高考攻略READING风土人情英国篇.doc

风土人情篇
ANALYZE
（二）英国风情
【专题介绍】
英国风土人情成为高考阅读理解热点话题的理由有以下几点：
1. 英国是英语的发源地，英国英语一直被认为是纯正、正统的英语。
2. 英国历史悠久，其文化源远流长,对世界文化做出了重要贡献。
3. 英国作为一个老牌资本主义国家，曾在科教文化、工业技术等领域引领世界达300多年，且在当今世界范围内仍具有强大的政治、经济、文化影响力。
近几年来，反映英国风土人情的高考阅读理解文章主要有: 2007山东卷的B篇；2007上海卷的D篇。2008年高考反映英国风土人情的阅读理解更是内容丰富，异彩纷呈，如：全国卷II的 B篇介绍了英国女王伊丽莎白二世半个世纪以来的口音变化；四川卷的B篇谈论英国家庭主妇的巨大作用和贡献；天津卷的B篇则是对具有英国特色的慈善商店的介绍。
【应考策略】
1. 熟悉英国的地理概况和气候特点以及英国人的性格特点。
2. 了解英国的绅士文化（绅士风度是英国文化的精髓,是英国人的价值取向和努力方向。深受这种文化熏陶的英国人,在生活、工作、为人处事等方面都以此为标准）以及一些独特的历史传统和风俗。
3. 掌握一些重要的历史名词的含义，如:工业革命、维多利亚价值观和英联邦等。
【考例再现】
The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts has found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.
Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany’s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent (口音) changes recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.
He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels (元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don’t notice from year to year.”
“We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’. Similarly she would have spoken of ‘the citay’ and ‘dutay’, rather than ‘citee’ and ‘dutee’, and ‘hame’ rather than ‘home’. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst’, but by the 1970s ‘lost’.”
The Queen’s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the
10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch (传统火鸡午餐).
The results were published (发表) in the Journal of Phonetics.
1. The Queen’s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because ______.
A. she has been Queen for many years
B. she has a less upper-class accent now
C. her speeches are familiar to many people
D. her speeches have been recorded for 50 years
2. Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?
A. “dutay” B. “citee” C. “hame” D. “lorst”
3. We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on ______.
A. speech sounds B. Christmas customs
C. TV broadcasting D. personal messages
4. What is the text mainly about?
A. The relationship between accents and social classes.
B. The Queen’s Christmas speeches on TV.
C. The changes in a person’s accent.
D. The recent development of the English language.
(2008 全国卷II)
【阅读赏析】
这篇文章中隐含着很多英国文化背景知识，如英联邦国家（Commonwealth countries）。英联邦国家是由英国和已经独立的前英国殖民地或附属国组成的联合体。英王是英联邦的元首。英国女王伊丽莎白二世自登基以来, 每年都要通过广播向英联邦国家发表圣诞感言致辞。然而，近来研究人员从她的圣诞感言中听出了变化：她那世人皆知的“贵族式发音”如今已少了些“贵族”的味道。这个现象折射出一个社会现实，那就是过去在英国贵族英语和平民英语是有区别的，当然，这种区别的存在有其历史渊源。但是随着社会的发展，这种差异越来越小，女王“贵族式发音”的平民化就是一个典型例子。由此表明英语语言发展的平民化倾向明显，贵族英语和平民英语正在进一步融合。
【答案解析】
1. D。推理判断题。文章的第二段对把握全文含义尤为重要。此段内容提到Jonathan Harrington想要研究一个人有记录的语音在半个世纪内的变化，而就他所知，这样的广播记录只有女王的。因此英国女王是作为研究对象的唯一人选，故选D。
2. B。细节理解题。第三、四段提到，女王的口音变化体现在元音音素的发音发生变化，而且是从贵族式发音向平民式转变。因此她在70年代使用的发音肯定是相对less noble的，如citee , dutee, home, lost。故选B。
3. A。细节理解题。最后一段提到这项关于女王的pronunciation和accent的研究结果发表在了Journal of Phonetics上，据此可推断出这个杂志是有关语音学的。
4. C。主旨大意题。根据全文大意尤其是第二段段意可知。

