2026年9-10月最新时文阅读练习(GVC+ABC+六选四)第02套-2027届高考英语一轮复习专项

2026 年 9—10 月最新时文阅读练习（GVC + ABC + 六选四） · 学生版 2026 年 9—10 月最新时文阅读练习（GVC + ABC + 六选四） 学生版 　 Set 2 　 II. Grammar and Vocabulary 　 Section A　Grammar Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank. 　 Vaccines save millions of lives every year, but they can also cause mild side effects such as muscle soreness, tiredness and fever. Researchers have long wondered 　　21　　 some people develop these reactions while others seem unaffected. The answer, it turns out, may lie in the bacteria in our guts. In a study 　　22　　(publish) in Science, researchers collected samples from more than 170 people before and after they received 　　23　　 second or third dose of a COVID vaccine. They found that those who reported a fever had similar features in their gut bacteria. More specifically, people with worse fever had higher levels of a protein 　　24　　(call) flagellin. Flagellin forms the tail-like structures that bacteria use 　　25　　(move) around, which suggests that these microbes were more active than usual. To test this idea, the researchers carried out an experiment 　　26　　 mice. Animals that were exposed to bacteria from feverish donors showed a response similar 　　27　　 a human fever, while mice without the relevant receptors were much less affected. This pointed to a direct link between flagellin and the body's immune response. It is still not clear why flagellin levels differ so much between people, though diet may play a role: 　　28　　(vegetarian) in the study tended to have lower levels. Ruth Ley, who 　　29　　(lead) the research, hopes the results will help reduce this side effect of vaccines. If the reaction can 　　30　　(reduce), more people may be willing to get vaccinated. 　 Section B　Vocabulary Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need. A. option　B. dedicated　C. embrace　D. cases　E. sceptical　F. flatter　G. tailored　H. advocates　I. biases　J. over-reliant　K. banning 　 Some teenagers are already using artificial intelligence to help with homework. Others avoid it completely. At one school in Scotland, teachers have decided that pretending AI does not exist is not a(n) 　　31　　. Pupils there now spend part of the week learning how the technology works, what it is good at, and how it fails. The school is believed to be the first in the UK to appoint a teacher 　　32　　 entirely to AI literacy. But rather than teaching pupils to 　　33　　 AI, the teacher's aim is to make sure they can question it, challenge it and use it responsibly. The idea came from teachers who noticed that pupils were already using chatbots without understanding their limits. In one of his first lessons, pupils were shown a mixture of real and AI-generated images and asked to spot the fakes. The task was much harder than most of them expected. He also teaches them about "hallucinations", 　　34　　 in which AI confidently offers information it has invented. Young people need to learn to be 　　35　　 of anything a machine tells them, and then go and check it. There is another danger. AI tends to 　　36　　 users and agree with them rather than challenging their ideas, and pupils who accept answers without thinking may become 　　37　　. The teacher compares it to a friend who always agrees: pleasant at first, but useless when you need an honest opinion. Lessons will be 　　38　　 to different ages, with younger pupils focusing on basic knowledge first. "We are not 　　39　　 for AI," the teacher says. "Our students need to know how to use it properly." They also need to understand that such systems carry 　　40　　 from the data on which they were trained. For the pupils at this school, the goal is not to fear the technology but to treat it as a tool that always deserves checking. 　 III. Reading Comprehension 　 Section A　Cloze Directions: For each blank in the following passage there are four words or phrases marked A, B, C and D. Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context. 　 Anyone who has walked through a city in spring knows the sound of birdsong. Few of us notice, however, that urban birds often sing at a 　　41　　 pitch than their relatives in the countryside. The obvious explanation is noise: to be heard above traffic, a singer must raise its voice. But a growing body of research suggests that the story is more 　　42　　, and that singing higher may carry hidden costs. The first cost is physical. Producing high notes costs energy, and high sounds do not travel as far as low ones. A bird that sings higher may therefore be heard by 　　43　　 neighbours, not more. The very change that makes a song audible in a city street may make it less 　　44　　 across a territory where every metre matters. The second cost is social. In many species, females prefer males with deeper voices. If city life forces males to sing higher, they may become less 　　45　　 to the very partners they are trying to attract. The adaptation keeps them heard, but not necessarily 　　46　　. There is also a cost to the next generation. Young birds learn their songs by listening to adults, and a song that is distorted by noise is harder to 　　47　　. Studies of great tits in European cities have found that their songs have become shorter and simpler over the decades, reducing the information a song can carry. Birds are not 　　48　　 losing their voices; they are slowly losing their grammar. Yet birds are not passive victims. Some species have found another solution: instead of singing higher, they sing 　　49　　. In cities where the mornings become noisy quickly, several species now begin their dawn chorus before the first buses appear. The findings carry a practical message. If high-pitched singing is a 　　50　　 rather than a genuine improvement, then the real solution is not to celebrate the birds' cleverness but to 　　51　　 the noise itself. Quieter roads, lower speed limits and better-insulated buildings can all help. “We should not treat this as a happy story of adaptation,” one researcher warns. “It is a 　　52　　 of how far we have pushed other species to fit around us.” None of this means that city birds are doomed. Many populations are 　　53　　, and some species are even thriving. But the fact that a species is changing does not prove that the change is 　　54　　. A bird with a simpler song may still find a mate and raise a family; over many generations, however, part of what the song once carried may quietly disappear. The birds will still be singing. Whether they will still be saying anything is another 　　55　　. 　 