2019-2020学年三明市第九中学高三英语上学期期末考试试题及参考答案 第一部分 阅读（共两节，满分40分） 第一节（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分） 阅读下列短文，从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中选出最佳选项 A I once taught in a small private school. Each morning at nine o’clock all the students, ranging in age from three to seven years old, gathered in the Great Room for a warm-up in preparation for the day. One morning the headmistress made an announcement to all the children gathered,“Today we begin a great experiment of the mind.” She held up two ivy(常春藤) plants, each potted in an identical container. She continued, “Do they look the same?” All the children nodded. So did I, for, in this way, I was alsoa child. “We will give the plants the same amount of light, the same amount of water, but not the same amount of attention,” She said. “Together we are going to see what will happen when we put one plant in the kitchen away from our attention and the other plant right here in this room. Each day for the next month, we shall sing to our plant in the Great Room and tell it how much we love it, and how beautiful it is. We will use our good minds to think good thoughts about it.” Four weeks later my eyes were as wide and disbelieving as the children’s. The kitchen plant was leggy and sick-looking, and it hadn’t grown at all. But the Great Room plant, which had been sung to and surrounded by positive thoughts and words, had increased threefold in size with dark leaves that were filled with energy. In order to prove the experiment, the kitchen ivy was brought to the Great Room to join the other ivy. Within three weeks, the second plant had caught up with the first ivy. Within four weeks, they could not be distinguished, one from the other. I took this lesson to heart and made it my own. 1. Why did the headmistress do the experiment? A. She wanted to teach me a lesson. B. She expected the students to learn to grow plants. C. She meant to prove the impact of good minds on growth. D. She intended to show students how to save a sick-looking plant. 2. What happened to the ivy in the kitchen at last? A. It stopped growing and died. B. It was leggy and sick with dark leaves. C. It looked almost the same as the other one. D. It grew better than the one in the Great Room. 3. What can be a suitable title for the passage? A. Life Means Growth B. Things Grow with Love C. Equality Makes a Difference D. Positive Thoughts Really Count B In someareas ofCalifornia, it’s so dry that farmers aren’t willing to plant crops this season. Growers, north ofSan Francisco, have begun pulling out of local farmers markets. CountyLineHarvest, which farms more than 30 acres inPetaluma, hasn’t had enough water to grow all the peppers, lettuces and other produce for a long time, according to a video on its Instagram page. Nearby farms arc saying the same, emphasizing (强调) the effect of theextendeddry periods. Californiagrows a third of theUnited States' vegetables and two-thirds of the nation's fruits and nuts. If dry weather prevents farmers from growing plants, that could lead to pushing up the price of food that's already starting to affect theU.S.economy. “Due to severe drought, for the first time in 21 years, we will not be able to grow this summer inPetaluma,"CountyLinesaid in its post. Drew Lerner, president of World Weather Inc. inKansas, saidCalifornia“missed the rainy season" and won't see much moisture (水分) over the next several months. A La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific pushed winter storms north and away from the state, leaving it with less moisture than usual. AsCaliforniagets most of its water from winter storms, little relief is expected before October. That has left growers such as Shao Shan Fann in a bind. The business can’t offer the selection of Asian vegetables and Bay Area staples it usually grows at its Bolinas location, according to its website. Nearby, Green Valley Community Farm has access to only about 5% of the water it usually relies on, owner David Plescia said. He’s looking for new land with enough water to use, and also has a permit in the works to grow cannabis to make up for the lost income. If it doesn’t make it, he’ll leave the fields empty. “It’s part of our generation’s cross to bear, figuring out how to run small — or medium-scale farm businesses in this kind of atmosphere of highly variable rainfall,” Andrew said. 4. What does the underlined word “extended” in the second paragraph mean? A. Hot. B. Short. C. Long. D. Wonderful. 5. Which is the result if the dry weather stops famers from planting crops? A. Theincreaseinthe priceof food. B. The growth of economy inU.S. C.Lessmoisture than usual. D. The low price of Asian vegetables. 6. From what Andrew said, we can infer (推断) all of the following statements EXCEPT that________. A. The climate is not very good B. It is part of the burden for people of his generation C. It is hard for him to run his farm businesses insuch bad climate D. He is sure that the serious drought will come to an end soon 7. What does the passage mainly talk about? A. How do the famers run businesses inCalifornia. B. How does the owner look for new land with enough water C. California farmers facing drought choose not to plant crops. D. The farm economy of theUnited Stateshas changed a lot. C Elizabeth Spelke, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, has spent her career testing the world’s most complex learning system-the mind of a baby. Babies might seem like no match for artificial intelligence (AI). They are terrible at labeling images, hopeless at mining text, and awful at video games. Then again, babies can do things beyond the reach of any AI. By just a few months old, they’ve begun to grasp the foundations of language, such as grammar. They’ve started to understand how to adapt to unfamiliar situations. Yet even experts like Spelke don’t understand precisely how babies or adults learn. Consider one of the most impressive examples of AI, Alpha Zero, a programme that plays board games with superhuman skill. After playing thousands of games against itself at a super speed, and learning from winning positions, Alpha Zero independently discovered several famous chess strategies and even invented new ones. It certainly seems like a machineeclipsinghuman cognitive abilities. But Alpha Zero needs to play millions more games than a person during practice to learn a game. Most importantly, it cannot take what it has learned from the game and apply it to another area. 本文来源：https://www.wddqw.com/doc/ff019348bb4ae45c3b3567ec102de2bd9605de6c.html