V. Reading Comprehension: Choose the best answer. 15% (各 1.5 分)
It is simple enough to say that since books have classes—fiction, biography, poetry—we should
separate them and take from each what is right that each should give us. Yet few people ask from
books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds,
asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be
flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such
preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to your author;
try to become him. Be his fellow worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve, and criticize
at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read. But if
you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness,
from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being
unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this, and soon you will find that your
author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more definite.
The thirty-two chapters of a novel—if we consider how to read a novel first—are an attempt to
make something as formed and controlled as a building: but words are more impalpable than bricks;
reading is a longer and more complicated process than seeing. Perhaps the quickest way to
understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write, to make your own
experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words. Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct
impression on you—how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people talking. A tree
shook; an electric light danced; the tone of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision, an
entire conception, seemed contained in that moment.
【題組】37. What does the word “dictate” probably mean?.
(A) to be fascinated by
(B) to tell someone how to behave
(C) to notice or discover something
(D) to say words for someone else to write down