高级英语第一册试题A

. V ocabulary: Choose the appropriate word to fill in the blank. You may have to change the form of the word in some sentences. (10%)1. If the work were done ________ we could pay well.silent discreet careful secret2. As the offender ________ his crime, he was dealt with leniently.admit confess3. As a result, the nerves of the Duke and Duchess were frayed when the _______ buzzer of the outer door eventually sounded.silent mute4. Several strong men were needed to open and close the _______ gates to the castle. massive huge great big gigantic5. The house detective took his time, ________ puffing a cloud of blue cigar smoke.leisurely slowly unhurriedly6. To ask what the _______ of computers are is like asking what are the applications of electricity.usage application practice7. Most Americans remember Mark Twain as the father of Huck Finn's idyllic cruise through _______ boyhood.endless permanent eternal8. It would be ______, but no more than waiting here for certain detectionperilous hazardous parlous chancy9. It grows louder and more _____ until you round a corner and see a fairyland of dancing flashes, as the burnished copper catches the light of _____ lamps and braziers.distinct, innumerable clear, countless distinct, numerable10. I was offered my teaching job back but I ________. Later I became a geologist for an oil company.refused rejected declined11. I was again crushed by the rejected thought that I stood on the _______ of the first atomic bombardment.spot site place area12. Just as the Industrial Revolution took over a(n) _________ range of tasks from men‟s muscles and enormously expanded productivity, so the microcomputer is rapidly assuming huge burdens of drudgery from the human brain.immense enormous numerous huge13. The poor old man died of _______ at the hand of the slave-owner.mistreatment ill-treatment14. Mark Twain had become a very _______ man during his later life, which was reflected in his writings. He believed that the world was wrong, where people achieved nothing.sarcastic ironic cynical sentimental15. This is the _________ lawyer who is likely to w in the whole nation‟s attention.clever intelligent remarkable brilliant(卓越的）16. The _________ of computers are increasing at a fantastic rate.able capable17. If he does guess correctly, he will price the item high, and _______ little in the bargainingproduce resign surrender yield18. The few Americans and Germans seemed just as _____ as I was.constrain curb inhibit withhold19. They would also like to _____ the atomic museum.demolish destroy ruin smash20. The house detective‟s piggy eyes surveyed her ________ from his gross-jowled face. sardonic sarcastic ironicalII. Sentence and Structure (30%)A. Paraphrase the following sentences. Use brief words. (20%)1. He will price the item high, and yield little in the bargaining.2. As you approach it, a tinkling and banging and clashing begins to impinge on your ear.3. The few Americans seemed just as inhibited as I was.4. I thought somehow I had been spared.5. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it.6. We shall be strengthened not weakened in determination and in resources.7. Now we are getting somewhere.8. The house detective clucked his tongue reprovingly.9. In no area of American life is personal service so precious as in medical care.10. Well, that is California all over.B. Collocation: Choose the most appropriate expression to fill the blank. (10%)1. Little girls and elderly ladies in kimonos ______ teenagers and women in western dress.a. rubbed the shoulder withb. rubbed shoulders withc. rubbed the shoulder withd. rubbed the shoulders with2. At last this intermezzo ______, and I found myself in front of the gigantic City Hall.a. came to an endb. came to the endc. came to endd. came to ending3. The seller makes a point ______ protesting that the price he is charging is depriving him ______ all profit.a. of…fromb. from…ofc. of…ofd. from…fro m4. The shop-keepers speak in slow, measured tones, and the buyers ______.a. follow suitb. take suitc. follow suitsd. take suits5. I suppose they will be ______ in hordes.a. gathered upb. collected upc. piled upd. rounded up6. Hitler was however wrong and we should ______ to help Russia.a. make all outb. make out allc. go all outd. go out all7. The Nazi regime is devoid ______ all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination.a. fromb. ofc. outd. away8. In June 1941 Hitler suddenly ______ an attack on Russia.a. launchedb. exertedc. developedd. created9. The custom-made object will be ______.a. in everyone‟s reachb. within everyone‟s reachc. in ever yone‟s touchd. within everyone‟s touch10. The widest benefits of the electronic revolution will ______the young.a. accrue tob. accrue atc. accrue ford. accrue withIII. Please identify the figures of speech used in the following underlined parts of the sentences. (10%)1 ( ) The din of the stall-holders crying their wares, of donkey-boys and porters clearing a way for themselves by shouting vigorously, and of would-be purchasers arguing and bargaining is continuous and makes you