1、雅思（阅读）模拟试卷 26及答案与解析 一、 Reading Module (60 minutes) 0 The Prize: $10 Million A They are an elite club of billionaires, movie producers, dotcom wiz kids and the occasional astronaut and between them they hope to change the face of scientific research with money and influence, the 20-strong team among
2、them the producer of the Blues Brothers and Naked Gun movies, the cofounder of Google, a former White House aide and the Vietnam veteran-turned-billionaire genetics entrepreneur, Craig Venter, are to launch a series of multimillion dollar prizes to accelerate scientific breakthroughs that otherwise
3、might be decades away. B Together, they make up the X-Prize Foundation, an organisation set up by Peter Diamandis of Space Adventures, the company that arranged for Dennis Tito to fly to the International Space Station in 2001 and so become the worlds first space tourist. The foundation (motto: “Cre
4、ating radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity“), plans to launch three prizes of at least $10 million this year to crack some of the toughest problems facing genetics, nanotechnology and the car industry. “Our goal is to build ourselves into a world-class prize institute and focus on using
5、 those prizes to attack some of the grand challenges of our time,“ Dr Diamandis said. “By setting up prizes with a big enough purse, you can reach across space and time and problems will get solved.“ C The move follows the foundations huge success with the Ansari X-Prize, which promised $I0 million
6、for the first commercial manned spacecraft to reach suborbital space twice within two weeks. Named after Anousheh Ansari, a dotcom multimillionaire and one of only two women on the foundations board, the prize attracted 26 teams which spent more than $100 million trying to win. The prize was trigger
7、ed by what Dr Diamandis calls his “absolute frustration at the glacial pace of progress“ and was won in 2004 by Burt Rutan, an American aeronautics expert, with his rocket-plane SpaceShipOne. The competition forced US officials to draw up regulations for commercial spaceflight and paved the way for
8、Richard Branson to add space tourism to his portfolio with the launch of Virgin Galactic, a spaceflight venture that will use a rocket designed by Mr Rutan. D Now the foundation is looking to repeat its success in other areas of science. Dr Diamandis is cagey about the finer details of future prizes
9、, but one will offer $10 million for the first company to sequence the genetic code of 100 people in a matter of weeks. The prize is intended to force private industry to find ways of making full genome sequencing cheap enough for everyone to afford. It will be no cakewalk: a full genome sequence no
10、w takes around six months to read and costs $20 million. “The value of having the human genome doesnt really occur until you have it for tens or hundreds of thousands of people, so the prize will make that happen,“ Dr Diamandis said. “To say this gene correlates with adult onset diabetes, that this
11、gene reacts badly with that drug, you need a huge statistical database.“ E A second prize is aimed at kicking Americas self-proclaimed addiction to oil, by spurring research into greener vehicles. “This is a hot button that can effect our reliance on energy from around the world and our production o
12、f pollution, which are major problems from a national security standpoint and an environmental standpoint, Dr Diamandis said. “Were still using the internal combustion engine after 100 years, and getting 20 miles per gallon for the past 40 years. Its ripe for a major prize to break things open.“ The
13、 foundation is also planning prizes in nanotechnology and education and is considering a second space prize, which could see the first commercial team to put a person into orbital spaceflight win $50 million to $100 million. “Were always looking for where things have become stuck, where there are bu
14、reaucratic, technology, government or industrial problems stopping things evolving.“ According to Dr Diamandis, in the future such prizes will shape research by focusing minds on a particular problem and ensuring the goalposts do not change with political whims. Soon, he believes $100 million and ev
15、en $1 billion prizes will be put up by organisations keen to draw on the mass intelligence of the worlds experts. F The money for the prizes comes from donations from wealthy individuals and sponsorship, and entry is usually open to all. “In general we want these open to the most brilliant minds on
16、the planet,“ Dr Diamandis said. “A lot of the value is not just the cash, its the heroism that goes along with winning the competition. Its what drives people to work around the clock and take risk to levels required for breakthroughs.“ The X-Prize Foundation has inspired others to follow suit, nota
17、bly Nasa, which believes its money might be better spent setting up a prize fund than running parallel research projects in-house. This month it released details of six $5 million “challenges“ to solve technical hurdles standing in the way of typically Nasaish projects, namely how to build extraterr
