新東方6級訓練閱讀12

Taking charge of yourself involves putting to rest some very prevalent myths. At the top of the list is the notion that intelligence is measured by your ability to solve complex problems; to read, write and compute at certain levels, and to resolve abstract equations quickly. This vision of intelligence asserts formal education and bookish excellence as the true measures of self-fulfillment. It encourages a kind of intellectual prejudice that has brought with it some discouraging results. We have come to believe that someone who has more educational merit badges, who is very good at some form of school discipline is "intelligent." Yet mental hospitals are filled with patients who have all of the properly lettered certificates. A truer indicator of intelligence is an effective, happy life lived each day and each present moment of every day.

If you are happy, if you live each moment for everything it's worth, then you are an intelligent person. Problem solving is a useful help to your happiness, but if you know that given your inability to resolve a particular concern you can still choose happiness for yourself, or at a minimum refuse to choose unhappiness, then you are intelligent. You are intelligent because you have the ultimate weapon against the big N. B. D-Nervous Break Down.

"Intelligent" people do not have N. B. D.'s because they are in charge of themselves. They know how to choose happiness over depression, because they know how go deal with the problems of their lives.

You can begin to think of yourself as truly intelligent on the basis of how you choose to feel in the face of trying circumstances. The life struggles are pretty much the same for each of us. Everyone who is involved with other human beings in any social context has similar difficulties. Disagreements, conflicts and compromises are a part of what it means to be human Similarly, money, growing old, sickness, deaths natural disasters and accidents are all events which present problems to virtually all human beings. But some people are able to make it, to avoid immobilizing depression and unhappiness despite such occurrences, while others collapse or have an N. B. D. Those who recognize problems as a human condition and don't measure happiness by an absence of problems are the most intelligent kind of humans we know; also, the most rare.

 

21. It can be inferred that Americans being approached too closely by Middle Easterners would most probably ______________.

 A) stand still

 B) jump aside

 C) step forward

 D) draw back

注：對應文章第二段

 

22. The author gives many examples to criticize Americans for their ___________.

 A) cultural self-centeredness

 B) casual manners

 C) indifference toward foreign visitors

 D) arrogance towards other cultures

注：對應文章第四段首句

 

23. In countries other than their own most Americans _______________.

 A) are isolated by the local people

 B) are not well informed due to the language barrier

 C) tend to get along well with the natives

 D) need interpreters in hotels and restaurants

注：對應文章第五段，inform對應information

 

24. According to the author, Americans' cultural blindness and linguistic ignorance will ____________.

 A) affect their image in the new era

 B) cut themselves off from the outside world

 C) limit their role in world affairs

 D) weaken the position of the US dollar

注：對應倒數(shù)第二段

 

25. The author's intention in writing this article is to make Americans realize that ________.

 A) it is dangerous to ignore their foreign friends

 B) it is important to maintain their leading role in world affairs

 C) it is necessary to use several languages in public places

 D) it is time to get acquainted with other cultures

注：B反了

 

Our culture has caused most Americans to assume not only that our language is universal but that the gestures we use are understood by everyone. We do not realize that waving good-bye is the way to summon a person from the Philippines to one's side, or that in Italy and some Latin-American countries, curling the finger to oneself is a sign of farewell.

Those private citizens who sent packages to our troops occupying Germany after World War II and marked them GIFT to escape duty payments did not bother to find out that "Gift" means poison in German. Moreover, we like to think of ourselves as friendly, yet we prefer to be at least 3 feet or an arm's length away form others. Latins and Middle Easterners like to come closer and touch, which makes Americans uncomfortable.

Our linguistic（語言上的）and cultural blindness and the casualness with which we take notice of the developed tastes, gestures, customs and languages of other countries, are losing us friends, business and respect in the world.

Even here in the United States, we make few concessions to the needs of foreign visitors. There are no information signs in four languages on our public buildings or monuments; we do not have multilingual（多語的）guided tours. Very few restaurant menus have translations, and multilingual waiters, bank clerks and policemen are rare. Our transportation systems have maps in English only and often we ourselves have difficulty understanding them.

When we go abroad, we tend to cluster in hotels and restaurants where English is spoken. The attitudes and information we pick up are conditioned by those natives-usually the richer-who speak English. Our business dealings, as well as the nation's diplomacy, are conducted through interpreters.

For many years, America and Americans could get by with cultural blindness and linguistic ignorance. After all, America was the most powerful country of the free world, the distributor of needed funds and goods.

