Fact or Fiction?
Non-fiction can be broken down into many categories. One category is literary non-fiction, which is still based in fact but employs some of the storytelling elements that fiction uses. Literary non-fiction includes a type of autobiography(自传) called memoir. Memoir most often focuses on a certain period of the author’s life. It is, by definition, rooted in truth. Still, people sometimes question whether memoir should be categorized as non-fiction at all.
As non-fiction, memoir is intended to be factual. Is this really the case, though, considering memoir relies on human memory? One classic study, led by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, showed how easily an interviewer’s choice of wording can influence an eyewitness’s account of a traffic accident. It is therefore reasonable to wonder whether memoir should continue to be branded as non-fiction.
Certainly, human memory can be unreliable. However, a memoir author is undoubtedly writing about significant and impactful life events. Memories of such events are actually more reliable than others. Studies show that the more influential an event is, the more accurately people recall the details. As an emotionally charged event unfolds, the brain activity changes in a way that amplifies small details. This activity helps build a more precise and accurate memory.
Of course the brain is not a camera that can “save” any memory with perfect accuracy. But if memoir is questionable due to the imperfections of the human mind, then critics will have to tackle non-fiction more broadly. All writers are using their memories when they create, and moreover, they are relying on the memories of others. Journalists conduct interviews to tell a news story and history writers depend on the accuracy of accounts from long ago. Yet they all rightfully fall under the umbrella of non-fiction.
Some people may doubt memoir not because they mistrust human memory, but because they mistrust the author’s morality. Critics may suspect an author of making up events. However, there is no reason to be suspicious of memoir author’s intentions. Writing a factual memoir that appeals to readers has the potential to be profitable for the author, and there is no motivation for a memoir writer to knowingly change or beautify the truth.
Looking beyond the author’s own life events, memoir can inform readers about the world in the same way that other non-fiction can. Memoir has a way of relaying facts about anything from an occupation to brief fashion trends, all of it meaningful to the author.
1. The author introduces the topic in Paragraph 1 by _____ .| A．illustrating why it is important to talk about memoir |
| B．listing some interesting facts and features of memoir |
| C．defining key terms that are discussed later in the passage |
| D．making a comparison between autobiography and memoir |
| A．Collects. | B．Ignores. |
| C．Enlarges. | D．Absorbs. |
| A．critics argue that a news story by a journalist is fiction |
| B．a memoir author’s memory can be influenced by the interviewees |
| C．memoir can’t show readers facts about what an author experienced |
| D．emotional moments can cause the creation of more detailed memories |
| A．the most profitable memoirs are those shown to be the most factual |
| B．many authors are untrustworthy, although many memoirs are fact-based |
| C．memoir is rightfully categorized under the umbrella of literary non-fiction |
| D．memory is too unreliable for memoir to be considered a type of non-fiction |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Having your nose in a book might seem a little anti-social at times—but reading could actually make you a kinder, more considerate person, a study has found. Readers were more likely to act in a socially acceptable manner, while those who preferred watching television came across as less friendly and less understanding of others’ views, researchers said.
123 participants in the study were quizzed on their preferences for books, TV and plays at Kingston University, London. They were then tested on how much they considered people’s feelings and whether they acted to help others. Researchers told the British Psychological Society conference in Brighton yesterday that fiction fans showed more positive social behavior.
Readers of drama and romance novels were also empathetic, while lovers of experimental books showed the ability to see things from different directions. Comedy fans scored the highest for relating to others. The study suggested reading allows people to see different points of view enabling them to understand others better.
The researchers added, “Exposure to fiction relates to a range of empathetic abilities. Engaging with fictional prose and comedy in particular could be key to improving people’s empathetic abilities.”
However, the authors warned the study did not prove cause-and-effect. So it could be that reading causes positive behavior, or it could be that thoughtful, well-mannered people are more likely to prefer reading. So it is a good idea to pick up a book to begin your travel with the author. Each author will show how they would react to certain situations through their characters. Everyone can view the same situation differently, and from 1,001 different angles. The more you read, the much better you can understand other peoples’ opinions.
