Question

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, 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. Tough 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 of this wonderful new fruit—or is it a vegetable?” As late as the twentieth century some writers still 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.

1. 1.
   The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because ______.
   1. A.
      it made Christians evil.
   2. B.
      it was the apple of Eden
   3. C.
      it came from a forbidden land
   4. D.
      it was religiously unacceptable
2. 2.
   What can we infer the underlined part in Paragraph 3 ?
   1. A.
      The process of ignoring the tomato slowed down
   2. B.
      There was little progress in the study of the tomato
   3. C.
      The tomato was still refused in most western countries
   4. D.
      Most western people continued to get rid of the tomato
3. 3.
   What is the main reason for Robert Johnson to eat the tomato publicly?
   1. A.
      To make himself a hero
   2. B.
      To remove people’s fear of the tomato
   3. C.
      To speed up the popularity of the tomato
   4. D.
      To persuade people to buy products from his factory
4. 4.
   What is the main purpose of the passage ?
   1. A.
      To challenge people’s fixed concepts of the tomato
   2. B.
      To give an explanation to people’s dislike of the tomato
   3. C.
      To present the change of people’s attitudes to the tomato
   4. D.
      To show the process of freeing the tomato from religious influence

Answer 1

DCBC
本文講述了西紅柿進入歐洲的“辛酸血淚史”，呵呵。原本產(chǎn)于南美洲的西紅柿（好像之前也叫狼果），因為和基督教道德里的伊甸園的禁果“沾上了關(guān)系”，所以根本無法進入歐洲。直到勇敢的人兒站出來品嘗，才逐漸為其正名。注意幾個詞組：drag one’s feet 拖拖拉拉；蹣跚而行   carry the day取勝
1.歐洲本就是基督教思想控制的地區(qū)，西紅柿自打在南美發(fā)現(xiàn)開始，就悲慘地和禁果等同起來，不能進入歐洲，當然是宗教的不接受。
2.drag one’s feet本意是拖拖拉拉，做事不利索，下劃線部分不是指的緩慢下來，而是指的自始自終就沒快過，故不選A。B項錯在“study”上，歐洲人當時做的并非是對西紅柿研究，而是根本地拒絕。D項的“get rid of…”沒有道理。
3.根據(jù)短文最后一段內(nèi)容可知，Robert Johnson當眾吃西紅柿的主要原因在于他想讓人們擺脫對西紅柿的恐懼。因此，正確答案為B選項。
4.判斷文章的主要意圖，A、B項可以輕易排除。C、D兩項我比較了很久，最終選擇了C項，雖說選對了，我都感覺有點幸運的成分。C項是說展現(xiàn)人們對于西紅柿態(tài)度的變化，D項是說展現(xiàn)西紅柿如何擺脫宗教影響的過程。這兩個選項讓我至少想了三分鐘。后來我是這樣想的：西紅柿的一生雖然充滿坎坷，而且宗教的確在它的血淚史里有著夢魘一般的作用，但是并非是唯一的影響因素。而且第三段更是講解了人們對于西紅柿態(tài)度開始動搖，雖然“Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato”，但也有著名的種植專家的女兒寫下的懷疑，這些都是實實在在的人的態(tài)度的“變化”，并沒有刻意去描寫宗教的影響；在最后一段里，真正拯救和吃下西紅柿的人還是個美國人，他用自己勇敢的行為，給那些前來觀看他死亡的人以有力一擊。而在這些故事的描寫中，也和宗教就沒有太大關(guān)系了。最后我考慮的是：在“人”的態(tài)度變化和西紅柿本身地位變化的“過程”選擇上，我還是傾向于選擇了內(nèi)涵似乎更深層次的“人”的因素。所以綜上所述，宗教只是構(gòu)成文章的“重要因素”和“起因”，并非貫穿文章的“線索”。