41. A. higher B. steadier C. lower D. softer 42. A. familiar B. complicated C. encouraging D. recent 43. A. fewer B. louder C. closer D. larger 44. A. musical B. popular C. effective D. frequent 45. A. similar B. loyal C. useful D. attractive 46. A. chosen B. loud C. safe D. understood 47. A. ignore B. copy C. record D. perform 48. A. gradually B. really C. simply D. certainly 49. A. earlier B. together C. louder D. less 50. A. victory B. mystery C. habit D. compromise 51. A. study B. reduce C. measure D. accept 52. A. reward B. record C. reminder D. risk 53. A. stable B. tiny C. silent D. protected 54. A. visible B. recent C. familiar D. harmless 55. A. story B. question C. song D. answer 　 Section B　Reading Comprehension Directions: Read the following three passages. Each passage is followed by several questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you have just read. 　 Passage A 　 Cancer statistics have a way of announcing themselves as good news, and the latest figures from the United States are, on the face of it, excellent. Seventy-one per cent of people diagnosed with cancer now live at least five years, up from forty-nine per cent in the late 1970s. Few areas of medicine can point to a change of that size. The gains are not evenly spread, but some of them are genuinely dramatic. Deaths from lung cancer, for decades the most stubborn of the major killers, have fallen sharply as smoking has declined and treatment has improved. Childhood leukaemias, once close to a death sentence, are now cured in the great majority of cases. Behind each percentage sits a series of unglamorous improvements: earlier scanning, better surgery, drugs that are tolerated well enough to be taken for years. Yet the headline figure carries a trap, and epidemiologists are unusually candid about it. Prostate cancer, for instance, now shows a five-year survival rate approaching ninety-eight per cent. That number is often read as evidence of brilliant treatment. It may equally be evidence that many of the tumours being found were never going to cause harm in the first place. If a slow-growing cancer would have remained silent for twenty years, then finding it early and treating it successfully does not extend a life; it merely changes what appears on a patient's record. This is not a quibble about arithmetic. It matters because the same figure is used to argue for more screening, and screening carries costs of its own: unnecessary operations, complications, and the anxiety of a diagnosis that was never going to threaten anyone. A survival statistic measures how long people live after a diagnosis. It does not measure whether the diagnosis was worth making. Those are two different questions, and only the second one tells a patient what to do. None of this diminishes real progress. Survival has improved because treatments genuinely work, and the fall in lung-cancer deaths is a triumph that no arithmetic can explain away. The lesson is narrower and more useful: a number can be rising for more than one reason at once, and a public that is only told the number will not be able to tell which reason applies. 　 56. What change in five-year cancer survival is reported? A. From 49 per cent in the late 1970s to 71 per cent today. B. From 71 per cent in the late 1970s to 49 per cent today. C. From 71 per cent ten years ago to 98 per cent today. D. From 49 per cent to 98 per cent across all cancer types. 　 57. Why does the writer describe improvements in treatment as “unglamorous”? A. They have produced smaller gains than the public believes. B. They consist of many ordinary advances rather than one breakthrough. C. They receive no funding from public bodies. D. They were achieved mainly by preventing disease rather than curing it. 　 58. What point does the writer make about prostate cancer survival rates? A. They prove that screening programmes should be expanded. B. They may reflect the detection of tumours that would never have caused harm. C. They are calculated differently from other cancer statistics. D. They have fallen because treatment has become less aggressive. 　 59. What does the writer suggest readers should do with survival statistics? A. Distrust them until the underlying data are published. B. Ask whether early detection actually improved the patient's life. C. Compare national figures instead of individual cancer types. D. Rely on them as the best available guide to treatment choices. 　 　 