1. Why did the writer mention the result of watching television?| A．The writer is a anti-social reporter. | B．The writer shows benefits of reading. |
| C．The writer is a considerate person. | D．The writer becomes socially acceptable. |
| A．The skills of communicating. | B．The time of reading books. |
| C．The places of getting new books. | D．The ways of expressing feelings. |
| A．Readers of drama. | B．Writers of romance novels. |
| C．Readers of comedy. | D．Readers of experiments. |
【推荐2】According to Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, reading aloud was a common practice in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Readers were “listeners attentive to a reading voice,” and “the text addressed to the ear as much as to the eye.” The significance of reading aloud continued well into the nineteenth century.
Using Charles Dickens' nineteenth century as a point of departure, it would be useful to look at the familial and social uses of reading aloud and reflect on the functional change of the practice. Dickens habitually read his work to a domestic audience or friends. In his later years he also read to a broader public crowd. Chapters of reading aloud also abound in Dickens' own literary works. More importantly, he took into consideration the Victorian practice when composing his prose, so much so that his writing is meant to be heard, not only read on the page.
Performing a literary text orally in a Victorian family is well documented. Apart from promoting a pleasant family relationship, reading aloud was also a means of protecting young people from the danger of solitary (孤独的) reading. Reading aloud was a tool for parental guidance. By means of reading aloud, parents could also introduced literature to their children and as such the practice combined leisure and more serious purposes such as religious cultivation in the youths. Within the family, it was commonplace for the father to read aloud. Dickens read to his children: one of his surviving and often-reprinted photographs features him posing on a chair, reading to his two daughters.
Reading aloud in the nineteenth century was as much a class phenomenon as a family affair, which points to a widespread belief that Victorian readership primarily meant a middle-class readership. Those who fell outside this group tended to be overlooked by Victorian publishers. Despite this, Dickens, with his publishers Chapman and Hall, managed to distribute literary reading materials to people from different social classes by reducing the price of novels. This was also made possible with the technological and mechanical advances in printing and the spread of railway networks at the time.
Since the literacy level of this section of the population was still low before school attendance was made compulsory in 1870 by the Education Act, a considerable number of people from lower classes would listen to recitals of texts. Dickens' readers, who were from such social backgrounds, might have heard Dickens in this manner. Several biographers of Dickens also draw attention to the fact that it was typical for his texts to be read aloud in Victorian England, and thus illiteracy was not an obstacle for reading Dickens. Reading was no longer a chiefly closeted form of entertainment practiced by the middle class at home.
A working-class home was in many ways not convenient for reading: there were too many distractions, the lighting was bad, and the home was also often half a workhouse. As a result, the Victorians from the non-middle classes tended to find relaxation outside the home such as in parks and squares, which were ideal places for the public to go while away their limited leisure time. Reading aloud, in particular public reading, to some extent blurred the distinctions between classes. The Victorian middle class defined its identity through differences with other classes. Dickens's popularity among readers from the non-middle classes contributed to the creation of a new class of readers who read through listening.
Different readers of Dickens were not reading solitarily and “jealously” to use Walter Benjamin's term. Instead, they often enjoyed a more communal experience, an experience that is generally lacking in today's world. Modem audiobooks can be considered a contemporary version of the practice. However, while the twentieth-and twentieth-first-century trend for individuals to listen to audiobooks keeps some characteristics of traditional reading aloud—such as “listeners attentive to a reading voice” and the ear being the focus—it is a far more solitary activity.
