第三部分：阅读理解（共两节，满分40分）

第一节：选择题（共15小题，每小题2分，共30分）

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。

    I must have been about fourteen then, and I put away the incident from my mind with the

easy carelessness of  youth. But the words, Carl Walter spoke that day, came back to me years

later, and ever since have been of great value to me.

Carl Walter was my piano teacher. During one of my lessons he asked how much practicing I was doing. I said three or four hours a day.

"Do you practice in long stretches, an hour at a time?"

"I try to."

"Well, don't," he exclaimed. "When you grow up, time won't come in long stretches.    Practice in minutes, whenever you can find them five or ten before school, after lunch, between household tasks. Spread the practice through the day, and piano-playing will become a part of your life."

When I was teaching at Columbia, I wanted to write, but class periods, theme-reading, and committee meetings filled my days and evenings. For two years I got practically nothing down on paper, and my excuse was that I had no time. Then I remembered what Carl Walter had said. During the next week I conducted an experiment. Whenever I had five minutes unoccupied, I sat down and wrote a hundred words or so. To my astonishment, at the end of the week I had a rather large manuscript ready for revision, later on I wrote novels by the same piecemeal method. Though my teaching schedule had become heavier than ever, in every day there were idle moments which could be caught and put to use. I even took up piano--playing again, finding that the small intervals of the day provided sufficient time for both writing and piano practice.

There is an important trick in this time--using formula: you must get into your work quickly. If you have but five minutes for writing, you can't afford to waste four chewing your pencil. You must make your mental preparations beforehand, and concentrate on your task almost instantly when the time comes. Fortunately, rapid concentration is easier than most of us realize.

I admit I have never learnt how to let go easily at the end of the five or ten minutes. But life can be counted on to supply interruptions. Carl Walter has had a tremendous influence on my life. To him I owe the discovery that even very short periods of time add up to all useful hours I need, if I plunge（投入）in without delay.

56．The meaning of “stretch” in the underlined part is the same as that in sentence “        ”.

      A．The forests in the north of the province stretch for hundreds of miles.

       B．Bob worked as a government official for a stretch of over twenty years.

       C．My family wasn’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination.

       D．During his senior year his earnings far enough to buy an old car.

57．Which of the following statements is true?

　　A．The writer didn’t completely take the teacher’s words to heart at first.

　　B．Carl Walter has had a great influence on the writer's life since he became a student.

　　C．The writer owes great thanks to his teacher for teaching him to work in long stretches.

　　D．Rapid concentration is actually more difficult than most people imagine.

58．We can infer that the writer             . 

       A．has new books published each year however busy his teaching is

      B．is always tired of interruptions in life because his teaching schedule is always heavy

      C．has formed a bad habit of chewing a pencil while writing his novels

       D．can find sufficient time for mental preparations beforehand, so he's devoted to work   instantly

59．What is the best title of this passage?

       A．Concentrate on Your Work           B．A Little at a Time

       C．How I Became a Writer               D．Good Advice Is Most Valuable

When Marilynne Robinson published her first novel, Housekeeping, in 1980, she was unknown in the literary world. But an early review in The New York Times ensured that the book would be noticed. “It’s as if, in writing it, she broke through the ordinary human condition with all its dissatisfactions, and achieved a kind of transfiguration（美化）,” wrote Anatole Broyard, with an enthusiasm and amazement that was shared by many critics and readers. The book became a classic, and Robinson was recognized as one of the outstanding American writers of our time. Yet it would be more than twenty years before she wrote another novel. 

During the period, Robinson devoted herself to writing nonfiction. Her essays and book reviews appeared in Harper’s and The New York Times Book Review, and in 1989 she published Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution, criticizing severely the environmental and public health dangers caused by the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in England—and the political and moral corruption(腐败). In 1998, Robinson published a collection of her critical and theological writings, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought, which featured reassessments of such figures as Charles Darwin, John Calvin, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Aside from a single short story—“Connie Bronson,” published in The Paris Review in 1986—it wasn’t until 2004 that she returned to fiction with the novel Gilead, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her third novel, Home, came out this fall.

