ReadingWhatSortofLanguageLearnerAreYou.docx

阅读理解例子主旨题Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness(荒野). But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.24. What attracted the early settlers to New York City?A. Its business culture.B. Its small population.C. Its geographical position.D. Its favourable climate.When her five daughters were young, Helene An always told them that there was strength in unity (团结) .To show this, she held up one chopstick, representing one person. Then she easily broke it into two pieces. Next,she tied several chopsticks together, representing a family. She showed the girls it was hard to break the tied chop? sticks. This lesson about family unity stayed with the daughters as they grew up. Helene An and her family own a large restaurant bus? iness in California. However, when Helene and her hus? band Danny left their home in Vietnam in 1975,they didnt have much money. They moved their family to San Francisco. There they joined Dannys mother, Diana, who owned a small Italian sandwich shop. Soon after? wards, Helene and Diana changed the sandwich shop into a small Vietnamese restaurant. The five daughters helped in the restaurant when they were young. However, Helene did not want her daughters to always work in the family business because she thought it was too hard.Helen tied several chopsticks together to show _. A. the strength of family unityB. the difficulty of growing upC. the advantage of chopsticksD. the best way of giving a lessonPeople seem to forget that since innovation is a change, there can be no innovation without change. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom prevents leaders, followers and companies from changing and therefore innovating. If companies dont innovate, but their competitors do, the future is likely to be problematic（成问题的）. Breaking from conventional wisdom has led to many of the most innovative companies and products in history across many industries, so it has a powerful effect on business success.Ted Turner（founder of CNN） knew little, if anything, about the news business, but he knew it was inconvenient to watch news only at the dinner hour, as was common before CNN. Turners solution was to create a cable （有线的）channel devoted to news 24 hours a day. The news establishment reflected conventional wisdom at the time, and predicted his idea would fail because no one wanted to watch the news all day. However, it doesnt take a rocket scientist to understand that viewers dont have to watch the news all day for the CNN to work. Viewers just have to watch when they want to get information. Due to conventional thinking, the critics failed to recognize the opportunity that was clear to Ted. They assumed that only what was familiar to them could work in the future.50. The founding of CNN is used as an example to prove _. A. missing opportunities could lead to failureB. watching news at the dinner hour is convenientC. changing could contribute to business successD. conventional wisdom influences business successChimps(黑猩猩) will cooperate in certain ways, like gathering in war parties to protect their territory. But beyond the minimum requirements as social beings, they have little instinct (本能) to help one another. Chimps in the wild seek food for themselves. Even chimp mothers regularly decline to share food with their children. Who are able from a young age to gather their own food.In the laboratory, chimps dont naturally share food either. If a chimp is put in a cage where he can pull in one plate of food for himself or, with no great effort, a plate that also provides food for a neighbor to the next cage, he will pull at random -he just doesnt care whether his neighbor gets fed or not. Chimps are truly selfish.Human children, on the other hand are extremely corporative. From the earliest ages, they decide to help others, to share information and to participate a achieving common goals. The psychologist Michael Tomasello has studied this cooperativeness in a series of expensive with very young children. He finds that if babies aged 18 months see an worried adult with hands full trying to open a door, almost all will immediately try to help.There are several reasons to believe that the urges to help, inform. and share are not taught .but naturally possessed in young children. One is that these instincts appear at a very young age before most parents have started to train children to behave socially. Another is that the helping behaviors are not improved if the children are rewarded. A third reason is that social intelligence. Develops in children before their general cognitive(认知的)skills, at least when compared with chimps.In tests conducted by Tomtasell, the children did no better than the chimps on the physical world tests, but were considerably better at understanding the social worldThe cure of what childrens minds have and chimps dont in what Tomasello calls what. Part of this ability is that they can infer what others know or are thinking. But that, even very young children want to be part of a shared purpose. They actively seek to be part of a “we”, a group that intends to work toward a shared goal.59. Michael Tomasellos tests on young children indicate that they_.A. have the instinct to help othersB. know how to offer help to adultsC. know the world better than chimpsD. trust adults with their hands fullWeve considered several ways of paying to cut in line: hiring line standers, buying tickets from scalpers (票贩子), or purchasing line-cutting privileges directly from, say, an airline or an amusement park. Each of these deals replaces the morals of the queue (waiting your turn) with the morals of the market (paying a price for faster service). Markets and queuespaying and waitingare two different ways of allocating things, and each is appropriate to different activities. The morals of the queue, “First come, first served, have an egalitarian (平等主义的) appeal. They tell us to ignore privilege, power, and deep pockets. The principle seems right on playgrounds and at bus stops. But the morals of the queue do not govern all occasions. If I put my house up for sale, I have no duty to accept the first offer that comes along, simply because its the first. Selling my house and waiting for a bus are different activities, properly governed by different standards. Sometimes standards change, and it is unclear which principle should apply. Think of the recorded message you hear, played over and over, as you wait on hold when calling your bank: “Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.