【正文】 s socially accepted form of murder——has bee a national epidemic. Every hour of every day about three Americans on average are killed by drunken drivers， adding up to an incredible 250， 000 over the past decade. A drunken driver is usually defined as one with a blood alcohol content or roughly three beers， glasses of wine or shots of whisky drunk within two hours. Heavy drinking used to be an acceptable part of the American macho image and judges were lenient in most courts， but the drunken slaughter has recently caused so many wellpublicized tragedies， especially involving young children， that public opinion is no longer so tolerant. Twenty states have raised the legal drinking age to 21， reversing a trend in the 1960s to reduce it to 18. After New Jersey lowered it to 18， the number of people killed by 1820yearold drivers more than doubled， so the state recently upped it back to 21. Reformers, however, fear raising the drinking age will have little effect unless acpanied by educational programs to help young people to develop “responsible attitudes” about drinking and teach them to resist peer pressure to drink. Though new laws have led to increased arrests and tests and， in many areas already， to a marked decline in fatalities. Some states are also penalizing bars for serving customers too many drinks. A tavern in Massachusetts was fined for serving six or more double brandies to a customer who “obviously intoxicated” and later drove off the road， killing a nineyearold boy. As the fatalities continue to occur daily in every state， some Americans are even beginning to speak well of the 13 years of national prohibition of alcohol that began in 1919， what President Hoover called the “ noble experiment.” They fot that legal prohibition didn39。第 1 頁 共 8 頁 英語 知識復(fù)習(xí) 拓展精練 （ 5） 閱讀理解（共 20 小題；每小題 2 分，滿分 40 分） 閱讀下列短文，從每題所給的 A、 B、 C 和 D 四個選項中，選出最佳選項，并在答題卡上將該項涂黑。 A Back in the fifteenth century, in a tiny village near Nuremberg, lived a family with eighteen children． In spite of the hopeless condition, two of the children, Albrecht Durer and Albert, had a dream． They both wanted to pursue their talent for art． After many long discussions, the two boys finally worked out an agreement. They would toss a coin． The loser would go down into the nearby mines and, with his earnings, support his brother who attended the academy． Then, when that brother who won the toss pleted his studies, in four years, he would support the other brother at the academy． Tossing a coin, Albrecht Durer won and went off to Nuremberg． Albert went down into the dangerous mines and, for the next four years, supported his brother, whose work at the academy was almost an immediate sensation（轟動）． By the time he graduated, he had earned considerable fees for his outstanding works． When the young artist returned to his village, the Durer family held a festive dinner to celebrate Albrecht’s triumphant（勝利的） homeing． Albrecht drank a toast to his beloved brother for the years of sacrifice that had enabled him to plete his dream．