dizzy. parallelism2 ( ) Was I not at the scene of the crime?rhetorical question3 ( ) I felt sick, and every since then they have been testing and treating me. alliteration （头韵）4 ( ) I see the German bombers and fighters in the sky, still smarting from many a British whipping, delighted to find what they believe is an easier and a safer prey.metaphor5 ( ) We will never parley, we will never negotiate... repetition6 ( ) We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air, until, ... parallelism7 ( ) The latter-day Aladdin, still snugly abed, then presses a button on a bedside box and issues a string of business and personal memos, which appear instantly on the genie screen. metaphor8 ( ) Tom Sawyer‟s endless summer of fr eedom and adventure.hyperbole9 ( ) Mark Twain gained a keen perception of the human race, of the difference between what people claim to be and what they really are. antithesis10 ( ) The instant riches of a mining strike would not be his in the reporting trade, but for making money, his pen would prove mightier than his pickax.metonymyIV. Passage Reading and Question Answering (10%)The electronic revolution promises to ease, enhance and simplify life in ways undreamed of even by the utopians. At home or office, routine chores will be performed with astonishing efficiency and speed. Leisure time, greatly increased, will be greatly enriched. Public education, so often a dreary and capricious process in the U.S., may be invested with the inspiriting quality of an Oxford tutorial—form preschool on. Medical care will be delivered with greater precision. Letters will not so easily go astray. It will be safer to walk the streets because people will not need to carry large amounts of cash; virtually all financial transactions will be conducted by computer. In the microelectronic village, the home will again be the center of society, as it was before the Industrial Revolution.Mass production of the miracle chip has already made possible home computer systems that sell for less than $800—prices will continue to fall. Many domestic devices that use electric power will be computerized. Eventually the household computer will be as much a part of the home as the kitchen sink; it will program washing machines, burglar and fire alarms, sewing machines, a robot vacuum cleaner and a machine that will rinse and stack dirty dishes. When something goes wrong with an appliance a question to the computer will elicit repair instructions—in futuregenerations, repairs will be made automatically. Energy costs will be cut by a computerized device that will direct heat to living areas where it is needed, and turn it down where it is not; the device‟s ubiquitous eye, sensing where people are at all times, will similarly turn the lights on and off as needed.Paper clutter will disappear as home information management systems take over from memo pads, notebooks, files, bills and the kitchen bulletin board.A. Write a summary of this passage in about 50 words. (6%).B. Answer the following questions in one sentence. (4%)1. What will the future home or office look like?2. How do you think the future electric appliances will work?V. Reading comprehension (40%)A. Multiple ChoicePassage 1INK-STAINED RICHES:Mencken, the Daddy of Bad-Boy PunditryIn his essay on H.L. Mencken entitled “Saving a Whale,” journalist Murray Kempton points out that “whales are the only mammals that the museums have never managed to stuff and mount in their original skins.” To Kempton, Mencken is a very great whale who, almost 40 years after his death, still defies critical taxonomy. That is putting it politely. Mencken in death provokes as much vitriol as he did while living. he has been called a racist, a humanitarian, an arch conservative and a great liberal, and the thorny fact is, he was all those things. Nobody knows what to make of a man who turned his diary into a manure pile of anti-Semitism at the same time he was working diligently to get Jews out of Hitler‟s Germany.Biographers have been stru ggling to take Mencken‟s measure since the 1920s. Fred Hobson‟s Mencken...is the latest and best attempt. Hobson is the first of Mencken‟s biographers to use all the posthumously published diaries, where the “Sage of Baltimore” vented his most odious bigotries and where he most clearly revealed the alienation and loneliness at the heart of his personality. Hobson does not try to resolve the contradictions in Mencken‟s personality. Instead, he wisely uses this new material to portray Mencken as a man forever in conflict with himself, the carefree cutup coexisting with the control freak, the comic with the tragedian. Eventually—at least a decade before the 1948 stroke that robbed him of the ability to read or write—Mencken‟s darker angels took charge of his so ul. In 1942, he wrote, “I have spent all of my 62 years here, but I still find it impossible to fit myself into the accepted patterns of American life and thought. After all these years, I remain a foreigner.”But as Hobson points out, the darkness was there all along, and the miracle is that out of