László Bíró, a Hungarian, was the father of one of the 20th century’s most successful inventions—ballpoint pen. He worked in medicine, oil industry, motor racing and painting. It was when he was a newspaper editor that he became disappointed by the nibs (metal points) of pens which leaked ink and tore paper. One day, he was in a Budapest printing shop and saw an ink that dried as soon as it touched paper. “It got me thinking how this process could be simplified right down to the level of an ordinary pen,” he recalled later.
The quick-drying ink used in printing was too thick to flow from a fountain pen, so Bíró’s brother, George, who is an expert in chemistry, came up with a new design. After several years of experiments, Biro replaced the pen’s metal writing nib with the new design bearing a tiny ball in its tip with the help of his brother. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rolled, picking up ink from the ink container and putting it smoothly on the paper.
Bíró sold his patent (专利) to Baron Marcel Bich of France for 2 million dollars. In 1950 Bich produced his own cheap, disposable (一次性的) ballpoint pen. It was sold throughout the market and in 1965 the French government allowed it to be used in schools, with other countries following suit, such as Argentina. Before long, the ballpoint was becoming an increasingly popular piece of stationery (文具). Today, around 15 million ballpoint pens are sold worldwide every day. People will always remember Biro for his invention. Today in many English-speaking countries, people still use the word “biro” to refer to any kind of ballpoint pen Millions of people use it all over the world every day.
Bíró used to hear people say the ballpoint was ruining writing skills. He would smile and say, “Well, writing comes from the heart. If we can help the hand to perform the task, what is so wrong with that?”
1.When did Biro decide to invent a new pen?
A.When he worked in the oil industry. B.When he saw the quick-drying ink.
C.When he began to use fountain pens. D.When he was buying a printing machine.
2.What did George help Biro do?
A.Design the ballpoint pen. B.Invent a pen-friendly kind of paper.
C.Manage to make printing ink thicker. D.Produce the pen’s metal writing nib.
3.Where were ballpoint pens first put on the market?
A.In Hungary. B.In England. C.In France. D.In Argentina.
4.What can we learn from the text?
A.We should put our heart into writing. B.The tip of the ballpoint pen ruins paper.
C.Biro regretted inventing the ballpoint pen. D.The ballpoint pen was welcome at the market.
高一英语阅读选择中等难度题
THE BRONTE FAMILY
Yorkshire, England was the setting for two great novels of the 19th century. One of them is Jane Eyre written by Charlotte Bronte.
The Bronte family had three girls and a boy. Charlotte was born in 1816, Emily was born in 1818 and Anne in 1820. Their brother Branwell was born in 1817. The children wrote and told stories and walked over the hills. They grew up largely self-educated. Branwell showed a great interest in drawing. The girls took positions as teachers or taught children in their homes. The girls were determined to earn money for Branwell's art education.
As children, the girls had all written many stories. Charlotte alone wrote 22 books, each with 60 to 100 pages of small handwriting. Therefore, they turned to writing for income. By 1847, Charlotte had written The Professor; Emily, Wuthering Heights; and Anne, Agnes Grey. After much difficulty, Anne and Emily found a publisher (出版商), but there was no interest shown in Charlotte's book. ( It was not published until 1859. ) However, one publisher expressed an interest in seeing more of her work. Jane Eyre was already started, and she hurriedly finished it. It was accepted at once; thus each of the sisters had a book published in 1847.
Jane Eyre was immediately successful; the other two, however, did not do so well. Emily lived only a short while after the publication of her book, and Anne died in 1849.
Charlotte published Shirley in 1849, and Villette in 1853. In 1854 she married Arthur Bell Nicholls. But only a year later, she died of tuberculosis (肺结核) as her sisters had.
1.What did the Bronte sisters want to do for Branwell Bronte?
A. Help him write stories.
B. Help him get trained in art.
C. Teach him how to draw well.
D. Teach him how to educate himself.
2.We know from the text that
A. Jane Eyre was published in 1847
B. Charlotte Bronte wrote 22 books in all
C. the Bronte sisters received good education
D. the father helped his daughters with their writing
3.The underlined words "the other two" in Paragraph 4 refer to ________.
