题目内容
American agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug has received the Congressional Gold Medal.
Norman Borlaug is often called "the man who saved a billion lives" and "the father of the Green Revolution."
His work helped fight starvation in India and Pakistan in the nineteen sixties. He won the nineteen seventy Nobel Peace Prize.
He, ninety-three years old ,still works as an adviser at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico.
In accepting the medal, he urged Congress and the administration to increase development assistance for agriculture. He said the world needs better and more technology to deal with hunger. In his words: "Hunger and poverty and misery are very fertile soils into which to plant all kinds of 'isms,' including terrorism."
In the 1940s, Norman Borlaug and a team developed highly productive and disease-resistant wheat for farmers in Mexico. About twenty years later, millions of people in India and Pakistan were in danger from grain shortages.
The improved wheat from Mexico also grew well in South Asia, combined with changes in growing methods. Norman Borlaug persuaded farmers to use more fertilizers and pesticide chemicals and to water their crops with irrigation systems. Also many a crop can be planted in the same field. The results were big production gains that many believe saved as many as a billion lives.
President Bush noted that hunger still affects much of the developing world. He said the most fitting honor for Norman Borlaug is to lead a second Green Revolution that feeds the world. Yet his support for new agricultural technologies has been criticized at times over the years.
Some researchers worry about the effects of industrial methods of modern farming.
Population researcher Paul Ehrlich, for example, wrote a nineteen sixty-eight book called
"The Population Bomb." He predicted that population growth would cause widespread harm to the planet.
But now, some people are saying there should be greater attention and respect for Norman Borlaug. A major theme of his work is that people can deal with difficulties and that technology can improve their lives.
Norman Borlaug is called “the Father of the Green Revolution” mainly lies in that_______.
A. he developed highly productive wheat to help fight against hunger
B. he made a great contribution to fighting against terrorism and hunger
C. he developed a kind of wheat that is environmentally friendly
D. he sticks to the belief that technology can improve our lives.
The best title for the passage would be________.
A. Norman Borlaug, the Father of the Green Revolution
B. Golden Moments----a Long-life Struggle
C. Hunger------a Serious Problem That Affects the Developing World.
D. Norman Borlaug, the Savior of the Developing Country.
Which of the following is NOT supported by the passage?
A. Despite his age, Norman Borlaug still works for the improvement in agriculture
B. Norman Borlaug thinks that hunger and poverty tend to breed crimes and evil
C. Without Norman Borlaug’s work, hunger problem wouldn’t completely be settled now
D. Paul Ehrlich thinks that population growth would cause widespread harm to the planet.
It can be inferred from the passage that_________.
A. Congress and the administration are to blame for hunger and poverty
B. not all people are in favor of his new agricultural technologies
C. people can defeat terrorists by improving modern farming
D. the Congressional Gold Medal is the highest civilian honor given by Congress.
【小题1】A
【小题2】A
【小题3】C
【小题4】B
解析:
【小题1】细节理解题。由文章第二段中的 “His work helped fight starvation in India and
Pakistan in the nineteen sixties.”和第六段中 “The results were big production gains that
many believe saved as many as a billion lives.”可知, 他被称为 “绿色革命之父”是因为帮助人们发展农业, 使成千上万的人免于饥饿和贫困。故答案为A。
【小题2】标题归纳题。本文介绍了一位为世界农业的发展作出了巨大贡献的美国农业科学家Norman Borlaug的故事,他被称为“绿色革命之父”,故A项符合主题。其他选项均偏离主题。
【小题3】正误判断题。由倒数第四段中 “President Bush noted that hunger still affects much of the developing world.”可知, 目前饥饿问题还没有完全解决, C项表述错误,符合题意。
【小题4】推理判断题。由倒数第三段中的Yet his support for new agricultural technologies has been criticized at times over the years. Some researchers worry about the effects of industrial methods of modern farming. 可以推出并不是所有的人都对他的农业新技术赞许,故B项符合题意。A、C项与文意不符;D项文中有明确表述,不符合题意。

Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4, 8, 5, 3, 7, 9, 6. Read them loud. Now look away and spend 20 seconds memorizing them in order before saying them out loud again. If you speak English, you have about a 50% chance of remembering those perfectly. If you are Chinese, though, you’re almost certain to get it right every time. Why is that? Because we most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within a two-second period. And unlike English, the Chinese language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds.
That example comes from Stanislas Dahaene’s book The Number Sense. As Dahaene explains: Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be spoken out in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is “si” and 7 “qi”). Their English pronunciations are longer. The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length.
It turns out that there is also a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed. In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and nineteen, so one might expect that we would also say oneteen, twoteen, threeteen, and fiveteen. But we don’t. We use a different form: eleven, twelve, thirteen and fifteen. For numbers above 20, we put the “decade” first and the unit number second (twenty-one, twenty-two), while for the teens, we do it the other way around (fourteen, seventeen, eighteen). The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan, and Korea. They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two-tens-four and so on.
That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to 40. American children at that age can count only to 15. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian friends in the most fundamental of math skills.