Her novels could be described as celebrations of the human—the characters in them are unforgettable creations. Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her sister Lucille, who are cared for by their eccentric（古怪的）Aunt Sylvie after their mother commits suicide. Robinson writes a lot about how each of the three is changed by their new life together. Gilead is an even more close exploration of personality: the book centres on John Ames, a seventy-seven-year-old pastor(牧师) who is writing an account of his life and his family history to leave to his young son after he dies. Home borrows characters from Gilead but centers on Ames’s friend Reverend Robert Boughton and his troubled son Jack. Robinson returned to the same territory as Gilead because, she said, “after I write a novel or a story, I miss the characters—I feel like losing some close friends.”

1.Robinson’s second novel came out ____.

A. in 1980                         B. in 1986                          C. in 1998                          D. in 2004

2.What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?

A. Robinson’s achievements in fiction.

B. Robinson’s achievements in nonfiction.

C. Robinson’s influence on the literary world.

D. Robinson’s contributions to the environment.

3.According to Paragraph 3, who is John Ames?

A. He is Robinson’s close friend.

B. He is a character in Gilead. 

C. He is a figure in The Death of Adam.

D. He is a historian writing family stories.

4.From which section of a newspaper can you read this passage?

A. Career.                        B. Lifestyle.     　   C. Music.                           D. Culture.

 

    I must have been about fourteen then, and I put away the incident from my mind with the

easy carelessness of  youth. But the words, Carl Walter spoke that day, came back to me years

later, and ever since have been of great value to me.

Carl Walter was my piano teacher. During one of my lessons he asked how much practicing I was doing. I said three or four hours a day.

"Do you practice in long stretches, an hour at a time?"

"I try to."

"Well, don't," he exclaimed. "When you grow up, time won't come in long stretches.    Practice in minutes, whenever you can find them five or ten before school, after lunch, between household tasks. Spread the practice through the day, and piano-playing will become a part of your life."

When I was teaching at Columbia, I wanted to write, but class periods, theme-reading, and committee meetings filled my days and evenings. For two years I got practically nothing down on paper, and my excuse was that I had no time. Then I remembered what Carl Walter had said. During the next week I conducted an experiment. Whenever I had five minutes unoccupied, I sat down and wrote a hundred words or so. To my astonishment, at the end of the week I had a rather large manuscript ready for revision, later on I wrote novels by the same piecemeal method. Though my teaching schedule had become heavier than ever, in every day there were idle moments which could be caught and put to use. I even took up piano--playing again, finding that the small intervals of the day provided sufficient time for both writing and piano practice.

There is an important trick in this time--using formula: you must get into your work quickly. If you have but five minutes for writing, you can't afford to waste four chewing your pencil. You must make your mental preparations beforehand, and concentrate on your task almost instantly when the time comes. Fortunately, rapid concentration is easier than most of us realize.

I admit I have never learnt how to let go easily at the end of the five or ten minutes. But life can be counted on to supply interruptions. Carl Walter has had a tremendous influence on my life. To him I owe the discovery that even very short periods of time add up to all useful hours I need, if I plunge（投入）in without delay.

56．The meaning of “stretch” in the underlined part is the same as that in sentence “        ”.

      A．The forests in the north of the province stretch for hundreds of miles.

       B．Bob worked as a government official for a stretch of over twenty years.

       C．My family wasn’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination.

       D．During his senior year his earnings far enough to buy an old car.

57．Which of the following statements is true?

　　A．The writer didn’t completely take the teacher’s words to heart at first.

　　B．Carl Walter has had a great influence on the writer's life since he became a student.

　　C．The writer owes great thanks to his teacher for teaching him to work in long stretches.

　　D．Rapid concentration is actually more difficult than most people imagine.

58．We can infer that the writer             . 

       A．has new books published each year however busy his teaching is

      B．is always tired of interruptions in life because his teaching schedule is always heavy

      C．has formed a bad habit of chewing a pencil while writing his novels

       D．can find sufficient time for mental preparations beforehand, so he's devoted to work   instantly

59．What is the best title of this passage?

       A．Concentrate on Your Work           B．A Little at a Time

       C．How I Became a Writer           D．Good Advice Is Most Valuable