高考名师：2009年高考英语创新试题大盘点

　　many miles. But few will know——or even think to ask——who it was that invented them.

　　Sylvan N. Goldman invented the shopping cart in 1937. At that time he was in the supermarket business. Every day he would see shoppers lugging(吃力地携带) groceries around in baskets they had to carry.

　　One day Goldman suddenly had the idea of putting baskets on wheels. The wheeled baskets would make shopping much easier for his customers, and would help to

　　attract more business.

　　On June 4th, 1937, Goldman’s

　　first carts were ready for use in his market. He was terribly excited on the morning of that day as customers began arriving. He couldn’t wait to see them using his invention.

　　But Goldman was disappointed.Most shoppers gave the carts a long look, but hardly anybody would give them a try.

　　After a while, Goldman decided

　　to ask customers why they weren’t using his carts. “Don’t you think this arm is strong enough to carry a shopping basket?” one shopper replied.

　　But Goldman wasn’t beaten yet. He knew his carts would be a great success if only he could persuade people to give them a try. To this end, Goldman hired a group of people to push carts around his market and pretend they were shopping! Seeing this, the real customers gradually began copying the phony(假冒的) customers.

　　As Goldman had hoped, the carts were soon attracting larger and larger numbers of customers to his market. But not only did more people come——those who came bought more. With larger, easier-to-handle baskets, customers

　　unconsciously bought a greater number of items than before.

　　Today’s shopping carts are five times larger than Goldman’s original model. Perhaps that’s one reason Americans today spend more than five times as much money on food each year as they did before 1937——before the coming of the shopping cart.

　　(1)The underlined words

　　“chrome-plate contraptions” in Paragraph 1 refer to ___________.(No more than 3 words)

　　(2)What was the purpose of Goldman’s invention? (No more than 10 words)________________

　　(3)Why was Goldman disappointed at first? (No more than 10 words)_______________________

　　(4)Why did Goldman hire people to push carts around his market? (No more than 10 words)

　　_____________________________

　　(5)What do you think of Goldman? Please give your reasons. (No more than 20 words)

　　_____________________________

　　解析：做此类题时，同学们可以先浏览所有题目，明确考查要求后，带着问题去阅读文章。阅读文章的时候要在文章找到与问题相关的地方，一般情况下，前面4小题的答案都可以在原文中找到;而最后1小题，常要求同学们用自己的语言回答问题，此时要注意表达的正确和准确，注意不超出字数要求。