If you are reading this right now, you are ta...

If you are reading this right now, you are taking part in the wonder of literacy. Because of printed words, people can relay information across both time and space. Much of the credit for this phenomenon can be attributed to one man.

Born in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg, studied at the University of Erfurt in 1418 and spent much of his young adult life practicing the profession of goldsmithing. In 1439 Gutenberg borrowed money from investors but found himself in financial trouble.

In 1439 the city in which Gutenberg lived was planning to exhibit a large collection of some relics, which was expected to bring many visitors to the town. Gutenberg created many metal mirrors which were to be sold to the visitors. The mirrors probably would have sold well, but due to severe flooding the event was delayed by one year. The investors demanded that Gutenberg return their investments, but he had already spent the money on the mirrors. In order to satisfy the investors, Gutenberg decided to share his secret with them. This secret would forever change the world, all of history, and even the, process of keeping history. He had created the mechanical printing press with movable type.

Gutenberg’s brilliant idea would soon change the world, but he was in financial trouble once again and was accused of mismanaging money. The courts ruled against Gutenberg and Gutenberg lost .the shop he had created.

Before the spread of Gutenberg, s idea, literature was primarily handwritten and thus books were extremely rare and valuable. There was little reason for common people to learn to read or write. Gutenberg’s invention would change all of that. His printing press allowed literature to be produced on a mass scale. His movable metal type could be arranged once to form a page, and his press could print the page again and again.

Though Gutenberg had failed as a businessman, the technologies that he had created spread across Europe rapidly. As these printing technologies and techniques spread, news and books began to travel across Europe much faster than previously possible. The world has not been the same since.

1.Which of the following can replace the underlined word in Paragraph one?

A. referred　　 B. devoted

C. exposed　　 D. owed

2.Why did Gutenberg’s plan to sell mirrors fail?

A. The mirrors were less popular than he had expected.

B. Flooding delayed the event for an entire year.

C. Too many other people had the same idea.

D. Newly invented glass mirrors made his metal mirrors old-fashioned.

3.Which of the following is best supported by evidence from the text?

A. Gutenberg’s idea was a tremendous success that made him incredibly wealthy.

B. Gutenberg’s idea didn’t become popular in his lifetime, but grew very popular after his death.

C. Gutenberg, s idea did not make him rich but spread very quickly.

D. Gutenberg, s idea did not become popular right away but made him incredibly rich over time.

4.Which of the following titles best expresses the main idea of this text?

A. Investing Wisely: Turning Your Good Ideas into Money

B. How to Make Books Using the Gutenberg Method

C. The City of Mainz: Life in Medieval Germany

D. Gutenberg: A Man Who Changed the World

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Will you stop using plastic?

If you take a look around your kitchen or office right now, chances are that you’ll notice you’re surrounded by plastic—water bottles, to-go coffee cups, straws (吸管), plastic grocery bags, food wrappers, take-out containers, single-serve coffee pods and produce bags. 1.

It’s certainly not realistic to remove all plastic from your life, but let’s examine some statistics that may encourage you to reduce your single-use plastic footprint by throwing away straws, switching to reusable water bottles, bringing cloth bags to the grocery store and more.

According to a study published in the journal Science Advances, the popularity of plastic, which began rising in the 1950s, is growing out of control. 2. And there’s no sign of slowing down, considering scientists say that another 12 trillion kilograms will be produced worldwide by 2050.

“Every piece of plastic that has ever been created will remain in the environment in some form, but once we conveniently throw out our rubbish at home, wind and runoff carry our waste from landfills and streets to the ocean,” says Mystic Aquarium’s chief clinical veterinarian Jennifer Flower, DVM, MS. “Given that we are globally producing over 320 million tons of plastic annually, the marine environment is taking a big hit from our daily disposal of plastic.

3. For example, newborn fish are mistaking tiny bits of plastic waste for food. If they die, there will be fewer big fish—and that could damage the food chain. Often our society is so focused on making our lives more convenient in the short term, but in the long run, our health and the health of marine life are at the expense of those everyday conveniences.”

4. A recent report suggests that when heated, certain food additives (添加剂) can damage hormones, growth and development, as well as increase chances for children of being fat. 5. It is found in plastic containers and metal cans. Parents are urged to avoid using microwaves to warm food and drinks or placing plastics in the dishwasher.

