Section 2 Reading Comprehension(In this section you will find after each of the passages a number of questions or unfinished statements about the passage, each with 4 (A, B, C and D) choices to answer the question or complete the statement You must choose the one which you think fits best Blacken the corresponding letter as required on your machine-scoring ANSWER SHEET.)
1.Seeking to frame his new administration as one with a firm focus on closing the gap between children from affluent and poor families,Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom will propose spending some $1.8 billion on an array of programs designed to boost California’s enrollment in early education and child-care programs. Newsom’s plan,which he hinted at in a Fresno event last month,will be a key element in the state budget proposal he will submit to the Legislature shortly after taking office Monday,a source close to the governor-elect’s transition team said. The spending would boost programs designed to ensure children enter kindergarten prepared to learn,closing what some researchers have called the“readiness gap”that exists based on a family’s income.It would also phase in an expansion of prekindergarten and offer money to help school districts that don’t have facilities for full-day kindergarten. “The fact that he,s making significant investments with his opening budget is really exciting,”Ted Lempert,president of the Bay Area-based nonprofit Children Now,Said Tuesday.“What’s exciting is the comprehensiveness of it,because it’s saying we’re going to focus on prenatal through age 5.” A broad overview document reviewed by The times on Tuesday shows that most of the outlay under the plan-$1.5 billion-would be a one-time expense in the budget year that begins July 1.Those dollars would be a single infusion of cash,an approach favored by Gov.Jerry Brown in recent years.Most of the money would be spent on efforts to expand childCare Services and kindergarten classes.By law,a governor must submit a full budget to the Legislature no later than Jan.10.Lawmakers will spend the winter and spring reviewing the proposal and must send a final budget plan to Newsom by June 15. Though legislative Democrats have pushed for additional early childhood funding in recent years-a key demand of the Legislative Women’s Caucus-those actions have typically come late in the bud get writing season in Sacramento.“Quite frankly,to Start out With a January proposal that includes that investment in California’s children reflects a new day,”state Sen.Holly J.Mitchell(D-Los Angeles)said. The governor-elect will propose a $750-million boost to kindergarten funding,aimed at expanding facilities to allow full-day programs.A number of school districts offer only Partial day programs,leaving many low-income families to skip enrolling their children because kindergarten classes end in the middle of the workday.Because the money would not count toward meeting California’s three-decades-old education spending guarantee under Proposition 98,which sets a minimum annual funding level for K-12 schools and community colleges,it will not reduce planned spending on other education services. Close behind in total cost is a budget proposal by Newsom to help train child-care workers and expand local facilities already subsidized by the state,as well as those serving parents who attend state colleges and universities.Together,those efforts could cost$747 million,according to the budget overview document. An expansion of prekindergarten programs would be phased in over three years at a cost of$125 million in the first year.The multiyear rollout would,according to the budget overview,“ensure the system can plan for the increase in capacity.” Lempert said the Newsom proposal is notable for trying to avoid the kinds of battles that in recent years pitted prekindergarten and expanded child care against each other for additional taxpayer dollars.“The reality is we need to expand both simultaneously,”he said. Another $200 million of the proposal would be earmarked for programs that provide home visits to expectant parents from limited-income families and programs that provide healthcare screenings for young children.Some of the money would come from the state’s Medi-Cal program,and other money from federal matching dollars.Funding for the home visits program was provided in the budget Brown signed last summer;the Newsom effort would build on that.
