專家解析大學英語四級考試歷年閱讀真題(十三)

　　可以看到A、B、C的說法在最后一段找不到任何類似內容。D所說的“價格使公民站在了不平等的基礎上”中，價格應該就是指的氫彈的昂貴，使不平等應該是說富人買得起而窮人買不起，這符合上面的分析。應該選D。

　　20. From the tone of the passage we know that the author is ________.

　　A) doubtful about the necessity of keeping H-bombs at home for safety

　　B) unhappy with those who vote against the ownership of H-bombs

　　C) not serious about the private ownership of H-bombs

　　D) concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons(A)

　　本題問從這篇文章的敘述基調可知作者如何如何。

　　A，對出于安全因素而在家中存放氫彈的必要性表示懷疑。

　　B， 對那些投票反對個人擁有氫彈的人存有反感。

　　C，對私人擁有氫彈問題并不在乎。

　　D，憂心核武器的擴散。

　　從文章內容來看，作者實際上自始至終沒有提出自己的觀點，只是引用氫彈協(xié)會與反對者兩方面的意見進行論述，要想從中看出作者的傾向比較困難。但內容本身還是能夠傳達出一些信號供我們分析。首先，在寫作一篇關于氫彈協(xié)會的文章之始，在寫作方向上可以有很多選擇，如將其做為新生事物做正面介紹——這就暗示作者有支持氫彈協(xié)會的傾向(如此就可以選B);或者把此事作為新聞事件僅客觀地加以敘述，寫法類似于新聞報道(如此就可以選C)。但讀完文章后可以發(fā)現(xiàn)，作者沒有按照上述的寫法寫作，而是引入很多反對意見，以問答的形式介紹在該事件上的爭論情況，這樣就至少可以判斷出作者的傾向不是支持氫彈協(xié)會的，否則就不會羅列如此之多的反對意見，來讓讀者了解到私人擁有氫彈的弊端。其次，可以發(fā)現(xiàn)作者羅列的反對意見是非常深入非常尖銳的，尤其是最后兩段，對前面發(fā)言人的觀點做了針鋒相對的反駁，如果作者的態(tài)度是事不關己，相信不會如此和氫彈協(xié)會的人過不去。因此可以判斷作者的態(tài)度大致是對私人擁有氫彈表示擔心的。答案應該是A。

　　D的說法似乎也對，但應該注意D的用詞，nuclear weapons用的是復數(shù)形式，那么這個詞組就指的是破壞力極強的軍事上使用的核武器，而不是家庭用的氫彈。如果指家庭用氫彈應該這么表述：the nuclear weapon，用the特指文章已經提到的氫彈，weapon用單數(shù)。

　　Passage Three

　　Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.

　　Sign has become a scientific hot button. Only in the past 20 years have specialists in language study realized that signed languages are unique—a speech of the hand. They offer a new way to probe how the brain generates and understands language, and throw new light on an old scientific controversy: whether language, complete with grammar, is something that we are born With, or whether it is a learned behavior. The current interest in sign language has roots in the pioneering work of one rebel teacher at Gallaudet University in Washington, D. C., the world’s only liberal arts university for deaf people.

　　When Bill Stokoe went to Gallaudet to teach English, the school enrolled him in a course in signing. But Stokoe noticed something odd: among themselves, students signed differently from his classroom teacher.

　　Stokoe had been taught a sort of gestural code, each movement of the hands representing a word in English. At the time, American Sign Language (ASL) was thought to be no more than a form of pidgin English (混雜英語). But Stokoe believed the “hand talk” his students used looked richer. He wondered: Might deaf people actually: have a genuine language? And could that language be unlike any other on Earth? It was 1955, when even deaf people dismissed their signing as “substandard”. Stokoe’s idea was academic heresy (異端邪說).

　　It is 37 years later. Stokoe—now devoting his time to writing and editing books and journals and to producing video materials on ASL and the deaf culture—is having lunch at a cafe near the Gallaudet campus and explaining how he started a revolution. For decades educators fought his idea that signed languages are natural languages like English, French and Japanese. They assumed language must be based on speech, the modulation (調節(jié)) of sound. But sign language is based on the movement of hands, the modulation of space. “What I said,” Stokoe explains, “is that language is not mouth stuff—it’s brain stuff.”

　　21. The study of sign language is thought to be ________.

　　A) a new way to look at the learning of language

　　B) a challenge to traditional, views on the nature of language

　　C) an approach: to simplifying the grammatical structure of a language

　　D) an attempt to clarify misunderstanding about the origin of language(C)