题目内容
The Linguistic Habits of a New Generation
In the year of 1914 a young girl named Monica Baldwin entered a convent（女修道院）,remaining there until 1941 when she returned to the outer world. During these twenty-eight years wars and revolutions had come and gone in Europe. Her uncle, Stanley Baldwin, had led his country for some time. Technical developments had changed the conditions of everyday life almost beyond recognitions, but all these events had left as a matter of fact untouched the small religious community to which she had belonged. In 1949 Miss Baldwin published her impressions of those bewildering（令人困惑的）years of her return to a world in which the motorcar had replaced the horse and carriage and where respectable women showed their legs and painted their faces.
Yet it was not only these odd sights that surprised her, for she was more puzzled by what she heard. During a railway journey the term “luggage in advance” meant nothing to her, so in desperation she asked the porter to do as he thought best. Reading the newspapers made her feel very stupid, because the writers of reviews and leading articles used words and phrases such as Jazz,
71．Miss Baldwin found the world totally changed because .
A．she had worked for a religious community for a long time
B．she had been cut off from the rest of the world for many years
C．the community where she lived had been in war for many years
D．there had been too many technical developments
72．During a railway journey Miss Baldwin .
A．found the porter’s words hard to understand
B．found her luggage too heavy to carry
C．did not know how to talk with the porter
D．had to ask the porter to look after her luggage
73．Young people like to use the latest slang because .
A．they feel it is easier to use
B．they believe it will soon become standard usage
C．they want to show they have caught up with the time
D．they find it more powerful in expressing feelings
74．Miss Baldwin’s experience shows us that .
A．the English language has not changed much
B．the English language has entirely changed
C．language doesn’t change at all in the religious world
D．language changes with the passage of time
75．By the time a man is forty, he will .
A．be speaking the same language as his parents do
B．have changed his way of speaking
C．not use the slang he liked to use when young
D．be using less new slang in speech and writing
BACDD
People often hear each others' voices without ever seeing the faces they belong to. "Nowadays we are talking away on the phone without meeting people," says Seung-Jae Moon. And from business conference calls to chat lines, people often imagine they would recognize the speaker if they saw him or her. Seung-Jae Moon, a linguist of Korea found that, under certain conditions, they're actually right.
Moon decided to see just how close those mental pictures match up with reality and if there was any relation to how people speak rather than what they are saying. He recorded 16 Koreans, half men and half women, reading the same passage, and took a full-body photo and head shot of each speaker. Then he played the tapes for 361 Koreans and 173 Americans who did not speak Korean and asked his subjects to match up voice and picture. The Korean participants viewing full-body photos were quite perceptive. A majority linked 6 of the 8 women to the correct voice and did so for 5 of the 8 men. With the Korean group shown only faces, accuracy plummeted, but more than 20 percent of the subjects selected the same incorrect picture. The Americans showed no accuracy in matching the foreign voices to photos, but they too were consistent in their errors. That disconnection reveals conflicting ideas of physical and vocal beauty. Moon asked people to pick a favorite face and voice. Seventy percent of the Koreans picked one voice, but there was no agreement on a face. Americans didn' t agree on either count. And over 65 percent of both Koreans and Americans did not match their favorite face with their favorite voice.
Moon hopes to use software to break voices into components like pitch and hoarseness to narrow down which elements trigger certain mental pictures. "If we can map which characteristics of the voice triggers what kind of linage, and it doesn't matter whether that image is the right or wrong one of the actual speaker, then we can create an image through voice,' he says. That capacity could help to create computer-synthesized voices tailored to conjure up specific associations — audio books for children that inspire motherly visages, or warning alerts that bring to mind a stern police officer.
【小题1】People often think that they would ______ the speaker when they saw the speaker.
| A．understand | B．recognize | C．like | D．surprise |
| A．see how close mental pictures match up with reality |
| B．how people speak |
| C．see if there was any relation to how people speak rather than what they are saying |
| D．both A and C |
| A．12 | B．16 | C．8 | D．10 |
| A．The Koreans | B．The American women |
| C．The Korean women | D．The Americans |
| A．Less than 65 | B．Less than 35 | C．Over 65 | D．About 20 |
Beijing has started a battle to get rid of "Chinglish" (Chinese English). The "Language Mandarins" of Beijing have decided that Chinglish is a disease for China's modernizing claim and must be obliterated before the city hosts the Olympic Games in 2008.
