第二部分 阅读理解(共两节，满分40分)
第一节(共15分，每小题2分，共30分)
阅读下列短文，从每题给出的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
A
Maria Callas was born Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulus in New York City in 1923. Her mother wanted her children to study music. Maria had a beautiful voice but she was very shy. Her mother forced her daughter to sing at contests and on radio programs. Maria won many top prizes, but she wasn’t very happy.
Maria’s father did not want to pay for expensive music lessons. He and his wife argued. When Maria was 13, she moved to Greece with her mother and sister. Her mother lied about Maria’s age and got her into the Athens Conservatory. Maria studied hard for two years. She had no time for friends or fun.
In 1939, Maria began to study with a world-famous Spanish opera singer, Elvira de Hidalgo. She changed Maria’s life. De Hidalgo taught her to sing and act. She also taught her how to fix her hair and choose beautiful clothes. Maria joined Greece’s National Opera at age 16 and took the stage name Maria Callas. At 17, she was a permanent member. She was the youngest person ever to join a European opera company.
Soon Callas became an international star. Some called her the “Golden Voice of the Century.” She acted and sang with great emotion. Her style changed opera forever. In 1947, she joined La Scala, the leading opera house in Milan. By age 24, Callas was giving 50 performances a year. Some people said this was not good for her singing voice.
Sadly, Callas was not happy. She argued with everyone and did not get along with other singers. She has a problem with her throat and started to lose her singing voice when she was only 35. Maria Callas died in 1977 at the age of 53. We remember her as one of the greatest opera singers of the twentieth century.
21. Why did Callas study music when she was very young?
A. Her mother forced her to do so. B. Her father taught music lessons.
C. She loved to show her beautiful voice. D. She was pleased to win top prizes.
22. How did Elvira de Hidalgo change Maria’s life?
A. She advised Maria to start a European opera company.
B. She helped Maria take the stage name Maria Callas.
C. She got Maria into the Athens Conservatory.
D. She taught Maria how to sing and act and dress.
23. Which of the following might be harmful to Maria’s singing voice?
A. She sang with great emotion. B. She gave to many performances.
C. She argued with everyone. D. She joined the leading opera house in Milan.
24. Which of the following best describes Maria Callas?
A. Popular and tolerant. B. Serious and boring.
C. Talented but unhappy. D. Honest but unfriendly.
25. What does Tom intend to do at first?
A. To have a family lunch.
B. To invite his friend to a barbecue.
C. To go for a drink with his friends.
D. To ask for help from his friends.
26. The underlined part “snowed under” in the second email means “___________”.
A. buried under snow B. very bored
C. entirely relaxed D. extremely busy
27. What will Tom probably do after sending the last email?
A. Prepare the barbecue. B. Go to the pub.
C. Have a rest. D. Call his friends.
C
If you stand a short distance away from a high wall and shout, your voice sometimes comes back to you as an echo. This knowledge was made a few years before the last war, when radio waves from a transmitting (发送) station were reflected back from a distant airplane.
It was realized that if an apparatus (装置) could be designed to send out radio waves all the time and record the echoes from any approaching airplanes, it would be a wonderful method of defense in war.
Scientists set about solving the problem and radar was invented. An apparatus was made which sent out waves in pulses, and the presence of a distant airplane was shown on the screen (this is what we have in a television set). In this way radar station could detect the approach of enemy aircraft.
After the war radar was put to peaceful uses. It is now installed at airports to guide airplanes down safely in fog. It is fitted to ships so that they are warned of obstructions (障碍物) ahead, such as icebergs. It guides ships into port. It provided airplanes and ships with a magic eye, with which they can see far into the distance, in the dark or in fog.
28. What does “the last war” in the first paragraph refer to?
A. the World War I B. the World War II
C. The Oct. Revolution D. the Chinese Liberation War
29. For what purpose did scientists first invent radar?
A. To help find their enemies. B. To guide ships into port.
C. To send out sound waves. D. To help airplanes land safely.
30. The invention of radar .
A. has nothing to do with the reflection of sound waves.
B. is exactly the same as the reflection of sound waves
C. is on the basis of the reflection of sound waves
D. is by changing sound waves into radio waves
31. From the passage we may infer that radio waves can .
A. only be reflected from airplanes
B. be reflected from anything not far away
C. be reflected from almost everything
D. only be reflected from anything made of metal
D
When Matty Sallin was working on a degree in art and technology at New York University, he got an interesting assignment in electronics class: Create something for the household. He decided to create an alarm clock.
“Everybody has to deal with these every day, and they are extremely unpleasant!" he says. He asked different people what they’d like to wake up to instead of a clanging, noisy alarm. A lot of them said, "The smell of bacon.”
So Sallin and two classmates invented a new kind of alarm clock: a wooden box with a pig face and a digital clock that uses the smell of cooking bacon rather than sound to wake someone up. He explains, “There’s no danger of burning, because it uses halogen light bulbs(卤素灯泡)instead of a flame for cooking and turns off automatically after ten minutes.”
Just a few easy steps are required to set the “alarm.”
“What you do is put a couple of frozen pieces of bacon in the night before,” says Sallin. “If you set the alarm for 8:00, it will turn on at 7:50 and slow cook for ten minutes under the halogen bulbs,” he says. Then the bulbs turn off and a fan blows the smell out through the pig nose.
“So instead of an alarm or a beep or a radio, you smell yourself awake,” says Sallin. “Then you can open the door on the side and pull the bacon out and eat it.”
When Sallin was a kid, he spent a lot of time making drawings of inventions. “I wanted to make an elevator in my back yard and a special tree house,” he says. “But I never really thought I’d be called an inventor!”
32. Why did Sallin choose to create a new alarm clock?
A. His classmates had no alarm clocks. B. His alarm clock in use was out of fashion.
C. Many people disliked the noisy alarm. D. Many people had difficulty in waking up.
33. In what way is Sallin’s alarm clock special?
A. It wakes people up with the smell of bacon.
B. It warns people of the danger of burning.
C. It can also be used as a lamp.
D. It is very small in size.
34. The pig nose on the alarm clock is used _______.
A. to cook the bacon B. to let the smell out
C. to sound the alarm D. to blow the flame.
35. What do we know about Sallin?
A. He decides to make more alarm clocks.
B. He has a special gift for clock designing.
C. He has always dreamed of becoming an architect.
D. He showed an interest in invention at an early age.
