2008年职称英语阅读理解习题(15)

 acing in Animals

Flight Distance

Any o ervant person has noticed that a wild animal will allow a man or other potential enemy to a roach only up to a given distance before it flees. “Flight distance” is the terms used for this inter ecies  acing. As a general rule, there is a positive relatio hip between the size of an animal and its flight distance—the larger the animal, the greater the distance it must keep between itself and the enemy. An antelope will flee when the enemy is as much as five hundred yards away. The wall lizard's flight distance, on the other hand is about six feet. Flight is the basic mea  of survival for mobile creatures.

Critical Distance

Critical distance a arently is present wherever and whenever there is a flight reaction. “Critical distance” includes the narrow zone separating flight distance from attack distance. A lion in a zoo will flee from an a roaching man until it meets a barrier that it ca ot overcome. If the man continues the a roach, he soon penetrates the lion's critical distance, at which point the cornered lion reverses direction and begi  slowly to stalk the man.

Social Distance

Social animals need to stay in touch with each other. Lo  of contact with the group can be fatal for a variety of reaso  including exposure to enemies. Social distance is not simply the distance at which an animal will lose contact with his group—that is, the distance at which it can no longer see, hear, or smell the group—it is rather a  ychological distance, one at which the animal a arently begi  to feel anxious when he exceeds its limits. We can think of it as a hidden band that contai  the group.

Social distance varies from  ecies to  ecies. It is quite short—a arently only a few yards—among some animals, and quite long among others.

Social distance is not always rigidly fixed but is determined in part by the situation. When the young of apes and huma  are mobile but not yet under control of the mother's voice, social distance may be the length of her reach. This is readily o erved among the baboo  in a zoo. When the baby a roaches a certain point, the mother reaches out to seize the end of its tail and pull it back to her. When added control is needed because of danger, social distance shrinks. To show this in man, one has only to watch a family with a number of small children holding hands as they cro  a busy street.

1. Which of the following is the most a ropriate definition of Flight Distance?
A. Distance between animals of the same  ecies before fleeing.
B. Distance between large and small animals before fleeing.
C. Distance between an animal and its enemy before fleeing.
D. Distance between certain animal  ecies before fleeing.

2. If an animal's critical distance is penetrated, it will
A. begin to attack.
B. try to hide.
C. begin to jump.
D. run away.

3. According to the pa age, social distance refers to
A. physical distance.
B.  ychological distance.
C. physiological distance.
D. philosophical distance.

4. Which of the following could best replace the word “band” in “We can think of it as a hidden band that contai  the group” （in Paragraph 3）?
A. Strip of land
B. Distance
C. Society
D. Community

5. The example of the children holding hands when cro ing the street in the last paragraph shows that
A. social distance is not always needed.
B. there is no social distance among small children.
C. huma  are different from animals in social distance.
D. social distance is sometimes determined by outside factors.

Some Things We Know about Language

Many things about language are a mystery, and many will always remain so. But some things we do know.

First, we know that all human beings have a language of some sort. There is no race of men anywhere on earth so backward that it has no language, no set of  eech sounds by which the people communicate with one another. Furthermore, in historical times, there has never been a race of men without a language.

Second, there is no such thing as a primitive language. There are many people whose cultures are undeveloped, who are, as we say, uncivilized, but the languages they  eak are not primitive. In all known languages we can see complexities that must have been te  of thousands of years in developing.

This has not always been well understood; indeed, the direct contrary has often been stated. Popular ideas of the language of the American India  will illustrate. Many people have su osed that the India  communicated in a very primitive system of noises. Study has proved this to be no e e. There are, or were, hundreds of American Indian languages, and all of them turn out to be very complicated and very old. They are certainly different from the languages that most of us are familiar with, but they are no more primitive than English and Greek.

Finally, we know that language changes. It is natural and normal for language to change; the only languages which do not change are the dead ones. This is easy to understand if we look backward in time. Change goes on in all a ects of language. Grammatical features change as do  eech sounds, and changes in vocabulary are sometimes very exte ive and may occur very rapidly. Vocabulary is the least stable part of any language.