PRACTICE
阅读下列短文，从每题所给出的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。
A
I love charity (慈善) shops and so do lots of other people in Britain because you find quite a few of them on every high street. The charity shop is a British institution, selling everything from clothes to electric goods, all at very good prices. You can get things you won’t find in the shops anymore. The thing I like best about them is that your money is going to a good cause and not into the pockets of profit-driven companies, and you are not damaging the planet, but finding a new home for unwanted goods.
The first charity shop was opened in 1947 by Oxfam. The famous charity’s appeal to aid postwar Greece had been so successful it had been flooded with donations (捐赠物). They decided to set up a shop to sell some of these donations to raise money for that appeal. Now there are over 7,000 charity shops in the UK. My favourite charity shop in my hometown is the Red Cross shop, where I always find children’s books, all 10 or 20 pence each.
Most of the people working in the charity shops are volunteers, although there is often a manager who gets paid. Over 90% of the goods in the charity shops are donated by the public. Every morning you see bags of unwanted items outside the front of shops, although they don’t encourage this, rather ask people to bring things in when the shop is open.
The shops have very low running costs: all profits go to charity work. Charity shops raise more than ￡110 million a year, funding（资助） medical research, overseas aid, supporting sick and poor children, homeless and disabled people, and much more. What better place to spend your money? You get something special for a very good price and a good moral sense. You provide funds to a good cause and tread lightly on the environment.
1. The author loves the charity shop mainly because of ______.
A. its convenient location
B. its great variety of goods
C. its spirit of goodwill
D. its nice shopping environment
2. The first charity shop in the UK was set up to ______. A. sell cheap products
B. deal with unwanted things
C. raise money for patients
D. help a foreign country
3. Which of the following is TRUE about charity shops?
A. The operating costs are very low.
B. The staff are usually well paid.
C. 90% of the donations are second-hand.
D. They are open twenty-four hours a day.
4. Which of the following may be the best title for the passage?
A. What to Buy at Charity Shops.
B. Charity Shop: Its Origin && Development.
C. Charity Shop: Where You Buy to Donate.
D. The Public’s Concern about Charity Shops.
（天津2008）

B
In England, Christmas is the most important of all the holidays in the year. Two important things help to set this holiday apart from all others: the custom of giving gifts and the habit of spending it with the family.
In the present highly commercialized （商业化的） age, we are reminded of Christmas many weeks before the event. In the shops the special Christmas displays appear. In the shopping centers of very large towns decorations are put up in the streets. Thousands of people flock into the center of the town to see the decorations. The advertisements in all the newspapers keep reminding us that there are “Only × more shopping days to Christmas”. The Post Office vans (有盖小货车) are covered with brightly colored posters urging us to “Post Early for Christmas”, for hundreds of millions of Christmas cards and millions of parcels are sent every year. Everywhere one turns, one is made aware that Christmas, which comes “but once a year”, is coming once again.
Many people deplore (谴责) what they consider the over-commercialization of a sacred holiday, but under all the business activities, a great deal of true Christmas spirit is to be found. The custom of giving presents to one’s family and friends is a very pleasant one so long as one remembers that it is the spirit behind the gift which matters most and not the gift itself. And how good it is at Christmas to return to the family home and meet parents, grandparents and as many aunts, uncles and cousins as can be accommodated (容纳). Without twentieth and 21st century means of transport, many families would be denied the Christmas reunion.
On Christmas Eve, the traditional custom of hanging up a stocking at the foot of the bed is performed by millions of excited children. During the day the Christmas tree will have been dressed. All is now ready for the great morning, which comes round soon enough. Many of the young children stay awake until Santa Claus (or Father Christmas, as some call him) steals in to deliver the presents they have asked him for.
Christmas Day is spent quietly at home. The excitement of all the presents is hardly over before it is time for the traditional Christmas dinner.
5. In the first paragraph, the phrase “set ．．． apart” is closest in meaning to “______”.
A. make ．．． different B. set ．．． aside
C. remove ．．． from D. divide ．．． by
6. Which of the following reminds you of the true Christmas spirit?
A. Commercialization. B. Goods on display.
C. Family reunion. D. Colored posters.
7. We can infer from the passage that before the 20th century ______.
A. people didn’t have a happy family reunion
B. it was hard for a family to gather together at Christmas
C. people could travel freely during the holiday
D. the true spirit of Christmas couldn’t be found
8. What would be the best title for the passage?
A. Christmas Decoration
B. Holidays in the West
C. Christmas in England
D. Father Christmas

Key：
1-4 CDAC 5-8 ACBC