A. Our plastic consumption is directly affecting the life in the ocean.

B. People are concerned about the results of overusing plastic containers.

C. 8.2 trillion kilograms of plastic have been produced around the world.

D. Using plastic containers in microwaves is also harmful to children’s health.

E. Let’s stop using plastic for the benefit of the environment and human beings.

F. These are all examples of single-use plastic products, which is a hot topic nowadays.

G. The most concerning artificial additive BPA is a chemical used in the production of plastics.

高三英语七选五中等难度题查看答案及解析

Wherever in the world you’re reading this right now, you will be aware of just how mixed modern society has become in terms of race. Within the UK, mixed-raced children are the largest 1 ethnic minority. Bringing home a partner of a different 2 to yourself is no longer viewed as, “strange” or “different” in a lot of families. When Joseph brought home Hari, the 3 that she was of Indian parentage was never even talked about — she made him happy. They made each other happy. And that was all that 4.

But the reason why they were together for 11 years before they got 5 is that Hari was afraid of telling her 6 about the person that she’d fallen in love with. She was afraid of the consequences it would 7 for her younger sisters. Would they be packed off to India? Would they end up in arranged 8 they may not want? At 22 years old, when she first fell in love with him — it was a large burden to 9.

But she loved him, and 10 they moved in together… and then bought a house by the Brighton coast, where they have 11 for almost 8 years. All the while her parents didn’t know. Her sisters did, and they too loved Joseph — they 12 him as the brother they’d never had.

But after nine years together, she finally had to tell her father (her mother 13 away a few years ago). We were on tenderhooks（惶恐不安）the weekend she went up North to tell him.

It was emotional and as a family we were worried. Hari had been 14 of our family for so long, we felt for her. We knew how 15 it would be. She loved her father, but knew this would hurt him, who was a very traditional Sikh man.

高三英语完型填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

Right now you are reading English. That means that you are using your brain in a very active way. Reading is a very active process. 1.. When you read a text, you have to do some or all of these:

• Imagine a scene in your head

• Understand clearly what the writer is trying to say

• Agree or disagree with the writer

There are also many advantages associated with reading, including:

2.

You will usually meet with new words when you read. If there are too many new words for you, then the level is too high and you should read something simpler. But if there are, say, a maximum of five new words per page, you will learn this vocabulary easily. You may not even need to use a pocket dictionary because you can guess the meaning from the rest of the text. 3..

A model for writing

When you read, it gives you a good example for writing. Texts that you read show you structures and expressions that you can use when you write.

Seeing “correctly structured” English

When people write, they usually use “correct” English with a proper grammatical structure. 4.. So, by reading you see and learn grammatical English naturally.

5.

You can read as fast or as slowly as you like. You can read ten pages in 30 minutes, or take one hour to explore just one page. It doesn’t matter. The choice is yours. You can not easily do this when speaking or listening. This is one of the big advantages of reading because different people work at different speeds.

A. Working at your own speed

B. Learning vocabulary in context (语境)

C. This is not always true when people speak

D. Focusing on exactly what you want to learn

E. you should write down unknown vocabulary in whole sentences

F. Not only do you learn new words, but you see them being used naturally

G. It is true that the writer does a lot of work, but the reader also has to work hard

高三英语七选五简单题查看答案及解析

Would you please _______ this form for me to see if I’ve filled it in right?

A.take off                              B.look after

C.give up                                   D.go over

高三英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

If you are not reading this on a screen then you hold in your hands one of humanity’s world-changing inventions. Yet that power has not been matched by fame: paper delights in self-modesty, pointing you to the words on its surface and so acting only as a stage for ideas and arguments that have changed history.

Without that stage, the written and printed word would have attracted only a small audience.All the alternatives to paper commonly used throughout our pre-digital history have been too rare, too heavy, too expensive or too inconvenient to deliver words to a wide number of people,let alone a mass readership

Paper has enabled writers to reach unprecedented(前所未有) numbers throughout history.Among them were the Buddhist missionary translators from South and Central Asia who brought their religion to China almost two thousand years ago. The paper age has its outstanding personalities: Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose collected works when combined fill more than 200 volumes.

For many of us, it has only been the rise of digital media that has finally opened our eyes to papers striking existence everywhere. Of course, paper has found thousands of roles for itself,writing aside. Your bedside lamp glows through a paper cover and the cups in the office coffee machine are made from paper. It can be as common and practical as a bus ticket or it can be treasured and expensive as the carrier of the worlds best-loved painting.

It is clear that many predictions of paper's extinction have been premature-and greatly overstated. Much of the 400 million tons of paper produced annually is absolutely necessary to our way of life. The bigger question, of course, concerns the one role paper has had that has been transformative for the world. namely as the carrier of written or printed text. Already,it is leaving much of the difficult work of words to digital media, and many of its centuries-old roles have already been largely transferred to the screen. There is also a sense in which paper has itself become a subject, rather than simply a medium. This began to become clear in art several decades ago. as paper became not simply the backdrop (背景) for art but, in a few cases, the stuff of the art itself.

