题目内容：

Dubai(迪拜)is one of the economically richest places in the world. With its numerous malls, hotels, and beautiful beaches, Dubai has always been a popular holiday destination. This city was visited by around 5 million tourists each year. The government wanted to increase this number to 15 million. However, Dubai has only 45 miles of coastline, which is nowhere enough for so many people. To solve this problem, an island that looked like a palm tree was built in 2006, and named the Palm Jumeirah.

The plan for the island was extraordinary. It was to host several hotels, shopping malls, restaurants, and homes. Although the initial plan was to build the island from concrete(水泥), a decision was taken to create it from sand and gravel(砾石), so as to give it a natural look.

To make sure that this project was a success, the best engineers from across the world were employed. Engineers from Holland formed the majority in this group. To begin with, the engineers calculated the strength of storms at sea, and also the expected amount of rise in water levels due to global warming. And then they found that, the proposed location for the island was neither very wide nor deep.

One of the difficulties the engineers came across was to put sand on the sea bed to create the breakwater(防浪堤).Finding the right sand for the project was also a daunting task, as the sand from Dubai’s deserts was too fine. Instead, sand from the sea was used, as it was coarser(粗糙). Once the breakwater was built, construction of the island began.

The Palm Island are really impressive in terms of engineering. However, these projects are so large that they may have changed the ecology of the region. Also, an immense amount of money and resources go into maintaining the islands, which is a major concern at the moment. Only time will tell if building the Palm Islands was actually a good decision.

1.What does Paragraph 1 mainly show us?

A. Beautiful attractions of Dubai.

B. The geographical features of Dubai.

C. The purposes of building the Palm Jumeirah,

D. The difficulty in developing the tourism industry.

2.Why were some changes made to the initial plan for the project?

A. To reduce the building cost.    B. To get the islands completed sooner.

C. To get the building materials more easily.    D. To make the island look more natural,

3.What does the underlined word"daunting" in Paragraph 4 mean?

A. meaningless    B. difficult    C. Impossible    D. necessary

4.According to the last paragraph, how is the construction of the Palm Islands?

A. Profitable.    B. Surprising.    C. Worrying.    D. Unbelievable.