this almost paralyzing bleakness, Mencken was once able to spin exuberant, lacerating prose that is as funny as it is essentially serious. At the peak of his powers, in the …20s and early …30s, he slaughtered every sacred cow in sight, from Prohibition to fundamentalism. But as hard as he could be on hillbillies and Klansmen, he was even harder on professors: “Of a thousand head of such dull drudges not ten, with their doctors‟ dissertations behind them, ever co ntribute so much as a flyspeck to the sum of human knowledge.” Coining phrases like “the Bible belt” and aphorisms like “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard,” Mencken left his indecorous f ingerprints all over Americanthought and speech.As a newspaper columnist, a magazine editor and a book writer, Mencken radically broadened the scope and raised the standards of American journalism. But most important, he proved that an intellectual could thrive in the popular press....Many have imitated Mencken‟s style....But the sad fact is, Mencken‟s disciples are not Mencken. Flaws and all, he was inimitable. As Hobson says, “He was our nay-saying Whitman, and...he sounded his own barbaric yap over the roofs of the timid and the fearful, the contented and the smug.” With his cheap cigars and his hick‟s haircut, and with his gaudy, orotund prose, he looks and sounds like an old-fashioned vaudevillian.... As nice as it would be to stick this curmudgeonly, politically incorrect relic on a back shelf and forget about him, we need his rancor too much. Better than anyone, he still instructs us on the value of the loyal opposition. At his best, he made his readers think and he kept them honest. No journalist could want a better epitaph.1. Kempton thinks that Mencken was[A] a huge man. [B] beyond reproach. [C] larger than life. [D] hard to classify.2. Hobson‟s biography is atypical of previous books abut Mencken because it[A] sues samples of Mencken‟s prose. [B] creates a one-sided portrait.[C] glosses over inconsistencies. [D] uses material Mencken never published.3. Mencken is probably best characterized as a/an[A] optimist. [B] pessimist. [C] enthusiast. [D] defeatist.4. According to the aut hor of the passage, Mencken‟s prose is[A] pedantic. [B] prosaic. [C] pungent. [D] poetic.5. The reviewer believes that Mencken‟s work should be appreciated because[A] it has historic value.[B] it reminds Americans of the importance of dissent.[C] Mencken was an excellent reporter.[D] Mencken cannot be copied.Passage 2THE DEATH OF A SPOUSEFor much of the world, the death of Richard Nixon was the end of a complex public life. But researchers who study bereavement wondered if it didn‟t also sign ify the end of a private grief. Had the former president merely run his allotted fourscore and one, or had he fallen victim to a pattern that seems to afflict longtime married couples: one spouse quickly following the other to the grave?Pat, Nixon‟s wife of 53 years, died last June after a long illness. No one knows for sure whether her death contributed to his. After all, he was elderly and had a history of serious heart disease. Researchers have long observed that the death of a spouse particularly a wife is sometimes followed by the untimely death of the grieving survivor. Historian Will Durant died 13 days after his wife and collaborator, Ariel; Bickminster Fuller and his wife died just 36 hours apart. Is this more than coincidence?“Part of the story, I suspect, is that we men are so used to ladies feeding us and taking care of us,” says Knud Helsing, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, “that when we lose a wife we go to pieces. We don‟t know how to take care of ourselves.” In one ofseveral studies Helsing has conducted on bereavement, he found that widowed men had higher mortality rates than married men in every age group. But, he found that widowers who remarried enjoyed the same lower mortality rate as men who‟d never be en widowed.Women‟s health and resilience may also suffer after the loss of a spouse. In a 1987 study of widows, researchers form the University of California, Los Angeles, and UC, San Diego, found that they had a dramatic decline in levels of important immune-system cells that fight off disease. Earlier studies showed reduced immunity in widowers.For both men and women, the stress of losing a spouse can have a profound effect. “All sorts of potentially harmful medical problems can be worsened,” says Ger ald Davison, professor of psychology at the University of Southern California. People with high blood pressure, for example, may see it rise. In Nixon‟s case, Davison speculates, “the stroke, although not caused directly by the stress, was probably hastene d by it.” Depression can affect the surviving spouse‟s will to live; suicide rates are elevated in the bereaved, along with accidents not involving cars.Involvement in life helps prolong it. Mortality, says Duke University psychiatrist Daniel Balzer, is higher in older people without a good social-support system, who don‟t feel they‟re part of a group or a family, that they “fit