The African elephant, the largest land animal remaining on the earth, is of great importance to African ecosystem(生态系统). Unlike other animals, the African elephant is to a great extent the builder of its environment. As a big plant-eater, it largely shapes the forest-and-savanna(大草原) surroundings in which it lives, therefore setting the terms of existence for millions of other animals that live in its habitat.
It is the elephant’s great desire for food that makes it a disturber of the environment and an important builder of its habitat. In its continuous search for the 300 pounds of plants it must have every day, it kills small trees and underbushes, and pulls branches off big trees. This results in numerous open spaces in both deep tropical forests and in the woodlands that cover part of the African savannas(热带草原). In these open spaces are numerous plants in various stages of growth that attract a variety of other plant-eaters.
Take the rain forests for example. In their natural state, the spreading branches overhead shut out sunlight and prevent the growth of plants on the forest floor. By pulling down trees and eating plants, elephants make open spaces, allowing new plants to grow on the forest floor. In such situations, the forests become suitable for large hoofed plant-eaters to move around and for small plant-eaters to get their food as well.
What worries scientists now is that the African elephant has become an endangered species. If the elephant disappears, scientists say, many other animals will also disappear from vast areas of forest and savanna, greatly changing and worsening the whole ecosystem.
小题1:What is the passage mainly about? | A．Disappearance of African elephants. | | B．Forests and savannas as habitats for African elephants. | | C．The effect of African elephants’ search for food. | | D．The eating habit of African elephants. |
小题2:What does the underlined phrase “setting the terms” most probably mean? | A．Fixing the time. | B．Worsening the state. | | C．Improving the quality. | D．Deciding the conditions. |
小题3:According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?| A．The African elephant is the largest animal on the earth. | | B．African elephants have 300 pounds of plants every day, including small trees and underbushes. | | C．The African elephant is in a way the builder of the environment like other land animals. | | D．If the African elephant disappears, the whole ecosystem won’t be affected. |
小题4:The passage is developed mainly by . | A．showing the effect and then explaining the causes | | B．pointing out similarities and differences | | C．describing the changes in space order | | D．giving examples |
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小题1:C
小题2:D
小题3:B
小题4:A |
文章讲述了非洲大象对生态的影响，并解释了具体的原因。
小题1:主旨大意题。文章正是讲述了非洲大象对生态的影响。
小题2:猜测词义题。根据上下文可知大象对生态的影响很大；这里是指大象形成了它所生活的大草原的环境，决定了其它一些生活在栖息地的动物的情况。
小题3:细节题。根据第二段2,3行. In its continuous search for the 300 pounds of plants it must have every day, it kills small trees and underbushes, and pulls branches off big trees.
小题4:写作方法。文章采用的写作方法是先说明影响，然后解释了具体的原因。 |
核心考点
试题【The African elephant, the largest land animal remaining on the earth, is of grea】；主要考察你对
题材分类等知识点的理解。
[详细]举一反三
Memory is the ability to keep track of things that have happened in the past. Memory really is learning. One needs memory to ride a bicycle. A dog needs to remember if it is to come when called.
Memory is said to be stored in the brain as a “memory trace（记忆痕）.” What makes up this trace is not known. Some scientists believe that certain chemical substances may carry certain memories. For example, one substance, when given to rats, causes them to fear the dark.
Other research into memory has to do with how the brain works. Psychologists use three means to find out how a person remembers. For example, give a person a grocery list. Let the person memorize the list, then put it away. The most natural way to find out how much a person remembers of the grocery list is to ask what he or she remembers. This is called the method of recall. Another method is called recognition. Give the person another grocery list. Ask him or her to choose items on the first list from the items that are on only the second list. Often a person will be able to recognize things that he or she cannot recall. A third method of finding how much a person remembers is called relearning. Here the person is asked to read over the first list. The person will probably learn the list the second time faster than he did the first time. The difference in the time it takes to relearn the list is thought of as a measure of how much a person has remembered.
One way of remembering something is to repeat it many times. Interest is very important. Boring lists of facts are much more difficult to remember than something that we understand and are interested in. Motivation, or wanting to do something, is also important. Motivation is linked with reward. For example, a hungry animal quickly learns how to do something if that action gets the animal food. In humans, wanting to learn is often motivation. The praise of a teacher or the knowledge that an answer is correct is rewarding.
