专四专八改错题复习汇总

Part Ⅱ Proofreading and Error Correction (15 min)The following passage contains TEN errors. Each line contains a maximum of ONE error. In each case, only ONE word is involved. You should proofread the passage and correct it in the following way.For a wrong word, underline the wrong word and write the correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line.For a missing word, mark the position of the missing word with a “∧” sign and write the word you believe to be missing in the blank provided at the end of the line.For an unnecessary word cross out the unnecessary word with a slash “/’ and put the word in the blank provided at the end of the line.ExampleWhen∧art museum wants a new exhibit, (1) anit never／buys things in finished form and hangs (2) neverthem on the wall. When a natural history museumwants an exhibition, it must often build it. (3) exhibitThe hunter-gatherer tribes that today live as our prehistoric 1.______ human ancestors consume primarily a vegetable diet supplementing 2._____with animal foods. An analysis of 58 societies of modem hunter-gatherers, including the Kung of southern Africa, revealed that onehalf emphasize gathering plant foods, one-third concentrate on fishingand only one-sixth are primarily hunters. Overall, two-thirdsand more of the hunter-gatherer’s calories come from plants. Detailed 3.______ studies of the Kung by the food scientists at the University ofLondon, showed that gathering is a more productive source of foodthan is hunting. An hour of hunting yields in average about 100 4.______ edible calories, as an hour of gathering produces 240. 5.______ Plant foods provide for 60 percent to 80 percent of the Kung 6._______ diet, and no one goes hungry when the hunt fails. Interestingly, ifthey escape fatal infections or accidents, these contemporaryaborigines live to old ages despite of the absence of medical care. 7._______ They experience no obesity, no middle-aged spread, little dentaldecay, no high blood pressure, on heart disease, and their bloodcholesterol levels are very low( about half of the average American 8._______ adult), if no one is suggesting what we return to an aboriginal life 9.________ style, we certainly could use their eating habits as a model for 10.________ healthier diet.The grammatical words which play so large a part in Englishgrammar are for the most part sharply and obviously different 1._______ from the lexical words. A rough and ready difference which mayseem the most obvious is that grammatical words have“ lessmeaning”, but in fact some grammarians have called them 2._______“empty” words as opposed in the “full” words of vocabulary. 3.________ But this is a rather misled way of expressing the distinction. 4._________ Although a word like the is not the name of something as man is,it is very far away from being meaningless; there is a sharp 5._________ difference in meaning between “man is vile and” “the man isvile”, yet the is the single vehicle of this difference in meaning. 6.________ Moreover, grammatical words differ considerably amongthemselves as the amount of meaning they have, even in the 7.________ lexical sense. Another name for the grammatical words has been“little words”. But size is by no mean a good criterion for 8._________ distinguishing the grammatical words of English, when weconsider that we have lexical words as go, man, say, car. Apart 9.________ from this, however, there is a good deal of truth in what somepeople say: we certainly do create a great number of obscurity 10.________ when we omit them. This is illustrated not only in the poetry ofRobert Browning but in the prose of telegrams and newspaper headlines.During the early years of this century, wheat was seen as thevery lifeblood of Western Canada. People on city streets watchedthe yields and the price of wheat in almost as much feeling as if 1._______ they were growers. The marketing of wheat became an increasing 2._______ favorite topic of conversation.War set the stage for the most dramatic events in marketingthe western crop. For years, farmers mistrusted speculative grainselling as carried on through the Winnipeg Grain Exchange.Wheat prices were generally low in the autumn, so farmers could 3._______ not wait for markets to improve. It had happened too often thatthey sold their wheat soon shortly after harvest when farm debts 4.________ were coming due, just to see prices rising and speculators getting rich. 5._______ On various occasions, producer groups, asked firmer control, 6._______ but the government had no wish to become involving, at 7.______ least not until wartime when wheat prices threatened to runwild.Anxious to check inflation and rising life costs, the federal 8.______ government appointed a board of grain supervisors to deal withdeliveries from the crops of 1917 and 1918. Grain Exchangetrading was suspended, and farmers sold at prices fixed by theboard. To handle with the crop of 1919, the government appointed 9.______ the first Canadian Wheat Board, with total authority to 10.______ buy, sell, and set prices.There are great impediments to the general use of a standardin pronunciation comparable to that existing in spelling (orthography).One is the fact that pronunciation is learnt “naturally”and unconsciously, and orthography is learnt 1__________ deliberately and consciously. Large numbers of us, in fact,remain throughout our lives quite unconscious with what our speech 2.__________ sounds like when we speak out, and it often comes as a shock 3.__________ when we firstly hear a recording of ourselves. It is not a voice we 4._________ recognize at once, whereas our own handwriting is somethingwhich we almost always know. We begin the natural learning 5.__________ of pronunciation long before we start learning to read or write,and in our early years we went on unconsciously imitating and 6.__________ practicing the pronunciation of those around us for many morehours per every day than we ever have to spend learning even our 7.