But all that is past. American dollars no longer buy all good things, and we are slowly beginning to realize that our proper role in the world is changing. A 1979 Harris poll reported that 55 percent of Americans want this country to play a more significant role in world affairs; we want to have a hand in the important decisions of the next century, even though it may not always be the upper hand.

 

26. What makes women blind to the deceptive nature of high heels?

 A) The multi-functional use of high heels.

 B) Their attempt to show off their status.

 C) The rich variety of high heel styles.

 D) Their wish to improve their appearance.

注：B選項show off炫耀，C是迷惑選項。

 

27. The author's presentation of the positive side of high heels is meant ______________.

 A) to be ironic

 B) to poke fun at women

 C) to be fair to the fashion industry

 D) to make his point convincing

注：諷刺意味的

 

28. The author uses the expression "those babies" (Line 3, Para.2) to refer to high heels __________.

 A) to show their fragile characteristics

 B) to indicate their feminine features

 C) to show women's affection for them

 D) to emphasize their small size

 

29. The author's chief argument against high heels is that ____________.

 A) they pose a threat to lawns

 B) they are injurious to women's health

 C) they don't necessarily make women beautiful

 D) they are ineffective as a weapon of defense

 

30. It can be inferred from the passage that women should _______________.

 A) see through the very nature of fashion myths

 B) boycott the products of the fashion industry

 C) go to a podiatrist regularly for advice

 D) avoid following fashion too closely

 

In department stores and closets all over the world, they are waiting. Their outward appearance seems rather appealing because they come in a variety of styles, textures, and colors. But they are ultimately the biggest deception that exists in the fashion industry today. What are they? They are high heels - a woman's worst enemy (whether she knows it or not). High heel shoes are the downfall of modern society. Fashion myths have led women to believe that they are more beautiful or sophisticated for wearing heels, but in reality, heels succeed in posing short as well as long term hardships. Women should fight the high heel industry by refusing to use or purchase them in order to save the world from unnecessary physical and psychological suffering.

For the sake of fairness, it must be noted that there is a positive side to high heels. First, heels are excellent for aerating（使通氣）lawns. Anyone who has ever worn heels on grass knows what I am talking about. A simple trip around the yard in a pair of those babies eliminates all need to call for a lawn care specialist, and provides the perfect-sized holes to give any lawn oxygen without all those messy chunks of dirt lying around. Second, heels are quite functional for defense against oncoming enemies, who can easily be scared away by threatening them with a pair of these sharp, deadly fashion accessories.

Regardless of such practical uses for heels, the fact remains that wearing high heels is harmful to one's physical health. Talk to any podiatrist（足病醫(yī)生）, and you will hear that the majority of their business comes from high-heel-wearing women. High heels are known to cause problems such as deformed feet and torn toenails. The risk of severe back problems and twisted or broken ankles is three times higher for a high heel wearer than for a flat shoe wearer. Wearing heels also creates the threat of getting a heel caught in a sidewalk crack or a sewer-grate（陰溝柵）and being thrown to the ground-possibly breaking a nose, back, or neck. And of course, after wearing heels for a day, any woman knows she can look forward to a night of pain as she tries to comfort her swollen, aching feet.

 

31. The picture of the reading ability of the American people, drawn by the author, is _____.

 A) rather bleak

 B) fairly bright

 C) very impressive

 D) quite encouraging

注：選一個爛的，bleak黯淡無光

 

32. The author's biggest concern is ____________.

 A) elementary school children's disinterest in reading classics

 B) the surprisingly low rate of literacy in the U.S.

 C) the musical setting American readers require for reading

 D) the reading ability and reading behavior of the middle class

 

33. A major problem with most adolescents who can read is ___________.

 A) their fondness of music and TV programs

 B) their ignorance of various forms of art and literature

 C) their lack of attentiveness and basic understanding

 D) their inability to focus on conflicting input

 

34. The author claims that the best way a reader can show admiration for a piece of poetry or prose is ____________.

 A) to be able to appreciate it and memorize it

 B) to analyze its essential features

 C) to think it over conscientiously

 D) to make a fair appraisal of its artistic value

 

35. About the future of the arts of reading the author feels ____________.

 A) upset

 B) uncertain

 C) alarmed

 D) pessimistic

注：對應最后一段

 

It is hardly necessary for me to cite all the evidence of the depressing state of literacy. These figures from the Department of Education are sufficient: 27 million Americans cannot read at all, and a further 35 million read at a level that is less than sufficient to survive in our society.

