阅读理解

Tail Spin

    Two dolphins race around in a big pool in the Ocean Park. The smaller dolphin Grace, shown off a few of her tricks, turning around and waving hello to the crowd. The most amazing thing about her, however, is that she's even swimming at all. She doesn't have a tail.

Grace lost her tail as a baby when she got caught up in a fish trap. When the dolphin arrived at the Ocean Park in December 2005, she was fighting for her life. “Is she going to make it?” Her trainer, Abbey Stone, feared the worst. Grace did make it — but her tail didn't. She ended up losing her flukes and the lower part of her peduncle.

Over the past six years, she has learned to swim without her tail. Dolphins swim by moving their flukes and peduncle up and down. Grace taught herself to move another way—like a fish! She pushed herself forward through the water by moving her peduncles from side to side.

    The movement put harmful pressure on Grace's backbone. So a company offered to create a man-made tail for her. The tail had to be strong enough to stay on Grace as she swam but soft enough that it wouldn't hurt her.

    The first time Grace wore the artificial tail. She soon shook it off and let it sink in the bottom of the pool. Now, she is still learning to use the tail. Some days she wears it for an hour at a time, others not at all. “The tail isn't

necessary for her to feel comfortable,” says Stone, “but it helps to keep that range of motion(动作) and build muscles(肌肉).”

    Now, the dolphin is about to get an even happier ending. This month, Grace will star in Dolphin Tale, a film that focus on her rescue and recovery. Her progress has inspired more than just a new movie. Many people travel from near and far to meet her. Seeing Grace swim with her man-made tail gives people so much courage.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

Shakespeare's Sister

    Let us imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith.

    Shakespeare himself went, very probably — his mother was an heiress — to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin — Ovid, Virgil and Horace — and the elements of grammar and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached (偷猎) rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighborhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the centre of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practicing his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen.

    Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as curious to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew(炖锅) and not moon about with books and papers. They would have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were practical people who knew the conditions of life for a woman. Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be engaged to the son of a neighboring wool stapler(经销商). She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or fine dresses, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart?

    The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down by a rope one summer's night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen. The birds that sang in the woods were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother's, for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager — a fat, loose-lipped man — howled with laughter. He roared something about puppies dancing and women acting — no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a bar or roam (游荡) the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways. At last — for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows — at last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so — who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and confined in a woman's body? — killed herself one winter's night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses (公共汽车) now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.

    That, more or less, is how the story would run, if a woman in Shakespeare's day had had Shakespeare's genius.

    There is distinction between reading for information and reading for understanding. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    The first sense is the one in which we read newspapers, magazines, or anything else. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Such materials may increase our store of information, but they cannot improve our understanding. And clearly we don't have any difficulty in gaining the new information, for our understanding was equal to them before we started. Otherwise, we would have felt the shock of puzzlement.

    The second sense is the one in which we read something that at first we do not completely understand. Here the thing to be read is at the first sight better or higher than the reader. The writer is communicating something that can increase the reader's understanding. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Otherwise one person could never learn from another. Here “learning” means understanding more, not remembering more information.

    What are the conditions in this kind of reading? First, there is inequality in understanding {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Besides, his book must convey something he possesses and his potential readers lack. Second, the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree. And he should always try to reach the same level of understanding with the writer. If the equality is approached, success of communication is achieved.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} It is the least demanding and requires the least amount of effort. Everyone who knows how to read can read for entertainment if he wants to. In fact, any book that can be read for understanding or information can probably be read for entertainment as well.

A．Thus, we can employ the word “reading” in two distinct senses.

B．Such communication between unequals must be possible.

C．We can get access to the content of those materials easily.

D．The writer must be “superior” to the reader in understanding.

E. The writer should have a better communicating skill.

F. Besides gaining information and understanding, there's another goal of reading—entertainment.

G. Reading for entertainment is capable of increasing our understanding for   information.

    The oddness of life in space never quite goes away. Here are some examples.

    First consider something as simple as sleep. Its position presents its own challenges. The main question is whether you want your arms inside or outside the sleeping bag. If you leave your arms out, they float free in zero gravity, often giving a sleeping astronaut the look of a funny balled （芭蕾）dancer. “I'm an inside guy,” Mike Hopkins says, who returned from a six-month tour on the International Space Station. “I like to be wrapped up.”

