盐城市2017届高三年级第一学期期中考试英语

cycling. You can also combine your tour with fishing, sailing or sunbathing on the beach. One of the most incredible places to walk is along the Tarkine coast which is located in the north-west of Tasmania. It’s such a wild and remote area that you can easily complete your walk without seeing anyone apart from the members of your group and your two guides. The area contains the largest temperate rainforest in Australia which is home to more than 50 endangered species. It is also home to many Aboriginal Heritage Sites. Your guides will provide you with plenty of information about the area as you complete that part of your tour. During your tour, you’ll come across rivers, mountain ranges, spectacular waterfalls, wildlife and long wild beaches. It will be an experience you won’t easily forget. Tour Itinerary: Day 1: You’re picked up from your hotel in the town of Launceston and driven to the Tarkine. You then complete a three-hour walk through the forest before arriving at your camp at Mystery Creek. There you will enjoy a delicious meal cooked by your guides. Day 2: After breakfast, you continue deeper into the rainforest, passing some of the tallest trees in the world as you go, and stopping for lunch and then camp in the evening. Day 3: The highlight of today’s trek is the Tarkine Falls, a beautiful 15-metre waterfall. Day 4: Today you can stay at the camp and bathe in the Tarkine Falls, or you can go for a day trek for more fantastic views of the forest. Day 5: After a last trek through the forest, you are picked up at about 4:00 p.m. and you arrive in Launceston at around 7:00 p.m. The tour includes two professional guides, transport to and from the rainforest, all food while on the tours and all safety equipment. You should buy or hire recommended camping equipment including: backpacks, sleeping bags, sleep mats, head torches, rain coats and trousers. 56. A tourist to the island can ______.

A. cycle along the Tarkine coast and through the forest B. buy or hire as much camping equipment as possible C. go for a day trek for more fantastic views on Day 5 D. choose to make a sailing tour of the place for pleasure 57. From the passage we know that ______.

A. people will walk hours in all the five days during the tour B. many species in danger are protected in the national parks C. it takes about three hours to drive from Launceston to Tarkine D. the tour provides guides, accommodation and safety equipment

B

Art is visible. However, everything one sees is filtered through certain conditions, some of them historical, and others, natural. The historical conditions include the material which is used — oil, colors, and the canvas; second, a certain style. There can be a general style, for example, the style of Impressionism, or a particular style, for example, the individual ways in which two painters, both impressionists, paint. The natural conditions include certain unchanging psychological laws of sight, for instance, the effects of colors or optical illusions.

The conditions of art are nothing but a particular way of interpreting reality. To understand this, one can examine the difference between the classical Greek and the classical Egyptian styles. For the Greeks, the reality of the visible was given by the perspective and the situation in which the object appears; for that reason they presented a person in his individual movements. For the

Egyptians, however, this was only the appearance of a brief moment, which, according to their beliefs, was not real. Therefore, the Egyptians searched for the permanent essence and the typical character in their depiction of an object. For the Egyptians, Greek art was an illusion; for the Greeks, on the other hand, Egyptian art was unrealistic constructivism.

The way in which reality appears in art must not be regarded on its own. It is affected by many other systems of recognizing reality, including the political, religious, economic, intellectual, and social — in short, all the phenomena of human life.

Moreover, art is always of a certain epoch (纪元), with its particular conception of reality. Thus, when discussing, for example, the art of ancient myth, of medieval Christianity, or that of the technological age, one must be aware that myth, Christianity, or technology was the most outstanding feature of the epoch.

It is paradoxical (似是而非的) to understand art as some kind of copy of the fields of experience connected with it. So, for example, it is meaningless for the work of art to be compared with the landscape, which served the artist as his model. Even if the artist had tried to make what he painted as similar as possible to the model he used, the landscape which he saw is only the matter from which something completely different emerges since he has submitted his view to the conditions of art: namely to the material used (colors, canvas, etc.), to his style, and even to the fact that he paints on a flat surface. Thus one must contemplate (注视) a work of art by itself. Even if it is connected to other fields of experience it nevertheless displays something unique which appears in that piece of art and there alone.

58. What is mentioned as one of the conditions through which art is seen? A. Impressionism. B. Optical illusions. C. Nature. D. Perspective.

59. Why did the Egyptians search for the permanent essence of an object? A. Egyptian art was thought to be unrealistic constructivism. B. They should present a person in his individual movements. C. The reality of the visible was only the presence of an instant. D. The appearance of the object features largely in the reality. 60. What can we infer after reading the passage?

A. The conditions of art are more than a particular way of interpreting reality. B. The way in which reality appears in art should be regarded only on its own. C. Myth, Christianity, or technology was under the influence of a unique style. D. Works of art were usually produced in response to certain interpretations. C

A new study revealed that the formation of the Earth, Sun and Moon that cause changes in Earth’s tides can also trigger a special kind of Earthquake along the California’s San Andreas Fault （断层）.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, is based on previous researcher suggesting that the gravitational tug of sun and moon is not only affecting the sea levels of Earth, but can also stretch and compress that Earth’s crust, producing tremors and quakes. Furthermore, the new study showed that small tremors deep underground were more likely to occur during certain periods of the tidal cycle.

For the study, the researchers looked at about 81,000 low-frequency earthquakes from 2008 to 2015 along the Parkfield section of the San Andreas Fault and compared it to the two-week tidal cycle known as the “fortnightly tide.” Low-frequency earthquakes are named due to the rumbling sound they make and not by the rate of its occurrence. These kinds of earthquake only occur about 15 to 30 kilometers below ground and are no larger than magnitude 1 in the Richter scale.