But my own worry today is less that of the overwhelming problem of elemental literacy than it is of the slightly more luxurious problem of the decline in the skill even of he middle-class reader, of his unwillingness to afford those spaces of silence, those luxuries of domesticity and time and concentration, that surround the image of the classic act of reading. it has been suggested that almost 80 percent of America's literate, educated teenagers can no longer read without an accompanying noise (music) in the background or a television screen flickering（閃爍）at the corner of their field of perception. We know very little about the brain and how it deals with simultaneous conflicting input, but every common-sense intuition suggests we should be profoundly alarmed. This violation of concentration, silence, solitude（獨處的狀態(tài)）goes to the very heart of our notion of literacy; this new form of part-reading, of part-perception against background distraction, renders impossible certain essential acts of apprehension and concentration, let alone that most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves, which is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.

Under these circumstances, the question of what future there is for the arts of reading is a real one. Ahead of us lie technical, psychic（心理的）, and social transformations probably much more dramatic than those brought about by Gutenberg, the German inventor in printing. The Gutenberg revolution, as we now know it, took a long time; its effects are still begin debated. The information revolution will touch every facet of composition, publication, distribution, and reading. No one in the book industry can say with any confidence what will happen to the book as we've known it.

 

36. According to the passage, the chief purpose of explorers in going to unknown places in the past was ______________.

 A) to display their country's military might

 B) to accomplish some significant science

 C) to find new areas for colonization

 D) to pursue commercial and state interests

注：對應文章第一段

 

37. At present, a probable inducement for countries to initiate large-scale space ventures is _____________.

 A) international cooperation

 B) nationalistic reasons

 C) scientific research

 D) long-term profits

注：對應文章第三段，B和D相反都排除

 

38. What is the main goal of sending human missions to Mars?

 A) To find out if life ever existed there.

 B) To see if humans could survive there.

 C) To prove the feasibility of large-scale space ventures.

 D) To show the leading role of science in space exploration.

 

39. By saying "With Mars the scientific stakes are arguably higher than they have ever been"  (Line 1, Para.4), the author means that _________________.

 A) with Mars the risks involved are much greater than any previous space ventures

 B) in the case of Mars, the rewards of scientific exploration can be very high

 C) in the case of Mars, much more research funds are needed than ever before

 D) with Mars, scientists argue, the fundamental interests of science are at issue

注：爭議太多，對應末段

 

40. The passage tells us that proof of life on Mars would _______________.

 A) make clear the complex chemistry in the development of life

 B) confirm the suggestion that bacterial fossils traveled to Earth on a meteorite

 C) reveal the kind of conditions under which lie originates

 D) provide an explanation why life is common in the universe

 

For centuries, explorers have risked their lives venturing into the unknown for reasons that were to varying degrees economic and nationalistic. Columbus went west to look for better trade routes to the Orient and to promote the greater glory of Spain. Lewis and Clark journeyed into the American wilderness to find out what the U.S. had acquired when it purchased Louisiana, and the Appolo astronauts rocketed to the moon in a dramatic show of technological muscle during the cold war.

Although their missions blended commercial and political-military imperatives, the explorers involved all accomplished some significant science simply by going where no scientists had gone before.

Today Mars looms（隱約出現(xiàn)）as humanity's next great terra incognita（未探明之地）. And with doubtful prospects for a short-term financial return, with the cold war a rapidly fading memory and amid a growing emphasis on international cooperation in large space ventures, it is clear that imperatives other than profits or nationalism will have to compel human beings to leave their tracks on the planet's reddish surface. Could it be that science, which has long played a minor role in exploration, is at last destined to take a leading role? The question naturally invites a couple of others: Are there experiments that only humans could do on Mars? Could those experiments provide insights profound enough to justify the expense of sending people across interplanetary space?

With Mars the scientific stakes are arguably higher than they have ever been. The issue of whether life ever existed on the planet, and whether it persists to this day, has been highlighted by mounting evidence that the Red Planet once had abundant stable, liquid water and by the continuing controversy over suggestions that bacterial fossils rode to Earth on a meteorite（隕石）from valuable data about the range of conditions under which a planet can generate the complex chemistry that leads to life. If it could be established that life arose independently on Mars and Earth, the finding would provide the first concrete clues in one of the deepest mysteries in all of science: the prevalence of life in the universe.