Passage B 　 COUNT THE BIRDS IN YOUR STREET　　Any morning, worldwide, free Urban bird surveys have quietly become one of the most useful records of how cities are changing. You do not need to identify every species: the project asks for a ten-minute count, twice a month, from the same spot, and it accepts “not sure” as an answer. Beginners are paired with an online mentor for their first three submissions. Data are published openly every quarter. CLASSIFY GALAXIES FROM YOUR SOFA　　Online, whenever you like, free Hundreds of thousands of photographs from a survey telescope are waiting to be sorted, and computers still cannot do it as well as people can. After a ten-minute tutorial you are shown images and asked simple questions about shape. Accuracy, not speed, is what the project measures, and each image is shown to several volunteers before it is accepted. SAMPLE YOUR LOCAL RIVER　　Saturday mornings, March–November, £15 kit Volunteers measure the clarity, temperature and acidity of a stretch of river near their home and upload the readings from a phone. The scheme covers more than 2,000 sites and its data are used by regional water authorities. A starter kit — measuring tube, thermometer and test strips — is posted to you; training is online and takes about an hour. TRANSCRIBE A WEATHER DIARY　　Online, flexible hours, free Historical archives hold thousands of handwritten weather journals kept by farmers, doctors and lighthouse keepers before official records existed. Volunteers type what they see, including odd spellings, and the entries are then linked to modern climate data. Accuracy matters more than volume; a single careful page is more valuable than twenty rushed ones. Note: none of these projects requires a science degree, and all four publish their results where anyone can read them. 　 Project When Cost What you need Count the birds in your street any morning, twice a month free ten minutes; a mentor for your first three counts Classify galaxies from your sofa whenever you like free a ten-minute tutorial; no equipment Sample your local river Saturday mornings, March–November £15 kit measuring tube, thermometer, test strips Transcribe a weather diary flexible hours free careful reading; accuracy before volume 　 60. Which project offers personal help to those taking part for the first time? A. Count the birds in your street. B. Classify galaxies from your sofa. C. Sample your local river. D. Transcribe a weather diary. 　 61. What does the passage say about the galaxy project? A. Only trained volunteers may take part. B. Volunteers are paid according to the number of images they sort. C. The same image is checked by more than one volunteer. D. Speed of work is the main measure of success. 　 62. What do the river and the weather-diary projects have in common? A. Both require volunteers to buy equipment. B. Both value careful, accurate records more than large quantities. C. Both depend on data collected by regional authorities. D. Both are limited to a particular season of the year. 　 　 Passage C 　 The tree stood at the edge of a field in the American Midwest, and for years nobody who passed it could say what it was. It was clearly old — the trunk was thick, the lower branches gnarled — but the fruit it dropped each autumn was small, mottled and unremarkable. Local growers assumed it was a seedling that had grown from a discarded core. Then a photograph of the tree reached a group of amateur fruit hunters. For around two decades these enthusiasts have been walking old farms and abandoned orchards, recording trees that predate the commercial nurseries whose catalogues supposedly document every variety worth growing. Most of what they find turns out to be ordinary. Occasionally, however, they find something that rewrites the record, and they had learnt to check before they celebrated. The check in this case was a leaf. Samples were sent to a laboratory that compares the genetic fingerprints of apple varieties, and the result came back with an unexpected message: the tree did not match any known commercial cultivar. It matched, instead, descriptions of a variety that had been widely planted before 1850 and then vanished from the catalogues altogether. Further dating of the wood placed the tree decades earlier than the oldest orchard the nurseries had on record. Amateur hunters had been dismissed for years as sentimentalists chasing romantic stories about lost fruit. Yet the discovery was not confirmed by sentiment; it was confirmed by genetics, and it was the amateurs who knew where to look and which tree to sample. “They are doing real science,” one plant geneticist observed, “with a level of local knowledge that no laboratory could hire.” The variety is now being propagated again, and young trees have been planted at several heritage orchards. For the hunters, the satisfaction lies elsewhere. A catalogue, they point out, is only ever a list of what somebody chose to sell. What grows in an old field is evidence of what people actually ate. 　 63. What did local growers originally think about the tree? A. It had been planted by a commercial nursery. B. It had grown accidentally from a discarded core. C. It belonged to a variety imported from Europe. D. It was the last survivor of an abandoned orchard. 　 64. What is the main work of the amateur fruit hunters described in the passage? A. They buy old farms in order to protect historic trees. B. They search old sites for trees that predate commercial records. C. They breed new apple varieties for small growers. D. They catalogue fruit varieties held in university laboratories. 　 65. Why does the writer mention the plant geneticist's remark? A. To show that the hunters' work has gained scientific recognition. B. To argue that laboratories should employ local people. C. To explain why the variety disappeared from catalogues. D. To suggest that the discovery was largely a matter of luck. 　 66. What do the hunters' final remarks suggest about nursery catalogues? A. They are unreliable because they were never updated. B. They record what was sold rather than what was grown. C. They are more useful for dating trees than DNA evidence. D. They were kept mainly by amateur growers. 　 　 Section C Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need. 　 Most flowers, if you look closely, are mathematicians. Their petals curl and ruffle in ways that can be predicted from a single principle: different parts of a growing sheet of tissue expand at different rates, and because the sheet cannot stretch to accommodate them, it must bend. 　　67　　 This principle, known as Gauss incompatibility, accounts for an impressive range of natural shapes, from the wavy edge of certain lettuces to the veins of a leaf. It works, however, only when the resulting pattern is smooth and repeats regularly. 　　