2017年职称英语试题综合B级阅读理解模拟题(1)

A Tale of Scottish Rural Life

Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song (1932) was voted "the best Scottish novel of all time" by Scotland's reading public in 2005. Once considered shocking for its frank description of aspects of the lives of Scotland's poor rural farmers, it has been adapted for stage, film, TV and radio in recent decades.

The novel is set on the fictional estate of Kinraddie, in the farming country of the Scottish northwest in the years up to and beyond World War I. At its heart is the story of Chris, who is both part of the community and a little outside it.

Grassic Gibbon gives us the most detailed and intimate account of the life of his heroine ( 女主人公) . We watch her grow through a childhood dominated by her cruel but hard-working father;experience tragedy (her mother's suicide and murder of her twin children); and learn about her feelings as she grows into a woman. We see her marry, lose her husband, then marry again. Chris has seemed so convincing a figure to some female readers that they cannot believe that she is the creation of a man.

But it would be misleading to suggest that this book is just about Chris. It is truly a novel of a place and its people. Its opening section tells of Kinraddie's long history, in a language that imitates the place's changing patterns of speech and writing.

The story itself is amazingly full of characters and incidents. It is told from Chris' point of view but also from that of the gossiping community, a community where everybody knows everybody else's business and nothing is ever forgotten.

Sunset Song has a social theme too. It is concerned with what Grassic Gibbon perceives as the destruction of traditional Scottish rural life first by modernization and then by World War I.

Gibbon tried hard to show how certain characters resist the war. Despite this, the war takes the young men away, a number of them to their deaths. In particular, it takes away Chris' husband,Evan Tavendale: The war finally kills Euan, but not in the way his widow is told. In fact, the Germans aren't responsible for his death, but his own side. He is shot because he is said to have run away from a battle.

If the novel is about the end of one way of life it also looks ahead. It is a "Sunset Song" but is concerned too with the new Kinraddie, indeed of the new European world. Grassic Gibbon went on to publish two other novels about the place that continue its story.

1.What is Sunset Song mainly about?

A.The First World War.

B.The beauty of the sunset.

C.The new European world.

D.The lives of rural Scottish farmers.

2.Which statement is NOT true of Chris?

A.She is the heroine, of Sunset Song.

B.She had a miserable childhood.

C.She is the creation of a man.

D.She married only once.

3.What is the opening section of the novel mainly concerned with?

A.The climate of Kinraddie.

B.The history of Kinraddie.

C.The geography of Kinraddie.

D.The language spoken in Kinraddie.

4.Who killed Chris' husband, Evan?

A.His own troops.

B.The French army.

C.The Germans.

D.The Russian soldiers.

5.The word "'Sunset" in the title of this novel most probably means

A.the end of the heroine's life.

B.the end of the story.

C.the end of the traditional way of life.

D.the end of the day.

2017年职称英语试题综合B级阅读理解模拟题答案

1.参考答案：D

参考解析： 细节题。题干：《落日之歌》这部小说主要讲了什么?利用题干关键词可以定位到第一段的第二句话，即《落日之歌》这部小说因其对苏格兰乡村贫苦农民生活的真实描写而令人震撼，近几十年来多次被改编成多种其他艺术形式。由此可以推断，这部小说主要内容与苏格兰贫苦农民的生活有关，故选D。

2.参考答案：D

参考解析： 细节题。题干：下列有关Chris的表述，哪一项是不对的?利用题干关键词和选项关键词可以定位到第三段，该段描述了小说中女主人公Chris的具体生活。第三句话提到“We see her marry, lose her husband, then marry again”，可见Chris结了两次婚，故选D。

3.参考答案：B

参考解析： 细节题。题干：小说的开头部分主要描述了什么?利用题干关键词可以定位到第四段的第三句话，即Kinraddie的悠久历史也是小说描述的内容之一，故选B。

4.参考答案：A

参考解析： 细节题。题干：谁杀了Chris的丈夫Evan?利用题干关键词可以定位到文章倒数第二段，后面部分谈到了Chris的丈夫Evan的死。战争最终夺去了Evan的生命，但事实上Evan并非死于德国人之手，而是死在自己人手上。据说他是因临阵脱逃而被打死的。故选A。

5.参考答案：C

参考解析： 推理题。题干：小说的题目中Sunset的含义是__________。利用题干关键词可以定位到最后一段，这部小说表达的主要意义在于一种生活方式的结束，但它同时也关注着新的欧洲世界的各种变化，故选C。