2020高考英语临考难点突破专题学生版

2020高考英语临考难点突破专题一、阅读理解AThe ancient tale of the Country Mouse and the Town Mouse was only the first to emphasize rural folk's supposed simplicity when compared with more sophisticated urbanites. However, neuro-scientists announce that, in fact, it is city living that can dull the wits.The new study led by Dr. Spiers at Nantes University describes how they used a dataset from 4 million people of a computer game, which tests navigating skills by asking players to memorise a map showing the location of checkpoints and then measuring how well players can find them, guided only by their mental map. Dr. Spiers and his colleagues examined the 4 million people from 38 countries, and found that the strongest indicator of a high score was a player's age—older people performed relatively poorly, which agrees with what researchers know about age-related cognitive decline. But the benefit of rural living was strong enough to offset some of that. Data showed that a 70-year-old who grew up in the countryside had the navigational abilities of an average 60-year-old across the dataset.There is a huge gap between the navigation skills of rural and city people, and the researchers think they know why. Dr. Spiers says that the brain's navigational abilities probably weaken in the less challenging city environment because they are not being used as much. Although cities may appear more elaborate, they also feature more clues to help residents find their way, such as numbered streets. In the countryside, however, one field tends to look much the same as another, so there are fewer external landmarks to help guide the way.Neuroscientists already know that living and working in more complex environments can influence the function and structure of the brain. Brain scans of London taxi drivers, who have gained an encyclopedic memory of the city5 s streets, show that they tend to have an enlarged hippocampus—a region of the brain acting as a neural GPS, sensing position and path on an internal map of the environment.The harmful effect of city living on navigation is probably most serious in people under 16—18, Dr. Spiers says, because their still-developing brains respond and change the most according to external stimuli. And while people who live in cities with young children should not be alarmed, the study does raise some interesting ideas for urban planners: keep their city designs not so simple perhaps. And for everyone else, it might be an idea to turn off maps on the phone.1．The study led by Dr. Spiers shows that _______.A．the seniors score higher at computer gamesB．rural life benefits people's sense of directionC．participants are better at finding ways in citiesD．the young remember checkpoints better in maps2．The underlined word "offset", in Para. 2 most probably means _______.A．achieve B．confirmC．reduce D．replace3．What is the purpose of the passage?A．To introduce a new way of driver training.B．To expose the drawbacks of living in the urban area.C．To show the contrast between lives in the country and city.D．To present environments' impact on one's ability to locate places.4．What is the best tide for the passage?A．Lost in the CityB．Brain Weakened in CitiesC．Navigating to the CountrysideD．The Negative Effects of City LivingBCommunities across the world are starting to ban facial recognition technologies. The efforts are well intentioned, but banning facial recognition is the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance （监视）.Generally, modern mass surveillance has three broad components: identification, correlation and discrimination.Facial recognition is a technology that can be used to identify people without their consent. Once we are identified, the data about who we are and what we are doing can be correlated with other data. This might be movement data, which can be used to "follow” us as we movethroughout our day. It can be purchasing data, Internet browsing data, or data about who we talk to via email or text. It might be data about our income, ethnicity, lifestyle, profession and interests. There is an entire industry of data brokers who make a living by selling our data without our consent.It's not just that they know who we are; it's that they correlate what they know about us to create profiles about who we are and what our interests are. The whole purpose of this process is for companies to treat individuals differently. We are shown different ads on the Internet and receive different offers for credit cards. In the future, we might be treated differently when we walk into a store, just as we currently are when we visit websites.It doesn't matter which technology is used to identify people. What's important is that we can be consistently identified over time. We might be completely anonymous （匿名的）in a system that uses unique cookies to track us as we browse the Internet, but the same process of correlation and discrimination still occurs.Regulating this system means addressing all three steps of the process. A ban on facial recognition won't make any difference. The problem is that we are being identified without our knowledge or consent, and society needs rules about when that is permissible.Similarly, we need rules about how our data can be combined with other data, and then bought and sold without our knowledge or consent. The data broker industry is almost entirely unregulated now. Reasonable laws would prevent the worst of their abuses.Finally, we need better rules about when and how it is permissible for companies to discriminate. Discrimination based on protected characteristics like race and gender is already illegal, but those rules are ineffectual against the current technologies of surveillance and control. When people can be identified and their data correlated at a speed and scale previously unseen, we need new rules.Today, facial recognition technologies are receiving the force of the tech backlash （抵制），but focusing on them misses the point. We need to have a serious conversation about all the technologies of identification, correlation and discrimination, and decide how much we want to be spied on and what sorts of influence we want them to have over our lives.5．