2015年四川大学考博英语真题1

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I Reading Comprehension (30%； one mark each)

Directions: Read the following six passages. Answer the questions below each passage by choosing A, B, C or D. Write your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.

Passage 1

Speech is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. It seems as natural to man as walking and only less so than breathing. Yet it needs but a moment’s reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is, in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk. In the case of the latter function, culture, in other words, the traditional body of social usage, is not seriously brought into play. The child is individually equipped, by the complex set of factors that we term biological heredity, to make all the needed muscular and nervous adjustments that result in walking. Indeed, the very conformation of these muscles and of the appropriate parts of the nervous system may be said to be primarily adapted to the movements made in walking and in similar activities. In a very real sense, the normal human being is predestined to walk, not because his elders will assist him to learn the art, but

because his organism is prepared from birth, or even from the moment of conception, to take on all those expenditures of nervous energy and all those muscular adaptations that result in walking. To put it concisely, walking is an inherent, biological function of man. Not so language. It is of course true that in a certain sense the individual is predestined to talk, but that is due entirely to the circumstance that he is bom not merely in nature, but in the lap of a society that is certain, reasonably certain, to lead him to its traditions. Eliminate society and there is every reason to believe that he will learn to walk, if, indeed, he survives at all. But it is just as certain that he will never learn to talk, that is, to communicate ideas according to the traditional system of a particular society. Or, again, remove the new-born individual from the social environment into which he has come and transplant him to an utterly alien one. He will develop the art of walking in his new environment very much as he would have developed it in the old. But his speech will be completely at variance with the speech of his native environment. Walking then is a general human activity that varies only within a restricted limit as we pass from individual to individual. Its variability is purposeless.

Speech is a human activity that varies without assignable limit as we pass from social group to social group, because it is a purely historical heritage, the product of long-continued social usage. It varies as all creative effort varies—not as consciously, perhaps, but none the less as truly as do the religions, the beliefs, the customs, and the arts of different peoples. Walking is an organic, instinctive function, speech is a non-instinctive, acquired, “cultural” function.

1. The first sentence of Paragraph Two, “Not so language” is the closest in meaning to .

A. this is not the case with language

B. so is language and not anything else

C. no such a thing exists in language

D. not so much with language

2. The real difference between the ability to walk and the ability to talk is that .

A. the former is like breathing while the latter is not

B. the former does not require social interaction while the latter does

C. the former requires muscular movement while the latter does not

D. not so much with language

3. Which of the following is NOT an idea of the author?

A. Language is biologically programmed but has to be acquired later on.

B. Only when a child grows up in a community can he learn to talk.

C. Language interaction is a way to impart culture.

D. Formal education is necessary for the learning of language.

4. When the author says the variability of walking “is purposeless”，he means that .

A. any person who walks would not have a purpose

B. in all cultures people walk aimlessly

C. culture does affect the ways people walk

D. purpose in walking varies with one’s ability

5. The author wrote this passage in order to •

A. argue for a point

B. provide information

C. narrate a legend

D. debate with his rivals

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