68　　 Wherever such a point appears, the mathematics that describes the rest of the petal simply stops applying. To find out what rose petals were actually doing, a team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem cut them into fine strips. When a strip was cut lengthwise, it curled up, as though the petal had been straining in that direction all along. 　　69　　 The contrast told the researchers that a petal is not a flat sheet at all, but a shape closer to a cone — something that can be flattened without any tension building up inside it. The method is borrowed from the kitchen. Quarter a carrot lengthwise and the pieces bend outwards, revealing pressure that was invisible while the carrot was whole. 　　70　　 It is a reminder that a shape often conceals the forces that produced it, and that the way to find out is not to look harder but to interfere. 　 A. Cut across the width instead, and the strip stayed exactly as it was. B. A rose petal, by contrast, is neither smooth nor periodic: its surface carries isolated points where the pattern breaks. C. No two rose petals in a garden are ever quite the same, which is part of their charm. D. To keep such a sheet flat is impossible — the same problem that defeats anyone pressing the skin of an orange flat. E. The same hidden mathematics is said to govern how many petals a flower produces. F. Cutting is a way of making internal stress visible, because the balance it maintained disappears. 2026 年 9—10 月最新时文阅读练习（GVC + ABC + 六选四） · 学生版 　 Page 1 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 Page 1 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 $2026 年 9—10 月最新时文阅读练习（GVC + ABC + 六选四） · 教师版 2026 年 9—10 月最新时文阅读练习（GVC + ABC + 六选四） 教师版 · 含答案与解析 　 Set 2 　 II. Grammar and Vocabulary 　 Section A　Grammar 出处：Scientific American · Jackie Flynn Mogensen · 2026年10月9日 ·《Feverish After a Vaccine? The Reason Could Be Your Gut Microbiome》 Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank. 　 Vaccines save millions of lives every year, but they can also cause mild side effects such as muscle soreness, tiredness and fever. Researchers have long wondered 　　21　　 some people develop these reactions while others seem unaffected. The answer, it turns out, may lie in the bacteria in our guts. In a study 　　22　　(publish) in Science, researchers collected samples from more than 170 people before and after they received 　　23　　 second or third dose of a COVID vaccine. They found that those who reported a fever had similar features in their gut bacteria. More specifically, people with worse fever had higher levels of a protein 　　24　　(call) flagellin. Flagellin forms the tail-like structures that bacteria use 　　25　　(move) around, which suggests that these microbes were more active than usual. To test this idea, the researchers carried out an experiment 　　26　　 mice. Animals that were exposed to bacteria from feverish donors showed a response similar 　　27　　 a human fever, while mice without the relevant receptors were much less affected. This pointed to a direct link between flagellin and the body's immune response. It is still not clear why flagellin levels differ so much between people, though diet may play a role: 　　28　　(vegetarian) in the study tended to have lower levels. Ruth Ley, who 　　29　　(lead) the research, hopes the results will help reduce this side effect of vaccines. If the reaction can 　　30　　(reduce), more people may be willing to get vaccinated. 　 Section B　Vocabulary 出处：BBC News · Lucy Adams & Katy McCloskey · 2026年10月5日 ·《Scotland's First AI Teacher Warns Pupils》 Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need. A. option　B. dedicated　C. embrace　D. cases　E. sceptical　F. flatter　G. tailored　H. advocates　I. biases　J. over-reliant　K. banning 　 Some teenagers are already using artificial intelligence to help with homework. Others avoid it completely. At one school in Scotland, teachers have decided that pretending AI does not exist is not a(n) 　　31　　. Pupils there now spend part of the week learning how the technology works, what it is good at, and how it fails. The school is believed to be the first in the UK to appoint a teacher 　　32　　 entirely to AI literacy. But rather than teaching pupils to 　　33　　 AI, the teacher's aim is to make sure they can question it, challenge it and use it responsibly. The idea came from teachers who noticed that pupils were already using chatbots without understanding their limits. In one of his first lessons, pupils were shown a mixture of real and AI-generated images and asked to spot the fakes. The task was much harder than most of them expected. He also teaches them about "hallucinations", 　　34　　 in which AI confidently offers information it has invented. Young people need to learn to be 　　35　　 of anything a machine tells them, and then go and check it. There is another danger. AI tends to 　　36　　 users and agree with them rather than challenging their ideas, and pupils who accept answers without thinking may become 　　37　　. The teacher compares it to a friend who always agrees: pleasant at first, but useless when you need an honest opinion. Lessons will be 　　38　　 to different ages, with younger pupils focusing on basic knowledge first. "We are not 　　39　　 for AI," the teacher says. "Our students need to know how to use it properly." They also need to understand that such systems carry 　　40　　 from the data on which they were trained. For the pupils at this school, the goal is not to fear the technology but to treat it as a tool that always deserves checking. 　 