billion names from records such as passenger lists, immigration records and from birth, marriage and death records. The collected information is then used for each customized book.
“Our Name is History” books are available for nearly 200,000 last names, accounting form 85 percent of all the US homes. The collected information is a great start of learning about your family roots. This book will not only surprise your mother, but also become a precious memory to pass down through the generations. It can also be an inspiration for her to talk about all the special women in her life. So instead of just giving her flowers or jewelry, give her a special family name book and share your favorite memories with her.
After learning the general history of your last name, your might be inspired to continue your exploration. The “Our Name is History” books include a special software product for building, searching and sharing your family history.
To learn more about “Our Name is History” books, visit www. Ournameinhistory.com. The deadline to order in time for Mother’s Day is April 30. The first paragraph mainly talks about _________.
| A．the importance of exploring family root |
| B．what a family story really is |
| C．the importance of a family name |
| D．how to pass down a family’s traditions |
What does the underlined word “it” refer to in Paragraph 2?
| A．The “Our Name is History” book. |
| B．The website Ancestory.com. |
| C．The website www. ournameinhistory.com. |
| D．The family’s last name. |
The “Our Name is History” books _________.
| A．are very cheap compared with flowers or jewelry |
| B．can tell us where we should look to find out family history |
| C．cover the last names of all Americans |
| D．can tell us origins of our last names |
What will mothers do if they get “Our Name is History” books?
| A．They may be inspired to talk about some special women they remember. |
| B．They will collect information about their family roots. |
| C．They will learn how great their ancestors are. |
| D．They will share them with some other families. |
What’s the purpose of the author in writing this passage?
| A．To tell us how to explore family roots. |
| B．To help family traditions to live on. |
| C．To advertise “Our Name is History” books. |
| D．To tell us how to create our own family history. |
Dress codes cause us arguments
The first day of school is always a chaotic(混乱的) time. For many students in the US, this year was even more so. It was all due to one extra school policy. They are now required to wear clothes that meet a new standardized dress code(规范).
According to the handbooks of all high schools in Allentown, Pennsylvania, students must wear short or long sleeve polo shirts and khaki(卡其色的) or black pants. Skinny jeans, leggings(紧身裤), and open toe shoes are not allowed.
Allentown schools are not alone. Overall, about 57 percent of American public schools now have a “strict dress code”, up from more than 47 percent a decade earlier, said USA Today.
Some students don’t mind wearing a similar attire(服装) every day. “It takes away the daily fashion show and helps level the playing fields a little bit with the haves and have-nots,” longtime school safety consultant Ken Trump told USA Today.
But others aren’t happy, claiming that uniforms rob students of individuality(个性).
While school uniforms have been a popular topic to discuss recently in the US, however, in the UK there are much fewer questions about them-they are a tradition.
School uniforms in England were first introduced during the reign(统治) of King Henry VIII in the 16th century. They became popular following the Elementary Education Act of 1870. The UK Department of Education’s website states: “The Department strongly encourages schools to have a uniform as it can…contribute to the beliefs of a school and set the correct tone.
The uniform is now a strong part of school culture in the UK. Schools sometimes even have “Mufti”(便服) days on which students can wear their own clothes if they make a small donation(捐赠) to charity.
However, the tradition does not mean that school uniforms are popular there.
Many “children hate them”, according to Aisha on the BBC Newsround website. Ask UK students why they wear a school uniform and their answer will mostly likely be, “because we have to”.We can infer from the first three paragraphs that ________.
| A．there is a strict standardized dress code in most American public schools |
| B．the high schools in Allentown, Pennsylvania have the strictest dress code in the US |
| C．there has been a growing trend of strict dress codes in US high schools in the last decade |
| D．the new standardized dress code in Allentown’s high schools was put forward by teachers and parents |
We can learn from the article that students’ attitudes towards dress codes are _____
| A．negative | B．divided |
| C．supportive | D．doubtful |
What does paragraph 7 mainly talk about?
| A．The popularity of school uniforms in the UK. |
| B．The history and tradition of school uniforms in the UK. |
| C．The benefits of promoting school uniforms in the UK. |
| D．The UK Department of Education’s requirements on school uniforms. |
According to the article, on Mufti days, students in some UK schools ______.
