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第 14 讲 阅读理解词义猜测题（练）
A
Esports (electronic sports) are organized competitions where players — often referred to as “athletes” — face
off against each other in video games. They are not just games in a sense. Actually, they are a sport that can
improve the players’ thinking ability, hand-eye coordination, willpower and team spirit.
The esports industry has experienced significant growth in recent years around the world, though it’s still in
the nascent stage, which means it has huge growth potential going forward.
While the assumption is that esports are only a recent phenomenon, in reality the first esports-like event was
held back in 1972, when some Stanford University students competed against one another in the game Spacewar.
The prize? A year-long subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.
The ’80s saw the first true videogame tournament, with over 10,000 players gathering for the Space Invaders
Championship. However, most of the period saw that players focused on beating each other’s highest scores rather
than competing in organized tournaments.
As gaming became more popular, the ’90s became the first decade when esports (a term which wasn’t yet
coined) began to really take off, with companies such as Nintendo and Sega holding professional gaming
tournaments. This is also when we began to see money becoming a factor in professional gaming. But it is the 1997
Red Annihilation Quake tournament that is considered the world’s first real esports event. Only a few weeks later,
the Cyberathlete Professional League was formed — an organization which is considered a pioneer of esports.
Due to the normalization of gaming and the Internet (along with technological advances), the real surge ( 激
增 ) of esports came in the recent decade. It was then that we began seeing what we now know to be modern-day
esports. As streaming platforms such as YouTube took off, people began to show interest in not only playing
videogames but watching them too. Popular tournaments now sell out stadiums and professional players can earn
millions from prize money, advertising and salaries.
1．What does the underlined word “nascent” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?
A．Beginning. B．Peak.
C．Mature. D．Final.
2．How does the text mainly develop?
A．By providing examples. B．By making comparisons.
C．By following the order of time. D．By following the order of importance.
3．What can be learned about esports?A．They spread worldwide overnight.
B．Prize money appeared in the 1990s.
C．The first real esports event was held in 1972.
D．The athletes in esports are programmers.
4．What seems to be the author’s viewpoint on modern-day esports?
A．They are getting popular.
B．They become too commercialized.
C．They boost the normalization of the Internet.
D．Their development relies on advertising.
B
Some scientists have detected a chemical on Venus (金星) that isn’t expected to be there, which leads them to
wonder what is producing the chemical.
Venus may look beautiful in the night sky, but it’s a harsh planet. Its clouds are made of acid. And its
atmosphere is so thick that if you could stand on the planet’s surface, you would feel like you were 3,000 feet under
the sea. It is the hottest planet in the solar system, with an average temperature of 464℃. Though people have often
wondered if Venus used to have life, most people don’t believe life exists there. Now, as a result of work by a group
of scientists led by Dr. Jane Greaves from Cardiff University, there may be reason to question that.
The scientists found a molecule called phosphine (磷化氢) in Venus’ atmosphere. On Earth, some bacteria
produce small amounts of phosphine in oxygen-free environments. Phosphine molecules aren’t very stable, so they
tend to break apart or burn up easily.
Many scientists believe phosphine might be a sign of life on other planets. So the scientists were puzzled when
they found signs of phosphine high in the atmosphere of Venus. They double-checked their result and it was the
same — high in the clouds there appeared to be too much phosphine.
That led the scientists to think about what could make the phosphine. They studied many ideas, from sunlight,
lightning strikes to volcanoes. But none of these could produce the amount of phosphine they detected. One
possible explanation for the phosphine is simple — life. For example, some sort of bacteria can somehow survive in
the acid clouds of Venus.
The discovery of phosphine on Venus has caused a lot of excitement. The scientists behind the study are eager
to do more research. Now, many other people are also looking to focus on the planet and perhaps even create
missions to explore Venus’ atmosphere.
5．According to Paragraph 2, what’s generally believed about Venus?A．Life exists there for long.
B．It is an unlivable planet.
C．It is one of the hottest planets.
D．The clouds on Venus are thin and acidic.
6．What do we know about phosphine on Venus?
A．It is a kind of gas low in the clouds. B．It is a possible marker of life.
C．It contributes to the birth of life. D．It is stable in oxygen-free environments.
7．What does the underlined word “That” in Paragraph 5 refer to?
A．The presence of phosphine. B．The amount of acid.
C．The instability of phosphine. D．The high temperature.
8．What can be a suitable title for the text?
A．Is There Life on Venus? B．Oxygen Spotted on Venus
C．A New Way to Explore Venus D．Will Astronauts Land on Venus?
C
The prized love for an ice cream goes back thousands of years, and ice creams were enjoyed by people living
all over the ancient world—from China to Mesopotamia.
As early as 4,000 years ago, Chinese people enjoyed a kind of frozen syrup—a thick sweet sticky liquid.
