云南省丽江市永胜县永北镇中学初中英语 阅读理解练习试题.doc

云南省丽江市永胜县永北镇中学初中英语 阅读理解练习试题 Passage 1 When Christopher Columbus landed on the then unnamed Costa Rica in 1502, he saw many Indians wearing gold earrings. So he thought the land must be rich in gold. He named the place Costa Rica, which means “rich coast” in Spanish. Though little gold was found, Costa Rica today is indeed rich with coffee and bananas. Coffee is the most important product in Costa Rica and most of it is exported (出口) to other countries like America and West Germany. Bananas are the country抯 second most important export. Costa Ricans also grow many other crops such as fruits, corn and beans for their own use. Costa Ricans love colors and their houses are painted in bright colors. Education is very important to the Costa Ricans. Almost every village has a school and education is a must for children between seven and fourteen years of age. Boys and girls go to separate (单独的) schools. Classes begin in March and end in November. The other three months of the year are harvest time and the children have to help their parents to pick coffee beans.Passage 2 Christian Eijkman, a Dutch doctor, left the Netherlands for the island of Java. Many people on the island had a disease called beri?鄄beri. He was going there to try and find a cure. At first, Eijkman thought some kind of germ (细菌) caused beri-beri. He raised some chickens. He didn’t eat them, but made experiments on them. The local people were quite surprised at that. One day he noticed that his chickens became sick when they were fed the food most Javanese ate — refined white rice (精炼米). When he fed them with unrefined rice, also known as brown rice, they recovered. Eijkman realized that he had made an important discovery — that some things in food could prevent disease. These things were named vitamins (维生素). The Javanese were not getting enough vitamins because they had actually removed the part that contains vitamins. Later, other diseases were also found to be caused by the lack of v