1、笔译二级综合能力（阅读理解）模拟试卷 3及答案与解析 0 The British History not only gives cities their shape; it also molds their self-image. Since 1941, when London emerged from eight months of bombing with many of its landmarks pulverized but its resilience intact, the British capital has regarded itself as indomitable. Bu
2、t at 9 a. m. on a wintry Monday, a shock wave cracked that image, much as a V-2 rocket hitting a house would damage neighboring properties. Londoners learned that the citys entire fleet of buses had been recalled to its depots, defeated not by bombs the service had run quixotically but without inter
3、ruption throughout the Blitz but by snow. A mere six inches(5cm) of it. To say Britain isnt good at coping with snowing would be to exercise British understatement. Heavy snow is too rare to warrant serious investment in equipment, especially in London and the southeast, where this was, as excitable
4、 weather forecasters declared, the biggest “snow event“ in 18 years. The heavy fall may cost some 3 billion(about $4. 3 billion), since a fifth of the workforce took a “duvet day“ and business stayed shuttered. It also stopped Tube service, caused chaos at airports and closed schools. Thousands rema
5、ined shut for 48 hours, suggesting that Londoners, even more than Washingtonians, lack the “ flinty Chicago toughness“ President Barack Obama missed when a cold snap in the U. S. capital suspended his daughters school for a day. When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabaos London visit was also interrupted by s
6、now, Britains international humiliation was complete. Still, say this for Londoners: they can laugh at themselves. “Good thing Hitlers dead“ remarked a stock clerk in a supermarket. “He couldnt get us with the Blitz, but the place is so incapacitated now, hed walk right in. “ Meeting adversity with
7、a sort of gloomy wit is not a characteristic that always serves Brits well; they sometimes crack jokes when they should be complaining. Yet in this coldest of economic climates, an unquenchable sense of humor is one commodity that wont lose its value,(by Catherine Mayer, from Time, February 16, 2009
8、) 1 How was the traffic like during the Blitz? （ A） It had been completely tied up. （ B） It had run gallantly and effectively. （ C） It had run toughly and intermittently. （ D） It had run idealistically and impractically. 2 According to the author, the ROOT cause of the disaster is_. （ A） the heavy s
9、now （ B） Londoners incapacity （ C） weak precaution （ D） unreliable weather forecast 3 What is/are greatly influenced by the snow? （ A） Transportation system. （ B） Telecommunication system. （ C） Sino-British relation. （ D） All of the above. 4 In quoting the stock clerks remark, the author most probab
10、ly implies that_. （ A） London is now so weak that it may be broken through easily （ B） Londoners are always resilient despite all the hardships （ C） the indomitable image of London was not intact anymore （ D） Londoners are optimistic though they face with an embarrassing situation 5 What is the auth
11、ors attitude towards Britains coping with the heavy snow? （ A） Suspicious. （ B） Objective. （ C） Indifferent. （ D） Optimistic. 6 The author wrote the passage to_. （ A） amuse and entertain （ B） remind and warn （ C） explain and inform （ D） question and criticize 6 Our Guilty Secret Next time you pick u
12、p a lunchtime sandwich, take a moment to think about where it has come from. Think of the effort it took to grow the wheat for the bread, to feed the cows to make the cheese, to cultivate the salad from seed. Imagine if you took a few bites from it and simply threw the rest straight in the bin. And
13、if you did that every day, with everything you ate. Supermarkets and sandwich chains regularly discard a quarter as many sandwiches as they sell. Most of that food is perfectly edible, but little of it is given away to the poor or homeless. Instead, it is destroyed and often sent to landfill. Meanwh
14、ile, one billion people go hungry, in a globalized economy. Consumers are no better. In the United Kingdom alone, according to government estimates, a third of the food we buy goes into the bin. The appalling amount wasted in restaurants and fast-food eateries is another story. Tristram Stuarts Wast
15、e: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal lays bare our wasteful habits, from the farm to shrink-wrapped supermarket packaging and beyond. Stuart, a “freegan“ and environmental campaigner, has based his book on painstaking research carried out over several years of first-hand experience of foraging in s
16、upermarket bins, as well as interviews with company executives and trawls through the meagre data provided by governments and businesses. The book, with 68 pages of detailed notes and 69 pages of bibliography, bristles with facts but points also to the huge gaps in our knowledge of waste. Most retai
