No fairy story ever claimed to be a description of the external world and no sane child has ever believed that it was.

46. According to the author, the best way to retell a story to a child is to ______________.
A. tell it in a creative way
B. take from it what the child likes
C. add to it whatever at hand
D. read it out of the story book.

47. In the second paragraph, which statement best expresses the author’s attitude towards fairy stories?
A. He sees in them the worst of human nature.
B. He dislikes everything about them.
C. He regards them as more of a benefit than harms.
D. He is expectant of the experimental results.

48. According to the author, fairy stories are most likely to ____________.
A. make children aggressive the whole life
B. incite destructiveness in children
C. function as a safety valve for children
D. add children’s enjoyment of cruelty to others

49. If the child has heard some horror story for more than once, according to the author, he would probably be ______________.
A. scared to death
B. taking it and even enjoying it
C. suffering more the pain of fear
D. dangerously terrified

50. The author’s mention of broomsticks and telephones is meant to emphasize that ___________.
A. old fairy stories keep updating themselves to cater for modern needs
B. fairy stories have claimed many lives of victims
C. fairy stories have thrown our world into chaos
D. fairy stories are after all fairy stories
Passage 4
There has been a lot of hand-wringing over the death of Elizabeth Steinberg . Without blaming anyone in particular, neighbors, friends, social workers, the police and newspaper editors have struggled to define the community’s responsibility to Elizabeth and to other battered children. As the collective soul-searching continues, there is a pervading sense that the system failed her.
The fact is, in New York State the system couldn’t have saved her. It is almost impossible to protect a child from violent parents, especially if they are white, middle-class, well-educated and represented by counsel.
Why does the state permit violence against children? There are a number of reasons. First, parental privilege is a rationalization. In the past, the law was giving its approval to the biblical injunction against sparing the rod.
Second, while everyone agrees that the state must act to remove children from their homes when there is danger of serious physical or emotional harm, many child advocates believe that state intervention in the absence of serious injury is more harmful than helpful.
Third, courts and legislatures tread carefully when their actions intrude or threaten to intrude on a relationship protected by the Constitution. In 1923, the Supreme Court recognized the “liberty of parent and guardian to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.” More recently, in 1977, it upheld the teacher’s privilege to use corporal punishment against schoolchildren. Read together, these decisions give the constitutional imprimatur to parental use of physical force.
Under the best conditions, small children depend utterly on their parents for survival. Under the worst, their dependency dooms them. While it is questionable whether anyone or anything could have saved Elizabeth Steinberg, it is plain that the law provided no protection.
To the contrary, by justifying the use of physical force against children as an acceptable method of education and control, the law lent a measure of plausibility and legitimacy to her parents’ conduct.
More than 80 years ago, in the teeth of parental resistance and Supreme Court doctrine, the New York State Legislature acted to eliminate child labor law. Now, the state must act to eliminate child abuse by banning corporal punishment. To break the cycle of violence, nothing less will answer. If there is a lesson to be drawn from the death of Elizabeth Steinberg, it is this: spare the rod and spare the child.
51. The New York State law seems to provide least protection of a child from violent parents of ____________.
A. a family on welfare
B. a poor uneducated family
C. an educated black family
D. a middle-class white family
52. “Sparing the rod” (in boldface) means ____________.
A. spoiling children
B. punishing children
C. not caring about children
D. not beating children
53. Corporal punishment against schoolchildren is _____________.
A. taken as illegal in the New York State
B. considered being in the teacher’s province
C. officially approved by law
D. disapproved by school teachers
54. From the article we can infer that Elizabeth Steinberg is probably the victim of ____________.
A. teachers’ corporal punishment
B. misjudgment of the court
C. parents’ ill-treatment
D. street violence
55. The writer of this article thinks that banning corporal punishment will in the long run _____________.
A. prevent violence of adults
B. save more children
C. protect children from ill-treatment
D. better the system
Passage 5
With its common interest in lawbreaking but its immense range of subject-matter and widely-varying methods of treatment, the crime novel could make a legitimate claim to be regarded as a separate branch of literature, or, at least, as a distinct, even though a slightly disreputable, offshoot of the traditional novel.
The detective story is probably the most respectable (at any rate in the narrow sense of the word) of the crime species. Its creation is often the relaxation of university scholars, literary economists, scientists or even poets. Disastrous deaths may occur more frequently and mysteriously than might be expected in polite society, but the world in which they happen, the village, seaside resort, college or studio, is familiar to us, if not from our own experience, at least in the newspaper or the lives of friends. The characters, though normally realized superficially, are as recognizably human and consistent as our less intimate acquaintances. A story set in a more remote African jungle or Australian bush, ancient China or gas-lit London, appeals to our interest in geography or history, and most detective story writers are conscientious in providing a reasonably true background. The elaborate, carefully-assembled plot, despised by the modern intellectual critics and creators of “significant” novels, has found refuge in the murder mystery, with its sprinkling of clues, its spicing with apparent impossibilities, all with appropriate solutions and explanations at the end. With the guilt of escapism from real life nagging gently, we secretly take delight in the unmasking of evil by a vaguely super-human detective, who sees through and dispels the cloud of suspicion which has hovered so unjustly over the innocent.
Though its villain also receives his rightful deserts, the thriller presents a less comfortable and credible world. The sequence of fist fights, revolver duels, car crashes and escapes from gas-filled cellars exhausts the reader far more than the hero, who, suffering from at least two broken ribs, one black eye, uncountable bruises and a hangover, can still chase and overpower an armed villain with the physique of a wrestler, He moves dangerously through a world of ruthless gangs, brutality, a vicious lust for power and money and, in contrast to the detective tale, with a near-omniscient arch-criminal whose defeat seems almost accidental. Perhaps we miss in the thriller the security of being safely led by our imperturbable investigator past a score of red herrings and blind avenues to a final gathering of suspects when an unchallengeable elucidation of all that has bewildered us is given and justice and goodness prevail. All that we vainly hope for from life is granted vicariously.
56. The crime novel is regarded by the author as _________________.
A. a not respectable form of the traditional novel
B. not a true novel at all
C. related in some ways to the historical novel
D. a distinct branch of the traditional novel
57. The creation of detective stories has its origin in _______________.
A. seeking rest from work or worries
B. solving mysterious deaths in this society
C. restoring expectations in polite society
D. preventing crimes
58. The characters of the detective stories are, generally speaking, _____________.
A. more profound than those of the traditional novels
B. as real as life itself
C. not like human beings at all
D. not very profound but not unlikely
59. The setting of the detective stories is sometimes in a more remote place because ___________.
A. it is more real
B. our friends are familiar with it
C. it pleases the readers in a way
D. it needs the readers’ support
60. The writer of this passage thinks _____________.
A. what people hope for from life can finally be granted if they have confidence
B. people like to feel that justice and goodness will always triumph
C. they know in the real world good does not prevail over evil
D. their hopes in life can only be fulfilled through fiction reading
Passage 6
Whenever we are involved in a creative type of activity that is self-rewarding, a feeling overcomes us—a feeling that we can call “flow.” When we are flowing we lose all sense of time and awareness of what is happening around us; instead, we feel that everything is going just right.
A rock dancer describes his feeling of flow like this: “If I have enough space, I feel I can radiate an energy into the atmosphere. I can dance for walls, I dance for floors. I become one with the atmosphere.” “You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you don’t exist,” says a composer, describing how he feels when he “flows.” Players of any sport throughout the world are familiar with the feeling of flow; they enjoy their activity very much, even though they can expect little extrinsic reward. The same holds true for surgeons, cave explorers, and mountain climbers.