阅读下列材料，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题纸上将该选项标号涂黑。

           Graph can be a very useful tool for conveying information especially numbers， percentages, and other data . A graph gives the reader a picture to interpret. That can be a lot more pages and pages and pages explaining the data .

          Graphs can seem frightening, but reading a graph is a lot like reading a story. The graph has a title ,a main idea ,and supporting details .You can use your active reading skills to analyze and understand graphs just like any other text .

           Most graphs have a few basic parts: a caption or introduction paragraph, a title , a legend or key, and labeled axes. An active reader looks at each part of the graph before trying to interpret the data. Captions will usually tell you where the data came from (for example, a scientific study of 400 African elephants from 1980 to 2005). Captions usually summarize the author's main point as well. The title is very important. It tells you the main idea of the graph by stating what kind of information is being shown. A legend, also called a key ,is a guide to the symbols and colors used in the graph. Many graphs, including bar graphs and line graphs, have two axes that form a corner, Usually these axes are the left side and the bottom of the graph .Each axis will always have a label. The label tells you what each axis measures.

                   Bar Graphs

          A bar graph has two axes and uses bars to show amounts. In Graph 1 ,we see that the x-axis shows grades

that students earned, and the y-axis shows bow manystudents earned each grade .You can see that 6 students earned an A because the bar for A stretches up to 6 on the vertical measurement. There is a lot of information we can

get from a simple graph like this(See Graph 1).

          Line Graphs

A line graph looks similar to a bar graph ,but instead of Bars, it plots points and connects them with a line .It has the same parts as a bar graph – two labeled axes –and can be read the same way .To read a line graph, it's important to focus on the points of intersection rather than the line segments between the points, This type of graph is most commonly used to show how something changes over time.

Here is a graph that charts how far a bird flies during the first Five days of its spring migration (See Graph 2).

The unit of measurement for the x-axis is days. The unit of measurement for the y-axis is kilometers. Thus we can see that ,on the first day, the pipit flew 20 kilometers. The line segment goes up between Day 1 and Day 2,which means that the bird flew farther on Day 2.If the line segment angled dawn, as between Day 4 and Day 5,it would mean that the bird flew fewer kilometers than the day before. This line graph is a quick, visual way to tell the reader about the bird's migration.

    Pie Graphs

           A typical pie graph looks like a circular pie. The circle is divided into sections, and each section represents a fraction of the data. The graph is commonly used to show percentages; the whole pie represents l00 percent, so each piece is a fraction of the whole.

A pie graph might include a legend，or it might use icons or labels within each slice. This pie graph shows on month's expense, (See Graph 3 ).

Food $ 25

Movies $ 12

Clothing $ 36

Savings $ 20

Books $ 7

    Dolphins (海豚) live in a dark underwater world. It's often impossible to see each other or anything else around them, so sound plays an important role in their survival. To communicate with each other, dolphins produce all kinds of sounds.

    Only other dolphins understand what the sounds mean. Scientists haven't uncovered their secret communication, except for one kind of whistle. It might last less than a second, but this whistle is a big deal. Why? Because these whistles are actually names of dolphins — and every dolphin has one. Scientists call these sounds a “signature whistle.” When other dolphins hear the whistle, they know which dolphin is calling.

    Dolphins often hunt by themselves but still need to stay connected to the group. Since they can't always see each other, dolphins use their signature whistles to check in with other dolphins hundreds of yards away. “In coastal areas, dolphins exchange whistles even when they're a third of a mile apart,” says Greg Campbell, who studies animals. That means dolphins shout out to group members that might be nearly five football fields away.

    What's amazing is who names the baby dolphin. Not the mother. Not an auntie dolphin or another group member. Scientists believe the baby dolphin itself comes up with the signature whistle. Like human babies, a baby dolphin plays with sounds throughout its first year. While testing its sound skills, a baby dolphin is doing something amazing. It's creating or figuring out its signature whistle. How or why it chooses its signature whistle is not clear. Studies show that most of the time the signature whistle is nothing like its mother's or group members' whistles.

    When the baby dolphin is about a year old, its signature whistle is set. It repeats it often so the other dolphins learn to recognize it.

    Deciphering(破译) dolphin names is just the beginning of figuring out what dolphins communicate about. Do they chat about sharks? Discuss the tides? Maybe they even have a name for people. Someday scientists are to decipher the rest of dolphins' communication.

    Public transport is declining in the rich world. To those who have to squeeze onto the number 25 bus in London, or the A train in New York, the change might not be noticeable. But public transport is becoming less busy in those places, and passenger numbers are flat or falling in almost every American city. That is despite healthy growth in urban populations and employment.

    Although transport agencies blame their unpopularity on things like road works and broken signals, it seems more likely that they are being outcompeted. App-based taxi services like Uber and Lyft are more comfortable and convenient than trains or buses. Cycling is nicer than it was, and rental bikes are more widely available. Cars are cheap to buy, thanks to cut-rate loans, and ever cheaper to run. Online shopping, home working and office-sharing mean more people can avoid travelling altogether.

    The competition is only likely to grow. More than one laboratory is developing new transport technologies and applications. Silicon Valley invented Uber and, more recently, apps that let people rent electric scooters(滑板车) and then abandon them on the pavement. China created sharing-bicycles and battery-powered "e-bikes", both of which are spreading.