1. How did the practice of reading aloud influence Dickens's works?| A．He started to write for a broader public crowd. |
| B．He included more readable contents in his novels. |
| C．Scenes of reading aloud became common in his works. |
| D．His works were intended to be both heard and read. |
| A．2 | B．3 | C．4 | D．5 |
| A．Working place. | B．His/ Her own house. |
| C．Nearby bookstores. | D．Trafalgar Square. |
| A．Different classes stated to appreciate and read literary works together. |
| B．People from lower social classes became accepted as middle-class. |
| C．The differences between classes grew less significant than before. |
| D．A non-class society in which everyone could read started to form. |
| A．New reading trends for individuals. | B．The harm of modern audiobooks. |
| C．The material for modern reading. | D．Reading aloud in contemporary societies. |
【推荐3】For the kids who have just started to read, choosing the right books is essential and their parents should be there to help them.
A proper book classification system would be of great help in this regard, since most parents do not know which books suit their children’s reading levels the most. An effective classification system for children’s books would help overcome this problem.
Chinese bookstores, online or offline, still prefer to use age rather than reading ability to categorize what they sell. In fact, reading ability and interests vary from child to child even when they are at the same age. This early form of classification is accepted by most bookstores and publishers, yet many young readers get books that are nowhere near their targeted reading levels.
China has at least 200 million children under the age of 14, and their enthusiasm for reading has increased over the years. The publishers of children’s books should try to introduce a juvenile-centered classification system to help their readers choose books that are suitable for their reading abilities.
Some don’t trust the call for more effective book classification, mentioning the need for youngsters to read extensively and avoid restricting themselves to one or two categories. There is a strong case for resisting selective reading, but not book classification, which is designed to help young children develop good reading habits and hold onto them in the long run.
Studies have found that kids are less likely to be into reading if they have not developed such a habit before the age of 10. That said, it is in their best interests to adopt targeted reading during childhood, as this can greatly improve their comprehension abilities. So greater efforts should be put into designing a book classification system that meets the needs of young readers.
1. A proper book classification system should ________.| A．be on an age basis |
| B．limit readers to one or two categories |
| C．help readers get books suitable for their reading levels |
| D．benefit all the bookstores and publishers |
| A．Young children. | B．Publishers. |
| C．Reading levels. | D．Reading habits. |
| A．There is a strong case for resisting book classification. |
| B．Everyone doesn’t support a more effective book classification. |
| C．Youngsters should be restricted to a few categories of books. |
| D．Youngsters don’t need to read extensively. |
| A．Dissatisfied. | B．Ambiguous. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Unconcerned. |
【推荐1】Could your cellphone give you cancer? Whether it could or not, some people are worrying about the possibility that phones, power lines and wi-fi could be responsible for a range of illnesses, from rashes to brain tumors.
Some say there is evidence to support the growing anxieties. David Carpenter, a professor of environmental health sciences at the university at Albany, in New York, thinks there's a greater than 95 percent chance that power lines can cause childhood leukemia (白血病). Also there's a greater than 90 percent chance that cellphones can cause brain tumors. "It's apparent now that there's a real risk, "said Carpenter.
But others believe these concerns are unjustified. Dr Martha Linet, the head of radiation epidemiology (流行病学)at the US National Cancer Institute, has looked at the same research as Carpenter but has reached a different conclusion. "I don't support warning labels for cellphones, "said Linet. "We don't have the evidence that there's much danger. "
Studies so far suggest a weak connection between EMFs (电磁场)and illness —so weak that it might not exist at all. A multinational investigation of cellphones and brain cancer, in 13 countries outside the US, has been underway for several years. It's funded in part by the European Union, in part by a cellphone industry group. The final report should come out later this year, but data so far don't suggest a strong link between cellphone use and cancer risk.
