【阅读】
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
Johnson's Dictionary
For the century before Johnson's Dictionary was published in 1775. There had been concern about the state of the English language. There was no standard way of speaking or writing and no agreement as to the best way of bringing some order to the chaos' of English spelling. Dr. Johnson provided the solution.
There had, of course, been dictionaries in the past, the first of these being a little book of some 120 pages, compiled by a certain Robert Cawdray, published in 1604 under the title A Table Alphabeticall ‘of hard usual English words'. Like the various dictionaries that came after it during the seventeenth century, Cawdray's tended to concentrate on 'scholarly' words; one function of the dictionary was to enable its student to convey an impression of fine learning.
Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer - lexical as well as social and commercial. It is highly appropriate that Dr. Samuel Johnson, the very model of an eighteenth-century literary man, as famous in his own time as in ours, should have published his dictionary at the very beginning of the heyday of the middle class.
Johnson was a poet and critic who raised common sense to the heights of genius. His approach to the problems that had worried writers throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was intensely practical. Up until his time, the task of producing a dictionary on such a large scale had seemed impossible without the establishment of an academy to make decisions about right and wrong usage Johnson decided he did not need an academy to settle arguments about language; he would write a dictionary himself; and he would do it single-handed. Johnson signed the contract for the Dictionary with the bookseller Robert Dosley at a breakfast held at the Golden Anchor Inn near Holbom Bar on 18 June 1764. He was to be paid £ 1.575 in instalments, and from this he took money to rent 17 Gough Square, in which he set up his 'dictionary workshop'.
James Boswell, his biographer described the garret where Johnson worked as ‘fitted up like a counting house' with a long desk running down the middle at which the copying clerks would work standing up. Johnson himself was stationed on a rickety chair at an 'old crazy deal table' surrounded by a chaos of borrowed books. He was also helped by six assistants, two of whom died whilst the Dictionary was still in preparation.
The work was immense; filling about eighty large notebooks (and without a library to hand). Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words, and illustrated their many meanings with some 14.000 quotations drawn from English writing on every subject, from the Elizabethans to his own time. He did not expect to achieve complete originality. Working to a deadline, he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries, and to make his work one of heroic synthesis. In fact it was very much more. Unlike his predecessors. Johnson treated English very practically, as a living language, with many different shades of meaning. He adopted his definitions on the principle of English common law - according to precedent. After its publication, his Dictionary was not seriously rivalled for over a century.
After many vicissitudes the Dictionary was finally published on 15 April 1775. It was instantly recognised as a landmark throughout Europe. This very noble work.’ wrote the leading Italian lexicographer; ‘will be a perpetual monument of Fame to the Author, an Honour to his own Country in particular, and a general Benefit to the republic of Letters throughout Europe.' The fact that Johnson had taken on the Academies of Europe and matched them (everyone knew that forty French academics had taken forty years to produce the first French national dictionary) was cause for much English celebration.
Johnson had worked for nine years. ‘With little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow'. For all its faults and eccentricities his two-volume work is a masterpiece and a landmark, in his own words, 'setting the orthography, displaying the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the significations of English words’. It is the corner-stone of Standard English, an achievement which, in James Boswell’s words, ‘conferred stability on the language of his country'.
The Dictionary, together with his other writing, made Johnson famous and so well esteemed that his friends were able to prevail upon King George III to offer him a pension. From then on, he was to become the Johnson of folklore.
Questions 1-3
Choose THREE letters A-H.
Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.
NB Your answers may be given in any order.
Which THREE of the following statements are true of Johnson’s Dictionary?
A It avoided all scholarly words.
B It was the only English dictionary in general use for 200 years.
C It was famous because of the large number of people involved.
D It focused mainly on language from contemporary texts.
E There was a time limit for its completion.
F It ignored work done by previous dictionary writers.
G It took into account subtleties of meaning.
H Its definitions were famous for their originality.
Questions 4-7
Complete the summary.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 4-7 on your answer sheet.
In 1764, Dr. Johnson accepted the contract to produce a dictionary. Having rented a garret, he took on a number of 4 ..........who stood at a long central desk.
Johnson did not have a 5 ..........available to him, but eventually produced definitions of in excess of 40,000 words written down in 80 large notebooks. On publication, the Dictionary was immediately hailed in many European countries as a landmark.
