第一篇
The Edge，by R. K. Narayan
小说节选：一个叫Ranga的主人公，从事“戗剪子磨菜刀”的职业。当别人问他多大时，他总是笼统的回答：“50，60，80的吧。”如果你换个问法：“你干这行多久了?”他会问你:“哪行?”若是你回答：“带着砂轮磨刀这行啊。”他会说他可不仅仅是磨刀，镰刀、剪刀、理发刀、削皮器、切面包的、屠夫的刀都可以磨。他盼望着或许有一天能给国王的士兵磨剑。你要是打断他问你到底从事这行多久了。他就会指着嘴唇上面说：“从这有胡子开始。”从他乱糟糟的变白的胡子你是看不出啥答案的。
他从来不看月历、表、年历，甚至不照镜子。穿着宽袍，围着头巾在街上游走喊着“戗剪子嘞磨菜刀”。他时常带着设备在市场上游走，会在裁缝店理发店门口停下问需不需要磨磨刀。他们要是忙着会说晚会来吧，要是闲着会想办法溜掉。Ranga会试图说服他们，有些会拿出些家里遗忘的破烂给他，有些直接回绝他。他会说：“如果这次你不磨，下次我就不在了，可能就去朝圣了。”有些人说：“那我就找别人。”
Ranga会说一些比别人不如他专业，磨刀都没有火花，他们都不知道刀锋和锤头的区别等等，而他磨刀时的烟花般的火花会吸引许多孩子。他的老顾客喜欢他开的玩笑和他干的活。他也有六十天保质期，要是60天就钝了可以骂他。有时有顾客质问他一些可能由于材料等问题的原因导致的一些小缺陷，他通常也不辩解，重新返工磨一遍，就当是看看火花愉悦一下了。
题目：
1. 文章结构题目
写作中心从什么变成了什么，main focus shifts from what to what?
本题解题重点在可以利用排除法把带有livelihood等完全无中生有选项做适当排除，答案可得。
2. 词汇题
考察pressed，本题需要放在语境下，看到是其他人不断追问其年龄，让其感觉到很压迫很紧迫，选项有，urged，occupied等。
3. 询证题
题目文主人公Ranga 相比于过去，现在如何?
本题考查作者变化，可以从下面证据部分知道对应信息，其中有younger people对应 overdue older 等。
4. 细节题
考查磨刀匠遇到的顾客都是什么样的?
定位知道到其与顾客的谈话，其中有信息顾客对于他的新方法不感兴趣，勉强接受的信息。选项包括：hypocritical action，sarcastic等。
5. 询证题
考察磨刀匠的新策略效果如何?通过定位到后面四个证据，找到其 实效果不佳，对应信息有reluctant等信息，本题可以解答。
6. 功能题
问作者文章中 an egg用法的作用，本题需要通过an egg定位到是磨刀匠评价对手时候的一个比喻用法，强调了到的使用功能。
第二篇
Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson，by Walt Whitman，BROOKLYN, August, 1856.
HERE are thirty-two Poems, which I send you, dear Friend and Master, not having found how I could satisfy myself with sending any usual acknowledgment of your letter. The first edition, on which you mailed me that till now unanswered letter, was twelve poems—I printed a thousand copies, and they readily sold; these thirty-two Poems I stereotype, to print several thousand copies of. I much enjoy making poems. Other work I have set for myself to do, to meet people and The States face to face, to confront them with an American rude tongue; but the work of my life is making poems. I keep on till I make a hundred, and then several hundred—perhaps a thousand. The way is clear to me. A few years, and the average annual call for my Poems is ten or twenty thousand copies—more, quite likely. Why should I hurry or compromise? In poems or in speeches I say the word or two that has got to be said, adhere to the body, step with the countless common footsteps, and remind every man and woman of something.
Master, I am a man who has perfect faith. Master, we have not come through centuries, caste, heroisms, fables, to halt in this land today. Or I think it is to collect a ten-fold impetus that any halt is made. As nature, inexorable, onward, resistless, impassive amid the threats and sereams of disputants, so America. Let all defer. Let all attend respectfully the leisure of These States, their politics, poems, literature, manners, and their free-handed modes of training their own offspring. Their own comes, just matured, certain, numerous and capable enough, with egotistical tongues, with sinewed wrists, seizing openly what belongs to them. They resume Personality, too long left out of mind. Their shadows are projected in employments, in books, in the cities, in trade; their feet are on the flights of the steps of the Capitol; they dilate, a larger, brawnier, more candid, more democratic, lawless, positive native to The States, sweet-bodied, completer, dauntless, flowing, masterful, beard-faced, new race of men.
Swiftly, on limitless foundations, the United States too are founding a literature. It is all as well done, in my opinion, as could be practicable. Each element here is in condition. Every day I go among the people of Manhattan Island, Brooklyn, and other cities, and among the young men, to discover the spirit of them, and to refresh myself. These are to be attended to; I am myself more drawn here than to those authors, publishers, importations, reprints, and so forth. I pass coolly through those, understanding them perfectly well. and that they do the indispensable service, outside of men like me, which nothing else could do. In poems, the young men of The States shall be represented, for they out-rival the best of the rest of the earth.
