Material4_9综合英语专四阅读训练

Material 4-9
Text A
She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton Nuttel when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.
"I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said. "She has been very interesting," said Framton. "I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton briskly. "My husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn't it?"
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton, it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious mat his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.
"The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who labored under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement," he continued.
"No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention—but not to what Framton was saying.
"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!"
Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.
In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window; they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: " I said, Bertie, why do you bound?"
Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist corning along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.
" Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window, "fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?" "A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappleton, "could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of goodbye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost." "I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece calmly. "He told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of
pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve. "
Romance at short notice was her speciality.
1. It can be inferred from the passage that Mrs. Sappleton was all EXCEPT________.
A. courteous
B. extroverted
C. talkative
D. deceitful
2. Which adjective can best describe Framton's feeling when talking with Mrs. Sappleton?
A. Apprehensive.
B. Churlish.
C. Glum.
D. Respectful.
3. The word "infirmities" in the fourth paragraph probably means________.
A. personalities
B. ailments
C. accomplices
D. behaviors
4. Framton dashed off without a word of goodbye or apology because .
A. he could not bear Mrs. Sappleton's chattering
B. he suffered from a severe mental illness
C. he was afraid of the brown spaniel
D. he was horrified by the three men
Text B
In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true gladiators. We're pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT prep courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of our first choice. We say our motives are selfless and sensible. A degree from Stanford or Princeton is the ticket for life. If Aaron and Nicole don't get in, they're forever doomed. Gosh, we're delusional.
I've twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. It's one-upmanship among parents. We see our kids' college pedigrees as trophies attesting to how well—or how poorly—we've raised them. But we can't acknowledge that our obsession is more about us than them. So we've contrived various justifications that turn out to be half-truths, prejudices or myths. It actually doesn't matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford.
Admissions anxiety afflicts only a minority of parents. It's true that getting into college has generally become tougher because the number of high-school graduates has grown. From 1994 to 2006, the increase is 28 percent. Still, 64 percent of freshmen attend schools where acceptance rates exceed 70 percent, and the application surge at elite schools dwarfs population growth.
We have a full-blown prestige panic; we worry that there won't be enough trophies to go around. Fearful parents prod their children to apply to more schools than ever. "The epicenters of parental anxiety used to be on the coasts. Boston, New York, Washington, Los Angeles," says Tom Parker, Amherst's admissions dean, "But it's radiated throughout the country. "
Underlying the hysteria is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All that's plausible—and mostly wrong. " We haven't found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters," says Ernest T. Pasearella of the University of Iowa, co-author of How College Affects Students, an 827-page evaluation of hundreds of studies of the college experience. Selective schools don't systematically employ better instructional approaches than less-selective schools, according to a study by Pasearella and George Kuh of Indiana University. Some do; some don't. On two measures—professors' feedback and the number of essay exams—selective schools do slightly worse.
By some studies, selective schools do enhance their graduates' lifetime earnings. The gain is reckoned at 2 percent to 4 percent for every 100-point increase in a school's average SAT scores.
But even this advantage is probably a statistical fluke. A well-known study by Princeton economist Alan Krueger and Stacy Berg Dale of Mathematic Policy Research examined students who got into highly selective schools and then went elsewhere. They earned just as much as graduates from higher-status schools. Kids count more than their colleges. Getting into Yale may signify intelligence, talent and ambition. But it's not the only indicator and, paradoxically, its significance is declining. The reason; so many similar people go elsewhere. Getting into college isn't life's only competition. In the next competition—the job marl.et, graduate school—the results may change. Old-boy networks are breaking down. Krueger studied admissions to one top Ph. D. program. High scores on the Graduate Record Exam helped explain who got in; Ivy League degrees didn't.
So, parents, lighten up. The stakes have been vastly exaggerated. Up to a point, we can rationalize our pushiness. America is a competitive society; our kids need to adjust to that. But too much pushiness can be destructive. The very ambition we impose on our children may get some into Harvard but may also set them up for disappointment. One study of students 20 years out found that, other things being equal, graduates of highly selective schools experienced more job dissatisfaction. They may have been so conditioned to being on top that anything less disappoints. What fires parents' fanaticism is their self-serving desire to announce their own success. Many succumb; 1 did. I located my ideal school for my daughter. She got in—and went elsewhere. Take that, Dad. I located the ideal school for my son. Heck, he wouldn't even visit the place. Pow, Dad. They both love their schools and seem amply stimulated. Foolish Dad.
5. The word "gladiators" in the first paragraph probably means "_______".
A. colossuses
B. commanders
C. warriors
D. gluttons
6. The author's attitude to die parents' claim "our motives are selfless and sensible" is one
Of ________.
A. antipathy
B. apathy
C. ambivalence
D. dissent
7. It can be inferred from the fourth paragraph that .
A. American youth have fewer choices but to go to elite schools
B. the competition for elite schools is fiercer in the United States
C. the parents should not put too much pressure on their children
D. the children's future will be bleak without going to elite schools
8. Which of the following statements about selective schools is TRUE?
A. Selective schools offer getter instructional approaches to their students.
B. There are more essay exams in selective schools than other schools.
C. Their new teaching methods secure their graduates' high salaries.
D. They don't outperform other schools in terms of professors' feedback.
9. The author suggests that parents not impose their ambition on their children because _______.
A. too much pressure might lead to unsatisfactory results
B. their own ambition shouldn't be realized by their children
C. their children might practice job-hopping frequently
D. their children might not share similar interests with them
10. A suitable title for the passage would be________.
A. Selective Schools
B. Success in the Future
C. Desperate Parents
D. Prestige Panic。