III. Reading Comprehension 　 Section A　Cloze 出处：素材依据：Science · 2020年城市噪声与鸟类鸣唱研究综述、Nature Ecology & Evolution 相关报道（城市鸟类音调升高、大山雀歌曲简化）· 原创议论文编写（2026年10月） Directions: For each blank in the following passage there are four words or phrases marked A, B, C and D. Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context. 　 Anyone who has walked through a city in spring knows the sound of birdsong. Few of us notice, however, that urban birds often sing at a 　　41　　 pitch than their relatives in the countryside. The obvious explanation is noise: to be heard above traffic, a singer must raise its voice. But a growing body of research suggests that the story is more 　　42　　, and that singing higher may carry hidden costs. The first cost is physical. Producing high notes costs energy, and high sounds do not travel as far as low ones. A bird that sings higher may therefore be heard by 　　43　　 neighbours, not more. The very change that makes a song audible in a city street may make it less 　　44　　 across a territory where every metre matters. The second cost is social. In many species, females prefer males with deeper voices. If city life forces males to sing higher, they may become less 　　45　　 to the very partners they are trying to attract. The adaptation keeps them heard, but not necessarily 　　46　　. There is also a cost to the next generation. Young birds learn their songs by listening to adults, and a song that is distorted by noise is harder to 　　47　　. Studies of great tits in European cities have found that their songs have become shorter and simpler over the decades, reducing the information a song can carry. Birds are not 　　48　　 losing their voices; they are slowly losing their grammar. Yet birds are not passive victims. Some species have found another solution: instead of singing higher, they sing 　　49　　. In cities where the mornings become noisy quickly, several species now begin their dawn chorus before the first buses appear. The findings carry a practical message. If high-pitched singing is a 　　50　　 rather than a genuine improvement, then the real solution is not to celebrate the birds' cleverness but to 　　51　　 the noise itself. Quieter roads, lower speed limits and better-insulated buildings can all help. “We should not treat this as a happy story of adaptation,” one researcher warns. “It is a 　　52　　 of how far we have pushed other species to fit around us.” None of this means that city birds are doomed. Many populations are 　　53　　, and some species are even thriving. But the fact that a species is changing does not prove that the change is 　　54　　. A bird with a simpler song may still find a mate and raise a family; over many generations, however, part of what the song once carried may quietly disappear. The birds will still be singing. Whether they will still be saying anything is another 　　55　　. 　 41. A. higher B. steadier C. lower D. softer 42. A. familiar B. complicated C. encouraging D. recent 43. A. fewer B. louder C. closer D. larger 44. A. musical B. popular C. effective D. frequent 45. A. similar B. loyal C. useful D. attractive 46. A. chosen B. loud C. safe D. understood 47. A. ignore B. copy C. record D. perform 48. A. gradually B. really C. simply D. certainly 49. A. earlier B. together C. louder D. less 50. A. victory B. mystery C. habit D. compromise 51. A. study B. reduce C. measure D. accept 52. A. reward B. record C. reminder D. risk 53. A. stable B. tiny C. silent D. protected 54. A. visible B. recent C. familiar D. harmless 55. A. story B. question C. song D. answer 　 Section B　Reading Comprehension Directions: Read the following three passages. Each passage is followed by several questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you have just read. 　 Passage A Source: Nature, 8 October 2026 　 Cancer statistics have a way of announcing themselves as good news, and the latest figures from the United States are, on the face of it, excellent. Seventy-one per cent of people diagnosed with cancer now live at least five years, up from forty-nine per cent in the late 1970s. Few areas of medicine can point to a change of that size. The gains are not evenly spread, but some of them are genuinely dramatic. Deaths from lung cancer, for decades the most stubborn of the major killers, have fallen sharply as smoking has declined and treatment has improved. Childhood leukaemias, once close to a death sentence, are now cured in the great majority of cases. Behind each percentage sits a series of unglamorous improvements: earlier scanning, better surgery, drugs that are tolerated well enough to be taken for years. Yet the headline figure carries a trap, and epidemiologists are unusually candid about it. Prostate cancer, for instance, now shows a five-year survival rate approaching ninety-eight per cent. That number is often read as evidence of brilliant treatment. It may equally be evidence that many of the tumours being found were never going to cause harm in the first place. If a slow-growing cancer would have remained silent for twenty years, then finding it early and treating it successfully does not extend a life; it merely changes what appears on a patient's record. This is not a quibble about arithmetic. It matters because the same figure is used to argue for more screening, and screening carries costs of its own: unnecessary operations, complications, and the anxiety of a diagnosis that was never going to threaten anyone. A survival statistic measures how long people live after a diagnosis. It does not measure whether the diagnosis was worth making. Those are two different questions, and only the second one tells a patient what to do. None of this diminishes real progress. Survival has improved because treatments genuinely work, and the fall in lung-cancer deaths is a triumph that no arithmetic can explain away. The lesson is narrower and more useful: a number can be rising for more than one reason at once, and a public that is only told the number will not be able to tell which reason applies. 　 