湖北省2012高考英语二轮复习专题训练：阅读理解（82）
阅读下列短文，从每篇短文后所给各题的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。
A
"Grandma, Grandma, tell us a story!" Four darling children sat by my feet, looking up at me expectantly.
Suddenly, we were interrupted by clapping. "Terrific," the director said, stepping up to the stage from the aisle(过道）. “Except, could you kids face the audience a bit more?"
The kids shifted to face the empty ats, which would be filled in a few days for the church play. "Perfect," the director said. "Now, Grandma, read to your grandchildren." A pang of sadness hit me. If only I could read to my real grandchildren!
I had a granddaughter, but I'd never met her. Sixteen years earlier my son was involved in a relationship that ended badly. But out of it came a blessing: a baby girl named Lena. I hoped to be a grandmother to her-- but shortly after the birth, the mother moved without any address left. Over the years, I asked around town to try and find my son's ex-wife, but it emed that she
didn't want to be found.
I'd just joined this new church a week earlier, and was at once offered the part of Grandma in the play. At least now I could pretend to be a grandma. The rehearsals went well, and finally the day of the show arrived. The performance was great. "You all looked so natural up there," one of my friends said.
Afterward, we went to the church bament for refreshments.
I walked over to one of the girls in the play. Rehearsals had been in such a hurry that we never really got to talk. "How's my granddaughter?" I joked.
" Fine!" she answered. Just then, someone el walked up and asked the girl her name.
I wasn't sure I heard the girl's answer correctly. But it made me ask her another question. "What's your mother's name?"
She told me. I was still in shock. "And what's your
father's name?" I asked. It was my son.
She'd only started going to that church a week before I did. Since that day of the play, we've stayed clo. Not long ago, she even made me a great grandma.
1. What was the author doing at the beginning of the story?
A. Telling a story
B. Playing a game.
C. Preparing for a play.
D. Acting in a movie.
2. Why did the author feel " a pang of sadness" at the words of
the director?
A. The director's words reminded her of her lost granddaughter.
B. The director's words hurt her badly.
C. She wished that she had a real grandchild.
D. The director wasn't content with her performance.
3. What happened in the church bament after the play?
A. The author played a joke on Lena.
B. Lena treated the author as a friend.
C. The author got to know who Lena was.
D. Lena mistook the author for her grandmother.
4. We can infer that when writing the story, the author felt
______.
A. light-hearted
B. heartbroken
C. confud
D. anxious
B
School districts are turning to high-tech solutions-from fingerprint scans to electronic cards – to track kids on school bus and keep them from getting off at the wrong stops. A
fingerprint scanning system, approved this month for testing at the Dert Sands district, northeast of San Diego. Students will be scanned as they get on and off the bus.
"Kids get lost. It happens in every school district, every year," says John DeVries, president of Global Biometrics Security, which developed the Biometric Obrvation Security System (BOSS)
that's being tested. It happened Oct. 13 when a Prince George's County (Md.) school employee took a 5-year-old student to the wrong bus and the student got off veral blocks from home.
With BOSS, students' fingerprints are scanned and nt to a databa. When they get off, they provide a "check out" print. An alarm sounds if the child tries to get off at the wrong place. The fingerprints are not stored, DeVries says. They are converted into a
ries of numbers that cannot be ud to re-create the print, he says.
Margaret Gomez of Palm Springs, Calif., who daughter, then 6, was let off a bus about a mile from her home three years ago, supports the idea. "Anything is better than what they have in place now."
Other tracking systems include the ZPass from Seattle-bad Zonar Systems, which us a programmed card carried by students or tied to a backpack. It is in about 30 districts, including North Kansas City Schools and Illinois School District 128 in Palos Heights, company executive Chris Oliver says.
Paul Stephens, of the Privacy Rights Clearinghou in San Diego, says tracking students is reasonable, but the data could fall into unauthorized hands. "What if a child predator was able to get access to this?" he says.
5. What is the purpo of schools turning to high-tech solutions?
A．To make school bus safer for kids．
B．To prevent kids from getting lost．
C．To help parents locate their missing kids．
D．To save some time for school children．
6. What can we learn from the third paragraph?
A．Students will have to carry a databa with them．
B．An alarm will go off every time kids get off
C．The fingerprints will be stored in the databa．
D．Students' information can't be ud for other purpos．
7. What is Margaret Gomez's attitude toward the new solution?
A．Supportive．
B．Pessimistic． C．Doubtful．
D．Worried．
8. What is Paul Stephens mainly concerned about?
A．Whether this new solution is reasonable．
B．How this tracking can be accepted by parents．
C．The safety of children's personal information．
D．Who should be authorized access to such information．
C
When people arch online, they leave a trail that remains stored on the central computers of firms such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Analyzing what we're looking for on the Web can offer a remarkable understanding of our anxieties and enthusiasms.
UK writer John Battelle wrote on his blog, "This can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture."
Google's experimental rvice Google Trends, for example, compares the numbers of people arching for different words and phras from 2004 to the prent.
According to the graphs, sometimes people's interests are driven obviously by the latest news: when the Spice Girls, a pop group, announce a reunion, there's an immediate rush to find out more
about them. Other results are strikingly asonal: people go shopping online for coats in winter and sandals（凉鞋）in summer.
The most fascinating possibility is that arch data might help predict behavior. Perhaps we arch for a political candidate's name when we are thinking about voting for him or her. This information could clearly be uful to a marketer - it's already how Google decides which ads to show on its arch results pages – or to a political campaign manager.
Marissa Mayer, a Google vice-president, argues that Google Trends correctly "predicted" George Bush's victory over John Kerry in the 2004 election. The graph clearly shows that
Bush continued his lead over Kerry, in terms of arch volumes, even when polls(民意测验) suggested the race was on a razor's edge. However, that’s not always the ca. For instance, the same approach predicted Hillary Clinton would beat Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 turned out to be wrong in the end.
9. According to the passage, Google are able to e the trails of
the people when they are ________ .
A. using their computers
B. surfing the Internet
C. using its arch engine
D. connecting their computer to another one
10. The arch data can help foree the following EXCEPT ______
A. The different features of different cultures
B. the better place to put advertiments in
C. The victory of a politician in the election
D. The reunion of a pop group
11. On the whole, the author holds a view towards the arch trail that ______
A. It is necessary to make rules about collecting the arch trails
B. People are in danger of letting out their personal
information
C. The arch data is very uful to understand people in
society
D. Search trails might cau a lot of disorder.
12. The underlined expression in the last paragraph means_______
A. The competition was a very clo one
B. The competition was towards the end
C. The competition showed a clear result
D. The competition was endless
D
Kirk Watson, then Austin’s mayor, remembers it this way:
“I was at the gym working out and going back and forth between different machines, doing different things. I was on a treadmill(踏车), my head down and a guy on another treadmill cried out, ‘Mayor, is that the World Trade Center?’ ”
Moments later, Watson was in another part of the gym, away from televisions. “Another guy said another one hit.” he recalled.
Watson, now a state nator, recalls every detail, every emotion of Sept. 11, 2001.