According to Para. 2, with facial recognition _______.A．one’s lifestyle changes greatlyB．one's email content is disclosedC．one's profiles are updated in timeD．one's personal information is released6．We can learn from the passage that _______.A．discrimination based on new tech surveillance is illegalB．different browsing data bring in different advertisementsC．using mobiles anonymously keeps us from being correlatedD．data brokers control the current technologies of surveillance7．The underlined part “the point，,in the last paragraph probably refers to _______. A．people's concern over their safetyB．the nature of the surveillance societyC．proper regulation of mass surveillanceD．the importance of identification technology8．The author wrote this passage to _______.A．call for banning facial recognition technologiesB．advocate the urgent need for changes in related lawsC．inform readers of the disadvantages of facial recognitionD．evaluate three broad components in modem mass surveillanceCChicken is America’s most popular meat. Many people assume chicken follows a simple rule-of-thumb: Pink chicken turned white means “done.” It’s similar to how we cook other meats. But is this true? To study how cooks at home follow safety recommendations, researchers filmed 75 households in five European countries. From a random but nonrepresentative sample, they also conducted an online survey of nearly 4,000 households in the same countries that say they cook chicken.Worried that chicken would dry out, most home cooks determined doneness by color and texture (口感) inside the meat, they found. Few bothered with thermometers (温度计), claiming they took too much time, were too complicated to use, didn’t fit in the chicken or weren’t necessary (although easy-to-use thermometers are inexpensive and widely available).In additional lab experiments, the scientists injected raw chicken breast with bacteria (细菌), which cause millions of sicknesses, thousands of hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths each year in the United States. They cooked the breasts until they reached core temperatures ranging from 122 to 158 Fahrenheit, and they discovered something surprising. At 158 degrees, but not lower, bacteria inside the chickens’ cores was reduced to safe levels, and when cut open its flesh appeared dull and fibrous, not shiny like raw chicken. But meat began changing from pink to white far below this, and most color change occurred below 131 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes, the chicken’s core would be safely cooked, but unsafe levels of bacteria still existed on surfaces that hadn’t touched the grill plate.So what are you supposed to do?Dr. Bruno Goussault, a scientist and chef, recommends buying and cooking breasts and legs separately. Bring the breast’s core to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, he said, and the leg to between 168.8 and 172.4 Fahrenheit. If you really want to safely measure temperature for a whole chicken, insert a pop-up thermometer into the thickest part of the leg before roasting it, Dr. Goussault suggests. By the time it pops, the breasts will have long cooked. They will likely be dry and far from his standards of culinary (烹饪的) perfection. But you’ll be sure to, as Dr. Goussault says in French, “dormir sur ses deux oreilles,” or, figuratively, “sleep peacefully.”9．Why didn’t home cooks measure temperature with a thermometer?A．They could not afford it. B．It affected the taste of the meat.C．It was not available in supermarkets. D．They thought it was too much trouble. 10．In lab experiments, when the temperature reached 158 Fahrenheit, the meat . A．was free of bacteria B．still remained pinkC．appeared to dry out D．was reduced in size11．What can be learned from the last paragraph?A．The meat does not taste best when bacteria free.B．The leg becomes fully cooked before the breast.C．A whole chicken requires a higher temperature.D．The thermometer should be placed inside the breast.12．What is the passage mainly about?A．Food safety. B．Simple lifestyle.C．Cooking skills. D．