河北省承德市联校2018届高三上学期期末考试英语试题

I have learned something about myself since I moved from Long Island to Florida three years ago. Even though 1 own a home in Port St. Lucie just minutes from the ocean, an uncontrollable urge wells up to return to Long Island even as others make their way south. I guess I am a snowbird stuck in reverse. Instead of enjoying Florida’s mild winters, I willingly endure the severe weather on Long Island, the place I called home for 65 years.

I’m like a migratory bird (候鸟) that has lost its sense of timing and direction, my wings flapping against season.

So what makes me fly against the tide of snowbirds? The answer has a lot to do with my reluctance to give up the things that define who I am. Once I hear that the temperature on Long Island has dipped into the range of 40 to 50 degrees, I begin to long for the sight and crackling sound of a wood fire. I also long for the bright display of colors—first in the fall trees, and then in the lights around homes and at Rockefeller Center. Floridians decorate, too, but can’t create the special feel of a New England winter.

I suppose the biggest reason why I return is to celebrate the holidays with people I haven’t seen in months. What could be better than sitting with family and friends for a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, or watching neighbors’ children excitedly open gifts on Christmas? Even the first snowfall seems special. I especially enjoy seeing a bright red bird settling on a snow-covered branch. (My wife and 1 spend winters at a retirement community in Ridge, and I’m grateful that I don’t have to shovel.)

While these simple pleasures are not unique to Long Island, they are some of the reasons why I come back. Who says you can’t go home?

24. What’s the difference between Florida and Long Island? A. Winters in Florida are milder. B. The snowbirds in Florida are rarer. C. Weather in Florida is severer. D. Florida is nearer to the ocean.

25. What does the underlined word “reluctance” in Paragraph 3 mean? A. Unwillingness. Motivation.

26. Which of the following words can best describe the author?

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B. Expectation. C. Coincidence. D.

A. Imaginative and outspoken. C. Homesick and easy-going.

B. Hard-working and serious. D. Anxious and painful.

27. What’s the author’s purpose in writing the text? A. To describe his dream to be a free bird. B. To express his feeling of missing his hometown. C. To praise the beauty and warmth of his hometown. D. TO explain the reasons for moving from his hometown.

C

When Dee Dee Bridgewater learned that she would become a 2017 NEA Jazz Master, a series of thoughts and feelings flooded her mind. “It was so far out of my orbit and just my whole sphere of thinking,” she said in a conversation at NPR this spring, hours before she formally received her award.

She’s 66-far from retirement age in jazz, and on the extreme forward edge of the NEA Jazz Masters people. So she was aware of her relative youth in the field She also recognized that there haven’t been many women in the ranks of NEA Jazz Masters: fewer than 20, out of 145. That idea led her to reflect on her predecessors (前任): legendary singers like Betty Carter* who was seated back in 1992, and Abbey Lincoln, who received the nod in 2003.

Bridgewater sought inspiration and advice from both Carter and Lincoln, as she recalls in this period of Jazz Night, which features music recorded during the season opener for Jazz at Lincoln Center. On a program called “Songs of Freedom”, organized by drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr., Bridgewater sang material associated with Lincoln as well as Nina Simone: an extremely angry song of the civil rights movement, like “Mississippi Goddam”.

A separate concert, “Songs We Love”, found Bridgewater singing less politically charged (but still exciting) fare like “St. James Infirmary”, which appears on her most recent album. In words as well as music, this period reveals how seriously Bridgewater takes that responsibility, seeing as how it connects to her own experience in the jazz lineage. But maybe “seriously” isn’t the right word when it comes to Dee Dee, whose effervescence (欢腾) shines through even in a reflective mood. Join her here for a while; she’s excellent company, no more or less so now that mastery is officially a part of her resume.

28. What did Bridgewater think of her winning the award?

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A. It confused her.

B. It was beyond her expectation. C. It won great popular support for her. D. It gave her much confidence about her career.

29. What can we learn about the musicians winning NEA Jazz Masters? A. Women ranked higher than men. B. Men accounted for a bigger part of them. C. Most of them were unwilling to retire at first. D. Many of them received the award at an early age.

30. Who is more likely to have a great influence on Bridgewater? A. Carter and Lincoln.

B. Ulysses and Lincoln. D. Nina Simone and Ulysses.

C. Nina Simone and Carter.

31. What does the last paragraph mainly talk about? A. Bridgewater’s music theme. B. Bridgewater’s music experience. C. Bridgewater’s personal characters. D. Bridgewater’s great achievements.

D

How do the world’s only flying mammals communicate? Researchers have observed young bats adopting new “dialects” simply by hearing them repeatedly, making them one of the few animals known to have a capacity for vocal (声音的) learning. “These bats may help us clarify the evolution of speech acquisition (习得) skills,” says Yosef Prat, a PhD at Tel Aviv University (TAU).

For one year, researchers raised 14 Egyptian fruit bat pups with their mothers in controlled area, exposing each young bat to two different vocalizations: the natural call of its mother and a separate recording that varied in pitch (音高) or frequency. They found that the pups in each group developed a dialect like the recording. “The general assumption in this field is that most animals develop their born vocalizations regardless of what they hear, and that human vocal learning abilities have developed during evolution,” says Mr Prat. “The finding that bats learn the common dialect in their rest place was unusual.”

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Scientists know little about the origin of spoken language, which is believed to have appeared in humans within the past 500,000 years. Dozens of theories attempt to explain the complexity of this skill, but none have done so conclusively.

“Studying vocal communication and vocal learning in animal models is a very useful way to approach the problem,” says Olga Feher, an assistant professor at the University of Warwick in England.

But animal vocalizations and human speech are very different things, says Jamin Pelkey, a professor at Ryerson University. “All species communicate. Unlike other animals, though, human beings are able to use sound patterns for functions that are far stranger—functions that are imaginative, theoretical, and critical. When speech is involved in these stranger functions, that is what we mean by spoken ‘language’.”

32. How do young bats acquire their “language” according to the research? A. Flying in the air slowly. B. Hearing it again and again. C. Communicating with partners. D. Repeating it with their mothers.

33. What was the general view about animal vocalization? A. Most animals are born with it B. Its process was unusual. C. It is easier than human speech.

D. What animals heard doesn’t affect their learning.

34. What does the underlined word “problem” in Paragraph 4 refer to? A. The difference between animals and humans. B. The complexity of spoken language. C. The origin of spoken language. D. The study of animal models.

35. What does professor Pelkey think of researching young bats? A. It is far from the fact B. Its result is beyond doubt. C. It is of great scientific value.

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