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SAT考試閱讀練習題:Reading Comprehension Test 11
8 question 12 minutes
I chose to wander by Bethlehem Hospital; partly, because it lay
on my road round to Westminster; partly, because I had a fancy
in my head which could be best pursued within sight of its
walls. And the fancy was: Are not the sane and the insane
5 equal at night as the sane lie a dreaming? Are not all of us
outside this hospital, who dream, more or less in the
condition of those inside it, every night of our lives? Are
we not nightly persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate
preposterously with kings and queens, and notabilities of all
10 sorts? Do we not nightly jumble events and personages and times
and places, as these do daily? Said an afflicted man to me,
when I visited a hospital like this, ‘Sir, I can frequently
fly.’ I was half ashamed to reflect that so could I - by night.
I wonder that the great master, when he called Sleep the death
15 of each day’s life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each
day’s sanity.
1. It can be correctly inferred that Bethlehem hospital
I is very close to Westminster
II has patients who are regarded as insane
III is a place the author has visited before
A. I only
B. II only
C. III only
D. I and II
E. I, II and III
2. The author makes his point with the aid of all of the following except
A. rhetorical questions
B. personal anecdote
C. allusion
D. frequent use of metaphor
E. repetition and parallel construction
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately
have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the
bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect
can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing
5 the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely.
A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a
failure, and then fail all the more completely because he
drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the
English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our
10 thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language
makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
3. The example of the man who takes to drink is used to illustrate which of the following ideas in the paragraph?
A. foolish thoughts
B. the slovenliness of language
C. political and economic causes
D. an effect becoming a cause
E. bad influences
4. The author would most likely agree that
A. individual writers can never have a bad influence on the English language
B. imprecise use of language is likely to make precise thought more difficult
C. the English language is ugly and inaccurate
D. all language declines for political reasons
E. failure generally leads to more failure in a downward spiral
