浙江省2024高考英語二輪復習專題訓練：閱讀理解（97）

由雕龍文庫 分享時間：2024-03-30 17:42:15 收藏本文

　　閱讀理解

　　Goldie's Secret

　　She turned up at the doorstep of my house in Cornwall. No way could I have sent her away. No way, not me anyway. Maybe someone had kicked her out of their car the night before. "We're moving house.'; "No space for her any more with the baby coming." "We never really wanted her, but what could we have done? She was a present." People find all sorts of excuses for abandoning an animal. And she was one of the most beautiful dogs I had ever seen.

　　I called her Goldie. If I had known what was going to happen I would have given

　　her a more creative name. She was so unsettled during those first few days. She hardly ate anything and had such an air of sadness about her. There was nothing I could do to make her happy, it seemed. Heaven knows what had happened to her at her previous owner's. But eventually at the end of the first week she calmed down. Always by my side, whether we were out on one of our long walks or sitting by the fire.

　　That's why it was such a shock when she pulled away from me one day when we were out for a walk. We were a long way from home, when she started barking and getting very restless. Eventually I couldn't hold her any longer and she raced off down the road towards a farmhouse in the distance as fast as she could.

　　By the time I reached the farm I was very tired and upset with Goldie. But when I saw her licking (舔) the four puppies (幼犬) I started to feel sympathy towards them. "We didn't know what had happened to her," said the woman at the door. "I took her for a walk one day, soon after the puppies were born, and she just disappeared." "She must have tried to come back to them and got lost," added a boy from behind her. '

　　I must admit I do miss Goldie, but I've got Nugget now, and she looks just like her mother. And I've learnt a good lesson: not to judge people.

　　1. How did the author feel about Goldie when Goldie came to the house?

　　A. Shocked.

　　B. Sympathetic.

　　C. Annoyed.

　　D. Upset.

　　2. In her first few days at the author's house, Goldie

　　A. felt worried

　　B. was angry

　　C. ate a little

　　D. sat by the fire

　　3. Goldie rushed off to a farmhouse one day because she

　　A. saw her puppies

　　B. heard familiar barkings

　　C. wanted to leave the author

　　D. found her way to her old home

　　You can never be too sure these days in the United States of your neighbours or even your customers! Try to keep a low profile（姿態）in your neighborhood: don’t announce to just about everyone that you are running a home business with thousands of dollars worth of equipment. As much as possible, don’t invite clients（客戶）or visitors to your home. In fact I know of some home-based entrepreneurs（企業家）who would rather meet their clients in a neutral（中間的）ground, e.g. the client’s office or even Starbucks.

　　There are other ways to keep burglars away from your house.

　　●Keep lights on around your house in the evenings. Light is a natural fright for burglars.

　　●Invest in a security alarm, particularly if your house is located in a remote spot. Security systems can often bring down the cost of your homeowner’s insurance premiums（費用）.

　　●Make sure that all windows and doors are locked and the security alarm turned on before you sleep at night or go out of the house. Avoid keeping house keys in obvious places, such as under the lamp or top of the doorframe.

　　●Adding an additional lock will provide extra security when you are home. The dead-lock, sometimes called an “exit-only deadbolt” is an deadbolt that doesn’t have an external（外部的）key. It’s clearly visible on the door from the outside, but can’t be broken into without destroying the door, frame, or lock itself. While the security won’t help directly when you aren’t home, the visibility may discourage an intruder from trying the door.

　　●Your door itself should be made of strong materials, such as one-inch thick solid hardwood or heavy metal.

