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閱讀專題訓練一
Joseph Glatthaar’s Forged in Battle is not the first excellent study of Black soldiers and their White officers in the Civil War, but it uses more soldiers’ letters and diaries—including rare material from Black soldiers—and concentrates more intensely on Black-White relations in Black regiments than do any of its predecessors. Glatthaar’s title expresses his thesis: loyalty, friendship, and respect among White officers and Black soldiers were fostered by the mutual dangers they faced in combat.
Glatthaar accurately describes the government’s discriminatory treatment of Black soldiers in pay, promotion, medical care, and job assignments, appropriately emphasizing the campaign by Black soldiers and their officers to get the opportunity to fight. That chance remained limited throughout the war by army policies that kept most Black units serving in rear-echelon assignments and working in labor battalions. Thus, while their combat death rate was only one-third that of White units, their mortality rate from disease, a major killer in his war, was twice as great. Despite these obstacles, the courage and effectiveness of several Black units in combat won increasing respect from initially skeptical or hostile White soldiers. As one White officer put it, “they have fought their way into the respect of all the army.”
In trying to demonstrate the magnitude of this attitudinal change, however, Glatthaar seems to exaggerate the prewar racism of the White men who became officers in Black regiments. “Prior to the war,” he writes of these men, “virtually all of them held powerful racial prejudices.” While perhaps true of those officers who joined Black units for promotion or other self-serving motives, this statement misrepresents the attitudes of the many abolitionists who became officers in Black regiments. Having spent years fighting against the race prejudice endemic in American society, they participated eagerly in this military experiment, which they hoped would help African Americans achieve freedom and postwar civil equality. By current standards of racial egalitarianism, these men’s paternalism toward African Americans was racist. But to call their feelings “powerful racial prejudices” is to indulge in generational chauvinism—to judge past eras by present standards.
1. The passage as a whole can best be characterized as which of the following?
(A) An evaluation of a scholarly study
(B) A description of an attitudinal change
(C) A discussion of an analytical defect
(D) An analysis of the causes of a phenomenon(A)
(E) An argument in favor of revising a view
2. According to the author, which of the following is true of Glatthaar’s Forged in Battle compared with previous studies on the same topic?
(A) It is more reliable and presents a more complete picture of the historical events on which it concentrates than do previous studies.
(B) It uses more of a particular kind of source material and focuses more closely on a particular aspect of the topic than do previous studies.
(C) It contains some unsupported generalizations, but it rightly emphasizes a theme ignored by most previous studies.
(D) It surpasses previous studies on the same topic in that it accurately describes conditions often neglected by those studies.(B)
(E) It makes skillful use of supporting evidence to illustrate a subtle trend that previous studies have failed to detect.
3. The author implies that the title of Glatthaar’s book refers specifically to which of the following?
(A) The sense of pride and accomplishment that Black soldiers increasingly felt as a result of their Civil War experiences
(B) The civil equality that African Americans achieved after the Civil War, partly as a result of their use of organizational skills honed by combat
(C) The changes in discriminatory army policies that were made as a direct result of the performance of Black combat units during the Civil War
(D) The improved interracial relations that were formed by the races’ facing of common dangers and their waging of a common fight during the Civil War(D)
(E) The standards of racial egalitarianism that came to be adopted as a result of White Civil War veterans’ repudiation of the previous racism
4. The passage mentions which of the following as an important theme that receives special emphasis in Glatthaar’s book?
(A) The attitudes of abolitionist officers in Black units
(B) The struggle of Black units to get combat assignments
(C) The consequences of the poor medical care received by Black soldiers
(D) The motives of officers serving in Black units(B)
(E) The discrimination that Black soldiers faced when trying for promotions
5. The passage suggests that which of the following was true of Black units’ disease mortality rates in the Civil War?
(A) They were almost as high as the combat mortality rates of White units.
(B) They resulted in part from the relative inexperience of these units when in combat.
(C) They were especially high because of the nature of these units’ usual duty assignments.
(D) They resulted in extremely high overall casualty rates in Black combat units.(C)
(E) They exacerbated the morale problems that were caused by the army’s discriminatory policies.
6. The author of the passage quotes the White officer in lines 23-24 primarily in order to provide evidence to support the contention that
(A) virtually all White officers initially had hostile attitudes toward Black soldiers
(B) Black soldiers were often forced to defend themselves from physical attacks initiated by soldiers from White units
(C) the combat performance of Black units changed the attitudes of White soldiers toward Black soldiers
(D) White units paid especially careful attention to the performance of Black units in battle(C)
(E) respect in the army as a whole was accorded only to those units, whether Black or White, that performed well in battle
7. Which of the following best describes the kind of error attributed to Glatthaar in lines 25-28?
(A) Insisting on an unwarranted distinction between two groups of individuals in order to render an argument concerning them internally consistent
(B) Supporting an argument in favor of a given interpretation of a situation with evidence that is not particularly relevant to the situation
(C) Presenting a distorted view of the motives of certain individuals in order to provide grounds for a negative evaluation of their actions
(D) Describing the conditions prevailing before a given event in such a way that the contrast with those prevailing after the event appears more striking than it actually is(D)
(E) Asserting that a given event is caused by another event merely because the other event occurred before the given event occurred
8. Which of the following actions can best be described as indulging in “generational chauvinism” (lines 40-41) as that practice is defined in the passage?
(A) Condemning a present-day monarch merely because many monarchs have been tyrannical in the past.
(B) Clinging to the formal standards of politeness common in one’s youth to such a degree that any relaxation of those standards is intolerable.
