Read the passage carefully to find the answers for Questions 1 to 5. Answer each question in a maximum of 10 words. Remember to write the answers on the Answer Sheet. In the United States also there were great changes, though the causes here were due only in part to the war; they sprang mainly from technical progress, and the development of mass-production, in which the United States henceforth was to lead the world. The cheap automobile, pioneered by Henry Ford, is a good example. In 1915 the United States contained 2.5 million cars; in 1920, 9 million. Only the new mass-production techniques made it possible to build all these cars and only the growing practice of “easy-payments” made it possible to sell them. By 1925 three out of four cars, new and old, were sold in this way. About the same proportion was covered against the weather; ten years earlier, forty-nine cars out of fifty were open ones. The last fact is important. The car had not only become cheap; it had become a comfortable room on wheels not just a means of transport. First in the United States, then in Britain and other countries, the car began to revolutionize everyday life. People no longer had to live near their work or close to a railway station. So began, in earnest, the problem which is still with us. The town centers, once full of life and sociability, began to wither; evening found them dead and deserted, nothing but bright shop windows and locked doors. The car brought many far-reaching consequences and it was blamed, rightly or wrongly, for the decline in churchgoing and the increase in immorality. More recently, it meant the virtual end of horse drawn transport and a growing threat to the supremacy of the railroad. Questions: 1.What is the main cause for the great changes in the U.S.? 2.the United States, 20 million cars could be sold in 1925 because of ______? 3.What does “the last fact” refer to in the second paragraph? 4.What is the main idea of this passage? 5.According to the writer, it is doubtful whether the car should be responsible for ______?
正确答案: 1.echnical progress and mass-production development. 首段指出美国发生的巨大变化是技术的进步和大规模生产的发展造成的。 2.growing practice of easy payments 首段倒数第二句提到是便捷的付款方法使得汽车可以在1925年销售量达到两千万。 3.It refers to the fact that cars in 1925 had weather protection.the last fact指上文中提到汽车销量高的最后一个因素,即汽车的上面开始安装weather protection。 4.Great changes brought about by the car in the U.S. 此题是对文章主旨的考查,文章第一段首先描述了汽车销量的变化及原因,接着主要阐述了汽车为美国带来的影响和变化。 5.正确he decline in churchgoing and the increase in immorality 第二段段尾作者提出了有人认为汽车的增加造成decline in churchgoing和the increase in immorality,但从rightly or wrongly可以看出作者对此并不肯定。