最新人教版八年级英语下册Unit10 拓展阅读训练

A.
Almost every child likes sweet things，such as candies，chocolate，ice cream and desserts．But do you know there is a holiday called Sweetest Day in the USA? Does it mean people can eat lots of sweets on that day?
Sweetest Day is a popular holiday for Americans．People celebrate it on the third Saturday in October．On that day，people show their love to the elderly，children，their good friends or anyone else they want to help．Orphans（孤儿）and patients can also enjoy people’s greetings．In fact，anyone may get a gift on that day．It is just a day that offers people a chance to show their love and care to others．
How did the holiday originate（起源）?Here is a story．In 1922，a very kind man in Cleveland，a city in Ohio of America，thought that many poor people in the city needed care from others．He wanted them to be happy and he hoped they
would find people always remembered them and cared about them．So he gave them boxes of sweets or small gifts to show his love．He also asked his friends and neighbours to help him do these things．Many people thought it was a great idea．After that more and more people in Cleveland began to do things like him every year．Gradually it became a popular holiday for lots of Americans．
1．The underlined（画线的）word “desserts”in Paragraph 1probably means ________．
A．eggs B．salty food C．beef
D．sweet food
2．Oct.4 is the first Saturday in October this year,so Sweetest Day will be celebrated on ______．
A．Oct．4 B．Oct．11 C．Oct．18
D．Oct．25
3．Paragraph 2 mainly talks about ________．
A．what the Americans do to make friends
B．how Americans celebrate Sweetest Day
C．why the elderly and children are helped
D．where orphans and patients are greeted 4．Sweetest Day has a history of about _________ years．
A．82 B．98 C．102
D．112
5．More and more people did things like the kind man because _________．
A．they agreed with the kind man and followed his example
B．they thought they would also be cared about if they did so
C．they thought they could be remembered by the poor people
D．they were asked by the kind man to try their best to help others
B
You may have heard of the famous saying,“East or West, home is the best.”What does the word“home”mean to you? How do you say the word in French, in Chinese, in your language?
Although people usually know what the word means, it sometimes has no exact translation. It’s not surprising, because the idea of home is different from country to country, and from person to person. A home is more than a roof and four walls. It’s the cooking, eating, talking, playing and
sleeping that go on inside. And at home you usually feel safe and relaxed.
Homes look different in different countries. They also have different things inside. For example, in cold northern Europe, there’s a fire in the living room or kitchen and all the chairs face it. In the south, where the sun shines a lot and it’s more important to keep the heat out, there are small windows and cool stone floors.
We asked some people about their homes.
How often do people move house in your country?
“In my country many people don’t stay in one place for a very long time. They often move every ten years or so.”
-- Chery, Boston, USA
What are features (特征) of homes in your country?
“In Britain, even in town, there’s always a garden. We have separate bedrooms and living rooms. But we don't often have balconies (阳台). The weather isn’t warm enough!”
--Pat, Exeter, England
6.The word“home”sometimes has no exact translation because __________.
A. no one knows what it is
B. people can’t understand each other very well
C. people can’t find this word in the dictionary
D. it has different meanings in different countries
7. According to the passage, at home, you can do everything EXCEPT __________.
A. making friends
B. cooking and eating
C. playing and talking
D. sleeping and relaxing
8. Why is it important to keep the heat out of the houses in southern Europe?
A.Because the sun there shines a lot.
B. Because there’s a fire in the living room.
C. Because they wear heavy clothes all day long.
D. Because they want to breathe fresh air outside.
9. From the second paragraph, what kind of homes people have depends on __________.
A.how old they are
B. the climate(气候) they have
C. whether they are rich or not
D. whether they live in the city or countryside
10. What can we learn from the passage？
A. Homes look the same in different countries.
B. Some Americans move house several times during their lifetime.
C. People in Britain seldom have balconies because it's so hot outside.
D. Houses in northern Europe have big windows and cool stone floors.
C
Do American children still learn handwriting in school? In the age of the keyboard, some people seem to think handwriting lessons are on the way out. 90% of teachers say they are required to teach handwriting. But studies have yet to answer the question of how well they are teaching it. One of this year’s studies found that about three out of every four teachers say they
are not prepared to teach handwriting. Some teachers are teaching handwriting by providinginstruction for 10 to 15 minutes a day, and then other teachers who basically teach it for 60 to
70 minutes a day —which really for handwriting is pretty much.
Many adults remember learning that way —by copying letters over and over again. Today’s thinking is that short
periods of practice are better. Many experts (专家) also think handwriting should not be taught by itself. Instead, they say it should be used as a way to get students to express ideas. After all, that is why we write.
Handwriting involves two skills. One is legibility, which means forming the letters so they can be read. The other is fluency (流畅) —writing without having to think about it. Fluency continues to develop up until high school.
But not everyone masters these skills. Teachers commonly report that about one fourth of their kids have poor handwriting. Some people might think handwriting is not important any more because of computers and voice recognition programs.
But Steve Graham at Vanderbilt says word processing is seldom done in primary school, especially in the early years. American children traditionally first learn to print, and then to write in cursive(手写体), which connects the letters. But guess what we learned from a spokeswoman for the College Board (大学委员会). More than 75 percent of students choose to print their essay (article) on the test rather than write in cursive.
