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题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通

牛津译林版高中英语高三上册模块9 Unit 1 Other countries, other cultures 同步练习

阅读理解

    The U. S. Postal Service (USPS) is losing billions of dollars a year. The government company that delivers "small mail" is losing out to email and other types of electronic communication. First-class mail amount fell from a high point of 104 million pieces in 2000 to just 64 million pieces by 2014.

    Congress permits the 600.000-empIoyee USPS to hold a monopoly (垄断) over first-class and standard mail. The company pays no federal, state or local taxes; pays no vehicle fees; and is free from many regulations on other businesses. Despite these advantages, the USPS has lost $52 billion since 2007, and will continue losing money without major reforms.

    The problem is that Congress is preventing the USPS from reducing costs as its sales decline, and is blocking efforts to end Saturday service and close unneeded post office locations. USPS also has a costly union-dominated workforce that slows the introduction of new ideas or methods down. USPS workers earn significantly higher payment than comparable private-sector workers. The answer is to privatize the USPS and open postal markets to competition. With the rise of the Internet, the argument that mail is a natural monopoly that needs government protection is weaker than ever.

    Other countries facing declining letter amounts have made reforms Germany and the Netherlands privatized their national postal companies over a decade ago, and other European countries have followed suit. Britain floated shares of the Royal Mail on its stock exchange in 2013. Some countries, such us Sweden and New Zealand, have not privatized their national postal companies, but they have opened them up to competition.

    These reforms have driven efficiency improvements in all of these countries. Additional number of workers have been reduced, productivity has risen and consumers have benefited. Also, note that cost-cutting measures—such as closing tone post offices—are good for both the economy and the environment.

    Privatization and competition also encourage new changes. When the USPS monopoly over "extremely urgent" mail was stopped in 1979, we saw an explosion in efficient overnight private delivery by firms such as FedEx.

    The government needs to wake up to changing technology, study postal reforms abroad and let businessmen reinvent our out-of-date postal system.

(1)、What do we know about the USPS?

A、Its great competitor is the delivery firm FedEx. B、It is an old public service open to competitions. C、Its employees don't pay federal, state or local taxes. D、It has complete control of first-class and standard mail.
(2)、The author mentions some other countries in Paragraph 4 to __________.

A、explain the procedures of reform to the USPS B、show the advantages of private postal services C、set some examples for the government to learn from D、prove the situation is very common around the world
(3)、The author probably that the USPS __________.

A、needs government's protection as ever B、can work together with other businesses C、must be replaced by international companies D、should be sold out and become a private service
(4)、Which of the following shows the development of ideas in this passage?

(I: Introduction     CP: Central point P: Point     Sp: Sub-point (次要点)    C: Conclusion)

A、 B、 C、 D、
举一反三
根据短文理解,选择正确答案。

    A man once said how useless it was to put advertisements in the newspapers.“last week, ”said he, “my umbrella was stolen from a London church.As it was a present, I spent twice its worth in advertising, but didn't get it back.”

    “How did you write your advertisement?” asked one of the listeners, a merchant.

“Here it is,” said the man, taking out of his pocket a slip cut from a newspaper.The other man took it and read, “Lost from the City Church last Sunday evening, a black silk umbrella.The gentleman who finds it will receive ten shillings on leaving it at No.10 Broad Street.”

    “Now, ”Said the merchant, “I often advertise, and find that it pays me well . But the way in which an advertisement is expressed is of extreme importance.Let us try for your umbrella again, and if it fails, I'll buy you a new one.”

The merchant then took a slip of paper out of his pocket and wrote:“If the man who was seen to take an umbrella from the City Church last Sunday evening doesn't wish to get into trouble, he will return the umbrella to No.10 Broad Street.He is well known.”

    This appeared in the paper, and on the following morning, the man was astonished when he opened the front door.In the doorway lay at least twelve umbrellas of all sizes and colors that had been thrown, and his own was among them.Many of them had notes fastened to them saying that they had been taken by mistake, and begging the loser not to say anything about the matter.

阅读理解

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    TV Ears has helped thousands of people with various degrees of hearing loss hear the television clearly without turning up the volume(音量) and now it's better and more affordable than ever! With TV Ears wireless technology, you set your own headset volume, while other TV listeners hear the television at a volume level that's comfortable for them. You can even listen through the headset only and put the TV on mute(静音) if the situation calls for a quiet environment —maybe the baby is sleeping. Or perhaps you are the only one who is interested in listening to the ballgame.

    TV Ears patented(有专利权的) technology includes a revolutionary noise reduction ear tip, not used in any other commercially available headset. This tip reduces outside noise so that television dialogue is clear and understandable. Get the technology that has proven to help the most demanding customers. That's why TV Ears has earned the trust and confidence of audiologists(听觉学家) nationwide as well as world-famous doctors.

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    “My wife and I have used TV Ears almost daily for the past two years and find them a great help in our enjoyment of television . As a retired ear doctor, I heartily recommend TV Ears to people with normal hearing as well as those with hearing loss.”

