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2015年6月大學英語四級閱讀模擬試題(五)

英語四級 閱讀(8.1K)

  Passage Two

2015年6月大學英語四級閱讀模擬試題(五)

  Questions 61 to 65 are based on the following passage.

Language is, and should be, a living thing, constantly enriched with new words and forms of expression. But there is a vital distinction between good developments, which add to the language, enabling us to say things we could not say before, and bad developments, which subtract from the language by rendering it less precise. A vivacious, colorful use of words is not to be confused with mere slovenliness. The kind of slovenliness in which some professionals deliberately indulge is perhaps akin to the cult (迷信) of the unfinished work, which has eroded most of the arts in our time. And the true answer to it is the same that art is enhanced, not hindered, by discipline. You cannot carve satisfactorily in butter.

The corruption of written English has been accompanied by an even sharper decline in the standard of spoken English. We speak very much less well than was common among educated Englishmen a generation or two ago.

The modem theatre has played a baneful (有害的) part in dimming our appreciation of language. Instead of the immensely articulate dialogue of, for example, Shaw (who was also very insistent on good pronunciation),audiences are now subjected to streams of barely literate trivia, often designed, only too well, to exhibit 'lack of communication', and larded (夾雜) with the obscenities (下流的話) and grammatical errors of the intellectually impoverished. Emily Post once advised her readers: "The theatre is the best possible place to hear correctly-enunciated speech. " Alas, no more. One young actress was recently reported to be taking lessons in how to speak badly, so that she should fit in better.

But the BBC is the worst traitor. After years of very successfully helping to raise the general standard of spoken English, it suddenly went into reverse. As the head of the Pronunciation Unit coyly (含蓄地) put it, "In the 1960s the BBC opened the field to a much wider range of speakers." To hear a BBC disc jockey talking to the latest ape-like pop idol is a truly shocking experience of verbal squalor. And the prospect seems to be of even worse to come. School teachers are actively encouraged to ignore little Johnny's incoherent grammar, atrocious spelling and haphazard punctuation, because worrying about such things might inhibit his creative genius.

61. The writer relates linguistic slovenliness to tendencies in the arts today in that they both __________.

A. occasionally aim at a certain fluidity

B. appear to shun perfection

C. from time to time show regard for the finishing touch

D. make use of economical short cuts

62. "Art is enhanced, not hindered, by discipline" (Lines 6~7, Paragraph 1 ) means __________.

A. an artist's work will be finer if he observes certain aesthetic standards

B. an unfinished work is bound to be comparatively inferior

C. the skill of certain artists conceals their slovenliness

D. artistic expression is inhibited by too many roles

63. Many modem plays, the author finds, frequently contain speech which__________.

A. is incoherent and linguistically objectionable

B. is far too ungrammatical for most people to follow

C. unintentionally shocks the audience

D. tries to hide the author's intellectual inadequacies

64. The author says that the standard of the spoken English of BBC__________.

A. is the worst among all broadcasting networks

B. has raised English-speaking up to a new level

C. has taken a turn for the worse since the 1960s

D. is terrible because of a few popular disc jockeys

65. Teachers are likely to overlook the linguistic lapses in their pupils since__________.

A. they find that children no longer respond to this kind of discipline nowadays

B. they fear the children may become less coherent

C. more importance is now attached to oral expression

D. the children may be discouraged from expressing their ideas

Passage Two

【參考譯文】

語言是而且也應該是活的,不斷有新的詞彙和表達形式來使其豐富完善。但是發展有好有壞,兩種發展有著很大區別。前者為語言注入新的東西,讓我們能夠表達出之前不能表達的東西,而後者就不一樣了.它通過減弱語言的精準度而降低語言層次。對詞彙靈活、生動的使用同對詞彙邋遢、馬虎的使用是不可混為一談的。[61]有些語言工作者有意大量以邋遢、馬虎的方式使用詞彙,他們的這種做法同狂熱地迷信藝術品不需要潤飾的做法很相似,而藝術品不潤飾的做法也逐漸毀掉了我們這個時代的藝術品。[62]對於這種見象。解決的方法同藝術創作是一樣的:規則是對藝術的促進,而不是對藝術的阻礙。用黃油來雕刻永遠也做不出令人滿意的藝術品。

伴隨著書面英語的慘淡現狀,英語口語的水平更是大大降低了。我們現在說的口語要比一兩代之前接受普通教育的英國人差很多。