| A．are required to make a donation to charity |
| B．can vote to choose their own school uniforms |
| C．can wear their own clothes if they contribute to charity |
| D．are allowed to wear whatever they like for the morning |
“Indeed,” George Washington wrote in his diary in 1785, “some kind of fly, or bug, had begun to eat the leaves before I left home.” But the father of America was not the father of bug. When Washington wrote that, Englishmen had been referring to insects as bugs for more than a century, and Americans had already created lightning-bug(萤火虫). But the English were soon to stop using the bugs in their language, leaving it to the Americans to call a bug a bug in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The American bug could also be a person, referring to someone who was crazy about a particular activity. Although fan became the usual term, sports fans used to be called racing bugs, baseball bugs, and the like.
Or the bug could be a small machine or object, for example, a bug-shaped car. The bug could also be a burglar alarm, from which comes the expression to bug, that is, “to install (安装) an alarm”. Now it means a small piece of equipment that people use for listening secretly to others’ conversation. Since the 1840s, to bug has long meant “to cheat”, and since the 1940s it has been annoying.
We also know the bug as a flaw in a computer program or other design. That meaning dates back to the time of Thomas Edison. In 1878 he explained bugs as “little problems and difficulties” that required months of study and labor to overcome in developing a successful product. In 1889 it was recorded that Edison “had been up the two previous nights discovering ‘a bug’ in his invented record player.”We learn from Paragraph 1 that ___________.
| A．Americans had difficulty in learning to use the word bug |
| B．George Washington was the first person to call an insect a bug |
| C．the word bug was still popularly used in English in the nineteenth century |
| D．both Englishmen and Americans used the word bug in the eighteenth century |
What does the word “flaw” in the last paragraph probably mean?
| A．Explanation. | B．Finding. |
| C．Origin. | D．Fault. |
The passage is mainly concerned with__________.
| A．the misunderstanding of the word bug |
| B．the development of the word bug |
| C．the public views of the word bug |
| D．the special characteristics of the word bug |
Win a Week in England
You still don’t know what to do this summer? Well, here’s your chance to win a one-week language course in Kent, England! Free4Fun and ETC(English Travel Connections) are giving away two trips to Rochester. This historic city is less than an hour’s drive from London and close to the sea resort of Herne Bay. It is also the home of one of England’s most famous writers, Charles Dickens. The town of the Rochester is in Southeast England. Charles Dickens often wrote about it in his books. His home, Gad’s Hill，is there too. A popular attraction is Rochester Castle，a large Norman fortress（堡垒）. It was built in the 11th century and rebuilt during the 14th century. Other attractions are Rochester Cathedral, which was built during the 13th century, and Dickens Centre. It has got it’s name in honour of Dickens himself.
The trip to England includes:
* travel by train (via the Eurotunnel) to and from any railway station in Germany
* room and full board with a guest family for one week
* language course in small groups
* two trips to London
* large choice of sports and entertainment
* German-speaking advisors available 24 hours a day
Interested? All you have to do is to answer the following question: When was Charles Dickens born?
So, take the chance and send your answer by May1 to:
Free4Fun “Rochester”
Free4Fun, 24 Elphinstone Road, Hastings, 2FQ6VJ
Fax: 089/85-763-103
e-mail: free4fun@netlight.com
The two winners will be contacted directly before May5. They will also be announced in the June issue of Free4Fun. Good luck!
For further information contact:
Phone: (03212)144-43
Fax: (03212) 144-42
e-mail: info@etc.comRochester Cathedral was built in the ___________.
| A．1400s | B．1300s | C．1200s | D．1100s |
What activities can you participate in during the trip?
| A．Enjoying sports and entertainment. |
| B．Learning the German language. |
| C．Traveling by train with a guest family. |
| D．Working as a language advisor. |
This advertisement was designed to target _______.
| A．Italians | B．Germans |
| C．Europeans | D．Americans |
How could we tell time if there were no watches or clocks anywhere in the world?