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    “Now my husband can have the volume as loud as he needs and I can have the TV at my hearing level. TV Ears is so comfortable that Jack forgets he has them on ! He can once again hear and understand the dialogue.”

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阅读理解

    Long before they can actually speak, babies pay special attention to the speech they hear around them. Within the first month of their lives, babies' responses to the sound of the human voice will be different from their responses to other sorts of hearing stimulation. They will stop crying when they hear a person talking, but not if they hear a bell or the sound of a rattle. At first, the sounds that a baby notices might be only those words that receive the heaviest emphasis and that often occur at the ends of utterances(讲话,说话). By the time they are six or seven weeks old, babies can detect the difference between syllables pronounced with rising and falling tones. Very soon, these differences in adult stress and intonation can influence babies' emotional states and behavior. Long before they develop actual language comprehension, babies can sense when an adult is happy or angry, attempting to begin or end new behavior, and so on, merely on the basis of clues such as the rate, volume, and melody of adult speech.

    Adults make it as easy as they can for babies to pick up a language by exaggerating(夸张) such clues. One researcher observed babies and their mothers in six diverse cultures and found that, in all six languages, the mothers used simplified utterances and nonsense sounds, and transformed certain sounds into baby talk. Other researchers have noted that when mothers talk to babies who are only a few months old, they exaggerate the pitch, loudness, and intensity of their words. They also exaggerate their facial expressions, hold vowels(元音) longer, and emphasize certain words.

    More significant for language development than their response to general intonation is observation that tiny babies can make relatively fine distinctions between speech sounds. In other words, babies enter the world with the ability to make those precisely perceptual(知觉的,感性的) recognition that are necessary if they are to acquire listening language.

    Babies obviously obtain pleasure from sound input, too: even as young as nine months they will listen to songs or stories, although the words themselves are beyond their understanding. For babies, language is a sensory-motor delight rather than the route to boring meaning that it often is for adults.

阅读理解

    The idea that computers have some amount of "intelligence" is not new, says Ralph Haupter, the president of Microsoft Asia, pointing as far back as 1950 when computer pioneer Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. "So it has taken nearly 70 years for the right combination of factors to come together to move AI from concept to reality," says Haupter.

    It is predicted that the development of artificial intelligence will be the story of the coming generations, not just the coming year, but as 2019 gets underway, you'll find AI will begin to touch your life in many ways according to some researchers.

"Personal assistant AIs will keep getting smarter. As our personal assistants learn more about our daily routines, I can imagine the day I need not to worry about preparing dinner. My AI knows what I like to eat, which days of the week I like to cook at home, and makes sure that when I get back from work all my groceries are waiting at my doorstep, ready for me to prepare that delicious meal I had been longing for." —Alecjandro Troccoli, senior research scientist, NVIDIA.

"Thanks to AI, the face will be the new credit card, the new driver's license and the new barcode (条形码). Facial recognition is already completely transforming security with biometric capabilities being adopted, and seeing how technology and business are connected, like Amazon is with Whole Foods, I can see a near future where people will no longer need to stand in line at the store." —Georges Nahon, president, Orange Institute, a global research laboratory.

"2019 will be the year AI becomes real for medicine. By the end of the year we're seeing solutions for population health, hospital operations and a broad set of clinical specialties quickly follow behind." —Mark Michalski, executive director, Massachusetts General Hospital.

阅读理解

On an autumn afternoon, a remote sheep farm in southern Greenland is quiet. The silence is abruptly broken when dozens of sheep come thundering across the hills overlooking the farm. Walking after them are Lars Nielsen and his 37-year-old son Kunuk Nielsen.

The Nielsen family has owned and run the farm since 1972. Kunuk says the summers now are longer than when he was a child and that drought has become a problem. The fields are not so green as those in the old days. He has to buy hay (草料) from European countries.

The effects of a warming climate are obvious on the land. While he intends to struggle on, his older brother Pilu has chosen a different path.

Pilu, 40, lives in Qaqortoq in the south of Greenland -- a town of about 3,000 people. Ten years ago, he got his helicopter pilot's license and is now part owner of a small company called Sermeq Helicopters. It caters to construction and telecommunication workers and an increasing number of foreign tourists.

Pilu says he loves his family's sheep farm. But he saw that warming temperatures were making remote areas of Greenland more accessible and wanted to look for other opportunities. His company's most popular tours include a visit to Greenland's glaciers.

The warming temperatures are also affecting traditional ways of life, particularly hunting. The sea ice is changing; it's becoming less so that hunting on ice becomes more difficult. When there's no sea ice, it's difficult to use dog sledges (雪橇), and the whole culture around having dogs and dog sledges and doing traditional hunting on the ice is sort of diminishing.

Besides, many Greenlanders, like Pilu, are leaving the countryside for towns and the capital city Nuuk, where opportunities are greater. A report found that Nuuk's share of Greenland's population grew from 17.2% in 1977 to 29.2% in 2014. If there were enough houses in Nuuk, the share would even be bigger.

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