研究近几年全国各省市中考英语试题，我们发现“阅读理解”题呈现出这样几个特点：①题材新颖，原汁原味，趣味性强；②贴近生活实际，极具可读性；③反映社会热点，富于时代气息；④题目设计巧妙，匠心独运；⑤考查能力综合化；⑥选材广泛，信息量大。所涉及内容包罗万象，不仅涉及生活百科，自然科学，而且也触及天文地理，异域风情等。

　　兵法有云：知彼知己，百战不殆。下面就从2003年全国重点省市中考英语试题中精选出具有代表性、权威性的试题，并辅之以解题思路点拨。相信将对同学们决胜中考大有裨益。

　　(1)“选择填空”式

　　Passage 1

　　In the summer of 1978 an English man named Steven was driving his tractor through a field of wheat when he discovered something strange. Some of his wheat was lying on the ground. The flattened wheat formed(形成)a circle about six meters across . Around this circle were four smaller circles of flattened wheat.

　　Three years later a farmer who lived nearby discovered almost the same circles in one of his fields. These circles were larger—nearly 15 meters across . That same year , another English farmer discovered three circles of flattened wheat on his land—one large circle between two small circles. During the following years, farmers in England found circles in their fields more and more often.

　　The circles are called “crop circles” because they usually appear in fields of wheat or corn. The wheat in the circles lies on the ground but is never broken; it keeps on growing, and the farmers can later harvest it. Farmers always discover the crop circles in the morning, so the circles probably form at night. They appear only in the months from May to September. What causes the crop circles?

　　At first, people thought that some kids were making them as a joke, or that farmers were making them to attract tourists.(In fact, in 1991, two men said they made the circles themselves, but many scientists don’t believe them.) People tried to copy them: They tried to make circles exactly like the ones the farmers had found. They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t enter a field of wheat without leaving tracks, and they couldn’t flatten the wheat without breaking it.

　　Several times people reported seeing stranger objects near the fields where crop circles later appeared. Many people believe that these crop circles are the messages sent by living things from outer space(外层空间)or the marks left by their spaceships.