The sun was probably the world’s first “clock”, except in the far north, where the Eskimos(爱斯基摩人) live. There it’s dark most of the winter, and light most of the summer. But in most of the world, people have used the sun for a clock. Even today if you don’t have a clock that shows time, you still know that when the sun shines, it’s day; and when it’s dark, it’s night. The sun can not only tell you whether it’s day or night but also it’s morning, noon, or afternoon. When the sun is almost directly overhead, it’s noon.
People who live near the sea can tell time from the tides. In the daytime, for about six hours, the water rises higher and higher on the beach. And then it goes down and down for another six hours. The same thing happens again at night. There are two high tides and two low tides every 24 hours.
Seamen on a ship learn how to tell time by looking at the moon and the stars .The whole sky is their clock.
In some places in the world the wind comes up at about the same time every day or changes direction or stops blowing. In these places, the wind can be the clock.
A sand clock is an even better clock. If you had fine dry sand in a glass shaped like the one in the picture above, you would have what is called an hourglass. The sand in the hourglass goes from the top part to the bottom part in exactly one hour. When the hourglass it turned over, the sand will take another hour to go back again.The Eskimos in the far north can’t use the sun for a clock because ______.
| A．they know very little about the sun |
| B．the sun there never goes down in winter. |
| C．it’s too cold for them to go out to watch the sun |
| D．there are long dark winters and long light summers in the far north |
The underlined word “tides” in paragraph 3 means ___________.
| A．ocean current |
| B．storm |
| C．a regular rise and fall of the sea |
| D．wave |
In which part of the newspaper can you probably read this passage?
| A．News | B．Science |
| C．Business | D．Advertisement |
What’s the best title for the passage?
| A．Different Ways to Tell Time |
| B．Useful Machine to Tell Time |
| C．The History of the Clock |
| D．The Development of the Clock |
How many ways are mentioned in the passage to tell time?
| A．Five | B．Four | C．Six | D．Three |
How long has 3-D technology been around? Most of us might think of crowds of teenagers in a 1950’s movie house watching Bwana Devil in 3-D. But 3-D technology made its first appearance on the scene in 1838 with the first stereoscope(体视镜). And the first actual 3-D movie was a 1903 film called Le Ariveed’un Train.
Although it has such a long history, the technology has still remained based on one simple principle-----to make 3-D effects you must find a way to project two slightly different pictures to each eye. Modern 3-D technology works by rapidly flickering(闪动) two versions of the movie and projecting them onto each eye. The brain does the rest of the work, combining the two pictures together into one and giving the show the appearance of depth, the third dimension.
But does this exposure, especially long exposures, cause harm to the child’s developing brain and visual system? Unfortunately, long-term studies on new flicker digital 3-D technology and children aren’t yet available. We do not know if regular or daily 3-D viewing over years affects the developing visual system, although older 3-D methods basically do the same thing and are not considered harmful.
The question of possible harm in modern 3-D use in TV is really based on two facts: the amount of time children will now be watching 3-D TV each day and the sensitivity some children show in reaction to 3-D viewing. It is difficult to make actual lab studies of longer term 3-D viewing in children because of the possible harm of the experiment. Researchers will have to wait until 3-D TV technology is already in the marketplace for a number of years, then check heavy 3-D TV watchers and compare them with non-watchers.
With a 3-D television technology in the home, we will soon be able to answer the question of whether or not longer and more frequent periods of 3-D exposure cause more changes in the visual system. We may find that the bigger problem is the introduction of a new technology that leads to even more time spent on TV rather than playing outdoors.
| A．was refused by people when it first appeared. |
| B．will soon change the way we watch TV. |
| C．does no good to our visual system. |
| D．has a history of nearly 200 years. |
| A．how 3-D technology works. |
| B．why 3-D movies are popular |
| C．the history of 3-D technology. |
| D．the influence of 3-D technology. |
| A．To wait and see | B．To carry out lab studies |
| C．To stop making 3-D movies | D．To improve 3-D technology |
| A．ask children not to watch 3-D movies |
| B．discuss if 3-D viewing is harmful to children. |
| C．introduce the advantages of 3-D technology. |
| D．predict the development of 3-D technology. |
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