2014高考英语阅读理解专题训练二轮精品题（二十一）及答案.docVIP

2014高考英语阅读理解专题训练二轮精品题（21）及答案 阅读理解 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 neighborhood．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 liters．The government of India promises （but rarely provides） forty．Most people drink two or three liters—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 liters 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 liters 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． ．The underlined word “slum” most likely means ______．