四、長篇閱讀 (第 41-50 題) 說明:下列二篇文章共有 10 個問題,閱讀後請依文意與題意選出最恰當的選項,並將 代號標示在答案卡上。 One of the great, abiding myths of America is that it is a melting pot, a big, warm stew of all the ethnic and cultural differences that formerly separated people, now blended together into a smooth, supremely palatable America. Language was the prime example-within a generation or two, immigrants to America were expected to shed their Chinese, Korean, Spanish or Italian mother tongues for initially accented and ultimately flawless English. But ironically, in an era when the world’s lingua franca is overwhelmingly English, there are a skyrocketing number of people in America who not only have limited proficiency in English, but who live in households where no one speaks English very well. The U.S. Census calls these households “linguistically isolated,” and the number of people living in them has surged in recent years-by more than 50 percent, to nearly 12 million people. The total number of people in America today speaking English either “not at all” or with limited proficiency is nearly 25 million, more than the population of Taiwan. 【題組】42. Which of the following descriptions about “melting pot” is TRUE?
(A) It is a metaphor of cookware used to illustrate the diversification of cuisine cultures.
(B) It is a claim that people should be separated from one another because of the cultural
differences.
(C) It is a belief that people of different ethnic groups can assimilate to make a heterogeneous
society homogeneous.
(D) It used to be an abiding myth in the U.S. and now becomes a ubiquitous creed in the
world.