Question

Former Irish President Mary Robinson was just making a polite conversation with an Ethiopian(埃塞俄比亞的)teenager about her wedding day.The 16­year­old had already been married for a year.“She looked at me with the saddest eyes and said，‘I had to drop out of school’，” Robinson said in a telephone interview.“That conveyed to me the reality，” said Robinson，the first woman to serve as Ireland's President and former U．N.High Commissioner for Human Rights.“Her life，as far as she is concerned，had more or less ended.”

Robinson said keeping girls in school was one of the most important things policymakers could do to address the coming challenges of an ever­increasing population，predicted by the United Nations to reach 7 billion soon.“European countries are concerned about aging populations，but this is much less of an issue than the huge number of people which we are going to see over the next 40 years when the population goes from 7 billion to 9 billion，” she said.“Almost all of that increase will be in poor developing countries，so that we have a very big challenge.”

Family planning experts worry in particular about the future population explosion in Sub­Saharan Africa.In May，the United Nations projected the world population would reach 9.3 billion in 2050 and 10.1 billion by 2100.Much of that growth will come from Africa, where the population is growing at 2.3 percent a year—more than double Asia's 1 percent growth rate.If that rate stays consistent，which is not certain，Africa's population will reach 3.6 billion by 2100 from the present 1 billion.

Joel Cohen，a professor of population studies at Rockefeller University and Columbia University in New York，said universal secondary education offered a way to reduce population in high birth rate regions.In addition to providing information about birth control，a secondary education teaches women to reduce their own fertility，improve the health of their children and allow them to move from a mindset of having many children in the hope that some will survive to improve the quality of each child's life，Cohen wrote in the journal Nature.

36．In the first paragraph，the author introduces his topic by________．

A．giving an example

B．explaining his opinions

C．describing the poor education system

D．coming straight to the topic

37．What can we learn from the passage?

A．Robinson is happy after talking to the Ethiopian girl.

B．Robinson is a successful expert in population studies.

C．Robinson is worried about the population growth.

D．Robinson encourages female education.

38．What is Joel Cohen's view about secondary education?

A．It provides basic knowledge of health.

B．It reduces aging population.

C．It makes people pay more attention to education.

D．It can change people's parenting ideas.

39．According to the passage，one of the most important ways to control high population growth is to________．

A．let girls go away from Africa

B．keep girls in school

C．let young girls remain single

D．keep girls in families

Answer 1

人口的快速增長困擾著世界。有關(guān)人士指出，控制人口快速增長的一種方式就是提高女性的受教育水平，進(jìn)而改變?nèi)藗冾^腦中固有的傳統(tǒng)生育觀念。

36．A　篇章結(jié)構(gòu)題。在本段中，作者以愛爾蘭前總統(tǒng)Mary Robinson與埃塞俄比亞的一位已婚少女的交談為例引入話題，所以A項(xiàng)正確。

37．C　推理判斷題。第二段引號中的內(nèi)容提到“歐洲國家擔(dān)心出現(xiàn)人口老齡化問題，但與人口快速增長相比，這算不了什么。幾乎所有的人口增長都發(fā)生在發(fā)展中國家，這將是一個(gè)巨大的挑戰(zhàn)。”由此可推斷她擔(dān)心的是人口增長問題。

38．D　推理判斷題。由最后一段的最后一句可知，Joel Cohen在《自然》雜志中寫到中等教育可以改變?nèi)藗兊挠齼豪砟睢?/p>

39．B　細(xì)節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)第二段第一句前半部分中的內(nèi)容可知，控制人口快速增長的最重要的方式之一是讓女孩兒上學(xué)。