4职称英语阅读理解_B级_小抄

2012年职称英语阅读理解

（综合类B级）教材

1 Eiffel Is an Eyeful

2 Goal of American Education

3 （新增）The Family

4（新增）Tales of the Terrible Past

5 Spacing in Animals

6 Some Things We Know about Language

7The Only Way Is Up

8Clone Farm

9Income

10（新增）Seeing the World Centuries Ago

11Importance of Services

12The National Park Service 17

13Find Yourself Packing It On? Blame Friends

14 （新）”Lucky” Lord Lucan---Alive or Dead

15 Pool Watch

16The Cherokee Nation

17（新增）Oseola McCarty

17 Eiffel Is An Eyeful1

Some 300 meters up, near the Eiffel Tower's wind-whipped summit the world comes to scribble3. Japanese,Brazilians, Americans —they graffiti their names,loves and politics on the cold iron — transforming the most French of monuments into symbol of a world on the move5.

With Paris laid out in miniature below，it seems strange that visitors would rather waste time marking their presence than admiring the view. But the graffiti also raises a question ： Why, nearly 114 years after it was completed,and decades after it ceased to be the world, s tallest structure,is la Tour Eiffel still so popular?

The reasons are as complex as the iron work that graces a structure some 90 stories high. But part of the answer is, no doubt, its agelessness. Regularly maintained, it should never rust away. Graffiti is regularly painted over,but the tower lives on.

"Eiffel represents Paris and Paris is France. It is very symbolic”，says Hugues Richard10,a 31- year-old Frenchman who holds the record for cycling up to the tower's second floor — 747 steps in 19 minutes and 4 seconds, without touching the floor with his feet. "It's iron lady，It inspires us11 ”， he says.

But to what12? After all,the tower doesn' t have a purpose. It ceased to be the world’ s tallest in 1930 when the Chrysler Building13 went up in New York. Yes，television and radio signals are beamed from the top,and Gustave Eiffel,a frenetic builder who died on December 27，aged 91 ,used its height for conducting research into weather, aerodynamics and radio communication.

But in essence the tower inspires simply by being there _ a blank canvas for visitors to make of it what they will14. To the technically minded15, it's an engineering triumph. For lovers, it's romantic.

"The tower will outlast all of us,and by a long way16”，says Isabelle Esnous, whose company manages Eiffel Tower.

练习：

1. Why does the author think the Eiffel Tower is transformed into symbol of a world on the move?

答案：B ) Tourists of all nationalities come to scribble on the cold iron of the tower.

2. What seems strange to the author?

答案：A) Visitors prefer wasting time scribbling to enjoying the view.

3. Which statement is NOT true of Hugues Richard?

答案：C ) He climbed 747 steps up the tower in 19 minutes and 4 seconds.

4. What did the builder use the Eiffel Tower for?

答案：B ) Conducting research in various fields.