第二部分 阅读理解(共两节，满分60分)
第一节 (共15小题;每小题3分，满分45分)
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，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
A
The Cambridge Science Festival Curiosity Challenge
Dare to Take the Curiosity Challenge!
The Cambridge Science Festival (CSF) is pleased to inform you of the sixth annual Curiosity Challenge. The challenge invites, even dares school students between the ages of 5 and 14 to create artwork or a piece of writing that shows their curiosity and how it inspires them to explore their world.
Students are being dared to draw a picture, write an article, take a photo or write a poem that shows what they are curious about. To enter the challenge, all artwork or pieces of writing should be sent to the Cambridge Science Festival, MIT Museum, 265 Mass Avenue, Cambridge 02139 by Friday, February 8th.
Students who enter the Curiosity Challenge and are selected as winners will be honored at a special ceremony during the CSF on Sunday, April 21st. Guest speakers will also present prizes to the students. Winning entries will be published in a book. Student entries will be exhibited and prizes will be given. Families of those who take part will be included in the celebration and brunch will be served.
Between March 10th and March 15th, each winner will be given the specifics of the closing ceremony and the Curiosity Challenge celebration. The program guidelines and other related information are available at: http://cambridgesciencefestival.org.
21. Who can take part in the Curiosity Challenge?
A. School students. B. Cambridge locals. C. CSF winners. D. MIT artists.
22. When will the prize-giving ceremony be held?
A. On February 8th. B. On March 10th. C. On April 21st. D. On March 15th.
23. What type of writing is this text?
A. An exhibition guide. B. An art show review. C. An announcement. D. An official report.
B
Passenger pigeons(旅鸽) once flew over much of the United States in unbelievable numbers. Written accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries described flocks(群) so large that they darkened the sky for hours.
It was calculated that when its population reached its highest point, there were more than 3 billion passenger pigeons – a number equal to 24 to 40 percent of the total bird population in the United States, making it perhaps the most abundant bird in the world. Even as late as 1870 when their numbers had already become smaller, a flock believed to be 1 mile wide and 320 miles (about 515 kilometers) long was seen near Cincinnati.
Sadly, the abundance of passenger pigeons may have been their undoing. Where the birds were most abundant, people believed there was an ever-lasting supply and killed them by the thousands. Commercial hunters attracted them to small clearings with grain, waited until pigeons had settled to feed, then threw large nets over them, taking hundreds at a time. The birds were shipped to large cities and sold in restaurants.
By the closing decades of the 19th century, the hardwood forests where passenger pigeons nested had been damaged by Americans’ need for wood, which scattered (驱散) the flocks and forced the birds to go farther north, where cold temperatures and spring storms contributed to their decline. Soon the great flocks were gone, never to be seen again.
In 1897, the state of Michigan passed a law prohibiting the killing of passenger pigeons, but by then, no sizable flocks had been seen in the state for 10 years. The last confirmed wild pigeon in the United States was shot by a boy in Pike County, Ohio, in 1900. For a time, a few birds survived under human care. The last of them, known affectionately as Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914.
24. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, passenger pigeons _______.
A. were the biggest bird in the world
B. lived mainly in the south of America
C. did great harm to the natural environment
D. were the largest bird population in the US
25. The underlined word “undoing” probably refers to the pigeons’ ______.
A. escape B. ruin C. liberation D. evolution
26. What was the main reason for people to kill passenger pigeons?
A. To seek pleasure. B. To save other birds. C. To make money. D. To protect crops.
27. What can we infer about the law passed in Michigan?
A. It was ignored by the public. B. It was declared too late.
C. It was unfair. D. It was strict.
C
A typical lion tamer (驯兽师) in people’s mind is an entertainer holding a whip (鞭) and a chair. The whip gets all of the attention, but it’s mostly for show. In reality, it’s the chair that does the important work. When a lion tamer holds a chair in front of the lion’s face, the lion tries to focus on all four legs of the chair at the same time. With its focus divided, the lion becomes confused and is unsure about what to do next. When faced with so many options, the lion chooses to freeze and wait instead of attacking the man holding the chair.
How often do you find yourself in the same position as the lion? How often do you have something you want to achieve (e.g. lose weight, start a business, travel more) ---- only to end up confused by all of the options in front of you and never make progress?
This upsets me to no end because while all the experts are busy debating about which option is best, the people who want to improve their lives are left confused by all of the conflicting information. The end result is that we feel like we can’t focus or that we’re focused on the wrong things, and so we take less action, make less progress, and stay the same when we could be improving.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Anytime you find the world waving a chair in your face, remember this: All you need to do is focus on one thing. You just need to get started. Starting before you feel ready is one of the habits of successful people. If you have somewhere you want to go, something you want to accomplish, someone you want to become … take immediate action. If you’re clear about where you want to go, the rest of the world will either help you get there or get out of the way.
28. Why does the lion tamer use a chair?
A. To show off his skills. B. To trick the lion.
C. To get ready for a fight. D. To entertain the audience.
29. In what sense are people similar to a lion facing a chair?
A. They feel puzzled over choices. B. They hold on to the wrong things.
C. They find it hard to make changed. D. They have to do something for show.
30. What is the author’s attitude towards the experts mentioned in Paragraph 3?
A. Tolerant. B. Doubtful. C. Respectful. D. Supportive.
31. When the world is “waving a chair in your face”, you’re advised to _______.
A. wait for a better chance B. break your old habits
C. make a quick decision D. ask for clear guidance
D
As more and more people speak the global languages of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000—7,000 languages spoken around the world today will likely die out by the next century, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars from a number of organizations ---- UNESCO and National Geographic among them ---- have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.
Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Center, Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, working, and raising a family in a village in Nepal.
Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.
At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials ---- including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes ---- which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection.
Now, through the two organizations that he has founded ---- the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project ---- Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, found in libraries and stores around the world, available not just to scholars but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.
32. Many scholars are making efforts to _____.
A. promote global language B. rescue disappearing languages
C. search for language communities D. set up language research organizations
33. What does “that tradition” in Paragraph 3 refer to?
A. Having full records of the languages.
B. Writing books on language teaching.
C. Telling stories about language users.
D. Living with the native speakers.
34. What is Turin’s book based on?
A. The cultural studies in India. B. The documents available at Yale.
C. His language research in Bhutan. D. His personal experience in Nepal.
35. Which of the following best describes Turin’s work?
A. Write, sell and donate. B. Record, repair and reward.
C. Design, experiment and report. D. Collect, protect and reconnect.
