When my brother and I were young, my mom would take us on Transportation Days.It
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When my brother and I were young, my mom would take us on Transportation Days.
It goes like this: You can"t take any means of transportation more than once. We would start from home, walking two blocks to the rail station. We"d take the train into the city center, then a bus, switching to the train, then maybe a taxi. We always considered taking a horse carriage in the historic district, but we didn"t like the way the horses were treated, so we never did. At the end of the day, we took the subway to our closest station, where Mom"s friend was waiting to give us a ride home—our first car ride of the day.
The good thing about Transportation Days is not only that Mom taught us how to get around. She was born to be multimodal (多方式的). She understood that depending on cars only was a failure of imagination and, above all, a failure of confidence—the product of a childhood not spent exploring subway tunnels.
Once you learn the route map and step with certainty over the gap between the train and the platform, nothing is frightening anymore. New cities are just lightrail lines to be explored. And your personal car, if you have one, becomes just one more tool in the toolbox—and often an inadequate one, limiting both your mobility and your wallet.
On Transportation Days, we might stop for lunch on Chestrut Street or buy a new book or toy, but the transportation was the point. First, it was exciting enough to watch the world speed by from the train window. As I got older, my mom helped me unlock the mysteries that would otherwise have paralyzed my first attempts to do it myself: How do I know where to get off? How do I know how much it costs? How do I know when I need tickets, and where to get them? What track, what line, which direction, where"s the stop, and will I get wet when we go under the river?
I"m writing this right now on an airplane, a means we didn"t try on our Transportation Days and, we now know, the dirtiest and most polluting of them all. My flight routed me through Philadelphia. My multimodal mom met me for dinner in the airport. She took a train to meet me.
小题1: According to the writer, what was the greatest benefit of her Transportation Days?| A．Building confidence in herself. | | B．Reducing her use of private cars. | | C．Developing her sense of direction. | | D．Giving her knowledge about vehicles. |
小题2: The underlined word “paralyzed”(in Para.5) is closest in meaning to “________”．| A．displayed | B．justified | C．ignored | D．ruined |
小题3: Which means of transportation does the writer probably disapprove of?| A．Airplane. | B．Subway. | C．Train. | D．Car. |
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答案
小题1:A
小题2:D
小题3:A |
解析
试题分析：本文介绍了作者对于人的价值观的看法，人生的价值体现在给与我们有关的、我们所爱的人留下最美好，最珍贵的回忆。
小题1: 推理题：根据文章的第三段和第四段中的句子a failure of confidence—the product of a childhood not spent exploring subway tunnels和…, nothing is frightening anymore. 从而得出结论--- Building confidence in herself。选A
小题2:词义猜测题：通过对上下文的理解，可知这里需要解释为ruined。选D。
小题3:推理题：根据最后一段的句子：the dirtiest and most polluting of them all，可知作者对于飞机是这种交通工具并不喜欢。选A。 |
举一反三
After a busy day of work and play, the body needs to rest. Sleep is necessary for good health. During this time, the body recovers from the activities of the previous day. The rest that you get while sleeping enables your body to prepare itself for the next day.
There are four levels of sleep, each being a little deeper than the one before. As you sleep, your muscles relax little by little. Your heart beats more slowly, and your brain slows down. After you reach the fourth level, your body shifts back and forth from one level of sleep to the other.
Although your mind slows down, from time to time you will dream. Scientists who study sleep state that when dreaming occurs, your eyeballs begin to move more quickly (Although your eyelids are closed). This stage of sleep is called REM, which stands for rapid eye movement.
If you have trouble falling asleep, some people recommend breathing very deeply. Other people believe that drinking warm milk will help make you drowsy. There is also an old suggestion the counting sheep will put you to sleep!
小题1:A good title for this passage is ____.| A．Sleep | B．Dreams | C．Good Health | D．Work and Rest |
小题2:The word drowsy in the last paragraph means ____.| A．sick | B．asleep | C．stand up | D．a little sleepy |
小题3:This passage suggests that not getting enough sleep might make you _____.| A．dream more often | B．have poor health | C．nervous | D．breathe quickly |
小题4:During REM, ____.| A．your eyes move quickly | B．you dream | C．you are restless | D．both A and B |
小题5:The average number of hours of sleep that an adult needs is ______ .| A．approximately six hours | B．around ten hours | | C．about eight hours | D．not described here |
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Have you ever seen any students whose trousers hang so low that you can see their underwear? What do you think of that? Fashionable? Some of today’s teenagers are big fans of such a look. But recently this trend has been at the center of an argument in Italian middle schools. The headmaster of a school in central Italy has asked students to stop wearing low-rise jeans that expose underwear and parts of the body. His request came after a class trip, when he saw one boy"s baggy trousers slide to his feet. He pointed out that this way of dressing is not suitable for school. But in Italy, a nation that takes fashion very seriously, the suggestion caused a debate among parents, teachers and students. The issue is whether the headmaster"s request will limit students" freedom— or whether dress in Italian schools is too casual. A parents" group praised the move in favor of good taste, while others advised schools to stop worrying about fashion and fix up old school buildings. “We do not want to kick fashion out,” the headmaster explained, “but extremes of fashion like this are not right in school.” Many other schools have now requested that their students also stop wearing such trousers. Most students have simply ignored the request. Ludovica Gaudio, 14, wore extremely low trousers exposing orange underwear in class. It was cold, so she wore a matching orange scarf. Another 14-year-old said she would probably respect the request, simply for practical reasons. “I don"t really feel comfortable in those sort of jeans，” said Sarah Lattanzi, “in winter, when dressed like that, it"s quite cold and I am afraid my stomach will ache.”
