高三英语阅读理解试题 - 极难题

I recently turned fifty,which is young for a tree,midlife for an elephant,and ancient for a sportsman.Fifty is a nice number for the states in the US or for a national speed limit,but it is not a number that I was prepared to have hung on me.Fifty is supposed to be my father’s age,but now I am stuck with this number and everything it means.

A few days ago,a friend tried to cheer me up by saying,“Fifty is what forty used to be.”He had made an inspirational point.Am I over the hill?People keep telling me that the hill has been moved,and I keep telling them that the high-jump bar has dropped from the six feet I once easily cleared to the four feet that is impossible for me now.

“You’re not getting older,you’re getting better,”says Dr.Joyce Brothers.This,however,is the kind of doctor who inspires a second opinion.

And so,as I approach the day when I cannot even jump over the tennis net,I am moved to share some thoughts on aging with you.I am moved to show how aging feels to me physically and mentally.Getting older,of course,is obviously a better change than the one that brings you eulogies(悼词).In fact,a poet named Robert Browning considered it the best change of all:

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be.

Whether or not Browning was right,most of my first fifty years have been golden ones,so I will settle for what is ahead being as good as what has gone by.I find myself moving toward what is ahead with a curious blend(混合)of both fighting and accepting my aging,hoping that the philosopher(哲学家)was right when he said.“Old is always fifteen years from now.”

1.The author seems to tell us in Paragraph 1 that ________.

A.time alone will tell

B.time goes by quickly

C.time will show what is right

D.time makes one forget the past

2.When the author turned fifty,people around him ________.

A.tried to comfort him

B.got inspirations from him

C.were friendlier with him

D.found him more talkative

3.The author considers his fifty years of life ________.

A.peaceful          B.ordinary          C.satisfactory          D.regretful

4.We can infer from the passage that ________.

A.the old should lead a simple life

B.the old should face the fact of aging

C.the old should take more exercise

D.the old should fill themselves with curiosity

高三英语阅读理解极难题查看答案及解析

Zhu Haoyu, 18, a history major, wears his iPod everywhere on campus. The freshman has it going out for a walk, visiting the library or lying in bed. However, he found that his habit is like displaying a big “Do not disturb ”sign for himself.

As time slips away, he has begun to regret not having conversed much with his peers around . “As I put the little buds (耳机) into my ears, I’m immersed in a universe of my own, forgetting all troubles in the real world,” said Li.

The MP3 player is one of a number of gadgets (小玩意)—starting with the Sony Walkman, which led to the iPod, iPhone and iPad —that give people the ability to shut themselves off from world around them.

Youngsters delight in handset (手持的) technology. In public, students chat on their cell phones, stopping only to talk briefly to friends. On buses or trains it’s common to see youngsters with PlayStations instead of playing poker or sharing jokes or games. And during airline flights, people watch episodes (连续剧) of US TV dramas on their iPads, rather than talking.

The BBC News magazine recently published an article saying that headphone wearing culture is making us anti-social. “Half of humankind is wired to a parallel universe that leaves them ignoring their surroundings and fellows,” wrote Tom de Castella.

Actually, it’s a decade since Apple unveiled the iPod, which promised “1,000 songs in your pocket”. In 2007 more than half of Western residents were using an iPod or MP3 player.

Entertainment is on offer in all surroundings, not just at home. But in the meantime, it has created barriers between us. Many people subscribe to the view that the headphone culture is creating a “spoilt, selfish generation that lacks civic（公民的）culture”.

However, many users of portable MP3 players argue that the device, as a mind drug, helps them relieve stress by escaping for a while. It is also said to be able to help some students concentrate on work or study. “If you want to get away from the hucksters (小贩) on the way, just start listening to your player,” said Liu, a freshman. “They do not approach people with headphones on.” This might also mean he’s blocking those who want to ask him for the directions.

Experts, however, say that short contacts or mini conversations with strangers are helpful to our mind. Many experts warn that it is dangerous to lose touch with people in our lives.

1.Zhu Haoyu found that his wearing the iPod ________ .

2.The underlined word “immersed” can be replaced by ________ .

3.What is the main idea of the fourth paragraph?

4.Which of the following is not true?

5.What is the writer’s attitude towards the headphone culture ?

高三英语阅读理解极难题查看答案及解析

Many women write to me perplexed(困惑的)about why they can’t form close friendships. They try new approaches, put themselves in all the right places, see therapists, and read relevant self-help books. They consider themselves interesting, loyal, kind and friend-worthy people. But for reasons unknown to them, they have a tough time forming intimate relationships. Many admit to not having even one close friend.

