PART III READING COMPREHENSIONS

　　Directions: In this section there are four reading passages followed by fifteen multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your Answer Sheet.

　　TEXT A Despite Denmarks manifest virtues, Danes never talk about how proud they are to be Danes. This would sound weird in Danish. When Danes talk to foreigners about Denmark, they always begin by commenting on its tininess, its unimportance, the difficulty of its language, the general small-mindedness and self indulgence of their countrymen and the high taxes. No Dane would look you in the eye and say "Denmark is a great country". You are supposed to figure this out for yourself. It is the land of the silk safety net, where almost half the national budget goes toward smoothing out lifes inequalities, and there is plenty of money for schools, day care, retraining programs, job seminars —— Danes love seminar: three days at a study center hearing about waste management is almost as good as a ski trip. It is a culture bombarded by English, in advertising, pop music, the Internet, and despite all the English that Danish absorbs —— there is no Danish Academy to defend against it —— old dialects persist in Jutland that can barely be understood by Copenhageners. It is the land where, as the saying goes, "Few have too much and fewer have too little", and a foreigner is struck by the sweet egalitarianism that prevails, where the lowliest clerk gives you a level gaze, where Sir and Madame have disappeared from common usage, even Mr. and Mrs. Its a nation of recyclers —— about 55% of Danish garbage gets made into something new —— and no nuclear power plants. Its a nation of tireless planners. Trains run on time. Things operate well in general. Such a nation of overachievers —— a brochure from the Ministry of Business and Industry says, "Denmark is one of the worlds cleanest and most organized countries, with virtually no pollution, crime, or poverty. Denmark is the most corruption-free society in the Northern Hemisphere." So, of course, ones heart lifts at any sighting of Danish sleaze: skinhead graffiti on buildings ("Foreigners Out of Denmark!"), broken beer bottles in the gutters, drunken teenagers slumped in the park. Nonetheless, it is an orderly land. You drive through a Danish town, it comes to an end at a stone wall, and on the other side is a field of barley, a nice clean line: town here, country there. It is not a nation of jaywalkers. People stand on the curb and wait for the red light to change, even if its 2 a.m. and theres not a car in sight. However, Danes dont think of themselves as a waiting-at-2-a.m.-for-the-green-light-people —— that is how they see Swedes and Germans. Danes see themselves as jazzy people, improvisers, more free spirited than Swedes, but the truth is (though one should not say it) that Danes are very much like Germans and Swedes. Orderliness is a main selling point. Denmark has few natural resources, limited manufacturing capability; its future in Europe will be as a broker, banker, and distributor of goods. You send your goods by container ship to Copenhagen, and these bright, young, English-speaking, utterly honest, highly disciplined people will get your goods around to Scandinavia, the Baltic States, and Russia. Airports, seaport, highways, and rail lines are ultramodern and well-maintained. The orderliness of the society doesnt mean that Danish lives are less messy or lonely than yours or mine, and no Dane would tell you so. You can hear plenty about bitter family feuds and the sorrows of alcoholism and about perfectly sensible people who went off one day and killed themselves. An orderly society can not exempt its members from the hazards of life. But there is a sense of entitlement and security that Danes grow up with. Certain things are yours by virtue of citizenship, and you shouldnt feel bad for taking what you have entitled to, you are as good as anyone else. The rules of the welfare system are clear to everyone, the benefits you get if you lose your job, the steps you take to get a new one; and the orderliness of the system makes it possible for the country to weather high unemployment and social unrest without a sense of crisis.

　　36. The author thinks Danes adopt a ____ attitude towards their country.

　　A) boastful

　　B) modest

　　C) deprecating

　　D) mysterious

　　37. Which of the following is Not a Danish characteristic cited in the passage?

　　A) Fondness of foreign culture.

　　B) Equality in society.

　　C) Linguistic tolerance.

　　D) Persistent planning.