According to his biographer, James Boswell, Johnson’s principal achievement was to bring 6..........to the English language. As a reward for his hard work, he was granted a 7 .......... by the king.
Questions 8-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
8 ..........The growing importance of the middle classes led to an increased demand for dictionaries.
9 ..........Johnson has become more well known since his death.
10.......... Johnson had been planning to write a dictionary for several years.
11 ..........Johnson set up an academy to help with the writing of his Dictionary.
12 ..........Johnson only received payment for his Dictionary on its completion.
13 ..........Not all of the assistants survived to see the publication of the Dictionary.
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
The problem of climate change
Question 14–18
Reading Passage has 5 paragraphs, A–E.
Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A–E in the boxes below.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
14 ..........A natural phenomenon that could also affect climate change.
15 ..........Steps we can take to help reverse the situation.
16 ..........An explanation of what climate change is.
17 ..........Organisations that want to help.
18 ..........Possible effects of climate change.
Question 19-22
Look at the following people (Questions 19-22) and the list of statements below.
Match each person with the correct statement, A-F.
A. We have the ability to change the situation
B. Climate Change is Inevitable
C. Humans have made the situation much worse
D. Climate Change might not be all bad
E. Human activity and natural weather phenomena
F. While we may not be too late to save our planet, there are bound to be some extreme side-effects of past human activity one way or the other
19 ..........Professor Max Leonard
20 ..........Dr. Michael Crawley
21 ..........Professor Mark Halton
22 ..........Dr. Ray Ellis
Questions 23-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In spaces 23-26 below, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
23 ..........Man is not entirely responsible for global warming.
24 ..........Scientists have come up with new evidence about the negative effects of carbon-free sources of energy such as nuclear power
25 ..........One of the purposes of Green Peace is to find out which companies and governments are doing things which don’t help the actions of environmentalists.
26 ..........Most people aren’t willing to start using renewable energy.
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Amateur Naturalists
A | Tim Sparks slides a small leather-bound notebook out of an envelope. The books yellowing pages contain beekeeping notes made between 1941 and 1969 by the late Walter Coates of Kilworth, Leicestershire. He adds it to his growing pile of local journals, birdwatchers' lists and gardening diaries, "We're uncovering about one major new record each month,” he says, “I still get surprised." Around two centuries before Coates, Robert Marsham, a landowner from Norfolk in the east of England, began recording the life cycles of plants and animals on his estate when the first wood anemones flowered, the dates on which the oaks burst into leaf and the rooks began nesting. Successive Marshams continued compiling these notes for 211 years. |
B | Today, such records are being put to uses that their authors could not possibly have expected. These data sets, and others like them, ire proving invaluable to ecologists interested in the timing of biological events, or phenology. By combining the records with climate data, researchers can reveal how, for example, changes in temperature affect the arrived of spring, allowing ecologists to make improved predictions about the impact of climate change. A small band of researchers is combing through hundreds of years of records taken by thousands of amateur naturalists. And more systematic projects have also started up, producing on overwhelming response. "The amount of interest is almost frightening," says Sparks, a climate researcher at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire. |
C | Sparks became aware of the army of "closet phenologists", as he describes them, when a retiring colleague gave him the Marsham records. He now spends much of his time following leads from one historical data set to another. As news of his quest spreads, people tip him off to other historical records, and more amateur phenologists come out of their closets. The British devotion to recording and collecting makes his job easier - one man from: Kent sent him 30 years' worth of kitchen calendar, on which he had noted the date that his neighbour's magnolia tree flowered. |
D | Other researchers have unearthed data from equally odd sources. Rafe Sargarin recently studied records of a betting contest in which participants attempt to guess the exact time at which a specially erected wooden tripod will fall through the surface of a thawing river. The competition has taken place annually on the Tenana River in Alaska since 1917, and analysis of the results showed that the thaw now arrives five days earlier than it did when the contest began. |
E | Overall, Such records have helped to show that, compared with 20 years ago, a raft of natural events now occur earlier across much of the northern hemisphere, from the opening of leaves to the return of birds from migration and the emergence of butterflies from hibernation . The data can also hint at how nature will change in the future. Together with models of climate change, amateurs' records could help guide conservation. Terry Root, an ecologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has collected birdwatchers' counts of wildfowl taken between 1955 and 19% on seasonal ponds in the American. Midwest and combined them with climate data and models of future warming. Her analysis shows that the increased droughts that the models predict could halve the breeding populations at the ponds. "The number of waterfowl in North America will most probably drop significantly with global warming," she says. |
