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专题三 阅读理解(六)

【山东省潍坊市重点中学2012届高三2月月考】

C

Endangered languages are languages that wouldn’t exist any longer, much like endangered species of plants or animals. Languages are considered to be endangered when parents are no longer teaching the language to their children and are not using it actively in everyday life. A language is considered to nearly disappear when it is spoken by only a few elderly native speakers.

The world faces enormous challenges in order to protect different kinds of languages. Of the more than 6,912 languages, half may be in danger of disappearing in the next several decades. It is caused by many reasons: small numbers of speakers, the regular use of other languages, attitudes towards their languages, moving of the younger population, government policies, and languages used in education and so on. A language may lack important things such as a body of literature, and people who read and write it. A language may also lack prestige (声望) and support of its speakers.

The survival of a language is also threatened when speakers move to other areas where different languages are spoken, or when government policies improve the use of a specific language in school, official business and the media. These situations encourage people to learn the wider-known language and may cause them, especially the young, to stop using their mother tongue. Often those speaking lesser-known languages will choose to learn a more prestigious language with the hope of greater economic opportunities. Most of the world’s parents are teaching their children English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Russian or some other main languages instead of their own languages for social and economic reasons. 66.What’s the main idea of this passage?

A．Languages in the world. B．Reasons why languages become endangered. C．What an endangered language is. D．Languages spoken by few speakers. 67.About ________languages will probably disappear in this century according to the passage. A．more than 6,912 B．more than 3,456 C．6,912

D．less than 3,456

68.Which of the following best shows the structure of the passage?

①=Paragraph1

②=Paragraph2 ③=Paragraph3 ④=Paragraph4

69.We can infer that the best way to maintain an endangered language is to _________. A．forbid the speakers to move about B．pass laws to protect the language

C．raise the salaries of the people who speak the language

D．teach the language to young children and encourage people to speak it often 70.All of the following about languages are true EXCEPT __________. A．many languages will be probably endangered in this century B．government policies have a big effect on languages

C．the endangered language is a language that is spoken by a few people D．languages are related to their speakers’ social and economic position

【答案】

66-70 BBDDC

【山东省潍坊市重点中学2012届高三2月月考】

D

Why can some people sleep through noises like a honking car or flushing toilet, while others are awakened by the lightest sound?

To find the answer, sleep researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital conducted an unusual study of 12 self-described deep sleepers. After tests confirmed that the healthy volunteers were solid sleepers, they took part in a three-night study in the university’s sleep laboratory. The participants spent the night in a big and comfortable room. But the room also included four

speakers positioned near the top of the bed.

During the night, the deep sleepers were subjected to 14 different recorded sounds, like street traffic, toilets flushing, and an airplane flying overhead. Next door, the researchers monitored their sleep patterns and brain waves.

As expected, all of the participants slept relatively well, but there were differences in how they responded to the noisy interruptions. Some of the sleepers didn’t wake up even when a sound was blasted at 70 decibels（分贝）；others were awakened by sounds at 40 or 50 decibels.

The researchers discovered that the difference in a sleeper’s reaction to noise could be predicted by the level of brain activity called “sleep spindles（纺锤体）”. A sleep spindle is a burst of high-frequency brain activity coming from deep inside the brain during sleep. The source of the spindles is the thalamus（丘脑）, a part of the brain that sends sensory information to the rest of the cortex（皮层）.

Before the study, the Massachusetts researchers theorized that the spindles are the brain’s way of preventing sensory information from passing through the thalamus and waking the rest of the brain during sleep. They found that sleepers who experienced the most sleep spindles during the night were also the soundest sleepers and were least likely to be awakened by noise.

Scientists already know that most people become lighter sleepers with age, most likely because older people experience less “slow wave sleep”, which is the deepest stage of sleep. People also produce fewer sleep spindles as they age. But even when controlling for the stage of sleep a person was in, the number of sleep spindles still predicted their risk for awakening because of noise.

More research is needed, but the findings suggest that a better understanding of sleep spindles could lead to new behavioral or drug therapies for people with sleep disorders. For example, future studies may try to determine whether diet, exercise or other behaviors may influence the number of sleep spindles a person produces during the night.

71. Some participants can sleep well through loud noises mainly because ________. A. their brains don’t respond to outside noises. B. their brains react differently to noises. C. they adapt too the environment quickly. D. they don’t pay attention to the monitors.