ENG96

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

PART I

Text 1

Everywhere one meets the idea that reading is an activity desirable in itself. It is
understandable that publishers and librarians - and even writers - should promote thisassumption, but it is strange that the idea is so widely held. Without taking into accounteither the purpose of reading or the value of what is being read, people seem to take it
5 for granted that reading is virtuous. Teachers and parents praise the child who reads,
whether the text be The Reader’s Digest or War and Peace. This attitude towardreading, however, is unwarranted; most reading is no more intellectual than playing
billiards or watching a game show on TV. Reading literature, of course, is different there really ought to be another word for this activity, but that is the subject of another10 essay.
In light of such widespread favorable feelings about reading, it is worth asking how
the act of reading became something to value in itself. In recent times, one can argue
that television has increased the value placed on reading since it provides a temptinganti-intellectual alternative. But mass literacy itself is a recent phenomenon, and I
15 suggest that the high esteem that reading enjoys today goes back to the importance thatour great-great grandparents placed on reading. Literacy used to be a mark of social
distinction, separating a small portion of humanity from the rest. Having time to readin a period of history when most people had to work long and hard meant that thereader was free from the necessity of spending most waking hours making a living. In
20 this sense, reading was an inactivity and, therefore, a badge of social class. Not
surprisingly, the farm laborer who was ambitious for his children did not daydream of
their becoming schoolteachers or doctors; he daydreamed that they would learn to read,
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and that a world would therefore open up to them in which they did not have to labor in
the fields fourteen hours a day six days a week in order to buy life’s necessities like salt
25 and cotton.
But most of the reading which is praised for itself today is not only not literary or
intellectual, it is not even reading for information. It is a kind of drug. Cheap novels,
sensationalist weekly magazines, tabloid newspapers and comic books. This drug is notharmful, but it is nothing to be proud of. This sort of reading is the idle daydream, the30 mindless escape of the bored housewife and the tired businessman, interested not inexperience and feeling, but in turning off the possibilities of experience and feeling. Far
from opening us up to the world and making us more sensitive to it - the aims ofliterature - it is reading to shut out the world, where books are not windows, but curtain.

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56. According to the text, who places too much value on the activity of reading?
a. Mainly people who work in the book industry.
b. Mainly people who watch a lot of television.
c. Generally only schoolteachers and parents.
d. Just about everybody who thinks about reading.
57. What can we assume the writer thinks about The Reader’s Digest?
a. It is primarily reading for children, not adults.
b. It is an example of desirable reading, like War and Peace.
c. It is a very different kind of reading from War and Peace.
d. It deserves to be more highly valued than it is.
58. What does the writer mean by ‘‘there really ought to be another word for thisactivity” (line 9)?
a. Reading literature gets more respect than it actually deserves.
b. People do not try hard enough to understand literature.
c. Reading literature requires more thought than other kinds of reading.
d. If we make a new word for reading, people may lower their opinion of it.
59. What does the writer suggest as the cause of the current high status of the act ofreading?
a. Promotion of the idea by publishers, librarians and writers.
b. Negative opinions that schoolteachers and parents have of television.
c. The fact that several generations ago being able to read was unusual.
d. A reduction in anti-intellectual attitudes in modern times.
60. Why, according to the writer, was reading highly valued several generations ago?
a. Being able to read was a sign of high social class.
b. Reading gave a person much needed rest from hard labor.
c. Only readers could get high paying jobs.
d. Only readers could have access to great literature.

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61. What can we assume about farm laborers of the sort mentioned in this text?
a. They did not want their children to become doctors or teachers.
b. They were not likely to be able to read themselves.
c. They thought reading would make their children more successful farmers
d. They valued hard labor more than reading ability.
62. What does the writer mean by “reading was an inactivity” (line 20)?
a. Little reading was being done in this period of history.
b. Most reading was easy and required little serious mental activity.
c. Inactive readers were not physically fit enough for hard work in the fields.
d. Time for reading was a luxury that only those who didn't work could afford.
63. In what sense does the writer think some types of reading are a kind of drug?
a. Once one starts, one cannot stop.
b. It makes one forget about the outside world.
c. It causes one to become inactive.
d. It heightens one's sensitivity about things.
64. What is the writer’s own attitude toward reading?
a. Not all reading should be highly valued.
b. Most reading is superior to watching television.
c. People should only read works of great literature.
d. Reading can be harmful if one reads too much.

