山西省太原双语中学高考英语-专题阅读理解强化训练集(三十一).doc

山西省太原双语中学2012届高考英语专题精选阅读理解强化训练集（三十一）
阅读下列短文，然后从所给的四个选项 (A、B、C和D) 中选出最佳选项。
A
If we are to help students develop reading skills in a foreign language, it is important to understand what is involved in the reading process itself. If we have a clear idea of how “good readers” read, either in their own or a foreign language, this will enable us to decide whether particular reading techniques are likely to help learners or not.
In considering the reading process, it is important to distinguish between two quite separate activities: reading for meaning (or “silent reading”) and reading aloud. Reading for meaning is the activity we normally engage in when we read books, newspapers, road signs, etc.; it is what you are doing as you read this text. It involves looking at sentences and understanding the message they convey, in other words “making sense” of a written text. It doesn’t normally involve saying the words we read, not even silently inside our heads; there are important reasons for this, which are outlined below.
Reading aloud is a completely different activity; its purpose is not just to understand a text but to convey the information to someone else. It is not an activity we engage in very often outside the classroom; common examples are reading out parts of a newspaper article to a friend, or reading a notice to other people who can’t see it. Obviously, reading aloud involves looking at a text, understanding it and also saying it. Because our attention is divided between reading and speaking, it is a much more difficult activity than reading silently; we often stumble and make mistakes when reading aloud in our own language, and reading aloud in a foreign language is even more difficult.
When we read for meaning, we do not need to read every letter or every word, nor even every word in each sentence. This is because, provided the text makes sense, we can guess much of what it says as we read it.
1. The passage is mainly about ____________.
A. reading skills
B. silent reading
C. reading processes
D. reading aloud
2. The underlined word “stumble” in Paragraph 3 means ____________.
A. step over something and fall
B. repeat something or pause for too long
C. walk with heavy movements
D. speak in a fluent and confident way
3. We can infer from the passage that the author will continue to ____________.
A. discuss in detail how to read aloud
B. introduce some more reading activities
C. tell how good readers read in their own language
D. explain why we needn’t say the words when reading for meaning
4. We can conclude that ____________.
A. reading silently is easier than reading aloud
B. to understand a sentence, you have to read all the words in it
C. silent reading involves looking at a text and saying the words silently to yourself
D. there’s no difference between reading in one’s own language and in a foreign one
B
When I was about 14, I decided to make money, so I got a part-time job at a local restaurant. With my first paycheck, I realized that I would have to work awfully hard to make very little money. My boss had been making just above minimum wage for 20 years, and I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life working to death. Around the same time, my godparents took me to an investment(投资) workshop. Immediately, my eyes were opened to the power of compound growth in investing. I knew that this was a way to financial freedom. I left the workshop, determined to make my money work for me instead of just me working for money.
Honoring what my mother had taught me, to share whatever I had, I donated part of my paychecks to raise money for breast cancer, and saved everything else to build up a large enough nest egg to open a brokerage account (经纪人账户). Too excited to wait, I began reading everything I could about investing. With most of my life savings (which wasn't very much money), I invested in DuPont, AT&T, Caterpillar, and International Paper. The pride in being a shareholder （股东）in a company, along with watching my stocks increase in value, fueled my desire to learn more. I went to three more investment workshops with my godparents and browsed(浏览) books at the library.
I began with $4,000 in my account and have added about $2,000 since then. My portfolio is now worth roughly $12,000, five years later, having grown about 18% per year, on average. My favorite holdings are biotechnology companies that I know a fair amount about because they're based near me.
In the years since then, I have experienced many moments of gratitude for discovering investing so early in my life. I'm in college now, and plan to go on to medical school and become a family practice physician. And I know that, thanks to investing, my road will be much easier. Not only have I taken an active step towards improving my long-term financial future, but I am confident that I will also be able to generously support the causes I believe in with more ease than I otherwise would have imagined.