    Transport agencies should accept the upstarts, and copy them. Cities tend either to ignore app-based services or to try to push them off the streets. That is understandable, given the rules-are-for-losers attitude of firms like Uber. But it is an error.

    It is doubtful that most people make hard distinctions between public and private transport. They just want to get somewhere, and there is a cost in time, money and comfort. An ideal system would let them move across a city for a single payment, transferring from trains to taxis to bicycles as needed. Building a platform to allow that is hard, and requires much sweet-talking of traditional networks as well as technology firms. It is probably the secret to keeping cities moving.

    It was rainy, and I had no desire to drive up the winding mountain road to my daughter Carolyn's house. But she had insisted that I come to see something at the top of the mountain.

    So here I was, reluctantly making the two-hour journey through fog that hung like veils. By the time I saw how thick it was near the summit, I'd gone too far to turn back.

    Nothing could be worth this, I thought as I inched along the dangerous highway.

    "I'll stay for lunch, but I' m heading back down as soon as the fog lifts," I announced when I arrived.

    "But I need you to drive me to the garage to pick up my car," Carolyn said, "Could we at least do that?"

    "How far is it?" I asked.

    "About three minutes," she said, "I'll drive—I'm used to it."

    After ten minutes on the mountain road, I looked at her anxiously. "I thought you said three minutes."

    She grinned. "This is a detour."

    Turning down a narrow track, we parked the car and got out. We walked along a path that was thick with old pine needles. Huge black-green evergreens towered over us. Gradually, the peace and silence of the place began to fill my mind.

    Then we turned a comer and stopped—and I gasped in amazement.

    From the top of the mountain, sloping for several acres across the mountain side and valleys, were rivers of flowers in numerous colors. It looked as though the sun had tipped over and spilled gold down the mountainside.

    A series of questions filled my mind. Who created such beauty? Why? How?

    As we approached the home that stood in the center of the property, we saw a sign that read: "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking."

    The first answer was: "One Woman—Two Hands, Two Feet, and Very Little Brain." The second was: "One at a Time." The third: "Started in 1958."

    As we drove home, I was so moved by what we had seen. I could scarcely speak. "She changed the world." I finally said, "one bulb (球茎) at a time. She started almost 40 years ago, probably just the beginning of an idea, but she kept at it."

    The wonder of it would not let me go. "Imagine," I said, "if I'd had a vision and worked at it, just a little bit every day, what might I have accomplished?"

    Carolyn looked at me sideways, smiling. "Start tomorrow," she said. "Better yet, start today."

    When I was a boy, our extended, immigrant family would sometimes gather at my aunt's tiny house over the summer. Relatives from all over the country would come in to visit. The adults would crowd together in the living room to talk and catch up on each other's lives. And the kids would be sent out into the front yard to play when dinner was slowly cooked for all of us.

    Those were the days before video games, smart phones, and motorized toys, so we often ended up playing an old game. I remember one of those moments especially. As I was the youngest and smallest of all the kids there, I got caught first and couldn't catch anyone else. My brothers and cousins were all too fast for me, and I grew more and more frustrated. I finally fell my face first into the dirt. I got up with tears forming in my eyes. Then I saw one of my female cousins Susan standing there. She started to run but was going much slower than before. I easily caught up and seized her. Then she turned to me, smiled, and said, I'm it! You'd better run! Iran off laughing with glee while she turned and started to chase others.

    Now I see how her act of kindness that day saved me from sadness and returned me to joy. It didn't matter that we hardly ever saw each other. I know we are family and she loves me.

    In her wonderful book: Box of Butterflies, Roma Downey writes, "We are all one, we all belong to each other, and we are one big beautiful family." Perhaps it is time that we all started to treat each other that way. Perhaps it is time that we shared our love, our kindness, our laughter, and our joy with everyone without fear. Perhaps it is time to finally and forever bring this world together in one big family reunion.

    I was on my way home from work, cutting through the Bryant Park. On that day, the sun seemed to set faster than usual, and suddenly I found myself walking in the dark. I was less than half a mile from my apartment, but the path would lead me over a bridge, across train tracks, and through an unlit underpass.

    Then I heard him – a stranger running alongside me, partly obscured(遮掩) by the bushes. My mouth went dry; my legs felt like water. But I didn't pick up my pace – instead, I stopped, turned, and faced him. He came out of the bushes and said he'd been watching me "for a long time".

    As he walked beside me, I guided us towards the edge of the park. When we reached the bridge, a train rumbled(轰鸣着缓慢行进) past, and he seized the moment, attacking me with a knife around my throat. The self-defense skills I had learned years before kicked in, and I pushed my finger into his eye, hard. And then came the shock: That didn't frighten him away. My mind flashed back to a tip from an old guitar teacher: "Press the strings like you're squeezing a flea(跳蚤)." I put all my strength into that finger, and finally he let go.

    I was shaking with fear, but I looked him straight in the eye and began to back away. I turned to run the hell out of there, but then I remembered another self-defense lesson: Never run, because then you're a target. So I walked away alone – through the dark tunnel as I dialed 911 with trembling fingers. If you ever find yourself in this situation, use these self-defense skills that you already know. They can really make all the difference to you.