ENG89

89 年度英語読解力考査
This is NOT the actual test.

PART I

Text 1

Not too long ago a thirty-year-old financial analyst was complaining to me over a
period of months about her tendency to procrastinate in her job. We had worked throughher feelings about her employers and how they related to her feelings about authority ingeneral, and to her parents specifically. We had examined her attitudes toward workand success and how these related to her marriage, her sexual identity, her desire tocompete with her husband, and her fears of such competition. Yet, despite all thisstandard and painstaking psychoanalytic work, she continued to procrastinate as muchas ever. Finally, one day, we dared to look at the obvious. "Do you like cake?" I asked her.
She replied that she did. "Which part of the cake do you like better," I went on, "the cakeor the frosting?" "Oh, the frosting!" she replied enthusiastically. "And how do you eat apiece of cake?" I inquired, feeling that I must sound like the most foolish psychiatrist
that ever lived. "I eat the frosting first, of course," she replied. From her cake eating
habits we went on to examine her work habits, and, as was to be expected, discoveredthat on any given work day she would devote the first hour to the more gratifying half ofher work, and spend the remaining six hours getting around to the objectionableremainder. I suggested that if she were to force herself to accomplish the unpleasantpart of her job during the first hour, she would then be free to enjoy the other six. It
seemed to me, I said, that one hour of pain followed by six of pleasure was preferable toone hour of pleasure followed by six of pain. She agreed, and, being basically a person ofstrong will, she no longer procrastinates.
Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a
way as to increase the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting
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it over with. It is the only decent way to live.

Questions for text1
27. The woman's problem was related to her habit of _____.
a. competing with her colleaguesb. reacting too emotionally toward her employers
c. denying her feelings about authority
d. putting off what she was supposed to do
28. The writer and the woman discussed the roles of her parents and employers as they
related to her _____.
a. feelings about authority
b. fear of competitionc. marriage
d. eating habits
29. The example of _____ helped the writer to understand the cause of the woman'sproblem.
a. how the woman felt about her employers
b. the woman's competition with her husbandc. how the woman usually ate caked. the woman's doing the unpleasant work first
30. On a typical day at work, the woman would spend _____.
a. about six hours on the easy partb. one hour on the easy partc. no time on the hard partd. too little time on the hard part

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ENG8931. The writer implies that his question about eating cake is _____.
a. inappropriate
b. painstaking
c. standard
d. unusual
32. It is clear from this text that the writer _____.
a. agrees with the policy of procrastinationb. has no opinion about the value of delaying gratificationc. thinks doing painful things first is sensible
d. does not care much about life's pleasures
33. In the end, the woman was _____.
a. able to solve her problem
b. unhappy with her doctor's advicec. doing the easy part of her work firstd. suffering from pain
34. The purpose of this text is probably to _____.
a. explain the process of psychoanalysis
b. convince readers that procrastination is unavoidablec. tell a story about a friend's eating habits
d. emphasize the importance of delaying gratification

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Text 2

Fairy tale literature is one of the great kinds, a body of stories that does what noother literature does. Fairy tales reach back to a dateless time to tell of wishes and fears
that have been shared by people of all cultures. The existence of similar fairy tales
throughout the Eurasian continent is evidence of this cultural oneness. Comparative
5 folklorists have managed to uncover characters, events, and themes that appear, oftenwith only slight changes, in tales told in India, Japan, France, Germany, and Ireland.
Naturally, each culture gave the stories different twists and emphases, just as eachculture also developed distinctively native or local tales. The fairy tale book on which I
was raised, for example, contains two Japanese stories, one of which, "The Tongue-Cut
10 Sparrow," is similar to Grimm's "The Fisherman and His Wife," while the other, "TheAccomplished and Lucky Teakettle," is like no other story I am aware of. The bestknown stories in The Thousand and One Nights are distinctively "Arabian," but many ofthe lesser-known tales have much in common with some Indian and European ones. On
the other hand, African and native American stories belong to families altogether
15 different from the fairy tales of Europe and Asia.
The stories we know today come from a relatively late period just before they began
to be written down and collected, but are descendants of versions that go back into themists of time, versions that underwent centuries of gradual changes we can only sum up
with the term "oral tradition." Furthermore, the stories themselves often reach back
20 still farther, to a time often referred to as "once upon a time"; "two thousand years ago"says the beginning of The Juniper Tree, or "when wishing still did some good," as theopening of The Frog Prince tells it. The versions we know were written, rewritten andENG
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ENG89collected primarily in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But all take us back to aworld when only a handful of people outside the church were able to read, and still
25 farther to a world of fairies, elves and other magical creatures.
The ancientness of the tales, their curious persistence in so many different countries,
their testimony to the strength of an oral tradition now all but gone, all serve to makethem a literature that latter-day people need to treat, with great care and respect if they
are going to know them at all. Some sense of historical change can help a great deal
30 here. The crucial point about fairy tales is that they became children's literature butwere nothing of the sort for most of their existence, even including written versions that
we know today. Indeed, fairy tales could not have been children's literature originally,
because the concepts of children and childhood did not exist until recent centuries. To
begin to contemplate the importance of that is to begin not only to understand what
35 fairy tales are now, but to glimpse what we can best presume they once were.

