高考英语二轮专题复习 阅读理解(五十)

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Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that the perfect portable bike would be“ like a magic carpet...You could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag”. Then he paused：“ But you’ll always be limited by the size of the wheels. And so far no one has invented a folding wheel.”

It was a rare—indeed unique—occasion when I was able to put Ritchie right. A 19th-century inventor，William Henry James Grout，did in fact design a folding wheel. His bike, predictably named the Grout Portable, had a frame that split into two and a larger wheel that could be separated into four pieces. All the bits fitted into Grout’s Wonderful Bag，a leather case.

Grout’s aim: to solve the problems of carrying a bike on a train.Now doesn’t that sound familiar? Grout intended to find a way of making a bike small enough for train travel: his bike was a huge beast. And importantly, the design of early bicycles gave him an advantage：in Grout’s day ，tyres were solid，which made the business of splitting a wheel into four separate parts relatively simple. You couldn’t do the same with a wheel fitted with a one-piece inflated(充气的) tyre.

So，in a 21st-century context, is the idea of the folding wheel dead? It is not. A British design engineer, Duncan Fitzsimons, has developed a wheel that can be squashed into something like a slender ellipse(椭圆). Throughout，the tyre remains inflated. Will the young Fitzsimons’s folding wheel make it into production? I haven’t the foggiest idea. But his inventiveness shows two things. First, people have been saying for more than a century that bike design has reached its limit, except for gradual advances. It’s as silly a concept now as it was 100-years-ago：there’s plenty still to go for. Second, it is in the field of folding bikes that we are seeing the most interesting inventions. You can buy a folding bike for less than ￡1,000 that can be knocked down so small that it can be carried on a plane — minus wheels, of course—as hand baggage.

Folding wheels would make all manner of things possible. Have we yet got the magic carpet of Andrew Ritchie’s imagination? No. But it’s progress.

【文章大意概括】 一位发明家想要发明折叠自行车的话，最大的困难是如何折叠轮子。其实19世纪的一位发明家在当年已经做到了，令人欣喜的是现在又有人想出了折叠轮子的办法。我们都在期待着。

1. We can infer from Paragraph 1 that thc Brompton folding bike________. A. was portable

B. had a folding wheel

C. could be put in a pocket D. looked like a magic carpet

【详解剖析】 推理判断题。这种自行车的特点是便于携带，而不是呈地毯状或为的是能放进口袋，故不能选C或D。 【最佳选项】 A

2. We can learn from the text that the wheels of the Grout Portable________. A. were difficult to separate

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B. could be split into 6 pieces C. were fitted with solid tyres D. were hard to carry on a train 【详解剖析】 推理判断题。从文章第三段“And importantly...in Grout’s day，tyres were solid...”可得知答案。他的折叠方法只适合当时的固体轮胎。 【最佳选项】 C

3. We can learn from the text that Fitzsimons’s invention________. A. kept the tyre as a whole piece B. was made into production soon C. left little room for improvement D. changed our views on bag design

【详解剖析】 推理判断题。从文章第四段“squashed into...like a slender ellipse”可得知答案。 【最佳选项】 A

4. Which of the following would be the best title for the text? A. Three folding bike inventors B. The making of a folding bike C. Progress in folding bike design D. Ways of separating a bike wheel 【详解剖析】 主旨大意题。全文讲述了不同时期的三位发明家对折叠自行车的探索。故选C。 【最佳选项】 C 2

We once had a poster competition in our fifth grade art class.

“You could win prizes，” our teacher told us as she wrote the poster information on the blackboard. She passed out sheets of construction paper while continuing，“ The first prize is ten dollars. You just have to make sure that the words on the blackboard appear somewhere on your poster.”

We studied the board critically. Some of us looked with one eye and held up certain colors against the blackboard, rocking the sheets to the right or left while we conjured up our designs. Others twisted their hair around their fingers or chewed their erasers while deep in thought. We had plans for that ten-dollar grand prize, each and every one of us. I’m going to spend mine on candies, one hopeful would announce, while another practiced looking serious, wise and rich. Everyone in the class made a poster. Some of us used parts of those fancy paper napkins, while others used nothing but colored construction paper. Some of us used big designs, and some of us preferred to gather our art tidily down in one corner of our poster and let the space draw the viewer’s attention to it. Some of us would wander past the good students’ desks and then return to our own projects with a growing sense of hopelessness. It was yet another grown-up trick of the sort they seemed especially fond of, making all of us believe we had a fair chance, and then always—always—rewarding the same old winners.

I believe I drew a sailboat, but I can’t say that with any certainty. I made it. I admired it. I determined it to be the very best of all of the posters I had seen，and then I turned it in.

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Minutes passed.

No one came along to give me the grand prize, and then someone distracted me, and I probably never would have thought about that poster again.

I was still sitting at my desk, thinking, What poster? when the teacher gave me an envelope with a ten-dollar bill in it and everyone in the class applauded for me. 【文章大意概括】 本文描述了在五年级美术课的一次海报设计竞赛中，作者出乎意料地取得了第一名的经历。

1. What was the teacher’s requirement for the poster? A. It must appear in time. B. It must be done in class.

C. It must be done on a construction sheet. D. It must include the words on the blackboard.

【详解剖析】 事实细节题。从第二段“...make sure that the words on the blackboard appear somewhere on your poster.”可知，老师的要求是黑板上的内容需在海报中出现。 【最佳选项】 D

2．The underlined phrase in Paragraph 3 most probably means ________. A. formed an idea for B. made an outline for C. made some space for D. chose some colors for

【详解剖析】 猜测词义题。第三段中conjure up意为“想起；使„„呈现于脑际”。从对称的结构“Some...while we conjured up our designs.”与下文的“Others...while deep in thought.”可以猜测出该词词义。 【最佳选项】 A

3. After the teacher’s words, all the students in the class________. A. looked very serious

B. thought they would be rich

C. began to think about their designs D. began to play games

【详解剖析】 事实细节题。第三段生动、形象地描写了同学们思考时的各种动作。 【最佳选项】 C

4. After seeing the good students’ designs, some students________. A. loved their own designs more B. thought they had a fair chance C. put their own designs in a corner D. thought they would not win the prize

【详解剖析】 事实细节题。从第四段“...wander past the good students’desks and then return to our own projects with a growing sense of hopelessness.”可知：看到优秀学生作品后，另外一些学生对自己这次的参赛作品信心更加不足了。 【最佳选项】 D

5. We can infer from the passage that the author________. A. enjoyed grownup tricks very much B. loved poster competitions very much C. felt surprised to win the competition

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D. became wise and rich after the competition

【详解剖析】 推理判断题。最后三段描写了作者焦急地等待比赛结果的心情，所以对于不自信的作者来说，这次比赛的结果让他很吃惊。 【最佳选项】 C

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