5. What can we learn from the first paragraph?
A. The working condition in the local restaurant was awful
B. The writer didn’t make much money because he took a temporary job.
C. People can’t make a lot of money unless they work hard as hard work always pays.
D. The investment workshop taught the writer that he could make money through investment.
6. The writer was eager to learn more about investing because ________.
A. he had invested all his life savings in stocks
B. he was too excited to wait to open a brokerage account
C. he wanted to donate more to raise money for breast cancer
D. he felt proud of being a shareholder with his stocks increasing in value
7. Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE according to the passage?
A. Investing made his wealth grow effectively.
B. Investing enabled him to achieve his life goals.
C. Investing allowed him to pay off all his debts.
D. Investing helped him to reach financial independence.
8. The best title of the passage should be __________.
A. The Rewards of Investing
B. My Dream Career
C. The Key to Successful Investment
D. Thank You, My Godparents 

C
Below is a web page from

Kid of the Year Photo Contest
Enter your kid’s photo today and win! We’re giving away 52 weekly $250 prizes from Readers' Choice votes. PLUS our editors will select one entry (参赛作品) to win our grand prize of $7,000.
Official Contest Rules
No purchase necessary to enter or win.
The Kid of the Year Photo Contest entry period begins at 12:00
a.m. January 23, 2011, and ends January 21, 2012 (the "Entry
Period"). Entries must be received by 9:00 p.m.on January 21, 2012
("Entry Deadline"). Entries will not be acknowledged or returned.
SPONSOR: Meredith Corporation, 1716 Locust Street, Des Moines, Iowa.
ENTRY: There will be two methods of entry.
ShareMy Entry:
Visit and click the button to
enter. Then complete the registration form and follow the instructions to upload one album of up
to six photos of your child age three months to eight years. Photos must be taken by entrant,
non-professional, unpublished and may not have won any prize or award. Photos must be .jpeg
or .bmp image formats (格式) and cannot exceed 3 MB.
Facebook Entry:
Visit F and click the Kid of 2011 tab. Fill out the registration
form and upload one album of up to six photos of your child age three months to eight years. You
may provide one description and one album title that will be applied to all photos. Photos must be
taken by entrant, non-professional, unpublished and may not have won any prize or award. Photos
must be .jpeg or .bmp image formats and cannot exceed 3 MB.
This promotion is in no way sponsored, supported or run by, or associated with Facebook.
You are providing your information to Parents Magazine and not to Facebook. The information
you provide will only be used to run the promotion and register for P.
Photos must not contain material that infringes (侵犯) the rights of another, including but
not limited to privacy, publicity or intellectual property rights, or that constitutes copyright
infringement. Photos must not contain brand names or trademarks.
 LIMIT: One entry per household, per eligible (有资格的) child, per week. One weekly prize
per child. For entries of more than one eligible child in the household, the entry process must be completed separately for each child. No group entries.

9. We can learn from the passage that _________.
A. you should buy something first before you enter the contest
B. your entry will not be returned even if you don’t win the contest
C. you should send your entry before 9:00 p.m. on January 21, 2011
D. the editors of the contest will decide who will win the 20,000 dollars in prizes
10. Linda, a mother with seven-year-old twins, wants to enter the contest. She must _________.
A. provide a description and an album title for the kid’s photos
B. go to Meredith Corporation to fill out the registration forms
C. complete the entry process separately for each of her kids
D. provide the information to Facebook if she chooses Facebook Entry
11. To enter the contest, photos must __________.
A. have won some prize or award
B. be taken by non-professional entrants
C. contain brand names or trademarks
D. contain parents’ personal information
12. The purpose of the passage is __________.
A. to advertise the website Facebook. com
B. to attract photographers’ interest in a photo contest
C. to introduce two methods of entering a photo contest
D. to encourage parents with children to enter a photo contest
D
The $11 billion self-help industry is built on the idea that you should turn negative thoughts like "I never do anything right" into positive ones like "I can succeed." But was positive thinking advocate Norman Vincent Peale right? Is there power in positive thinking?
