高考英语阅读冲刺（10集）高考英语阅读冲刺阅读理解（共 20小题；每小题2 分，满分4 0 分）阅读下面的短文，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。AEarly one morning,more than a hundred years ago,an American inventor called EliasHowe finally fell asleep.He had been working all night on the design of a sewingmachine but he had run into a very difficult problem:It seemed impossible to get thethread to run smoothly around the needle.Though he was tired,Howe slept badly.He turned and turned.Then he had a dream.He dreamt that he had been caught by terrible savages whose king wanted to kill himand eat him unless he could build a perfect sewing machine.When he tried to do so,Howe ran into the same problem as before.The thread kept getting caught around theneedle.The king flew into the cage and ordered his soldiers to kill Howe.They cameup towards him with their spears raised.But suddenly the inventor noticed something.There was a hole in the tip of each spear.The inventor awoke from the dream,realizing that he had just found the answer to the problem.Instead of trying to get thethread to run around the needle,he should make it run through a small hole in thecenter of the needle.This was the simple idea that finally made Howe design andbuild the first really practised sewing machine.Elias Howe was not the only one in finding the answer to his problem in this way.Thomas Edison,the inventor of the electric light,said his best ideas came into him indreams.So did the great physicist Albert Einstein.Charlotte Bronte also drew in herdreams in writing Jane Eyre.To know the value of dreams,you have to understand what happens when you areasleep.Even then,a part of your mind is still working.This unconscious（无意识的），but still active part understands your experiences and goes to work on the problemsyou have had during the day.It stores all sorts of information that you may haveforgotten or never have really noticed.It is only when you fall asleep that this part ofthe brain can send messages to the part you use when you are awake.However,theunconscious part acts in a special way.It uses strange images which the consciouspart may not understand at first.This is why dreams are sometimes called u secretmessages to ourselves”.1.A ccording to the passage,Elias Howe was.A.the first person we know of who solved problems in his sleepB.much more hard-working than other inventorsC.the first person to design a sewing machine that really workedD.the only person at the time who knew the value of dreams2.The problem Howe was trying to solve was.A.what kind of thread to useB.how to design a needle which would not breakC.where to put the needleD.how to prevent the thread from getting caught around the needle3.Thomas Edison is spoken of b e c a u s e.A.he also tried to invent a sewing machineB.he got some of his ideas from dreamsC.he was one of Howe s best friendsD.he also had difficulty in falling asleep4.Dreams are sometimes called u secret messages to ourselves”b e c a u s e.A.strange images are used to communicate ideasB.images which have no meaning are usedC.we can never understand the real meaningD.only specially trained people can understand themBLanguage learning begins with listening.Children are greatly different in the amountof listening they do before they start speaking,and later starters are often longlisteners.Most children will“obey”spoken instructions some time before they canspeak,though the word“obey”is hardly accurate as a description of the eager anddelighted cooperation usually shown by the child.Before they can speak,manychildren will also ask questions by gesture and by making questioning noises.Any attempt to study the development from the noises babies make to their firstspoken words leads to considerable difficulties.It is agreed that they enjoy makingnoises,and that during the first few months one or two noises sort themselves asparticularly expressive as delight,pain,friendliness,and so on.But since these can tbe said to show the baby s intention to communicate,they can hardly be regarded asearly forms of language.It is agreed,too,that from about three months they play withsounds for enjoyment,and that by six months they are able to add new words to theirstore.This self-imitation（模仿）leads on to deliberate（有意的）imitation of soundsmade or words spoken to them by other people.The problem then arises as to thepoint at which one can say that these imitations can be considered as speech.It is a problem we need to get out teeth into.The meaning of a word depends on whata particular person means by it in a particular situation and it is clear that what a childmeans by a word will change as he gains more experience of the world.Thus the useat seven months of“mama”as a greeting for his mother cannot be dismissed as ameaningless sound simply because he also uses it at other times for his father,his dog,or anything else he likes.Playful and meaningless imitation of what other people saycontinues after the child has begun to speak fbr himself,I doubt,however whetheranything is g