单选题 It vanished in 2002, a result of a bad fall. As my neurosurgeon explained, when my head hit the ground, my brain sloshed around, which smashed delicate nerve endings in my olfactory system. Maybe they'll repair themselves, she said (in what struck me as much too casual a tone ), and maybe they won't, If I had to lose something, it might as well have been smell; at least nothing about my personality or my memory had changed, as can happen with head trauma. So it seemed almost churlish to feel, as the months went on, so devastated by this particular loss.
But I was heartbroken. My sense of smell was always something I took pleasure in. Without scent, I felt as ff I were walking around the city without my contact lenses, dealing with people while wearing earplugs, moving through something sticky and thick. The sharpness of things, their specificity, diminished. I couldn't even tell when the milk had gone bad. Oddly, my sense of taste remained perfectly fine, but I was still nervous about opening a carton of yogurt without having someone nearby to sniff it for me. I had been stripped of the sense we all use, often without realizing it, to negotiate the world, to know which things are safe and which are dangerous.
After nearly a year, I talked to a colleague savvying about neuro-science, who suggested I try to retrain my sense of smell on the assumption that the nerve endings had repaired themselves but that something was still broken along the pathway from nose to brain, where odor molecules activate olfactory receptors (the subject of this year's Nobel-winning research) . Her advice was to expose myself to strong, distinctive fragrances, asking the person I was with to tell me exactly what I was smelling even if I wasn't conscious of smelling anything at all.
I began sticking my nose into everything that seemed likely to have a scent-the cumin in the spice cabinet, freshly ground coffee, red wine. I interrupted friends midsentence if we happened to be walking past a pizza place or a garbage truck and asked, stupidly, "What are you smelling now?"
Slowly, the smell therapy started to work. At first, distressingly, all I could smell were unnatural scents: dandruff shampoo, furniture polish, a cloud of after-shave from a stocky young man. The first time I smelled cut grass again, in the small park near the American Museum of Natural History, was almost exactly two years after my fall. It made me cry. The tears embarrassed me, but cut grass is one of those fragrances that transport me directly to the landscape of childhood. And that's what I had been missing, really, and why getting back my sense of smell was so precious: a visceral connection to the person I used to be.

单选题 According to the text, a bad fall of the author resulted in______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】本题是细节题。
根据第1段作者的神经外科医生(neurosurgeon)的解释可以作出此判断:Ⅱ I had to lose something,it might as well have been smell.由此可知正确答案为 D。
单选题 We may infer from the context that the author was______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】本题是推论题。
根据文章第2段:I felt as if I were walking around the city with out my contact lenses(我感到似乎没戴隐形眼镜似的在城里行走);此处用的是虚拟语气,实际上是戴了隐形眼镜。由此可推知作者是个近视眼,答案应为B。
单选题 Why was the author nervous about opening a carton of yogurt?
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】本题是细节题。
为什么作者打开酸奶盒会感到紧张?因为她丧失了味觉,不知道手中的酸奶是否食用安全。参见文章第2段最后一句:I had been stripped of the sense we all use,often without reaching it,to negotiate the world,to know which things are safe and which are dangerous.这与选项C的意思一致,所以为正确答案。
单选题 Judging from the context "savvying" in Line 1, Paragraph 3 probably means______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】本题是词汇题。
根据上下文a colleague savvying about neuro-science,也即是“懂一点神经学的同事”。savvy v. 理解;领悟,如:Do you savvy?你懂吗?
单选题 When the author smelled cut grass again for the first time, she______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】本题是细节题。
参见文章最后一段:The first time I smelled cut grass again,..It made me cry.The tears embarrassed me,..由此可见,当作者恢复味觉再次嗅到青草的芬芳时,她情不自禁地失声大哭,泪如泉涌。因此正确答案为C。