　　4. The advice given by the writer in the passage focuses on __________.

　　A. how to make your house safer from burglars

　　B. what to do when your house is broken into

　　C. how to improve social security in the United States

　　D. how to run a home business

　　5. Some home-based entrepreneurs don’t invite clients to their home ___________.

　　A. to enjoy convenience outside their home

　　B. for reasons of their property safety

　　C. not to let others know their business

　　D. in order to avoid being seen by burglars

　　6. All of the following are part of the writer’s advice except that the homeowner ________.

　　A. buy a security alarm and turn it on in the evening

　　B. fix an extra lock on the door from inside

　　C. have the doors made of solid hardwood or heavy metal

　　D. keep lights on in all rooms to threaten burglars

　　7. What does the underlined word “intruder” most probably mean in this passage?

　　A. Someone who is invited to visit.

　　B. Someone who illegally enters the home.

　　C. Someone who pays regular visits to the home.

　　D. Someone who tries to destroy the lock.

　　After successfully serving their term for 4 years, military service men and women are given the choice to stay in the military or return to civilian life.

　　For some, having to readjust to civilian life is one of the mist challenging assignments our returning soldiers and marines（水兵）will ever to undertake. While people may think readjusting should be simple, they must take into consideration of all physical and mental stress our servicemen went through.

　　Post-traumatic Stress Disorder（創傷后應急障礙）,or PTSD, is a mental disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of life-threatening events such as military combat（打仗）.

　　Most survivors of trauma return to normal given a little time. In the military, the marines are given a two-week course on how to return to civilian life.

　　Unfortunately, some will have stress reactions that do not go away on their own, or may even get worse over time. These individual may develop PTSD.

　　People who suffer from PTSD have difficulty sleeping because they are often reliving the experience through nightmares（夢魘）and flashbacks, and feel deserted or often stand off, and these symptoms can be severe enough an dlast long enough to significantly damage the person’s daily life.

　　Fullerton College, like most colleges, has its own Veteran’s（老兵）Office. Ray Bustos has been running the office for 3 years. Bustos acts as a liaison（聯絡） for the school and the veteran students. He makes sure the veterans returning to school get the right benefits. There are various types of financial aid for soldiers and marines. He strongly encourages the use of the Veteran Affairs website.

　　The website is very informative and extremely helpful for veterans as well as for friends and relatives of veterans who want to learn more.

　　8. One purpose of the writer in writing the passage is ________________.

　　A. to introduce some methods to cure PTSD

　　B. to instruct PTSD patients to return to civilian life

　　C. to recommend a website to veterans and people concerned

　　D. to give military service men and women advice on civilian life

　　9. What problems will some returning soldiers and marines meet with?

　　A. How to readjust to civilian life.

　　B. how to get rid of mental diseases

　　C. How to get along with PTSD patients

　　D. How to return to school for benefits.

　　10. Which of the following is true about Ray Bustos?

　　A. He’s a veteran who has just come back from a military combat.

　　B. He runs Fullerton College with a veteran office.

　　C. He’s in charge of an office dealing with veteran affairs.

　　D. He provides a lot of financial aid for soldiers and marines.

　　11. The best title for the passage is __________.

　　A. PTSD: Killer of A Civilian Life.

　　B. The Last Assignment For All Military Persons

　　C. How to Overcome PTSD.

　　D. Ready for a Civilian Life?

　　Pacing and Pausing

　　Sara tried to befriend her old friend Steve's new wife, but Betty never seemed to have anything to say. While Sara felt Betty didn't hold up her end of the conversation, Betty complained to Steve that Sara never gave her a chance to talk. The problem had to do with expectations about pacing and pausing.

　　Conversation is a turn-taking game. When our habits are similar, there's no problem. But if our habits are different, you may start to talk before I'm finished or fail to take your turn when I'm finished. That's what was happening with Betty and Sara.

　　It may not be coincidental that Betty, who expected relatively longer pauses between turns, is British, and Sara, who expected relatively shorter pauses, is American. Betty often felt interrupted by Sara. But Betty herself became an interrupter and found herself doing most of the talking when she met a visitor from Finland. And Sara had a hard time cutting in on some speakers from Latin America or Israel.

　　The general phenomenon, then, is that the small conversation techniques, like pacing and pausing, lead people to draw conclusions not about conversational style but about personality and abilities. These habitual differences are often the basis for dangerous stereotyping (思維定式). And these social phenomena can have very personal consequences. For example, a woman from the southwestern part of the US went to live in an eastern city to take up a job in personnel. When the Personnel Department got together for meetings, she kept searching for the right time to break in--and never found it. Although back home she was considered outgoing and confident, in Washington she was viewed as shy and retiring. When she was evaluated at the end of the year, she was told to take a training course because of her inability to speak up.

