新GRE长篇阅读题精选
Like any alternative fuel, methanol has its critics. Yet much of the criticism is based on the use of “gasoline clone” vehicles that do not incorporate even the simplest design improvements that are made possible with the use of methanol. It is true, for example, that a given volume of methanol provides only about one-half of the energy that gasoline and diesel fuel do; other things being equal, the fuel tank would have to be somewhat larger and heavier. However, since methanol-fueled vehicles could be designed to be much more efficient than “gasoline clone” vehicles fueled with methanol, they would need comparatively less fuel. Vehicles incorporating only the simplest of the engine improvements that methanol makes feasible would still contribute to an immediate lessening of urban air pollution.
1. According to the passage, incomplete combustion is more likely to occur with gasoline than with an alternative fuel because
A. the combustion of gasoline releases photochemically active hydrocarbons
B. the combustion of gasoline involves an intricate series of reactions
C. gasoline molecules have a simple molecular structure
D. gasoline is composed of small molecules.
E. gasoline is a carbon-based fuel
2. Which of the following most closely parallels the situation described in the first sentence of the passage?
A. Although a town reduces its public services in order to avoid a tax increase, the town’s tax rate exceeds that of other towns in the surrounding area.
B. Although a state passes strict laws to limit the type of toxic material that can be disposed of in public landfills, illegal dumping continues to increase.
C. Although a town’s citizens reduce their individual use of water, the town’s water supplies continue to dwindle because of a steady increase in the total population of the town.
D. Although a country attempts to increase the sale of domestic goods by adding a tax to the price of imported goods, the sale of imported goods within the country continues to increase.
E. Although a country reduces the speed limit on its national highways, the number of fatalities caused by automobile accidents continues to increase.
3. It can be inferred from the passage that a vehicle specifically designed to use methanol for fuel would
A. be somewhat lighter in total body weight than a conventional vehicle fueled with gasoline
B. be more expensive to operate than a conventional vehicle fueled with gasoline
C. have a larger and more powerful engine than a conventional vehicle fueled with gasoline
D. have a larger and heavier fuel tank than a “gasoline clone” vehicle fueled with methanol
E. average more miles per gallon than a “gasoline clone” vehicle fueled with methanol
4. The passage suggests which of the following about air pollution?
A. Further attempts to reduce emissions from gasoline-fueled vehicles will not help lower urban air-pollution levels.
B. Attempts to reduce the pollutants that an individual gasoline-fueled vehicle emits have been largely unsuccessful.
C. Few serious attempts have been made to reduce the amount of pollutants emitted by gasoline-fueled vehicles.
D. Pollutants emitted by gasoline-fueled vehicles are not the most critical source of urban air pollution.
E. Reductions in pollutants emitted by individual vehicles have been offset by increases in pollution from sources other than gasoline-fueled vehicles.
答案：B C E A
Passage 7
Mary Barton, particularly in its early chapters, is a moving response to the suffering of the industrial worker in the England of the 1840s. What is most impressive about the book is the intense and painstaking effort made by the author, Elizabeth Gaskell, to convey the experience of everyday life in working class homes. Her method is partly documentary in nature: the novel includes such features as a carefully annotate reproduction of dialect, the exact details of food prices in an account of a tea party, an itemized description of the furniture of the Bartons’ living room, and a transcription (again annotated) of the ballad “The Oldham Weaver”. The interest of this record is considerable, even though the method has a slightly distancing effect.
As a member of the middle class, Gaskell could hardly help approaching working-class life as an outside observer and a reporter, and the reader of the novel is always conscious of this fact. But there is genuine imaginative re-creation in her accounts of the walk in Green Heys Fields, of tea at the Bartons’ house, and of John Barton and his friend’s discovery of the starving family in the cellar in the chapter “Poverty and Death.” Indeed, for a similarly convincing re-creation of such families’ emotions and responses (which are more crucial than the material details on which the mere reporter is apt to concentrate), the English novel had to wait 60 years for the early writing of D. H. Lawrence. If Gaskell never quite conveys the sense of full participation that would completely authenticate this aspect of Mary Bartons, she still brings to these scenes an intuitive recognition of feelings that has its own sufficient conviction.