A. Shirley and Villette
B. The Professor and Agnes Grey
C. Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights
D. The Professor and Wuthering Heights
4.What do we know about the Bronte sisters from the text?
A. Their novels interested few publishers.
B. None of them lived longer than 40 years.
C. Emily was the least successful of the three.
D. None of them had more than two books published.
高一英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
There lived in South Carolina a young woman named Eliza Lucas. Her father was governor of one of the islands of the West Indies. Miss Lucas often got seeds from her father, and then she planted them in South Carolina.
Once, her father sent her some seeds of the indigo (靛蓝) plant. She planted some of them in March, but a frost (霜冻) came and killed all her plants. However, she decided to plant some more seeds in April. These grew very well until a cutworm found them and ate her plants. Once more Miss Lucas planted some of the seeds. This time the plants grew very well. She wrote to her father about it. He sent her a man who knew how to get the indigo out of the plant.
However, the man tried not to show Miss Lucas how to make the indigo. He did not want the people in South Carolina to learn how to make it. He was afraid his own people would not get so much money for their indigo if other people made it as well. So he destroyed the indigo on purpose. But Miss Lucas watched him closely. She worked out how the indigo could be made. Some of her father’s land in South Carolina was now planted with the indigo plant.
Then Miss Lucas got married, and became Mrs. Pinckney. Her father gave her all the indigo growing on his land in South Carolina. It was all saved for seeds. Mrs Pinckney gave some of the seeds to her friends while her husband sowed others. They all grew and were made into the blue dye(染料) that we call indigo. In a few years, South Carolina was producing more than a million pounds of indigo every year. All the people were grateful to her.
1.The indigo plant died at first because of ______.
A. a cutworm B. a frost
C. strong sunlight D. heavy rain
2.What might be people’s attitude toward Eliza Lucas in South Carolina?
A. They were afraid of her. B. They were doubtful of her.
C. They were thankful to her. D. They were worried about her.
3.The man Miss Lucas’s father sent her ______.
A. was not as helpful as she expected B. knew little about planting seeds
C. helped her a lot in making the indigo D. made a lot of money in South Carolina
4.What’s the main idea of the text?
A. Eliza Lucas learned to plant seeds.
B. Eliza Lucas became Mrs. Pinckney.
C. Eliza Lucas got her father’s land in South Carolina
D. Eliza Lucas introduced indigo to South Carolina.
高一英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
Of all ___ reasons for my decision to go abroad, my father’s advice was ___ very important one.
A．the; / B．the; the C．/; the D．the; a
高一英语单项填空简单题查看答案及解析
Thomas Edison was one of the most successful inventors the world has ever seen.1.
Bui people found that although Edison was good at inventing new things, he was a poor fisherman. He used to spend an hour almost every day sitting at the side of a river and fish. He always fished all alone by himself.2.
People asked Edison, “Why are you so crazy about fishing when you are so bad at it?” His answer was, “I really never caught ant fish because I have never used any bait (诱饵).” Another question followed, “Why would you fish without bait?” Edison answered, “Because when you fish without bait, people don’t disturb you and neither do the fish.3.”
Sometimes the world’s best inventor was the world’s worst fisherman. In fact, because Edison was the world’s worst fisherman, he could become the world’s greatest inventor.
Are you setting aside some time for yourself to think?4. Here are some ideas for you:
► Slowing down and taking long showers is a good idea.
► 5.
► Long walks are good too.
► Afternoon naps have been proved to improve creativity.
A. But he never caught any fish.
B. It provides me my best time to think.
C. So is listening to some soft classical music.
D. In all, Edison has thousands of inventions.
E. He was asked the reason behind him being a fisherman.
F. To make your brain work better, you need to take a rest.
G. Set aside 15-20 minutes per day so that you can do nothing.
高一英语七选五中等难度题查看答案及解析
One day, a young man asked Albert Einstein, a great 1. (science), what the secret of success was. The scientist told him that the secret of success is hard work. A few days 2. (late), the young man asked him 3. same question again. Einstein was not very 4. (unhappy). He didn’t say anything, 5. wrote a few words 6. a piece of paper and handed 7. to the young man. The young man looked at the paper. On it was 8. (write): A = X + Y + Z. “What does this mean?” asked the young man. “ A means success,” said the scientist. “ and X means hard work, Y means good 9. (method), and Z means 10. (little) talking and more work.”