　　That's why slight differences in conversational style--tiny little things like microseconds of pause-can have a great effect on one's life. The result in this case was a judgment of psychological problems---even in the mind of the woman herself, who really wondered what was wrong with her and registered for assertiveness training.

　　12. What did Sara think of Betty when talking with her?

　　A. Betty was talkative.

　　B. Betty was an interrupter.

　　C. Betty did not take her turn.

　　D. Betty paid no attention to Sara.

　　13. According to the passage, who are likely to expect the shortest pauses between turns?

　　A. Americans.

　　B. Israelis.

　　C. The British.

　　D. The Finns.

　　14. We can learn from the passage that ______.

　　A. communication breakdown results from short pauses and fast pacing

　　B. women are unfavorably stereotyped in eastern cities of the US

　　C. one's inability to speak up is culturally determined sometimes

　　D. one should receive training to build up one's confidence

　　15. The underlined word "assertiveness" in the last paragraph probably means _______.

　　A. being willing to speak one's mind

　　B. being able to increase one's power

　　C. being ready to make one's own judgment

　　D. being quick to express one's ideas confidently

　　The British aren’t having as many children as they used to. One reason is that people are having children much older than before, meaning they have fewer years in which they can have them. After years at university, they need a few years of work experience before they can get the job they want. They might then get married, but it’s incredibly expensive to buy a house in the UK.

　　The above explains why young British people now don’t move out of their parents’ home until they are around 30 years old on average. It is not until they are 30 that they can afford their own home. Increasingly, it is not until that age that they can afford to get married and start a new life in a new home. It’s only after this age that many young people start thinking about having a child.

　　So a British person manages to get a job, get a home and get married. Why isn’t he or she then having at least two children on average? The main reason is that it is quite expensive to bring up a child in the UK. Why is it expensive? Well, these days, both parents need to work just to pay for their home and living expenses. Because both parents are at work, that means they then need to pay someone to look after their child during the day. Paying for this childcare is nearly always expensive.

　　The recent financial crisis is making things even harder for families, since unemployment is rising and even fewer people can afford to have children. With so much pressure on families, is it any surprise that the divorce rate is so high?

　　So what is Britain doing to try and save the British family? The government is trying to make it cheaper to have children. For example, there have been increases in money families can claim from the state each month. Also, there are increasing government subsidies for nursery schools, so that parents do not need to pay so much for child care.

　　The government is also trying to reduce the number of hours British parents have to work to earn enough money to pay their bills. If parents didn’t have to work so many hours, they’d have more time to spend with their children and wouldn’t need to spend so much on childcare. On average, a Briton works 49 hours a week, which is the most in Europe. The state is now considering introducing laws to encourage companies to improve their employees’ work-life balance. Let’s hope they’re not too late to save the British family. Otherwise, the British will always be too tired, and won’t have enough time and money, to have children.

　　16. Young British people live in their parents’ home until around 30 because

　　. A. They are allowed to get married at 30 B. they can’t find jobs to support themselves C. they can’t afford a house of their own until then D. they enjoy family life with their parents

　　17. The British are now having fewer children than before for all the following reasons EXCEPT that

　　. A. they have fewer years to have children B. they live much shorter lives than before C. it is more expensive to bring up a child D. people are losing their jobs because of the recent financial crisis

　　18. To make it cheaper to have children, the British government is

　　. A. bringing down prices

　　B. raising the salaries of parents C. reducing family income tax

　　D. increasing subsidies for families and nursery schools

　　19. It can be inferred from the text that

　　A. with long work hours, it is hard for British parents to balance life and work

　　B. more and more families in Britain are breaking up because they are having fewer children

　　C. among Europeans, British people work hardest and earn the least

　　D. childcare takes up too much energy and time for the British

　　20. The underlined word “subsidies” in Paragraph 5 means _________.

　　A. food paid by the government

　　B. school buildings for poor students