山西省太原双语中学2012届高考英语-专题阅读理解强化训练集(二十七).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（二十七）
阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中，选出最佳选项。
A
"Grandma, Grandma, tell us a story!" Four darling children sat by my feet, looking up at me expectantly.
    Suddenly, we were interrupted by clapping. "Terrific," the director said, stepping up to the stage from the aisle(过道）. “Except, could you kids face the audience a bit more?"
    The kids shifted to face the empty seats, which would be filled in a few days for the church play. "Perfect," the director said. "Now, Grandma, read to your grandchildren." A pang of sadness hit me. If only I could read to my real grandchildren!
    I had a granddaughter, but I'd never met her. Sixteen years earlier my son was involved in a relationship that ended badly. But out of it came a blessing: a baby girl named Lena. I hoped to be a grandmother to her-- but shortly after the birth, the mother moved without any address left. Over the years, I asked around town to try and find my son's ex-wife, but it seemed that she didn't want to be found.
    I'd just joined this new church a week earlier, and was at once offered the part of Grandma in the play. At least now I could pretend to be a grandma. The rehearsals went well, and finally the day of the show arrived. The performance was great. "You all looked so natural up there," one of my friends said.
    Afterward, we went to the church basement for refreshments. I walked over to one of the girls in the play. Rehearsals had been in such a hurry that we never really got to talk. "How's my granddaughter?" I joked.
    " Fine!" she answered. Just then, someone else walked up and asked the girl her name.
    I wasn't sure I heard the girl's answer correctly. But it made me ask her another question. "What's your mother's name?"
    She told me. I was still in shock. "And what's your father's name?" I asked. It was my son.
    She'd only started going to that church a week before I did. Since that day of the play, we've stayed close. Not long ago, she even made me a great grandma.
1. What was the author doing at the beginning of the story?
  A. Telling a story B. Playing a game.  
C. Preparing for a play.   D. Acting in a movie.
2. Why did the author feel " a pang of sadness" at the words of the director?
  A. The director's words reminded her of her lost granddaughter.
  B. The director's words hurt her badly.
  C. She wished that she had a real grandchild.
  D. The director wasn't content with her performance.
3. What happened in the church basement after the play?
  A. The author played a joke on Lena.
  B. Lena treated the author as a friend.
  C. The author got to know who Lena was.
  D. Lena mistook the author for her grandmother.
4. We can infer that when writing the story, the author felt ______.
A. light-hearted    B. heartbroken    C. confused  D. anxious

B
The ability of falling cats to right themselves in midair and land on their feet has been a source of wonder for ages. Biologists long regarded it as an example of adaptation by natural selection, but for physicists it bordered on the miraculous. Newton's laws of motion assume that the total amount of spin(旋转) of a body cannot change unless an external force speeds it up or slows it down. If a cat has no spin when it is released and experiences no external force, it ought not to be able to twist(转动) around as it falls. 
     In fact, the righting of a falling cat is similar to a magician's trick. The movements of the cat in midair are too fast for the human eye to follow, so the process is hard to understand. Either the eye must be speeded up, or the cat's fall slowed down for the phenomenon to be observed. A century ago the former was realized by means of high-speed photography using equipment now available in any drugstore. But in the nineteenth century the capture on film of a falling cat led to a scientific experiment. 
     The experiment was described in a paper presented to the Paris Academy in 1894. Two series of twenty photographs each, one from the side and one from behind, show a white cat in the act of righting itself. Grainy though they are, the photos show that the cat was dropped upside down, with no spin, and still landed on its feet. Careful analysis of the photos reveals the secret. As the cat rotates the front of its body clockwise, the back and tail twist (扭转) counterclockwise, so that the total spin remains zero, in perfect accord with Newton's laws. Halfway down, the cat pulls in its legs before changing its twist in the opposite way and then extends them again, with the desired end result. The explanation was that while nobody can acquire spin without force, a flexible one can readily change its direction. Cats know this naturally, but scientists could not be sure how it happened until they increased the speed of their views a thousand times as much. 
5. What does the passage mainly discuss?  
   A. The explanation of an interesting phenomenon  
   B. Miracles in modern science  
   C. The process in scientific research  
   D. The differences between biology and physics. 
6.Which of the following can be inferred about high-speed photography in the late 1800's?  
   A. It was a relatively new technology.  
   B. The necessary equipment was easy to obtain.  
   C. The resulting photographs are difficult to explain.  
   D. It was not fast enough to provide new information. 
7.The underlined word “rotates” in third paragraph is closest in meaning to  
    A. drops       B. turns      C. controls       D. touches 
8.According to the passage, a cat is able to right itself in midair because it is  
    A. frightened      B. small       C. intelligent        D. flexible  