A recent study published in the Journal of personality and Social Psychology offers some clues as to how both nature (personality) and nurture (experience) impact our friendships. Researchers at the University of Virginia and University of Toronto, Mississauga studied more than 7,000 American adults between the ages of 20 and 75 over a period of ten years, looking at the number of times these adults moved during childhood. Their study, like prior ones, showed a link between residential mobility and adult well-being: The more times participants moved as children , the poorer the quality of their adult social relationships.

But digging deeper, the researchers found that personality—specifically being introverted (内向的) or extroverted (外向的) — could either intensify of buffer (缓冲) the effect of moving to a new town or neighborhood during childhood. The negative impact of more moves during childhood was far greater for introverts compared to extroverts.

“Moving a lot makes it difficult for people to maintain long-term close relationships,” stated Dr. Shigehiro Oishi, the first author of the study, in a press release from the American Psychological Association, “This might not be a serious problem for outgoing people who can make friends quickly and easily. Less outgoing people have a harder time making new friends.”

Families often have to relocate — across town, across the country, or across the globe. Yet, in many cases, their kids and young adolescents haven’t yet built up a bank of friendships. So the conventional wisdom is to try to minimize moves for the sake of your child, whenever possible , and to move at the end of the academic year.

1.The passage is written mainly to ________ .

2.Which of the following is true according to the second paragraph?

3.In order for children to maintain long-term close relationships , parents ________.

4.We learn from the fourth paragraph that moves during childhood ________ .

5.We can infer from the passage that ________.

高三英语阅读理解极难题查看答案及解析

If women are mercilessly exploited year after year, they have only themselves to blame.  Because they tremble at the thought of being seen in public in clothes that are out of fashion, they are always taken advantage of by the designers and the big stores. Clothes which have been worn only a few times have to be put aside because of the change of fashion. When you come to think of it, only a woman is capable of standing in front of a wardrobe packed full of clothes and announcing sadly that she has nothing to wear.

Changing fashions are nothing more than the intentional creation of waste. Many women spend vast sums of money each year to replace clothes that have hardly been worn. Women who cannot afford to throw away clothing in this way, waste hours of their time altering the dresses they have. Skirts are lengthened or shortened; neck－lines are lowered or raised, and soon.

No one can claim that the fashion industry contributes anything really important to society. Fashion designers are rarely concerned with vital things like warmth, comfort and durability. They are only interested in outward appearance and they take advantage of the fact that women will put up with any amount of discomfort, as long as they look right. There can hardly be a man who hasn’t at some time in his life smiled at the sight of a woman shaking in a thin dress on a winter day, or delicately picking her way through deep snow in high－heeled shoes.

When comparing men and women in the matter of fashion, the conclusions to be drawn are obvious. Does the constantly changing fashion of women's clothes, one wonders, reflect basic qualities of instability? Men are too clever to let themselves be cheated by fashion designers. Do their unchanged styles of dress reflect basic qualities of stability and reliability? That is for you to decide.

1.The writer would be less critical if fashion designers placed more stress on the of clothing

___ .

2.According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE？

3.By saying “the conclusions to be drawn are obvious”, the writer means that _____.

高三英语阅读理解极难题查看答案及解析

The need to feed a growing population is putting much pressure on the world's supply of water. With 97% of the world's water too salty to be drunk or used in agriculture, the worldwide supply of water needs careful management, especially in agriculture. Although the idea of a water shortage(短缺)seems strange to someone fortunate enough to live in a high rainfall country, many of the world's agricultural industries experience constant water shortages.

Although dams can be built to store water for agricultural use in dry areas and dry seasons, the costs of water redistribution(重新分配)are very high. Not only is there the cost of the engineering itself, but there is also an environmental cost to be considered. Where valleys(山谷)are flooded to create dams, houses are lost and wildlife homes destroyed. Besides, water may flow easily through pipes to fields, but it cannot be transported from one side of the world to the other. Each country must therefore rely on the management of its own water to supply its farming requirements.

This is particularly troubling for countries with agricultural industries in areas dependent on irrigation (灌溉). In Texas, farmers' overuse of irrigation water has resulted in a 25% reduction of the water stores. In the Central Valley area of southwestern USA, a huge water engineering project provided water for farming in dry valleys, but much of the water use has been poorly managed.

Saudi Arabia's attempts to grow wheat in desert areas have seen the pumping of huge quantities of irrigation water from underground reserves. Because there is no rainfall in these areas, such reserves can only decrease, and it is believed that fifty years of pumping will see them run dry.

1.What is most likely to be discussed in the paragraph that follows?

2.From the first two paragraphs we learn that________.

3.The text is mainly about________.