in” somewhere. And that‟s a common problem for men, who tend not to have as many close friendships as women. The sudden absence of routines can also be a health hazard, says Blazer. “A person who loses a spouse shows deterioration in normal habits like sleeping and eating,” he says. “They don‟t have that other person to orient them, like when do you go to bed, when do you wake up, when do you eat, when do you take your medication, when do you go out to take a walk? Your pattern is no longer locked into someone else‟s pattern, so it deteriorates.”While earlier studies suggested that the first six months to a year—or even the first week—were times of higher mortality for the bereaved, some newer studies find no special vulnerability in this initial period. Most men and women, of course do not die as a result of the loss of a spouse. And there are ways to improve the odds. A strong sense of separate identity and lack of over-dependency during the marriage are helpful. Adult sons and daughters, siblings and friends need to pay special attention to a newly widowed parent. They can make sure that he or she is socializing, getting proper nutrition and medical care, expressing emotion and, above all, feeling needed and appreciated.6. According to researchers, Richard Nixon‟s death was[A] caused by his heart problems. [B] indirectly linked to his wife‟s death.[C] the inevitable result of old age. [D] an unexplainable accident.7. The research reviewed in the passage suggests that[A] remarried men live healthier lives. [B] unmarried men have the longest life spans.[C] widowers have the shortest life spans. [D] widows are unaffected b y their mates‟ death.8. One of the results of grief mentioned in the article is[A] loss of friendships. [B] diminished socializing.[C] vulnerability to disease. [D] loss of appetite.9. The passage states that while married couples can prepare for grieving by[A] being self-reliant. [B] evading intimacy.[C] developing habits. [D] avoiding independence.10. Helsing speculates that husbands suffer from the death of a spouse because they are[A] unprepared for independence. [B] incapable of cooking.[C] unwilling to talk. [D] dissatisfied with themselves.B. Read the following passage and answer the questions. Your answers should be given in English. Be brief and straight to the point. (20%)The Penalty of DeathH. L. MenckenOf the arguments against capital punishment that issue from uplifters, two are commonly heard most often, to wit:1. That hanging a man (or frying him or gassing him) is a dreadful business, degrading to those who have to do it and revolting to those who have to witness it.2. That it is useless, for it does not deter others from the same crime.The first of these arguments, it seems to me, is plainly too weak to need serious refutation. All it says, in brief, is that the work of the hangman is unpleasant. Granted. But suppose it is? It may be quite necessary to society for all that. There are, indeed, many other jobs that are unpleasant, and yet no one thinks of abolishing them---that of the plumber, that of the soldier, that of the garbage man, that of the priest hearing confessions, that of the sand-hog, and so on. Moreover, what evidence is there that any actual hangman complains of his work? I have heard none. On the contrary, I have known many who delighted in their ancient art, and practiced it proudly.In the second argument of the abolitionists there is rather more force, but even here, I believe, the ground under them is shaky. Their fundamental error consists in assuming that the whole aim of punishing criminals is to deter other (potential) criminal ---that we hang or electrocute A simply in order to so alarm B that he will not kill C. This, I believe, is an assumption which confuses a part with the whole. Deterrence, obviously, is one of the aims of punishment, but it is surely not the only one. On the contrary, there are at least a half dozen, and some are probably quite as important. At least one of them, practically considered, is more important. Commonly, it is described as revenge, but revenge is really not the word for it. I borrow a better term from the late Aristotle: katharsis. Katharsis, so used, means a salubrious discharge of emotions, a healthy letting off of steam. A school-boy, disliking his teacher, deposits a tack upon the pedagogical chair; the teacher jumps and the boy laughs. This is katharsis. What I contend is that one of the prime objects of all judicial punishments is to afford the same grateful relief (a) to the immediate victims of the criminal punished, and (b) to the general body of moral and timorous men.These persons, and particularly the first group, are concerned only indirectly with deterring other criminals. The thing they crave primarily is the satisfaction of seeing the criminal actually before them suffer as he made them suffer. What they want is the peace of mind that goes with the feeling that accounts are squared. Until they get that satisfaction they are in a state of emotional tension, and hence unhappy. The instant they get it they are