1. From the passage we can learn that some people are worried because____________.| A．they have evidence that the use of cellphones can lead to cancer |
| B．they make a fuss over cellphone use |
| C．some experts have given a warning |
| D．cellphones are responsible for brain tumors |
| A．the worrying is unnecessary |
| B．cancer-warning labels should be on cellphones |
| C．there is a link between cellphones and cancer |
| D．cellphones have nothing to do with cancer |
| A．Optimistic. | B．Objective. | C．Opposite. | D．Casual. |
| A．There is a link between cellphone and cancer. |
| B．EMFs（电磁场）and illness do have a strong relation. |
| C．More effort is needed to detect the link between cellphone and cancer. |
| D．The cellphone and radiation epidemiology are closely linked with each other. |
【推荐2】Some people say house dust is mostly human skin cells, but it’s only a little bit true.
That list is based on the Canadian House Dust Study, in which researchers collected dust samples from 1,025 Canadian homes. The proportions(比例)of the components vary from household to household. A house near a busy road, for example, is likely to harbor a high level of outdoor pollutants from car exhaust(废气).
The commonly-cited statement that 70% to 80% of house dust is human skin cells is likely not true for most houses.
People do drop lots of skin cells as they go about their business.
| A．But our body needs all kinds of nutrients |
| B．Skin cells are part of the makeup(组成)of house dust |
| C．The skin helps people maintain the right internal temperature |
| D．A newly-built house might have much dust from construction |
| E．The average adult loses about 500 million skin cells each day |
| F．It may not be a bad thing to have some dead skin in your home |
| G．According to a study of house dust, 60% of the components of the dust were from inside |
【推荐3】WISH YOU WERE MORE CREATIVE?
I want to ask you a favor. I have a pair of pants. Tell me: How many different ways can I put a pair of pants to use? Now imagine you're an architect. Same question. Now imagine you're Bill Gates. A scuba diver. A medieval knight. You still have the pants. What alternative uses come to mind?
What you just practiced--the conscious act of "wearing" another self--is an exercise that, according to psychiatrist SriniPillay, MD, is essential to being creative.
One great irony (讽刺) about our collective addiction to creativity is that we tend to frame it in uncreative ways. That is to say, most of us marry creativity to our concept of self: Either we’re “creative” or we aren't, without much of a middle ground. "I'm just not a creative person!” a discouraged student might say in art class, while another might blame her talent at painting for her difficulties in math, making a comment "I'm very right-brained."
Dr.Pillay, an assistant professor at Harvard University, has spent years overturning these ideas. He believes that the key to unlocking your creative potential is to challenge the stereotyped (陈词滥调的) advice that urges you to “believe in yourself.” In fact, you should do the opposite: Believe you are someone else.
He points to a study showing the impact of stereotype on one's behavior. The authors, psychologists Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar, divided their college student subjects into two groups, instructing one group to think of themselves as "eccentric poets" and the other to imagine they were "rigid librarians". The researchers then presented them all with ordinary objects, including a fork, a carrot, and a pair of pants, and asked them to come up with as many different uses as possible for each one. The former group came up with the widest range of ideas, whereas the latter had the fewest.
These results suggest that creativity is not an individual characteristic but a “product of context and perspective”. Everyone can be creative, as long as he or she feels like a creative person.
Dr. Pillay's work takes this a step further: He argues that simply identifying yourself as creative is less powerful than taking the brave, creative step of imagining you are somebody else. This exercise, which he calls psychological Halloweenism, refers to the conscious action of “wearing” another self. An actor may employ this technique to get into character, but anyone can use it. According to Dr. Pillay, it works because it is an act of conscious unfocus, a collection of brain regions that spring into action when you're not focused on a specific task or thought. Most people spend nearly half of their days in a state of "unfocus." This doesn't make us lazy; it makes us human.
Imagining yourself in a new situation, or an entirely new identity, never felt so productive. You’re making yourself more creative, and you're giving yourself permission to do something you'd otherwise feel guilty about.
