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Text 6

As is the case in many cultures, the degree to which a minority group was seen as different from the characteristics of the dominant majority determined the extent of that group’s acceptance. Immigrants who were like the earlier settlers were accepted. The large numbers of immigrants with significantly different characteristics tended to be viewed as a threat to basic American values and the American way of life.

This was particularly true of the immigrants who arrived by the million during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of them came from poverty-stricken nations of southern and eastern Europe. They spoke languages other than English, and large numbers of them were Catholics or Jews.

Americans at the time were very fearful of this new flood of immigrants. They were afraid that these people were so accustomed to lives of poverty and dependence that they would not understand such basic American values as freedom, self-reliance and competition. There were so many new immigrants that they might even change the basic values of the nation in undesirable ways.

Americans tried to meet what they saw as a threat to their values by offering English instruction for the new immigrants and citizenship classes to teach them basic American beliefs. The immigrants, however, often felt that their American teachers disapproved of the traditions of their homeland. Moreover, learning about American values gave them little help in meeting their most important needs such as employment, food, and a place to live.

Far more helpful to the new immigrants were the “political bosses” of the larger cities of the northeastern United States, where most of the immigrants first arrived. Those bosses saw to many of the practical needs of the immigrants and were more accepting of the different homeland traditions. In exchange for their help, the political bossed expected the immigrants to keep them in power by voting for them in elections.

In spite of this, many scholars believe that the political bosses performed an important function in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They helped to assimilate large numbers of disadvantaged white immigrants into the larger American culture. The fact that the United States had a rapidly expanding economy at the turn of the century made it possible for these new immigrants, often with the help of the bosses, to better their standard of living in the United States. As a result of these new opportunities and new rewards, immigrants came to accept most of the values of the larger American culture and were in turn accepted by the great majority of Americans. For white ethnic groups, therefore, it is generally true that their feeling of being a part of the larger culture, that is, “American” is much stronger than their feeling of belonging to a separate ethnic group— Irish, Italian, Polish, etc. (468 words)

26. A minority group’s acceptance to the country was determined by _____.

A.the difference they showed from the majority.

B.the time when they arrived at the new land.

C.the background conditions they came from.

D.the religious group to which they belonged.

27. The immigrants’ flushing in was considered a threat to American value mainly because _____.

A.the immigrants came from poverty-stricken nations of southern and eastern Europe.

B.the immigrants had been accustomed to poverty and dependence.

C.the immigrants had different homeland traditions and other particular characteristics.

D.the immigrants did not speak English.

28. “Citizenship classes” (Para. 4) were offered because Americans ____.

A.wanted to help the immigrants to solve their practical needs.

B.would not accept any groups with different traditions.

C.wanted the immigrants to deal with the threat to the American values.

D.wanted the immigrants to learn about and to keep the American values.

29. The political bosses helped the new immigrants for the main purpose of _____.

A.showing off their political powers and advantages.

B.getting support in elections.

C.assimilating the minority into the majority.

D.showing their generosity.

30. The living standards of the new immigrants were improved in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries mainly because ____.

A.they kept the political bosses in power.

B.the political bosses gave them a lot of practical help.

C.they had a much stronger feeling of being a part of the larger culture.

D.there was a rapid growth in American economy at that time.

Text 7

The table before which we sit may be, as the scientist maintains, composed of dancing atoms, but it does not reveal itself to us as anything of the kind, and it is not with dancing atoms but a solid and motionless object that we live. So remote is this “real” table — and most of the other “realities” with which science deals — that it cannot be discussed in terms which have any human value, and though it may receive our purely intellectual credence it cannot be woven into the pattern of life as it is led, in contradistinction to life as we attempt to think about it. Vibrations in the ether are so totally unlike, let us say, the color purple that the gulf between them cannot be bridged, and they are, to all intents and purposes, not one but two separate things of which the second and less “real” must be the most significant for us. And just as the sensation which has led us to attribute an objective reality to a non-existent thing which we call “purple” is more important for human life than the conception of vibrations of a certain frequency, so too the belief in God, however ill founded, has been more important in the life of man than the germ theory of decay, however true the latter may be.

We may, if we like, speak of consequence, as certain mystics love to do, of the different levels or orders of truth. We may adopt what is essentially a Platonist trick of thought and insist upon postulating the existence of external realities which correspond to the needs and modes of human feeling and which, so we may insist, to make an unwarrantable assumption and to be guilty of metaphysical fallacy of failing to distinguish between a truth of feeling and that other sort of truth which is described as a “truth of correspondence”, and it is better perhaps, at least for those of us who have grown up in an age of scientific thought, to steer clear of which science deals is the real universe, yet we do not and cannot have any but fleeting and imperfect contacts with it; that the most important part of our lives — our sensations, emotions, desires, and aspirations — takes place in a universe of illusions which science can attenuate or destroy but which it is powerless to enrich. (397 words)

31. The author suggests that in order to bridge the puzzling schism between scientific truth and the world of illusion, the reader should ________.

A. try to rid himself of his world of illusion

B. accept his world as being one of illusion

C. apply the scientific method

D. learn to acknowledge both

32. Judging from the ideas and tone of the selection, one may reasonably guess that the author is a ________.

A. humanist

B. pantheist

C. nuclear physicist

D. doctor of medicine

33. According to the passage, a scientist would conceive of a “table” as being ________.

A. a solid motionless object

B. certain characteristic vibrations in ether

C. a form fixed in space and time

D. a mass of atoms in motion

34. The topic of this selection is ________.

A. the confusion caused by emotions

B. the distortion of reality by science

C. a scientific approach to living

D. the place of scientific truth in our lives

35. By “objective reality” the author means ________.

A. scientific reality

B. a symbolic existence

C. the viewer’s experience

D. reality colored by emotion

Text 8

In the early days of sea travel, seamen on long voyages lived exclusively on salted meat and biscuits. Many of them died of scurvy, a disease of the blood which causes swollen gums, livid white spots on the flesh and general exhaustion. On one occasion, in 1535, an English ship arrived in Newfound-land with its crew desperately ill. The men’s lives were saved by Iroquois Indians who gave them vegetable leaves to eat. Gradually it came to be realized that scurvy was caused by some lack in the sailors’ diet and Captain Cook, on his long voyages of discovery to Australia and New Zealand, established the fact that scurvy could be warded off by the provision of fresh fruit for the sailors.

