TEM8 阅读新题型训练2

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2024年6月20日发(作者：)

TEM8 Reading Comprehension Practice 2

PART Ⅱ READING COMPREHENSION (45 MIN)

SECTION A

In this section there are several passages followed by 14 multiple choice questions. For

each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose

the one that you think is the best answer and then mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET

TWO.

PASSAGE A

William Shakespeare described old age as “second childishness”―sans teeth, sans eyes, sans

taste. In the case of taste he might, musically speaking, have been even more perceptive than he

realized. A paper in Neurology by Giovanni Frisoni and his colleagues at the National Center for

Research and Care of Alzheimer’s Disease in Brescia, Italy, shows that one form of senile

dementia can affect musical desires in ways that suggest a regression, if not to infancy, then at

least to a patient’s teens.

Frontotemporal dementia is caused, as its name suggests, by damage to the front and sides of

the brain. These regions are concerned with speech, and with such “higher” functions as abstract

thinking and judgment. Frontotemporal damage therefore produces different symptoms from the

loss of memory associated with Alzheimer’s disease, a more familiar dementia that affects the

hippocampus and amygdala in the middle of the brain. Frontotemporal dementia is also rarer than

Alzheimer’s. In the past five years the center in Brescia has treated some 1,500 Alzheimer’s

patients; it has seen only 46 with Fromotemporal dementia.

Two of those patients interested Dr. Frisoni. One was a 68-year-old lawyer, the other a

73-year-old housewife. Both had undamaged memories, but displayed the sorts of defect

associated with Frontotemporal dementia ― a diagnosis that was confirmed by brain scanning.

About two years after he was first diagnosed, the lawyer, once a classical music lover who

referred to pop music as “mere noise”, started listening to the Italian pop band “883”. As his

command of language and his emotional attachments to friends and family deteriorated, he

continued to listen to the band at full volume for many hours a day. The housewife had not even

had the lawyer’s love of classical music, having never enjoyed music of any sort in the past. But

about a year after her diagnosis she became very interested in the songs that her 11-year-old

granddaughter was listening to.

This kind of change in musical taste was not seen in any of the Alzheimer’s patients, and thus

appears to be specific to those with Frontotemporal dementia. And other studies have remarked on

how Frontotemporal dementia patients sometimes gain new talents. Five sufferers who developed

artistic abilities are known. And in another lapse of musical taste, one woman with the disease

suddenly started composing and singing country and western songs.

Dr. Frisoni speculates that the illness is causing people to develop a new attitude towards

novel experiences. Previous studies of novelty-seeking behavior suggest that it is managed by the

brain’s fight frontal lobe. A predominance of the fight over the left frontal lobe, caused by damage

to the latter, might thus lead to a quest for new experience. Alternatively, the damage may have

affected some specific neural circuit that is needed to appreciate certain kinds of music. Whether

that is a gain or a loss is a different matter. As Dr. Frisoni puts it in his article, De Gustibus Non

Disputandum Est. Or, in plainer words, there is no accounting for taste.

11. Which one is NOT a symptom of Frototemporal dementia?

A. The loss of memory.

B. The loss of judgment.

C. The loss of abstract thinking.

D. The loss of speech.

12. From the two patients mentioned in the passage, it can be concluded that_________

A. their command of language has deteriorated.

B. their emotional attachments to friends and family are being lost.

C. Frontotemporal dementia can bring new gifts.

D. Frontotemporal dementia can cause patients to change their musical tastes.

13. From the passage, it can be inferred that_________

A. the damage of the left frontal lobe may affect some specific neural circuit.

B. the lawyer patient has the left frontal lobe damaged.

C. the damage of the left frontal lobe decreased the appreciation of certain kinds of music.

D. every patient has the same taste.

PASSAGE B

When you buy a gallon of organic milk, you expect to get tasty milk from happy cows who

haven’t been subjected to antibiotics, hormones or pesticides. But you might also unknowingly be

getting genetically modified cattle feed.

Albert Straus, owner of the Straus Family Creamery in the small northern California town of

Marshall, decided to test the feed that he gives his 1,600 cows last year and was alarmed to find

that nearly 6% of the organic corn feed he received from suppliers was “contaminated” by

genetically modified (GM) organisms. Organic food is, by definition, supposed to be free of

genetically modified material, and organic crops are required to be isolated from other crops. But

as GM crops become more prevalent, there is little that an organic farmer can do to prevent a

speck of GM pollen or a stray GM seed from being blown by the wind onto his land or farm

equipment and, eventually, into his products. In 2006, GM crops accounted for 61% of all the corn

planted in the U.S. and 89% of all the soybeans. “I feared that there weren’t enough safeguards,”

Straus says.

So Straus and five other natural food producers, including industry leader Whole Foods,

announced last week that they would seek a new certification for their products, “non-GMO

verified”, in the hopes that it will become a voluntary industry standard for GM-free goods. A

non-profit group called the Non-GMO Project runs the program, and the testing is conducted by

an outside lab called Genetic ID. In a few weeks, Straus expects to become the first food

manufacturer in the country to carry the label in addition to his “organic” one. With Whole Foods

in the ring, the rest of the industry will soon be under competitive pressure to follow.

Earning the non-GMO label, at least initially, requires nearly as much effort as getting

certified organic. To root out the genetically modified corn, Straus spent several months and about

$10,000 testing, re-testing and tracing back his products: from his own dairy’s milk, to other

dairies that supply some of his milk, to the brokers who sell them feed, to their mills that grind the

corn, to farmers who grow it. To put the GM-free label on his ice cream, Straus will have to trace

the chickens that provided the egg yolks, the grain used in the alcohol that carries his vanilla

extract and the soy lecithin used as an emulsifier for his chocolate chips.

So why bother? The organic and natural foods industry sees a huge opportunity in telling

consumers even more about what’s in their food. Few consumers would think about the pesticides

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