高考英语任务型阅读题高考英语任务型阅读题.doc

2010年高考英语任务型阅读题·江苏卷 ? 任务型阅读(共10小题；每小题1分，满分10分) 请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。 注意：请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填1个单词。 For more than twenty years scientists have been seeking to understand the mystery of the “sixth sense” of direction. By trying out ideas and solving problems one by one, they are now getting closer to one answer. One funny idea is that animals might have a built-in compass(指南针). Our earth itself is a big magnet(磁体). So a little magnetic needle that swings freely lines itself with the big earth magnet to point north and south. When people discovered that idea about a thousand years ago and invented the compass, it allowed sailors to navigate (航海) on ocean voyages, even under cloudy skies. Actually the idea of the living compass came just from observing animals in nature. Many birds migrate twice a year between their summer homes and winter homes. Some of them fly for thousands of kilometers and mostly at night. Experiments have shown that some birds can recognize star patterns. But they can keep on course even under cloudy skies. How can they do that? A common bird that does not migrate but is great at finding its way home is the homing pigeon. Not all pigeons can find their way home. Those that can are very good at it, and they have been widely studied. One interesting experiment was to attach little magnets to the birds’ heads to block their magnetic sense?just as a loud radio can keep you from hearing a call to dinner. On sunny days, that did not fool the pigeons. Evidently they can use the sun to tell which way they are going. But on cloudy days, the pigeons with magnets could not find their way. It was as if the magnets had blocked their magnetic sense. Similar experiments with the same kind of results were done with honeybees. These insects also seem to have a special sense of direction. In spite of the experiments, the idea of an animal compass seemed pretty extraordinary. How would an animal get the magnetic stuff for a compass. An