When my brother and I were young, my Mom would take us on Transportation Days.
It goes like this: you can’t take any means of transport more than once. We would start from home walking two blocks to the railway station. We’d take the train into the city center, then a bus, switching to the tram, then maybe a taxi. We always considered taking a horse carriage in the historic district, but we didn’t like the way the horses were treated, so we never did. At the end of the day, we took the subway to our closest station, where Mom’s friend was waiting to give us a ride home— our first car ride of the day.
The good thing about Transportation Days is not only that Mom taught us how to get around. She was born to be multimodal(多方式的). She understood that depending on cars only was a failure of imagination and, above all, a failure of confidence— the product of a childhood not spent exploring subway tunnels.
Once you learn the route map and step with certainty over the gap between the train and the platform, nothing is frightening any more. New cities are just light-rail lines to be explored. And your personal car, if you have one, becomes just one more tool in the toolbox— and often an inadequate one, limiting both your mobility and your wallet.
On Transportation Days, we might stop for lunch on Chestnut Street or buy a new book or toy, but the transportation was the point. First, it was exciting enough to watch the world speed by from the train window. As I got older, my Mom helped me unlock the mysteries that would otherwise have paralyzed my first attempts to do it myself: How do I know where to get off? How do I know how much it costs? How do I know when I need tickets, and where to get them? What track, what line, which direction, where’s the stop, and will I get wet when we go under the river?
I’m writing this right now on an airplane, a means we didn’t try on our Transportation Days and, we now know, the dirtiest and most polluting of them all. My flight routed me through Philadelphia. My multimodal Mom met me for dinner in the airport. She took a train to meet me.Which was forbidden by Mom on Transportation Days?
| A．Having a car ride. |
| B．Taking the train twice. |
| C．Buying more than one toy. |
| D．Touring the historic district. |
According to the writer, what was the greatest benefit of her Transportation Days?
| A．Building confidence in herself. |
| B．Reducing her use of private cars. |
| C．Developing her sense of direction. |
| D．Giving her knowledge about vehicles. |
The underlined word “paralyzed” (in Para. 5) is closest in meaning to “_______”.
| A．displayed | B．misunderstood |
| C．forgot | D．ruined |
Which means of transportation does the writer probably dislike?
| A．Airplane. | B．Subway. |
| C．Tram. | D．Car. |
Though England was on the whole prosperous and hopeful, though by comparison with her neighbors she enjoyed internal peace, she could not evade the fact that the world of which she formed a part was torn by hatred and strife as fierce as any in human history. Men were still for from recognizing that two religions could exist side by side in the same society; they believed that the toleration of another religion different from their own. And hence necessarily false, must inevitably destroy such a society and bring the souls of all its members into danger of hell. So the struggle went on with increasing fury within each nation to impose a single creed upon every subject, and within the general society of Christendom to impose it upon every nation. In England the Reformers, or Protestants, aided by the power of the Crown, had at this stage triumphed, but over Europe as a whole Rome was beginning to recover some of the ground it had lost after Martin Luther’s revolt in the earlier part of the century. It did this in two ways, by the activities of its missionaries, as in parts of Germany, or by the military might of the Catholic Powers, as in the Low Countries, where the Dutch provinces were sometimes near their last extremity under the pressure of Spanish arms. Against England, the most important of all the Protestant nations to reconquer, military might was not yet possible because the Catholic Powers were too occupied and divided: and so, in the 1570’s Rome bent her efforts, as she had done a thousand years before in the days of Saint Augustine, to win England back by means of her missionaries.
These were young Englishmen who had either never given up the old faith, or having done so, had returned to it and felt called to become priests. There being, of course, no Catholic seminaries left in England, they went abroad, at first quite easily, later with difficulty and danger, to study in the English colleges at Douai or Rome: the former established for the training of ordinary or secular clergy, the other for the member of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as Jesuits, a new Order established by St, Ignatius Loyola same thirty years before. The seculars came first; they achieved a success which even the most eager could hardly have expected. Cool-minded and well-informed men, like Cecil, had long surmised that the conversion of the English people to Protestantism was for from complete; many—Cecil thought even the majority—had conformed out of fear, self-interest or—possibly the commonest reason of all—sheer bewilderment at the rapid changes in doctrine and forms of worship imposed on them in so short a time. Thus it happened that the missionaries found a welcome, not only with the families who had secretly offered them hospitality if they came, but with many others whom their first hosts invited to meet them or passed them on to. They would land at the ports in disguise, as merchants, courtiers or what not, professing some plausible business in the country, and make by devious may for their first house of refuge. There they would administer the Sacraments and preach to the house holds and to such of the neighbors as their hosts trusted and presently go on to some other locality to which they were directed or from which they received a call. The main idea of this passage is
[A]. The continuity of the religious struggle in Britain in new ways.
[B]. The conversion of religion in Britain.
[C]. The victory of the New religion in Britain.
[D]. England became prosperous. What was Martin Luther’s religions?
[A]. Buddhism. [B]. Protestantism. [C]. Catholicism. [D]. Orthodox. Through what way did the Rome recover some of the lost land?