17、lers, for instance, prefer not to say how much food they waste, regarding it as a trade secret. Giving it away would put them at a competitive disadvantage, they tell Stuart. Waste is certainly one of the most important environmental books to come out in years. But it is more than that. It is an ind
18、ictment of our consumer culture that should make us all feel deeply ashamed. The scale of our food waste problem-and its effect on the developing world-revealed in this book will leave you shocked. And, the author hopes, demanding change. Avoiding the unnecessary wasting of food is deeply ingrained
19、in most cultures. “ Your eyes are bigger than your belly“ was how children who helped themselves to more than they could eat were scolded in the Belfast of my childhood. Those who failed to finish, or gorged themselves on too much, would be reminded first of the starving children in Africa then, for
20、 good measure, of the Irish famine of the 1840s. We need not go back so far to discover raw memories of food shortages. Rationing during the second world war and early 1950s left its mark on British life for decades, and famines during and following the war scarred Europe and parts of Asia. In the p
21、ast two decades, we have seen famines in Africa roll horrifically across our television screens. Human societies have found ingenious ways to eke out our valuable food resources: to store, pickle and preserve; to find uses for byproducts; to fatten animals on scraps; and even to burn or distil the l
22、ast residues. Much of our cultural heritage is defined by what we eat. As Stuart reminds us in his chapter-headings quotations from the Bible, the Koran and folk sayings we have evolved elaborate rules and customs that embody the imperative to use food efficiently. Yet our culture of thrift, built u
23、p over millennia, seems to have broken down within a few decades into a culture of carelessness. The food wasted each day in the United Kingdom and the United States alone would be enough to alleviate the hunger of 1. 5 billion people more than the global number of malnourished. How did this happen?
24、 Retailers must shoulder a large part of the blame. The illusion of plenty they like to foster, by constantly refilling shelves and ensuring there is always more food than can be bought in a day, comes in for an excoriating attack. These practices, in turn, force suppliers to overproduce for fear th
25、at if the retailer runs out of a product, they will be held to blame. If this sounds like poor economics, it isnt. Food has become so cheap in most developed countries that retailers make more profit from selling one more sandwich than they lose from throwing it in the bin if it remains unsold. So o
26、ver-stacking the shelves is a no-brainer. Food producers play along because they need to keep their contracts with retailers, and they incorporate the cost of waste into their products. Stuart records seeing stacks of ready-meals, metres high, being crushed at a food producers plant instead of being
27、 sold. They had not even passed their “sell by“ date it was just that the retailer decided it did not need so many. They were retailer branded, so could not be sold elsewhere. The edible food had to be landfilled. Red tape does not help. Confusion over “best before“, “sell by“ and “display until“ da
28、tes causes massive waste of edible food. So did the over-regulation, until recently, of food sizes and shapes by the European Union. As a result of a knee-jerk reaction by the UK government after the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in 2001, food scraps from school kitchens and the like cannot even b
29、e given to pigs as swill. Stuart catalogues appalling waste all through the food supply chain; the farmer whose tasty, blemish-free carrots are only deemed fit to feed animals because they are a mite too bendy to be sold in supermarkets, which assume buyers can only cope with straight vegetables; re
30、tail chains that padlock their bins or deliberately spoil the edible contents, for fear their customers will forage in them; consumers who fall for buy-one-get-one-free offers to buy food they will not eat. Wasting food in rich countries cannot be seen in a vacuum. It has a disastrous effect on the
31、poor. Cheap food is an illusion the pressure on agricultural land for people to feed themselves and produce for export markets is causing widespread deforestation in the Amazon, south-east Asia and Africa, and soil degradation across the world. Our careless waste pushes up prices for globalized comm
32、odities such as grain and rice, forcing poor people to go hungry or beggar themselves. This book exposes all of these effects clearly, logically and readably. It made me more angry than any book I have read for a long time. 7 The passage is most probably taken from a_. （ A） preface of the book （ B）
33、book report （ C） book review （ D） book abstract 8 The main idea of Tristram Stuarts Waste is_. （ A） the appalling amounts wasted in restaurants and fast-food eateries （ B） the wasteful habits of the British people from the farm to the supermarket （ C） the huge gaps between retailers and consumers in