Nowadays it is understood that a diet which contains nothing harmful may yet result in serious disease if certain important elements are missing. These elements are called “vitamins”. Quite a number of such substances are known and they are given letters to identify them, A,B,C,D, and so on. Different diseases are associated with deficiencies of particular vitamins. Even a slight lack of Vitamin C, for example, the vitamin most plentiful in fresh fruit and vegetable, is thought to increase significantly our susceptibility to colds and influenza.

The vitamins necessary for a healthy body are normally supplied by a good mixed diet, including a variety of fruit and green vegetables. It is only when people try to live on a very restricted diet, say during extended periods of religious fasting, or when trying to lose weight, that it is necessary to make special provision to supply the missing vitamins.

Another example of the dangers of a restricted diet may suffer from ‘beriberi’, which used to afflict large numbers of Eastern peoples who lived mainly on rice. In the early years of this century, a Dutch scientist called Eijkman was trying to discover the cause of beriberi. At first he thought it was transmitted by a germ. He was working in a Japanese hospital, where the patients were fed on rice which had had the outer husk removed from the grain. It was thought this would be easier for weak, sick people to digest.

Eijkman thought his germ theory was confirmed when he noticed the chickens in the hospital yard, which were fed on scraps from the patients’ plates, were also showing signs of the disease. He then tried to isolate the germ he thought was causing the disease, but his experiments were interrupted by a hospital official, who decreed that the huskless polished rice, even though left over by the patients, was too good for chickens. It should be recooked and the chickens fed on cheap, coarse rice with the outer covering still on the grain.

Eijkman noticed that the chickens began to recover on the new diet. He began to consider the possibility that a lack of some ingredient in the husk might be the cause of the disease. Indeed this was the case. The element needed to prevent beriberi was shortly afterwards isolated from rice husks and is now known as vitamin B. The milled rice, though more expansive, was in fact perpetuating the disease the hospital was trying to cure. Nowadays, this terrible disease is much less common thanks to our knowledge of vitamins. (553 words)

36. From the passage, what can we learn about Captain Cook?

A. He provided clothes for his sailors to avoid scurvy.

B. He provided money for his sailors to avoid scurvy.

C. He provided fresh fruit for his sailors to avoid scurvy.

D. He provided blood for his sailors to avoid scurvy.

37. The word ‘beriberi’ (in paragraph 3) probably means _______.

A. a germ B. a natural phenomenon C. an epidemic D. a disease

38. In the last paragraph, what does sentence “Indeed this was the case” mean?

A. Really B. True C. False D. Eijkman’s considering was proved correct.

39. Vitamin B can be got in—－

A. rice B. rice husks C. noodle D. grain

40. From the context, what do you think “perpetuating” means?

A. deadB. happyC. keep freshD. keep alive

Text 9

Research on friendship has established a number of facts, some interesting, some even useful. Did you know that the average student has 5-6 friends, or that a friend who was previously an enemy is like more than one who has always been on the right side? Would you believe that physically attractive individuals are preferred as friends to those less comely, and is it fair that physically attractive defendants are less likely to be found guilty in court? Unfortunately, such titbits don’t tell us much more about the nature or the purpose of friendship. In fact, studies of friendship seem to implicate more complex factors.

For example, one function friendship seems to fulfi1 is that it supports the image we have of ourselves, and confirms the value of the attitudes we hold. Certainly we appear to project ourselves onto our friends; severa1 studies have shown that we judge them to be more like us than they (objectively) are. This suggests that we ought to choose friends who are similar to us rather than those Who would be complementary. In our experiment, some developing friendships were monitored amongst first－year students living in the same hoste1. It was found that similarity of attitudes (towards politics, religion and ethics, pastimes and aesthetics) was a good predictor of what friendships wou1d be estab1ished by the end of four months, though it has 1ess to do with initial alliances－not surprising1y, since attitudes may not be obvious on first inspection.

There have also been studies of pairings, both voluntary (married couples) and forced (student roommates), to see which remained together and which split up. Again, the evidence seems to favour similarity rather than complementarity as an omen of a successful relationship, though there is a complication: where marriage is concerned, once the field has been narrowed down to potential mates who come from similar backgrounds and share a broad range of attitudes and values, a degree of complementarity seems to become desirab1e. When a couple are not just similar but almost identical, something else seems to be needed. Simi1arity can breed contempt, it has a1so been found that when we find others obnoxious, we dislike them more if they are like us than when they are dissimilar!

The difficulty of linking friendship with similarity of persona1ity probably reflects the complexity of our personalities: we have many facets and therefore require a disparate group of friends to support us. This of course can explain why we may have two close friends who have litt1e in common, and indeed dislike each other. By and large, though, it looks as though we would do well to choose friends (and spouses) who resemble us. If this were not so, computer dating agencies would have gone out of business years ago. (463 words)

41. Research on friendship has demonstrated that______

A. every student has five or six friends.

B. judges are always influenced by a pretty face.

C. ugly people find it harder to make friends than beautiful people.

D. we tend to grow fond of people if we dislike them at first sight.

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