I. Vocabulary (30 points)This part consists of two sections.
Section A
Directions: Choose one of the four alternatives which is closest in meaning to the underlined word or phrase and mark the corresponding letter. Please write your answers on the Answer Sheet.(1×20 points).
1.The intellect is always held in abeyance by the spirit of reasonableness, and still more by the
writer's artistic sensibility.
A . suspension B. approval C. continuation D. antidote
2. She smiled the credulous smile of ignorant innocence and pulled the gate open.
A. sophisticated B. naive C. deceiving D. guilty
3. We can trace the rudimentary roots of all our values and limits back in our childhood
anecdotes.
A. salient B. deep C. fundamental D. far-fetched
4. Alexander envisioned a cosmopolitan culture in his new empire.
A. local B. endemic C. provincial D. universal
5. Perhaps the first thing any cynic will note about these pledges is that they are devoid of
any self-sacrifice.
A. realist B. faultfinder C. optimist D. pessimist
6. When the winds blew through the holes, the rocks emitted an eerie keening sound, like a
dirge of lost souls.
A. elegy B. song C. eulogy D. tribute
7. I am blessed with a buoyant temperament and enjoy the pleasures of this earth.
A. lighthearted B. depressed C. disheartened D. glad
8. He saw the hideous, obscure shape rise slowly to the surface.
A. beautiful B. unclear C. repulsive D. ambiguous
9. Jim likes to gloat over all the sports prizes he has own, which he keeps in a glass case.
A. revel B. lament C. survey D. scan
10. It would be unwise to pretend that it does not happen and dishonest to disavow it in any
circumstances.
A. claim B. renounce C. confess D. plead
11. His rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue.
A. rough B. robust C. ruddy D. dark
12. Going higher-end also means Microsoft would dodge a potential threat to Amazon
and Google.
A. duck B. form C. propose D. profile
13 . Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.
A . exhaustion B. regulator C. monitor D. refresher
14. When my play was with thee I never questioned who thou wert. I knew nor shyness
nor fear, my life was boisterous
A. controllable B. disorderly C. wild D. unruly
15. He had plenty of feedback and plenty of time to mitigate this issue, but he can be stubborn.
A . alleviate B. shorten C. increase D. revise
16. The eggs are packed in cartons lined with shockproof corrugated paperboard.
A. smooth B. horizontal C. silky D. ribbed
17. In the East he succeeded in establishing Byzantine hegemony over the crusading states.
A. overthrow B. conquest C. supremacy D. subjugation
18. Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.
A. labour B. journey C. pilgrimage D. wretchedness
19. He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
A. cynic B. pessimist C. dogmatist D . fascist
20. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a blur of movement on the other sideof the glass
A. clarity B. haziness C. shape D. transparency
Section B
There are ten words or phrases underlined in the following sentences. You are required to use other English words or phrases to explain them with the meanings that best suit those sentences (1×10 points).
For example: Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with great eloquence
Answer: quick and witty tongue.
1. While his intentions are to save lived and prevent injuries, this manger is perceived as
vindictive, uncaring and self-serving.
2. It is not to shame you that I write these things but to admonish you as my beloved children.
3. All the people in the party were disgusted with his bawdy jokes.
4. His aesthetic and ideology have seeped into the very fabric of American theater.
5. This magnifies US cultural advantages because the market into which artists from other
countries must sell is often abysmal.
6. Violent storms wreaked havoc on the French Riviera, leaving three people dead and
dozens injured.
7. I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler's whiteface.
8. Critics of the scheme take a less benign view.
9. The crux of the matter is not shortage of time, but shortage of work.
10. He speaks many languages including Arabic, so he was assigned to dangerous covert
operations.
II. Cloze (20 points)
Directions: There are twenty blanks in the following passage. You are required to fill the words or phrases in them that best complete the passage to make a smooth and logical reading semantically, syntactically and textually. The words that you use to fill in the blanks can be any that you think are suitable and able to make the passage smooth in meaning and grammar. Please write your answers on the Answer Sheet. （1x20 points）
Shakespeare’s sonnets are very different from Shakespeare’s plays, but they do contain _____1_____elements and an overall sense of story. Each of the poems__2____with a highly personal theme, and each can be __3___ on its own or in relation to the poems around it. The sonnets have the feel of ___4___ poems, but we don’t know whether they deal with real events or not, because no one knows ___5___ about Shakespeare’s life to say whether or not they deal with real events and feelings, so we tend to refer to the voice of the sonnets as “the speaker”—as ___6___ he were a dramatic creation like Hamlet or King Lear. There are certainly a number of intriguing ____7__ throughout the poems. The first 126 of the sonnets seem to be ___8___ to an unnamed young nobleman, whom the speaker loves very much; the rest of the poems (except for the last two, which seem generally unconnected to the __9___ of the sequence) seem to be addressed to a mysterious __10___ , whom the speaker loves, hates, and lusts for simultaneously. The two addressees of the sonnets are usually__11___ to as the “young man” and the “dark lady”; in summaries of individual poems, I have also called the young man the “beloved” and the dark lady the “lover,” especially in cases where their ____12__ can only be surmised. Within the two mini-sequences, there are a ____13___ of other discernible elements of “plot”: the speaker _ 14__ the young man to have children; he is forced to __15__ a separation from him; he competes with a__16___ poet for the young man’s patronage and affection. At two points in the sequence, it seems that the young man and the___17__lady are actually lovers themselves—a state of affairs with which the speaker is none too ___18___ . But while these continuities give the poems a narrative flow and a helpful frame of reference, they have been frustratingly_19____ for scholars and biographers to pin __20___ . In Shakespeare’s life, who were the young man and the dark lady?


