Most mornings, the line begins to form at dawn: scores of silent women with babies on thei

Most mornings, the line begins to form at dawn: scores of silent women with babies on their backs, buckets balanced on their heads, and in each hand a bright-blue plastic jug. On good days, they will wait less than an hour before a water tanker goes across the dirt path that serves as a road in Kesum Purbahari, a slum on the southern edge of New Delhi. On bad days, when there is no electricity for the pumps, the tankers don’t come at all. “That water kills people,” a young mother named Shoba said one recent Saturday morning, pointing to a row of pails filled with thick, caramel (焦糖)-colored liquid. “Whoever drinks it will die.” The water was from a pipe shared by thousands of people in the poor neibourhood. Women often use it to wash clothes and bathe their children, but no­body is desperate enough to drink it.
　　There is no standard for how much water a person needs each day, but ex­perts usually put the minimum at fifty li­tres. The government of India promises (but rarely provides) forty. Most people drink two or three litres—less than it takes to wash a toilet. The rest is typically used for cooking and bathing. Americans consume between four hundred and six hundred litres of water each day, more than any other people on earth. Most Europeans use less than half that. The women of Kesum Purbahari each hoped to drag away a hundred litres that day—two or three buckets’ worth. Shoba has a husband and five children, and that much water doesn’t go far in a family of seven, particularly when the temperature reaches a hundred and ten degrees before noon. She often makes up the difference with bottled water, which costs more than water delivered any other way. Sometimes she just buys milk; it’s cheaper. Like the poorest people every­where, the people of New Delhi’s slums spend a far greater percentage of their incomes on water than anyone lucky enough to live in a house connected to a system of pipes.
【小题1】The underlined word “slum” most likely means . A．a villageB．a small townC．the part of a town that lacks water badlyD．an area of a town with badly-built, over-crowded buildings【小题2】Sometimes the water tanker doesn’t come because .A．there is no electricityB．the weather is badC．there is no waterD．people don’t want the dirty water【小题3】A person needs at least litres of water a day.A．fortyB．four hundredC．a hundredD．fifty【小题4】The passage mainly tells us .A．how India government manages to solve the problem of water gets their waterB．how women in Kesum Purbahari C．how much water a day a person deeds D．that India lacks water badlyD

(答案→)D 解析：文章大意：文章介绍印度的严重缺水问题，具体的例举了一些缺水的情况，让读者更加了解印度缺水的严重性和政府的不作为。【小题1】猜词题：从选项上看：A、B、C 可以指贫穷地区，也可以指富裕地区，但根据第1 段的On good days, they will wait less than an hour before a water tanker goes across the dirt path that serves as a road in Kesum Purbahari, a slum on the southern edge of New Delhi.及第2 段的最后一句Like the poorest people every­where, the people of New Delhi’s slums spend a far greater percentage of their incomes on water than anyone lucky enough to live in a house connected to a system of pipes.可以知道 slum 指的更可能是贫穷地区，D选项比较接近这个意思，因此D应该是最佳答案。【小题2】细节题：根据第1 段的On bad days, when there is no electricity for the pumps, the tankers don’t come at all.可以知道是没有电的时候，水车就不来了，A选项是正确答案。【小题3】细节题：根据第2 段的“…but experts usually put the minimum at fifty litres”可以知道一个人一天需要的最少的水量是50升，D选项是正确答案。【小题4】主旨大意题。第2 段第2 句是该文的主题句，说明这篇文章讲的是印度的缺水严重问题，D 选项与主题句的意思一致，因此是正确选项。B C，选项是细节信息，用于村托印度缺水的现象；A选项则完全与文章的意思相反，因此均可排除。

感谢回答，我学习了