英语周报2017年高考英语模拟试题(2)
C
Wind turbines are efficient sources of cheap energy but also a source of concern as their huge spinning blades (叶片) frequently kill birds and bats. A new type of wind generator developed in Spain offers a creative solution to that problem.
In 2002, Spanish inventor David Yanez saw a short film about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the U.S., collapsing in strong wind. It was a vivid example of the powerful vibrations wind can create when it blows past a long pole, such as a car antenna or even a stick of bamboo. It gave him the idea for a new type of wind-energy generator.
“The initial philosophy or spirit was to create a generator of dreams that had all the qualities one would want: It should be as cheap as possible, need as little maintenance as possible, the setup as simple as possible,” he said.
Yanez and his friend Raoul Martin took the idea to an engineering firm, where they were told it would never work. Undiscouraged, they started experimenting on their own in a small wind tunnel they built.
Good initial results were repeated by a larger working model called Vortex (涡旋) installed in a nearby field. “What we have is a mast (桅杆), which is the top piece and acts as a blade,” Yanez said. “It’s constructed from the same material as a conventional generator, and what it does is it oscillates (振荡), transmitting the oscillation to a conventional alternator, which by its own oscillation converts the wind’s energy into electric energy.”
Yanez said the output of the 6-meter-tall generator, and even that of smaller models, was better than expected. The Vortex creates about 30 percent less energy than a comparable bladed wind turbine, but it is lighter and cheaper to build and maintain. It is made mostly of reinforced plastic and has very few moving parts. Also, it does not create noise and—even more important for many environmentalists—it does not present a threat to passing birds.
The current prototype works at wind speeds ranging from 1.5 to 7 meters per second. The inventors say the next step is building a 12.5-meter tall bladeless generator with a 4-kilowatt capacity that could power small businesses or individual homes, or provide supplemental power to a main grid. The commercial version of the Vortex Bladeless generator should be ready for the market by 2017.
62. The author mentions a short film about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to show ________.
A. what the initial philosophy or spirit was
B. what inspired Yanez to create the generator
C. how the bridge was destroyed in strong wind
D. how wind creates powerful vibrations
63. What do we know from the passage?
A. The original idea was considered as practical in an engineering firm.
B. Yanez and Martin’s initial tests by themselves proved to be successful.
C. The material for constructing the mast is different from that of the past.
D. The new generator is better at creating energy than a comparable bladed one.
64. What would be the best title for the passage?
A. Bladeless wind-power generator is friendly to birds.
B. Wind turbines are efficient sources of cheap energy.
C. A new generator will come onto the market by 2017.
D. Yanez has made a generator for the benefit of people.
D
Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse, and when he arrived in this hard world, it was very doubtful whether he would live beyond the first three minutes. He lay on a hard little bed and struggled to start breathing.
Oliver fought his first battle without much assistance from the two people present at his birth. One was an old woman, who was nearly always drunk, and the other was a busy local doctor, who was not paid enough to be very interested in Oliver’s survival. ____________________
However, Oliver managed to draw his first breath, and then announced his arrival to the rest of the workhouse by crying loudly. His mother raised her pale young face from the pillow and whispered, “Let me see the child, and die.”
The doctor turned away from the fire, where he had been warming his hands. “You must not talk about dying yet,” he said to her kindly. He gave her the child to hold. Lovingly, she kissed the baby on its forehead with her cold white lips, then stared wildly around the room, fell back—and died. “Poor dear!” said the nurse, hurriedly putting a green glass bottle back in the pocket of her long skirt.
The doctor began to put on his coat. “The baby is weak and will probably have difficulties,” he said. “If so, give it a little milk to keep it quiet.” Then he looked at the dead woman. “The 盐城市2015-2016学年第一学期期中考高三英语试题及答案mother was a good-looking girl. Where did she come from?”
“She was brought here last night,” replied the old woman. “She was found lying in the street. She’d walked some distance, judging by her shoes, which were worn to pieces. Where she came from, where she was going to, or what her name was, nobody knows.”
The doctor lifted the girl’s left hand. “The old story,” he said sadly, shaking his head. “No wedding ring, I see. Ah! Good night.”