Centuries later around 400 B．C．, sherbet was a popular treat in the Persian Empire. This cold drink featured
syrups made from chemise, quinces, and pomegranates that were then cooled with snow. The modern words
“sherbet,” “Barbet,” and “syrup” can find their linguistic origins back Lo Shabbat.
Historic accounts tell of Alexander the Great, who took over the Persian Empire in 330 B．C．, enjoying
tasty ices sweetened with honey. The Greeks, and later the Romans, adopted the custom of cooling their drinks. In
the early yean of the Roman Empire, Emperor Nero was known to apply fruit juices mixed with boney and snow at
his banquets. Centuries later in the 1290s, Marco Polo returned from China with recipes for delicious ices, some of
which included milk.
Modern ice creams were only made possible by obtaining and preserving snow and ice from cold,
mountainous areas or frozen lakes and rivers. Different civilizations created icehouses with variations on the same
theme: chambers free of heat and light. Deep pits were often used, and the ice would be packed separately, often
with straw or branches, to keep out the heat.
Getting ice was complex and labor-consuming, which made ice highly valuable in the middle Ages, when
snow was still brought from the mountains to icehouses throughout Europe. The 17th century witnessed privateicehouses, and by the end of the 18th century, large icehouses were built in towns and cities. Traveling sales people
sold large blocks of ice door to door.
In some cities the ice trade was regulated by the authorities, who set prices and fines for illegal sale. In Naples
there were 43 “ice sellers” in 1807. Rule restricted sellers to supplying ice only during the summer.
Sorbet, sherbet, syrup, or just plain ice cream, these cold, greet treats have been cooling people of for
centuries.
9．Which of the following is the fact about the development of ice cream?
A．Straws or branches were used to produce modern ice creams.
B．Alexander the Great had cool drinks with honey end snow at his banquets.
C．Marco Polo brought back from China recipes for milk -taste ices in the late 13th century.
D．People in the Persian Empire enjoyed frozen syrup 3, 600 years earlier than the Chinese.
10．Which has the closest meaning with the underlined word “chambers” in Paragraph 4?
A．Plants. B．Rooms. C．Packages. D．Ice creams.
11．Why was the price of ice creams high during the Middle Age?
A．It was a tough jab to obtain ice. B．The production took a lot of time.
C．Much labor was needed for marketing. D．The producing techniques were advanced.
12．What is the best title of the passage?
A．Historic Accounts of Preserving Ice Creams B．Contrast of Ancient and Modern lee Creams
C．Chinese Contributions to Making Ice CreamsD．The History and Worldwide Love of Ice Creams
D
Turtles have an unfortunate habit of eating plastic objects floating in the sea. These then cannot be broken
down and digested, and may ultimately kill them.
It is widely assumed that this special liking for plastics is a matter of mistaken identity. Floating plastic bags,
for instance, look similar to jellyfish, which many types of turtles love to eat. Yet lota of plastic objects that end up
inside turtles are not similar to jellyfish. Joseph Pfaller of the University of Florida therefore suspects that the smell
of micro-organisms (微生物) which grow on floating plastic objects fools turtles to feed.
Researchers at the University of California noticed that certain chemicals, which are released into the air by
micro-organism — colonised plastics, are those which many seabirds sniff to track down food. These chemicals
mark good places to hunt because they indicate an abundance of the seaweed and bacteria. Since turtles are known
to break the surface and sniff the air when swimming towards their feeding areas, Dr. Pfaller indicated that they are
following these same chemicals, and are fooled into thinking that floating plastic objects are edible.To test that idea, he and his colleagues set up an experiment. They arranged for 15 of the animals, each around
five months old, to be exposed, in random order, to four smells delivered through a pipe to; the air above an
experimental area. The smells were: the vapour from deionised (去离子) water; the smell of turtle-feeding meal;
the smell of a clean plastic bottle; and the smell of a similarly plastic bottle that had been kept in the ocean for five
weeks to allow seaweed and bacteria to grow on it. Two of the smells-the smell of meal and that of five-week-old
bottles-proved far more attractive to the animals than the others.
On the face of it, then, the turtles were responding to the smell of old bottles as if it were the smell of food. In
an unpolluted ocean, pretty well anything which had this smell would be edible-or, at least, harmless.
Unfortunately, five-week-old plastic bottles and their like are not.
13．What is most people's opinion on turtles' special habit?
A．Turtles prefer jellyfish to plastics.
B．Turtles enjoy the taste of plastics.
C．Turtles like being fed with plastic tools.
D．Turtles choose to eat plastics for a mistake.
14．What does the underlined word “edible" in paragraph 3 mean?
A．Fit to eat. B．Pleasant to smell.
C．Far to reach. D．Easy to digest.
15．What can we infer from Dr. Pfaller's research?
A．Many seabirds can track the food.
B．Most animals find food through smells.
C．Two smells are especially favored by turtles.
D．The favored smell leads turtles to seek for food.
16．Why did the author mention the unpolluted ocean at last?
A．To explain why the ocean is polluted.
