阅读理解Agriculture, Iron, and the Bantu Peoples
There is evidence of agriculture in Africa prior to 3000 B
阅读理解Native Americans probably arrived from Asia in successive waves over several
millennia, crossing a plain hundreds of miles wide that now lies inundated by 160 feet
of water released by melting glaciers. For several periods of time, the first beginning
around 60,000 B.C. and the last ending around 7,000 B.C., this land bridge was open. The
(5) first people traveled in the dusty trails of the animals they hunted. They brought with them
not only their families, weapons, and tools but also a broad metaphysical understanding,
sprung from dreams and visions and articulated in myth and song, which complemented
their scientific and historical knowledge of the lives of animals and of people. All this they
shaped in a variety of languages, bringing into being oral literatures of power and beauty.
(10) Contemporary readers, forgetting the origins of western epic, lyric, and dramatic
forms, are easily disposed to think of “literature” only as something written. But on
reflection it becomes clear that the more critically useful as well as the more frequently
employed sense of the term concerns the artfulness of the verbal creation, not its mode of
presentation. Ultimately, literature is aesthetically valued, regardless of language, culture,
(15)or mode of presentation, because some significant verbal achievement results from the
struggle in words between tradition and talent. Verbal art has the ability to shape out a
compelling inner vision in some skillfully crafted public verbal form.
Of course, the differences between the written and oral modes of expression are not
without consequences for an understanding of Native American literature. The essential
(20)difference is that a speech event is an evolving communication, an “emergent form,” the
shape, functions, and aesthetic values of which become more clearly realized over the
course of the performance. In performing verbal art , the performer assumes responsibility
for the manner as well as the content of the performance, while the audience assumes the
responsibility for evaluating the performer’s competence in both areas. It is this intense
(25)mutual engagement that elicits the display of skill and shapes the emerging performance.
Where written literature provides us with a tradition of texts, oral literature offers a
tradition of performances.
阅读理解Many ants forage across the countryside in large numbers and undertake mass
migrations; these activities proceed because one ant lays a trail on the ground for the others
to follow. As a worker ant returns home after finding a source of food, it marks the route
by intermittently touching its stinger to the ground and depositing a tiny amount of trail
(5)pheromone—a mixture of chemicals that delivers diverse messages as the context changes.
These trails incorporate no directional information and may be followed by other ants in
either direction.
Unlike some other messages, such as the one arising from a dead ant, a food trail has to
be kept secret from members of other species. It is not surprising then that ant species use
(10)a wide variety of compounds as trail pheromones. Ants can be extremely sensitive to these
signals. Investigators working with the trail pheromone of the leafcutter ant Atta texana calculated
that one milligram of this substance would suffice to lead a column of ants three times around
Earth.
The vapor of the evaporating pheromone over the trail guides an ant along the way,
(15)and the ant detects this signal with receptors in its antennae. A trail pheromone will
evaporate to furnish the highest concentration of vapor right over the trail, in what is called a
vapor space. In following the trail, the ant moves to the right and left, oscillating from side
to side across the line of the trail itself, bringing first one and then the other antenna into
the vapor space. As the ant moves to the right, its left antenna arrives in the vapor space.
(20)The signal it receives causes it to swing to the left, and the ant then pursues this new course
until its right antenna reaches the vapor space. It then swings back to the right, and so
weaves back and forth down the trail.
阅读理解Aggression
When one animal attacks another, it engages in the most obvious example of aggressive behavior
阅读理解Depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer
The vast grasslands of the High Plains in the central United States were settled by farmers and ranchers in the 1880s
阅读理解The "large, broad wheels" of the Conestoga wagon are mentioned in line 21 as an example of a feature of wagons that was
阅读理解The Long-Term Stability of Ecosystems
Plant communities assemble themselves flexibly, and their particular structure depends on the specific history of the area
阅读理解In 1903 the members of the governing board of the University of Washington. In
Seattle. engaged a firm of landscape architects, specialists in the design of outdoor
environments--Olmsted Brothers of Brookline, Massachusetts-to advise them on an
appropriate layout for the university grounds. The plan impressed the university officials,
(5) and in time many of its recommendations were implemented. City officials in Seattle, the
largest city in the northwestern United States, were also impressed, for they employed the
same organization to study Seattle''s public park needs. John Olmsted did the investigation
and subsequent report on Seattle''s parks. He and his brothers believed that parks should
be adapted to the local topography, utilize the area''s trees and shrubs, and be available to
(10) the entire community. They especially emphasized the need for natural, serene settings
where hurried urban dwellers could periodically escape from the city. The essence of the
Olmsted park plan was to develop a continuous driveway, twenty miles long, that would
tie together a whole series of parks, playgrounds, and parkways. There would be local
parks and squares, too, but all of this was meant to supplement the major driveway,
(15) which was to remain the unifying factor for the entire system.
