4级2单-新练习

Unit Two (Book Four)

形成性练习

I. RF

Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over a passage quickly and read ten statements after it.

For statements1-10, write

T(for True) if the statement agrees with the information given in the above paragraph(s);

F(for False) if the statement contradicts the information given in the above paragraph(s);

E (for Not given) if the statement is not given in the above paragraph(s);

(1)

Letters: Obsolete Technology?

Readers’complaints that our young people are helpless when thrown back on obsolete technology, such as the dial telephone and simple addition, have aroused a protest.

You may remember reading here about the fifth-grade pupil who wanted to call home from school but didn’t know how to use the dial phone, and the ice cream parlor that had to close because the computerized cash register broke down.

These stories suggested that young people are almost wholly dependent on state of the art technology, and also that we older people are becoming obsolete or outdated along with the machines of our era.

Perhaps it is the latter that hurts.

John A. Junot wants to know whether, if my car broke down, I would know how to ride a horse.

I might be willing to try. But the problem is --- where could I ride one?

Junot suggests that I would either get the car repaired or replace it. That is what today’s young engineers do when their computers break down, he points out.

In that respect I am as dependent on modern technology as the young, I have allowed myself to become wholly dependent on my computer, and when it breaks down I am like a man cast adrift at sea in a small boat.

“Cultures do not lose arts and skills,” Junot argues. “They abandon them. Calculating by slide rule is in exactly the same class as archery, blacksmithing, sailing, hand-weaving and drawing. To the extent that those things are done, they are done by hobbyists, historians and cultural anthropologists and are preserved mainly by librarians.”

Junot points out that certain ancient skills, such as archery and sailing, are themselves improved by modern technology. “Robin Hood probably couldn’t shoot one of today’s graphite (石墨)/epoxy (环氧的) compound bows.”

He says: “And so to that fifth-grader who didn’t know how to dial-type phone, you imply that the boy was somehow culturally deprived, and that it would ‘come in handy’ if he learned.”

“I fail to see how. Rotary-dial phones are going the way of high-button shoes; they are uncommon now and doomed to extinction simply because you can’t talk to computers with a rotary-type phone.”

Junot points out that the first computers are already obsolete. I know what he means. I bought the first IBM Personal Computer on the market. Recently I blew what is known as the “mother