F | But not all professionals are happy to use amateur data. "A lot of scientists won't touch them, they say they're too full of problems," says Root. Because different observers can have different ideas of what constitutes, for example, an open snowdrop. The biggest concern with ad hoc observations is how carefully and systematically they were taken," says Mark Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, who studies the interactions between plants and climate. "We need to know pretty precisely what a person's been observing - if they just say 'I noted when the leaves came out', it might not be that useful." Measuring the onset of autumn can be particularly problematic because deciding when leaves change color is a more subjective process than noting when they appear. |
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G | Overall, most phenologists are positive about the contribution that amateurs can make. "They get at the raw power of science: careful observation of the natural world," says Sagarin. But the professionals also acknowledge the need for careful quality control. Root, for example, tries to gauge the quality of an amateur archive by interviewing its collector. "You always have to worry things as trivial as vacations can affect measurement. I disregard a lot of records because they're not rigorous enough," she says. Others suggest that the right statistics can iron out some of the problems with amateur data. Together with colleagues at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, environmental scientist Arnold van Vliet is developing statistical techniques to account for the uncertainty in amateur phenological data. With the enthusiasm of amateur phenologists evident from past records, professional researchers are now trying to create standardized recording schemes for future efforts. They hope that well-designed studies will generate a volume of observations: large enough to drown out the idiosyncrasies of individual recorders. The data are cheap to collect, and can provide breadth in space, time and range of species. "It's very difficult to collect data on a large geographical scale without enlisting an army of observers," says Root. |
H | Phenology also helps to drive home messages about climate change. "Because the public understand these records, they accept them," says Sparks. It can also illustrate potentially unpleasant consequences, he adds, such as the finding that more rat infestations are reported to local councils in warmer years. And getting people involved is great for public relations. "People are thrilled to think that the data they've been collecting as a hobby can be used for something scientific -it empowers them," says Root.
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Questions 27-33
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-H
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet
27. ..........Definition of Phenology introduced
28. ..........Sparks first noticed amateur records
29. ..........Surprise function of casual data in science
30. ..........It seems like mission impossible without enormous amateur data collection
31. ..........Example of using amateur records for a scientific prediction
32. ..........Records from an amateur contributed to climate change
33. ..........Collection of old records compiled by a family of amateur naturalists
Questions 34-36
Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 34-36 on your answer sheet.
34. In Waiter Coates' records, there are plenty of information of ...........
35. Robert Marsham is well-known for noting animals and plants' .......... .
36. The number of waterfowl in North America decreases because of increased..........according to some phenologists.
Questions 37-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.
Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet
37 ..........Why do a lot of scientists question the amateurs’ data?
A. Data collection is not professional
B. Amateur observers are careless.
C. Amateur data is not reliable sometimes.
D. They have one-sided work experience
38 ..........Example of leaves Mark Schwartz used to explain that?
A. Amateur records arc not reliable at all.
B. Amateur records arc not well organized.
C. Some details are very difficult to notice.
D. Valuable information is accurate one.
39 ..........What suggestion of scientists for the usage of amateur data?
A. Use modified and better approaches.
B. Only Observation data is valuable.
C. Use original materials instead of changed ones.
D. Method of data collection is the most important.
40 ..........What's the implication of phenology for ordinary people?
A. It enriches the knowledge of the public.
B. It improves ordinary people's relations with scientists.
C. It encourages people to collect more animal information.
D. It arouses public awareness about climate change.
Keys
Passage 1
1. D, E, G IN ANY ORDER
2. D, E, G IN ANY ORDER
3. D, E, G IN ANY ORDER
4. clerks / copying clerks
5. library
6. stability :
7. pension
8. TRUE
9. FALSE
10. NOT GIVEN
11. FALSE
12. FALSE
13. TRUE
Passage 2
14. B
15. E
16. A
17. D
18. C
19. D
20. C
21. A
22. B
23. TRUE
24. NOT GIVEN
25. TRUE
26. FALSE
Passage 3
27. B
28. C
29. H
30. G
31. E
32. D
33. A
34. beekeeping
35. life cycle(s)
36. drought(s)
37. C
38. D
39. A
40. D
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