四、阅读理解(共15小题;每小题2分,满分30分)

Another man-made wonder of the United States was built long before the nation was established. About 900 years ago, the Ancestral Puebloan people built villages high in the walls of canyons in Colorado, where 600 cliff dwellings are now part of the Mesa Verde National Park.     

Visitors can stand at the top of the mesas and look into the dwellings almost hidden in openings of the rock walls. The Puebloan people cut small steps into the rock, which connected buildings containing hundreds of rooms.

The rock walls have protected the buildings from severe weather in the area; therefore, they remain mostly unchanged in the hundreds of years since they were built.

Our final man-made wonder is in the northwestern city of Seattle, Washington. The Space Needle was built as the central structure for the 1962 World's Fair.           

The 184-meter-tall structure was designed by Edward Carlson, which has a wide base on the ground, with its middle narrow and a large ring-like structure on top. The structure was meant to look like a "flying saucer," a vehicle that was popular in science fiction space travel stories.  The saucer includes an observation area and eating place. The restaurant slowly turns to provide visitors with a 360 degree view of Seattle.

The Space Needle, only costing about $4,500,000, was not very costly, and was designed and completed in about a year and opened on the first day of the World's Fair.

Today, the Space Needle is the most popular place for visitors to Seattle. And it remains the internationally known symbol of the city.

56.What the passage before this one can be about?

A.Some natural wonders in the world.

B.Sightseeing in the US.

C.Some other artificial wonders in the US.

D.American geography.

57. What does the underlined word “dwelling” mean?

       A. village                     B. house                C. canyon              D. step

58. Which of the following descriptions about the Space Needle is TRUE?

       A. It is a man-made wonder in Washington, D.C..

       B. Edward Carlson built the structure.

       C. It has a ring-like structure on top.

       D. It remains the internationally known symbol of the US.

59. What is the passage mainly about?

       A. Visiting the US                B. Man-made wonders in the US

       C. Wonders in the world              D. Famous places in the US

    We lived in a technological society where most goods are mass-produced by unskilled labor. Because of this, most people think that craft(手艺) no longer exists.

    One of the ways these people wrongly support their view is by pointing to 100-year-old homes which are still solid, and arguing that it is the craftsmanship that is responsible for their durability(持久性). “Homes in those days were well-built,” they say. No doubt these homes were well-built, but what these people have done is mix up the quality of material used in the house with the quality of the craftsmanship.

    Homes today could be built to last just as long as those old homes if people were willing or able to pay the price. For example, more people can no longer afford solid oak stairways, although they were once fairly common in older homes. Nor can they afford the high labor cost of employing a carpenter to build the stairway. Yet if someone can pay the high cost, there are still plenty of carpenters around able to make those stairways. And not only would these carpenters know how to build them, they would probably do a better job than carpenters of old.

    One thing the modern carpenter has which enables him to do a better job is much more advanced tools. Such tools as laser beams and power planes help them lay out a house better and make more precision cuts on the wood. Also, it is not uncommon any more to find carpenters with college degrees and carpenters with a solid knowledge of mathematics, which would enable them to deal with more difficult house designs.

The problems of modern quality, then, really  boils down to the problem of material, for the modern carpenter is just as able to produce craftsmanship as the carpenter of fifty years ago, but only if given proper material.

1. Compared to the carpenters in the past, modern carpenters are _______.

  A. more successful           B. more learned

  C. more imaginative          D. more hardworking

2. What does the underlined word “they” (paragraph 2) refer to?

carpenters who are fond of oak stairways.

carpenters who have college degrees.

people who think highly of carpenters of old.

people who think that modern material is of low quality.

3. What does the third paragraph mainly discuss?

People in the past preferred to use oak to build stairways.

It is now expensive to employ a carpenter.

Modern houses last as long as the old one.

Good carpenters still exist in modern times.

4. What would be the best title for the text?

Is Craft Dead?

Craft, Back to life?

History of craftsmanship

Carpenters Today and Yesterday

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