高三阅读理解 提高班 Senior2 December1

A

It used to be a matter of fact when Peter Pan

—

a character from James Matthew Barrie’s 1911 book —

said:

“All children, except one, grow up.”

But this “fact” doesn’t seem to apply to today’s world anymore.

According to the NPD Group, a US market research company, sales of toys to adults in the UK increased by

more than 20 percent in 2016, three times the pace of the children’s toy

market itself. These toys ranged from

puzzles and Lego building sets to vehicle models and action figures. And more than half of the sales came from

millennials

—

people born between the 1980s and 2000s.

“Adults of the 21st century are

channeling

their inner child, one toy at a time,” commented website Koreaboo.

This is also why these adults are sometimes referred to as “kidults”.

According to Frederique Tutt, an analyst at NPD, the motivation of these grown-ups is to escape the stress of

today’s

fast

-paced

world.

They

are

driven

toward

the

more

immediate

pleasures

brought

by

toys

than

those

brought by, say, getting a promotion, which is far less easy to achieve.

“It

reminds

me

of

the

playful

side

of

life,”

Rob

Willner,

a

25

-year-old

PhD

student

in

the

UK,

told

The

Telegraph when talking about his love for Lego, which he said brings him both comfort and entertainment.

Despite this, some social scientists see the trend as disturbing. To Frank Furendi, a professor at the University

of Kent in the UK, the fact that so many adults are pursuing “the

thrills

of youth” is the evidence that “adulthood

has got nothing attractive about it an

ymore”, he told The New York Times. “That’s actually quite sad.”

But scientists are probably just worrying too much. According to Canadian comic book artist Todd McFarlane,

collecting toys could simply be a way for people to express their

individuality. “It’s just pop culture stuff. It’s stuff

that says, ‘I like a little of this and I like a little of that’,” he told ABC News. “It’s no big deal.”

So now that over 100 years have passed since Peter Pan, perhaps it’s time to introduce a new “fact”, as stated

in the tagline (

标语

) of the UK fashion brand KIDULT:

“Growing old is

mandatory (

被迫的

), but growing up is

optional.”

1. What does the underlined sentence in paragraph 2 imply?

A.

Something old is not suitable for a new world.

B.

Many adults still have some childlike features.

C.

All children grow up as they become adults.

D.

It’s difficult for some children to grow up in today’s world.

2. Which of the following statements is true?

A.

Frederique Tutt believes that some adults enjoy playing with children’s toys to escape the st

ress.

B.

Rob Willner believes that the pleasure brought by toys is easier to achieve.

C.

Frank Furendi believes that the thrill of youth does not attract adults.

D.

Todd McFarlane is worrying too much about collecting toys.

3.

What is the writer’s attitude towards

the trend of growing kidults?

A.

Supportive

B. Doubtful

C. Critical

D. Indifferent

4. What can be the best title for the passage?

A. Growing Old Or Growing Up

B. Toys Sales On The Rise

C. Staying Young Forever

B

A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The

mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly

does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform

D. Kidults In Fashion Again

controlled flight tasks.

“It’s extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of

individual components (

元件

),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on

the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the

components. “The added difficulty with a project like this

is that actually none of those components are off the

shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.

They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which

just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually

has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to,” said Wood. The flight device

was

built

into

a

set

of

power,

computation,

sensing

and

control

systems.

Wood

says

the

success

of

the

project

proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.

While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it

with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-

gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’

fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.

Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect- scale. Yet, the power,

sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking

about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult

with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting

scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”

5. The difficulty the team of engineers met with while making the robotic fly was that __________.

A. they had no model in their mind

B. they did not have sufficient time

D. they could not assemble the components

C. they had no ready-made components

6. It can be inferred from paragraphs 3 and 4 that the robotic fly __________.

A. consists of a flight device and a control system

B. can just fly in limited areas at the present time

C. can collect information from many sources

D. has been put into wide application

7. Which of the following can be learned from the passage?

A. The robotic flyer is designed to learn about insects.

B. Animals are not allowed in biological experiments.

C. There used to be few ways to study how insects fly.

D. Wood’s design can replace

animals in some experiments.

8. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A. Father of Robotic Fly

C

The MacArthur Foundation late last month announced its latest crop of “genius grants”, and once again you

thought maybe, just maybe, this was your year.

And why not? These days, we’re all geniuses. We might be “marketing geniuses” or “cooking geniuses” o

r

“TV geniuses”. We have so weakened “genius” that it’s fast joining the company of “natural” and “mindful” (

留

心

), words left inactive through overuse and misuse.

Admittedly, the word is tough to nail down. Sometimes we assume genius equivalent to raw intelligence. But

many of humanity’s greatest breakthroughs were achieved by those with only modest IQs.

B. Inspiration from Engineering Science

D. Harvard Breaks Through in Insect Study

C. Robotic Fly Imitates Real Life Insect