Kitchen equipment.DUpskilling is the future—but it must work for everyoneAutomation and job replacement will be one of the most significant challenges for the global economy of the coming decades. A 2017 Mckinsey report established that 375 million workers will need to switch occupational categories by 2030. The World Economic Forum suggests that by 2022, automation will replace 75 million jobs globally—but create 133 million new ones.Research into the likelihood that a job will be impacted by digitization has largely focused on the “automatability” of the role and the following economic regional and political effects of this. What this research doesn’t take into account is something more important for the millions of taxi drivers and retail workers across the globe: their likelihood of being able to change to another job that isn’t automatable. Recent research suggests that th e answer to this may be that the skills that enable workers to move up the ladder to more complex roles within their current areas might be less important than broader skills that will enable workers to change across divisions.In July, Amazon announced that it would spend $700 million retraining around 30% of its 300,000 US workforce. While praiseworthy, it will be interesting to see the outcome. In the UK, the National Retraining Scheme has largely been led by employers, meaning that those on zero-hours contracts and part-time workers—often low-skilled—will miss out. Governance will be a crucial element of ensuring that such schemes focus on individuals and life-long learning, rather than upskilling workers into roles that will soon also face automation.According to the Mckinsey report, “growing awareness of the scale of the task ahead has yet to translate into action. Public spending on labour-force training and support has fallen for years in most member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development,” which impacts more than just the low-skilled and poorly compensated.The global impact of automation is also put into relief by research demonstrating that, between 1988 and 2015, income inequality increased throughout the world. Billions of people do not have the essentials of life as defined by the UN Sustainable Development goals.Alongside climate change, automation is arguably tech’s biggest challenge. As withglobalization, governments and employers—and us workers—ignore its potential consequences at risk to ourselves.13．It can be known from Paragraph 2 that .A．recent research has found ways to face automationB．broad skills are of great significance in changing jobsC．regional economy can affect the automatability of a jobD．it is even harder for workers to move up the social ladder14．What is the author’s attitude towards retraining programs?A．Supportive. B．Critical.C．Skeptical. D．Sympathetic.15．According to the author, what is one consequence of automation?A．Less spending on training. B．A slowdown of globalization. C．Social unrest and instability. D．An increase in income inequality. 16．The passage is written to .A．argue the urgency of creating new jobs B．compare globalization with automation C．analyze the automatability of certain jobs D．stress the importance of upskilling workersEIf there’s one cliche（陈词滥调）that really annoys Danah Boyd, a specialist researcher who has made a career from studying the way teenagers use the web, it’s that of the digita l native. “Today the world has computer-mediated communications. Thus, in order to learn about their social world around them, teenagers are learning about those things too. And they’re using that to work out the stuff that kids have always worked out： peer（同龄人）sociality, status, etc.” she says.It’s no surprise Boyd takes exception, really. As one of the first digital anthropologists to dig into the way teenagers use social networking sites, she gained insights into the social web by taking a closer look at what was going on.Lately, her work has been about explaining new ways of interpreting the behavior we see online. She outlined some examples at a recent conference in San Francisco, including the case of a young man from one of the poorest districts of Los Angeles who was applying for a top American college. The applicant said he wanted to escape the influence of violence, but the admissions officer was shocked when he discovered that the boy's MySpace page was covered with precisely the violent language he claimed to hate. “Why was he lying about his motivations?” asked the university. “He wasn't, ” said Boyd. “In his world, showing the right images online was a key part of surviving daily life.”Understanding what’s happening online is especially important, for today’s teenagers have a vastly different approach to privacy from their parents. She says, “Adults think of the home as a very private space. That’s often not the case for teenagers because they have little or no control over who has access to it, or under what conditions. As a result, the online world can feel more private because it feels like there's more control.”The concept of control is central to Boyd's work, and it applies to pointing out the true facts about teenage behavior. Boyd suggests control remains in the same places as it always did.“Technologists all go for the idea of techno・utopia （乌托邦）, the web as great democratizer （民主化）”，she says. “But we’re not actually democratizing the whole system；we’re just shifting the way in which we discriminate.”It’s a call to arms that most academic researchers would tend to sidestep, but then Boyd admits to treading a fine line between academics and activists. “The questions I continue to want to ask are the things that are challenging to me；having to sit down and be forced to think about uncomfortable social stuff, and it’s really hard to get my head around it, which means it’s exactly what I should dive in and deal with, ” she says.17．What does Danah Boyd think of “compute r-mediated communications”?A．They teach teenagers about social interaction.B．They replace other sorts of social interaction for teenagers.C．They are necessary for teenagers to have social interaction.D．They are barriers to wider social interaction among teenagers.18．Why does Danah Boyd cite the example of the Los Angeles college applicant?A．