专业英语四级阅读理解分类模拟426

专业英语四级阅读理解分类模拟426

READING COMPREHENSION

Section A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS

In this section there are several passages followed by ten multiple-choice questions. For each

multiple-choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one

that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO.

Passage One

(1) The Clyde whom Samuel Griffiths described as having met at the Union League Club in Chicago,

was a somewhat modified version of the one who had fled from Kansas City three years before. He

was now twenty, a little taller and more firmly but scarcely any more robustly built, and considerably

more experienced, of course.

(2) For since leaving his home and work in Kansas City and coming in contact with some rough

usage in the world—humble tasks, wretched rooms, no intimates to speak of, plus the compulsion to

make his own way as best he might—he had developed a kind of self-reliance and smoothness of

address such as one would scarcely have credited him with three years before. There was about him

now, although he was not nearly so smartly dressed as when he left Kansas City, a kind of conscious

gentility (文雅) of manner which pleased, even though it did not at first arrest attention. Also, and this

was considerably different from the Clyde who had crept away from Kansas City in a box car, he had

much more of an air of caution and reserve.

(3) For ever since he had fled from Kansas City, and by one humble device and another forced to

make his way, he had been coming to the conclusion that on himself alone depended his future. His

family, as he now definitely sensed, could do nothing for him. They were too impractical and too poor—his mother, father, Esta, all of them.

(4) At the same time, in spite of all their difficulties, he could not now help but feel drawn to them,

his mother in particular, and the old home life that had surrounded him as a boy—his brother and

sisters, Esta included, since she, too, as he now saw it, had been brought no lower than he by

circumstances over which she probably had no more control. And often, his thoughts and mood had

gone back with a definite and disconcerting pang (一阵剧痛) because of the way in which he had

treated his mother as well as the way in which his career in Kansas City had been suddenly interrupted—his loss of Hortense Briggs—a severe blow; the troubles that had come to him since; the trouble

that must have come to his mother and Esta because of him.

(5) On reaching St. Louis two days later after his flight, and after having been most painfully bundled

out (赶，匆忙打发) into the snow a hundred miles from Kansas City in the gray of a winter morning,

and at the same time relieved of his watch and overcoat by two brakemen who had found him hiding

in the car, he had picked up a Kansas City paper—The Star—only to realize that his worst fear in

regard to all that had occurred had come true. For there, under a two-column head, and with fully a

column and a half of reading matter below, was the full story of all that had happened: a little girl, the

eleven-year-old daughter of a well-to-do (小康的) Kansas City family, knocked down and almost

instantly killed—she had died an hour later; Sparser and Miss Sipe in a hospital and under arrest at the

same time, guarded by a policeman sitting in the hospital awaiting their recovery; a splendid car very

seriously damaged; Sparser's father, in the absence of the owner of the car for whom he worked, at

once incensed (激怒) and made terribly unhappy by the folly and seeming criminality (犯罪行为) and

recklessness of his son.

(6) But what was worse, the unfortunate Sparser had already been charged with larceny (盗窃) and

homicide (杀人), and wishing, no doubt, to minimize his own share in this grave catastrophe, had not

only revealed the names of all who were with him in the car—the youths in particular and their hotel

address—but had charged that they along with him were equally guilty, since they had urged him to

make speed at the time and against his will—a claim which was true enough, as Clyde knew. And Mr.

Squires, on being interviewed at the hotel, had furnished the police and the newspapers with the

names of their parents and their home addresses.

(7) This last was the sharpest blow of all. For there followed disturbing pictures of how their

respective parents or relatives had taken it on being informed of their sins.

(本文选自An American Tragedy)

Passage Two

(1) More and more of the world is working in English. Multinational companies (even those based in

places such as Switzerland or Japan) are making it their corporate language. And international bodies

like the European Union and the United Nations are doing an ever-greater share of business in the

world's new default language. At the office, it's English's world, and every other language is just living

in it.

(2) Is this to the English-speaker's advantage? Working in a foreign language is certainly hard. It is

easier to argue fluently or to make a point subtly when not trying to call up rarely used vocabulary or

construct sentences correctly. English-speakers can try to bulldoze opposing arguments through

sheer verbiage (冗词), hold the floor to prevent anyone else from getting a word in or lighten the

mood with a joke. All of these things are far harder in a foreign language. Non-natives have not one

hand, but perhaps a bit of their brains, tied behind their backs. A recent column by Michael Skapinker

in the Financial Times says that it's important for native English-speakers to learn the skills of talking

with non-natives successfully.

(3) But, as Mr Skapinker notes, there are advantages to being a non-native, too. These are subtler—but far from trivial. Non-native speakers may not be able to show off their brilliance easily. It can be an

advantage to have your cleverness highly rated, and this is the luck of verbally fluent people around

the world. But it is quite often the other way round: it can be a boon to be thought a little dimmer than

you really are, giving the element of surprise in a negotiation. And, as an American professor in France

tells Johnson, coming from another culture—not just another language—allows people to notice

stumbling blocks and habits of thinking shared by the rest of the natives, and guide a meeting past

them. Such heterodox (非正统的) thinking can be wrapped in a bit of disingenuous cluelessness: "I'm

not sure how things work here, but I "

(4) People working in a language not their own report other perks. Asking for a clarification can buy

valuable time or be a useful distraction, says a Russian working at The Economist. Speaking slowly

allows a non-native to choose just the right word—something most people don't do when they are

excited and emotional. There is a lot to be said for thinking faster than you can speak, rather than the

other way round.

(5) Most intriguingly, there may be a feedback loop (反馈回路) from speech back into thought.

Ingenious researchers have found that sometimes decision-making in a foreign language is actually

better. Researchers at the University of Chicago gave subjects a test with certain traps—easy-looking

"right" answers that turned out to be wrong. Those taking it in a second language were more likely to

avoid the trap and choose the right answer. Fluid thinking, in other words, has its downside, and

deliberateness (审慎) an advantage. And one of the same researchers found that even in moral

decision-making—such as whether it would be acceptable to kill someone with your own hands to

save a larger number of lives—people thought in a more utilitarian (功利的), less emotional way when

tested in a foreign language. An American working in Denmark says he insisted on having salary