The lists of ready-made literature which America inherits by the mighty inheritance of the English language—all the rich repertoire of traditions, poems, historics, metaphysics, plays, classics, translations, have made, and still continue, magnificent preparations for that other plainly signified literature, to be our own, to be electric, fresh, lusty, to express the full-sized body, male and female—to give the modern meanings of things, to grow up beautiful, lasting, commensurate with America, with all the passions of home, with the inimitable sympathies of having been boys and girls together, and of parents who were with our parents.
What else can happen The States, even in their own despite? That huge English flow, so sweet, so undeniable, has done incalculable good here, and is to be spoken of for its own sake with generous praise and with gratitude. Yet the price The States have had to lie under for the same has not been a small price. Payment prevails; a nation can never take the issues of the needs of other nations for nothing. America, grandest of lands in the theory of its politics, in popular reading, in hospitality, breadth, animal beauty, cities, ships, machines, money, credit, collapses quick as lightning at the repeated, admonishing, stern words, Where are any mental expressions from you, beyond what you have copied or stolen? Where the born throngs of poets, literats, orators, you promised? Will you but tag after other nations? They struggled long for their literature, painfully working their way, some with deficient languages, some with priest-craft, some in the endeavor just to live—yet achieved for their times, works, poems, perhaps the only solid consolation left to them through ages afterward of shame and decay. You are young, have the perfectest of dialects, a free press, a free government, the world forwarding its best to be with you. As justice has been strictly done to you, from this hour do strict justice to yourself. Strangle the singers who will not sing you loud and strong. Open the doors of The West. Call for new great masters to comprehend new arts, new perfections, new wants. Submit to the most robust bard till he remedy your barrenness. Then you will not need to adopt the heirs of others; you will have true heirs, begotten of yourself, blooded with your own blood.
With composure I see such propositions, seeing more and more every day of the answers that serve. Expressions do not yet serve, for sufficient reasons; but that is getting ready, beyond what the earth has hitherto known, to take home the expressions when they come, and to identify them with the populace of The States, which is the schooling cheaply procured by any outlay any number of years. Such schooling The States extract from the swarms of reprints, and from the current authors and editors. Such service and extract are done after enormous, reckless, free modes, characteristic of The States. Here are to be attained results never elsewhere thought possible; the modes are very grand too. The instincts of the American people are all perfect, and tend to make heroes. It is a rare thing in a man here to understand The States.
……
文章大意：讲述了美国著名诗人、人文主义学者，鼓励年轻人文学创作的信件。文章本身不难，内容翻译如下：美国也正在创立一种文学。我觉得做的很好也很实用。每天我走在曼哈顿岛，布鲁克林或者其他城市的年轻人群中，去寻找精神灵魂也去更新自己。相比那些出版商们，作者们，我自己更被这些吸引。我在人群中可以完整完美地理解这些人，他们做的事情是不可或缺的，无人能替代的。在诗歌这方面，美国年轻人要作为代表，因为他们胜过世界上其余的人。
美国通过英语语言继承的已存的文学作品有—所有的丰富的传统所包含的技能，诗篇，历史记录，元物理，戏剧，经典作品，翻译，已经完成的，还在继续的，为其他特定文学所做的准备。
美国，，通俗读物，文化丰富，还有钱等等优势，但是在不断重复的语言批判面前，这样一个牛国也得凉。你们这些年轻人干什么去了，你们的思想除了复制别人的还有别的吗?看别的国家人家一直以来没有什么文学作品，有的国家语言本身也不够丰满，但是人家就文学上很有成就。你们那么年轻，有这么多好资源包括自由的言论，自由的政府等，应该形成我们自己的文化。
题目：
11. 考察文章结构变化，main focus shift from what to what?
本题目可利用关键词有效排除，例如选项中 introduction of a theory 等。
12. Whiteman表明美国文化的重要组成部分，可以更多的依赖什么?
选项有：纽约;一般人的工作;更重视诗歌，城市的普通生活等。
本题需要参照下面询证题，周到对应的表达，形成匹配答案，普通人的生活。
13. 同上。
14. 词汇题，考察drawn的含义，其中选项包括，provoked，dragged，extracted等，本题需要放在语境之下，理解作者描述自己与其他人的不同，更佳冷静客观的分析美国文化的特征。
15. 段落功能题，考察第二段(16-28line)作用?本题目可以通过排除绝对词选项，例如everything等，然后定位段落分析观点句，重点强调在美的英国文化如此之多，值得借鉴。
16. 词汇题，考察rich的作用，选项有：manifestly affluent，deeply colored等，解题需要分析语境下英国文化的特点，本题可以解题。
17. 观点题，考察Whitman对于在美的英国文化，应该被如何看待?
本题可以通过选项中的情感态度类词汇解题，例如，a 讲到critics，可以通过情感态度进行有效排出。另外，把握作者观点，广泛吸收借鉴并有创新。
18. 询证题，Whitman暗示，美国文化和英国文化应该处于何种关系?
可以通过文章的中心，对于在美国的英国文化进行学习借鉴然后发展自己的文学对用到观点homage。
19. 同上。
20. 段落主旨，考察Whitman在最后一段(29-62line)中的观点?选项有： 美国resist the creation a literature new and original; 美国literature needed and overdue等。
21. 问Whitman在最后一段的祈使句的作用是什么?本题可以通过文章主旨以及关键词进行排除，例如选项中struggle of American writers.
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