III. Error Detection and Correction (20 points)
Directions: There are twenty errors in the following passage. You should detect and correct all the errors. Please write your answers on the Answer Sheet.
Prose by its very nature is longer than verse, and the virtues 1
peculiar with it manifest themselves gradually. If the cardinal 2
virtue of poetry is love, the cardinal virtue of prose is just;3
and, whereas love makes you act and speak in the spur of the 4
moment, justice needs inquiry, patient and a control even 5
of the noblest passions. To justice, here I do not mean justice 6
of ideas, but a habit of justice in all processes of thought, the style 7
only to particular people tranquillized and a form moulded to 8
that habit. The master of prose is not cold, and he will not let 9
any word or image inflame him with a heat irrelevant with his10
reject all beauties that are not germane to it; making his own 11
beauty out of the purpose. Unhasting, unresting, he pursues them, 12
subduing all the riches of his mind on it, very accomplishment of it.13
out of the whole work and its proportions, so as you must read14
to the end before you know that it is beauty. But he has his reward, 15
for his is trusted and convinces, as those that are at the mercy of their16
own eloquence do not; and he gives a pleasure all the greater for be 17
hardly noticed. In the best prose, whether narrative and argument, 18
we are so led on as we read, that we do not stop to applauding the19
writer, or do we stop to question him. 20




IV. Reading Comprehension (30 points)
Directions: There are three sections in this item with a passage in each section. Section A requires you to read a passage and provide a brief answer to each of the given questions. Section B requires you to read and judge whether the relevant statements are true or false. Section C requires you to read and then write a summary of it. Remember to write your answers on the Answer Sheet.
Section A. (10 points)
Why the inductive and mathematical sciences, after their first rapid development at the culmination of Greek civilization, advanced so slowly for two thousand years—and why in the following two hundred years a knowledge of natural and mathematical science has accumulated, which so vastly exceeds all that was previously known that these sciences may be justly regarded as the products of our own times—are questions which have interested the modern philosopher not less than the objects with which these sciences are more immediately conversant. Was it the employment of a new method of research, or in the exercise of greater virtue in the use of the old methods, that this singular modern phenomenon had its origin? Was the long period one of arrested development, and is the modern era one of normal growth? Or should we ascribe the characteristics of both periods to so-called historical accidents—to the influence of conjunctions in circumstances of which no explanation is possible, save in the omnipotence and wisdom of a guiding Providence?
　　The explanation which has become commonplace, that the ancients employed deduction chiefly in their scientific inquiries, while the moderns employ induction, proves to be too narrow, and fails upon close examination to point with sufficient distinctness the contrast that is evident between ancient and modern scientific doctrines and inquiries. For all knowledge is founded on observation, and proceeds from this by analysis, by synthesis and analysis, by induction and deduction, and if possible by verification, or by new appeals to observation under the guidance of
deduction—by steps which are indeed correlative parts of one method; and the ancient sciences afford examples of every one of these methods, or parts of one method, which have been generalized from the examples of science.
　　A failure to employ or to employ adequately any one of these partial methods, an imperfection in the arts and resources of observation and experiment, carelessness in observation, neglect of relevant facts, by appeal to experiment and observation—these are the faults which cause all failures to ascertain truth, whether among the ancients or the moderns; but this statement does not explain why the modern is possessed of a greater virtue, and by what means he attained his superiority. Much less does it explain the sudden growth of science in recent times.
　　The attempt to discover the explanation of this phenomenon in the antithesis of “facts” and “theories” or “facts” and “ideas”—in the neglect among the ancients of the former, and their too exclusive attention to the latter—proves also to be too narrow, as well as open to the charge of vagueness. For in the first place, the antithesis is not complete. Facts and theories are not coordinate species. Theories, if true, are facts—a particular class of facts indeed, generally
complex, and if a logical connection subsists between their constituents, have all the positive attributes of theories.
