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2024年高考第二轮复习英语湖北版
专题升级训练十四 阅读理解(二)
A
(2024湖北八校二次联考)
For the past two years, 8yearold Harli Jordean from Stoke Newington, London, has been selling marbles(弹珠). His successful marble company, Marble King, sells all things marblerelated—from affordable tubs of the glass playthings to significantly expensive items like Duke of York solitaire tables—sourced, purchased and processed by the miniCEO himself.
“I like having my own company. I like being the boss，” Harli told The Mirror.
With profits now in the thousands, “the world's youngest CEO” has had to get his mother and older brothers to help him meet the growing demand.
Harli launched Marble King after swapping marbles at school led to schoolchildren consuming his marble collection. Yes, he literally “lost his marbles.” Harli and his mother, Tina, turned to the Internet to find replacements.
Harli saw an empty space online: the marbles he wanted were hard to find. Within months，Harli had his own marbleselling website—and orders started pouring in.
Tina says her son's attachment to marbles started when he was just 6.
“His attachment became so passionate that we started calling him the Marble King —so when he wanted to set up a website it was the natural name for it，” she told The Sun.
“I never thought it would become so popular— we are struggling to cope with the number of orders at times.”
The 8yearold boy has his sights set on expanding his business and launching his own brand of marbles.
“Sometimes his ideas are so grand we have to scale them back a bit. But his dream is still to own Britain's biggest marble shop and open stores around the world，” Tina told The Daily Mail.
“At the moment he is annoying me by creating his own Marble King marbles— so that could well be the next step for him.”
1．Harli's Marble Company became popular as soon as he launched it because ______.
A．it was run by “the world's youngest CEO”
B．it filled the gap of online marble trade
C．Harli was fascinated with marble collection
D．Harli met the growing demand of the customers
2．How many mass media are mentioned in the passage?
A．One
B．TwoC．Three
D．Four
3．The underlined expression “scale them back” is closest in meaning to ______.
A．hold them downB．carry them out
C．set them asideD．clear them away
4．What message do the last two paragraphs carry?
A．Conflicts often occur between Harli Jordean and his family.
B．Harli's mother and brothers are worried about Marble King's future.
C．Marble King marbles will surely attract more fans around the world.
D．The “Marble King” has great ambition for his Marble King company.
B
Do American children still learn handwriting in school? In the age of the keyboard, some people seem to think handwriting lessons are on the way out. 90% of teachers say they are required to teach handwriting. But studies have yet to answer the question of how well they are teaching it. One study published this year found that about three out of every four teachers say they are not prepared to teach handwriting. Some teachers are teaching handwriting by providing instruction for ten to fifteen minutes a day, and then other teachers who basically teach it for sixty to seventy minutes a day— which really is pretty much for handwriting.
Many adults remember learning that way— by copying letters over and over again.Today's thinking is that short periods of practice are better.Many experts also think handwriting should not be taught by itself.Instead，they say it should be used as a way to get students to express ideas.After all，that is why we write.
Handwriting involves two skills.One is legibility，which means forming the letters so they can be read.The other is fluency— writing without having to think about it.Fluency continues to develop up until high school.
But not everyone masters these skills. Teachers commonly report that about one fourth of their kids have poor handwriting. Some people might think handwriting is not important any more
because of computers and voice recognition programs.
But Steve Graham at Vanderbilt says word processing is rarely done in elementary school, especially in the early years. American children traditionally first learn to print, and then to write in cursive, which connects the letters. But guess what we learned from a spokeswoman for the College Board, which administers the SAT college admission test. More than 75% of students choose to print their essay on the test rather than write in cursive.
5．We can infer from the first paragraph that ______.
A．teachers spend little time in teaching handwriting
B．most teachers attach importance to teaching handwriting
C．handwriting teaching is not commonly required
D． most teachers are at a loss how to teach handwriting
6．Which of the following about traditional handwriting in the USA is NOT true?
A．The students are taught by practicing a long period.
B．Printing is taught in preference to writing in cursive.
C．Handwriting is taught for its own sake.
D．Two skills get involved in handwriting.
7．Some people consider handwriting not important any more because ______.
A．all the American children learn to print first
B．about 1/4 of the students choose to print their essay on the test
C．it is unnecessary to use handwriting in the age of keyboard
D．computers and voice recognition programs are widely used
8．“______” may serve as the best title for the passage.
A．Handwriting: fascinating in keyboard age
B．Right or wrong: the death of handwriting
C．Two skills involved in handwriting
D．Handwriting lessons on the way out
C
Seen from space the Earth is covered in a blue mantle. It is a planet on which the continents are dwarfed (相形见绌) by the oceans surrounding them and the vastness of the marine area.
An astonishing 80 percent of all the life on Earth is to be found hidden beneath the waves and this vast global ocean pulses around our world driving the natural forces which keep life on our planet.
The oceans provide necessary sources of protein, energy, minerals and other products of use the world over and the rolling of the sea across the planet creates over half our oxygen, drives weather systems and natural flows of energy and nutrients around the world, transports water masses many times greater than all the rivers on land combined and keeps the Earth habitable.
Without the global ocean there would be no life on Earth.
It is seriously worrying, then, that we are damaging the oceans on a scale that is unimaginable to most people.
We now know that human activity can have serious influences on the vital forces working on our planet. We have fundamentally changed our global climate and are just beginning to understand the consequences of that.
As yet largely unseen, but just as serious, are the influences we are having on the oceans.