C
When people search online, they leave a trail that remains stored on the central computers of firms such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Analyzing what we're looking for on the Web can offer a remarkable understanding of our anxieties and enthusiasms.
UK writer John Battelle wrote on his blog, "This can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture."
Google's experimental service Google Trends, for example, compares the numbers of people searching for different words and phrases from 2004 to the present.
According to these graphs, sometimes people's interests are driven obviously by the latest news: when the Spice Girls, a pop group, announce a reunion, there's an immediate rush to find out more about them. Other results are strikingly seasonal: people go shopping online for coats in winter and sandals（凉鞋）in summer.
The most fascinating possibility is that search data might help predict behavior. Perhaps we search for a political candidate's name when we are thinking about voting for him or her. This information could clearly be useful to a marketer - it's already how Google decides which ads to show on its search results pages – or to a political campaign manager.
Marissa Mayer, a Google vice-president, argues that Google Trends correctly "predicted" George Bush's victory over John Kerry in the 2004 election. The graph clearly shows that Bush continued his lead over Kerry, in terms of search volumes, even when polls(民意测验) suggested the race was on a razor's edge. However, that’s not always the case. For instance, the same approach predicted Hillary Clinton would beat Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 turned out to be wrong in the end.
9. According to the passage, Google are able to see the trails of the people when they are ________ .
A. using their computers   
B. surfing the Internet
C. using its search engine
D. connecting their computer to another one
10. The search data can help foresee the following EXCEPT ______
A. The different features of different cultures
B. the better place to put advertisements in 
C. The victory of a politician in the election
D. The reunion of a pop group
11. On the whole, the author holds a view towards the search trail that ______
A. It is necessary to make rules about collecting the search trails
B. People are in danger of letting out their personal information
C. The search data is very useful to understand people in society
D. Search trails might cause a lot of disorder.
12. The underlined expression in the last paragraph means_______
A. The competition was a very close one  
B The competition was towards the end     
C. The competition showed a clear result  
D. The competition was endless

D
  Gadgets (小玩意儿）with education programs start to find a place in classroom.
    While most public schools don't allow the devices because they are considered distractions--and sometimes portable cheating tools--some school districts have started to put the technology to use. The key, educators say, is controlling the environment in which they are used.
    In St. Mary's, Ohio, a school district of 2,300 students is continuing a program where students are assigned PDAs, or personal digital assistants, for use as a learning tool in the classroom, and at home. They use applications created by a company to draw pictures and create sketches, journals and write essays, said Kyle, the district's technology coordinator(协调者）. Other applications create flash cards for spelling and math.
    Students took the phones on a museum field trip where they took photos, uploaded them to a server where the teacher could view the assignment and write comments on what they saw.
    In addition to the applications that students use, having the PDA teaches them responsibility, he said.
    "Cell phones aren't going away. Mobile technology isn't going away, " he said. "Right now, what we're telling kids is 'You go home and use whatever technology you want, but when you get to school, we're going to ask you to step back in time.' It doesn't make any sense," he said.
    The district started the program last school year with $40,000 and 60 Palm personal data devices that were handed out to students. Kyle said teachers who used to wait weeks to use computer labs were now able to use technology right in their classrooms--and students love it.
    But there are many questions districts face before opening the door to allow cellphones: If children had their own fancier phones, would they be allowed those instead of school-issued devices? How would they fund PDAs in large districts? And do kids really need technology always at their fingertips?
13. Students in public schools are forbidden to have the devices because ______
A. the devices have bad effect on students
B. the devices are considered poor quality
C. it makes no sense to use them at school
D. it is a waste of money
14. A school district uses the PDAs ______
A. as a learning tool 
B. as an application 
C. to keep in touch with the students
D. to watch the students in the exam
15. From the last paragraph we can learn _______
A. all the kids really need cell phones in school
B. not all the kids really need cell phones in school
C. there is no doubt for cell phones to be used in school
D. there is still some doubt for cell phones to be used in school
16. Kyle's attitude towards the use of PDAs in the classroom might be ______
A. approval  B. dissatisfaction  C. suspicion   D. tolerance

E
It is difficult to imagine what life would be like without memory. The meanings of thousands of everyday perceptions, the basis for the decisions we make, and the roots of our habits and skills are to be found in our past experiences, which are brought into the present by memory.
　　Memory can be defined as the capacity to keep information available for later use. It not only includes "remembering" things like arithmetic or historical facts, but also involves any change in the way an animal typically behaves. Memory is involved when a rat gives up eating grain because he has sniffed something suspicious in the grain pile.
　　Memory exists not only in humans and animals but also in some physical objects and machines. Computers, for example, contain devices for storing data for later use. It is interesting to compare the memory storage capacity of a computer with that of a human being. The instant access memory of a large computer may hold up to 100,000 "words"—string of alphabetic or numerical characters—ready for instant use. An average U.S. teenager probably recognizes the meaning of about 100,000 words of English. However, this is but a fraction of the total amount of information that the teenager has stored. Consider, for example, the number of faces and places that the teenager can recognize on sight.
　　The use of words is the basis of the advanced problem-solving intelligence of human beings. A large part of a person's memory is in terms of words and combinations of words. But while language greatly expands the number and the kind of things a person can remember, it also requires a huge memory capacity. It may well be this capacity that distinguishes humans, setting them apart from other animals.
17. Which of the following is TRUE about memory?
　A. It helps us perceive things happening around us every day.
　B. It is based on the decisions we made in the past.
　C. It is rooted in our past habits and skills.
　D. It connects our past experiences with the present.
18. According to the passage, memory is helpful in one's life in the following aspects EXCEPT that ________.
　A. it involves a change in one's behavior
　B. it keeps information for later use
　C. it warns people not to do things repeatedly
　D. it enables one to remember events that happened in the past
19. What is the major characteristic of man's memory capacity according to the author?
　A. It can be expanded by language.
B. It can remember all the combined words.
C. It may keep all the information in the past.
　D. It may change what has been stored in it.
20. Human beings make themselves different from other animals by _______.
　A. having the ability to perceive danger
　B. having a far greater memory capacity
　C. having the ability to recognize faces and places on sight
　D. having the ability to draw on past experiences

CACA AABD CDCA AADA DCAB
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