[A]. Civil and military ways. [B]. Propaganda and attack.
[C]. Persuasion and criticism. [D]. Religious and military ways.What did the second paragraph mainly describe?
[A]. The activities of missionaries in Britain.
[B]. The conversion of English people to Protestantism was far from complete.
[C]. The young in Britain began to convert to Catholicism
[D]. Most families offered hospitality to missionaries.
Moreover, insofar as any interpretation of its author can be made from the five or six plays attributed to him, the Wake field Master is uniformly considered to be a man of sharp contemporary observation. He was, formally, perhaps clerically educated, as his Latin and music, his Biblical and patristic lore indicate. He is, still, celebrated mainly for his quick sympathy for the oppressed and forgotten man, his sharp eye for character, a ready ear for colloquial vernacular turns of speech and a humor alternately rude and boisterous, coarse and happy. Hence despite his conscious artistry as manifest in his feeling for intricate metrical and stanza forms, he is looked upon as a kind of medieval Steinbeck, indignantly angry at, uncompromisingly and even brutally realistic in presenting the plight of the agricultural poor.
Thus taking the play and the author together, it is mow fairly conventional to regard the former as a kind of ultimate point in the secularization of the medieval drama. Hence much emphasis on it as depicting realistically humble manners and pastoral life in the bleak hills of the West Riding of Yorkshire on a typically cold bight of December 24th. After what are often regarded as almost “documentaries” given in the three successive monologues of the three shepherds, critics go on to affirm that the realism is then intensified into a burlesque mock-treatment of the Nativity. Finally as a sort of epilogue or after-thought in deference to the Biblical origins of the materials, the play slides back into an atavistic mood of early innocent reverence. Actually, as we shall see, the final scene is not only the culminating scene but perhaps the raison d’etre of introductory “realism.”
There is much on the surface of the present play to support the conventional view of its mood of secular realism. All the same, the “realism” of the Wakefield Master is of a paradoxical turn. His wide knowledge of people, as well as books indicates no cloistered contemplative but one in close relation to his times. Still, that life was after all a predominantly religious one, a time which never neglected the belief that man was a rebellious and sinful creature in need of redemption, So deeply (one can hardly say “naively” of so sophisticated a writer) and implicitly religious is the Master that he is less able (or less willing) to present actual history realistically than is the author of the Brome “Abraham and Isaac”. His historical sense is even less realistic than that of Chaucer who just a few years before had done for his own time costume romances, such as The Knight’s Tale, Troilus and Cressida, etc. Moreover Chaucer had the excuse of highly romantic materials for taking liberties with history. Which of the following statements about the Wakefield Master is NOT True?
[A]. He was Chaucer’s contemporary.
[B]. He is remembered as the author of five or six realistic plays.
[C]. He write like John Steinbeck.
[D]. HE was an accomplished artist. By “patristic”, the author means
[A]. realistic. [B]. patriotic
[C]. superstitious. [C]. pertaining to the Christian Fathers. The statement about the “secularization of the medieval drama” refers to the
[A]. introduction of mundane matters in religious plays.
[B]. presentation of erudite material.
[C]. use of contemporary introduction of religious themes in the early days. In subsequent paragraphs, we may expect the writer of this passage to
[A]. justify his comparison with Steinbeck.
[B]. present a point of view which attack the thought of the second paragraph.
[C]. point out the anachronisms in the play.
[D]. discuss the works of Chaucer.
Nearly two thousand years have passed since a census decreed by Caesar Augustus become part of the greatest story ever told. Many things have changed in the intervening years. The hotel industry worries more about overbuilding than overcrowding, and if they had to meet an unexpected influx, few inns would have a manager to accommodate the weary guests. Now it is the census taker that does the traveling in the fond hope that a highly mobile population will stay long enough to get a good sampling. Methods of gathering, recording, and evaluating information have presumably been improved a great deal. And where then it was the modest purpose of Rome to obtain a simple head count as an adequate basis for levying taxes, now batteries of complicated statistical series furnished by governmental agencies and private organizations are eagerly scanned and interpreted by sages and seers to get a clue to future events. The Bible does not tell us how the Roman census takers made out, and as regards our more immediate concern, the reliability of present day economic forecasting, there are considerable differences of opinion. They were aired at the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the American Statistical Association. There was the thought that business forecasting might well be on its way from an art to a science, and some speakers talked about newfangled computers and high-falutin mathematical system in terms of excitement and endearment which we, at least in our younger years when these things mattered, would have associated more readily with the description of a fair maiden. But others pointed to the deplorable record of highly esteemed forecasts and forecasters with a batting average below that of the Mets, and the President-elect of the Association cautioned that “high powered statistical methods are usually in order where the facts are crude and inadequate, the exact contrary of what crude and inadequate statisticians assume.” We left his birthday party somewhere between hope and despair and with the conviction, not really newly acquired, that proper statistical methods applied to ascertainable facts have their merits in economic forecasting as long as neither forecaster nor public is deluded into mistaking the delineation of probabilities and trends for a prediction of certainties of mathematical exactitude. Taxation in Roman days apparently was based on
[A]. wealth. [B]. mobility. [C]. population. [D]. census takers.The American Statistical Association
[A]. is converting statistical study from an art to a science.