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Questions for text2
35. The two Japanese stories in the fairy tale book that the writer read as a child _____.
a. resemble the lesser-known Arabic stories
b. reflect the general pattern of uniqueness and similarity found elsewherec. show that most fairy tales were adopted from one culture to anotherd. have much in common with the African and native American stories
36. Which of the following does the writer imply about "oral tradition"?
a. That it is richer than written tradition.
b. That it is less complex than latter-day traditions.
c. That its stories cannot be reconstructed clearly today.
d. That soon its secrets will be unlocked by folklorists.
37. The expression, "when wishing still did some good"(line 21) implies that _____.
a. wishes come true only in fairy tales
b. we can only rely on wishes
c. wishes don't come true anymore
d. wishing is not as good as acting
38. Which of the following orders represents the correct time sequence presented in thetext?
1 - The time that the stories are written down
2 - The time that is referred to in the stories
3 - The time that the stories are only spoken
4 - The time that the stories are considered children's literature
a. 2, 1, 3, 4
b. 2, 4, 3, 1
c. 3, 2, 4, 1
d. 2, 3, 1, 4

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ENG8939. The phrase, "their testimony to the strength of an oral tradition now all butgone"(line 27), means that _____.
a. the tales of the oral tradition are almost goneb. writing the tales down has changed the oral traditionc. the tales are evidence of a strong but disappearing oral traditiond. the permanence of the tales has strengthened the oral tradition
40. Which of the following best represents the relationship of the sentence beginningwith "Indeed, fairy tales..." (lines 32,33) to the sentence which comes before that one,
"The crucial point..." (lines 30-31)?
a. reasonb. resultc. response
d. repetition
41. The expression in the last sentence, "to contemplate" (line 34), means "to _____."
a. compare
b. emphasizec. think aboutd. write about
42. Which of the following statements best expresses the writer's main purpose in thistext?
a. He wants to make a comparison of fairy tales and other types of literature.
b. He wants to describe how fairy tales became children's literature.
c. He wants to outline some reasons for respecting fairy tale literature.
d. He wants to emphasize the cultural oneness of the Eurasian continent.

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PART II
The essence of history is change taking place in time. But if history is to bemeaningful, there must also be continuity. A nation or a language may vary over a long
period _(43)_ as to become something vastly different from what it was _(44)_. But thisgreat change is the sum of many _(45)_ changes. At any stage in its history, the nation
5 or language is fundamentally the same entity that it _(46)_ in the immediately
preceding stage. While it changes _(47)_ it preserves its identity. The preservation ofidentity _(48)_ continuity of change, then, characterizes things which have a history.
Preservation of identity is easy to see in concrete objects, _(49)_ what about abstract
concepts such as people, institutions, organizations? _(50)_ concrete objects, they
10 usually _(51)_ preserve physical identity. What does link them is a continuity offunction and purpose. The history of language is of this _(52)_ sort. At any given
moment, the _(53)_ of a language is the sum total of the speaking habits of the people
who use it. _(54)_ habits change from year to year, _(55)_ from day to day, and therefore
the language also changes. But the people still know they are speaking "the same
15 language." Its identity persists _(56)_ change through generations. _(57)_ theaccumulated changes may become so _(58)_ that it almost seems like a wholly newlanguage. _(59)_ the continuity is such that very few people are aware of the changes
that occur in their own speech from year to year. _(60)_ the fifteen hundred or so years
of its recorded history, English has changed so greatly that its earliest form is
20 unintelligible to _(61)_ speakers of English. But _(62)_ was the language of the father
unintelligible to the son.

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ENG8943. a. as great

44. a. at the beginning

45. a. largeb. greatest

b. at the timeb. quickc. greatly

c. in the end

c. sharp

d. so greatly

d. as in the pastd. small

46. a. can be

47. a. in detailb. is

b. in factb. fromc. wasc. in outline

c. thoughd. will bed. in sumd. through48. a. for49. a. and50. a. Besides

b. butb. Unlikeb. do notc. so

c. Whereasc. seem tod. thusd. Withd. try to

52. a. former

53. a. continuity

b. lastb. function

b. Fewc. laterc. history

c. So

d. latterd. identity

d. These

55. a. even56. a. due to

51. a. do

54. a. Also

57. a. After a whileb. moreoverb. in spite ofb. All of a suddenc. neverc. instead ofc. Frequently

d. unnoticed

d. to created. In the future

58. a. difficult

59. a. But

60. a. Afterb. far

b. In additionb. Because ofc. greatc. So

c. Despite

d. muchd. Thend. During

61. a. almost

62. a. at no timeb. basicb. at some timec. formerc. at the beginningd. modernd. at the end

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