单选题
"Other countries have a climate; in England we have
weather. " This statement is often made by Englishmen, which is both revealing
and true. It is revealing because in it we see the Englishman insisting
once again that what happens in England is not the same as what happens
elsewhere; its truth can soon be found by any foreigner who stays in the country
for longer than a few days. It has been said only in England
can one experience four seasons in the course of a single day! Day may break as
a balmy spring morning; an hour later black clouds may have appeared from
nowhere and the rain may be pouring down. At midday conditions may be really
wintry with the temperature down by about eight degrees or more. And then, in
the late afternoon the sky will clear, the sun will begin to shine, and for an
hour or two before darkness falls, it will be summer. In
England one can experience almost every kind of weather except the most extreme.
Some foreigners seem to be under the impression that for ten months of the year
the country is covered by a dense blanket of fog; this is not true. The problem
is that we never can be sure when the different sorts of weather will occur. Not
only do we get several different sorts of weather in one day, but we may very
well get a period of winter in summer and a period of summer in
winter. This uncertainty about the weather has had a definite
effect upon the Englishman's character; it tends to make him cautious, for
example. The foreigner may laugh when he sees the Englishman setting out on a
sunny morning wearing a raincoat and carrying an umbrella, but he may well
regret his laughter later in the day! The English weather has also helped to
make the Englishman adaptable. It has been said that one of the reasons why the
English colonized (开拓殖民地) so much of the world was that, whatever the weather
conditions they met abroad, they had already experienced something like them at
home! And, of course, the weather's variety provides a constant
topic of conversation. Even the most unfriendly of Englishmen is always prepared
to discuss the weather. And, though he sometimes complains bitterly of it, he
would not exchange it for the more predictable (可以预防的) climate of other
lands.
单选题
The word "balmy" in the second paragraph probaly means
A. cloudy
B. cold
C. pleasant
D. wet
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[解析] (见第2段)
balmy意为“芳香的；令人愉快的”，引申为表示气候等“温和的”。如“a balmy breeze”(和风)。本文用来形容春天的早晨，一定是令人愉快的天气(a pleasant weather)了。根据后面几种天气状况中所用的cloudy，wet，cold等词也可做出判断。
单选题
By giving the example in the fourth paragraph, the writer tries to tell
the reader that ______.
A. it is hard for a foreigner to understand Englishmen's strange
behavior
B. in England it is always sunny in the morning and rainy in the
afternoon
C. Englishmen are good at foretelling weather
D. the English weather has made English people very careful