第三章 阅读理解

    第五节阅读理解强化练习

     Passage 3

Once upon a time, the United States seemed to have plenty of land to go around. Plenty of rivers to dam and plenty of rural valleys left over. Plenty of space for parks and factories. Plenty of forests to cut and grasslands to plow. But that was once upon a time. The days of unused land are over. Now the land has been spoken for, fenced off, carved up into cities and farms and industrial parks, put to use.

At the same time, the population keeps growing. People need places to work and places to play. So we need more sites for more industries, more beaches for more sunbathers, and more clean rivers for more fishers. And it isn磘 just a matter of population growth. Our modern technology has needs that must be met, too. We need more coal for energy, and we need more power plants; cars must have highways and parking lots, and jets must have airports.

Each of these land uses swallows up precious space.Highways and expressways alone take some 200,000 acres each year. And urban sprawl --- the spreading out of cities --- is expected to gobble up vast areas of land by the year 2,000. But there is only so much land to go around. It is always hard to decide. Take, for example, a forest. A forest can be a timber supply. It can provide a home for wildlife. It is scenery and a recreation area for man. It is soil and watershed protection.

11. “…the United States seemed to have plenty of land to go around ” means that ______.

A. the United States seemed to have vast land for its people to walk around

B. the United States seemed to have enough land for sharing with everyone

C. the United States could provide whatever its inhabitents needs

D. the United States was not able to allow its people to do what they wanted to

12. The sentence of “Plenty of rivers to dam and plenty of rural valleys left over” suggests that _____.

A. the United States had a lot of rivers to dam and many rural valleys, too

B. the rivers could be damed later

C. rural valleys would be considered in the future

D. people needn磘 think of the rivers and valleys

13. “Now the land has been spoken for, …” tells us that _______.

A. today, land has shown its values

B. now, people have said something about land

C. nowadays, land has been claimed by human beings

D. recently, people spoke for the land

14. The phrase of “swallows up” informed us that _______.

A. these usages of land have good results

B. these lands must be used totally

C. the precious space was taken completely

D. the precious space were eaten up

15. The word “sprawl” indicates that ______.

A. cities are developing very fast to meet the people磗 demands

B. urban areas are diminishing smoothly

C. urban areas are enlarging steadily in a planned way

D. cities are spreading out without any plans

11.【答案】B。

【解析】句中关键词组“go around” 意为“be enough for everyone”，而不是“ walk around” 的意思，所以选B。

12.答案A。

【解析】这实际上是由两个名词短语 plenty of rivers和plenty of rural valleys 组成，“ to dam”和“left over”分别是动词不定式和过去分词短语修饰前面的两个词组，这里所表达的意思是美国还有很多河流可以在其上筑坝还剩下有许多峡谷可以利用。

13.【答案】C。

【解析】句中词组“ speak for sth.”常用于被动语态，意思是“get the right to sth. in advance; reserve”，另外，根据上下文，运用排除法，可以确定选C。

14.【答案】C。

【解析】词组“ swallow up”意思是“use up completely; cause to disappear”。（北京安通学校提供）

15.【答案】D。

【解析】“ sprawl”意思是“spread out ungracefully over a wide area”。所以这个词在此表明城市扩张没有规划好。