Ladies and Gentlemen,
I want to begin by telling you about some people I know.
Martin McLeod, 94-year old, is still in good health, but no longer drives. When he goes to the doctor or the grocery store, someone must pick him up.
Emily Sanders, a university student, has to ride a bike across town to school every day because she can’t afford a car or the expensive rent near the university. One day in January, while riding down Chatula Street, she broke her ankle. She ended up dropping out of school because of no transportation.
Martin and Emily are people who would benefit if our city invested in a more comprehensive public transportation system. But they are not the only ones, for I am convinced that you, too, would benefit. Let me explain why.
Consider first the cost. Let’s say Hannah buys a used car for $10,000 and uses it for ten years. She spends $1,000 per year just to own it. She easily spends $4,000 per year on insurance, gas, parking, safety inspections, tune-ups and repairs. Suppose, however, the city public transportation could cost Hannah less than $300 a year.
2017 city report says that we have more than 700,000 cars on the road every day. Multiply Hannah by 700,000, and the cost of driving cars begins to look pretty amazing! If everyone took public transportation, we would put over $2.5 billion back into the pocketbooks of our citizens.
Besides, public transportation would greatly improve the quality of life. It helps the environment, reduces traffic and the need for parking and so on.
All these reasons and more scream for us to invest in a public transportation system, but certainly there is a cost. The rail and bus systems require vehicles and staff to run. This part of the cost can be borne through user fees. Also much of the remaining cost can be offset by reducing the need to construct new roads. When all is said and done, then, the final, real cost of a public transportation system is less than you might think.
So, here is the situation. Our city needs to invest in public transportation. Isn’t this really something you need to think over?
40. With the examples of Martin and Emily, the speaker wants to show . A. the danger of traffic B. the age groups of drivers
C. the demand for public transportation D. the complaints about transportation means 41. Taking public transportation instead of a car, Hannah may save per year. A. $10,000
B. $4,700
C. $4,000
D. $1,000
42. According to the speaker, the public transportation system may . A. reduce the employment opportunities B. decrease the chance of dangerous driving C. bring more benefit without extra expense D. increase the budget for roads construction 43. The intended audience of the speech are . A. government officials C. the citizens
B. university students D. the elderly C
In the past many studies placed too much emphasis on how animals are trained to learn. But recently more and more studies have focused on how animals equip themselves to learn.
One study started with a school field trip to a pine forest where many pine cones were discovered, stripped(剥壳) to the central core. So the investigation was directed at finding out what was eating the pine seeds and how they managed to get them out of the cones. The culprit proved to be the black rat, and the technique was to bite each cone from base to top, following the growth pattern of the cone.
Urban black rats were found to lack the skill. However, babies of urban mothers cross-fostered by stripper mothers acquired the skill, whereas babies of stripper mothers fostered by an urban mother could not. Clearly the skill had to be learned from the mother. In the case of rats, the youngsters take cones away from the mother when she is still eating them, allowing them to acquire the stripping skill.
Another study, Bird Behaviour, provides a different view of the adaptiveness of social learning. It concerns the seed caching(hiding) behaviour of Clark’s Nutcracker and the Mexican Jay. The former is a specialist, caching about 30,000 seeds in scattered locations that it will recover over the months of winter; the Mexican Jay will also cache food but is much less dependent on this than the Nutcracker. The two species also differ in their social structure: the Nutcracker prefers living alone while, the Jay, in social groups.
The experiment is to discover if a bird can remember where it hid a seed but also if it can remember where it saw another bird hide a seed. The design is funny with a cacher bird hiding food in a room, while watched by a caged observer bird. Two days later, cachers and observers are tested for their discovery rate against estimated random performance(预估随机表现). Both cachers performed above chance. More surprisingly, jay observers were as successful as jay cachers, whereas nutcracker observers
pine cone
did no better than chance. It seems that, whereas the Nutcracker is highly skilled at remembering where it hid its own seeds, the social living Mexican Jay is more adept at remembering, and so making use of, the caches of others.
