2019-2020学年汕头市第一中学高三英语月考试卷及参考答案

2019-2020学年汕头市第一中学高三英语月考试卷及参考答案

第一部分阅读（共两节，满分40分）

第一节（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分）

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中选出最佳选项

A

A Lifelong Devotion to Keeping People Fed

Yuan Longping is a Chinese agricultural scientist and educator, known for developing the hybrid rice varieties.

Yuan graduated from the Southwest Agriculture Institute in 1953 andbegan his teaching career at an agriculture school.

In the 1960s, when a serious food shortage sweptChina, Yuan decided to devote himself to studying how to increase the yields of rice. He then began a lifelong connection with rice.

Yuan succeeded in growing the world’s first high-yielding hybrid rice varieties in 1973, which could reach a yield of over 500 kg per mu (about 0.067 hectares), rising from the previous yield of only 300 kg per mu. For the next four decades, he continued to work on research and development of hybrid rice, achieving increasingly higher outputs. In 2020, hybrid rice developed by Yuan’s team achieved 1,500 kilograms per mu in two growing seasons, a new world record.

InChina, where rice is the main food for the majority of the 1.4 billion people, the planting area of hybrid rice has reached 16 million hectares, or 57 % of the total planting area of rice, helping feed an extra 80 million people a year.

Hybrid rice has also been grown in over 40 countries, including theU.S.,Brazil,India,Vietnam, thePhilippinesandMadagascar. The total planting area of the hybrid rice has reached 8 million hectares overseas.

Even after a great success, Yuan never held himself back from making new breakthroughs. In 2017, his team started to grow seawater rice inQingdao. The rice was designed to grow in saline-alkaline land and survive even after being completely in seawater. His team planned to develop a type of seawater rice that could be planted in 6.67 million hectares of saline-alkaline land acrossChinato boost the country’s rice harvest by about 20 %. In 2018, Yuan’s team was invited to plant the saline-alkaline tolerant rice in experimental fields inDubai, which achieved huge success. In June 2020, his team started to grow seawater rice on a farm at an altitude of 2,800 meters in northwestChina’sQinghaiProvince. The experiment succeeded.

Yuan had two dreams — to “enjoy the cool under the rice crops taller than men” and that hybrid rice could be grown all over the world to help solve the global food shortage.

1. What made Yuan Longping decide to study rice?

A. A serious food shortage.

B. Agriculture development.

C. His interest in the rice experiment.

D. His wish to plant the tallest rice in the world.

2. From the passage, we know that Yuan Longping ________.

A. developed a variety of hybrid rice

B. worked as a scientist after graduation

C. started to grow seawater rice inDubaiin 2017

D. grew the first high-yielding hybrid rice varieties in 1953

3. We can infer from the passage that Yuan Longping’s most outstanding qualities are________.

A. modest and outgoing

B. honest and creative

C. generous and optimistic

D. responsible and devoted

B

A 25-year-old American with a university degree can expect to livea decade longer than a peer who dropped out of high school. Although researchers have long known that the rich live longer than the poor, this education gap is less well documented. And although the average American’s expected span(预期寿命) has been smooth in recent year—and, shockingly, even fell between 2015 and 2017—that of the one-third with a bachelor’s degree has continued to lengthen.

This gap in life expectancy is growing, according to new research published in the report of the National Academy of Sciences. Anne Case and Angus Deation ofPrincetonUniversityfound that the lifespans of those with and without a bachelor’s degree started to become different in the 1990s and 2000s. This gap grew even wider in the 2010s.

What is the link between schooling and longevity(长寿)? Some argue that better-educated people develop healthier lifestyles: each additional year of study reduces the chances of being a smoker and of being overweight. The better-educated earn more, which in turn is associated with greaterhealth.

Ms Case and Mr Deaton argue that changes in labor markets, including the rise of automation and increased demand for highly-educated workers, coupled with the rising costs of employer-provided health care, have decreased the supply of well-paid jobs for those without a degree. This may be contributing to higher rates of alcohol and drug use, suicide and other “deaths of despair”.

The authors argued that the educational gap in mortality(致死率) will widenin the wake ofthe covid-19 pandemic. ForAmerica’s overall life expectancy to start climbing again, improvements will be needed across all