(C) Questioning the accuracy of a report written by an employee merely because of the employee’s gender.
(D) Deriding the superstitions accepted as “science” in past eras without acknowledging the prevalence of irrational beliefs today.(E)
(E) Labeling a nineteenth-century politician as “corrupt” for engaging in once-acceptable practices considered intolerable today.
閱讀專題訓練二
Kazuko Nakane’s history of the early Japanese immigrants to central California’s Pajaro Valley focuses on the development of farming communities there from 1890 to 1940. The Issei (first-generation immigrants) were brought into the Pajaro Valley to raise sugar beets. Like Issei laborers in American cities, Japanese men in rural areas sought employment via the “boss” system. The system comprised three elements: immigrant wage laborers; Issei boardinghouses (boardinghouse: n.寄宿公寓) where laborers stayed; and labor contractors, who gathered workers for a particular job and then negotiated a contract between workers and employer. This same system was originally utilized by the Chinese laborers who had preceded the Japanese. A related institution was the “labor club,” which provided job information and negotiated employment contracts and other legal matters, such as the rental of land, for Issei who chose to belong and paid an annual fee to the cooperative for membership.
When the local sugar beet industry collapsed in 1902, the Issei began to lease land from the valley’s strawberry farmers. The Japanese provided the labor and the crop was divided between laborers and landowners. The Issei thus moved quickly from wage-labor employment to sharecropping (sharecrop: v.作佃農耕種) agreements. A limited amount of economic progress was made as some Issei were able to rent or buy farmland directly, while others joined together to form farming corporations. As the Issei began to operate farms, they began to marry and start families, forming an established Japanese American community. Unfortunately, the Issei’s efforts to attain agricultural independence were hampered by government restrictions, such as the Alien Land Law of 1913. But immigrants could circumvent such exclusionary laws by leasing or purchasing land in their American-born children’s names.
Nakane’s case study (case study: n.個案研究) of one rural Japanese American community provides valuable information about the lives and experiences of the Issei. It is, however, too particularistic (particularism: a tendency to explain complex social phenomena in terms of a single causative factor). This limitation derives from Nakane’s methodology—that of oral history—which cannot substitute for a broader theoretical or comparative perspective. Future research might well consider two issues raised by her study: were the Issei of the Pajaro Valley similar to or different from Issei in urban settings, and what variations existed between rural Japanese American communities?
1. The primary purpose of the passage is to
(A) defend a controversial hypothesis presented in a history of early Japanese immigrants to California
(B) dismiss a history of an early Japanese settlement in California as narrow and ill constructed
(C) summarize and critique a history of an early Japanese settlement in California
(D) compare a history of one Japanese American community with studies of Japanese settlements throughout California(C)
(E) examine the differences between Japanese and Chinese immigrants to central California in the 1890’s
2. Which of the following best describes a “labor club,” as defined in the passage?
(A) An organization to which Issei were compelled to belong if they sought employment in the Pajaro Valley
(B) An association whose members included labor contractors and landowning “bosses”
(C) A type of farming corporation set up by Issei who had resided in the Pajaro Valley for some time
(D) A cooperative association whose members were dues-paying Japanese laborers(D)
(E) A social organization to which Japanese laborers and their families belonged
3. Based on information in the passage, which of the following statements concerning the Alien Land Law of 1913 is most accurate?
(A) It excluded American-born citizens of Japanese ancestry from landownership.
(B) It sought to restrict the number of foreign immigrants to California.
(C) It successfully prevented Issei from ever purchasing farmland.
(D) It was applicable to first-generation immigrants but not to their American-born children.(D)
(E) It was passed under pressure from the Pajaro Valley’s strawberry farmers.
4. Several Issei families join together to purchase a strawberry field and the necessary farming equipment. Such a situation best exemplifies which of the following, as it is described in the passage?
(A) A typical sharecropping agreement
(B) A farming corporation
(C) A “labor club”
(D) The “boss” system(B)
(E) Circumvention of the Alien Land Law
5. The passage suggests that which of the following was an indirect consequence of the collapse of the sugar beet industry in the Pajaro Valley?
(A) The Issei formed a permanent, family-based community.
(B) Boardinghouses were built to accommodate the Issei.
(C) The Issei began to lease land in their children’s names.
(D) The Issei adopted a labor contract system similar to that used by Chinese immigrants.(A)
(E) The Issei suffered a massive dislocation caused by unemployment.
6. The author of the passage would most likely agree that which of the following, if it had been included in Nakane’s study, would best remedy the particularistic nature of that study?
(A) A statistical table comparing per capita income of Issei wage laborers and sharecroppers in the Pajaro Valley
(B) A statistical table showing per capita income of Issei in the Pajaro Valley from 1890 to 1940
(C) A statistical table showing rates of farm ownership by Japanese Americans in four central California counties from 1890 to 1940
(D) A discussion of original company documents dealing with the Pajaro Valley sugar beet industry at the turn of the century(C)
(E) Transcripts of interviews conducted with members of the Pajaro Valley Japanese American community who were born in the 1920’s and 1930’s
7. It can be inferred from the passage that, when the Issei began to lease land from the Valley’s strawberry farmers, the Issei most probably did which of the following?
(A) They used profits made from selling the strawberry crop to hire other Issei.
(B) They negotiated such agricultural contracts using the “boss” system.
(C) They paid for the use of the land with a share of the strawberry crop.
(D) They earned higher wages than when they raised sugar beets.(C)
(E) They violated the Alien Land Law.
