2016年普通高等学校招生英语模拟试卷
本试卷分第Ⅰ卷(选择题)和第Ⅱ卷(非选择题)两部分。考试结束后，将本试卷和答题卡一并交回。
第Ⅰ卷
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1. 答第Ⅰ卷前，考生务必将自己的姓名、准考证号填写在答题卡上。
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A
One morning last week I looked out of my study window and saw that it was a fine day. No, it was a glorious day: the sun shone down from a sky with not even a single cloud.
But later that day, hard at work at my desk, I heard a loud drumming noise on the roof. Turning to the window, I saw that the sky was now the color of charcoal. Rain was beginning to fall; two minutes later the rain became hail; at some point, the hail became snow. Rain, hail or snow, it was all wet, making rivers of water.
This story will give you some idea about weather in Britain. It’s extremely variable. Go ahead with your picnic in the local park by all means, but don’t assume that because the sun is shining now, it will be when you open your pack of sandwiches; better take an umbrella, just in case.
The weather in Britain is by no means always bad. The weather can just seem a lot like a person who has a lot of mood swings.
This is one of the biggest reasons why the British talk so often about the weather: it’s handy. Wherever there are strangers standing or sitting close together, and talk cannot be avoided, the conversation focuses on the weather: “Yes, the weather has been good, hasn’t it? Three whole days of sunshine this May!” or “What shocking weather we’ve been having!” The unreliability of the weather is something that every Brit can agree on. That makes it a safe topic of conversation.
Thus, the weather’s unpredictability is actually a plus for the British, a very useful bit of our culture. Even those with different opinions on everything else in the world, such as the current argument in the UK about membership of the European Union, can talk about the weather without it leading to a shouting match. Long live rainstorms in mid-July!
1. The writer wrote the article mainly to ______.
A. describe his own experiences of the different weather in Britain
B. remind people to take an umbrella whenever they have to go out in Britain
C. prove the uncertainty of the weather in Britain
D. describe the weather and the way people talk about weather in Britain
2. The main characteristic of British weather is ______.
A. changeability B. stability
C. lack of sunshine D. continuous rain
3. The British often start conversations by talking about the weather because ________.
A. they seldom trust the weather forecast
B. the variable weather is a safe topic of conversation
C. they are all interested in predicting weather
D. they like complaining about the terrible weather
4. It can be inferred from the article that the author holds a(n) ________ attitude toward the weather in Britain.
A. negative B. critical C. indifferent D. positive
B
British people who go to the US are very likely to hear one sentence a lot: “I just love listening to your accent!” Sometimes it seems that Americans can’t get enough of the way we sound. And a recent survey has supported this idea.
The airline British Airways asked over 1,000 British people and 1,000 Americans to tell them their choice for the sexiest accent. And the results were unsurprising for any Britons who have spent time in the US – people in the US said our accent was their favorite.
However, perhaps surprisingly, they didn’t say they went craziest for the “Queen’s English”. They made it clear that a Scottish accent, like that of tennis player Andy Murray or actor Ewan McGregor, who starred in the movie Moulin Rouge! (《红磨坊》，2001) was their preferred kind of British accent.
When asked to choose their sexiest accent, Britons went for the voice of US actor Morgan Freeman, who starred in The Shawshank Redemption (《肖申克的救赎》，1994) and Lucy (《超体》，2014). This was probably because the actor’s voice is known to be easy to listen to and sounds intelligent. More generally, Britons also chose the New York accent, which caused The Huffington Post’s American editor Suzy Strutner to write, “Wait ... what?” in disbelief. Funnily enough, only one in five Britons asked could find New York on a map, so they may have been thinking of a different accent when they chose one that many in the US think is uncultured.
More than anything, the survey perhaps shows how accents can sound very different to people who are not used to hearing them. For example, I personally enjoy the sound of many American accents, but people from the US can’t believe that I would prefer them to ones from my own country. The results of the survey also support this idea, as Britons and Americans’ overall sexiest accent belongs to the emotional and loving Italians. Perhaps you just sound better when you speak to people you don’t spend much time with!
5. The article is mainly about ______.
A. a comparison of British and American accents
B. a survey about the sexiest accents
C. why Americans and Britons love each other’s accents
D. the fact that Britons and Americans’ favorite accents are unfamiliar ones
6. According to the survey, which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. Americans were found to think that British accents in movies sound sexier.
B. Britons feel surprised that their accent is popular with Americans.
C. The “Queen’s English” is regarded as the sexiest accent by Americans.
D. A Scottish accent was unexpectedly found to be Americans’ favorite accent.
7. Many Americans think the New York accent is ______.
A. the sexiest American accent
B. spoken by people with a lower level of education
C. easy to understand and sounds intelligent
D. favored by American actors and editors
8. It can be concluded from the article that ______.
A. the author prefers British accents to American ones
B. the sexiest accents belong to actors
C. people may prefer an accent that they are unfamiliar with
D. there is no arguing with the fact that everyone thinks the Italian accent is the sexiest accent in the world
C
He is probably the greatest artist of the 20th century. As CBS said, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) “defined modern art”.
In the 1960s, English writer John Berger even compared the Spanish artist to King Midas, a figure from Greek mythology. Everything Midas touched turned into gold. It seemed to Berger that everything Picasso painted was affected by a similar type of magic.
In fact, much of the “magic” came from Picasso’s revolutionary style of painting. Before Picasso, an artist had made a painting like a window – they painted to make it look like there was depth. You could tell which objects were “close” to you and which objects were “far away”, as if the picture were a window you were looking through.
But Picasso and his colleague Georges Braque (1882-1963) thought that a painting wasn’t a window on the world; they believed that it was marks and lines on a flat surface. Why should an object be shown only from one angle? A guitar looks very different depending on which angle one looks at it from.
Their answer was to show all the angles. Then they broke the guitar up into pieces. It was an analytical approach to art, which gave this style of painting its name: “analytic cubism (解析立体主义)”. You can take a closer look at these types of paintings in Beijing on May 28 at the Picasso in China Art Exhibition. The exhibition will include 83 of the artist’s paintings. Most of these masterpieces will be shown in Beijing for the first time. With a worth of over a billion euros (around 7.3 billion yuan), the show will be “the largest and most valuable Picasso exhibit in Beijing”, according to China Daily.
Why did Picasso feel such a need to change things? Well, the world around him was changing. Science was turning people’s ideas upside down. Einstein’s relativity was proving what we knew about time and space to be wrong. It’s often said that Picasso was like Einstein with a paintbrush.
And it was not only science that was making waves. New political movements like socialism were on the rise. The world was becoming different; artists needed to start seeing and painting it differently.
A famous and terrifying painting, Guernica (1937) shows the horror caused to the town of Guernica by bombs during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
In the picture, the sky actually falls in. Picasso could not have painted it without using the skills he had learned during his cubist period. Taking a guitar to pieces was his preparation for showing the world being blown to pieces.
to write, however busy he or she is.
9. What is the article mainly about?
A. Picasso’s revolutionary style of painting.
B. What inspired Picasso to develop into a great artist.
C. Why Picasso’s paintings have a lasting popularity.
学识谷
