SAT考试阅读练习题:Reading Comprehension Test 11
8 question 12 minutes
I chose to wander by Bethlehem Hospital; partly, because it lay
on my road round to Westminster; partly, because I had a fancy
in my head which could be best pursued within sight of its
walls. And the fancy was: Are not the sane and the insane
5 equal at night as the sane lie a dreaming? Are not all of us
outside this hospital, who dream, more or less in the
condition of those inside it, every night of our lives? Are
we not nightly persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate
preposterously with kings and queens, and notabilities of all
10 sorts? Do we not nightly jumble events and personages and times
and places, as these do daily? Said an afflicted man to me,
when I visited a hospital like this, ‘Sir, I can frequently
fly.’ I was half ashamed to reflect that so could I - by night.
I wonder that the great master, when he called Sleep the death
15 of each day’s life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each
day’s sanity.
1. It can be correctly inferred that Bethlehem hospital
I is very close to Westminster
II has patients who are regarded as insane
III is a place the author has visited before
A. I only
B. II only
C. III only
D. I and II
E. I, II and III
2. The author makes his point with the aid of all of the following except
A. rhetorical questions
B. personal anecdote
C. allusion
D. frequent use of metaphor
E. repetition and parallel construction
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately
have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the
bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect
can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing
5 the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely.
A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a
failure, and then fail all the more completely because he
drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the
English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our
10 thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language
makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
3. The example of the man who takes to drink is used to illustrate which of the following ideas in the paragraph?
A. foolish thoughts
B. the slovenliness of language
C. political and economic causes
D. an effect becoming a cause
E. bad influences
4. The author would most likely agree that
A. individual writers can never have a bad influence on the English language
B. imprecise use of language is likely to make precise thought more difficult
C. the English language is ugly and inaccurate
D. all language declines for political reasons
E. failure generally leads to more failure in a downward spiral
Paragraph one
All the sound reasons ever given for conserving other natural
resources apply to the conservation of wildlife – and with
three-fold power. When a spendthrift squanders his capital it
is lost to him and his heirs; yet it goes somewhere else.
5 When a nation allows any one kind of natural resource to be
squandered it must suffer a real, positive loss; yet
substitutes of another kind can generally be found. But when
wildlife is squandered it does not go elsewhere, like
squandered money; it cannot possibly be replaced by any
10 substitute, as some inorganic resources are: it is simply an
absolute, dead loss, gone beyond even the hope of recall.
Paragraph two
The public still has a hazy idea that Nature has an overflowing sanctuary
of her own, somewhere or other, which will fill up the gaps
automatically. The result is that poaching is commonly
15 regarded as a venial offence, poachers taken red-handed are
rarely punished, and willing ears are always lent to the cry
that rich sportsmen are trying to take the bread out of the
poor settler's mouth. The poor settler does not reflect that
he himself, and all other classes alike, really have a
20 common interest in the conservation of any wildlife that
does not conflict with legitimate human development.sat
5. The author of paragraph one probably uses the expression ‘three-fold power’
A. because there are three-times as many reasons for conserving wildlife
B. to be more dramatic that saying “double-power”
C. to emphasize the contrast between loss of money, loss of other resources, and loss of wildlife
D. to stress the need for saving money, resources and time
E. to indicate the magnitude of the problem without intending the expression to be taken literally
6. From the context, the word ‘venial’ in paragraph two most nearly means
A. major
B. criminal
C. frequent
D. trivial
E. natural
7. Both paragraphs apparently imply that
A. there is no source from which wildlife, once exterminated, can be replaced
B. poachers must be punished
C. wildlife has much in common with other natural resources
D. conservation is in conflict with human development
E. preserving wildlife is expensive
8. It can be inferred that the spendthrift in paragraph one and the poor settler mentioned in paragraph two are alike in that they are
A. in conflict with the aims of conservation
B. inclined to waste natural resources
C. more concerned with the present than the future
D. unable to control their spending
E. unaware of conservation
SAT Reading Comprehension Test 11参考答案见下一页
1.Correct Answer: B
Explanation:
We know that the hospital is on the author’s road to Westminster, but there is no information about how long the route is, and so we cannot say that it is “very close”. We cannot say that the author has visited this particular hospital before since we are told only that the author has “visited a hospital like this”. But it is clear that the hospital patients are regarded as insane, hence only statement II is correct.
2.Correct Answer: D
Explanation:
Check each term: rhetorical questions are there (they are questions used for effect rather than to elicit an answer). Personal anecdote is narration of the author’s own experiences, a technique that the author uses both in referring to his previous visit to a similar hospital and in the narration of his wandering one night. Allusion is indirect reference and is used when the author refers to the ‘great master’. Repetition and parallel construction are there (you can find many words repeated, and the questions are framed in parallel ways). But there is no metaphor. A metaphor is an implied comparison, for example, if we describe a person as a “rock in times of trouble” we are using a metaphor, because a person cannot actually be a rock.
3.Correct Answer: D
Explanation:
The example is inserted to make clearer the rather abstract idea in the previous sentence. The idea is that an effect can become a cause. In this example the initial drinking is an effect of feeling a failure, but the drinking in turn becomes the cause of further failure.
4.Correct Answer: B
Explanation:
Answer B is correct because it conveys what the author means when he says “the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts”. Note how the words “slovenliness of our language” in the text are paraphrased as “imprecise use of language”. The word “never” makes answer A too strong to be correct. Answer C is again too strong because the author is alerting us to the fact the language becomes ugly when we think foolishly, and does not state that the whole language is ugly. D is obviously too generalized, and so is E (note the words “all” and “generally” that help us identify these as incorrect.)
5.Correct Answer: C
Explanation:
The term “three-fold power” is a rhetorical device (one used for effect) to help prepare the reader for the three stages in his argument, stages in which he shows that loss of wildlife is more serious than loss of natural resources other than wild-life, and loss of money.
6.Correct Answer: D
Explanation:
If a criminal is caught red-handed and yet not punished, it implies that the crime is not taken seriously. Hence we can say that poaching (stealing animals from someone else’s land) was not regarded as serious. The word in the answer choices that means “not serious” is trivial.
7.Correct Answer: A
Explanation:
In paragraph one we are clearly told that wildlife once lost cannot be replaced (gone even beyond the hope of recall). The second tells us this in an indirect way: the public has a wrong idea that there is a way that Nature can fill the gaps. From this we can infer that the author of paragraph two believes that there is no way to replace lost wildlife. In any case the other answers are easy to eliminate because poachers and human development are not in passage one, other natural resources are not in two, and expense is in neither.
8.Correct Answer: C
Explanation:
The spendthrift wastes money so that it is not available to his descendents (but money is not a natural resource, so eliminate answer B). The poor settler does not think about the need to conserve wildlife (but that is nothing to do with spending, so eliminate D). We are not told whether the spendthrift is even aware of conservation, so eliminate A and E. C is correct as wasting money now without regard to the needs of future generations, is like poaching animals now without regard to future needs.