56. What change in five-year cancer survival is reported? A. From 49 per cent in the late 1970s to 71 per cent today. B. From 71 per cent in the late 1970s to 49 per cent today. C. From 71 per cent ten years ago to 98 per cent today. D. From 49 per cent to 98 per cent across all cancer types. 　 57. Why does the writer describe improvements in treatment as “unglamorous”? A. They have produced smaller gains than the public believes. B. They consist of many ordinary advances rather than one breakthrough. C. They receive no funding from public bodies. D. They were achieved mainly by preventing disease rather than curing it. 　 58. What point does the writer make about prostate cancer survival rates? A. They prove that screening programmes should be expanded. B. They may reflect the detection of tumours that would never have caused harm. C. They are calculated differently from other cancer statistics. D. They have fallen because treatment has become less aggressive. 　 59. What does the writer suggest readers should do with survival statistics? A. Distrust them until the underlying data are published. B. Ask whether early detection actually improved the patient's life. C. Compare national figures instead of individual cancer types. D. Rely on them as the best available guide to treatment choices. 　 　 Passage B Source: compiled from Zooniverse, iNaturalist and museum citizen-science project pages, October 2026 　 COUNT THE BIRDS IN YOUR STREET　　Any morning, worldwide, free Urban bird surveys have quietly become one of the most useful records of how cities are changing. You do not need to identify every species: the project asks for a ten-minute count, twice a month, from the same spot, and it accepts “not sure” as an answer. Beginners are paired with an online mentor for their first three submissions. Data are published openly every quarter. CLASSIFY GALAXIES FROM YOUR SOFA　　Online, whenever you like, free Hundreds of thousands of photographs from a survey telescope are waiting to be sorted, and computers still cannot do it as well as people can. After a ten-minute tutorial you are shown images and asked simple questions about shape. Accuracy, not speed, is what the project measures, and each image is shown to several volunteers before it is accepted. SAMPLE YOUR LOCAL RIVER　　Saturday mornings, March–November, £15 kit Volunteers measure the clarity, temperature and acidity of a stretch of river near their home and upload the readings from a phone. The scheme covers more than 2,000 sites and its data are used by regional water authorities. A starter kit — measuring tube, thermometer and test strips — is posted to you; training is online and takes about an hour. TRANSCRIBE A WEATHER DIARY　　Online, flexible hours, free Historical archives hold thousands of handwritten weather journals kept by farmers, doctors and lighthouse keepers before official records existed. Volunteers type what they see, including odd spellings, and the entries are then linked to modern climate data. Accuracy matters more than volume; a single careful page is more valuable than twenty rushed ones. Note: none of these projects requires a science degree, and all four publish their results where anyone can read them. 　 Project When Cost What you need Count the birds in your street any morning, twice a month free ten minutes; a mentor for your first three counts Classify galaxies from your sofa whenever you like free a ten-minute tutorial; no equipment Sample your local river Saturday mornings, March–November £15 kit measuring tube, thermometer, test strips Transcribe a weather diary flexible hours free careful reading; accuracy before volume 　 60. Which project offers personal help to those taking part for the first time? A. Count the birds in your street. B. Classify galaxies from your sofa. C. Sample your local river. D. Transcribe a weather diary. 　 61. What does the passage say about the galaxy project? A. Only trained volunteers may take part. B. Volunteers are paid according to the number of images they sort. C. The same image is checked by more than one volunteer. D. Speed of work is the main measure of success. 　 62. What do the river and the weather-diary projects have in common? A. Both require volunteers to buy equipment. B. Both value careful, accurate records more than large quantities. C. Both depend on data collected by regional authorities. D. Both are limited to a particular season of the year. 　 　 Passage C Source: Scientific American, October 2026 　 The tree stood at the edge of a field in the American Midwest, and for years nobody who passed it could say what it was. It was clearly old — the trunk was thick, the lower branches gnarled — but the fruit it dropped each autumn was small, mottled and unremarkable. Local growers assumed it was a seedling that had grown from a discarded core. Then a photograph of the tree reached a group of amateur fruit hunters. For around two decades these enthusiasts have been walking old farms and abandoned orchards, recording trees that predate the commercial nurseries whose catalogues supposedly document every variety worth growing. Most of what they find turns out to be ordinary. Occasionally, however, they find something that rewrites the record, and they had learnt to check before they celebrated. The check in this case was a leaf. Samples were sent to a laboratory that compares the genetic fingerprints of apple varieties, and the result came back with an unexpected message: the tree did not match any known commercial cultivar. It matched, instead, descriptions of a variety that had been widely planted before 1850 and then vanished from the catalogues altogether. Further dating of the wood placed the tree decades earlier than the oldest orchard the nurseries had on