Researchers in Canada just published a study in the journal Psychological Science that says trying to get people to think more positively can actually have the opposite effect: it can simply highlight how unhappy they are.
The study's authors, Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, begin by citing (引证) older research showing that when people get feedback which they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better. If you tell your friend who is slow to learn that he has the potential of an Einstein, you're just underlining his faults. In one 1990s experiment, a team including psychologist Joel Cooper of Princeton asked participants to write essays opposing funding for the disabled. When the essayists were later praised for their sympathy, they felt even worse about what they had written.
In this experiment, Wood, Lee and Perunovic measured 68 students' self-esteem. The participants were then asked to write down their thoughts and feelings for four minutes. Every 15 seconds, one group of students heard a bell. When it rang, they were supposed to tell themselves, "I am lovable."
Those with low self-esteem didn't feel better after the forced self-affirmation (自我肯定). In fact, their moods turned significantly darker than those of members of the control group, who weren't urged to think positive thoughts.
The paper provides support for newer forms of psychotherapy (心理治疗) that urge people
to accept their negative thoughts and feelings rather than fight them. In the fighting, we not only often fail but can make things worse. Meditation (静思) techniques, in contrast, can teach people to put their shortcomings into a larger, more realistic viewpoint. Call it the power of negative thinking.
13. The first paragraph is written ___________.
A. to raise an argument about positive thinking
B. to introduce the power of positive thinking
C. to encourage people to have positive thoughts
D. to introduce the $11 billion self-help industry
14. According to the study of the Canadian researchers, ___________
A. positive thinking is not as powerful as negative thinking
B. encouraging positive thinking may actually discourage people
C. happy people can think positively while unhappy people can’t
D. getting people to think positively can strengthen their confidence
15. What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 3 mean?
A. You are pointing out the mistakes he has made.
B. You are reminding him that he is not intelligent.
C. You are not taking his mistakes seriously enough.
D. You are showing he has great potential in spite of faults.
16. We can learn from the last paragraph that ____
A. negative feelings must be got rid of
B. there’s no point in thinking positively
C. it doesn’t make sense to think negatively
D. negative thinking is not always negative
E
It was 1963, in Paris. While walking through the fruit and vegetable market Alice Waters was struck by the display of brilliant colors, the music of farmers selling their produce, and in the middle of a great city. She felt "directly connected to the land." Chez Panisse, a Berkeley restaurant, which was founded upon Waters' ecological philosophy, has been named "The Best Restaurant in America" by both the James Beard Foundation and by Gourmet magazine, many times in the past. Only the food grown in accordance with the principles of sustainable (可持续发展的) agriculture was used in the restaurant. Menus offered nightly at Chez Panisse have consisted only of fresh ingredients, harvested in season, and purchased from local farmers.
Alice Waters has successfully demonstrated how a restaurant can develop successfully while contributing to the general welfare of the farming community. Sharing a meal between the people was one of the wishes of Alice Waters as she would love her customers to know each other. In 1996, inspired by the Garden Project at the San Francisco County Jail(监狱), Waters decided to apply her principles to education. The project was first started at the Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley with the idea to transform some land near the school into a garden and, in the process, to teach local school children about food and agriculture. In 1999, over 120 people came to help plant the first cover crop, which prepared the field for farming by adding nutrients to the soil.
The student garden staff has had several years' worth of harvest, and has started growing gardens like herb and tea. Here, agricultural practices are continually being revised and updated and every year the Schoolyard staff attends the Ecological Farming Conference in Monterey. A kitchen classroom has also been created, where students learn about main foods eaten in other parts of the world.
"I believe that every child in this world needs to have a relationship with the land...to know how to nourish themselves...and to know how to connect with the community ar