　　38. The author's reaction to the statement by the Ministry of Business and Industry is ____.

　　A) disapproving

　　B) approving

　　C) noncommittal

　　D) doubtful

　　39. According to the passage, Danish orderliness ____.

　　A) sets the people apart from Germans and Swedes

　　B) spare Danes social troubles besetting other peoples

　　C) is considered economically essential to the country

　　D) prevents Danes from acknowledging existing troubles

　　40. At the end of the passage the author states all the following Except that ____.

　　A) Danes are clearly informed of their social benefits

　　B) Danes take for granted what is given to them

　　C) the open system helps to tide the country over

　　D) orderliness has alleviated unemployment

　　TEXT B But if language habits do not represent classes, a social stratification into something as bygone as "aristocracy" and "commons", they do still of course serve to identify social groups. This is something that seems fundamental in the use of language. As we see in relation to political and national movements, language is used as a badge or a barrier depending on which may we look at it. The new boy at school feels out of it at first because he does not know the right words for things, and awe-inspiring pundits of six or seven look down on him for not being aware that racksy means "dilapidated", or hairy "out first ball". The miner takes a certain pride in being "one up" on the visitor or notice who calls the cage a "lift" or who thinks that men working in a warm seam are in their "underpants" when anyone ought to know that the garments are called hoggers. The "insider" is seldom displeased that his language distinguishes him from the "outsider". 　 Quite apart from specialized terms of of this kind in groups, trades and professions, there are all kinds of standards of correctness at which most of us feel more or less obliged to aim, because we know that certain kinds of English invite irritation or downright condemnation. On the other hand, we know that other kinds convey some kind of prestige and bear a welcome cachet. 　 In relation to the social aspects of language, it may well be suggested that English speakers fall into three categories: the assured, the anxious and the indifferent. At one end of this scale, we have the people who have "position" and "status", and who therefore do not feel they need worry much about their use of English. Their education and occupation make them confident of speaking an unimpeachable form of English: no fear of being criticized or corrected is likely to cross their minds, and this gives their speech that characteristically unselfconscious and easy flow which is often envied. 　 At the other end of the scale, we have an equally imperturbable hand, speaking with a similar degree of careless ease, because even if they are aware that their English is condemned by others, they are supremely indifferent to the fact. The Mrs. Mops of this world have active and efficient tongues in their heads, and if we happened not to like their ways of saying things, well, we "can lump it". That is their attitude. Curiously enough, writers are inclined to represent the speech of both these extreme parties with -in for ing. On the one hand, "Were goin huntin, my dear sir;" on the other, "Were goin racin, mate." 　 In between, according to this view we have a far less fortunate group, the anxious. These actively try to suppress what they believe to be bad English and assiduously cultivate what they hope to be good English. They live their lives in some degree of nervousness over their grammar, their pronunciation, and their choice of words: sensitive, and fearful of betraying themselves. Keeping up with the Joneses is measured not only in houses, furniture, refrigerators, cars, and clothes, but also in speech. 　 And the misfortune of the "anxious" does not end with their inner anxiety. Their lot is also the open or veiled contempt of the "assured" on the side of them and of the "indifferent" on the other. 　 It is all too easy to raise an unworthy laugh at the anxious. The people thus uncomfortably stilted on linguistic high heels so often form part of what is, in many ways, the most admirable section of any society: the ambitious, tense, inner-driven people, who are bent on "going places and doing things". The greater the pity, then, if a disproportionate amount of their energy goes into what Mr. Sharpless called "this shabby obsession" with variant forms of English —— especially if the net result is (as so often) merely to sound affected and ridiculous. "Here", according to Bacon, "is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter …… It seems to me that Pygmalions frenzy is a good emblem …… of this vanity: for words are but the images of matter; and except they have life of reason and invention, to fall in love with them is to fall in love with a picture."

　　41. The attitude held by the assured towards language is ____.

　　A) critical

　　B) anxious

　　C) self-conscious

　　D) nonchalant

　　42. The anxious are considered a less fortunate group because ____.

　　A) they feel they are socially looked down upon

　　B) they suffer from internal

　　C) they are inherently nervous and anxious people

　　D) they are unable to meet standards of correctness

　　43. The author thinks that the efforts made by the anxious to cultivate what they believe is    good English are ____.

　　A) worthwhile

　　B) meaningless

　　C) praiseworthy

　　D) irrational