record. Amateur hunters had been dismissed for years as sentimentalists chasing romantic stories about lost fruit. Yet the discovery was not confirmed by sentiment; it was confirmed by genetics, and it was the amateurs who knew where to look and which tree to sample. “They are doing real science,” one plant geneticist observed, “with a level of local knowledge that no laboratory could hire.” The variety is now being propagated again, and young trees have been planted at several heritage orchards. For the hunters, the satisfaction lies elsewhere. A catalogue, they point out, is only ever a list of what somebody chose to sell. What grows in an old field is evidence of what people actually ate. 　 63. What did local growers originally think about the tree? A. It had been planted by a commercial nursery. B. It had grown accidentally from a discarded core. C. It belonged to a variety imported from Europe. D. It was the last survivor of an abandoned orchard. 　 64. What is the main work of the amateur fruit hunters described in the passage? A. They buy old farms in order to protect historic trees. B. They search old sites for trees that predate commercial records. C. They breed new apple varieties for small growers. D. They catalogue fruit varieties held in university laboratories. 　 65. Why does the writer mention the plant geneticist's remark? A. To show that the hunters' work has gained scientific recognition. B. To argue that laboratories should employ local people. C. To explain why the variety disappeared from catalogues. D. To suggest that the discovery was largely a matter of luck. 　 66. What do the hunters' final remarks suggest about nursery catalogues? A. They are unreliable because they were never updated. B. They record what was sold rather than what was grown. C. They are more useful for dating trees than DNA evidence. D. They were kept mainly by amateur growers. 　 　 Section C Source: Scientific American, 13 October 2026 Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need. 　 Most flowers, if you look closely, are mathematicians. Their petals curl and ruffle in ways that can be predicted from a single principle: different parts of a growing sheet of tissue expand at different rates, and because the sheet cannot stretch to accommodate them, it must bend. 　　67　　 This principle, known as Gauss incompatibility, accounts for an impressive range of natural shapes, from the wavy edge of certain lettuces to the veins of a leaf. It works, however, only when the resulting pattern is smooth and repeats regularly. 　　68　　 Wherever such a point appears, the mathematics that describes the rest of the petal simply stops applying. To find out what rose petals were actually doing, a team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem cut them into fine strips. When a strip was cut lengthwise, it curled up, as though the petal had been straining in that direction all along. 　　69　　 The contrast told the researchers that a petal is not a flat sheet at all, but a shape closer to a cone — something that can be flattened without any tension building up inside it. The method is borrowed from the kitchen. Quarter a carrot lengthwise and the pieces bend outwards, revealing pressure that was invisible while the carrot was whole. 　　70　　 It is a reminder that a shape often conceals the forces that produced it, and that the way to find out is not to look harder but to interfere. 　 A. Cut across the width instead, and the strip stayed exactly as it was. B. A rose petal, by contrast, is neither smooth nor periodic: its surface carries isolated points where the pattern breaks. C. No two rose petals in a garden are ever quite the same, which is part of their charm. D. To keep such a sheet flat is impossible — the same problem that defeats anyone pressing the skin of an orange flat. E. The same hidden mathematics is said to govern how many petals a flower produces. F. Cutting is a way of making internal stress visible, because the balance it maintained disappears. 　 ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS 　 Section A　Grammar 21. why　【宾语从句】wondered 后接从句，从句缺原因状语，用 why。 22. published　【过去分词作定语】a study 与 publish 被动关系。 23. a　【不定冠词】a second or third dose 表“第二或第三剂”，泛指某一次。 24. called　【过去分词作定语】a protein 与 call 被动，相当于 which is called。 25. to move　【不定式】use sth to do sth 结构。 26. on　【介词】carry out an experiment on mice，表“在小鼠身上做实验”。 27. to　【介词】similar to 固定搭配。【易错】勿填 with——表示“与…相似”用 similar to。 28. vegetarians　【名词复数】谓语 tended 为复数形式，且指代一类人，需用复数。 29. led　【一般过去时】研究已完成，且与主句 hopes 的现在时形成时间对照。 30. be reduced　【情态动词被动】can 后接 be + 过去分词；reaction 与 reduce 被动。 速查：21. why　22. published　23. a　24. called　25. to move　26. on　27. to　28. vegetarians　29. led　30. be reduced 　 Section B　Vocabulary 31. A（option）　【名词】is not a(n) ___ 需元音开头的单数名词；option 表“选项、可行做法”。 32. B（dedicated）　【固定搭配】dedicated to 表“专门负责…的”，修饰 teacher。 33. C（embrace）　【反义对照】rather than teaching pupils to ___ 与后文 question / challenge 相对，需动词原形表“接纳”。 34. D（cases）　【名词】___ in which 构成定语从句，cases 表“情形”； hallucination 即 AI 编造信息的情形。 35. E（sceptical）　【固定搭配】be sceptical of 表“对…持怀疑态度”。 36. F（flatter）　【动词原形】tend to ___ 后接原形；后文 agree rather than challenging 即“奉承”的释义。 37. J（over-reliant）　【形容词】become ___ 与 accept answers without thinking 呼应，表“过度依赖的”。 38. G（tailored）　【固定搭配】be tailored to 表“为…量身定制”。 39. H（advocates）　【名词复数】we are ___ for AI 需复数名词与 we 一致。 40. I（biases）　【名词复数】carry ___ 需复数；后文 from the data on which they were trained 说明偏见来源。 【多余词】K. banning —— 语篇无“禁止”义。 速查：31-40: A B C D E F J G H I　　多余词: K 　 Section A　Cloze 41. A（higher）　【句组·复现】下句 to be heard above traffic, a singer must raise its voice 直接解释“音调更高”；than their relatives in the countryside 提示城郊对照。lower 与 raise its voice 矛盾。 42. B（complicated）　【句组·转折】But 提示与“显而易见的解释”相反；下文 singing higher may carry hidden costs 说明事情并非如此简单。encouraging、familiar 与“隐藏代价”方向不符。 43. A（fewer）　【句组·因果】前句说明“高音传不远”，故结果是听到的同类“更少”；not more 是直接对照标记。