Question

Former Irish President Mary Robinson was just making a polite conversation with an Ethiopian(埃塞俄比亚的)teenager about her wedding day.The 16­year­old had already been married for a year.“She looked at me with the saddest eyes and said，‘I had to drop out of school’，” Robinson said in a telephone interview.“That conveyed to me the reality，” said Robinson，the first woman to serve as Ireland's President and former U．N.High Commissioner for Human Rights.“Her life，as far as she is concerned，had more or less ended.”

Robinson said keeping girls in school was one of the most important things policymakers could do to address the coming challenges of an ever­increasing population，predicted by the United Nations to reach 7 billion soon.“European countries are concerned about aging populations，but this is much less of an issue than the huge number of people which we are going to see over the next 40 years when the population goes from 7 billion to 9 billion，” she said.“Almost all of that increase will be in poor developing countries，so that we have a very big challenge.”

Family planning experts worry in particular about the future population explosion in Sub­Saharan Africa.In May，the United Nations projected the world population would reach 9.3 billion in 2050 and 10.1 billion by 2100.Much of that growth will come from Africa, where the population is growing at 2.3 percent a year—more than double Asia's 1 percent growth rate.If that rate stays consistent，which is not certain，Africa's population will reach 3.6 billion by 2100 from the present 1 billion.

Joel Cohen，a professor of population studies at Rockefeller University and Columbia University in New York，said universal secondary education offered a way to reduce population in high birth rate regions.In addition to providing information about birth control，a secondary education teaches women to reduce their own fertility，improve the health of their children and allow them to move from a mindset of having many children in the hope that some will survive to improve the quality of each child's life，Cohen wrote in the journal Nature.

36．In the first paragraph，the author introduces his topic by________．

A．giving an example

B．explaining his opinions

C．describing the poor education system

D．coming straight to the topic

37．What can we learn from the passage?

A．Robinson is happy after talking to the Ethiopian girl.

B．Robinson is a successful expert in population studies.

C．Robinson is worried about the population growth.

D．Robinson encourages female education.

38．What is Joel Cohen's view about secondary education?

A．It provides basic knowledge of health.

B．It reduces aging population.

C．It makes people pay more attention to education.

D．It can change people's parenting ideas.

39．According to the passage，one of the most important ways to control high population growth is to________．

A．let girls go away from Africa

B．keep girls in school

C．let young girls remain single

D．keep girls in families

Answer 1

人口的快速增长困扰着世界。有关人士指出，控制人口快速增长的一种方式就是提高女性的受教育水平，进而改变人们头脑中固有的传统生育观念。

36．A　篇章结构题。在本段中，作者以爱尔兰前总统Mary Robinson与埃塞俄比亚的一位已婚少女的交谈为例引入话题，所以A项正确。

37．C　推理判断题。第二段引号中的内容提到“欧洲国家担心出现人口老龄化问题，但与人口快速增长相比，这算不了什么。几乎所有的人口增长都发生在发展中国家，这将是一个巨大的挑战。”由此可推断她担心的是人口增长问题。

38．D　推理判断题。由最后一段的最后一句可知，Joel Cohen在《自然》杂志中写到中等教育可以改变人们的育儿理念。

39．B　细节理解题。根据第二段第一句前半部分中的内容可知，控制人口快速增长的最重要的方式之一是让女孩儿上学。