In November of 1903 the city council of Seattle adopted the Olmsted Report, and
it automatically became the master plan for the city''s park system. Prior to this report,
Seattle''s park development was very limited and funding meager. All this changed
after the report. Between 1907 and 1913, city voters approved special funding measures
(20) amounting to $4,000,000. With such unparalleled sums at their disposal, with the Olmsted
guidelines to follow, and with the added incentive of wanting to have the city at its best
for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, the Parks Board bought aggressively.
By 1913 Seattle had 25 parks amounting to 1,400 acres, as well as 400 acres in
playgrounds, pathways, boulevards, and triangles. More lands would be added in the
(25) future, but for all practical purposes it was the great land surge of 1907-1913 that
established Seattle''s park system.
阅读理解What did the voyages of HMS Challenger (line13) and The Fram (line 26) have in common?
阅读理解The word "witnessed”'in line 26 is closest in meaning to
阅读理解It can inferred from the discussion about ducks that the molting of their flight feathers takes.
阅读理解Long before they can actually speak, babies pay special attention to the speech they
hear around them. Within the first month of their lives, babies'' responses to the sound of
the human voice will be different from their responses to other sorts of auditory stimuli.
They will stop crying when they hear a person talking, but not if they hear a bell or the
(5) sound of a rattle. At first, the sounds that an infant notices might be only those words that
receive the heaviest emphasis and that often occur at the ends of utterances. By the time
they are six or seven weeks old, babies can detect the difference between syllables
pronounced with rising and falling inflections. Very soon, these differences in adult stress
and intonation can influence babies'' emotional states and behavior. Long before they
(10) develop actual language comprehension, babies can sense when an adult is playful or
angry, attempting to initiate or terminate new behavior, and so on, merely on the basis of
cues such as the rate, volume, and melody of adult speech.
Adults make it as easy as they can for babies to pick up a language by exaggerating
such cues. One researcher observed babies and their mothers in six diverse cultures and
(15) found that, in all six languages, the mothers used simplified syntax, short utterances and
nonsense sounds, and transformed certain sounds into baby talk. Other investigators have
noted that when mothers talk to babies who are only a few months old, they exaggerate
the pitch, loudness, and intensity of their words. They also exaggerate their facial
expressions, hold vowels longer, and emphasize certain words.
(20) More significant for language development than their response to general intonation is
observation that tiny babies can make relatively fine distinctions between speech sounds.
other words, babies enter the world with the ability to make precisely those perceptual
discriminations that are necessary if they are to acquire aural language.
Babies obviously derive pleasure from sound input, too: even as young as nine months
(25) they will listen to songs or stories, although the words themselves are beyond their
understanding. For babies, language is a sensory-motor delight rather than the route to
prosaic meaning that it often is for adults.
阅读理解The word "shielded" in line 22 is closest in meaning to
阅读理解Which of the following terms is defined in thepassage?
阅读理解Early Cinema
The cinema did not emerge as a form of mass consumption until its technology evolved from the initial peepshow format to the point where images were projected on a screen in a darkened theater
阅读理解The phrase “carried on” in line 29 is closest in
meaning to
阅读理解The word "undergoing" in line 22 is closest in meaning to
阅读理解Which of the following is a characteristic of both needlefish and Florida gars?
阅读理解William Smith
In 1769 in a little town in Oxfordshire, England, a child with the very ordinary name of William Smith was born into the poor family of a village blacksmith
阅读理解Chinese Pottery
China has one of the worlds oldest continuous civilizationsdespite invasions and occasional foreign rule