全国通用20英语19届高考专题复习：专题9 阅读理解(科技说明文)

专题09—阅读理解（科技说明文）1.【2017年高考江苏卷英语】BBefore birth, babies can tell the difference between loud sounds and voices. They can even distinguish their mother’s voice from that of a female stranger. But when it comes to embryonic learning (胎教), birds could rule the roost. As recently reported in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, some mother birds may teach their young to sing even before they hatch (孵化). New-born chicks can then imitate their mom’s call within a few days of entering the world.This educational method was first observed in 2012 by Sonia Kleindorfer, a biologist at Flinders University in South Australia, and her colleagues. Female Australian superb fairy wrens were found to repeat one sound over and over again while hatching their eggs. When the eggs were hatched, the baby birds made the similar chirp to their mothers—a sound that served as their regular ＂feed me!＂ call.To find out if the special quality was more widespread in birds, the researchers sought the red-backed fairy wren, another species of Australian songbird. First they collected sound data from 67 nests in four sites in Queensland before and after hatching. Then they identified begging calls by analyzing the order and number of notes. A computer analysis blindly compared calls produced by mothers and chicks, ranking them by similarity.It turns out that baby red-backed fairy wrens also emerge chirping like their moms. And the more frequently mothers had called to their eggs, the more similar were the babies’ begging calls. In addition, the team set up a separate experiment that suggested that the baby birds that most closely imitated their mom’s voice were rewarded with the most food.This observation hints that effective embryonic learning could signal neurological (神经系统的) strengths of children to parents. An evolutionary inference can then be drawn. ＂As a parent, do you invest in quality children, or do you invest in children that are in need?＂Kleindorfer asks. ＂Our results suggest that they might be going for quality.＂58.The underlined phrase in Paragraph 1 means＂__________＂.A. be the worstB. be the bestC. be the as badD. be just as good59. What are Kleindorfer’s findings based on?A. Similarities between the calls of moms and chicks.B. The observation of fairy wrens across Australia.C. The data collected from Queensland’s locals.D. Controlled experiments on wrens and other birds.60. Embryonic learning helps mother birds to identify the baby birds which __________.A. can receive quality signalsB. are in need of trainingC. fit the environment betterD. make the loudest call60. C【解析】根据倒数第二段中的＂the baby birds that most closely imitated their mom’s voicewere rewarded with the most food＂和最后一段＂Our results suggest that they might be going for quality.＂可知，模仿母鸟模仿得最好的雏鸟得到最多的食物，研究结果表明，母亲会选择质量好的雏鸟。

由此可知，胎教帮助母鸟辨别出那些适应环境较好的孩子。

2.【江苏省泰州市泰州中学2018届高三上学期开学考试】BThe ability to speak more than one language certainly has its special benefits. It enables you to work in another country or interact with people whose language is different from your mother tongue. Cognitive（认知的） psychologists have been interested in how bilingualism（双语能力）shapes the mind for almost a century. There are those who suggest that in order to speak one language, bilinguals have to suppress（抑制）the influence of the other. In the past three decades, research had argued that this unique form of language processing trains the brain in the use of abilities known as "executive（执行的）functions" such as ignoring irrelevant information or shifting attention. Bilinguals of different ages and cultural backgrounds have been shown to be faster and more accurate than their monolingual（单语的）peers when performingcognitive tasks demanding these abilities. Furthermore, it has been argued that bilingualism may lead to a delayed onset（发作）of symptoms associated with dementia（痴呆）.But the scientific community recently has become increasingly skeptical of the bilingual advantage. One of the main points of criticism is that differences between monolinguals and bilinguals when it comes to executive functions are not always apparent. It appears that research on bilingualism is at a turning point. We need to pursue a new approach to understand, beyond those individual examples of executive functions, how the bilingual mind works. We have attempted to address this challenge by testing whether bilinguals and monolinguals differ in terms of how accurately they can assess their own performances. This ability is called meta cognition and is associated with other areas where bilinguals have been shown to have an advantage.In our research, we presented participants with a situation in which they had to observe two circles on a screen and guess which one contained more dots. Sometimes the difference was obvious, making the decision easy, while at other times the decision was very difficult (for example, one circle contained 50 dots and the other 49). Participants were then asked to determine how confident they were in their decision on a scale from less to more confident than normal.During the course of two experiments, we found that bilinguals and monolinguals were equally likely to choose the circle containing the highest number of dots. However, monolinguals were better able than bilinguals to discriminate between when they were right and when they were wrong. In other words, bilinguals had less insight into their performance than monolinguals. This went against our initial predictions, as we expected to find a bilingual advantage in meta cognitive processing. These results indicate that bilingualism may be associated with cognitive disadvantages as well as benefits.1. From Paragraph 2 we can learn that nowadays the scientific community______.A. has denied the special benefits of bilingualismB. has changed its way to understand how the bilingual mind worksC. thinks there is almost no difference between monolinguals and bilingualsD. tries to prove whether monolinguals have more advantages than bilinguals2. How is the last paragraph mainly developed?A. By analyzing causes.B. By describing a process.C. By following time order.D. By making a comparison.3. What is the author's attitude towards bilingualism?A. Supportive.B. Doubtful.C. Objective.D. Ambiguous. 【答案】BDC【分析】1. 细节判断题。