Unit6 Reading
Passage One
My guess is that English will retain its currency in the world for the next 50 years or so, but it is difficult to see it retaining beyond then. If the Chinese could establish some reasonable way of writing their language by forming some sort of alphabeticisation (拼音文字), then given the exponential (幂次方的) population growth among Chinese communities, their language would rapidly gain in importance. And let’s not forget Spanish; some predict that there will be a Spanish majority in the United States within twenty years. So it is not impossible to conceive that one day another language might come to dominate besides English.
An equally important trend will be the fragmentation of English. Many countries are now using English so much that they are starting to teach their own particular brand of the language with different forms of sentence construction, for example. They no longer want native speakers to teach English, but locals whose version of English contains the same forms as the local use of the language. This is not just true in colonial countries, but it’s happening as far apart as Germany and the Pacific Rim. It’s a strongly democratic move and I think we will see a lot more local publishing as a result.
Yet while forms of English become increasingly localized, the information explosion is also making our use of language more global. A quite new form of language is evolving on the internet. The email is a new form of message: It’s not a letter, not a postcard. And it has its own casual style, often without complete sentences. English is especially well adapted to this style, as it can easily be shortened. So I suspect English will continue to be more advanced than other languages on the worldwide web -- it will remain the language of science and technology.
As a result of increasing web use, I suspect that in a few decades a lot of us in the developed world may cease writing much in the way of long essays. But I simply don’t believe computers will physically replace books. It’s absurd to suppose that the experience of reading on a computer monitor is the same as reading a book -- think of the weight of the book and the sense of knowing where you are in it. I think we will always want books we can take to bed with us or read to our children.
1. Which of the following is NOT true according to the first paragraph?
A) English will still enjoy its popularity in the near future.
B) There is a possibility for Spanish to share the dominant position with English.
C) The author believes that Chinese language is bound to gain its importance despite its difficulty in spelling.
D) The number of people speaking a language can be a contributive factor in remaining its currency.
2. “the fragmentation of English” (in paragraph 2) can be best understood as ________.
A) the wide use of English in many parts of the world
B) the English with local version of the mother tongue
C) the English taught by non-native speakers
D) the localized English
3. Which is a decisive factor in making English more global according to the author?
A) The wide use of computer. C) The increase of localized English.
B) The adaptability of English. D) The flooding information.
4. All the following can be inferred in the passage EXCEPT ________.
A) It seems that the days of English as a world language could be numbered
B) Diversity is the taste of tomorrow’s world
C) Lovers of good writing can take heart
D) Laptops are going to take over from books and newspapers
5. What is the best title of the passage?
A) The Future of English. C) The History of English.
B) Tomorrow’s Language. D) The Modification of English.
Passage Two
As we looked at the faraway fires of Sirius, Procyon, Betelgeuse, and Rigel, we talked endlessly about the possibility of life under different skies. What would they look like? Would we ever meet them? And how would we act when we met them? We wonder about these questions and want to travel into that starlit darkness, where there are no answers yet.
One of the missions of an astronaut is to first imagine the destination. What we don’t know will always exceed what we know. The universe is presenting us with wonders almost faster than we absorb them. When we don’t know what is out there, we put a sign on the maps: “Here be dragons.” But we go exploring anyway, despite our fears and our ignorance, despite voices that argue that what we know is enough.
Since the dawn of consciousness, humans have wondered, are we alone in this universe? The discovery of extraterrestrial (地球外的) life, intelligent or not, would rank as the most earthshaking discovery in human history. Then, what will the Pioneers and Voyagers meet when they sail beyond the solar system?
Yet we still haven’t received any signal that can be interpreted for certain as sent from another civilization. Why is that? There exist billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars. However, both cosmologists and starship captains know that the universe is vast. The empty spaces between stars and between galaxies are so enormous that a signal might come and fall on stony ground -- before we have the technology to capture and read it, for example.
It is believed that extrasolar (太阳系以外的) planets do exist; inevitably, some of them will support life. The only way to know for certain, though, short of passively waiting for a signal or a visit, is to go out there and actively search for alien life. That is what the NASA (美国宇航局) planetary missions have done; that, too, is the primary reason for the launching of federation starships.
6. What is the best title for the passage?
A) A trip to outer space.
B) The mysterious universe.
C) The mission of discovering alien life.
D) To seek out new life.
7. What is suggested in the passage?
A) So far we haven’t received any signal whatsoever from outer space.
B) The vast universe makes the searching mission impossible.
C) The existing technology is not ready yet
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