如题所述
5. Read the passage below. Then choose the best answer to each question that follows.
(1) Television has transformed politics in the United States by changing the way in which information is disseminated, by altering political campaigns, and by changing citizens' patterns of response to politics.
(2) By giving citizens independent access to the candidates, television diminished the role of the political party in the selection of the major party candidates.
(3) By centering politics on the person of the candidate, television accelerated the citizens' focus on character rather than issues.
(4) Television has altered the forms of political communication as well.
(5) The messages on which most of us rely are briefer than they once were.
(6) The stump speech, a political speech given by traveling politicians and lasting 11/2 to 2 hours, which characterized nineteenth-century political discourse, has given way to the 30-second advertisement and the 10-second “sound bite” in broadcast news.
(7) Increasingly the audience for speeches is not that standing in front of the politician but rather the viewing audience who will hear and see a snippet of the speech on the news.
(8) In these abbreviated forms, much of what constituted the traditional political discourse of earlier ages has been lost. (9) In 15 or 30 seconds, a speaker cannot establish the historical context that shaped the issue in question, cannot detail the probable causes of the problem, and cannot examine alternative proposals to argue that one is preferable to others.
(10) In snippets, politicians assert but do not argue.
(11) Because television is an intimate medium, speaking through it requires a changed political style that was more conversational, personal, and visual than that of the old-style stump speech.
(12) Reliance on television means that increasingly our political world contains memorable pictures rather than memorable words.
(13) Schools teach us to analyze words and print.
(14) However, in a world in which politics is increasingly visual, informed citizenship requires a new set of skills.
(15) Recognizing the power of television's pictures, politicians craft televisual, staged events, called pseudo-event, designed to attract media coverage.
(16) Much of the political activity we see on television news has been crafted by politicians, their speechwriters, and their public relations advisers for televised consumption.
(17) Sound bites in news and answers to questions in debates increasingly sound like advertisements.
1) What is the main idea of the passage?
A. Citizens in the United States are now more informed about political issuebecause of television coverage.
B. Citizens in the United States prefer to see politicians on television instead ofin person.
C. Politics in the United States has become substantially more controversialsince the introduction of television.
D. Politics in the United States has been significantly changed by television.
2) The word “disseminated” in sentence 1 is closest in meaning to_______.
A. analyzed
B. discussed
C. spread
D. stored
3) It can be inferred that before the introduction of television, political parties _______.
A. had more influence over the selection of political candidates
B. spent more money to promote their political candidates
C. attracted more members
D. received more money
4) The author mentions the “stump speech” in sentence 6 as an example of _______.
A. an event created by politicians to attract media attention
B. an interactive discussion between two politicians
C. a kind of political presentation typical of the nineteenth century
D. a style of speech common to televised political events
5) The word “that” in sentence 7 refers to _______.
A. audience
B. broadcast news
C. politician
D. advertisement
6) According to the passage, as compared with televised speeches, traditional political discourse was more successful at _______.
A. allowing news coverage of political candidates
B. placing political issues within a historical context
C. making politics seem more intimate to citizens
D. providing detailed information about a candidate's private behavior
7) The author states that “politicians assert but do not argue” in sentence 9 in order to suggest that politicians _______.
A. make claims without providing reasons for the claims
B. take stronger positions on issues than in the past
C. enjoy explaining the issue to broadcasters
D. dislike having to explain their own positions on issues to citizens
8) The purpose of paragraph 4 is to suggest that_______.
A. politicians will need to learn to become more personal when meeting citizens
B. politicians who are considered very attractive are favored by citizens over politicians who are less attractive
C. citizens tend to favor a politician who analyzed the issue over one who did not
D.citizens will need to learn how to evaluate visual political images in order to become better informed
9) Which of the following statements is supported by the passage?
A. Political presentations today are more like advertisements than in the past.
B.Politicians today tend to be more familiar with the views of citizens than in the past.
C. Citizens today are less informed about a politician's character than in the past.
D. Political speeches today focus more on details about issues than in the past.
Part IIIRead and Question
In this part, you will read about related or contradictory views on a variety of issues. You will be required to identify the writer's position and evaluate the effectiveness of the writer's arguments. Read the following two passages and answer the questions.
Passage A
WhileOn the origin of Species created a great stir when it was published in 1859, Darwinian thought was almost completely out of vogue by the turn of the twentieth century. It took Ronald Fisher's “Great Synthesis” of the 1920s, which combined the genetic work of Gregor Mendel with Darwin's ideas about natural selection, and Theodosius Dobzhansky's “Modern Synthesis” of the 1930s, which was built upon Fisher's work with genetics within a species by focusing on how genetic variation could cause the origin of a new species, to begin to rehabilitate Darwin.
Yet, what is remarkable is how very prescient Darwin, working without knowledge of the mechanisms of heredity, proved to be. As prominent biologist Ernst Mayr notes, what made Darwinian theory so remarkable was his emphasis on “population thinking”. This contrasts to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory of evolution, popular throughout the nineteenth century, which posited that individuals changed personal actions and will. Lamarckian theory is often exemplified by a giraffe constantly reaching up to eat leaves off high branches and passing on its lengthened neck to its children.
Such explanations bore a strong resemblance to children's fables (and indeed Rudyard Kipling's late-nineteenth-century Just So Storieswas built upon Lamarckian theories). Where Darwin differed was his insistence that significant variation was not based within one particular individual, but rather in the breeding population as a whole. Natural selection was not based on the actions or goals of one individual, but variations in the average character of the species.
Passage B
As Peter Bowler points out in his aptly named The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth, nineteenth-century Darwinism was quite different from the Darwinism of today. Thomas Huxley, “Darwin's Bulldog”, so called because of his tireless public campaigning for Darwinian thought, exemplifies this difference. As a result of his advocacy, by the end of the nineteenth century Huxley was the vehicle for Darwinian thought. Noted science fiction writer H. G. Wells, for instance, garnered all of his information about natural selection and evolution through Huxley's lectures. Yet Huxley's theory varied significantly from that of Darwin, focusing on the will of humankind.
In the preface to Evolution and Ethics, Huxley wrote that “We cannot do without our inheritance from the forefathers who were the puppets of the cosmic process; the society which renounces it must be destroyed from without. Still less can we do with too much of it; the society in which it dominates must be destroyed from within.” According to Huxley, humankind has moved past physical evolution to the realm of self-directed moral evolution. Huxley, then, acknowledges that humankind has evolved under the pressure of natural selection and must remain aware of the fact or be “destroyed from without”, but he argues that a society that continues in the path that Nature has placed it will be “destroyed from within” because it will no longer be adapted to itself.
