|
1#

楼主 |
发表于 2005-9-16 10:00:13
|
只看该作者
Passage Three
<br> The single greatest shift in the history of mass-communication technology occurred in the 15th century and was well described by Victor Hugo in a famous chapter of "Notre-Dame de Paris" It was a cathedral. On all parts of the giant building, statuary and stone representations of
<br>every kind, combined with huge windows of stained glass, told the stories of the Bible and the
<br>saints, displayed the intricacies of Christian theology, adverted to the existence of highly unpleasant demonic winged creatures, referred diplomatically to the majesties of political power,
<br>and, in addition, by means of bells in bell towers, told time for the benefit of all of Paris and much
<br>of France. It was an awesome engine of communication.
<br> Then came the transition to something still more awesome. The new technology of mass
<br>communication was potable, could sit on your table, and was easily replicable, and yet, paradoxically, contained more information, more systematically presented, than even the largest of
<br>cathedrals. It was the printed book. Though it provided no bells and could not tell time, the
<br>over-all superiority of the new invention was unmistakable.
<br> In the last ten or twenty years, we have been undergoing a more or less equivalent shift -- this time to a new life as a computer-using population. The gain in portability, capability, ease,
<br> orderliness, accuracy, reliability, and information-storage over anything achievable by pen scribbling, typewriting, and cabinet filing is recognized by all. The progress for civilization is undeniable and, plain]y, irreversible. Yet, just as the book's triumph over the, cathedral divided people into two groups, one of which prospered, while the other lapsed into gloom, the computer's triumph has also divided the human race.
<br> You have only to bring a computer into a room to see that some people begin at once to buzz with curiosity and excitement, sit down to conduct experiments, ooh and ah at the boxes and beeps, and master the use of the computer or a new program as quickly as athletes playing a delightful new game. But how difficult it is - how grim and frightful! -- for the other people, the defeated class, whose temperament does not naturally respond to computers. The machine whirrs and glows before them and their faces twitch. They may be splendidly educated , as measured by book-reading, yet their instincts are all wrong, and no amount of manual-studying and mouse-clicking will make them right. Computers require a sharply different set of aptitudes, and, if the aptitudes are missing, little can be done, and misery is guaranteed.
<br> Is the computer industry aware that computers have divided mankind into two new, previously unknown classes, the computer personalities and the non-computer personalities? Yes, the industry knows this. Vast sums have been expended in order to adapt the computer to the limitations of non-computer personalities . Apple's Macintosh, with its zooming animations and
<br> pull-down menus and little pictures of file folders and watch faces and trash cans, pointed the way. Such seductions have soothed the apprehensions of a certain number of the computer-averse. This spring, the computer industry's. efforts are reaching a culmination of sorts .Microsoft Bill Gates' giant corporation , is to bring out a program package called Microsoft Bob, desired by Mr. Gates' wife, Melinda French, and intended to render computer technology available even to people who are openly terrified of computers. Bob's principle is to take the several tasks of operating a computer, rename them in a folksy style, and assign to them the images of an ideal room in an ideal home, with furniture and bookshelves, and with chummy cartoon helpers ("Friend, of Bob") to guide the computer user over the rough spots, and, in that way, simulate an atmosphere that feels nothing like computers .
<br>
<br>36. According to this passage, which of the following statements is NOT TRUE?
<br> A. It is because the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris had many bell-towers and could tell
<br> time to people that the writer regards it as an engine of mass communication.
<br> B. From cathedrals to books to computers the technology of communication has become
<br> more convenient, reliable and fast
<br> C. Every time when a new communication means triumphed over the old, it divided
<br> mankind into two groups.
<br> D. Computer industry has been trying hard to make people accept computers.
<br>37. The printed book is more progressive than the cathedral as a communication means, because
<br> A. it could sit on your table and did no longer tell time
<br> B. it was more reliable and did not tell the stories of saints and demons
<br> C. it was small, yet contained more information
<br> D. it did not flatter religious and political power
<br> 38. The word "awesome" in the passage means_______
<br> A. frightening B. causing fear and respect
<br> C. amazingly new D. awful
<br> 39. People who feel miserable with computers are those____
<br> A. who love reading books and writing with a pen or a typewriter
<br> B. who possess the wrong aptitudes of disliking and fearing new things
<br> C. who have not been trained to use computers
<br> D. who are born with a temperament that does not respond to computers
<br> 40. Melinda French designed Microsoft Bob which was to ease the misery of computer ,user by
<br> _________
<br> A. making users feel that they are not dealing with machines
<br> B. making the program more convenient and cartoon-like
<br> C. adding home pictures to the program design
<br> D. renaming the computer tasks in a folksy style
<br>
<br>II. Read the following passage carefully and then paraphrase the numbered and underlined
<br> parts. ("Paraphrase" means to explain the meaning in your own English.) (15%)
<br> Charm is the ultimate weapon, the supreme seduction, against which there are few defenses. If you've got it, you need almost nothing else, neither money, looks, nor pedigree. (41)It is a gift only given to give away. and the more used the more there is. It is also a climate , of behavior set for perpetual summer and controlled by taste and tact.
<br> Real charm is dynamic, an enveloping spell which mysteriously enslaves the senses. It is an
<br>inner light, fed on reservoirs of benevolence which well up like a thermal spring .It is unconscious, often nothing but the wish to please, and cannot be turned on and off at will.