高一英语短文填空中等难度题查看答案及解析
The result was far beyond _______we had expected, _______ brought great joy to every one of us.
A. that; which B. which; this C. what; what D. what; which
高一英语单项填空困难题查看答案及解析
Arthur Miller (1915—2005) is universally recognized as one of the greatest dramatists of the 20th century. Miller's father had moved to the USA from Austria-Hungary, drawn like so many others by the “Great American Dream”. However, he experienced severe financial hardship when his family business was ruined in the Great Depression of the early 1930s.
Miller's most famous play, Death of a Salesman, is a powerful attack on the American system, with its aggressive way of doing business and its insistence on money and social status as indicators of worth. In Willy Loman, the hero of the play, we see a man who has got into trouble with this system. Willy is “burnt out” and in the cruel world of business there is no room for sentiment: if he can't do the work, then he is no good to his employer, the Wagner Company, and he must go. Willy is painfully aware of this, and at a loss as to what to do with his lack of success. He refuses to face the fact that he has failed and kills himself in the end.
When it was first staged in 1949, the play was greeted with enthusiastic reviews, and it won the Tony Award for Best Play, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was the first play to win all three of these major awards.
Miller died of heart failure at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, on the evening of February 10, 2005, the 56th anniversary of the first performance of Death of a Salesman on Broadway.
1.Why did Arthur Miller's father move to the USA?
A．He suffered from severe hunger in his home country.
B．He was attracted by the “Great American Dream.”
C．He hoped to make his son a dramatist.
D．His family business failed
2.What can we learn about Willy Loman?
A．He treats his employer badly.
B．He runs the Wagner Company.
C．He is a victim of the American system.
D．He is regarded as a hero by his colleagues.
3.After it was first staged, Death of a Salesman________.
A．achieved huge success
B．won the first Tony Award
C．was warmly welcomed by salesmen
D．was severely attacked by dramatists
4.What is the text mainly about?
A．Arthur Miller and his family.
B．The awards Arthur Miller won.
C．The hardship Arthur Miller experienced.
D．Arthur Miller and his best-known play.
高一英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881—1973) is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. It is said that everything his brush touched turned to gold. But in truth, the value of his work could be worth more than any precious metal. Picasso created more than 20,000 works in his life, including two of the world’s 10 most expensive paintings.
Between 1907 and 1913, Picasso and his colleague(同事) Georges Braque started a revolution(革命) in painting. Before that, paintings were like windows — they were painted to look as if they had depth. You could tell which objects were “close” to you and which objects were “far away”. But Picasso and Braque didn’t want to paint like that any more. To them, a painting wasn’t a window to the world; it was marks and lines on a flat surface. Why, they thought, should an object like a guitar be shown only from one angle (角度)? A guitar can look very different depending on which angle one looks at it from. Their answer was to show all the angles. They broke the guitar up into pieces. Their style of painting is called cubism.
But why did they feel such a need to change things? Well, the world around them was changing, too. Science was turning people’s ideas upside down. Albert Einstein’s theory was proving that what we knew about time and space was wrong. And new political movements like socialism were on the rise. The world was becoming different; artists needed to start seeing and painting it differently.
The famous and terrifying painting Guernica (1937) shows the horror of the bombing(轰炸) of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. In the painting, you can actually see the sky falling. Picasso couldn’t have painted it without the skills he learned during his cubist period. Breaking a guitar into pieces was his preparation for showing the world being blown to pieces.
1.What is the article mainly about?
A. The high price of Picasso’s paintings. B. Picasso’s difficulties in career.
C. The popularity of Picasso’s paintings. D. Picasso’s achievements in art.
2.In what way did Picasso and Braque paint?
A. They painted objects with different depths.
B. They made their paintings look like windows.
C. They painted an object from different angles.
D. They broke objects into pieces and painted them.
3.What caused Picasso and Braque to start cubism?
A. Einstein’s theory. B. The changing world.
C. The rising socialism. D. New political movements.
4.The painting Guernica is mentioned to show _______.
A. the themes of Picasso’s paintings B. the anger of Picasso at the war
C. the preparations Picasso made before D. the artistic effect of cubism
高一英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
One spring, when I was 10, during one of my father’s layoffs (失业), I could tell my mother was unhappy. I decided to cheer her up by buying her a special Mother’s Day gift.
