英语阅读(2)平时作业(一)

英语阅读（2）平时作业（一）

班级：___________ 学号：___________ 姓名：____________ 分数：___________ Part I

Read the following two passages and then write brief answers to questions 1–10. 20%

Passage 1

In the late 1960s, motorcyclists in California, USA, used to go out in the countryside and ride their machines up and down mountain tracks just for fun. They made a lot of noise and did a lot of damage to the countryside. Soon, the practice was banned but the same people simply switched to old bicycles and started to use those for their sport.

At first, they took the bicycles up the mountains in trucks, but then one keen cyclist, Gary Fisher, put extra gears on his bike and began using it to ride uphill as well as down. By the end of the 1970s, bicycle manufacturers were beginning to develop special bikes for offroad riding. And so the mountain bike was born.

Now, mountain bikes have wide, heavy tyres to give a good grip on rough surfaces, and straight handlebars to make the control of the steering easier. They are built on smaller, stronger frames than other bikes, because they are often ridden over bumpy ground which would soon damage lighter bikes.

1. Where would motorcyclists go to ride their motorcycles in the 60’s?

2. Why did those people go motorcycling?

3. Why was the practice banned later?

4. What could Fisher do after he had put extra gears on his bike?

5. Why does the frame of mountain bikes have to be very strong?

Passage 2

She was launched on 31 May 1911 and sailed on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, via Chergourg and Queenstown, on 10 April 1912. With a gross tonnage of 46, 328 tons, she was the largest ship afloat: 882 feet long, 92 feet wide, 8 decks rising to the height of an 11-storey building. Four days and seventeen hours after the voyage began, at 11:40 p.m. on Sunday 14 April, she hit an iceberg and was badly damaged. Two hours and forty minutes later she sank. Of the 2227 passengers and crew, 705 escaped in twenty lifeboats and rafts; 1522 were drowned,

including her master, Captain Edward Smith. At dawn on 15 April the Cunard liner Carpathia, having heard the Titanic’s wireless distress calls 58 miles away, arrived at the scene and began picking up survivors.

6. What is the meaning of a ―maiden voyage?‖

7. In which season did Titanic set out for her only trip?

8. How did the disaster happen?

9. Which ship was the first one to arrive and save the passengers?

10. How long was it from the disaster taking place till the arrival of the other ship to save the survivors?

Part II

Look quickly through this story and then write brief answers to questions 11—20 according to the passage. 20%

Passage 3

―An important room, this!‖ cried Mr. Wonka, taking a bunch of keys from his pocket and slipping one into the keyhole of t he door. ―This is the nerve center of the whole factory, the heart of the whole business! And so beautiful! I insist upon my rooms being beautiful! I can’t abide ugliness in factories! In we go then! But do be careful, my dear children! Don’t lose your heads! Don’t get over-excited! Keep very calm!‖

Mr. Wonka opened the door. Five children and nine grown-ups pushed their ways in – and oh, what an amazing sight it was that now met their eyes!

They were looking down upon a lovely valley. There were green meadows on either side of the valley, and along the bottom of it there flowed a great brown river.

What is more, there was a tremendous waterfall halfway along the river—a steep cliff over which the water curled and rolled in a solid sheet, and then went crashing down into a boiling churning whirlpool of froth and spray.

Below the waterfall (and this was the most astonishing sight of all), a whole mass of enormous glass pipes were dangling down into the river from somewhere high up in the ceiling! They really were enormous, those pipes. There must have been a dozen of them at least, and they were sucking up the brownish muddy water from the river and carrying it away to goodness knows where. And because they were made of glass, you could see the liquid flowing and bubbling along inside them, and above the noise of the waterfall, you could hear the never-ending suck-suck-sucking sound of the