comfortable. I do not argue that this yearning is noble; I simply argue that it is almost universal among human beings. In the face of injuries that are unimportant and can be borne without damage it may yield to higher impulses; that is to say, it may yield to what is called Christian charity. But when the injury is serious Christianity is adjourned, and even saints reach for their side-arms. It is plainly asking too much of human nature to expect it to conquer so natural an impulse. A keeps s store and has a bookkeeper, B. B steals $700, employs it is playing at dice or bingo, and is cleaned out. What is A to do? Let B go? If he does so he will be unable to sleep at night. The sense of injury, of injustice, of frustration willhaunt him like pruritus. So he turns B over to the police, and they hustle B to prison. Thereafter A can sleep. More, he has pleasant dreams. He pictures B chained to the wall of a dungeon a hundred feet underground, devoured by rats and scorpions. It is so agreeable that it makes him forget his $700. He has got his katharsis.The same thing precisely takes place on a larger scale when there is a crime which destroys a whole community‟s sense of security. Every law-abiding citizen feels menaced and frustrated until the criminals have been struck down---until the communal capacity to get even with them, and more than even, has been dramatically demonstrated. Here, manifestly, the business of deterring others is no more than an afterthought. The main thing is to destroy the concrete scoundrels whose act has alarmed everyone, and thus make everyone unhappy. Until they are brought to book that unhappiness continues; when the law has been executed upon them there is a sigh of relief. In other words, there is katharsis.I know of no public demand for the death penalty for ordinary crimes, even for ordinary homicides. Its infliction would shock all men of normal decency of feeling. But for crimes involving the deliberate and inexcusable taking of human life, by men openly defiant of all civilized order---for such crimes it seems to nine men out of ten, a just and proper punishment. Any lesser penalty leaves them feeling that the criminal has got the better of society---that he is free to add insult to injury by laughing. That feeling can be dissipated only by a recourse to katharsis, the invention of the aforesaid Aristotle. It is more effectively and economically achieved, as human nature now is, by wafting the criminal to realms of bliss.The real objection to capital punishment doesn‟t lie against the actual extermination of the condemned, but against our brutal American habit of putting it off so long. After all, every one of us must die soon or late, and a murderer, it must be assumed, is one who makes that sad fact the cornerstone of his metaphysic. But it is one thing to die, and quite another thing to lie for long months and even years under the shadow of death. No sane man would choose such a finish. All of us, despite the Prayer Book, long for a swift and unexpected end. Unhappily, a murderer, under the irrational American system, is tortured for what, to him, must seem a whole series of eternities. For months on end he sits in prison while his lawyers carry on their idiotic buffoonery with writs, injunctions, mandamuses, and appeals. In order to get his money (or that of his friends) they have to feed him with hope. Now and then, by the imbecility of a judge or some trick of juristic science, they actually justify it. But let us say that, his money all gone, they finally throw up their hands. Their client is now ready for the rope or the chair. But he must still wait for months before it fetches him.That wait, I believe, is horribly cruel. I have seen more than one man sitting in the death house, and I don‟t want to see any more. Worse, it is wholly useless. Why should he wait at all? Why not hang him the day after the last court dissipates his last hope? Why torture him as not even cannibals would torture their victims? The common answer is that he must have time to make his peace with God. But how long does that take? It may be accomplished, I believe, in two hours quite as comfortably as in two years. There are, indeed, no temporal limitations upon God. He could forgive a whole herd of murderers in a millionth of a second. More, it has been done.1. What is the author‟s point in this essay? Sum up the author‟s argument in 50 words. (4%)2. How does the author put forward his argument? What does he do before he proposes his own idea about the death penalty? (4%)3. What method does the author use to refute the first argument proposed by the uplifters, that the death penalty should be abolished because it is unpleasant? How do you characterize the supporting details the author provides throughout the essay? (4%)4. What is the author‟s real objection to the death penalty? Sum up his description of how the death penalty is carried out currently within 50 words. (4%)5. Does the author expect his audience to agree with him? Where in the essay does he indicate his audience may disagree? (4%)。