To show how easy it is to investigate somebody's online activity.B．To illustrate how easy it is to misinterpret an individual online activity.C．To prove how important it is to check the content of someone's online activity.D．To express how necessary it is to judge someone's sincerity from his online activity. 19．Danah Boyd argues in Paragraph 4 that _______.A．teenagers feel more private in the online world than in the homeB．teenagers are less concerned about privacy than their parentsC．parents tend not to respect teenagers'need for online privacyD．parents value the idea of privacy less in a domestic environment20．It can be inferred from the last paragraph that Danah Boyd _______.A．is willing to take on research challenges others would avoidB．regards herself as being more of an activist than a researcherC．is aware that she is lacking in ability to deal with the challengesD．feels like abandoning the research into uncomfortable social stuffF“Jewel wings fly around like little helicopters until they see preys (猎物), usually smaller flying insects,” said Bellido, a biologist at the University of Minnesota. “Then th ey dash at their meals in a burst of speed.”You might mistake jewel wings for their cousins, dragonflies. New research shows that these two insects share something more significant than their appearance, however. In a paper published in Current Biology, Dr. Bellido and the dragonfly colleagues reveal that the neural (神经的) systems behind jewel wings’ vision are shared with dragonflies, with whom they have a common ancestor that lived before dinosaurs. But over the centuries, this brain wiring has adapted itself in different ways in each creature, enabling sharply different hunting strategies.Jewel wings’ behavior involves attacking what’s directly in front of them, the team found. But recordings made in the lab by Dr. Gonzalez and her colleagues confirmed that dragonflies rise up in a straight line to seize unsuspecting insects from below. Researchers are particularly interested in the neurons (神经元) that send visual information to the wings.To look closer at the neurons linking vision and flight, the researchers equipped jewel wings with sensors and showed them a video of a moving dot, comparing it with earlier dragonfly research. When a neuron fired, a popping sound filled the researchers’ ears, allowing them to tell exactly which movements-left, right, up, down or some combination-each neuron responded to. Jewel wings best see what’s right in front of them, they found, while dragonflies’ clearest vision is just above them.The team was interested to find that while jewel wings’ neurons didn’t alw ays respond like those in dragonflies, the number of neurons and organization were similar. That suggests that the system that conveys this information from the eyes to the wing muscles did not evolve recently, but has roots that are millions of years older than the oldest dinosaurs. And that ancient common ancestor likely had already developed remarkable speed in both vision and flight. Then, in the following years, the system has evolved to suit individual insect species.This shared neural system may be more than 250 million years old, but it is also flexible enough to transform itself to meet the needs of a variety of creatures in different eras and environments, the findings suggest.21．Jewel wings usually catch their meals ________ them.A．on the right of B．on the left ofC．straight ahead of D．at the back of22．What is Paragraph 4 mainly about?A．What actions jewel wings take to catch preys.B．How jewel wings ‘neurons respond to vision.C．When jewel wings start to hunt for their preys.D．Where researchers did the research into jewel wings.23．What can we learn about dragonflies and jewel wings from the passage?A．The two insects possess similar neural systems.B．Jewel wings’ vision is sharper than dragonflies’.C．Dragonflies ‘brain wiring is the same with jewel wings’.D．The oldest dinosaurs react as rapidly as the two insects.24．What is the main purpose of the passage?A．To analyse the habits of two similar insects.B．To tell the difference between dragonflies and jewel wings.C．To assess the effects of different insects ‘hunting strategies.D．To present the result of a study on two insects neural systems.GWe Are CyborgsRoboCop, the Bionic Woman, Darth V ader-what do these characters have in common? They are all cyborgs-humans who are made more powerful by advanced technology. You might think that cyborgs exist only in fiction, or are a possibility only in the distant future. But cyborg technology already exists.The word “cyborg” was first used in 1960 and defined as an organism “to which extern al components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments”. According to this definition, an astronaut in a spacesuit is an example of cyborg, as the spacesuit helps the astronaut adapt to a new environment-space. More recently, the word has evolved to refer to human beings who have mechanical body parts that make them more than human.Although super-humans like RoboCop are not yet a reality, advances in real-life cyborg technology allow some people to compensate for abilities they have lost, and give other people new and unusual abilities. An example is filmmaker Rob Spence and his bionic eye. Spence injured one of his eyes in an accident. A camera was implanted in his prosthetic eye(假眼). The eye is not connected to his brain or optic nerve(视神经), but it can record what he sees. Spence has used his camera eye to record interviews