Maybe it was those long Swedish winters. More than three generations ago, Swedish adults, struggling with the ____41____ of the endless cold nights, began forming “study circles.” They gathered informally to talk about subjects ____42____ from Egyptian art to foreign languages like English. When the Social Democrats gained power in the 1930s, the study circle was ____43____ a matter of national policy. “In Sweden you learn ____44____ you live,” says Barbro Wickberg, an official in the Swedish Education Ministry. Today the government pays 40 percent of the cost of study circles nationwide.
The Swedes have not just created a society of liberal-arts students. Their adult education is also about jobs. The country doesn’t spend very much on cash benefits for the unemployed; ____45____ , it lavishes money on training programs and grants for trainees. “We recognize we have to take care of people in our society. They may as well do something useful,” says Berit Rollen, director of Sweden’s National Employment Training Board.
【題組】41 (A)purpose (B)strength (C)boredom (D)freedom
Have you ever noticed a woman who isn’t particularly beautiful either in face or figure, but still somehow appears very attractive, confident, and stylish? Don’t ever believe being ____1____ equals being beautiful. There are many thin women in the world who don’t know how to dress to make themselves _____2____ really good. Beauty is style, it’s confidence, and above all _____3____ , it’s a positive attitude. Being well-dressed has less to do _____4____ fashion trends. As many experts point out, a well-dressed woman wears clothes ____5____ are right for her body, fit her perfectly, and are appropriate for the occasion.
【題組】3 (A)what (B)there (C)else (D)which
Reading test:
Words are concrete, used to express concrete thoughts and feelings and to deliver practical information; music is, by its very nature, abstract. When the two are put together, the resulting tension creates an excitement and an extra dimension which is denied to the spoken theater. For example, Shakespeare’s Othello is a great play, and Verdi’s Otello which is based on it is a great opera. I think that, if one had seen Shakespeare’s Othello seventy times one would be hard put to it to derive much enjoyment from a seventy-first encounter. But after seventy performances of the opera one can still find new beauty and subtleties to marvel at. Similarly, Beaumarchais’ play Le mariage de Figaro, entertaining though it is, is not something one would want to see once or twice a year throughout one’s lifetime. But ask any opera-lover whether he is tired of Mozart’s opera based on the play and you will learn that he is not, for its riches are inexhaustible. Music brings a greater complexity to the spoken drama and turns it into a different kind of experience.
【題組】38 According to the author, why would a person not want to watch Othello seventy-one times?
(A) It is a tragedy.
(B) He might feel tired of it.
(C) It is full of difficult words.
(D) He would find it too abstract.
33 The government brutally ________ the students’ protest, which in turn stimulated violent backlash.
(A) collided (B) rebelled (C) alienated (D) suppressed
寫作批改
VIP與詳解卡管理