[B]. has an excellent record in business forecasting.
[C]. is neither hopeful nor pessimistic.
[D]. speaks with mathematical exactitude. The message the author wishes the reader to get is
[A]. statisticians have not advanced since the days of the Roman.
[B]. statistics is not as yet a science.
[C]. statisticians love their machine.
[D].computer is hopeful.The “greatest story ever told” referred to in the passage is the story of
[A]. Christmas. [B]. The Mets.
[C]. Moses. [D]. Roman Census Takers.
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be , music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, --that petty fears and petty pleasure are but the shadow of reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, by consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundation. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that “there was a king’s son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which be lived. One of his father’s ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul, from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme.” We think that that is which appears to be. If a man should give us an account of the realities he beheld, we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop. Or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had as fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it. The writer’s attitude toward the arts is one of
[A]. admiration. [B]. indifference. [C]. suspicion. [D]. repulsionThe author believes that a child.
[A]. should practice what the Hindoos preach.
[B]. frequently faces vital problems better than grownups do.
[C]. hardly ever knows his true origin.
[D]. is incapable of appreciating the arts.. The author is primarily concerned with urging the reader to
[A]. look to the future for enlightenment. [B]. appraise the present for its true value.
[C]. honor the wisdom of the past ages. [D]. spend more time in leisure activities. The passage is primarily concerned with problem of
[A]. history and economics. [B]. society and population.
[C]. biology and physics. [D]. theology and philosophy.
Social circumstances in Early Modern England mostly served to repress women’s voices. Patriarchal culture and institutions constructed them as chaste, silent, obedient, and subordinate. At the beginning of the 17th century, the ideology of patriarchy, political absolutism, and gender hierarchy were reaffirmed powerfully by King James in The Trew Law of Free Monarchie and the Basilikon Doron; by that ideology the absolute power of God the supreme patriarch was seen to be imaged in the absolute monarch of the state and in the husband and father of a family. Accordingly, a woman’s subjection, first to her father and then to her husband, imaged the subjection of English people to their monarch, and of all Christians to God. Also, the period saw an outpouring of repressive or overtly misogynist sermons, tracts, and plays, detailing women’s physical and mental defects, spiritual evils, rebelliousness, shrewish ness, and natural inferiority to men.
Yet some social and cultural conditions served to empower women. During the Elizabethan era (1558—1603) the culture was dominated by a powerful Queen, who provided an impressive female example though she left scant cultural space for other women. Elizabethan women writers began to produce original texts but were occupied chiefly with translation. In the 17th century, however, various circumstances enabled women to write original texts in some numbers. For one thing, some counterweight to patriarchy was provided by female communities—mothers and daughters, extended kinship networks, close female friends, the separate court of Queen Anne (King James’ consort) and her often oppositional masques and political activities. For another, most of these women had a reasonably good education (modern languages, history, literature, religion, music, occasionally Latin) and some apparently found in romances and histories more expansive terms for imagining women’s lives. Also, representation of vigorous and rebellious female characters in literature and especially on the stage no doubt helped to undermine any monolithic social construct of women’s mature and role.
Most important, perhaps, was the radical potential inherent in the Protestant insistence on every Christian’s immediate relationship with God and primary responsibility to follow his or her individual conscience. There is plenty of support in St Paul’s epistles and elsewhere in the Bible for patriarchy and a wife’s subjection to her husband, but some texts (notably Galatians 3:28) inscribe a very different politics, promoting women’s spiritual equality: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Jesus Christ.” Such texts encouraged some women to claim the support of God the supreme patriarch against the various earthly patriarchs who claimed to stand toward them in his stead.
There is also the gap or slippage between ideology and common experience. English women throughout the 17th century exercised a good deal of accrual power: as managers of estates in their husbands’ absences at court or on military and diplomatic missions; as members of guilds; as wives and mothers who apex during the English Civil War and Interregnum (1640-60) as the execution of the King and the attendant disruption of social hierarchies led many women to seize new roles—as preachers, as prophetesses, as deputies for exiled royalist husbands, as writers of religious and political tracts.
What is the best title for this passage?
[A]. Women’s Position in the 17th Century.
[B]. Women’s Subjection to Patriarchy.
[C]. Social Circumstances in the 17th Century.
[D]. Women’s objection in the 17th Century.
What did the Queen Elizabeth do for the women in culture?
[A]. She set an impressive female example to follow.
[B]. She dominated the culture.
[C]. She did little.
[D]. She allowed women to translate something.
Which of the following is Not mention as a reason to enable women to original texts?
[A].Female communities provided some counterweight to patriarchy.
[B]. Queen Anne’s political activities.
[C]. Most women had a good education.
[D]. Queen Elizabeth’s political activities.
What did the religion so for the women?
[A]. It did nothing.
[B]. It too asked women to be obedient except some texts.
[C]. It supported women.
[D]. It appealed to the God.
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