阅读提能练(四)
一、阅读理解
A
In its early history，Chicago had floods frequently，especially in the spring,  making the streets so muddy that people, horses and carts got stuck. An old joke that was popular at the time went like this: A man is stuck up to his waist in a muddy Chicago street.  Asked if he needs help, he replies，“No, thanks. I've got a good horse under me.”             
The city planner decided to build an underground drainage (排水) system, but there simply wasn't enough difference between the height of the ground level and the water level. The only two options were to lower the Chicago River or raise the city.
An engineer named Ellis Chesbrough convinced the city that it had no choice but to build the pipes above ground and then cover them with dirt.  This raised the level of the city's streets by as much as 12 feet.
This of course created a new problem: dirt practically buried the first floors of every building in Chicago.  Building owners were faced with a choice: either change the first floors of their buildings into basements,  and the second stories into mainfloors, or hoist(吊起) the entire buildings to meet the new street level. Small wood­frame buildings could be lifted fairly easily. But what about large, heavy structures like the Tremont Hotel, which was a six­story brick building?
That's where George Pullman came in. He had developed some house­moving skills successfully.  To lift a big structure like the Tremont Hotel,  Pullman would place thousands of jackscrews (螺旋千斤顶) beneath the building's foundation.One man was assigned to operate each section of roughly 10 jackscrews.  At Pullman's sign each man turned his jackscrews by the same amount at the same time,  thereby raising the building slowly and evenly.  Astonishingly, the Tremont Hotel stayed open during the entire operation, and many of its guests didn't even notice anything was happening. Some people like to say that every problem has a solution. But in Chicago's early history,  every engineering solution seemed to create a new problem. Now that Chicago's waste water was draining efficiently i
nto the Chicago River, the city's next step was to clean the polluted river.
【解题导语】　本文主要介绍了芝加哥为了应对洪水泛滥的问题而实行了一些解决方案的故事。
1．The author mentions the joke in Paragraph 1 to show________.
A．horses were fairly useful in Chicago
B．Chicago's streets were extremely muddy
C．Chicago was very dangerous in the spring
D．the Chicago people were particularly humorous
解析：选B。推理判断题。根据文章首句可推知，作者提及这个笑话是为了表明芝加哥的街道非常泥泞。故选B。
2．The city planners were convinced by Ellis Chesbrough to________.
A．get rid of the street dirt
B．lower the Chicago River
C．fight against heavy floods
D．build the pipes above ground
解析：选D。细节理解题。根据第三段第一句“An engineer named Ellis Chesbrough convinced the city that ...”可知，Ellis Chesbrough让城市规划者相信在地上建管道才能解决洪水泛滥所带来的问题。故选D。
3．What can we conclude about the moving operation of the Tremont Hotel?
A．It went on smoothly as intended.
B．It interrupted the business of the hotel.
C．It involved Pullman in turning ten jackscrews.
D．It separated the building from its foundation.
解析：选A。细节理解题。根据第五段内容，以及最后一段倒数第三句“Some people like to say that every problem has a solution.”可推知，用螺旋千斤顶把the Tremont Hotel升高的事项进展顺利。故选A。
4．The passage is mainly about the early Chicago's________.
A．popular lifestyles and their influences
B．environmental disasters and their causes
C．engineering problems and their solutions
D．successful businessmen and their achievements
解析：选C。主旨大意题。本文主要讲的是早期芝加哥如何应对洪水泛滥的问题。故选spring street是什么意思C。
B
LAS VEGAS－It was different in the light of day.
There was no “pop, pop, pop” of gunfire, no screams.Just quite a lot of cars abandoned by those, like Kassidy Owen，who escaped with their lives.
“It's strange to hear the silence，” Owen said, “because all I remember was the noise.”
The 22­year­old was one of dozens of concertgoers who returned to the scene of the Route 91 Harvest Festival on Wednesday morning to fetch the vehicles they left behind as they fled from a gunman raining down bullets from high above in the tower of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino across the street.
Survivors of the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday needed their cars to move on with their lives－to get back to work, to school or home. It was the first time they were returning to a scene that would forever change them, when joy and celebration and music turned into killing and horror.
Before they could move forward, they had to go back to the place where they thought they
were going to die.
Owen had run to her car to hide and had tried to drive away, but she couldn't. People were running, bodies dropped to the ground, and cars bottlenecked in the parking lot. During a brief pause after more than 10 minutes of gunfire, she worried the lights of her SUV made everyone inside a shining target.
“They're shooting again！” her best friend's brother screamed.“Turn off the car！”
That's when she got out and fled.

版权声明：本站内容均来自互联网，仅供演示用，请勿用于商业和其他非法用途。如果侵犯了您的权益请与我们联系QQ:729038198，我们将在24小时内删除。