小题1:We can learn from the 2nd paragraph that ___________ .| A．bad memories may cause rats to fear the dark | | B．it is hard to tell what a memory trace consists of | | C．chemical substances carry certain memories | | D．memory is stored in the brain as a substance |
小题2:The way to pick out the items on the first list from the second is known as ________ .| A．recognition | B．recall | C．memorization | D．relearning |
小题3:What is considered as a measure of how much one has remembered?| A．The length of the list. | | B．The type of list items. | | C．The time difference of relearning. | | D．The time difference of brain working. |
小题4:A good way to train an animal to do something quickly is to ________.| A．make the action easy | B．praise it in words | | C．reward it with food | D．weaken its motivation |
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I credit my typing skill to so many hours of chatting online. Unfortunately, as my typing speed increased on the Internet, all grammatical rules went out of the window. You see instant messages have their own shorthand language and grammar isn’t important, of which even a newbie (新手) is aware. They can leave out articles, subjects (主语), pronouns, etc. They can misspell or “respell” almost any word. They often ask “A/S/L” when they first chat. Abbreviations (缩写) and capitalizations (大写) are particularly important. English-speaking instant messengers also refuse to burden themselves with punctuation and capitalization.
After I came back China, I discovered not one but two instant messaging crazes. The first, which brought back memories of my previous addiction to the computer, was QQ. I can see evidence that the Chinese have the same kind of separate instant messaging language, even when they chat in English. My first word in this language, for example, was “ft”. This abbreviation for “faint” is used whenever there is a need to express surprise. I also discovered that Chinese use the same kind of abbreviation for a laugh. And there is an extraordinary number of smileys (表情符) to the “vomit” and “army soldier” smileys. There is even a SARA smiley.
After QQ, there is another, perhaps more widespread messaging trend. You guessed it --- cell phone text messaging. I now understand how useful text messaging is and why it is so common. I admit that I have been guilty of sending text messages while walking outside or sitting on the subway. Who hasn’t ? No matter where I go, I see people on their cell phones, messaging. In fact, it’s rare to see someone actually talking on their phone!
So it looks as if there is no escape from the instant messaging crazes, no matter where in the world I go. And that’s plainly not going to change. In the end, though, I can’t complain: instant messaging is quick, it’s cheap, it’s easy and it’s extremely fun too. And after all, everyone’s doing it.
小题1:The underlined phrase “went out of the window” in Paragraph 1 probably means .| A．increased | B．occurred | C．disappeared | D．changed |
小题2:Which of the following is true according to the passage?| A．Grammar and correct spelling are very important while chatting online. | | B．There are enough smileys and icons to express yourselves while chatting on line. | | C．The writer is skilled at typing and once was addicted to online games. | | D．It is impolite to leave out some unimportant words or letters while chatting online. |
小题3:The writer believes that instant messaging is .| A．full of fun but time-consuming | | B．widespread but unnecessary | | C．quick but difficult to do | | D．common, used and cheap |
小题4:Which might be the main idea of the passage?| A．Who can escape QQ and cell phone text messaging? | | B．Why is instant messaging so popular? | | C．Chatting online is good for your typing skill. | | D．Chatting on QQ is natural for people. |
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Scientists at Harvard University and Bates College find female chimpanzees (黑猩猩) appear to treat sticks as dolls, carrying them around until they have children of their own. Young males engage in such behavior much less frequently.
The new work by Sonya M. Kahlenberg and Richard W. Wrangham, described this week in the journal Current Biology, provides the first evidence of a wild nonhuman species playing with dolls, as well as the first known sex difference in a wild animal’s choice of playthings.
The two researchers say their work adds to a growing body of evidence that human children are probably born with their own ideas of how they want to behave, rather than simply mirroring other girls who play with dolls and boys who play with trucks. Doll play among humans could have its origins in object—carrying by earlier apes (猿类), they say, suggesting that toy selection is probably not due entirely to socialization.
“In humans, there are obvious sex differences in children’s toy play, and these are remarkably similar across cultures,” says Kahlenberg. “While socialization by elders and peers has been the primary explanation, our work suggests that biology may also have an important role to play in activity preferences.”
In 14 years of data on chimpanzee behavior at the Kibale National Park in Uganda, Kahlenberg and Wrangham counted more than 100 examples of stickcarrying. Some young chimpanzees carried sticks into the nest to sleep with them and on one occasion built a separate nest for the stick. “We have seen juveniles occasionally carrying sticks for many years, and because they sometimes treated them rather like dolls, we wanted to know if in general this behavior tended to represent something like playing with dolls,” says Wrangham, a Professor at Harvard. “If the doll hypothesis (假设) was right, we thought that females should carry sticks more than males do, and that the chimpanzees should stop carrying sticks when they had their first child. We have now watched enough young chimpanzees to prove both points.”