This doesn’t mean that papers uses as a vehicle for words will end, but it does signal a slowing down. More than that, it signals that paper's greatest virtues are no longer good enough.Those virtues enabled unprecedented periods of cultural expansiveness. just as they encouraged knowledge, beliefs and ideas to move further down the socio-cconomic ladder. Yet such transformative qualities are shared by paper's digital opponent(对手), and paper can no longer compete on speed of delivery, scale of information immediately available, or ease of access.

Paper's historic dynamism(活力)has received its first great challenge and, in many aspects,it appears to be losing Nostalgia(怀旧)simply dismisses paper to a museum piece. But there are reasons to think that the dynamism that paper has exhibited over some 20 centuries will not be transferred totally to digital media. There are a few practical reasons. Electric power is always needed for digital media, of course. More importantly, anything online can, potentially, be hacked into. Your own reading choices can be viewed from the other side of the world. Even what you write can be viewed and changed or deleted. But it is the ownership of knowledge that matters most. As Amazon recently reminded a kindle reader who had lost the text of a book he was reading. you do not "own" your books on Kindle, as you own a physical book. You simply have the right to access them.

The digital revolution certainly provides unprecedented access to knowledge. But it is access only. Text that you can hold, shelve and own, due to paper, will always have a magic all its own.

1.Why does paper not have well-deserved fame?

A. Much information is available on a screen.

B. It takes great delight in being modest.

C. Only a small crowd enjoys the benefits of it.

D. It always guides readers to focus more on itself.

2.The underlined part in Paragraph 4 implies that the digital media 　　　 .

A. ignores the existence of paper

B. promotes the wide use of paper

C. replaces the functions of paper

D. helps us realize the roles of paper

3.One reason why paper won' t come to an end is that 　　　 .

A. it is being mass-produced

B. it is more than a medium

C. it has a centuries-old role

D. it is a well-known invention

4.What’s the purpose of mentioning the best virtues of paper in Paragraph 6?

A. To show its fast development.

B. To prove its unchanged strength.

C. To indicate its loss of competitiveness.

D. To bring back its past brilliance.

5.What is the biggest problem the digital media face?

A. It depends on electric power.

B. Personal privacy is easy to leak.

C. Users only have the right to use.

D. The joy of reading is hard to feel.

6.What is the best title for the passage?

A. The History of Paper

B. The Power of Paper

C. The Development of Paper

D. The Application of Paper

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Whether or not your mouth is moving right now, you are talking to yourself. As you read these words, your facial muscles are having quick, invisible movements, sounding out the words so you can actually hear them in your head. This kind of speech is called "subvocalization", and unless you're a speed-reader who has trained yourself out of this habit, you're doing it every time you read or even imagine a word.

Now, MIT researchers want to use those subvocalization to know what's in your mind and translate it into digital orders, using a wearable smart headset called AlterEgo. The headset combines human and machine in some ways.

According to the MIT Media Lab, the device would allow users to send silent orders to the headset simply by thinking of a word. A neural (神经的) network would translate the muscle movements to speech and do the user's orders—totally hands-and-voice-free. Let's say you want to ask AlterEgo what time it is. First, you think the word "time". As you do, your facial muscles make micro-movements to sound out the word in your head. Electrodes(电极) on the headset record these movements and then send them to a computer. The neural network processes these signals the same way a speech-to-text program might, and responds by telling you the time.

In a small study, 10 volunteers read a list of numbers to themselves while wearing AlterEgo headsets. AlterEgo correctly got which numbers the participants were reading with an average accuracy of 92 percent. For comparison, Google's microphone-based speech-to-text translation service has an accuracy of about 95 percent.

“We basically can’t live without our digital devices,” said Pattie Maes, an MIT professor. "But at the moment, the use of those devices is causing some problems in our life. My students and I have been experimenting with new types of experience that enable people to still benefit from all the wonderful knowledge and services that these devices provide but do it in a way that lets them remain in the present.”

1.We can learn from the first paragraph that “ subvocalization” _______.

A. is less used in life now

B. is more effective than speed reading

C. refers to a silent way of reading something

D. means reading something in a detailed way

2.What does Paragraph 3 mainly talk about?

A. How AlterEgo works.

B. The production of AlterEgo.

C. The disadvantages of AlterEgo.

D. How to wear AlterEgo correctly.

3.The test in Paragraph 4 suggests that AlterEgo _______.