___________ difficult English spelling. This is “natural”, therefore, that our 8.__________ speech-sounds should be those of our immediate circle; after all,as we have seen, speech operates as a means of holding a community 9.__________ and giving a sense of 'belonging'. We learn quite early torecognize a “stranger”, someone who speaks with anaccent of a different community-perhaps only a few miles far. 10.__________ 2003改错Demographic indicators show that Americans in the postwarperiod were more eager than ever to establish families. They quicklybrought down the age at marriage for both men and women and broughtthe birth rate to a twentieth century height after more than a hundred (1)______ years of a steady decline, producing the “baby boom.” These young(2)_______ adults established a trend of early marriage and relatively largefamilies that Went for more than two decades and caused a major (3)_______ but temporary reversal of long-term demographic patterns. Fromthe 1940S through the early 1960s, Americans married at a high rate (4)________ and at a younger age than their Europe counterparts. (5)________ Less noted but equally more significant, the men and women on who (6)________ formed families between 1940 and 1960 nevertheless reduced the (7)________ divorce rate after a postwar peak; their marriages remained intact toa greater extent than did that of couples who married in earlier as well (8)________ as later decades. Since the United States maintained its dubious (9)_________ distinction of having the highest divorce rate in the world, thetemporary decline in divorce did not occur in the same extent in (10)_________ Europe. Contrary to fears of the experts, the role of breadwinner andhomemaker was not abandoned.2004改错One of the most important non-legislative functions of the U.S Congressis the power to investigate. This power is usually delegated to committees - either standing committees, special committees set for a specific (1)________ purpose, or joint committees consisted of members of both houses. (2)________ Investigations are held to gather information on the need forfuture legislation, to test the effectiveness of laws already passed,to inquire into the qualifications and performance of members andofficials of the other branches, and in rare occasions, to lay the (3)________ groundwork for impeachment proceedings. Frequently, committeesrely outside experts to assist in conducting investigative hearings (4)_________ and to make out detailed studies of issues. (5)_________ There are important corollaries to the investigative power. Oneis the power to publicize investigations and its results. Most (6)_________ committee hearings are open to public and are reported (7)__________ widely in the mass media. Congressional investigationsnevertheless represent one important tool available to lawmakers (8)__________ to inform the citizenry and to arouse public interests in national issues.(9)________ Congressional committees also have the power to compeltestimony from unwilling witnesses, and to cite for contemptof Congress witnesses who refuse to testify and for perjurythese who give false testimony. (10)_________ 2005改错The University as BusinessA number of colleges and universities have announced steeptuition increases for next year much steeper than the current,very low, rate of inflation. They say the increases are needed becauseof a loss in value of university endowments heavily investing in common 1 stock. I am skeptical. A business firm chooses the price that maximizesits net revenues, irrespective fluctuations in income; and increasingly the 2 outlook of universities in the United States is indistinguishable from those of 3 business firms. The rise in tuitions may reflect the fact economic uncertainty 4 increases the demand for education. The biggest cost of beingin the school is foregoing income from a job (this is primarily a factor in 5 graduate and professional-school tuition); the poor one's job prospects, 6 the more sense it makes to reallocate time from the job market to education,in order to make oneself more marketable.The ways which universities make themselves attractive to students 7 include soft majors, student evaluations of teachers, giving studentsa governance role, and eliminate required courses. 8 Sky-high tuitions have caused universities to regard their students as customers. Just as business firms sometimes collude to shorten the 9 rigors of competition, universities collude to minimize the cost to them of the athletes whom they recruit in order to stimulate alumni donations, so the best athletes now often bypass higher education in order to obtain salaries earlierfrom professional teams. And until they were stopped by the antitrust authorities, the Ivy League schools colluded to limit competition for the best students, by agreeing not to award scholarships on the basis of merit rather than purelyof need-just like business firms agreeing not to give discounts on their best 10 customer.2006改错We use language primarily as a means of communication withother human beings. Each of us shares with the community in which welive a store of words and meanings as well as agreeing conventions as 1_______ to the way in which words should be arranged to convey a particular 2______ message: the English speaker has in his disposal vocabulary and a3_______ set of grammatical rules which enables him to communicate his4______ thoughts and feelings, in a variety of styles, to the other English 5_______ speakers. His vocabulary, in particular, both that which he uses activelyand that which he recognizes, increases in size as he growsold as a result of education and experience. 6______ But, whether the language store is relatively small or large, the systemremains no more, than a psychological reality for tike inpidual, unlesshe has a means of expressing it in terms able to be seen by another 7_______ member of his linguistic community; he bas to give tile system aconcrete transmission form. We take it for granted rice’ two m ost8_______ common forms of transmission-by means of sounds produced by ourvocal organs (speech) or by visual signs (writing). And these are 9___ ___ among most striking of human achievements. 