2020年高考英语阅读理解专项训练文化类(1)A characteristic of American culture that has become almost a tradition is to respect the self-made man the man who has risen to the top through his own efforts, usually beginning by working with his hands. While the leader in business or industry or the college professor occupies a higher social position and commands greater respect in the community than the common laborer or even the skilled factory worker, he may take pains to point out that his father started life in America as a farmer or laborer of some sort.This attitude toward manual(体力的) labor is now still seen in many aspects of American life. One is invited to dinner at a home that is not only comfortably but even luxuriously (豪华地) furnished and in which there is every evidence of the fact that the family has been able to afford foreign travel, expensive hobbies, and college education for the children; yet the hostess probably will cook the dinner herself, will serve it herself and will wash dishes afterward, furthermore the dinner will not consist merely of something quickly and easily assembled from contents of various cans and a cake or a pie bought at the nearby bakery. On the contrary, the hostess usually takes pride in careful preparation of special dishes. A professional man may talk about washing the car, digging in his flowerbeds, painting the house. His wife may even help with these things, just as he often helps her with the dishwashing. The son who is away at college may wait on table and wash dishes for his living, or during the summer he may work with a construction gang on a highway in order to pay for his education.1. From paragraph 1, we can know that in America _.A. people tend to have a high opinion of the self-made manB. people can always rise to the top through their won effortsC. college professors win great respect from common workersC. people feel painful to mention their fathers as labors.2. According to the passage, the hostess cooks dinner herself mainly because _.A. servants in American are hard to getB. she takes pride in what she can do herselfC. she can hardly afford servantsD. It is easy to prepare a meal with canned food3. The expression “ wait on table” in the second paragraph means “_”.A. work in a furniture shopB. keep accounts for a barC. wait to lay the tableD. serve customers in a restaurant4. Which of the following may serve as the best title of the passage?A. A Respectable Self-made FamilyB. American Attitude toward Manual LaborC. Characteristics of American CultureD. The Development of Manual Labor【答案解析】本文介绍了崇尚自我奋斗，尊重体力劳动的美国文化。1. A。细节题。 根据 A characteristic of American culture that has become almost a tradition is to respect the self-made made 我们可以了解到，“崇尚自我奋斗”是美国文化的特点。2. B。推断题。根据This attitude toward manual(体力的) labor is now still seen in many aspects of American life.(在美国生活的方方面面，尊重体力劳动态度的现象仍然随处可见)，可以推断女主人亲自下厨，是因为她以能做这样的体力活而自豪。3. D。词义猜测题。wait on table 意为“服务顾客”，注意其后的 washing dishes 也有一定的暗示意义，故答案为 D。4. B。主旨题。纵观全文，文章主要讲了美国崇尚自我奋斗，尊重体力劳动的文化习惯。故答案为B。(2)A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises(出现) from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar(奇怪的) that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl-friend.No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.1. The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is _.A. repeated without any changeB. treated as a jokeC. made some changes by the