试题

试题 试卷

logo

题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通

湖北省宜昌市部分示范高中教学协作体2020届高三上学期英语9月月考试卷

阅读理解

    Microsoft PowerPoint is the world's most common presentation tool. It emerged from software company Forethought Inc in the 1980s. Bob Gaskins was the man behind it.

    "I knew in the early 80s that there were as many as a billion, a thousand million presentation slides being made per year just in America," Gaskins says, but they were all made by hand and almost nobody was using computers to do them.

    "It was clear to me that here was a huge application worth billions and billions of dollars a year that could be done on computers as soon as there was a revolution in the kinds of computers that we had."

    Gaskins was onto something, but it was a hard sell at the time. The software wouldn't run on any existing personal computers. Anyone wanting to use it had to buy a new machine. Even so, people bought personal computers for the first time in order to be able to use PowerPoint, says Wired magazine journalist Russell Davies.

    Davies explains that before PowerPoint, people used slides to convey information to groups — but anyone creating a presentation had to send away to get their materials made. It took a long time to do, was difficult to make changes and because it was so expensive, only the most senior people in an organisation got to do it.

    "PowerPoint," Davies says, "made it possible for everyone in an organisation to stand up and say their piece."

    PowerPoint has helped turn us all into presenters — but it' s also been accused of over-simplifying ideas and distracting (干扰)us from clear thinking.

    Sarah Kaplan is a management professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. She has noticed that, rather than people asking for new analysis or insights in meetings, they were asking for more PowerPoint slides.

    Kaplan says that some CEOS, such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos, have banned its use. "He felt, and I think many people feel, that PowerPoint became such an object of the process that they lost the ideas inside of it and that is the risk."

(1)、What drove Bob Gaskins to develop PowerPoint?
A、His personal needs at the office. B、The support from Forethought Inc. C、The great potential market demand. D、His interest in science and technology.
(2)、What was the problem with Bob Gaskin's PowerPoint in the 1980s?
A、It was very expensive. B、It was very difficult to use. C、It couldn't t be used on old computers. D、It couldn't satisfy young people's needs.
(3)、What might be Russell Davies's attitude to PowerPoint?
A、Critical. B、Appreciative. C、Cautious. D、Contradictory.
(4)、Why does Jeff Bezos ban the use of PowerPoint?
A、It fails to solve practical problems. B、It fails to convey messages effectively. C、It makes something valuable unavailable. D、It results in creative thinking getting ignored.
举一反三
阅读理解

Helicopter Aerial Tour

    Explore the Grand Cannon(大峡谷)from the eyes of the eagle. A wonderful 12-to 15-minute helicopter tour will soar through the canyon for an aerial experience of wonderful views. Our aerial tour is not available anywhere else in the world! Ticket: $120. 00 per person, plus 10% tax. Please call us at 1-888-868-9378 for seasonal rates, specials or to book by phone.

Helicopter-Boat Tour

    Helicopter tour starts at the Grand Canyon, West Side. Take a 4,000-fool fall to the Colorado River below. Helicopters fall 4,000 feet from the canyon side to the banks of the Colorado River where visitors can enjoy 3 15- to 20-minute boat ride down the Colorado.

Ticket: $150.00 per person, plus 10% tax.

Champagne Helicopter Tour

    Experience the beauty of the Grand Cannon: Soar above the Hoover Dam and the dead volcanoes. You go aboard a million-dollar helicopter with all forward facing scats allowing 180 degrees of views in air-conditioned comfort. You will see the Hoover Dam, the Colorado River, the Grand Cannon and more! You land to have a champagne picnic lunch at the Grand Cannon.

Las Vegas Adventure Tour

    Helicopter tours to the Grand Canyon West include a wonderful Las Vegas adventure tour. Aerial sightseeing tours originating in Las Vegas, Nevada include breathtaking views of Lake Mead, the Mohave Desert, and the west edge of the Grand Canyon. Aerial tours including the round trip as well as combination tours attract many visitors.

    Visitors arriving at the Hualapai elation's Grand Cannon West Airport may select one of the activities above.

阅读理解

    People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions — and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.

    Rachael Jack from University of Glasgow, said that rather than scanning evenly across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.

    "We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions," Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, while Easterners favor the eyes and ignore the mouth."

    According to Jack and his colleagues, the discovery shows that communication of human emotions is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used reliably to convey emotions in cross­cultural situations.

    The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the facial movements of 13 Western people and 13 Eastern people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, or angry. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.

    It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than Westerners did. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions," Jack said. "Our data suggests that while Westerners use the whole face to convey emotions, Easterners use the eyes more and the mouth less."

    In short, the data shows that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotions. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotions. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.