10_______2007改错From what has been said, it must be clear that no one canmake very positive statements about how language originated.There is no material in any language today and in the earliest 1records of ancient languages show us language in a new and 2emerging state. It is often said, of course, that the language 3 ___ originated in cries of anger, fear, pain and pleasure, and the 4 necessary evidence is entirely lacking: there are no remotetribes, no ancient records, providing evidence ofa language with a large proportion of such cries 5than we find in English. It is true that the absenceof such evidence does not disprove the theory, but in 6other grounds too the theory is not very attractive.People of all races and languages make rather similarnoises in return to pain or pleasure. The fact that7such noises are similar on the lips of Frenchmenand Malaysians whose languages are utterly different,serves to emphasize on the fundamental difference8__________ between these noises and language proper. We maysay that the cries of pain or chortles of amusementare largely reflex actions, instinctive to large extent, 9whereas language proper does not consist of signsbut of these that have to be learnt and that are10__________ wholly conventional.2008年改错The desire to use language as a sign of national identityis a very natural one，and in result language has played a 1__________ prominent part in national moves．Men have often felt the need 2__________ to cultivate a given language to show that they are distinctive 3____________ from another race．whose hegemony they resent．At the time the 4.___________ United States split off from Britain，for example，therewere proposals that independence should be linguistically accepted by 5._________ the use of a different language from those of Britain． 6.__________ There was even one proposal that Americans should adopt Hebrew．Others favoured the adoption of Greek，though，as one man put it，things would certainly be simpler for Americans if they stuck on to 7.___________ English and made the British learn Greek．At the end，as everyone 8.___________ knows，the two countries adopted the practical and satisfactorysolution of carrying with the same language as before．Sincenearly two hundred years now，they have shown the 9.____________ world that political independence and national identity can be 10.___________ complete without sacrificing the enormous mutual advantages of a common language．2009年改错The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passesfrom one school child to the next and illustrates the further difference (1)__ ___ between shcool lore and nursery lore. In nursery lore a verse, learntin early childhood, is not usually passed on again when the little listener (2)__ ___ has grown up, and has children of their own, or even grandchildren. (3)___ __ The period between learning a nursery rhyme and transmittingIt may be something from twenty to seventy years. With the playground (4)__ ___ lore, therefore, a rhyme may be excitedly passed on whtin the very hour (5)__ ___it is learnt; and in the general, it passes between children of the (6)___ __ same age, or nearly so, since it is uncommon for the difference in agebetween playmates to be more than five years. If therefore, a playgroundrhyme can be shown to have been currently for a hundred years, or (7)___ __ even just for fifty, it follows that it has been retransmitting overand over; very possibly it has passed along a chain of two or three (8)__ ___ hundred young hearers and tellers, and the wonder is that it remains live (9)___ __ after so much handling, to let alone that it bears resemblance to the (10)__ __ original wording.2012PART IV PROOFREADING & ERROR CORRECTION (15 MIN)The passage contains TEN errors．Each indicated line contains a maximum of ONE error．In each case, only ONE word is involved．You should proof-read the passage and correct it in the following way:For a wrong word, underline the wrong word and write the correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line.For a missing word, mark the position of the missing word with a "L" sign and write the word you believe to be missing in the blank provided at the end of the line.For an unnecessary word, cross the unnecessary word with a slash "/" and put the word in the blank provided at the end of the line.EXAMPLEWhen A art museum wants a new exhibit, (1) anit never buys things in finished form and hangs (2) neverthem on the wall．When a natural history museumwants an exhibition, it must often build it．(3) exhibitProofread the given passage on ANSWER SHEET TWO as instructed.The central problem of translating has always been whether to translate literally or freely．The argument has been going since at least the first (1) ______ century B.C．Up to the beginning of the 19th century, many writersfavoured certain kind of “free” translation: the sp irit, not the letter; the (2) _______ sense not the word; the message rather the form; the matter not (3) _______ the manner．This is the often revolutionary slogan of writers who (4) _______ wanted the truth to be read and understood．Then in the turn of 19th (5) _______ century, when the study of cultural anthropology suggested thatthe linguistic barriers were insuperable and that the language (6) _______ was entirely the product of culture, the view translation was impossible (7) _______ gained some currency, and with it that, if was attempted at all, it must be as (8) _____ literal as possible．This view culminated the statement of the (9) _______ extreme “literalists” Walter Benjamin and Vladimir Nobokov.The argument was theoretical: the purpose of the translation, thenature of the readership, the type of the text, was not discussed．Toooften, writer, translator and reader were implicitly identified witheach other．Now, the context has changed, and the basic problem remains．(10)_____。