18、estrial fuel depots, human lunar all-terrain vehicles, low-cost space pressure suits, lunar night power sources, micro reentry vehicles and “station-keeping solar sails“. 1 Questions 1-4 The text has 6 paragraphs (A-F). Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information? 1 The reas
19、on that having the genetic codes of many people would be advantageous. 2 Who can enter the competitions. 3 The number of women on the board of directors of the X-Prize Foundation. 4 The backgrounds of the people who make up the X-Prize Foundation. 5 Questions 5-8 Complete the following sentences usi
20、ng NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each gap. 5 Dennis Tito was the _. 6 SpaceShipOne flew in _ space. 7 Diamandis thinks American reliance on oil is bad for the environment and for _. 8 Diamandis believes that money and _ make people interested in winning the prizes. 9 Questions 9-13 Do t
21、he following statements agree with the information given in the text? Write TRUE if the information in the text agrees with the statement. Write FALSE if the information in the text contradicts the statement. Write NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this. 9 One of the reasons for setting up the
22、 X-Prize Foundation was that the founders thought scientific development was too slow. 10 Anousheh Ansari is one of the richest women in the world. 11 If you wanted to know your full genetic code, it would currently cost you about $20 million. 12 Diamandis doesnt want politics to prevent scientific
23、development. 13 Nasa is using prizes instead of conducting its own expensive research. 13 Try To See It Our Way A Its playtime at Crown Lane primary school in Streatham, south London, and, as at every school the world over, playtime is bringing its problems. Over by the fence, Maya and Cora are squa
24、ring up for a fight. There are raised voices and some angry pointing: it has the makings of an ugly scene. Then a girl in an orange sweatshirt and a boy in a black sweatshirt move in. A few quiet words are exchanged, and the four move inside the school building to a sunny corridor where they can hav
25、e some privacy. B This is peer mediation for the under-12s, a programme that has its origins in the US and is running in a handful of schools in the UK, many in Lambeth. In the corridor, mediators Tom and Maria are setting out the ground rules. “We wont gossip, or take sides, or tell you what to do,
26、“ says Maria. “We ask you not to blame one another, and to speak one at a time. Do you agree?“ Maya and Cora nod, and the story unfolds. Cora has new trainers; Maya has appeared unimpressed by their appearance on Coras feet; Cora is convinced Maya is jealous; Maya has started spending her playtime w
27、ith another girl. C Maria and Tom listen to the story, and reflect back what they have heard: “So you felt Cora was showing off, and when you waited for her at the school gates as usual she didnt show up, so you went home with someone else?“ Tom gets to the nub of it: “What can we do to resolve this
28、 problem?“ At first, the girls are silent. Then, tentatively, they offer their thoughts. “Maybe I could say Coras trainers are really nice, even though I do think she was showing off.“ “Maybe I shouldnt come to school in my trainers, at least for a while.“ D There are twelve peer mediators at Crown
29、Lane. They take it in turns to be on duty, two by two (a boy and a girl), and to wear the distinctive sweatshirts that mark them out. Once a week, they meet for a training session and to discuss with the peer mediation coordinator, Kim Hemans, what they have been doing. When new mediators are needed
30、, adverts are put up around the school, and children are recruited from years 4 and 5, so they have plenty of time to use their training before moving to secondary school. Theres never any shortage of new recruits, says Hemans. Securing support from adults in the school has been an important foundat
31、ion for success, she says. “Getting adults to trust that the children can do this is one of the hardest things.“ When they see the training sessions in progress, and watch the children role-playing the way they would mediate in disputes, they are invariably won round. E One American study (Johnson a
32、nd Johnson, 1996) found that pupils who train as peer mediators retain their peacemaking skills, and that there is a reduction in the number of pupil disputes referred to teachers. Whether there are fewer disputes in a school with a mediation scheme isnt clear, but the issue isnt whether children ar
33、gue, but whether they can learn to sort out their arguments before they escalate. Other studies suggest a vital ingredient for the success of peer mediation programmes is an existing culture of cooperation. “Peer mediation requires a shift in the school culture from teacher control to pupil empowerm