A road sign on the Avenue of Eternal Peace (Chang'an Street) ,for example, advises: "To Take Notice of Safe; The Slippery Are Very Crafty", a warning that the sidewalk was slippery(滑). Another sign in a Beijing park reads: "Little grass is smiling slightly, please walk on sidewalk. "
Li Honghai, the city official in charge of the battle, said," Linguistic perfection (语言美) is becoming increasingly important with the rise in the number of the foreigners flowing into the city."
However, not everyone shares the disdain (蔑视) of the Beijing government for the mixed language. "The choice of words is pretty much. One can either choose the verbs, adverbs, nouns or whatever one likes," explained one Hong Kong 
linguist on an Internet website.
So many examples exist that several Internet sites have been set up to collect Chinglish phrases. Many come from English instructions on packages such as a candle marked with "Keep this candle out of children" and a model boat—curiously named Posh Sailboat—which means, "Please don't place it in dusty play."
If the battle against Chinglish is successful, Chinese will also turn their attention to the English-language versions of newspapers, which play an even more important role
in teaching right English.
【小题1】The underlined word
"obliterated" refers to .
| A．removed | B．exploited |
| C．translated | D．beautified |
| A．everyone shares the disdain for the mixed language |
| B．all the people don't share the disdain for the mixed language |
| C．Chinglish usually communicates in many cases |
| D．several Internet sites have been set up to clear the Chinghsh phrases |
| A．should be in duty to teach normal English |
| B．should report the above battle |
| C．should be paid more attention to |
| D．should collect more Chinglish phrases |
| A．Watch your step. Slippery sidewalk. | B．Keep off the grass, please. | C．Tourists do not enter. | D．No smoking, please. |
It is not unusual for people to speak two or three languages; they’re known as bilinguals or trilinguals. Speakers of more than three languages are known as polyglots. And when we refer to people who speak many languages, perhaps a dozen or more, we use the term hyper-polyglot.
The most famous hyper-polyglot was Giuseppe Mezzofanti, a 19th century Italian cardinal, who was said to speak 72 languages. This claim sounds absurd. If you assume each language had 20,000 words, Mezzofanti would have to learn a word a minute, six hours a day, for eleven years—an impossible task. But Mezzofanti was tested by critics, and they were all impressed.
Did Mezzofanti have an extraordinary brain? Or are hyper-polyglots just ordinary people with ordinary brains who manage to do something extraordinary through hard work?
U.S. linguist Stephen Drashen believes that outstanding language learners just work harder at it and then they acquire unusually strong language ability. As an example, he mentions a Hungarian woman who worked as an interpreter during the 20th century. When she was 86, she could speak 16 languages and was still working on learning new languages. She said she learned them mostly on her own, reading fiction or working through dictionaries or textbooks.
Some researchers argue to the contrary. They believe that there is such a thing as a talent for learning languages. In the 1930s, a German scientist examined parts of the preserved brain of a hyper-polyglot named Emil Krebs, who could speak 60 languages fluently. The scientist found that the area of Krebs’s brain called Broca’s area, which is associated with language, looked different from the Broca’s area in the brains of men who speak only one language. However, we still don’t know if Krebs was born with a brain ready to learn dozens of languages or if his brain adapted to the demands he put on it.
Although it is still not clear whether the ability to learn many languages is in born, there’s no doubt that just about all of us can acquire skills in a second, third, or even fourth language by putting our mind to it.
【小题1】What does the underlined sentence imply?
| A．Mezzofanti could remember 360 words a day. |
| B．Mezzofanti had a special way to learn languages. |
| C．Mezzofanti’s achievement was ridiculous. |
| D．Mezzofanti language ability was astonishing. |
| A．good memory | B．hard work |
| C．unique brain | D．learning methods |
| A．had an unusual brain |
| B．was born with great talent |
| C．had worked hard at languages |
| D．expected too much of himself |
| A．it is not hard to learn foreign languages |
| B．hard work plays a part in language learning |
| C．there is no such thing as a talent for languages |
| D．hyper-polyglots have an inborn talent for language |