B．To ask for people to feed turtles proper food.
C．To arouse the awareness of protecting the ocean.
D．To show his agreement on Dr. Pfaller's research.
E
Because the commercial internet has been developed with so little regard for privacy, tech companies have
been able to turn personal data into considerable profits, raising billions of dollars off their ability to collect and sell
information about anyone who has wandered within shouting distance of their software. This week, Googleannounced a step in the right direction-but not a huge step, nor one that will stop Google from continuing to collect
immense amounts of personal data.
At issue is how online companies track internet users as they browse (浏览) from site to site online, typically
through cookies (information that a website leaves in your computer so that the website will recognize you when
you use it again). The most harmful version, “third-party” cookies, is the web alternative of a company posting
security guards across the internet to monitor what you do, even when you’re on other companies’ sites.
Google declared in a blog post Wednesday that it would no longer use or support third-party cookies, nor
would it create or use any other technology that tracks individual users across the web. Given that Google is a main
supplier of online advertising technology, its change in approach will impact far and wide.
That’s welcome news, although with huge amounts of warning. As Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation noted, third-party cookies were already on the retreat, with Apple and other makers of popular web
browsers moving to block them. Meanwhile, Google, Facebook and other Big Tech companies continue to collect
personal information in large quantities from people who use their sites and services through first-party cookies and
similar techniques.
The concerns about personal data collection are the same whether it’s being collected through first-party or
third-party techniques, said Michelle Richardson of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Companies may
use the information to discriminate among internet users, offering different goods, services and even prices to
different users.”
Instead of helping advertisers track individuals, Google says, it is improving a technology that assigns users
namelessly to large groups with common interests. That’s an improvement, even though it too may be at risk of
abuse. But why do any form of tracking at all? Privacy advocates say pitches (兜售) can be targeted effectively by
basing them on where the user is at the moment, not where he or she has browsed previously online.
Ultimately, lawmakers are going to have to lay down regulations giving people far more control over whether
and how personal information is used online. Ideally the federal (联邦的) government will set a strong floor under
online privacy protections, but until then it will be up to state lawmakers or voters to act, as this state has done with
its groundbreaking online privacy laws. It’s good to see Google move the ball forward, but there’s much farther to
go.
17．What does the underlined phrase “on the retreat” in Para 4 most probably mean?
A．Exposed. B．Removed. C．Emerging. D．Fading.
18．It can be learned from the declaration that Google .A．is developing new technologies to stop data collection
B．refuses to work with companies tracking privacy
C．intends to abandon its advertising technologies
D．resolves to stop the use of third-party cookies
19．From the passage we can know that first-party cookies .
A．are still collecting personal information
B．are blocked by big companies like Apple
C．are mainly used by advertising companies
D．are less concerning than third-party cookies
20．What is the writer’s attitude towards Google’s new move?
A．It is less satisfactory than expected.
B．It needs to be more forceful to be effective.
C．It will accelerate the disappearance of cookies.
D．It has driven lawmakers to make new regulations.
F
A small bowl bought at a yard sale in Connecticut for just $ 35 has been identified as a rare 15th-century
Chinese antique.
The blue-and-white bowl was made by China's royal court during the Ming dynasty. It is now expected to sell
for up to $500,000, according to Sotheby's auction(拍卖)house in New York, where the auction will take place next
month.
The purchase was made last year near New Haven, Connecticut. “I was just hanging around there aimlessly.
But when I saw this bowl, I didn't even bargain over the $35 asking price,” the owner said. Shortly after the
purchase, he sent photos of the bowl to auction specialists, who identified it as an item of historical significance.
Upon closer inspection, the artifact was found to have originated from the period of Yongle Emperor, who
ruled from 1403 to 1424 - a period noted for its distinctive porcelain (瓷器)techniques. It's now valued between
$300,000 and $500,000, with the top estimate nearly 14,300 times the amount it was purchased for.
“I was deeply attracted by the techniques. You can see why this bowl is so highly-valued from the very smooth
porcelain body, silky glaze(上釉)and special blue coloring, which were never reproduced in later dynasties,”
McAteer, an auction specialist, said.
“The Yongle Emperor improved the porcelain techniques and elevated the importance of porcelain from
being an ordinary bowl into a true work of art. This small bowl has both practical and artistic value, ”McAteer said.21．What can we infer about the bowl's owner?
A．He found the bowl by accident.
B．He hesitated during the purchase.
C．He doubted whether the bowl was real.
D．He bought the bowl because it was cheap.
22．What makes the bowl so precious?
A．The blue color on it. B．The long history it has.
C．The people who made it. D．The unique techniques used.
23．What does the underlined word “elevated” in Paragraph 6 probably mean?
A．Forsaw. B．Promoted.
C．Assessed. D．Acknowledged.
24．What's the best title of the text?
A．An Amazing Bowl B．A Special Yard Sale
C．The Return of Porcelains D．A Man Making Fortune