louder、closer 与传播距离无关，larger 与可数名词 neighbours 的语义不搭。 44. C（effective）　【句组·对照】the very change that makes a song audible… 与 make it less ___ 构成“城市里听得见／领地里不奏效”的转折；territory where every metre matters 强调“有效性”。musical、frequent 与传递效果无关。 45. D（attractive）　【句组·因果】 females prefer males with deeper voices 是原因，故高音雄鸟对“想吸引的伴侣”更缺乏吸引力，attractive 与 attracted 同义复现。loyal、useful 与求偶语境无关。 46. A（chosen）　【句组·转折】but not necessarily 提示与 kept them heard 的落差：能“被听见”不等于能“被选中”。loud 与前文重复；safe、understood 与择偶语境不符。 47. B（copy）　【句组·复现】前句 Young birds learn their songs by listening to adults 说明幼鸟靠模仿学习；distorted by noise 使歌曲更难“模仿”。record、perform 与“学习”链条无关。 48. C（simply）　【句组·对照】not simply…；they are slowly losing their grammar 构成“不仅是 A，更是 B”的递进对照，强调问题比表面更严重。really、certainly 无法与后句形成递进。 49. A（earlier）　【句组·复现】后句 begin their dawn chorus before the first buses appear 解释“更早唱”，即在噪音升高前完成鸣唱。together、less 与“避开噪音时段”无关。 50. D（compromise）　【语篇·对照】rather than a genuine improvement 提示空白与之相反，即“权宜之计／折中方案”，与全文“利中有弊”的判断一致。victory 与后文 not to celebrate 矛盾。 51. B（reduce）　【句组·复现】后句 Quieter roads, lower speed limits… 是“降低噪音”的具体措施；not…but… 结构要求空格与 celebrate（赞美）形成行为对照。study、measure 只是认识噪音，与“解决问题”不符。 52. C（reminder）　【语篇·统摄】研究者引语为全文定调：这是警示而非喜讯。a ___ of how far we have pushed other species 表“提醒我们逼得有多远”。reward、record 与警示语气不符。 53. A（stable）　【句组·递进】and some species are even thriving 中 even 提示递进，空白应是与 thriving 同向而程度更轻的状态，即“数量稳定”。tiny、silent 与“并非注定灭亡”的逻辑相反。 54. D（harmless）　【语篇·对照】But 与上句形成转折：正在改变不等于无害；下文 over many generations… may quietly disappear 正是“有害”的证据。visible、familiar 与“危害”无关。 55. B（question）　【语篇·收束】结尾把“鸟还在唱”与“还能传达意义”区分开；Whether they will still be saying anything 是一个尚未解答的“问题”，与前句 The birds will still be singing 对举。 速查：41-55: A B A C D A B C A D B C A D B 　 逻辑覆盖：转折/对照 6 · 复现/定义 4 · 因果 2 · 语篇统摄 3（共 15 题，四类齐全） 　 Section B　Passage A 56. A　Detail. Para 1: seventy-one per cent now live at least five years, up from forty-nine per cent in the late 1970s. B reverses the figures; C borrows a figure from a single cancer type; D applies one type's rate to all cancers. 57. B　Detail / inference. Para 2 lists 'unglamorous improvements' — earlier scanning, better surgery, drugs patients can tolerate for years — a series of ordinary advances rather than one breakthrough. A contradicts the dramatic gains described; C and D are not mentioned. 58. B　Inference. Para 3: the figure may reflect tumours that would never have caused harm, illustrated by a cancer that would have stayed silent for twenty years. A is the misuse the writer warns against; C and D contradict the text. 59. B　Inference. Para 4: a survival statistic records how long people live after diagnosis, not whether the diagnosis was worth making. A is too sweeping; C goes against the single-cancer analysis; D ignores the warning about what the number cannot show. 　 Section B　Passage B 60. A　Detail. The bird-count entry says beginners are paired with an online mentor for their first three submissions. The galaxy project offers a tutorial, not personal help; the river project supplies a kit and online training; the diary project offers none. 61. C　Detail. The galaxy entry states that each image is shown to several volunteers before it is accepted. A contradicts the open access described; B invents payment; D contradicts 'accuracy, not speed'. 62. B　Inference. The river entry describes standardised measurements and an hour of training; the diary entry states plainly that accuracy matters more than volume. A applies only to the river; C reverses the direction of data flow; D applies only to the river. 　 Section B　Passage C 63. B　Detail. Para 1: 'Local growers assumed it was a seedling that had grown from a discarded core.' A contradicts the later finding of an unknown variety; C and D are unsupported. 64. B　Detail. Para 2: the hunters walk old farms and abandoned orchards, recording trees that predate the commercial nurseries. A describes buying farms, which is not mentioned; C is plant breeding; D confuses their work with the laboratory's. 65. A　Inference. Para 4 contrasts the old dismissal of amateurs as sentimentalists with the geneticist's remark that they are 'doing real science'. B turns a rhetorical phrase into a policy proposal; C and D are not the point of the quotation. 66. B　Inference. Para 5: 'a catalogue is only ever a list of what somebody chose to sell', whereas what grows in an old field shows what people actually ate. A misreads the point as slack updating; C contradicts the DNA evidence; D is unsupported. 　 Section C　六选四 67. D　Gap 67, end of para 1 (closing analogy). D restates the impossibility of keeping such a sheet flat and adds the orange-skin comparison, which completes the paragraph's explanation of why petals must bend. E introduces petal numbers, a different topic; C contradicts the predictability just described. 68. B　Gap 68, mid para 2 (contrast). The paragraph limits the principle to patterns that are smooth and repeat regularly. B supplies both the contrast (a rose petal is neither) and the 'isolated points' that the next sentence refers to with 'such a point'. E and C cannot supply that referent. 69. A　Gap 69, mid para 3 (control experiment). The strip cut lengthwise curled up; the next sentence begins 'The contrast told the researchers…', so a contrasting result must come first. A provides it: cut across the width, and nothing changed. E and C are irrelevant to the experiment. 70. F　Gap 70, end of para 4 (analogy). F states what the carrot example demonstrates — that cutting makes internal stress visible — and the following sentence draws the general lesson from it. C and E belong to no gap here. Answers: 67-D　68-B　69-A　70-F 2026 年 9—10 月最新时文阅读练习（GVC + ABC + 六选四） · 教师版 Distractors (not used): C and E Page 1 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 Page 1 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 $