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见2.The day this small town told its residents to stop drinking the water,life on Glendale Boulevard turned from quiet to alarming.One couple decided to immediately put their house up for sale.Another fretted over their young son and the baby who would soon arrive.And up the street,one mom felt a rising indignation that would turn her into an activist determined to restrict the chemicals contaminating her family’s drinking water-and that of millions of other Americans. That late July day,this town along the banks of the Kalamazoo River became the latest community affected by a ubiquitous class of compounds known as polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances,or PFAS.For years,calls for the federal government to regulate the chemicals have been unsuccessful,and last year the Trump administration tried to block publication of a study urging a much lower threshold of exposure. The man-made chemicals have long been used in a wide range of consumer products,including nonstick cookware,water-repellent fabrics and grease-resistant paper products,as well as in firefighting foams.But exposures have been associated with an array of health problems,among them thyroid disease,weakened immunity,infertility risks and certain cancers.The compounds do not break down in the environment. In Parchment,Where they were once used by a long-Shuttered paper mill,tests found PFAS levels in the water system in excess of 1,500 parts per trillion-more than 20 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended lifetime exposure limit of 70 parts Per trillion.Local officials promptly alerted residents.Michigan officials declared a state of emergency.People started picking up free cases of bottled water at the high school.Within Weeks,the town abandoned the municipal wells that had served 3,000 people and began getting water from nearby Kalamazoo."This is not a problem you can run away from,"Said Parchment resident Tammy Cooper,Who has become an outspoken advocate for better regulation.“There are Parchments across the country.” Harvard University researchers say public drinking-water supplies serving more than 6 million Americans have tested for the chemicals at or above the EPA’s threshold-Which many experts argue should be far lower to safeguard public health.The level is only an agency guideline;the federal government does not regulate PFAS.The compounds’ presence has rattled communities from Hoosick Falls,N.Y,to Tucson.They have been particularly prevalent on or near military bases,Which have long used PFAS-laden foams in training exercises. Both houses of Congress held hearings on the problem last year,and lawmakers introduced bins to compel the government to test for PFAS chemicals nationwide and to respond wherever water and soil polluted by them are found.In late November,the head of the EPA vowed that the agency would soon unveil a“national strategy”to address the situation.Affected communities are still waiting.“There are some very real human impacts from this stuff;”said Erik Olson,a drinking-Water expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council.“Most people have no idea they are being exposed.” Michigan is one of the few states where officials are trying to determine the extent of PFAS contamination.Health officials undertook statewide tests this year across 1,380 public Water Supplies and at more than 400 schools that operate their own wells.“When we look for it,We tend to find it,"said Eden Wells,the state’s chief medical executive.Yet detection raises difficult questions,given the lack of regulation involving PFAS in water and the evolving research on its long-term health effects.“Many of our responses are outstripping the scientific knowledge we need,”Wells said. More is known about two particular types of the chemicals, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS)and perfluorooctanoic acid(PFOA),Which companies phased out years ago amid growing evidence that both were ending up in the blood of nearly every American.But thousands of other PFAS chemicals remain in use-among the many threats,including arsenic and lead,to drinking water nationwide.
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见Section 3 Cloze Test(In the following passage, there are 20 blanks representing words that are missing from the context.Below the passage，each blank has 4 choices marked by letters A, B, C and D respectively.There is only ONE right answer.Blacken the corresponding letter as required on your machine-scoring ANSWER SHEET.)
1.When you look up,how far back in time do you see? Our senses are (91)in the past.There’s a flash of lightning,and then seconds Pass until we (92)the rumble of distant thunder.We hear the past.We are seeing into the past too. (93)sound travels about a kilometer every three seconds,light travels 300,000 kilometers every second.When we see a flash of lighting three kilometers away,We are seeing something that happened a hundredth of a millisecond ago.That’s not exactly the distant past. But as we look further afield,We Can Peer further back. (94)through a telescope,We Can look even further into the past.if you really want to look back in time,you need to look up. The Moon is our nearest celestial neighbor-a world with valleys,mountains and craters.It’s also about 380,000km away,so it takes 1.3 (95)for light to (96)from the Moon to us.We see the Moon not as it is,but as it was l.3 seconds ago. The Moon doesn’t change much from instant to instant,but this 1.3 second delay is (97)when mission control talks to astronauts on the Moon.Radio waves travel at the speed of light,so a message (98)mission control takes l.3 seconds to get to the Moon,and even the quickest of (99)takes another l.3 seconds to come back. It’s not (100)to look beyond the Moon and further back in time.The Sun is about 150 million km away,so we see it as it was about 8 minutes ago. Even our nearest planetary neighbors,Venus and Mars,are tens of millions of kilometers away, (101)we see them as they were minutes ago.When Mars is very (102)to Earth,We are seeing it as it was about three minutes ago,but at other times light takes more than 20 minutes to travel from Mars to Earth. This (103)some problems if you’re on Earth controlling a Rover on Mars.If you’re driving the Rover at 1km per hour then the lag, (104)to the finite speed of light,means the Rover could be 200 meters ahead of (105)you see it, and it could travel another 200 meters after you command it to hit the brakes. Not surprisingly,Martian Rovers aren’t breaking any speed records,travelling at 5cm Per second(0.18kph or O.11mph).On-board computers help with driving,to prevent rover wrecks with rovers following carefully (106)sequences and using on-board computers to (107)hazards and prevent punctures. Let’s go a bit further out in space.At its closest to Earth,Saturn is still more than a billion kilometers away,so we see it as it was (108)than an hour ago. When the world (109)into the Cassini spacecraft’s plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere in 2017,we were hearing echoes from a spacecraft that had already been destroyed more than an hour before. So when you look up,remember you aren’t seeing things as they are (101)you’re seeing things as they were. (选自The Conversation 2018年12月27日)
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见