11. From Paragraph 1, we can learn ________.
A. most teachers prefer to teach handwriting
B. teachers spend little time in teaching handwriting
C. a keyboard has taken the place of the handwriting
D. teaching handwriting is a basic requirement in the teaching job
12. Which of the following is WRONG for traditional handwriting in the USA?
A. Handwriting includes two skills.
B. To write in cursive is taught first.
C. The letters are repeated many times.
D. The students are taught by practicing a long period.
13. Many experts think handwriting should be used to get students to ________.
A. express ideas
B. keep away from computers
C. learn to write letters
D. practice more
14. The underlined word “legibility”in Paragraph 3 means ________.
A. easy to read
B. easy to write
C. unexpected
D. unreadable
15. The best title for the passage is ________.
A. Handwriting Involves Two Skills
B. How to Improve Handwriting in School
C. Right or Wrong: the Death of Handwriting
D. Handwriting Lessons Are on the Way Out
D
Few people can stop themselves from looking at pictures of cute animals. Take the Internet sensation(引起轰动的人或物) Sally chicken as an example. The chicken with a yellow body and flat mouth always looks lovely. Seeing her cute picture cheers people up. But there’s another benefit to cuteness.
New research has found that looking at cute pictures of animals can also help us concentrate
(专注)better. The study comes from researchers at Hiroshima University in Japan. They invited 132 university students to take part in some experiments. In one experiment, students were asked to find a given number from a list of numbers
within a time limit. They performed the given tasks
twice---before and after looking at seven pictures of either baby cats and baby dogs, or cats and dogs. Researchers were surprised to find that students who were shown cute baby animal pictures made fewer mistakes.
However, baby animals look both "cuter and more pleasant" than adult animals. What if the test difference came from their being pleasant"? To find the answer, the researchers chose some food pictures which looked pleasant but not cute and gave them to another group of students. But seeing the foods did not make the students perform any better in the number test. This finding suggests that seeing cute pictures makes students behave more deliberately and perform tasks with greater time and care.
The "power of cuteness" could be of great use. Think about situations in which people need to act carefully: driving, office work and exams. " In my first year of high school, I brought small plastic toys to school during tests. I would set them up in a row on my desk, facing me, and then get busy answering exam questions.”Susana Martinez-Conde wrote in Scientific American.
16. Why is Sally chicken mentioned in the first paragraph?
A. She is the main character.
B. She is a lovely Internet sensation.
C. She is used to introduce the topic of the passage.
D. She is popular to cheer people up on the Internet.
17.What's the main finding of the study at Hiroshima University?
A. Seeing cute animals could cheer people up.
B. Seeing pleasant things helps people concentrate better.
C. Seeing pictures of cats and dogs helps people perform better.
D. Seeing cute things could help people focus on something better.
18. The underlined word“deliberately”in the third paragraph has the closest meaning to“_________”.
A. happily
B. correctly
C. actively
D. carefully
19. What do Martinez-Conde's words tell us?
A. It is popular for students to have toys.
B. It is powerful for students to face toys.
C. It is useful to look at cute things in daily life.
D. It is good for students to look at toys after an exam.
20. In which situation could the findings of the experiment be useful for you?
A. Working in the lab.
B. Relaxing in a room
C. Eating in a restaurant
D. Shopping in a supermarket
E.
LONG before Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica 《大英百科全书》, there was Pliny the Elder. He was a first-century Roman researcher. His assistants (助理) read to him while he ate dinner and while he bathed. All the while, Pliny took notes. He even considered walking a waste of time. His assistants carried him around Rome in a chair while he read.
All of this was preparation for his Historia Naturalis (《博物志》). The book was published in A.D. 77. It is considered the oldest surviving encyclopedia(百科全书）on Earth. There are 2,500 chapters. They cover everything from mice to Mars. “No Roman author has completed such a project,”Pliny proudly announced. Unluckily, two years after publishing (出版) the encyclopedia, he died in a natural disaster.
Accidents can hardly be avoided (避免). However, they can
be recorded. Editors of encyclope
—dias, like Pliny, organize the knowledge of our world. Like a valuable gift, the books pass through the ages. They begin their lives as a tool and end them as a historical record. Therefore, in my opinion, an encyclopedia is not just a record of what its editors know. It’s also a record of what they don’t know.
Pliny was wrong when he said there were seven planets, including the Sun and the Moon. He was wrong, too, when he said Africans were black from being burnt by the Sun. After all, Historia Naturalis is a book edited by a Roman thousands of years ago. These were all he truly knew.
Similarly, both Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica have some incorrect information. Even the biggest encyclopedias only represent what their editors know.
“The task of editing an encyclopedia can never be completed,”said Roger Lewinter, an American researcher. Encyclopedias can’t record all of the human knowledge but just some of it. They are always waiting for someone—you, perhaps—to improve them.
21. According to the article, before Pliny the Elder completed his Historia Naturalis, ______.
A. Nobody had considered walking a waste of time
B. There was no encyclopedia on Earth
C. Nobody knew what Mars was
D. No Roman author had completed an encyclopedia
22. When did Pliny die in a natural disaster?
A. In A.D. 79.
B. In A.D. 77.
C. In A.
D. 75.
D. In 77 B.C.
23. According to the article, which of the following statements can we find in Historia Naturalis?
A. The Mars is not a planet.
B. The Sun is a planet.
C. Among all the continents, Africa is the farthest from the Sun
D. There are many mice in Africa
24. Which of the following statements would the author agree to?
A. We should destroy Pliny’s encyclopedia because it contains too many mistakes.
B. Modern encyclopedias—such as Wikipedia—have fewer mistakes.
C. In the biggest encyclopedia, we can find all of the human knowledge.
D. In all encyclopedias, there is some incorrect information.
25. The author expects his readers to _____.
A.find all the mistakes in Historia Naturalis
B. improve an encyclopedia
C. complete the task of editing an encyclopedia
D. take a look at the world’s biggest encyclopedias
参考答案
A.1-5 DCBBA
B.6-10 DAABB
C.11-15DBAAC
D.16-20 CDDCA
E.21-25 DABDB。