1. What’s the function of the questions in paragraph 1?| A．To lead in the topic. | B．To make a comparison. |
| C．To state an opinion. | D．To ask a favor. |
| A．creativity is an individual characteristic |
| B．librarians are more creative than poets |
| C．ordinary objects can improve creativity |
| D．your creativity is determined by yourself |
| A．it is an act of unconscious focus |
| B．certain brain areas begin to act together |
| C．people are in a state of laziness |
| D．all actors employ this technique |
| A．focus on a specific task | B．believe in your own talent |
| C．pretend to be someone else | D．turn to be right-brained |
【推荐1】Imagine a friend has just asked how you’re feeling. “I’m fine,” you protest. You’re clearly anxious but respond in this way, unable to express how it is you really feel. Try as you might, you can’t quite understand your emotions, and truth to be told, you’re not sure whether you really want to.
Research shows that being aware of your emotions is hugely beneficial and people with high emotional awareness have better social and emotional functioning. “Emotional awareness is being able to identify and make sense of not only our own emotions but those of others, ”explains Rachel Vora, psychotherapist and founder of CYP Wellbeing. “It’s absolutely essential in maintaining good mental health. When we are able to identify and reflect on our emotional responses, we can understand how this influences our behaviours and in turn, change the way we respond to challenging situations.”
Of course, finding out how we feel can often prove difficult. It’s the very reason we turn to general phrases like ‘I feel blue’ or I’m not myself today’. It’s not always easy to put a finger on exactly what’s wrong, without digging a little deeper. Vora says this is often because on some level we don’t want to know how we really feel. “We can often try to numb or suppress because they feel overwhelming or distressing and this can often lead to a lack of emotional awareness as we feel disconnected from ourselves,” she explains.
Without emotional awareness, we can also develop emotional blind spots: unhealthy thoughts, behaviours and coping mechanisms that are hidden from our view. Perhaps you lash out or withdraw when you feel overwhelmed or go into criticism and self-doubt when you receive negative feedback. Unless you take time for self-reflection, you’ll remain unaware of these habits and continue to repeat the same destructive patterns again and again. Vora says tuning into your emotions and honestly reflecting on how you feel is the key. “When we do this, we are more able to work with our emotions and put strategies in place to improve our mood,” she points out. “By identifying our emotional blind spots, we can feel more in control of our emotions, and also how we respond in challenging situations.”
1. Why can’t you express your true feeling according to paragraph 1?| A．You want to keep it a secret. | B．You are absent-minded at that time. |
| C．You are unable to grasp your feeling. | D．You are unwilling to share it with your friend. |
| A．It’s easy for us to respond politely. | B．It can identify our emotional responses. |
| C．It can contribute to our mental health | D．We can identify our emotions and those of others’. |
| A．People tend to lie to their friends. |
| B．People often doubt about themselves. |
| C．People should communicate with each other frequently. |
| D．People sometimes avoid their true feelings consciously. |
| A．Thinking over what is your true feeling. | B．Hiding you from the negative feedback. |
| C．Criticizing bravely when you are anxious. | D．Remaining unaware of the destructive patterns. |
【推荐2】Plant-based products have been breaking into the foodie mainstream in the United States, after years in which vegan (素食的) burgers and milk alternatives knocked on the market’s door. That is partly because more companies are targeting people who seek to reduce the amount of meat they eat, rather than forswear it altogether.
Now, as fish alternatives begin to attract investment and land at restaurants in the United States and beyond, people who track the fishless fish sector say that it could achieve significant growth.
One reason, they say, is that consumers in rich countries are becoming more aware of the seafood industry’s environmental problems, including overfishing and the health risks of some seafood. Another is that today’s plant-based companies do a better job of approaching fish flavor than earlier ones did—an important consideration for non-vegetarians (非素食者).
“There are a number of people already looking at alternative hamburgers,” said Joshua Katz, an analyst at the consulting firm McKinsey who has studied the alt-protein (替代蛋白) industry. “You might actually say, ‘I should work on something else.’ And seafood is still a massive market with convincing reasons to work on.” People who reduce their consumption of animal proteins for environmental reasons often stop eating red meat, which requires enormous amounts of land and water to farm.