One day after school I rode my bike to the Agins, which, I learned years later, was known for its high-end fashions (时尚) and styles. I introduced myself to Sylvia Agins, telling her I was looking for a Mother’s Day present.
“Do you think she’d like a purse?” she asked. I told her. I thought she might.
She took out an Italian handbag made of leather. She asked me what I thought, and I told her that my mom would like it.
“How much money do you have?” she asked.
“Twelve dollars,” I said.
“You’re in luck,” she told me. “It’s only $11. You have a dollar left over for the card.” She gift-wrapped the purse and thanked me for my business, and I rode off home with the package under my arm.
When my mother opened the gift the next Sunday morning, she asked in an accusing tone, “Where did you get this?”
“I bought it at the Agins. It cost me $11.” I said.
My mother was shocked into silence.
It wasn’t until many years later, when I learned that the purse was worth several hundred dollars, that I appreciated just how wonderful Sylvia Agins had been to me. I always felt bad that I never had a chance to properly thank her.
“You know, my son, what really amazes me to this day,” my mother said, “Letting you have the purse for just a few dollars was unbelievable enough. But the fact that she let you leave the store with a dollar for the card was a touch of kindness that I’ll never forget.”
1.The author bought his mother a purse to ________.
A. surprise his mother B. make his mother happy
C. show his ability of making money D. thank his mother for buying him a bike
2.Why was the author’s mother shocked into silence?
A. She wasn’t expecting a gift from her son.
B. The purse was bought from the Agins.
C. The author bought a card to go with the purse.
D. The Agins charged so little money for the purse.
3.Sylvia Agins’ behavior shows that________.
A. she is good at making money B. she is kind and thoughtful
C. she knows how to choose presents D. she is critical and mean
4.Which of the following can be the best title for the text?
A. An Unforgettable Event B. A Considerate Mother
C. A Priceless Mother’s Day Gift D. A Kind-hearted Shop Owner
高一英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析
.
Ⅲ.完形填空（20分）
Paracutin was born in Mexico in February, 1943. At the end of one week Paracutin was 500 feet high, and it is now over 9,000 feet high. Today Paracutin is 36 .
What is Paracutin? It was the first volcano in the world which was 37 from its eruption right up 38 the present day. On February 20th, 1943, a peasant and his wife set 39 to work in their own fields in the Mexican village of Paracutin. They were 40 to find the earth warm under their feet. Suddenly they heard noise 41 in the earth and a small hole 42 in their fields. In the afternoon there was a sudden loud noise and stones were 43 high in the air. The peasants ran from the fields and turned to watch. They saw the 44 of a volcano.
Large quantities of stones and lava 45 out and a little hill began to 46 . By evening this hill was 100 feet high and hot 47 were falling on the village. At night the strong light of the hot lava 48 up the countryside. The trees near the village were 49 and the villagers had to leave their houses. 50 the village was destroyed, its 51 was given to the volcano. The news quickly reached Mexico City, 52 to the east. Many people came to watch the 53 . The volcano grew for ten years and hundreds of square miles of 54 were destroyed. The Paracutin had gone to sleep 55 .
36.A. asleep B. active C. silent D. terrible
37.A. changed B. raised C. seen D. grown
38.A. on B. to C. from D. by
39.A. about B. on C. up D. out
40.A. frightened B. surprised C. worried D. disappointed
41.A. deep B. nearby C. outside D. from far
42.A. erupted B. appeared C. remained D. rose
43.A. thrown B. drawn C. pushed D. flown
44.A. access B. shape C. birth D. crash
45.A. wiped B. broke C. made D. stood
46.A. rise B. fall C. form D. spread
47.A. mud B. ashes C. virus D. powders
48.A. called B. added C. filled D. lit
49.A. cut B. killed C. lacked D. buried
50.A. Before B. Since C. When D. If
51.A. name B. place C. address D. spot
52.A. away B. far C. off D. back
53.A. nature B. wonder C. scene D. sign
54.A. forest B. houses C. land D. villages
55.A. from now on B. by now C. just now D. until now
高一英语完型填空简单题查看答案及解析