课时跟踪练(一) Warming Up & Reading — Pre-reading
Ⅰ.阅读理解
A
The origins of the Christmas traditions are the most fascinating of any holiday. All our favorite activities can be traced (追溯) back to specific points in history, and knowing how these things came about just makes celebrating Christmas much more wonderful.
The original Nicholas was born in 280 A．D. in the small country of Lycia, which is now part of modern Turkey. Nicholas became first a priest (牧师) and then a bishop (主教) in the early Christian church. The first paintings of him show Nicholas wearing the clothes of a Christian bishop — red decorated with white. When we see Santa's suit today, we're still seeing the two kinds of colors.
Nicholas became famous for giftgiving. In the early fourth century, a legend began to spread about Nicholas coming at night to the home of three poor girls who did not have money and therefore could not get married. While the girls slept, Nicholas left gold coins in their stockings, which were drying by the fire. That's how the tradition of Santa filling stockings got its start.
In 1841, Santa first appeared at a department store in Philadelphia. This Santa tried to climb down a chimney to impress the children who were watching, but he got stuck halfway down. In 1890, department store Santas began appearing all over America, especially on the East Coast around Boston. Parents in other countries joined together and hired passenger trains to take their families to see these Santas.
At the same time, Ralph E. Morris of the New England Telephone Company suggested that strings of lights be hung on Christmas trees. After all, lights would be much safer than candles. Our modernday image of Santa as a fat man is based on ads of the CocaCola company in the 1930s. Artist Hans Sundblom used a retired salesman named Les Prentice as his model.
1．What can we learn from Paragraph 1?
A．Christmas is the most important holiday.
B．The traditions of Christmas are based on facts.
C．There was not any record of Christmas in the past.
D．More and more people begin to celebrate Christmas.
解析：选B 推理推断题。由第一段可知，我们宠爱的任何圣诞节传统都可以追溯到历史上特定的由来，并且知道这些活动是如何产生的。由此可推知，这些传统都是建立在事实之上的。
2．What do we know about Nicholas?
A．He set up the first Christian church.
B．He was called Santa Claus when he was born.
C．His clothes are similar to Santa's suit in color.
D．His image is the same as the modernday Santa.
解析：选C 推理推断题。由其次段“...red decorated with white. When we see Santa's suit today, we're still seeing the two kinds of colors.”圣诞老人的由来可知，尼古拉斯第一批画像中穿着基督教主教的衣服——红镶有白的衣服。在如今圣诞老人的装扮中，我们看到的仍旧是这两种颜。
3．Three poor girls are mentioned to ________.
A．prove that Nicholas used to be a rich man
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