专业英语四级-116
(总分100,考试时间90分钟)
Passage 1
I grew up deprived of hugs. Neither of my parents was the cuddly type. Greetings involving kissing caused me to wince, and hugging generally just made me feel awkward.
Then one hug changed all that. One month before my 40th birthday my dad had heart surgery. As he came round, days later, he grabbed me and hugged me so hard I had to push with all my might to keep my head from pressing down on his newly stitched torso.
It was a hug to make up for all those we had never had. Days later as he slowly started to gain strength he told me for the first time ever that he loved me, and through my tears I told him I loved him, too.
I began planning how to bake him better—with carrot cakes, victoria sponges, jelly and ice
cream. My maternal streak kicked in and I fantasied about wheeling him through the park and feeding him home-made goodies. Then he died.
I felt cheated. All my life I had wondered whether my dad cared for me and loved me—I doubted it.
Just as I got proof that he did, he passed away.
My parents split up when I was two years old and, while I had monthly contact with my dad, my bitter stepmother and my father"s old-fashioned stiff upper lip meant we never became close. In fact, I used to dread the visits to see him and count the hours until I could go home again.
When I was very little the weekends at my father"s house felt cold and unfriendly. During my teens the trips to a hostile house became a dread on the horizon for weeks beforehand. Each stay culminated in an uncomfortable peck on the cheek from dad as he said goodbye—a moment I cringed about for hours in advance.
Losing a father whom you have no recollection of ever living with is difficult. Grieving is tricky; I didn"t have any obvious close father-daughter memories to cling to and think and cry over. Most of my memories were of stilted meetings and uncomfortable times together. But I desperately missed him being alive.
As time moved on my grief and anger at his untimely death began to recede. I realized that his affirmation of me from his deathbed had filled a gaping hole of insecurity I had constantly carried around.
To a child a hug says too many things. It tells you that the person hugging you loves you, cares for you. A hug also confirms that you are a lovable being. Months after dad"s death I realized with a jolt that his lack of hugs said more about him than me. My father was not a demonstrative man and I was, therefore, perhaps, a lovable being.
1. The word "wince" in Paragraph One means ______.
A. withdraw        B. shudder
C. cry        D. worry
2. We can infer from the passage that ______.
A. the father loved his daughter more than the mother did
B. the father wasn"t good at expressing his inner feelings
C. the father regretted not having hugged his daughter earlier
D. the father"s last wish was to tell his daughter he loved her
3. Which of the following statements about the author is INCORRECT?
A. She was reluctant to go to visit her father"s but she had to.
B. She wasn"t intimate with her father partly because of her stepmother.
C. She was awkward when her father felt uneasy during her stay.
D. She disliked having to meet with her stepmother and her children.
4. According to the passage, the author"s background ______.
A. made her feel sad and depressed
B. gave her a sense of insecurity
C. enabled her to make great achievements
D. induced her to be far away from her father
5. In the end, the author seemed to gain ______.
A. understanding        B. popularity
C. confidence        D. recognition
Passage 2
shudderOn one of the shelves of an old dresser, in company with old and dusty sauceboats, jugs, dishes and plates, and paid bills, rested a worn and ragged Bible, on whose front page w
as the record, in faded ink, of a baptism dated ninety-four years ago. "Martha Crale" was the name written on that yellow page. The yellow, wrinkled old dame who moved slowly and muttered about the kitchen, looking like a dead autumn leaf which the winter winds still pushed here and there, had once been Martha Crale; for seventy odd years she had been Martha Mountjoy. For longer than anyone could remember she had paced to and fro between oven and washhouse and dairy, and out to chicken-run and garden, grumbling and muttering and scolding, but working unceasingly. Emma Ladbruk, of **ing she took as little notice as she would of a bee wandering in at a window on a summer"s day, used at first to watch her with a kind of frightened curiosity. She was so old and so much a part of the place, it was difficult to think of her exactly as a living thing. Old Shep, the white-nosed, stiff-limber shepherd dog, waiting for his time to die, seemed almost more human than the withered, dried-up old woman. He had been a noisy, excited puppy, mad with the joy of life, when she was already a weak and tottering dame; now he was just a blind, breathing animal body, nothing more, and she still worked with frail energy, still swept and baked and washed, fetched and carried. If there were something in these wise old dogs t
hat did not perish utterly with death, Emma used to think to herself, what generations of ghost-dogs there must be out on those hills, that Martha had reared and fed and tended and spoken a last goodbye word to in that old kitchen. And what memories she must have of human generations that had passed away in her time. It was difficult for anyone, let alone a stranger like Emma, to get her to talk of the days that had been; her shrill, quivering speech was of doors that had been left unfastened, pails that had got mislaid, calves whose feeding-time was overdue, and the various little faults that change a farmhouse routine.
Now and again, when election time came round, she would unstore her recollections of the old names round which the fight had waged in the days gone by. There had been a Palmerston, that had been a name down Tiverton way; Tiverton was not a far journey as the crow flies, but to Martha it was almost a foreign country. Later there had been Northcotes and Aclands, and many other newer names that she had forgotten; the names changed, but it was always Libruls and Tootles, Yellows and Blues. And they always quarrelled and shouted as to who was right and who was wrong. The one they quarrelled
about most was a fine old gentleman with an angry face—she had seen his picture on the walls. She had seen it on the floor too, with a rotten apple squashed over it, for the farm had changed its politics from time to time. Martha had never been on one side or the other, none of "they" had ever done the farm a stroke of good. Such was her sweeping verdict, given with all a peasant"s distrust of the outside world.

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