小题1:What does a female chimpanzee do with sticks?| A．She gives them to her child to play with. | | B．She treats them as dolls. | | C．She makes useful tools from them. | | D．She treats them as weapons. |
小题2: What causes the different toy selection of chimpanzees, according to the passage?| A．Sex difference. | B．Socialization. | | C．Environment. | D．Cultural difference. |
小题3:We can infer from the fourth paragraph that ________.| A．socialization has nothing to do with human’s choice of playthings | | B．sex difference is the only factor in human’s choice of playthings | | C．the biology factor may also influence toy choice | | D．people choose different toys in different cultures |
小题4:It can be concluded from the passage that ________.| A．both humans and chimpanzees choose their playthings due to sex difference | | B．different factors cause humans and chimpanzees to choose different playthings | | C．only female chimpanzees have playthings | | D．chimpanzees usually choose playthings for their children |
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阅读下面短文，根据小题的具体要求，简要回答问题。
UFO is short for Unidentified Flying Object. It’s also called Flying Saucer. It is one of the most popular topics in the 20th century. With films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET in the 1970s came a rapid increase in reports of flying saucers and men from Mars. More than 20 countries said their people once saw the UFO and there were over 1,200 reports about the UFO. Some even said they saw aliens.
In July, 1916, Gaynor was a nine-year-old girl and lived in North Wales. One day, on her way home from school, she saw a silver object in a field not far from her home. The object looked like a saucer. Gaynor was very scared. She stayed in the tall grass and watched the door of the strange object open. She saw two aliens wearing silver suits get ou. Then they use something to examine the ground. They were short and had pink eyes. After about half an hour, the two aliens went back into the object. Then it took off. When Gaynor got home, she told her mother about her unusual experience, but her family decided to keep quiet about it. They didn’t want others to laugh at their daughter. However, 18 months later, Gaynor told her story to UFO scientists. They found out that Gaynor told the truth.
小题1:What does UFO stand for? (No more than 3 words)
小题2:How did Gaynor feel when she saw the silver object like a saucer? (No more than 4 words)
小题3:Why did Gaynor’s parents keep quiet about her experience ? (No more than 10 words) |
All children in the United States have to receive an education, but not all children go to school. A number of parents 36 not to send their children to school. Such children are known 37 “home-schoolers”. Some parents prefer teaching their children at home 38 they do not believe schools teach the correct religious (宗教的) 39 ; others believe they can provide a better educational 40 for their children by doing so. 41 , results show home-schooled children often do better than 42 on national tests in reading and math.
David teaches his three children at home. He 43 that his children learn very differently from children in school. Learning starts with the children’s 44 and questions. For example, when there is snowfall on a winter day, it may 45 a discussion about climate, snow removal 46 , Alaska, etc. Or a spring evening when the family is out 47 the stars is a good time to ask questions about the sky. If the Brazilian rain forests are on TV, it 48 be a perfect time to talk about how rain forests influence the climate, how deserts are 49 and how the polar ice caps 50 ocean levels.
Home schooling is often more interesting than 51 schools, but critics (批评家) say home-schoolers might be uncomfortable 52 with other people in adult life. Critics also say that most parents are not 53 to teach their children. However, most parents don’t have the time or the 54 to teach their children at home, so schools will continue to be 55 most children get their formal education.
| 小题1: | | A．consider | B．prefer | C．provide | D．suggest |
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| 小题3: | | A．because | B．for | C．though | D．while |
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| 小题4: | | A．activities | B．uses | C．thoughts | D．values |
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| 小题5: | | A．experience | B．knowledge | C．behavior | D．way |
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| 小题6: | | A．Sadly | B．Actually | C．Unbelievably | D．Happily |
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| 小题7: | | A．normal | B．ordinary | C．common | D．average |
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| 小题8: | | A．believes | B．says | C．offers | D．imagines |
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| 小题9: | | A．interests | B．discussion | C．needs | D．hobbies |
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| 小题10: | | A．carry | B．open | C．lead | D．start |
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| 小题11: | | A．furniture | B．equipment | C．tool | D．maker |
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| 小题12: | | A．seeing | B．looking | C．watching | D．noticing |
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| 小题13: | | A．need | B．must | C．ought | D．could |
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| 小题14: | | A．appeared | B．formed | C．invented | D．built |
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| 小题15: | | A．affect | B．decide | C．make | D．determine |
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| 小题16: | | A．outside | B．expensive | C．informal | D．regular |
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| 小题17: | | A．living | B．matching | C．mixing | D．connecting |
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| 小题18: | | A．fit | B．adapted | C．available | D．good |
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| 小题19: | | A．money | B．desire | C．hope | D．demand |
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