Unit 1 Living well
第二部分 阅读理解（共两节，满分35分）
第一节（共10小题；每小题2.5分，满分25分）
A
When fashion designer Mindy Scheier’s middle child, Oliver, came home one day and told her he wanted to wear jeans to school rather than sweatpants (宽松运动裤), she was faced with difficulty. Oliver has a rare disease, which causes him to struggle with everyday tasks, such as dressing himself. Would she tell her 8-year-old son that he couldn’t wear what everyone else got to wear, or could she figure out a way in which he could? She chose the latter, altering (更改) a pair of jeans for him. And with that, the Runway of Dreams Foundation was born.
Scheier started the foundation in 2014 to make adaptive clothing more accessible and fashionable for people with disabilities. As part of its aims, Runway of Dreams Foundation partners with brands to make stylish adaptive clothing lines available to the disabled, creates scholarships for students focusing on adaptive clothing and helps with employment opportunities for people in the disability community.
“It is truly unbelievable how one pair of jeans has changed the world,” Scheier said. “Creating adaptive clothing for people with disabilities and trying to make change happen in the fashion industry felt so much bigger than just Oliver or just me. It felt like something that had to happen. The future of fashion is inclusion. We’ve been dressing different body shapes, and now it’s time to dress different abilities. I am so thrilled that Runway of Dreams Foundation really started a movement to make change happen.”
“They told my mother that I wasn’t going be able to do anything for myself, but I proved them wrong. What people like me can do with a disability is the same as someone who doesn’t have one. It might look a little bit different, or a little bit strange, but it can be done. I
never opened up a magazine and saw someone that looked like me. So it’s good now for disabled young kids to see a model in an ad with a disability,” said Oliver.
21. How did Scheier react to Oliver’s request?
A. She turned it down.appreciates
B. She cared little about it.
C. She designed special clothes for him.
D. She asked him to turn to Runway of Dreams Foundation for help.
22. What does Scheier think of Runway of Dreams Foundation?
A. It should focus on normal people.
B. It will lead to changes in the fashion industry.
C. It has little influence on disabled people’s life.
D. It fails to take fashion designing into consideration.
23. What can we learn from Oliver’s words?
A. He never reads magazines.
B. He feels ashamed of himself.
C. He dreams to become a model.
D. He appreciates adaptive clothing.
B
Speaking, writing and reading are necessary to everyday life, where language is the major tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language — what words they unconsciously choose and combine — can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do.
Linguists (语言学家) try to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is learned and the ways it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon.
“Understanding why and how languages differ tells us about the range of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky, chair of the Department of Linguistics at Stanford.
Stanford linguists and psychologists study how language is interpreted (理解) by people. Even the slightest differences in language use may show the biased (有偏见的) beliefs of the speakers, according to research.
For example, a relatively harmless sentence, such as “girls are as good as boys at math,” because of the statement’s grammatical structure (结构), suggests that being good at math is more common or natural for boys than girls, the researchers said. Language can play a big role in how we and others see the world, and linguists work to discover how words and phrases can influence us, unknowingly.
People speak about 7,000 languages worldwide. Although there is a lot in common among languages, each one is unique. Jurafsky said it’s important to study languages other than our own and how they develop over time because it can help linguists understand what lies at the foundation of humans’ unique way of communicating with one another.
Linguists analyze how certain speech patterns influence particular behaviors, including how language can influence people’s buying decisions. Jurafsky said. “Understanding what different groups of people say and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together.”
24. How does the author start the text?
A. By giving examples.
B. By raising questions.
C. By referring to studies.
D. By stating the main points.
25. What does the example mentioned in Paragraph 5 show?
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