Unit 3 单元话题阅读理解练习-2023-2024学年九年级英语上册单元重难点易错题精练（仁爱科普版）

Unit 3 English around the world

单元话题阅读理解练习

（2022秋·福建厦门·九年级厦门市槟榔中学校考期中）When you learn English, you may come across these phrases we think you will love to use!

“Touch wood” is said when you hope something will happen without any problems. This phrase comes from the old belief that touching something made of wood will bring good luck.

So, if you and a friend had to write a report together for school that had to be done by the next morning, you might say, “If we work all night, we should be able to finish in time, As long as we don’t  ▲ — touch wood.”

Being “out of the woods” means not being in danger anymore, having gotten out of a difficult situation, or just not having a problem anymore. This old phrase comes from how dangerous it was to travel through a forest, or be lost in one.

So when the report is written, your friend could say, “I think we’re out of the woods. Now we just need to check our work.”

A person’s “neck of the woods” is the area of a town or city that they live in, but it can also be used to refer to a region. A “neck”, as the word is used in this expression, is a narrow piece of land.

So if you missed the school bus and couldn’t hand your report in on time, your mother might say, “Don’t worry— I’ll drive you. I’m going to the same neck of the woods as your school this morning anyway.”

1．When you “touch wood”, it will ________.

A．protect you from bad luck B．have a lot of problems

C．bring you bad luck D．hurt your hand

2．Which of the following is the best to fill in “ ▲ ” in Paragraph 3?

A．never give up B．fall asleep

C．go for a walk D．think carefully

3．When a boy says he is “out of the woods”, it means he ________.

A．is in trouble B．is lost in the forest

C．gets into a difficult situation D．is safe

4．What does the underlined word “region” mean in Chinese?

A．困境 B．区域 C．瓶颈 D．机会

5．What is the passage mainly about?

A．The way to write a report for school. B．Some phrases about wood.

C．Ways to learn English phrases. D．Some phrases meaning good luck.

 

（2022秋·福建厦门·九年级统考期中）When my friends discuss their coming trips with me, they ask similar questions: “Do I need to learn the local language to order food?” or “I’m nervous about finding my way around, will people speak English?”—they care much about language. My answer is not to expect everyone to speak English. After all, you’re the one visiting their country.

Languages for me are a wonderful insight（见解）to a place we’re visiting. I try my hardest to learn at least a greeting and how to thank someone. People will answer with kindness when you try to speak their language. It’s not about perfecting the pronunciation. Just try and connect with the local people. When I lived in Italy, pizza, pasta, ciao (hello) and grazie (thanks) were most often spoken by me. However, languages have never been something that I’ve thought to be difficulties during my stay in Italy. I love this place.

Even though you try, I won’t say it will be easy. On the trip in China, my bathroom light wouldn’t turn off. I called down to the front desk and the lady thought I was asking for laundry（洗衣）service. I tried to express things differently like “housekeeping”, hoping they would send someone up and fix it up. It’s not always easy to be understood abroad, but when I look back on, it still makes me laugh heartedly.

So be patient while traveling, be open to learning other languages and cultures and be kind to people if they don’t understand you. A smile, some practice and some understanding can get you far!

6．What do friends worry most about their trip?

A．The food. B．The direction. C．The language. D．The people.

7．The locals will be ____________ when you try to speak their language.

A．relaxed B．nervous C．angry D．kind

8．What’s the main idea of Paragraph 2?

A．It is difficult for the writer to learn Italian.

B．We should speak with good pronunciation.

C．Knowing how to greet in other languages is enough.

D．Language is a good way to understand a foreign place.

9．The writer called the front desk to find someone to ____________.

A．repair the light B．wash the clothes C．clean the room D．watch the show

10．What can be inferred（推理）from the passage?

A．The writer ate a lot of pizza during his stay in Italy.

B．The writer’s friends will visit an English-speaking country.

C．The writer has a good attitude（态度）towards most of the trips.

D．The writer once lived in a Chinese hotel with good service.

 

（2022秋·福建厦门·九年级厦门市华侨中学校考期中）

Languages have been coming and going for thousands of years, but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the word was still populated by hunter-gatherers, small closely knit (联系) groups developed their own forms of speech which have no connection with each other. Some language experts believe that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just five to ten million people, they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.

Soon afterwards, many of those people started settling (定居) down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centuries, trade, industrialisation (工业化), the development of the nation-state and the wide spread of basic education, especially globalisation and better communications in the past few years, all have caused many languages to disappear, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.

At present, the world has about 6,800 languages. And they are used in different parts of the world. The general rule is that mild zones have relatively few languages, often spoken by many people, while hot wet zones have lot, often spoken by small numbers, Europe has only around 200 languages; the Americas about 1,000; Africa 2,400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200, of which Papua New Guinea alone offers over 800. The median number (中位数) of speakers is only 6,000, which means that half the world’s languages are spoken by fewer people than that.

Already well over 400 of the total of 6,800 languages are close to extinction (消亡), with only a few elderly speakers left. For example, Busuu in Cameroon (eight remaining speakers), Chiapaneco in Mexico (150), Lipan Apache in the United States (two or three) or Wadjigu in Australia (one, with a question-mark): none of these seems to have much chance of survival.

11．What can we infer (推断) about languages in hunter-gatherer times?

A．They developed very fast.

B．They were large in number.

C．They had similar patterns.