中国名校英语六级考试冲刺（三）

Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension(35 minutes)
Directions:There are 4 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by 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 mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center.
Passage One?
Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage:?
Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary. Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts, and other vocations, like farming and fishery, that have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary, is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very fiber of our language. Hence, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood, than most other technicalities. The special dialects of law, medicine, divinity, and philosophy have also, in their older strata, become pretty familiar to cultivated persons and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary. Yet every vocation still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion has been much increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic arts. Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned with indifference when they have served their turn. Most of the new coinages are confined to special discussions, and seldom get into general literature or conversation. Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close guild （行会）. The lawyer, the physician, the man of science, the divine, associated freely with his fellow-creatures, and does not meet them in a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called “popular science” makes everybody acquainted with modern views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported in the newspapers, and everybody is soon talking about it as in the case of the Roentgen rays and wireless telegraphy. Thus our common speech is always taking up new technical terms and making them commonplace.?
21.Special words used in technical discussion____.?
A) never last long?
B) should be confined to scientific fields?
C) may become part of common speech?
D) are considered artificial language speech?
22.It is true that____.?
A) everyone is interested in scientific findings?
B) the average man often uses in his own vocabulary what was once technical language not meant for him?
C) an educated person would be expected to know most technical terms?
D) various professions and occupations often interchange their dialects and jargons?
23.In recent years,there has been a marked increase in the number of technical terms in the terminology of____.?
A) fishery     B) farming?C) government  D) sports?24.The writer of the article was, undoubtedly ____.?
A) a linguist  B) an attorney?C) a scientist D) an essayist?
25.The author’s main purpose in the passage is to____.?
A) describe a phenomenon?
B) propose a solution?
C) be entertaining ?
D) argue a belief ?
Passage Two?
Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage:?
    An important new industry, oil refining, grew after the Civil War. Crude oil, or petroleum—a dark, thick ooze（渗出物，分泌物）from the earth—had been known for hundreds of years. But little use had ever been made of it. In the 1850’s Samuel M. Kier, a manufacturer in western Pennsylvania, began collecting the oil from local seepage and refining it into kerosene. Refining, like smelting, is a process of removing impurities from a raw material. ?    Kerosene was used to light lamps. It was a cheap substitute for whale oil, which was becoming harder to get. Soon there was a large demand for kerosene. People began to search for new supplies of petroleum.?    The first oil well was drilled by E.L.Drake,a retired railroad conductor.In 1859 he began drilling in Titusville,Pennsylvania.The whole venture seemed so impractical and foolish that onlookers called it“Drake’s Folly.”But when he had drilled down about 70 feet(21 meters),Drake struck oil.His well began to yield 20 barrels of crude oil a day. ?
News of Drake’s success brought oil prospectors to the scene. By the early 1860’s these wildcatters were drilling for “black gold” all over western Pennsylvania. The boom rivaled the California gold rush of 1848 in its excitement and Wild West atmosphere. And it brought far more wealth to the prospectors than any gold rush. ?Crude oil could be refined into many products. For some years kerosene continued to be the principal one. It was sold in grocery stores and door-to-door. In the 1880’s and 1890’s refiners learned how to make other products such as waxes and lubricating oils. Petroleum was not then used to make gasoline or heating oil.?
26.According to the passage, many people initially thought that E. L. Drake had made a mistake by ____.?
A) moving Pennsylvania?
B) retiring from his job?
C) searching for oil?
D) going on a whaling expedition?
27.According to the passage, what is “black gold”??
A) Gold ore. B) Sstolen money.?
C) Whale oil. D) Crude oil.?
28.Why does the author mention the California gold rush??
A) To indicate the extent of United States mineral wealth.?
B) To argue that gold was more valuable than oil.?
C) To describe the mood when oil was first discovered.?
D) To explain the need for an increased supply of gold.?
29.The author mentions all of the following as possible products of crude oil EXCEPT____.?
A) gasoline B) kerosene?
C) wax      D) plastic?30.What might be the best title for the passage??
A) Oil Refining: A Historical Perspective.?
B) Kerosene Lamps: A Light in the Tunnel.?
C) The California Gold Rush: Get Rich Quickly.?
D) Private Property: Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.?
Passage Three?
Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage:?
For about three centuries we have been doing science, trying science out, using science for the construction of what we call modern civilization. Every dispensable item of contemporary technology, from canal locks to dial telephones to penicillin, was pieced together from the analysis of data provided by one or another series of scientific experiments. Three hundred years seems a long time for testing a new approach to human interliving, long enough to settle back for critical appraisal of the scientific method, maybe even long enough to vote on whether to go on with it or not. There is an argument. ?   
Voices have been raised in protest since the beginning, rising in pitch and violence in the nineteenth century during the early stages of the industrial revolution, summoning urgent crowds into the streets any day these days on the issue of nuclear energy. Give it back, say some of the voices, it doesn’t really work, we’ve tried it and it doesn’t work, go back three hundred years and start again on something else less chancy for the race of man.?   
The principle discoveries in this century, taking all in all, are the glimpses of the depth of our ignorance about nature. Things that used to seem clear and rational, matters of absolute certainty-Newtonian mechanics, for example-have slipped through our fingers, and we are left with a new set of gigantic puzzles, cosmic uncertainties, ambiguities; some of the laws of physics are amended every few years, some are canceled outright, some undergo revised versions of legislative intent as if they were acts of Congress.?   
Just thirty years ago we call it a biological revolution when the fantastic geometry of the DNA molecule was exposed to public view and the linear language of genetics was decoded. For a while, things seemed simple and clear, the cell was a neat little machine, a mechanical device ready for taking to pieces and reassembling, like a tiny watch. But just in the last few years it has become almost unbelievably complex, filled with strange parts whose functions are beyond today’s imagining.?It is not just that there is more to do, there is everything to do. What lies ahead, or what can lie ahead if the efforts in basic research are continued, is much more than the conquest of human disease or the improvement of agricultural technology or the cultivation of nutrients in the sea. As we learn more about fundamental processes of living things in general we will learn more about ourselves.?
31.What can’ t be inferred from the 1st paragraph??
A) Scientific experiments in the past three hundred years have produced many valuable items.?
B) For three hundred years there have been people holding hostile attitude toward science.?
C) Modern civilization depends on science so man supports scientific progress unanimously.?
D) Three hundred years is not long enough to settle back critical appraisal of scientific method.?
32.The principle discovery in this century shows ____.?
A) man has overthrown Newton’ s laws of physics?
B) man has solved a new set of gigantic puzzles?
C) man has lost many scientific discoveries?
D) man has given up some of the once accepted theories?
33.Now scientists have found in the past few years____.?
A) the exposure of DNA to the public is unnecessary?
B) the tiny cell in DNA is a neat little machine?
C) man knows nothing about DNA?
D) man has much to learn about DNA?
34.The writer’s main purpose in writing the passage is to say that ____.?
A) science is just at its beginning?
B) science has greatly improved man’s life?
C) science has made profound progress?
D) science has done too little to human beings?
35.The writer’s attitude towards science is ____.?
A) critical B) approving?
C) neutral D) regretful?