    On the station, the ordinary becomes strange. The exercise bike for the American astronauts has no handlebars. It also has no seat. With no gravity, it's just as easy to pedal violently. You can watch a movie while you pedal by floating a microcomputer anywhere you want. But station residents have to be careful about staying in one place too long. Without gravity to help circulate air, the carbon dioxide you exhale (呼气) has a tendency to form an invisible （隐形的）cloud around you head. You can end up with what astronauts call a carbon-dioxide headache.

    Leroy Chiao, 54, an American retired astronaut after four flights, describes what happens even before you float out of your seat,”Your inner ear thinks your're falling . Meanwhile your eyes are telling you you're standing straight. That can be annoying—that's why some people feel sick.” Within a couple days —truly terrible days for some —astronauts' brains learn to ignore the panicky signals from the inner ear, and space sickness disappears.

    Space travel can be so delightful but at the same time invisibly dangerous. For instance, astronauts lose bone mass. That's why exercise is considered so vital that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) puts it right on the workday schedule. The focus on fitness is as much about science and the future as it is about keeping any individual astronauts return home, and, more importantly, how to maintain strength and fitness for the two and a half years or more that it would take to make a round-trip to Mars.

    In the professional or career world, a gap year is when one stops their formal work life to pursue other interests. However, today gap year refers mostly to a year taken between high school and college.

    During this gap year, American students engage in advanced academic courses, extra-academic courses and non-academic courses, such as yearlong pre-college math courses, language studies, learning a trade, art studies, volunteer work, travel, internships(实习), sports and more.

    British and European students, however, take a much more vacation style approach to the “Gap Year” by generally working for 3-6 months and then traveling throughout the globe for the remaining time before college begins. This is intended to expand the mind, personal confidence, experiences, and interests before college.

    Let's look at the gap year in the following countries:

Denmark

    Denmark has tried to limit the number of students who take a year out, punishing students who delay their education to travel abroad or work full-time. In 2015, it was announced that fewer students than before had taken a year out.

India

    In India, the practice of taking time out after high school education, popularly called a drop year, has been on a quick rise in recent years, primarily students deciding to enroll in coaching institutions to prepare themselves for rigorous(严格的)college entrance examinations. However, using that year for travel is still not common.

Republic of Korea

     In republic of Korea, gap year is defined as time for the youth to think about directions of their lives by going through gap year programs such as voluntary activity, career exploration, education, having a relationship, internship and enterprise while he/she pauses studying.

United Kingdom

    In the United Kingdom a year out is a common choice before university, again to travel or volunteer, gaining life experience. All universities seem to welcome gap year applicants, no different from going straight to university from previous education.

    If you're a design enthusiast, you're sure to feel dizzy over these jaw-dropping pools.

    Sky Park Infinity Pool, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

    Located on the Sky Park above Singapore's most famous hotel, Marina Bay Sands this is the world's largest rooftop pool. Offering amazing views of the city's skyline, the pool is at least three times the length of an Olympic swimming pool. As visitors swim toward the edge, they face an illusion that they'll float into the sky-line. It's quite a heart-beaten rush!

    The Red Pool, The Library Koh Samui. Thailand

    This blood-red pool is perhaps one of the most special hotel pools on the list. Set against the backdrop of Koh Samui's Chaweng Beach, the fascinating colour isn't the result of using artificial dye. Rather, the mosaic tiles(马赛克瓷砖) of orange, yellow and red make the brilliant sight that is set among trees and an open-air library.

    San Alfonso del Mar Resort Pool. Region de valparaiso, Chile

    The world's largest outdoor swimming pool gets its water directly from the sea. The pool uses a computer-controlled pump and filtration system. Located at Chile's San Alfonso del Mar Resort, this huge man-made pool is larger than 20 Olympic-size pools and holds approximately 250 million litres of water. It also holds the Guinness World Record for being the world's deepest (115 feet)pool.

    Y-40 Deep Joy, Hotel Millepini Terme in Montegrotto Terme, Italy

    The deepest hotel swimming pool in the world will make you feel like you're jumping into the sea! The Y-40 Deep Joy is a round-shaped pool that reaches a depth of an impressive 130 feet. The pool, which has special caves， ledges(壁架) and underwater viewing glass, was designed by well-known- architect Emanuele Boaretto. It's meant for leisure dives, dive training and photo shoots.