<br> (42) You recognize charm by the feeling you get in its presence. You know who has it. But
<br>can you get it. too? Probably you can't, because it's a quickness of spirit an originality of touch
<br>you have to be born with. Or it's something that grows naturally out of another quality, like the
<br>simple desire to make people happy. Certainly, charm is not a question of learning tricks like
<br>wrinkling your nose, or having a laugh in your voice, or gaily tossing your hair out of your
<br>dancing eyes. (43) Such signs, to the nervous, are ominous warnings which may well send him
<br>streaking for cover. On the other hand. there is an antenna, a built-in awareness of others, which most people have , and which care can nourish.
<br> But in a study of charm , what else does one took for? Apart from the ability to listen -- rarest of all human virtues and most difficult to sustain without vagueness --- apart from warmth , sensitivity, and the power to please, what else is there visible? (44) A generosity. I suppose. which makes no demands, a transaction which strikes no bargains, which doesn't hold itself back till you've filled up a test-card making it clear that you're worth the trouble. Charm can't withhold, but spends itself willingly on young and old alike, on the poor, the ugly, the dim, the boring, on the test fat man in the comer. (45) It reveals itself also in a sense of ease, in casual but perfect manners, and often in a physical grace which spring less from an accident of youth than from a confident serenity of mind. Any person with this is more than just a popular fellow, be is also a social healer.
<br>
<br>Part Three: Cloze Test
<br>Fill in each numbered blank in the following passage: with ONE suitable word to complete the
<br>passage. Put your answers in the ANSWER SHEET. (l0%)
<br>
<br>One way of improving one's writing is to get into the habit of keeping a record of your observations, of storing (46) __ in a notebook or journal. You should make notes on your experiences and on your (47) _____ of everyday life so that they are preserved. It is sad (48) ___to be able to retrieve a lost idea that seemed brilliant when it fleshed across your (49) ___, or a forgotten fact that you need to make a point in an argument or to illustrate a conclusion.
<br> The journal habit has still (50) ___ value. Just (51)_____you need to record observations--the material for writing--you need to practice purling thoughts on paper. Learning to write is more like learning to ski (52) ____it is studying calculus or anthropology .Practice helps you discover ways to improve. Writing down ideas for your own use forces you to examine them. Putting thoughts on paper for someone else to read (53)______ you to evaluate not(54)____ the content -- what you say -- but also the expression---(55) _____ you say it. Many writers have benefited from this habit.
<br>
<br>Part Four: Proofreading
<br>Directions: This part consists of a short passage. In this passage, there are altogether 20 mistakes, one in each underlined sentence or part of a sentence. You may have to change a word, add a word or just delete a word. If you change a word, cross it out with a slash (\) and write the correct word. If you add a word, write the missing word between the words (in bracket) immediately before and after it. If you delete a word, cross it out with a slash 6). Put your answers in the ANSWER SHEET . (20 %)
<br>
<br>Examples :
<br> eg. 1 (56) The meeting begun 2 hours ago,
<br> Correction in the ANSWER SHEET: (56) began
<br> eg.2 (57) Scarcely they settled themselves in their seats in the theatre when the curtain went up Correction in the ANSWER SHEET: (57) (Scarcely) and (they)
<br> eg.3 (58) Never will I not do it again
<br> Correction in the ANSWER SHEET: (58) not
<br>
<br> (56) "Humanism" has used to mean too many things to be a very satisfactory term, (57)Nevertheless and in the lack or a better word. (58) I shall use it explain for the complex of attitudes which this discussion has undertaken to defend.
<br>(59) In this sense a humanist is anyone who reiects the attempt to describe or account of man
<br>wholly on the basis of physics, chemistry, and animal behavior. (60) He is anyone who believes
<br>that will reason, and purpose are real and significant than value and justice are aspects of a reality called good and evil and rests upon some foundation other than custom: (61) that conscjousness is so far from a mere epiphenomenon that it is the most tremendous of actualities (62) that the unmeasure may be significant or to sum it all up. (63) that these human realities which sometimes seem to exist only in human mind are the perceptions of the mind .
<br>(64) He is in other words, anyone who says that there are more things in heaven and earth that those dreamed of in the positivist philosophy.
<br>(65) Originally to be sure, the term humanist meant simply anyone who thought the study of
<br>ancient literature his chief concern. Obviously it means, as I use it, very much more. (66) But there remains nevertheless a certain connection between the aboriginal meaning and that I am attempting to give it, (67) because those whom I describe as humanists usually recognize that literature and the arts have been pretty consistently "on its side" and (68) because it is often to
<br>literature that they turn to renew their faith in the whole class of truths which the modern world has so consistently tended to dismiss as the mere figments of a wishful thinking imagination.
<br>(69) Insofar as this modern world gives less and less attention to its literary past. insofar as it dismisses that past as something outgrow and (70) to be discarded as much as the imperfect technology contemporary with it has been discarded. (71) just to that extent it facilitate the
<br>surrender of humanism to technology . (72) The literature is to be found, directly expressed or.
<br>(73) more often, indirectly implied, the most effective correction to the views now most prevalent
<br>among the thinking and unthinking.
<br>(74) The great imaginative writers present a picture of human nature and of human life which
<br>carries convjction and thus giving the lie to all attempts to reduce man to a mechanism. Novels and poems ,and dramas are so persistently concemed with the values which relativism rejects that one might even define literature as the attempt to pass value judgments upon representations of human life. (75) More often than not those of its imaginative persons who fail to achieve power and wealth are more successful that those who do not - by standards which the imaginative writer persuades us to accept as valid.
<br>
<br>Part Five: Writing
<br>Write a short composition of about 250 to 300 words on the topic given below: (15%)
<br>Topic: What is the most urgent issue facing the world people in the 21 century?
<br> State your reasons.
<br> |
|