The researchers discovered that low-frequency earthquakes tend to occur during the waxing

period of the tidal cycle, when the tides are getting little by little. It is already known that the strongest Earth tides occur when the sun and moon are in a straight line, while the tide is at its weakest state when the sun and moon are 90 degrees apart.

According to the researchers, low-frequency earthquakes show that some part of the San Andreas Fault is creeping, or slowly moving, almost all the time. With the help of the tidal forces, low-frequency earthquakes could provide more information about the deeper part of the fault.

“They tell us that the fault continues down below where the regular or typical earthquakes stop on the San Andreas, about 10 or 12 km (about 6 to 7 miles),” said David Shelly, a seismologist at USGS and helped write the study, in a statement. “Andthey tell us a lot of things about that deep part of the fault that we had no idea existed at all before.”

“It’s almost like having a lot of little creep meters embedded in the fault,” Shelly said. “We can use these low-frequency earthquakes as measurements of, at least in a relative sense, how much slip is happening at each little spot on the deep part of the fault where we see these events. When we don’t see them, we don’t know what’s happening; we don’t know whether it’s slipping silently or not slipping at all.”

The information is incredibly useful, he added. Whenever the deep part of the fault slips, the stress gets transferred to the shallow part of the fault.

“So if all of a sudden, we saw that the deep part of the fault was slipping a huge amount, it might be an indication that there was an increased chance of having an earthquake come at the shallower part of the fault,” he said.

61. What causes tremors and quakes according to the passage? A. The formation of the Earth, Sun and Moon. B. The change of the sea levels of Earth.

C. The effect of the gravitational tug of sun and moon on Earth’s crust. D. The movement of creeping in the deep part of the San Andres Fault. 62. The underlined word “they” in Paragraph 6 refers to ______. A. the researchers

B. the tidal forces

C. the low-frequency earthquakes

D. the typical earthquakes

63. Low-frequency earthquakes occur when ______. A. the tides are getting bigger gradually B. the sun and moon are in a straight line C. the sun and moon are 90 degrees apart D. the San Andreas Fault moves slowly

64. According to Shelly, the most important function of the study is ______. A. to find out where the typical earthquakes occur B. to indicate when the regular earthquakes occur C. to uncover how low-frequency earthquakes occur D. to offer more information about the deeper part of the fault

D

Sir Nicholas Winton, rescuer of children, died on July 1st, 2015, aged 106.

When the letters and the honor came knocking on the door of his house in Maidenhead, and the filmmakers came calling, Nicholas Winton always protested that he was no hero. Heroes faced danger; he never had. They put their lives on the line; he had just worked at home in Hampstead, after a day being a stockbroker in the City. They avoided bullets and the secret police; he wrote letters, made telephone calls, and composed lists.

The fact that he had rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia just as the Nazis invaded did

not, in his mind, constitute heroism. He hadn’t gone out there in 1938 with any burning urge to do good; just for a holiday, in fact. Nor had he gone looking for children to rescue. Instead they and their parents had come to him, as soon as word got round that he might be able to help them leave Prague and get to the West. From 6.00 a.m. the knocks would come at the door of his room in the Europa Hotel, and he would open it to find some shivering, starving, desperate figure.

When faced with a problem, his instinct was to solve it. So he made lists of the children, took their photographs, got them Home Office entry permits, found them foster families and organised their departure on trains, via the Netherlands, to Liverpool Street. After just three weeks in Prague, he went back to Britain and carried on the work from there.

The British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia gave him almost no help, so he took sole charge himself. The Home Office was slow with entry permits, so he copied some illegally. In search of foster-parents for the children he put their photos in Picture Post; in the hope of farther havens for them he wrote to governors and senators in America and even to President Roosevelt, to no avail. He could have rescued at least 2,000 more, he said later, if America had been willing to take any.

A hero might have got involved in the stress and distress of individual cases. He avoided that by treating them like a commercial transaction: like the world he knew, in fact. A market was created, takers were sought and any likely bidder would do. Siblings were separated, if necessary. Jewish children — they were almost all Jewish — were often placed with Gentile families. Mr Winton did not care and he just had to get the children out alive and fast. When they arrived, exhausted, at Liverpool Street he seldom greeted them himself, preferring to stay calmly at a distance. Only one event traumatised him: the disappearance of 250 children on the last transport of September 1st 1939, as war was declared. But this awful thing too he stored at the back of his mind, realising that he had done all he could and his part was over. The scrapbook of lists, photographs and begging letters went up to the attic; he said nothing about it, and moved on.

He liked it that way. The silent background suited him very well. For 50 years he sat on the Czech story, not supposing anyone would want to know, until in 1988 the scrapbook came to light and, with it, a blaze of publicity, culminating in an evening on Esther Rantzen’s “That’s Life” TV show when the whole audience suddenly stood up round him, applauding him, and every one was a child he had saved. It was “absolutely awful”, he thought; and wept with long-suppressed joy.

He was still no hero, though, in his own book. He had had no desire to improve the world: indeed, not even much idea which job he was best suited for. At his father’s suggestion he had tried banking first, having left Stowe with nothing much to show for it. After the war he dabbled in business, but it didn’t take. In later years he worked for a mental-health charity and helped to set up homes for the elderly; and wondered why saving the Czech children was deemed more heroic than those things. He had simply done what needed doing at that time, in that place. Surely any decent person would have done the same?

65. Why did Nicholas Winton refuse to regard himself as a hero? A. His behavior didn’t matter in the rescue. B. He didn’t undergo risk in the rescue.

C. He didn’t want to make himself public.

D. His travel to Prague was simply for a holiday.

66. What made Winton decide to help rescue the children? A. His strong desire to do good. B. His determination to be a hero. C. His hatred towards Nazis.

D. His sympathy for children’s fate

67. What can we learn about Winton from Paragraph 5?