5.To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians(基督教徒)ever cooked up.For them,the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil(邪惡的).So when Columbus brought the tomato back from South America,a land mistakenly considered to be Eden,everyone jumped to be the obvious conclusion.Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden,the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.
What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake(曼德拉草),a plant that was thought to have come from Hell (地獄).What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits.Though the tomato and the mandrake were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit,the general population considered them one and the same,too terrible to touch.
Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato,and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet.In the 1880s,the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father's house had been the"introduction this wonderful new fruit-or is it a vegetable?"As late as the twentieth century some writers classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an"evil fruit".
But in the end tomatoes carried the day.The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson,and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820,people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead."What are you afraid of?"he shouted."I'll show you fools that these things are good to eat!"Then he bit into the tomato.Some people fainted.But he survived and,according to a local story,set up a tomato-canning factory.
12.The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly becauseD.
A.it made Christians evil B.it was the apple of Eden
C.it came from a forbidden land D.it was religiously unacceptable
13.What can we infer from the underlined part in Paragraph 3?C
A.The process of ignoring the tomato slowed down
B.There was little progress in the study of the tomato
C.The tomato was still refused in most western countries
D.Most western people continued to get rid of the tomato
14.What is the main reason for Robert Johnson to eat the tomato publicly?B
A.To make himself a hero
B.To remove people's fear of the tomato
C.To speed up the popularity of the tomato
D.To persuade people to buy products from his factory
15.What is the main purpose of the passage?C
A.To challenge people's fixed concepts of the tomato
B.To give an explanation to people's dislike of the tomato
C.To present the change of people's attitudes to the tomato
D.To show the process of freeing the tomato from religious influence.
分析 本文主要講述了番茄在歐洲從剛開始的不被接受,到后來開放了番茄罐頭廠的"發(fā)展經(jīng)歷".番茄最開始被當(dāng)做禁果,后來由于Robert Johnson嘗試吃番茄,人們才改變了對它的看法.
解答 12.D.細節(jié)理解題.根據(jù)文章"So when Columbus brought the tomato back from South America,a land mistakenly considered to be Eden,everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion.Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden"可知,歐洲人錯誤的把西紅柿當(dāng)做禁果,這是宗教不允許的.故選D.
13.C.推理預(yù)測題.根據(jù)文章"Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato"可知,歐洲仍然忽視番茄."and"一詞表示前后文表達的意思應(yīng)為一致.A項錯誤.從前文來看.番茄的不被重視是整個西方國家的排斥,而不只是一些西方人.故選C.
14.B.細節(jié)理解題.根據(jù)文章"What are you afraid of?"he shouted."I'll show you fools that these things are good to eat!""可知,Robert Johnson吃番茄是為了讓人們不在害怕.故選B.
15.C.主旨大意題.本文主要講述了番茄在歐洲的"發(fā)展",從剛開始的不被接受,到后來開放了番茄罐頭廠,可見人們對它的態(tài)度產(chǎn)生了巨大的改變.故選C.
點評 本文是一個新聞報道類理解,題目涉及多道細節(jié)理解題,做題時結(jié)合原文和題目有針對性的找出相關(guān)語句進行仔細分析,結(jié)合選項選出正確答案.推理判斷題也是要在抓住關(guān)鍵句子的基礎(chǔ)上合理的分析才能得出正確答案,切忌胡亂猜測,一定要做到有理有據(jù).