PSAT-Reading 全真模擬試験 DEMO

問題6: Farmlands, wetlands, forests, and deserts that composed the American landscape in the early
twentieth
century have frequently been transformed during the past thirty years into mushrooming
metropolitan
areas as urbanization spreads across the country. Many metropolitan areas in the United States are
growing at extraordinary rates. "Urban growth is a vital issue that requires our careful attention from
local
to global scales," said Barbara Ryan, USGS Associate Director of Geography.
"It is not until we begin to take a broad census of the land itself--tracking landscapes from a spatial
perspective in a time scale of decades--that we can grasp the scale of the changes that have already
occurred and predict the impact of changes to come."
On average, between 1984 and 2004, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas,
Memphis,
Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham, Reno-Sparks, Sacramento,
Seattle-Tacoma, and Tampa-St. Petersburg averaged 173 square miles of additional urban land over
the
two decades, with Houston, Orlando, and Atlanta as the top three regions by area. The growth
leaders by
percentage change were Las Vegas (193 percent), Orlando (157 percent), and Phoenix (103 percent).
The tone of this passage is best described as
A. restrained ardor
B. dour
C. neutral
D. fanatical
E. biased
正解: C
Explanation:
You can infer the neutral tone from the unbiased quote and the dispassionate list of cities and
statistics.