John Lee likes to tinker with vehicles: his four-wheel-drive resembles a tractor more than a car. "It’s watertight," he smiles.

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问题     John Lee likes to tinker with vehicles: his four-wheel-drive resembles a tractor more than a car. "It’s watertight," he smiles. For the past week he has been driving down sodden lanes in Surrey, southwest of London, transporting people and medicines. Flooding is a misery, but at least it provides an opportunity to show off a set of wheels.
    Much of southern England is now sodden, and parts of the Thames Valley and Somerset are simply underwater. In Shepperton, a town in Surrey, the village green used for the summer fete is best reached by canoe. In Devon a sea wall has collapsed, shutting down a vital railway link to the south-west. As The Economist went to press, 16 severe flood warnings had been issued by the Environment Agency, a much-criticised quango that oversees flood defence.
    Floods are like snowflakes, says Andrew McKenzie of the British Geological Survey, a research body: none is quite like another. Rivers can overflow, as in Somerset. Groundwater can flood, as in the Thames Valley. Tides can surge, inundating villages, as they have in Lincolnshire. Rain can pound down too quickly to be absorbed. None of these is rare on its own. But over the past two months Britain has been subject to the whole lot, often in combination, over a large area.
    Last month was the wettest January in southern England since 1910. The rain was unusually prolonged, falling on 23 days out of 31 , a four-decade record. Rain continues to fall on this sodden ground. As a result, the Thames river has been running high for longer than at any point since records began in 1883. The calamitous floods that struck England in 1947, by contrast, were over much more quickly.
    Fingers have been pointed at the government, for squeezing the Environment Agency’s budget. According to the Committee on Climate Change, an independent body, government funding for flood management between 2011 and 2015 will be less than in the previous four years, even in cash terms. The maintenance budget was cut particularly savagely, says Iain Sturdy of the Somerset drainage board.
The best title of the text may be______.

选项 A、Flood: Who Is to Blame
B、Can We Prevent the Floods
C、A Disastrous Flood in England
D、Natural Disasters in Human World

答案C

解析 本文讨论的主要话题是英国的一次严重洪灾,故本文的主旨大意或者标题应该围绕flood一词,四个选项中可以先排除[D]项“Natural Disasters in Human World”,显然文章只讨论了洪灾,没有讨论到其他,故这个标题太广泛,与本文不符。剩余三个选项都包括了flood一词,我们可以通过各段大意来判断。首先,第一段通过描写tractor—like car引出主题;第二段描述了本次洪灾的受灾情况;第三段分析本次洪灾特点;第四段埘比历史一洪灾,突出本次洪灾的严重性;最后一段则讨论本次洪灾的责任。故选项[A]只是第五段的大意,选项[B]“pre—vent the floods预防洪灾”文章并未讨论,故选项[C]为最佳答案。
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