小题1:What led to the argument in Italian middle schools？______| A．Students" craze for fashions. | B．Clothes that are too exposing. | | C．Students" ignoring dress codes.（规则） | D．Students" underwear. |
小题2:Which of the following supports the headmaster"s request?___| A．Fashion should be taken seriously. | | B．Fashion should not be followed in school. | | C．Students should have their freedom in choosing what they wear. | | D．Students should be encouraged to have good taste in clothes. |
小题3: The argument against the headmaster"s request is that ______.| A．dress in Italian schools is too casual | | B．fashion should not be followed in school | | C．schools should pay attention to things more important than students" clothes | | D．low-rise jeans can do harm to youngster"s health |
小题4:The purpose of this story is to ________| A．show Chinese students that wearing very fashionable clothes in school is under attack in other countries, too. | | B．show that dress code is necessary even in a country like Italy | | C．let us see that Italian students react differently to schools" requests. | | D．tell us that a debate started in Italian middle schools over the way students dress in School |
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How would you like to sleep with one half your brain asleep and the other half awake? Dolphins sleep this way. Recently, scientists at Indiana State University have discovered that ducks sleep this way too. They found that ducks sleep half awake so they can rest and watch for danger at the same time.
After putting their ducks in a row and videotaping them, some researchers found ducks on the end of each row spent more time asleep with one eye open, apparently looking for predators.
“The more the ducks felt threatened, the more they slept with one eye open,” said lead author Niels C. Rattenborg, a graduate student at Indiana State University, Terre Haute. “The unique aspect is not that they do it, but that they control it. When they sleep at the edge of a group, they tend to realize greater danger, so they spend more time sleeping with one half of their brain.” Ducks with one eye open were still awake enough to detect predators, said the authors of the study, which appears today in the journal Nature.
The researchers studied four groups of four ducks held in plastic boxes, which were arranged in a row. Ducks on the end were found to sleep with one eye open 31.8 per cent of the time, compared to 12.4 percent of the time for ducks in the central position.
Also, ducks in the central position did not open one eye more than the others, while ducks on each end kept the eye facing away from the group open 86.2 per cent of the time. Brain wave readings of the ducks showed that the half of the brain receiving signals from the closed eye indicated that half of the brain was sleeping. Signals from the half of the brain receiving signals from the open eye showed a state between fully awake and asleep.
小题1:The under lined word “predator” is most likely to mean .| A．an animal that is likely to be friends with ducks | | B．a human being who looks after and feeds ducks | | C．a scientist who does research work on animals | | D．an animal that hunts, kills and eats other animals |
小题2:Ducks at the end of each row sleep with one eye open because .| A．they are looking for food | | B．they are watching out for danger | | C．they want to enjoy the scenery | | D．they are unique in their sleeping habit |
小题3:Which of the following is true according to the passage?| A．Ducks with one eye open at the edge can still enjoy a certain degree of sleep. | | B．Ducks with less sense of duty usually choose to stay in the center of a row. | | C．Ducks on the northern end of a row would keep their eye facing the south open. | | D．A video tape recorder was the only electronic device used in the experiment. |
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Half of the world’s population is affected by Asian monsoons（季风）, but monsoons are difficult to predict. American researchers have put together a 700-year record of the rainy seasons, which is expected to provide guidance for experts making weather predictions.
Every year, damp air masses，known as monsoon，produce large amounts of rainfall in India, East Asia, Northern Australia and East Africa. All this wet air is pulled in by a high pressure area over the Indian Ocean and a low pressure area to the south.
According to Edward Cook , a weather expert at Columbia University in New York., the complex nature of the climate systems across Asia makes monsoons hard to predict. In addition, climate records for the area are too recent and not detailed enough to be of much use. Therefore, he and a team of researchers spent more than fifteen years traveling across Asia, looking for trees old enough to provide long-term records. They measured the rings, or circles, inside thousands of ancient trees in more than 300 places.
Rainfall has a direct link to the growth and width of rings on some kinds of trees. The researchers developed a document they are calling a Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas. It shows the effect of monsoons over seven centuries, beginning in the 1300s.
Professor Cook says the tree-ring records show periods of wet and dry weather. “If the monsoon basically fails or is a very weak one, the trees affected by monsoons at that location might put on a very narrow ring. But if the monsoon is very strong, the trees affected by that monsoon might put on a wide ring for that year. So, the wide and narrow ring widths of the chronology that we developed in Asia provide us with a measure of monsoon variability.” With all this information, researchers say they can begin to improve computer climate models for predicting the behavior of monsoons.