But alt-fish advocates say that seafood also comes with environmental problems. Unsustainable fishing practices have destroyed fisheries (鱼汤) in recent decades, a problem both for biodiversity and the millions of people who depend on the sea for income and food.
“It’s simply a smarter way to make seafood,” says Mirte Gosker, the acting managing director of the Good Food Institute Asia-Pacific, a nonprofit advocacy group that promotes alternative proteins. “Full stop.”
So far plant-based seafood products in the United States account for only 0.1 percent of the country’s seafood sales, less than 1.4 percent of the U.S. meat market occupied by plant-based meat alternatives. But alt-seafood enterprises worldwide received at least $83 million from investors in 2020, compared with $1 million three years earlier. As of this June, 83 companies were producing alt-seafood products around the world, a nearly threefold rise since 2017. All but 18 of those 83 companies focus on plant-based products. A dozen others are developing lab-grown seafood, which is not yet commercially available in any country.
1. What does the underlined word “forswear” in paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Sample. | B．Consume. | C．Produce. | D．Abandon. |
| A．The health risks. | B．The protein intake. |
| C．The taste and mouthfeel. | D．The overfishing problem. |
| A．Determined. | B．Concerned. | C．Humorous. | D．Enthusiastic. |
| A．Seafood companies are struggling. |
| B．Plant-based meat products will be a trend. |
| C．Alt-seafood products have a promising future. |
| D．Seafood will be commercially available soon. |
【推荐3】One of the biggest concerns in science is that scientists themselves may influence the outcomes of experiments. Scientists have come up with all sorts of strategies to try to get rid of this problem.
But gathering the data and running an experiment is not the only part of the process that can go wrong. The methods chosen to analyse the data can also influence results. This point was dramatically demonstrated by two recent papers published in a journal called Surgery. Despite being based on the same data set, they drew opposite conclusions about whether using a particular piece of kit during appendix (阑尾) removal surgery reduced or increased the chances of infection.
A new paper, from a large team of researchers headed by Martin Schweinsberg, a psychologist at the European School of Management and Technology, in Berlin, helps cast some light on why. Dr Schweinsberg gathered 49 different researchers by advertising his project on social media. Each was handed a copy of a data set consisting of 3.9m words of text from nearly 8,000 comments made on Edge. org, an online forum (论坛) for chatty intellectuals.
In the end, 37 analyses were regarded sufficiently detailed to include. As it turned out, no two analysts employed exactly the same method, and none got the same result. The problem was not that any of the analyses were “wrong” in any objective sense. The differences arose because researchers chose different definitions of what they were studying, and applied different techniques.
Truth, in other words, can be a slippery customer, even for simple-sounding questions. What to do? One conclusion is that experimental design is critically important. Dr Schweinsberg hopes that platforms such as Data Explained can help solve the problem as well as revealing it, by allowing scientists to specify exactly how they chose to perform their analysis, allowing those decisions to be reviewed by others. It is probably not practical, he admits, to check and re-check every result. But if many different analytical approaches point in the same direction, then scientists can be confident that their conclusion is the right one.
1. Why did the researchers get different results according to paragraph 2?| A．Different methods were applied in the data analysis. |
| B．Some experimental techniques were unreliable. |
| C．Some analyses were conducted in a new way. |
| D．Different data were adopted randomly and indirectly. |
| A．49 researchers were gathered to discuss an issue. |
| B．37 analyses were thought to employ the same method. |
| C．2 analyses were considered not good enough. |
| D．37 researchers got different results. |
| A．A person who is extremely critical. |
| B．Someone who can’t be trusted. |
| C．A person who is willing to speak frankly. |
| D．Someone who can raise questions skillfully. |
| A．Different results come from the same experimental design. |
| B．The more data are collected, the more truthful the results will be. |
| C．Data don’t lie, but they can lead scientists to opposite conclusions. |
| D．The outcomes of the experiments come from the cooperation of the scientists. |