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ENG96

Text 2

In America in l996, everything is pretty easy. I do not mean to discount the slums ofAmerica's inner cities, or the poor communities in Appalachia; of course, everything is
not easy everywhere. And of course, it is obvious that for middle-class Americans
everywhere, college education costs too much, jobs are scarce, inflation is growing and5 everyone feels overworked. Nonetheless, middle-class Americans, and even mostAmericans in the working lower classes, have more security and more comforts than themiddle classes and the lower classes did one hundred years ago. Everything we take for
granted - from telephones to preventive dentistry - did not exist then. Ironically, thevery things that make our lives convenient and remove us from risk also distance us
10 from the basic human struggle to survive - a struggle that once made our lives so
fundamentally meaningful.
For example, it used to be that receiving a letter was an event. Great thought went
into writing letters, and once they were written, letters were waited for impatiently, andread out loud as an afternoon's entertainment when they arrived. I'm not saying that
15 it's a pity that a person today doesn't jump up and down when the telephone rings; I'm
only pointing out that the level of excitement at the things that happen to us has
dropped. The definition of what would be not just all right, but wonderful, has risen
until it is unfulfillably high. We watch a lot of television and movies, which give us
unrealistic visions of how well our lives can be lived, and cheapen what triumphs or
20 achievements we have managed. We go on four-day holidays with air-conditioned rooms,
air-conditioned pools and air-conditioned food, and return, exhausted, to our
air-conditioned offices, homes and cars; and we wonder why we don't feel refreshed. InENG
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fact, we have so many opportunities to distract ourselves that we have lost the capacity
to interest ourselves, or to entertain each other. We could use some more boredom and25 difficulty just for contrast, so we could know when something good was happening.

65. What does the writer of this text mean by “everything is pretty easy" in America
today (line 1)?
a. Slums and the poor won’t be counted in the calculation of “easy.”b. Jobs and the cost of education are not part of the formula.
c. Life is generally safer and more convenient now than it was in 1896.
d. There are more middle-class people today and fewer in the lower classes.
66. What does the word “discount” mean in line 1?
a. cheapenb. ignorec. bargain
d. disturb
67. Why does the writer admit that the middle Class suffers from high cost of living, job
scarcity, inflation and overwork?
a. To show that Americans take their lives for granted.
b. To prove that life really isn’t easy in America.
c. To offer a more balanced picture of life in America.
d. To make readers feel sorry for these people.
68. What does the writer consider to be ironic about a modern convenience such as thetelephone?
a. It takes us farther away from the natural or basic human condition.
b. We do not really appreciate how much it has helped improve our lives.
c. It has removed us from direct contact with other people.
d. It has made us more dependent on technology to live our lives.
69. What is the writer’s purpose in the last sentence of the first paragraph?
a. To raise a question about the consequences of having modern comforts
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ENG96b. To suggest that modern comforts have little ‘‘real" value.
c. To demonstrate that modern comforts have actually made life worse.
d. To show how to avoid the risks involved in technological advances.
70. What does the writer seem to think about reading letters as an afternoon’sentertainment?
a. It’s a pity more people don’t put careful thought into it.
b. It meant more a hundred years ago than it would today.
c. It is probably more enjoyable than making phone calls.
d. It’s too bad more people don’t still pass the time this way.
71. Why does the writer think we have lost our capacity to amuse ourselves?
a. Pressures from work prevent paying attention to amusement.
b. Modern life is too full of pain and sorrow to be amusing.
c. Amusement is not high on the human list of psychological needs.
d. Our expectations for amusement have risen to unrealistic levels.
72. According to this text, how have television and Hollywood affected our lives?
a. They have made us less able to appreciate our own accomplishments.
b. They have shown us ways to live our lives better.
c. They have helped raise our enjoyment of life to a healthy level.
d. They have helped us see how our lives have gotten better over time.
73. What is the point of the vacation story (lines 20-22)?
a. Vacations do not really break up the ‘‘sameness’’ of modern life
b. People need to take longer vacations in order to feel refreshed.
c. Vacations take up too much of our valuable time.
d. People no longer go on vacation in order to get refreshed.
74. Which of the following sentences is the best paraphrase of the last sentence in thistext?
a. We need to contrast boredom with difficulty so we can appreciate both.
b. Boredom and difficulty would help us appreciate the good in our lives.
c. We should create boredom and difficulty to make our lives better.
d. Our lives would be better if we could just ignore the bad things.
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75. What is the main point oft his text?
a. Life is easier than it was 100 years ago.
b. Americans today take too many things for granted.
c. Vacations do not refresh Americans the way they shouldd. Americans should return to a simpler lifestyle.

