高二英语阅读理解1

高二英语阅读理解1

A

A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises (出现) from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.

There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar (奇怪的) that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girlfriend.

No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.

1．The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is ________.

A．repeated without any change

B．treated as a joke

C．made some changes by the parent

D．set in the present

2．According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is ________.

A．in a realistic setting B．heard for the first time

C．repeated too often D．told in a different way

3．The advantage claimed (提出) for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it ________.

A．makes them less fearful

B．develops their power of memory

C．makes them believe there is nothing to be afraid of

D．encourages them not to have strange beliefs

4．The author's mention of sticks and telephones is meant to suggest that ________.

A．fairy stories are still being made up

B．there is some misunderstanding about fairy tales

C．people try to modernize old fairy stories

D．there is more concern for children's fears nowadays

5．One of the reasons why some people are not in favor of fairy tales is that ________.

A．they are full of imagination

B．they just make up the stories which are far from the truth

C．they are not interesting

D．they make teachers of history difficult to teach

B

Very old people do raise moral problems for almost everyone who comes in contact with them. Their values —this can't be repeated too often —are not necessarily our values. Physical comfort, cleanness and order are not necessarily the most important things. The social services from time to time find themselves faced with a flat with decaying food covered by small worms, and an old person lying alone in bed, taking no notice of the worms. But is it interfering (干涉) with personal freedom to insist that they go to live with some of their relatives so that they might be taken better care of? Some social workers, the ones who clear up the worms, think we are in danger of carrying this concept of personal freedom to the point where serious risks are being taken with the health and safety of the old.

Indeed, the old can be easily hurt or harmed. The body is like a car, it needs more mechanical maintenance (机械维修，保养) as it gets older. You can carry this comparison right through to the provision of spare parts. But never forget that such operations are painful experiences, however good the results will be. And at what point should you stop to treat the old body? Is it morally right to try to push off death by seeking the development of drugs to excite the forgetful old mind and to activate the old body, knowing that it is designed to die? You can't ask doctors or scientists to decide, because so long as they can see the technical opportunities, they will feel bound to give them a try, on the principle that while there's life, there's hope.

When you talk to the old people, however, you are forced to the conclusion that whether age is happy or unpleasant depends less on money or on health than it does on your ability to have fun.