And so Oliver was left with only the drunken nurse. Without clothes, under his first blanket, he could have been the child of a king or a beggar. But when the woman dressed him later in rough cotton clothes, yellow with age, he looked exactly what he was—an orphan in a workhouse, ready for a life of misery, hunger, and neglect.
Oliver cried loudly. If he could have known that he was a workhouse orphan, perhaps he would have cried even more loudly.
There was no one to look after the baby in the workhouse, so Oliver was sent to a special “baby farm” nearby. There, he and thirty other children rolled around the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing. Mrs Mann, the old woman who “looked after” them, was very experienced. She knew what was good for children, and a full stomach was very dangerous to their health. She also knew what was good for herself, so she kept for her own use the money that she was given for the children’s food. The board responsible for the orphans sometimes checked on the health of the children, but they always sent the beadle, a kind of local policeman, to announce their visit the day before. So whenever the board arrived, of course, the children were always neat and clean.
This was the way Oliver was brought up. Consequently, at the age of nine he was a pale, thin child and short for his age. But despite frequent beatings by Mrs Mann, his spirit was strong, which was probably the reason why he managed to reach the age of nine at all.
On Oliver’s ninth birthday, Mr Bumble, the beadle, came to the house to see Mrs Mann. Through the front window Mrs Mann saw him at the gate, and turned quickly to the girl who worked with her.
“Quick! Take Oliver and those others upstairs to be washed!” she said. Then she ran out to unlock the gate which was always kept locked.
65. According to the passage, a workhouse was where ________.
A. many women died unexpectedly B. workers helped each other
C. the poor and homeless lived D. people were only interested in money
66. Which of the following is true according to the passage?
A. Oliver was born into the world on a cold day.
B. Many people, especially women, drank heavily at that time.
C. The children in the baby farm were taken good care of.
D. Doctors were usually paid too little for the work they did.
67. Which sentence is most suitable for the blank in Paragraph 2?
A. Therefore, he felt very lonely in the world.
B. Frightened at the sight of the two, he started to cry.
C. After all, death was a common event in the workhouse.
D. In fact, the world was privileged to have him in it.
68. It can be inferred that the gate of the baby farm was always kept locked in order to ________.
A. protect the children inside from dangers outside
B. prevent official visitors walking in unexpectedly
C. keep the children inside working all the time
D. ensure the children were always neat and clean
69. According to the passage, Mrs Mann ________.
A. was mad keen on looking after children
B. provided children with little food and few comforts
C. beat children frequently to make them mentally strong
D. cared little about Mr Bumble’s abrupt appearance
70. What is the passage mainly about?
A. Oliver’s early life. B. Oliver’s personality. C. Mother’s death. D. People’s selfishness.
第四部分 任务型阅读(共10小题;每小题1分，满分10分)
请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。
注意：请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填1个单词。
Have you ever been so absorbed in a conversation at a party that you failed to notice that someone new is standing only six inches away from you, trying to get your attention? It’s possible that you were so distracted that you didn’t notice someone approaching you. But it’s also entirely likely that you were experiencing change blindness.
Change blindness is a phenomenon that occurs when a person is unable to notice visual changes in their environment, despite the fact that they are often rather obvious. In cases of change blindness, the person isn’t failing to notice small or insignificant changes, but will probably miss big changes, like someone standing next to them waving their hand.
Early experiments with change blindness focused largely on memory and perception when viewing pictures. For example, a person might be shown a photograph of a street scene in Egypt and told to memorize the image. Following that, they would be shown the same picture with certain elements added or taken away and asked to identify what’s different. Very often the individual could recall the larger aspects of the picture but couldn’t recognize the smaller changes.
In the 1990s, researcher Daniel Simons conducted a fascinating study into change blindness that many people find unbelievable. In Simons’ study, he asked participants to watch a video of a basketball being passed around between several people, with a particular focus on the basketball itself. When the experiment was over, Simons found that a large number of participants were so focused on watching the basketball being passed around that they failed to notice a man in a gorilla suit jumping around in front of the camera.
It’s important to note that the change in Simons’ video wasn’t subtle; the gorilla is very obviously taking up much of the frame. Simons concluded that participants were experiencing inattentional blindness, which is when a person fails to notice a major change because they are so focused on another task. In this case, because participants were asked to focus on the movement of the basketball, their brains prioritized that task in order to do it properly, thereby missing the other things happening in the video.