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ENG96PART II

One of the first mysteries humans tried to solve was the meaning of the constantbeat of their own hearts. That they were not stupid was soon evident, _(76)_ by 2000 BC
some had worked out _(77)_ it was the pump that circulated blood _(78)_ their bodies.
But this was understood _(79)_ in China where the Medicine Book of The Yellow
5 Emperor was sophisticated _(80)_ to distinguish between twenty-eight different kinds ofpulse. _(81)_, these ideas remained known only _(82)_ the people who practiced
traditional Chinese medicine and did not stir curiosity among people _(83)_ widely.
Though people are not stupid, they _(84)_ have tended to be stubbornly attached totheir old ideas _(85)_ from fear of the unfamiliar, but because an old idea is _(86)_ a
10 system of thought, which is like a cobweb: every part sustains _(87)_, and once you arein such a web, you _(88)_ escape. China’s discovery was ignored by the rest of the world,_(89)_ was tied up in other cobwebs and which _(90)_ to believe different stories about
what the _(91)_ did. Both Christians and Muslims, for example, remained _(92)_ in acobweb of ideas spun by Galen, who taught that the heart was not a pump but _(93)_
15 fireplace, producing the body’s heat. Galen’s textbooks were memorized by virtually_(94)_ doctors in the West and Middle East _(95)_ about a thousand years, and _(96)_they saw in their patients could stir their curiosity towards a different explanation. The_(97)_ for this was that Galen’s ideas formed a coherent whole. Galen’s mistakes
survived _(98)_ he taught that _(99)_ should not slavishly believe ancient books. _(100)_20 his disciples listened to him more carefully, they would not have been paralyzed by hisideas.

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76.

79.

82.

85.

88.

91.

94.

a. because

77.

a. evidence

78.

a. aboutb. earlyb. to support

b. allc. if

c. that

c. of

d. so

d. whichd. througha. briefly

80.

a. advice81.

a. As a result

b. likelyb. enoughb. Perhaps

c. mostlyc. suchc. Previously

d. onlyd. sod. Unfortunately

a. among

83.

a. more84.

a. neverb. because

b. outsideb. oncec. forc. quitec. seldomd. withind. spreadd. usuallya. away86.

a. at once87.

a. every otherb. mostlyb. centeringb. itselfc. not justc. part ofc. mored. partly

d. supportingd. somea. cannot

89.

a .although it

90.

a. admittedb. don’t want tob. but itb. continuedc. had betterc. so itc. hadd. should not

d. whichd. rejected

a. Chinese

92.

a. afraid

93.

a. a sort ofb. heartb. at lastb. also ac. Partsc. caught

c. burning ad. web

d. stilld. somewhat aa. all95.

a. during96.

a. anythingb. experienced

b. forb. muchc. mostc. overc. nothingd. the earliest

d. throughd. something

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97.

100.

a. beliefa. as though

99.

a. Chinese

b. causeb. because

b. onec. effectc. even thoughc. patientsd. purpose

d. yetd. thosea. Even if
b. Hadc. If
d. Until

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1198.