34、 their knowledge of waste （ D） first-hand experience of foraging in supermarket bins, as well as interviews with company executives 9 The passage mentions all of the following EXCEPT_ （ A） Stuart, the author of Waste, collected his information from first-hand experience, interviews with company exec
35、utives and data provided by governments. （ B） the book provides a lot of facts to point out how much food we waste, which we should be ashamed of. （ C） from the book, we know that food waste has not only influenced the UK but also the developing world. （ D） we should teach our children not to take m
36、ore than they could eat, because of Irish famine of the 1840s. 10 When the passage talks about the memories of food shortage, it really means that_. （ A） we used to have such sorrowful experiences that we should treasure but not waste our food （ B） famines during and following the war scared Europe
37、and part of Asia （ C） we should find ingenious ways to eke out our valuable food resources （ D） our culture of thrift has been built up over millennia and should not be easily abandoned 11 According to the passage, what is the ultimate reason for the massive food waste problem in the United Kingdom
38、and the United States? （ A） Because food is not as easy to store, pick and preserve as before. （ B） Because consumers buying habits have changed a lot after the Second World War. （ C） Because retailers always refill their shelves to ensure there is more food than can be bought. （ D） Because producer
39、s no longer cherish the tradition of thrift and often landfill edible food. 12 Stuart records appalling waste all through the food supply chain involving the following participants EXCEPT_. （ A） farmers whose tasty carrots are to feed animals because they are a mite too bendy to be sold in supermark
40、ets （ B） suppliers who overproduce for fear that if the retailer runs out of a product, they will be held to blame （ C） retailers who crushed stacks of ready-meals before their “sell by“ date, because they couldnt sell so many （ D） consumers who fall for buy-one-get-one-free offers to buy food they
41、will not eat 13 According to Stuarts Waste, what is the crucial consequence of wasting food in rich countries? （ A） Wasting food means wasting money of the suppliers, retailers and consumers. （ B） Careless waste pushes up commodities prices on a worldwide scale, forcing poor people to go hungry. （ C
42、） Amazon farmers are under great pressure to reduce deforestation caused by producing grain and rice for export markets. （ D） Developing countries are angry with the imbalance in food consumption. 14 It can NOT be inferred from the passage that_. （ A） strict government rules and regulations can prev
43、ent retailers from wasting food. （ B） confusing food date labels lead to waste of edible food. （ C） if the food sizes and shapes do not comply with European Unions regulations, they could not be sold, even if edible. （ D） before foot-and-mouth disease broke out, food scraps were given to pigs. 14 Ob
44、amas Energy Policy While the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that prompted the presidents speech is an unprecedented catastrophe, its nothing compared to whats ahead if we keep pretending that fossil fuels are cheap. Addressing our habits of carbon consumption isnt just the most important possible response
45、 to this particular disaster. Its probably the most important issue this president, or any other for the next few decades, will face. Moreover, theres a fairly clear solution thats already been outlined: at the moment, theres an implicit public subsidy for carbon use that enables our reliance, so th
46、e government needs to compensate for it by jack up the price of energy somehow. A cap-and-trade system is the preferred method here in much the same way that an insurance mandate was in healthcare reform: its a politically palatable partial measure, but far better than nothing. But Obama gave a lame
47、 speech by only offering vague generalities about “ increasing the cost of energy,“ failing to lay out the case for the reform that he knows perfectly well to be the only viable one. In fact, if the president decided to take the idea of energy reform to the people, he probably still wouldnt get legi
48、slation passed. But even in failure, theres something to be gained from speaking clearly and honestly to the public. Woodrow Wilson was a generally pretty detestable guy, but theres something Obama could learn from him. At the end of World War I, Wilson expended massive, futile effort trying to conv
49、ince Americans that the League of Nations was the worlds only hope for peace and stability. The Republicans who opposed Wilson over the League succeeded, in large part, because a weary country wasnt willing to accept an intellectual presidents high-flown scheme to prevent the recent disaster from repeating. When the feeble League failed and the crisis of the 1930s developed into World War II, it offered a kind of perverse validation to Wilsons effort. By