In the case of Simons’ study, participants engaged what’s referred to as attentional selection, which is when a person selects certain things to focus on in order to achieve a task and filters out anything that is unrelated to the objective.
There are a number of theories about what causes a person’s inability to recognize obvious changes in their environment, but most agree that the phenomenon is related to sensory processing. Broadly 盐城市2015-2016学年第一学期期中考高三英语试题及答案speaking, our brains have a limited capacity to detect and process everything in our environment. Instead, what the brain does is choose certain things to process, evaluate, and store, which allows other things to be missed or filtered out.
In simple terms, change blindness has a great deal to do with where a person directs their attention. In the case of the gorilla and the basketball, people focused their attention almost exclusively on one thing, which caused them to miss other elements or changes. Given that attention is often at the root of change blindness, a person’s age or mental and physical health can influence how well they will notice changes in stimuli.
Change Blindness
(71) ▲ of change blindness Change blindness is a surprising perceptual phenomenon that occurs when a person recognizes minor changes in scenes while large changes go (72) ▲ .
Experiments with change blindness ●The main (73) ▲ of early experiments was memory and perception.
●Individuals were found to be (74) ▲ at recalling the smaller details in the same picture previously shown to them.
Research in the 1990s ●In Simons’ study, participants were asked to pay special attention to the (75) ▲ basketball, during which time a man wearing a gorilla suit unexpectedly walked through the scene.
●Contrary to popular belief, with their attention fixed on the basketball, many participants reported that the “gorilla” (76) ▲ their notice.
●It is concluded that participants fail to recognize something big but unrelated to the objective when their brains are programmed to consider some task as a top (77) ▲ .
(78) ▲ of change blindness ●The brain makes (79) ▲ about what to be dealt with because of its limited capacity.
●Although attention is closely (80) ▲ to change blindness, age and health are other factors that play a role.
第五部分 书面表达(满分25分)
81. 请阅读下面短文，并按照要求用英语写一篇150词左右的文章。
The rise of selfie (自拍) photography in some of the world’s most beautiful, and dangerous, places is causing a range of interventions (干预措施) aimed at fighting risk-taking that has resulted in a string of shocking deaths worldwide.
The act of taking a picture of oneself with a mobile phone, placing the subject centre-stage, has exploded in popularity in recent years, with everyone from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to U.S. President Barack Obama joining in.
But the selfie has also inspired a lot of risk-taking and offensive public behavior, pushing the boundaries of safety and behavior, whether by hanging from a skyscraper or posing with live explosives.
Several governments and regulatory bodies have now begun treating the selfie as a serious threat to public safety, leading them to launch public education campaigns reminding people of those against smoking and excessive drinking.
【写作内容】
1. 用约30个单词写出上文概要;
2. 你对此现象所持的观点;
3. 用2—3个理由或论据支撑你的观点。
【写作要求】
1. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句;
2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称;
3. 不必写标题。
【评分标准】
内容完整，语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。
英语周报2017年高考英语模拟试题参考答案
1-5 CBBAA 6-10 CBCAB 11-15 BCACC 16-20 BCBBA
21-25 ABCAD 26-30 DDBBC 31-35 BACAB
36-40 ACBAD 41-45 BDCAB 46-50 ACDCB 51-55 DABCD
56-58 DCA 59-61 BAB 62-64 BBA 65-70 CACBBA
71. Definition/Concept 72. unnoticed 73. focus 74. poor
75. moving 76. escaped 77. priority 78. Causes
79. choices 80. related/linked
81. 书面表达参考范文
Today, more and more people, including some celebrities cannot resist the temptation to take photos of themselves in places with breathtaking scenery, regardless of the dangers involved. The trend has raised much public concern.
Personally, I am against the behavior. Firstly, a cool selfie could cost you your life, and there have been several reports about people losing their lives while taking selfies. I strongly hold the belief that nothing is more important than life itself. Secondly, people who are addicted to selfies are more likely to violate the standards of social behavior, which may present a great danger to other people or the environment. They don’t care about annoying people in their social 盐城市2015-2016学年第一学期期中考高三英语试题及答案media or care about the tourist attraction they are destroying.
In short, I don’t think it worthwhile taking selfies at the risk of life. Selfies as acts of self-focus may also bring annoyance to the world around us.
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