“There has been widespread famine and starvation and human dying in the past in large droughts. And on the other hand, if the monsoon is particularly heavy, it can cause extensive flooding.” said Eugene Wahl, a scientist with America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “So, to get a sense of what the regional moisture patterns have been, dryness and wetness over such a long period of time in great detail, I would call it a kind of victory for climate science.”
小题1:What’s the passage mainly about？| A．The effects of Asian monsoons. | | B．The necessity of weather forecast. | | C．The achievements of Edward cook. | | D．A breakthrough in monsoon prediction. |
小题2:It is difficult for experts to predict Asian monsoons because _______.| A．it is hard to keep long-term climate records. | | B．they are formed under complex climate systems. | | C．they influence many nations. | | D．there is heavy rainfall in Asia. |
小题3:What can be inferred from the passage?| A．Long and detailed climate records can offer useful information for monsoon research. | | B．The Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas has a monsoon record for about 1,300 years. | | C．The trees affected by monsoon grow fast if the monsoon is weak. | | D．The rainfall might be low although the monsoon is strong in monsoon-affected areas. |
小题4:According to Professor Cook, the rings of the trees _______.| A．determine the regional climate. | | B．have a great influence on the regional climate. | | C．offer people information about the regional climate. | | D．reflect all kinds of regional climate information. |
小题5:Which of the following best describes the tone of this passage?| A．Matter-of –fact | B．Pessimistic | C．Humorous | D．Friendly. |
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This site , all-birds. com, is about bird watching. Enjoy your browsing. There is much to learn and see.
Bird Watching Equipment
Some items that might make bird watching more enjoyable are binoculars （ 双目望远镜） , a camera, some kind of system for keeping notes, and maybe a back pack． Birders often keep lists of the birds they see along with notes about the habits． There is some great bird log software that will let you keep records on your computer． For more details on choosing binoculars see our Binocular -Optics page．
Clothes
If you are walking through a wooded area just wear clothes you would wear on any hike or field trip． You are best off wearing clothes with dull colors that mix into the background． Greens, browns, and grays are good． Avoid fabrics that rustle（沙沙响）easily． Depending on the birds you are watching you may want to get rain gear, rubber boots and warm clothing． For birds such as owls that you might look for in the evening a strong flashlight is also handy．
Choosing a Bird Field Guide
Take a good field guide to identify birds． Look for clear color pictures that make it easy to recognize one bird from another． Next to each picture should be detailed descriptions of each bird"s anatomy, habits, and what it eats． The guide should have information about what habitat each species uses． Many guides have maps showing the range of different birds along with their migration patterns．
Where and When to see Birds
Learning the habitats of birds in your area will increase the number of birds you see, and make your birding more enjoyable． If you know that Meadow larks are likely to be in open grassy areas, and dippers are forage along stream beds, you may be looking for them if you are in those types of habitats． Edge areas where different types of habitats meet will likely have more species in them． You are more likely to see specific birds at certain times of the day． For example songbirds are easier to see two to three hours after dawn, or just before sunset． This is when songbirds are most actively feeding． Many small birds will be silent or even hidden during the rest of the day． After sunup is the best time to see eagles and hawks． Visibility is best for hunting at this time, and they can soar on the thermal currents from the warmed air． Birds like owls are more likely to be seen in the evening． Many shorebirds and waders rest at high tide and feed when the water rises or falls．
Photographing Birds
Patience in Bird Photography
Most birds are afraid of people, and all species have their own comfort zone． With a little time you can learn the comfort zone of the birds you are photographing． Once they know that you are not a threat you may be able to get closer．
Type or Style
Your reason for photographing birds may determine your style and the kind of equipment you use． If you are just recording the kinds of birds you see you don"t need to get as close, and you can use less expensive equipment, then you need for high quality prints.
Photographing Birds in Flight
Photographing birds in flight can be fun． Many digital cameras have a tracking function． With these you focus on the bird, and then as you track it the lens will keep focus．
Use Your Yard
Choose an open area where the birds will get direct sunlight, showing off their magnificent colors．
Try using props
Birds will often land on a stick or post near a seed feeder before going to the feeder． The background was just an out of focus fence but you can use anything you want for a background, and then wait for a bird to perch.
小题1:The main purpose of the passage is to _____.| A．attract more people to photograph birds | | B．help birders learn how to identify and understand birds | | C．call on people to set some comfort zones for birds | | D．inform birders of the results of a scientific research on birds |
小题2:Clothes in ______ are highly recommended when you are going bird watching．| A．red | B．yellow | C．brown | D．blue |
小题3:________ are likely to be seen at 7 in the morning．| A．Owls | B．Shorebirds | C．Songbirds | D．Larks |
小题4:Which of the following statement is TRUE according to the passage?| A．A stick in the yard may scares birds off when you are photographing them． | | B．It will be wise for birders to hire a guide for themselves． | | C．Birders have to bring some notebooks to keep records of birds" habits． | | D．A flashlight will come in handy when you look for owls． |
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