【创新设计】2015高考英语（湖南专用）大二轮总复习阅读理解专题：专题四　“顺藤摸瓜”——明辨词义猜测类题目（含15命题动向）4-4.docVIP

　 .体验高考 Passage 1 体裁：说明文　话题：科学研究　时间：6分钟 (2014·广东卷，D)Scientists today are making greater effort to study ocean currents (洋流)．Most do it using satellites and other high-tech equipment.However，ocean expert Curtis Ebbesmeyer does it in a special way—by studying movements of random floating garbage.A scientist with many years experience，he started this type of research in the early 1990s when he heard about hundreds of athletic shoes washing up on the shores of the northwest coast of the United States.There were so many shoes that people were setting up swap_meets to try and match left and right shoes to sell or wear. Ebbesmeyer found out in his researches that the shoes－about 60,000 in total－fell into the ocean in a shipping accident.He phoned the shoe company and asked if they wanted the shoes back.As expected，the company told him that they didnt.Ebbesmeyer realized this could be a great experiment.If he learned when and where the shoes went into the water and tracked where they landed，he could learn a lot about the patterns of ocean currents. The Pacific Northwest is one of the worlds best areas for beachcombing(海滩搜寻) because winds and currents join here，and as a result，there is a group of serious beachcombers in the area.Ebbesmeyer got to know a lot of them and asked for their help in collecting information about where the shoes landed.In a year he collected reliable information on 1,600 shoes.With this data，he and a colleague were able to test and improve a computer program designed to model ocean currents，and publish the findings of their study. As the result of his work，Ebbesmeyer has become known as the scientist to call with questions about any unusual objects found floating in the ocean.He has even started an association of beachcombers and ocean experts，with 500 subscribers from West Africa to New Zealand.They have recorded all lost objects ranging from potatoes to golf gloves. 【语篇导读】　本文是说明文，介绍了一种研究洋流的特别方式。 1．The underlined phrase swap meets in Paragraph 1 i