www.100xuexi.com 圣才电子书 十万种考研考证电子书、题库视频学习平台 北京地区成人英语三级综合模拟试题及详解（二）
Part I Reading Comprehension （30%）
Directions: There are three passages in this part. Each passage is followed some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice and blacken the corresponding letter on the Answer sheet. Passage 1
Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.
A scorching sun, an endless sea of sand and a waterless, forbiddingly lonely land--that is the image most people have of deserts. But how true is this picture? Deserts are dry lands where rainfall is low. This is not to say rain never falls in deserts: it may fall once or twice a year in a fierce torrent that fades almost as soon as it has be gun, or which evaporates in the hot air long before it has got anywhere near the earth. It may fall in a sudden sweeping flood that carries everything in its path. Rains may only come once in five or six years or not fall for a decade or more. The Mojave desert in the United States remained dry for twenty-five years.
（76）Without water no living thing can survive, and one feature of the true desert landscape is the absence of vegetation. With little rain and hardly any vegetation the land suffers under the sun. There are virtually no clouds or trees to protect the earth’s surface and it can be burning hot. Under the sun, soils break up and crack. Wind and torrential rain sweep away and erode the surface further. Eight
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www.100xuexi.com 圣才电子书 十万种考研考证电子书、题库视频学习平台 million square kilometers of the world’s land surface is desert. Throughout history deserts have been expanding and retreating again. Cave paintings show that parts of the Sahara Desert were green and fertile about 10,000 years ago, and even animals like elephants and giraffes roamed the land. Fossil and dunes found in fertile and damp parts of the world show that these areas were once deserts. But now the creation of new desert areas is happening on a colossal scale. （77）Twenty million square kilometers, an area twice the size of Canada, is at a high to very high risk of becoming desert. With a further 1.25 million square kilometers under moderate risk, an area covering 30% of the earth’s land surface is desert, becoming desert, or in danger of becoming desert. The rate of growth of deserts is alarming. The world’s dry lands which are under threat include some of the most important stock-rearing and wheat-growing areas and are the homes of 600—700 million people. These regions are becoming deserts at the rate of more than 58, 000 square kilometers a year or 44 hectares a minute. In North Africa at least100, 000 hectares of cropland are lost each year. At this rate there is a high risk that we will be confined to living on only 50% of this planet’s land surface within one more century unless we are able to do something about it. 1. What does the passage tell us about rainfall in the desert? A. It never rains.
B. It rains so little that nothing can live. C. It rains unexpectedly. D. It rains very infrequently.
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www.100xuexi.com 圣才电子书 十万种考研考证电子书、题库视频学习平台 2. Desert soils break up and crack because of ______. A. the effects of wind and rain B. the lack of protection from the sun C. the tropical location of deserts D. the absence of rain
3. What do we learn about deserts from this text? A. Deserts can change into green and fertile areas. B. Certain areas have always been desert.
C. Deserts were once the home of elephants and giraffes. D. Deserts have been growing since the beginning of the world. 4. How much of the world’s land surface is at risk of becoming desert? A. Less than ten million square kilometers. B. Twenty million square kilometers.
C. More than twenty million square kilometers. D. 30% of the world’s land surface.
5. What does the writer think about the creation of new desert areas? A. It is a natural development. B. The problem is not very serious. C. It is a very worrying problem. D. The situation will improve in time.
【答案及解析】
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www.100xuexi.com 圣才电子书 十万种考研考证电子书、题库视频学习平台 1. D 第一段的最后一句 “Rains may only come once in five or six years or not fall
for a decade or more. The Mojave desert in the United States remained dry for twenty five years.”从中可以看出，沙漠不是不降雨，而是很少降雨，infrequently意为“罕见地，稀少地”，故D是符合题意的选项。
2. B 根据第二段第三句 “There are virtually no clouds or trees to protect the
earth’s surface and it can be burning hot. Under the sun，soils break up and crack...”，在沙漠地区没有云、没有树保护地面，地面很容易曝晒，因此裂开，所以应该选B地面缺乏保护。
3. A 文章第二段 “Throughout history deserts have been expanding and
retreating a gain. ”这段中谈到，一些肥沃的地方以前曾经是沙漠，而现在的沙漠以前也曾经是沃土和绿洲。所以A符合文章的内容。
4. C 文章第二段中间有一句话“Twenty million square kilometers，an area twice the
size of Canada, is at a high to very high risk of becoming desert. With a further 1.25 million square kilometers under moderate risk. ”这句话是说，2000万平方公里的土地面临着成为沙漠的高危险，而125万平方公里的土地有中度危险，加起来就是答案C——超过2000万平方公里的土地面临着成为沙漠的危险。 5. C 文章最后一句话作者是这样写的“At this rate there is a high risk that we will be
confined to living on only 50% of this planet’s land surface within one more century unless we are able to do something about it. ”作者的意思是，如果我们不采取措施我们将会面临着很严重的危机，所以说A、B、D都不是文章的本意，只有C符合。
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www.100xuexi.com 圣才电子书 十万种考研考证电子书、题库视频学习平台 Passage 2
Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage.
Adam Smith was the first person to see the importance of the division of the labor. He gave us an example of the process by which pins were made in England.
”One man draws out the wire, another strengthens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, and a fifth gives it a head. Just to make the head requires two or three different operations. The work of making pins is divided into about eighteen different operations, which in some factories are all performed by different people, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them.
Ten men, Smith said, in this way, turned out twelve pounds of pins a day or about 4800 pins a worker. （78） But if all of them had worked separately and independently without division of labor, they certainly could not have made twenty pins in a day and not even one.
There can be no doubt that division of labor is an efficient way of organizing work. Fewer people can make more pins. Adam Smith saw this, but he also took it for granted that division of labor is itself responsible for economic growth and development and it accounts for the difference between expanding economies and those that stand still. But division of labor adds nothing new, it only enables people to produce more of what they already have.
6. According to the passage, Adam Smith was the first person to ______. A. take advantage of the physical labor. B. introduce the division of labor into England.
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北京地区成人英语三级综合模拟试题及详解(二)【圣才出品】