A healthy ocean has diverse ecosystems and strong and healthy habitats. The actual state of our oceans is a far cry from this natural level.
A large quantity of human pressures are being exerted both directly and indirectly on ocean ecosystems the world over. Consequently ecosystems are collapsing as marine species are driven towards extinction and ocean habitats are destroyed. With the decrease and removement of their diversity, ocean ecosystems are losing their natural recovery.
9．The 2nd and the 3rd paragraphs are given mainly to describe ______.
A．what the oceans look like
B．what the oceans are made up of
C．what live in the oceans
D．what functions the oceans have
10．The oceans provide all the following except ______.
A．various marine creatures
B．rich living resources
C．all natural forces
D．comfortable habitats for man
11．Man has not yet realized ______.
A．that he has done harm to the oceans
B．that he has done harm to the planet
C．that he has benefited from the oceans
D．that he has benefited from the planet
12．The best title for this passage should be ______.
A．Protecting our planet
B．Defending our oceans
C．Making good use of our oceans
D．A glimpse of the oceans
D
There are plenty of creams etc. on the market that help you look younger, but today, Dr.Oz is going to show how some people are actually living longer.
“We are going to talk about extreme life extension，” he says. “I am talking in detail about allowing us to go into our second century of life with the energy that you have when you are a young person.”
Owing to advances in technology and research on how diet affects the aging process, Dr.Oz says it might be possible for some people to live to see their 120th birthdays.
There's one man in Oprah's audience who Dr.Oz says may become the first man in history to live to be 150 years old. Joe Cordell is one of thousands around the world who believe they've found the key to an extremely long life — calorie restriction leads to a longer, healthier life.
At 59 Joe weighs 130 pounds.
He may not look like a person who needs to count calories, but as part of his life extension program, he inspects every mouthful of food that passes through his system.
Every day for the past seven years, Joe has limited himself to about 1,950 calories.
He believes that by eating less and restricting his calorie intake, he will trigger a genetic switch that slows the aging process.
Joe doesn't rid himself of food. Instead, the then 52yearold father filled up on natural fruits,
vegetables and lean proteins(瘦蛋白 ) that were packed with necessary vitamins and nutrients.
“Whenever you are thinking about calorie restriction, you should continually think about getting the most nutritional amount per calorie，” Joe says.
In keeping with this principle, Joe starts every morning with three apples... but he only eats the peels.“Most of the fiber is in the peel, and more importantly, most of the nutrients are in the peel，” he says.
“It is important to eat some nuts with breakfast so that you do take in some fat, some healthy fats，” he says. “I think it helps the absorption of the nutrients, and it is very filling.”
For lunch, Joe usually eats a large salad, loaded with vegetables. At dinner time, he and his family enjoy lean meat or fish and more vegetables.
When
Joe
started
practicing
calorie
restriction,
he weighed 175 pounds. Since then, he has lost 45 pounds, and he says he hasn't had a cold in seven years. Though he is in his “golden years”， researchers studying Joe say he has the body of a 20yearold athlete.
13．According to Joe, the appropriate fat intake may help ______.
A．people lose weight
B．people feel always full
C．the absorption of the nutrients
D．people live longer
14．What can we learn about Joe since he started the calorie restriction program?
A．Joe counts the amount of every meal.
B．Joe has never had a cold.
C．Joe eats three apples every morning.
D．Joe has a large salad with vegetables for dinner.
15．The underlined word “trigger” in Paragraph 7 can probably be replaced by ______.
A．turn on
B．break down
C．take up
D. cut off
16．According to the passage, the extreme life extension refers to ______.
A．living very long even sick
B．how to make people lead a happy life
C．living long and having a healthy body
D．how to arrange our foods every day
E
The concept of solar power satellites, or SPS, first put forward in the 1960s, is still not widely known by the general public. For example, at many public exhibitions about energy, SPS is not even mentioned. This is mainly because very little money has been spent on SPS research.
There are people who claim that SPS is unrealistic— because launch costs are much too high today; or because it is too far away.
So why do we believe that it is important to continue to do researches on SPS? The reason is very simple.
Humans are going to need huge amounts of electric power in coming decades.
Within 50 years the world population is expected to double,
while economic growth will continue around the world,
especially in the poorer countries.
But existing energy sources already face serious problems. They are limited; they are polluted; they are dangerous. So 50 or 100 years from now, where is our power going to come from? Nobody knows. So we believe that new largescale possibilities should be studied further.
We must remember that humans have some
choices concerning our future.
To some extent we can choose the direction in which our civilization develops. And choices that are made in the coming decadessuch as the energy sources that we will or will not use,
will have major,
longterm meaning for human life on earth. We believe that if research continues to show that SPS is environmentally and economically attractive, SPS will open the door to a much more attractive future for human civilization than any groundbased energy source, and one that the public will support and that young people will find challenging and exciting. Furthermore energy from SPS can be readily used in developing countries, as the SPS 2000 project will show, thus aiding economic development worldwide. In addition, by creating large commercial fund for space engineering,
SPS will open the frontier of space to economic development, thus creating a limitless new field for the growth of the world
economy.
17．Which of the following may be the best title for the passage?
A．The Future Energy—SPS
B．The Concept of SPS
C．Humans and SPS
D．Advantages of SPS
18．Which of the following statements about SPS is TRUE?
A．The research on SPS started in the 1960s is still not appreciated by the public.
B．The research shows that SPS can benefit both the environment and the economy at present
C．The energy from SPS is now being used in some developing countries.
D．The public don't know about SPS because little time is devoted to the research.