for a documentary about people with bionic body parts.Some types of cyborg technology replace a lost ability by connecting directly to a person’s nerves. Michael Chorost completely and suddenly lost his ability to hear in July of 2001. Two months later, doctors placed a cochlear implant, a kind of computer, inside his skull. This type of implant connects to auditory nerves and allows a deaf person to hear again. Around the world, over 300,000 people have now been fitted with cochlear implants.These examples of cyborg technology have enabled people to enhance or change their abilities and improve their lives. But does everyone want to use cyborg technology? It might be too late to decide. Cyborg scientist Amber Case argues that most of us are already cyborgs. Anyone who uses a computer or a smartphone, Case claims, is a cyborg. Consider the data that you have in your smartphone. It keeps information for you so you don’t have to remember it: notes, phone numbers, email addresses, messages. It also allows you to communicate with friends and family via telephone, text messages, email, and social networks.The potential benefits of cyborg technology are evident, but can this new technology be harmful, too? Could we become too dependent on cyborg technology-and become less than human? These still remain questions.25．According to the passage, the cyborg _______.A．is similar to human beingsB．took root in fiction charactersC．first appeared in space industryD．has some device attached to the body26．With the help of cyborg technology, _______.A．eyesight can be restoredB．the nerve injury can be repairedC．lost abilities can be replaced by a new skillD．hearing loss can be prevented by cochlear implants27．Amber Case probably thinks that ______.A．technology makes cyborgs become commonB．cyborg technology is crucial to modern societyC．the use of mobiles improves cyborg technologyD．cyborg technology helps improve human memory28．What is the author’s attitude toward cyborg technology?A．Critical. B．Skeptical.C．Optimistic. D．Objective.HThe last decade saw the rise of the field of “plant neurobiology (神经生物学)”. That debatable field is based on the idea that plants——which do not possess brains ——handle information in ways similar to complicated animal nervous systems. This thinking implies that plants could feel happiness or sorrow or pain, make intentional decisions and even possess consciousness. But the chances of that are “effectively zero," Lincoln Taiz and colleagues write in an opinion piece in Trends in Plant Science. "There's nothing in the plant remotely comparable to the complexity of the animal brain," says Taiz, from the University of California, Santa Cruz.Some plants are capable of complicated behavior. Wounded leaves can send warning signals to other parts of the plant, and harmful chemicals can warn animals that eat them. Some plants may even have a version of short-term memory: Tiny sensing hairs can count the number of touches that come from a clumsy insect. But plants perform these with equipment that's very different from the nervous systems of animals, no brain required, Taiz argues.He and colleagues point out methodological (方法的) faults in some of the studies that claim plants have brain-like command centers, animal-like nerve cells and changing patterns of electricity that are similar to activity found in animal brains. But beyond the debate over how these studies are conducted, Taiz's team argues that plant consciousness doesn't even make sense from an evolutionary (进化的) point of view.Complicated animal brains advanced in part to help a living being catch a meal and avoid becoming one, Taiz says. But plants are rooted to the ground and rely on sunlight for energy, an inactive lifestyle that doesn't require quick thinking or outsmarting a predator (捕食者)——or the energetically expensive nervous systems that enable those behaviors.“What use would consciousness be to a plant?” Taiz asks. The energy required to power awareness would be too costly, and the benefit from such awareness too small. If a plant worried and suffered when faced with a threat, it would be wasting so much energy that it wouldn't have any left to do anything about that threat, Taiz says.Imagine a forest fire. "It's unbearable to even consider the idea that plants would be conscious beings aware of the fact that they're being burned to ashes, watching the young trees die in front of them," Taiz says. The frightening scene illustrates "what it would actually cost a plant to have consciousness."Furthermore, plants have plenty to do without having to be conscious, too. With sunlight, carbon dioxide and water, plants create the compounds (化合物) that sustain much of the rest of life on Earth, Taiz points out. "Isn't that enough?"29．According to Paragraph 1, a plant neurobiologist would most probably agree that ______. A．plants are capable of independent thinkingB．plants are as biologically complex as animalsC．plants developed nervous systems for survivalD．plants feel emotions in the same way as animals30．What does the underlined "one” in Paragraph 4 refer to?A．A predator.B．A meal.C．An inactive plant.D．A living being.31．Which statement does Linchol Taiz believe?A．Plants possess brain-like command centers.B．The lifestyle of plants requires nervous systems.C．It is unnecessary for plants to have consciousness.D．Nervous systems enable plants to fight their predators.32．Lincoln Taiz introduces a forest fire to ______.A．suggest new ways to study the behaviors of plants。