34、ent, and from arbitration to mediation as the dominant form of conflict resolution,“ says Edward Sellman, who looked at peer mediation for his PhD. F Anita Gee, who coordinates Lambeths peer mediation programme for the charity Healthy Minds, agrees. She says one of the difficulties for teachers is l
35、etting go of old-style discipline. “Theyre so used to having control, to telling children off when theyre doing something naughty or having a fight, that they dont want to take the chance and leave it to them to work things out. What we point out is that mediation is a way of actually solving the pr
36、oblem. When teachers put kids up against the wall, all youre doing is postponing the dispute, not addressing it at all.“ Gee says that children often turn out to be better mediators than adults, “What you find is that they stick rigidly to the guidelines, which is what the process requires. When adu
37、lts mediate, they often start to introduce their own bits and pieces, Ive been stunned at how good kids are as mediators.“ G The programme recognises that mediators should be drawn from across the gamut of children in a school, and not confined to the more confident, able and responsible pupils. As
38、Anita Gee says, “Weve found that even children who struggle with learning difficulties can be really good at mediation-and, of course, it makes them feel very valued as theyre making a visible and important contribution to school life. We always try to include some of the more challenging children a
39、mong our mediators.“ H At Crown Lane, the young mediators are full of enthusiasm for the project. “What I like is that the infants come up to me thinking Im a teacher,“ says Ade, whos in year 5. “They have quite a lot of disputes usually its things like someone pushing someone else, or a person whos
40、e friend has gone off with someone else.“ “Sometimes,“ adds Chedce, “you can see its just too soon for an argument to be mediated. The people have just got to calm down a bit. When theyve done that, then later they might be ready to talk about it. Sometimes you do get people who say: its none of you
41、r business. When that happens, I know Ive got to just walk away.“ According to Paige, the idea of becoming a mediator was a challenge, but the reality isnt too bad. “I thought it would be a lot harder. Once youve been trained, and if you follow the rules, you find its actually quite easy.“ One of th
42、e things the children like is the confidence their classmates have in their ability to help. “You get pupils saying to the adult in the playground that they want to go to a mediator to get something sorted out,“ says Jake. “Sometimes you get a teacher who doesnt think we can do it, and I think the a
43、dults need to have a bit more faith in us. On the whole, when adults see us actually doing mediation and how we are able to help people solve disputes, I think theyre generally surprised by how well it works.“ 14 Questions 14-17 The text has 9 paragraphs (A-I). Which paragraph does each of the follo
44、wing headings best fit? 14 Recruitment and training. 15 Mediators thoughts. 16 Problem resolved. 17 Ugly scene. 18 Questions 18-22 According to the text, FIVE of the following statements are true. Write the corresponding letters in answer boxes 18 to 22 in any order. A. Mediators wear uniforms. B. M
45、aya and Cora have been arguing over footwear. C. Mediators do the job for one or two years. D. Its not hard to find children who want to be mediators. E. A culture of co-operation is needed at schools for mediation to work. F. Adults often dont stick to mediation guidelines. G. Some mediators find t
46、heir job stressful. H. Younger children sometimes think the mediators are teachers. 23 Questions 23-26 According to the information given in the text, choose the correct answer or answers from the choices given. 23 Mediation roles include （ A） mediators dont tell other students what to do. （ B） medi
47、ators decide who is right. （ C） people involved in the dispute dont interrupt each other. 24 An American study indicated that mediation results in （ A） fewer disputes. （ B） teachers becoming involved in fewer disputes. （ C） mediators becoming better students. 25 Anita Gee thinks that （ A） teachers d
48、ont usually resolve disputes. （ B） kids often make better mediators than adults. （ C） children who have learning difficulties make better mediators. 26 Children at Crown Lane school think that （ A） the mediators are good. （ B） the mediators can solve any problem. （ C） teachers dont like the mediator
49、s much. 26 Why Girls Need to Switch on to Computing The garden is coming along nicely. Flowers spring into bloom in the herbaceous borders; mature trees are imported to cast their shade across the lawn. If only real life was this simple. For Bernadette Carverry and Jessica Allen, both 10, designing a garden takes a matter of minutes, not years. Later they might switch to designing a room, complete with plasma TV, or a bedroom, with lava lamps and pot plants. “I like computers,“