The regularity of their number system also means that Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily. Ask an English-speaking seven-year-old to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to change the words to numbers (37+22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation(等式) is right there, in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: it’s five-tens-nine.
When it comes to math, in other words, Asians have a built-in advantage. For years, students from China, South Korea, and Japan --- outperformed their Western classmates at mathematics, and the typical assumption is that it has something to do with a kind of Asian talent for math. The differences between the number systems in the East and the West suggest something very different --- that being good at math may also be rooted in a group’s culture.
【小题1】What does the passage mainly talk about?
A.The Asian number-naming system helps grasp advanced math skills better. |
B.Western culture fail to provide their children with adequate number knowledge. |
C.Children in Western countries have to learn by heart the learning things. |
D.Asian children’s advantage in math may be sourced from their culture. |
A.Their understanding of numbers. |
B.Their mother tongue. |
C.Their math education. |
D.Their different IQ. |
A.they pronounce the numbers in a shorter period |
B.they practice math from an early age |
C.English speaking children translate language into numbers first |
D.American children can only count to 15 at the age of four |
Increasingly, Americans are becoming their own doctors, by going online to diagnose their symptoms, order home health tests or medical devices, or even self-treat their illnesses with drugs from Internet pharmacies(药店). Some avoid doctors because of the high cost of medical care, especially if they lack health insurance. Or they may stay because they find it embarrassing to discuss their weight, alcohol consumption or couch potato habits. Patients may also fear what they might learn about their health, or they distrust physicians because of negative experiences in the past. But playing doctor can also be a deadly game.
Every day, more than six million Americans turn to the Internet for medical answers – most of them aren’t nearly skeptical enough of what they find. A 2002 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 72 percent of those surveyed believe all or most of what they read on health websites. They shouldn’t. Look up “headache”, and the chances of finding reliable and complete information, free from a motivation for commercial gain, are only one in ten, reports an April 2005 Brown Medical School study. Of the 169 websites the researchers rated, only 16 scored as “high quality”. Recent studies found faulty facts about all sorts of other disorders, causing one research team to warn that a large amount of incomplete, inaccurate and even dangerous information exists on the Internet.
The problem is most people don’t know the safe way to surf the Web. “They use a search engine like Google, get 18 trillion choices and start clicking. But that’s risky, because almost anybody can put up a site that looks authoritative(权威的), so it’d hard to know if what you’re reading is reasonable or not,” says Dr. Sarah Bass from the National Cancer Institute.
1. According to the text, an increasing number of American _____.
A.are suffering from mental disorders |
B.turn to Internet pharmacies for help |
C.like to play deadly games with doctors |
D.are skeptical about surfing medical websites |
2. Some Americans stay away from doctors because they _____.
A.find medical devices easy to operate |
B.prefer to be diagnosed online by doctors |
C.are afraid to face the truth of their health |
D.are afraid to misuse their health insurance |
3.According to the study of Brown Medical School, ______.
A.more than 6 million Americans distrust doctors |
B.only 1/10 of medical websites aim to make a profit |
C.about 1/10 of the websites surveyed are of high quality |
D.72% of health websites offer incomplete and faulty facts |
4. Which of the following is the author’s main argument?
A.It’s cheap to self-treat your own illness. |
B.It’s embarrassing to discuss your bad habits. |
C.It’s reasonable to put up a medical website. |
D.It’s dangerous to be your own doctor. |
第二节信息匹配 (共5小题;每小题2分,满分10分)
阅读下列应用文及相关信息,并按照要求匹配信息。请把答案填写在答题卡上将对应题号上。(选E项,在答题卡上将A,B涂黑; 选F项,在答题卡上将C,D涂黑)
首先,请阅读下列应用文:
The weekly magazine tells what you need to know if you’re thinking of traveling. Helpful advice on what to pack and what to buy once you’re there. Lots of colour photos to help you choose the best hotel, the cheapest flights and a special guide to different climates each week. |
E. Wired This magazine is designed for leaders in the field of information engineering including top managers and professionals in the computer, business, design and education industries. Published by Conde Nast Publications Inc, Wired often carries articles on how technology changes people’s lives. |
F. EUROPE NEWS The weekly magazine keeps you in touch with what’s happening. Filled with facts and figures about almost everything you can think of, plus articles by our regular writers on the week’s most interesting new stories. Special back page sums up the news for the busy readers. |
请阅读以下读者的信息,然后匹配读者和他/她最适合的杂志:
61. Bill travels a lot when he was younger. Now that he has stopped his work, he enjoys reading about foreign people, places and customs even if he has already visited that part of the world.
62. Emi is a university student studying Italian and Politics. She doesn’t have much time to read anything very detailed but she is looking for something with plenty of news and information.
63. Ben serves as an assistant to the general manager of an American company in Los Angeles. He is very interested in management and the use of high technology.
64. Up till now Brigitte has never traveled far so this year she has decided to go abroad for the first time. The travel agent suggests that she should read about various countries first before choosing her holiday.
65. Susan likes shopping. She is interested in buying clothes and she needs to be offered advice on clothes.