44. Urban black rats were able to learn to strip when .
A. fed by stripper mothers B. fostered by urban mothers C. living with stripper babies D. eating cones by themselves 45. In Bird Behavior Study, we can conclude that . A. nutcraker observers perform well in remembering B. the Clark’s Nutcraker has better learning skills C. the Mexican Jay benefits from social living D. jay cachers are only good at hiding food
46. According to the passage, both studies show that .
A. skills are equipped in childhood B. skills improve by practice C. animals study through playing D. animals learn by examples
D
The organic food has gained a lot of popularity as they are being considered as healthier and tastier. A fair number of people advocate a large-scale shift to organic farming from conventional agriculture. But this might not seem well-founded.
Since the mid-19th century, conventional industrial agriculture has become incredibly efficient on a simple land to food basis. Conventional farming gets more and more crop per square foot of land, which can mean less wilderness needs to be transformed to farmland.
To make farming more efficient, conventional agriculture uses a significant amount of synthetic fertilizer(合成肥料) each year, and all that nitrogen(氮) enables much faster plant growth. However, the cost is paid in vast polluted dead zones at the mouths of many of the world’s rivers, because much of the nitrogen ends up running off the soil and into the oceans. This also makes conventional farming one of the major threats to the environment.
To weaken the environmental impact of agriculture, improve soil quality as well as produce healthier foods, some farmers have turned to organic farming. Environmentalists have also welcomed organic food as better for the planet than the food produced by agricultural corporations. Organic practices—refusing artificial fertilizers and chemical pesticides—are considered far more sustainable. Sales of organic food rose 7.7% in 2010, up to $26.7 billion—and people are making those purchases for their moral senses as much as their tongues.
Yet a new meta-analysis in Nature does the math and comes to a hard conclusion: organic farming produces 25% fewer crops on average than conventional agriculture. This is definitely a downside of organic farming, especially when global population is still growing rapidly.
In the Nature analysis, scientists performed an analysis of 66 studies comparing conventional and organic methods across 34 different crop species, from fruits to grains. They found that organic farming delivered a lower output for every crop type, though the difference varied widely. For crops like fruit trees, organic trailed conventional agriculture by just 5%. Yet for major grain crops and vegetables—all of which provide the world’s main calories—conventional agriculture outperformed organics by more than 25%.
What that means is that while organic farming may be more sustainable than conventional agriculture, there are trade-offs(此消彼长) with each. So an ideal global agriculture system may borrow the best from both systems rather than upholding merely organic or conventional practices. 47. The purpose of the passage is to . A. compare two types of farming B. criticize conventional agriculture C. discuss the development of farming D. argue for a realistic agriculture system 48. According to the passage, conventional farming . A. produces more crops with fewer fertilizers
B. achieves efficiency at a huge cost to the environment C. offers a long-term solution to global demand for food D. performs far better for each crop type than organic farming 49. The author may agree with . A. employing organic farming to plant rice B. adopting organic practices to grow potato C. using conventional methods to plant cabbage D. applying conventional farming to growing apple
50. Which of the following shows the development of ideas in this passage?
A. B.
C. D.
CP: Central Point P: Point Sp: Sub-point(次要点) C：Conclusion
第二节（共5小题；每小题2分，共10分）
根据短文内容，从短文后的七个选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。
People Are People
Globalization has brought different cultures together in a way unimaginable one hundred years ago. Today, Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Africans, Anglos, and Hispanics may all work in the same offices, attend the same schools or live in the same neighborhoods. 51 And our society has lately emphasized the importance of diversity.
52 Take the following old proverbs for example.
“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” Thomas Jefferson, American President “One falsehood spoils a thousand truths.” African proverb
“Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest.” Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher
“A sacrifice is written off by a lie and the merit of devotion by an act of cheat.” Hindu saying 53 There seems to be a sort of cultural unity.
We don’t wish to imply all cultures are the same. Cultural diversity is real, and people from different cultures view many situations in different ways. However, historically, different cultures seem to share many common values. They are justice, courage, patience, generosity, equality, mercy and kindness, respect for the elders, and many more. Lying and stealing appear to be wrong no matter where you go. Perhaps some cultures make room for extenuating(情有可原) circumstances more than others; perhaps cultures apply these virtues in different ways; and when values disagree, different cultures may place different levels of importance on them. 54 But both cultures may still value both.
To us, it seems as if there is some sort of code of right and wrong that everyone everywhere seems
丰台区2024年高三年级第二学期综合练习(一)英语