　　Nevertheless, this distinction, however inadequate it may be to explain the source of true method in science, is well founded, and connotes an important character in true method. A fact is a proposition of simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true has all the characteristics of a fact, except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means. To convert theories into facts is to add simple verification, and the theory thus acquires the full characteristics of a fact.
　　1. The title that best expresses the ideas of this passage is
　　[A]. Philosophy of mathematics.
　　[B]. The Recent Growth in Science.
　　[C]. The Verification of Facts.
　　[D]. Methods of Scientific Inquiry.
　　2. According to the author, one possible reason for the growth of science during the days of the ancient Greeks and in modern times is
　　[A]. the similarity between the two periods.
　　[B]. that it was an act of God.
　　[C]. that both tried to develop the inductive method.
　　[D]. due to the decline of the deductive method.
3. The difference between “fact” and “theory”
　　[A]. is that the latter needs confirmation.
　　[B]. rests on the simplicity of the former.
　　[C]. is the difference between the modern scientists and the ancient Greeks.
　　[D]. helps us to understand the deductive method.
　　4. According to the author, mathematics is
　　[A]. an inductive science.
　　[B]. in need of simple verification.
　　[C]. a deductive science.
　　[D]. based on fact and theory.
　　5. The statement “Theories are facts” may be called.
　　[A]. a metaphor.
　　[B]. a paradox.
　　[C]. an appraisal of the inductive and deductive methods.
　　[D]. a pun.Section B. (10 points)
What we know of prenatal development makes all this attempt made by a mother to mold the character of her unborn child by studying poetry, art, or mathematics during pregnancy seem utterly impossible. How could such extremely complex influences pass from the mother to the child? There is no connection between their nervous systems. Even the blood vessels of mother and child do not join directly. An emotional shock to the mother will affect her child, because it changes the activity of her glands and so the chemistry her blood. Any chemical change in the mother’s blood will affect the child for better or worse. But we cannot see how a looking for mathematics or poetic genius can be dissolved in blood and produce a similar liking or genius in the child.
In our discussion of instincts we saw that there was reason to believe that whatever we inherit must be of some very simple sort rather than any complicated or very definite kind of behavior. It is certain that no one inherits a knowledge of mathematics. It may be, however, that children inherit more or less of a rather general ability that we may call intelligence. If very intelligent children become deeply interested in mathematics, they will probably make a success of that study.
As for musical ability, it may be that what is inherited is an especially sensitive ear, a peculiar structure of the hands or the vocal organs connections between nerves and muscles that make it comparatively easy to learn the movements a musician must execute, and particularly vigorous emotions. If these factors are all organized around music, the child may become a musician. The same factors, in other circumstance might be organized about some other center of interest. The rich emotional equipment might find expression in poetry. The capable fingers might develop skill in surgery. It is not the knowledge of music that is inherited, then nor even the love of it, but a certain bodily structure that makes it comparatively easy to acquire musical knowledge and skill. Whether that ability shall be directed toward music or some other undertaking may be decided entirely by forces in the environment in which a child grows up.


Decide whether the following statements are true (T) or false (F).
1. It is utterly impossible for us to learn anything about prenatal development.
2. There are no connection between mother’s nervous systems and her unborn child’s.
3. According to the passage, a child may inherit a rather general ability that we call intelligence.
4. If a child inherits something from his mother, such as an especially sensitive ear, a peculiar structure of the hands or of the vocal organs, he will mostly become a poet.
5. The best title for the passage could be “Role of Inheritance”.


Section C (10 points)
Read the following passage and write a summary of it within 100 words.
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains, and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.
Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it - not like their little brown houses, but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field - the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.
Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:
`He is in Melbourne now.'
She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.
`Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting?'
`Look lively, Miss Hill, please.'
She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.
But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married - she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew it was that that had given her the Palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her, like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother's sake. And now she had nobody to protect her, Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages - seven shillings - and Harry always sent up what he could, but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday's dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children
who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work - a hard life - but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.
She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Aires, where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they were courting, and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Aires, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.
`I know these sailor chaps,' he said.
One day he had quarrelled with Frank, and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.
The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernes! had been her favourite, but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mother's bonnet to make the children laugh.
Her time was running out, but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air. Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother's illness; she was again in the close, dark room at the other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into the sick-room saying:
`Damned Italians! coming over here!'
As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother's life laid its spell on the very quick of her being - that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice saying constantly with foolish insistence:
`Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!'
She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.
She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered
nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Aires. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer.
A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand: `Come!'
All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.
`Come!'
No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.
`Eveline! Evvy!'
He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on, but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.
Summary (Please write it on the Answer sheet)V． Writing （50 points）
Directions: Drawing on your own experiences and observations, use examples to show that you agree or disagree with any ONE of the following three proverbs underlined. Your essay should have a title and be written in no less than 400 words .Remember to write your essay on the Answer Sheet.
1. "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."
2. “A man is as old as he feels himself to be.”
3. “The good seaman is known in bad weather.”