高三英语阅读理解极难题查看答案及解析

When I was seven my father gave me a Timex, my first watch. I loved it, wore it for years, and haven’t had another one since it stopped ticking a decade ago. Why? Because I don’t need one. I have a mobile phone and I’m always near someone with an iPod or something like that. All these devices（装置）tell the time—which is why, if you look around, you’ll see lots of empty wrists; sales of watches to young adults have been going down since 2007.

But while the wise have realized that they don’t need them, others—apparently including some distinguished men of our time—are spending total fortunes on them. Brands such as Rolex, Patek Philippe and Breitling command shocking prices, up to £250.000 for a piece.

This is ridiculous. Expensive cars go faster than cheap cars. Expensive clothes hang better than cheap clothes. But these days all watches tell the time as well as all other watches. Expensive watches come with extra functions—but who needs them? How often do you dive to 300 metres into the sea or need to find your direction in the area around the South Pole? So why pay that much of five years’ school fees for watches that allow you to do these things?

If justice were done, the Swiss watch industry should have closed down when the Japanese discovered how to make accurate watches for a five-pound note. Instead the Swiss reinvented the watch, with the aid of millions of pounds’ worth of advertising, as a message about the man wearing it. Rolexes are for those who spend their weekends climbing icy mountains; a Patek Philippe is for one from a rich or noble family; a Breitling suggests you like to pilot planes across the world.

Watches are now classified as“investments”(投资). A 1994 Philippe recently sold for nearly £350, 000, while 1960s Rolexes have gone from £15, 000 to £30, 000 plus in a year. But a watch is not an investment. It's a toy for self-satisfaction, a matter of fashion. Prices may keep going up—they’ve been rising for 15 years. But when fashion moves on, the owner of that £350, 000 beauty will suddenly find his pride and joy is no more a good investment than my childhood Timex.

1.It seems ridiculous to the writer that_______________.

2.What can be learnt about Swiss watch industry from the passage?

3.Which would be the best title for the passage?

高三英语阅读理解极难题查看答案及解析

Imagine that you’re looking at your company-issued smartphone and you notice an e-mail from Linkedln:“These companies are looking for candidate like you!” You aren’t necessarily searching for a job, but you’re always open to opportunities, so out of curiosity, you click on the link. A few minutes later your boss appears at your desk. “We’ve noticed that you’re spending more time on Linkedln lately, so I wanted to talk with you about your career and whether you’re happy here,” she says Uh-oh.

It’s an awkward scene. Attrition(损耗) has always been expensive for companies, but in many industries the cost of losing good workers is rising, owing to tight labor markets. Thus companies are making greater efforts to predict which workers are at high risk of leaving so that managers can try to stop them. Methods range from electronic monitor to sophisticated analyses of employees’ social media lives.

Some of this work may be a reason to let employees to quit. In general, people leave their jobs because they don’t like their boss, don’t see opportunities for promotion or growth, or are offered a higher pay; these reasons have held steady for years.

New research conducted by CEB, a Washington-based technology company, looks not just at why workers quit but also at when. “We’ve learned that what really affects people is their sense of how they’re doing compared with other people in their peer group, or with where they thought they would be at a certain point in life, says Brian Kropp, who heads CEB’s HR practice. “We’ve learned to focus on moments that allow people to make these comparisons.”

Technology also provides clues about which star employees might be eyeing the exit. Companies can tell whether employees using work computers or phones are spending time on (or even just opening e-mails from) career websites, and research shows that more firms are paying attention to these things. Large companies have also begun tracking badge swipes(浏览痕迹)—employees’ use of an ID to enter and exit the building or the parking garage—to identify patterns that suggest a worker may be interviewing for a job.

1.From the first paragraph, we can infer Linkedln is ________.

A. an e-mail

B. a job from the Internet

C. a professional social network

D. a world-famous company

2.What’s the main idea of the second paragraph?

A. The cost of losing good workers is rising.

B. Companies are stricter with workers than before.

C. Measures have been taken to find the potential workers who want to quit.

D. Finding new jobs has been a trend for most workers.

3.According to the research by CEB, which of the following might be the most probable reason for workers to quit their jobs?

A. They don’t like their bosses.

B. Workers are always doing comparisons.

C. Not seeing opportunities for promotion.

D. To find a higher-paid job.

高三英语阅读理解极难题查看答案及解析

Lisa was running late.Lisa,25，had a lot to do at work，plus visitors on the way: her  parents  were  coming  in   for Thanksgiving from her hometown.But as she hurried down the subway stairs，she started to feel uncomfortably warm.By the time she got to the platform，Lisa felt weak and tired－maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to give blood the night before，she thought.She rested herself against a post close to the tracks.

Several yards away，Frank,43，and his girlfriend，Jennifer，found a spot close to where the front of the train would stop.They were deep in discussion about a house they were thinking of buying.