阅读理解

    Arthur Miller(1915-2005) is universally recognized as one of the greatest dramatists(剧作家) 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 (大萧条时期) 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 (标志) of worth. In Willy Loman, the hero of the play, we see a man who has got into trouble with his system, Willy is “burnt out” and in the cruel world of business there is no room for sentiment (情绪): 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 the 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.

阅读理解

    Technology offers conveniences such as opening the garage door from your car or changing the television station without touching the TV.

    Now one American company is offering its employees a new convenience: a microchip implanted (植入) in their hands. Employees who have these chips can do all kinds of things just by waving their hands. Three Square Market is offering to implant microchips in all of their employees for free. Each chip costs $300 and Three Square Market will pay for the chip. Employees can volunteer to have the chips implanted in their hands. About 50 out of 80 employees have chosen to do so. The president of the company, his wife and their children are also getting chips implanted in their hands.

    The chip is about the size of a grain of rice. Implanting the chip only takes about a second and is said to hurt only very briefly. The chips go under the skin between the thumb and forefinger. With a chip in the hand, a person can enter the office building, buy food, sign into computers and more, simply by waving that hand near a scanner. The chips will be also used to identify employees. Employees who want convenience, but do not want to have a microchip implanted under their skin, can wear a wristband (腕带) or a ring with a chip instead. They can perform the same tasks with a wave of their hands as if they had an implanted chip.

    Three Square Market is the first company in the United States to offer to implant chips in its employees. Epicenter, a company in Sweden, has been implanting chips in its employees for a while.

    Three Square Market says the chip cannot track the employees. The company says scanners can read the chips only when they are within a few inches of them. “The chips protect against identity theft, similar, to credit cards.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the chips back in 2004, so they should be safe for humans, according to the company.

    In the future, people with the chips may be able to do more with them, even outside the office. Todd Westby is Chief Executive Officer of Three Square Market. He says, “Eventually, this technology will become standardized allowing you to use this as your passport, public transit, all purchasing opportunities, etc.”

阅读短文,从每题所给的A、B、C和D四个选项中,选出最佳选项。

    I began cycling in 2004 when I was a poor student. It was dangerous, sure, but cycling is the fastest, cheapest point-to-point form of transport in Melbourne. I own a car now, but that's just for transporting the baby or groceries.

    I hate driving. So it's been quite encouraging watching the growth in cyclist numbers over the past decade. It is said that over 10,000 cyclists enter the CBD (Central Business District) each day, taking pressure off public transport. But as more people take to cycling as a way of transport, the number of cyclists seriously injured or killed keeps increasing. And that is a sign that our infrastructure (基础设施) is still not good enough.

    Melbourne was once a dream for cyclists—flat, long, wide roads, with plenty of paths along rivers. Now, cycling can be deadly, with roads taken up by cars. I have a friend who broke her back and was lucky to escape death and others with broken bones. In my time riding, I've been forced off the road by a truck, cut off by four-wheel drives, and told to get off the road. Drivers are a particularly rude to cyclists. And that's a sign of exactly one thing: inadequate infrastructure.

    We shouldn't need to be taught how to coexist in the same narrow space. Drivers and cyclists should be kept apart. Designing bike paths so riders are channelled between moving cars and parked cars is deadly. All it takes is one daydreaming driver to fling open the door and you are gone. That's what happened to the young university student James.

    This year, there are to be new cycling lanes (车道) built on Glen Road, where James died in 2010. But these lanes are not safe. Cyclists must still pass between two rows of cars.

阅读理解

Dear Students,

    I am delighted to be your guest.

    I would like to tell you about myself. I have been a news reporter for the past fifteen years. I chose this job so I could travel the world, but the job has taught me many unforgettable lessons. The work is sometimes difficult. I have seen famines, wars, earthquakes, poverty and death. But I have also seen courage, hope and happiness.

    In India, I visited a city where there were many homeless children. Some were as young as four years old. They lived in the streets and survived by begging or stealing. But then a wonderful lady called Rosa opened a home for them. Within one year, she was looking after two hundred children. She clothed them, fed them, and taught them. She gave them hope.

    Another time, I was in Turkey after a terrible earthquake, in one place. I found an old lady whose house was in ruins, her son was missing and rescuer workers said there was no chance that he was still alive. But the old lady did not give up hope. For four days, she moved heavy stones one at a time by herself. She did not stop until she found her son. He was alive.

    Here in China, I met a young boy with a serious condition. He had undergone twenty operations and spent nearly his whole life in hospital. I thought he would be sad, but when I met him, his smile was so warm and welcoming.

    In life, we need role models that we can admire and learn from. When my life is difficult, I try to remember the courage and goodness of these three people.

返回首页

试题篮