A. has good working performance

B. has become a popular digital product

C. works better than Googles similar service

D. is unable to complete complex tasks at present

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

If it were not for the fact that you _____ ill, I would ask you to do this right now.

高三英语单项填空简单题查看答案及解析

If you are a male and you are reading this ,congratulations: you are a survivor .According to statistics, you are more than twice as likely to die of skin cancer than a woman ,and nine times more likely to die of AIDS. Assuming you make it to the end of your natural term, about 78 years for men in Australia, you will die on average five years before a woman.

There are many reasons for this-typically, men take more risks than women and are more likely to drink and smoke but perhaps more importantly, men don’t go to the doctor.

“Men aren’t seeing doctors as often as they should, ” says Dr. Gullotta, “This is particularly so for the over-40s,when diseases tend to strike.” According to a recent survey, 95%of women aged between 15 and early 40s see a doctor once a year, compared to 70% of men in the same age group.

“A lot of men think they are invincible （不可战胜的）,”Gullotta says.  “They only come in when a friend drops dead on the golf course and they think, Geez, if it could happen to him……”

Then there is the ostrich(鸵鸟) approach, “ Some men are scared of what might be there and would rather not know, ” says Dr. Ross Cartmill.

“Most men get their cars serviced more regularly than they service their bodies,” Cartmill says .He believes most diseases that commonly affect men could be addressed by preventive check-ups. “Prevention is cheaper in the long run than having to treat the diseases. Besides, the final cost is far greater, it is called premature death.”

1.Why does the author congratulate his male readers at the beginning of the passage?

A. Their can live longer than they expected.

B. They are sure to enjoy a longer and happier life.

C. They have lived long enough to read this article.

D. They are more likely to survive serious diseases today.

2.Which of the author’s statements is the most important reason that men die five years earlier on average than women according to the passage?

A. Men drink and smoke much more than women.

B. Men don’t seek medical care as often as women.

C. Men are more likely to suffer from deadly diseases.

D. Men aren’t as cautions as women in face of danger.

3.Which of the following best completes the sentence “Geez, if it could happen to him,…’?

A. it could happen to me, too

B. it would be a big misfortune.

C. I should avoid playing golf.

D. I should consider myself lucky.

4.What does Dr. Ross Cartmill mean by “the ostrich approach”(in para.5)

A. A casual attitude towards one’s health conditions.

B. A new theatment for certain psychological problems.

C. Refusal to get medical treatment for fear of the pain involved.

D. Unwillingness to find out about one’s disease because of fear.

5.What does Cartmill say about regular check-ups for men?

A.They may increase public expenses

B.They will save money in the long run

C.They may cause psychological strains on men

D.They will enable men to live as long as women

高三英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析

What do you usually do when you have some free time? Do you take part in any form of hobby? If your answer is no, then you should think twice. Experiencing some type of interest or hobby might be the ideal way to develop your brain and improve your creative thinking.

Here is a common problem that many older people have. They have spent such a great deal of time raising their family that once their children are grown and left home, they all of a sudden start to experience their age. Quite often, it is not their age that is the concern. It is the fact that they are unexpectedly offered more time on their hands.

When you put in too much time not doing anything, this can affect your brain. This is just where the expression “If you don’t use it, you lose it” definitely is the truth. Your mind needs working out much like any other muscle in your body. This is why getting a hobby matters. It offers you something to do and is a perfect way to meet new people.

Enjoying a hobby is also a perfect way to improve creative thinking at any age. Even young children can profit from taking a new hobby. For retired people, enjoying a hobby which they can find entertainment in with their grandchildren will help keep them active and feeling young at heart.

Several hobbies that are terrific for both your mind and you body include yoga, biking, swimming and golf. If you aren’t fond of sports, even taking a walk regularly is a wonderful way to keep active. It helps you to appreciate fresh scenery and it has been suggested that the colors green and blue help make you more creative.

As you can see above, you can get pretty much from taking a hobby. With so many choices waiting for you, begin your journey right away!

1.What can be implied about many older people from Paragraph 2?

A. They lock creative thinking.

B. They should develop their brain.

C. They concern about their age.

D. They used to have little free time.

2.Why does getting a hobby matter according to the text?

A. It strengthens one’s brain.

B. It helps build up one’s muscle.

C. It enables one to make friends.

D. It improves one’s living conditions.

3.What does the underlined word “terrific” in Paragraph 5 probably mean?

A. Specific.　　 B. Disgusting.

C. Wonderful.　　 D. Fundamental.

4.Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A. Trying different hobbies　　 B. Spending your free time

C. Experiencing your hobby now　　 D. Feeling young at heart

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析