But when he heard the scream，followed by someone yelling，“Oh，my God，she fell in！” Frank didn’t hesitate.He jumped down to the tracks and ran some 40 feet toward the body lying on the rails.“No! Not you! ”his girlfriend screamed after him.

She was right to be alarmed.By the time Frank reached Lisa，he could feel the tracks shaking and see the light coming.The train was about 20 seconds from the station.

It was hard to lift her.She was just out.But he managed to raise her the four feet to the platform so that bystanders could hold her by the arms and drag her away from the edge.That was where Lisa briefly regained consciousness，felt herself being pulled along the ground，and saw someone else holding her purse.

Lisa thought she’d been robbed.A woman held her hand and a man gave his shirt to help stop the blood pouring from her head.And she tried to talk but she couldn’t，and that was when she realized how much pain she was in.

Police and fire officials soon arrived，and Frank told the story to an officer.Jennifer said her boyfriend was calm on their 40minute train ride downtown－just as he had been seconds after the rescue，which made her think about her reaction at the time.“I saw the train coming and I was thinking he was going to die，”  she explained.

1.What was the most probable cause for Lisa’s weakness?

2.Why did Jennifer try to stop her boyfriend?

3.How did Frank save Lisa?

4.The passage is intended to ________.

高三英语阅读理解极难题查看答案及解析

Historians say Harriet Tubman was born in the year 1820.Nobody really knows. But we do know that Harriet Tubman was one of the bravest women ever born in the United States.

From a very early age，Harriet knew how slaves suffered. At six years old，she was sent to the fields. Working outside not only made her body strong but also made her learn about the Underground Railroad，on which she helped hundreds of people escape from slavery later. She also learned many things from the other slaves，which one day would help her lead her people to freedom. She became more of a rebel (反叛者)．

In 1844，at about age 24，she married a free black man named John Tubman. By now，Harriet was sure she wanted to try to escape. Suddenly，the time came. Her owner died. Though opposed by her husband，she decided to escape. With the help of the Underground Railroad，and through a variety of suffering she finally crossed the border into Pennsylvania，where slavery was banned.

Now that Harriet was free，she did not forget the hundreds of other slaves back in Maryland. Harriet traveled back and forth eighteen times，helping about 300 slaves escape into free territory. She became an expert at hiding from slave hunters. The people she helped called her Moses. At one time，anyone finding Harriet was promised $40,000 for catching her－dead or alive.

During the Civil War，Harriet Tubman went into enemy territory to spy for the North. She also served as a nurse. After four years of bloody fighting，the North won the war.

After the fighting ended，Harriet Tubman returned to Auburn，New York. She kept working. She traveled and gave speeches to raise money for better education for black children. She also worked for women’s rights and housing. Harriet Tubman died in 1913.She was about 93 years old. By that time，she was recognized as an American hero. The United States government gave a funeral with military honors for the woman known as Moses.

1.Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

2.Which of the following is true of the Underground Railroad?

3.The sentence “Later，she told a friend，‘I felt like I was in heaven.’” can be placed at the back of Paragragh ________.

4.According to the text，we know that ________.

高三英语阅读理解极难题查看答案及解析

The word doping is probably from the Dutch word dop, the name of an alcoholic drinks make of grape skins used by Zulu soldiers in order to encourage their bravery in battle. The term became current around the turn of the 20^th century, originally referring to illegal drugging of racehorses. In 1928 the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) became the first to ban the use of doping. A reliable test method was finally introduced in 1974.

The practice of enhancing athletes’ performance through foreign substance or other artificial means, however, is as old as competitive sport itself. The most famous doping case of the 1980s concerned Ben Johnson, the 100-meter champion who tested positive for stanozolol(司坦咗醇) at the Olympic Games in Seoul, 1988.

The main front in the anti-doping war has rapidly shifted to blood doping since 1970s. Blood doping is the practice of adding red blood cells to the bloodstream in order to improve athletes’ performance. The blood is usually processed in order to create a concentration of red blood cells, and then freeze them until needed for transfusion(输血) back into the athlete shortly before the event. The extra red blood cells will deliver more oxygen and other essential elements to the athlete’s muscle tissues.

Just like any other problem, the only way to solve it is through education. Many high school sports programs now have people come in to talk to them about out the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs. Young players must be fully clear on the rules and what substances are banned. The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) has an easily accessible list of what substances are banned, how they are tested for and why they are banned on its website. This way, young players are clear on what they can put in their bodies. This is also a good way to educate players on the danger of the substances they may be tempted to use.

1.The word “enhancing” in the first sentence of the second paragraph means “_____”.

2.What can we know from the third paragraph?

3.The word “people” in the second sentence of the fourth paragraph probably refers to _____.

4.Which statement best matches the last paragraph?

高三英语阅读理解极难题查看答案及解析