高三英語限時閱讀訓練

A

London-Lazy students can now give up on work altogether as two Oxford University students have made scores of A-grade essays (論文) on the website for students to copy.

The essays are on the new website, “revise. it”

The website includes an “EssayLab” designed to make cheating (舞弊) as effective and effortless as possible.

Its homepage announces to surfers (網上沖浪者): “The revise. it EssayLab is a bank of hundreds of A-Level essays covering popular topics.”

“Next time you are asked to write an essay, why not see what we have on the subject-if you are in a lazy state of mind you can even use our guide to writing the essays and then just hand them in.”

Nick Rose and Jordan Mayo, both 19 and first from Manchester, spent much of their first year as students at the university setting up the website. There is no charge for downloading the essays.

“I have never been very good at essay writing,” Rose admitted. “We don’t see essay bank as a cheating way. It’s a surprising valuable resource. You can learn a lot by reading other people’s work on the subject.”

Among other tips, the website suggests inventing important speeches to give essays extra weight: “Popular people to quote (引用) are Douglass Hurd or Disraeli.”

Hurd was a foreign secretary in the 1980s and Disraeli was a 19th century prime minister.

Teachers are expressing their opinions by e-mail that they are angry about the website that “encourages students to cheat”, but students disagree.

According to Rose: “Exams are a fight. It’s us against them.”

1. It can be inferred from this passage that ______.

A. students who visit the website “revise. it” are all lazy

B. students in Oxford University are all lazy

C. websites in Oxford University are all set up by students

D. websites can provide people with different kinds of information

2. Nick Rose and Jordan Mayo set up their website for the purpose of ______.

A. helping students to cheat in exams B. helping students to improve their writing

C. making money to pay for their schooling D. making their teacher free

3. What Rose said at last suggests that in England ______.

A .it is difficult for students to pass their exams

B. it is difficult for teachers to finish their teaching

C. students are not satisfied with the education system

D. students are too lazy to learn anything

B

Fish have ears. Really. They’re quite small and have no opening to the outside world carrying sound through the body. For the past seven years, Simon Thorrold, a university professor, has been examining fish ears, small round ear bones called otoliths.

As fish grow, so do their otoliths. Each day, their otoliths gain a ring of calcium carbonate (碳酸鈣). By looking through a microscope (顯微鏡) and counting these rings, Thorrold can determine the exact age of a young fish. As a fish gets older, its otoliths no longer get daily rings. Instead, they get yearly rings, which can also be counted, giving information about the fish’s age, just like the growth rings of a tree.

Ring counting is nothing new to fish scientists. But Thorold has turned to a new direction. They’re examining the chemical elements (元素) of each otolith ring.

The daily ring gives us the time, but chemistry tells us about the environment in which the fish swam on any given day. These elements tell us about the chemistry of the water that the fish was in. It also says something about water temperature, which determines how much of these elements will gather within each otolith ring.

Thorrold can tell, for example, if a fish spent time in the open ocean before entering the less salty water of coastal areas. He can basically tell where fish are spending their time at any given stage of history.

In the case of the Atlantic croaker, a popular saltwater food fish, Thorrold and his assistant have successfully followed the traveling of young fish from mid-ocean to the coast, a journey of many hundreds of miles.

This is important to managers in the fish industry, who know nearly nothing about the whereabouts of the young fish for most food fish in the ocean. Eager to learn about his technology, fish scientists are now lending Thorrold their ears.

4. What can we learn about fish ears from the text?

A. They are small soft rings. B. They are not seen from the outside.

C. They are opening only on food fish. D. They are not used to receive sound.

5. Why does the writer compare the fish to trees?

A. Trees gain a growth ring each day. B. trees also have otoliths.

C. Their growth rings are very small. D. They both have growth rings.

6. Why is it important to study the chemistry of otolith rings?

A. The elements of the otoliths can tell the history of the sea.

B. Chemical contents of otoliths can tell how fast fish can swim.

C. We can know more about fish and their living environment.

D. Scientists can know exactly how old a fish is.

7. How would you understand “fish scientists are now lending their ears”?

A. They are very interested in Thorrold’s research fingings.

B. They want to know where they can find fish.

C. They lend their fish for chemical studies.

D. They wonder if Thorrold can find growth rings from their ears.

C

My son and I were trying to sell the house we had repaired but in the barn(谷倉)there were bats(蝙蝠)and they would not leave. The barn was their home. They told us so in their own way. They hung there in the barn and seemed determined to stay for the season. Don't worry about it, Dad, Patrick said. They keep down the mosquitoes(蚊子).”

Unfortunately they also kept the buyers away. when we had asked a person to sell　the house for us he had refused to show it because of the bats. Bats are popular, Patrick comforted me. They're ecological(生態學的).Isn't there a machine you can buy that produces high-frequency sounds to keep bats away?” I don't know,” said Patrick. But I like bats, and whoever buys this house will probably like them too.&n