单选题 Discoveries in science and technology are thought by " untaught minds" to come in blinding flashes or as the result of dramatic accidents. Sir Alexander Fleming did not, as legend would have it, look at the mold(霉)on a piece of cheese and get the idea for penicillin there and then. He experimented with antibacterial substances for nine years before he made his discovery. Inventions and innovations almost always come out of laborious trial and error. Innovation is like soccer; even the best players miss the goal and have their shots blocked much more frequently than they score. The point is that the players who score most are the ones who take most shots at the goal — and so it goes with innovation in any field of activity. The prime difference between innovation and others is one of approach. Everybody gets ideas, but innovators work consciously on theirs and they follow them through until they prove practicable or otherwise. What ordinary people see as fanciful abstractions, professional innovators see as solid possibilities. "Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there's no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done, " wrote Rudolph Flesch, a language authority. This accounts for our reaction to seemingly simple innovations like plastic garbage bags and suitcases on wheels that make life more convenient: "How come nobody thought of that before?" The creative approach begins with the proposition that nothing is as it appears. Innovators will not accept that there is only one way to do anything. Faced with getting from A to B, the average person will automatically set out on the best-known and apparently simplest route. The innovator will search for alternate courses, which may prove easier in the long run and are bound to be more interesting and challenging even if they lead to dead ends. Highly creative individuals really do march to a different drummer.

单选题 What does the author probably mean by "untaught mind" in the first paragraph?

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】解析：untaught原意为“未受教育的，无知的”，理解它的确切含义要通过语境。第一段首句指出具有untaught mind这类人的想法：他们认为发明创造是灵感或戏剧性事件的产物；继而第二句以青霉素发明者弗莱明爵士为例，对首句进行反驳，从而说明科技发明的取得都是经过长期的艰苦实验，从失败走向成功的。由此推断，只有那些不明真相、不知其艰辛的人才会把发明创造想象为灵感或戏剧性事件的产物，故选A。

单选题 According to the author, what distinguishes innovators from non-innovators?

单选题 The author quotes Rudolph Flesch in Paragraph 3 because______.

单选题 The phrase "march to a different drummer"(the last line of the passage)suggests that highly creative individuals are______.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】解析：此短语被作者放在全文的结束句，自成一段，是对全文中心思想的精辟概括，因此必须联系全文的中心思想去理解。march to a different drummer为习惯用法，意为“独树一帜、标新立异”。这里是指“不随波逐流，与其他人所走的道路或所持的思路不同”。这是对文章主旨的一个形象总结。而B选项正合此意。A强调的是毅力；C、D选项强调的是社会责任心，都与原文主旨不符，故选B。