1. In the second paragraph the author thinks that
A. some backward race doe 't have a language of its own.
B. some race in history didn't po e  a language of its own.
C. any human race, whether backward or not, has a language.
D. some races on earth can communicate without language.

2. According to the author, people of undeveloped cultures can have ___________ language.
A. complicated
B. uncivilized
C. primitive
D. well-known

3. The author has used American Indian languages as an example to show that they are
A. just as old as some well-known languages.
B. just as advanced as some well-known languages.
C. more developed than some well-known languages.
D. more complex than some well-known languages.

4. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT?
A. Language is a mea  of expre ing a particular culture.
B. All languages can well expre  their re ective cultures.
C. Some primitive languages can also expre  their cultures.
D. Some primitive languages are better than other languages.

5. According to he author language changes are most likely to occur in
A. grammar.
B. pronunciation.
C. vocabulary.
D. intonation.

Taxi Riding

In a moment of personal crisis, how much help can you expect from a New York taxi driver? I began studying this question after watching the “Taxicab Confe io ,” a series of documentaries in which hidden cameras record the secrets of u u ecting taxi riders. I found the results varied.

One morning I got into three different taxis and a ounced: “Well, it's my first day back in New York in seven years. I've been in prison.” Not a single driver replied, so I tried again. “Yeah, I shot a man in Reno,” I explained, hoping the driver would ask me why, so I could say casually, “Just to watch him die.” But nobody asked. The only re o e came from a Ghanaian driver: “Reno? That is in Nevada?”

Taxi drivers were uniformly sympathetic when I said I'd just been fired. “This is America,” a Haitain driver said. “One door is closed. Another is open.” He argued agai t my plan to burn down my bo 's house: “If you do something silly and they put you away, you ca ot look for another job.” A Pakistani driver even turned down a chance to profit from my lo  of hope: he refused to take me to the middle of the George Washington Bridge, a $20 trip. “Why you want to go there? Go home and relax. Don't worry. Take a new job.”

One very hot weekday in July, while wearing a red ski mask and holding a stuffed pillowcase with the word “BANK” on it, I tried hailing a taxi five times outside different banks. The driver picked me up every time. My ride with Guy-Caaude Thevenain, a Haitian driver, was typical of the superb a istance I received.

“Is anyone following us?”

“No,” said the driver, looking in his rearview mirror at traffic and me.

“Let's go acro  the park,” I said. “I just ro ed the bank there. I got $2, 5000.”

“$25, 000?” he asked.

“Yeah, you think it was wrong to take it?”

“No, man. I work 8 hours and I don't make almost $70. If I can do that, I do it too.”

As we a roached 86th and Lexington, I pointed to the Chemical Bank.

“Hey, there's another bank,” I said, “could you wait here a minute while I go i ide?”

“No, I can't wait. Pay me now.” His reluctance may have had something to do with money—taxi drivers think the rate for waiting time is too low—but I think he wanted me to learn that even a bank ro er can't expect unconditional su ort.

1. Form the Ghanaian driver's re o e, we can infer that
A. he was indifferent to the killing.
B. he was afraid of the author.
C. he looked down upon the author.
D. he thought the author was crazy.

2. Why did the Pakistani driver refuse to take the author to the middle of the George Washington Bridge?
A. Because he didn't want to help the author get over his career crisis.
B. Because he wanted to go home and relax.
C. Because it was far away from his home.
D. Because he su ected that the author was going to commit suicide.

3. What is the author's interpretation of the driver's reluctance “to wait outside the Chemical bank” ?
A. The driver thought that the rate for waiting time was too low.
B. The driver thought it wrong to su ort a taxi rider unconditionally.
C. The driver was frightened and wanted to leave him as soon as po ible.
D. The driver wanted to go home and relax.

4. Which of the following statements is true about New York taxi drivers?
A. They are ready to help you do whatever you want to.
B. They refuse to pick up those who would kill themselves.
C. They are sympathetic with those who are out of work.
D. They work only for money.

5. What does the pa age mainly discu ?
A. How to make taxi riders comfortable.
B. How to deal with taxi riders.
C. The attitudes of taxi drivers towards the taxi riders having personal crises.
D. The attitudes of taxi drivers towards violent criminals.

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