1 .        BBC foreign correspondent Jeremy Bowen’s recent assignment — a three-part series on Radio 4 in which he made “a personal journey through Wales”, the country of his birth — must still have left him a little shocked. Bowen, born in Cardiff but living in England and a non-Welsh speaker, did the most dangerous thing — he attacked what he saw as the way the Weish-speaking minority in Wales dominates the cultural conversation. This argument has not gone down well in the land of his fathers.

The Welsh online media has suggested this is the view from Camberwell where Bowen lives, rather than Criccieth — a journalist’s whistle-stop tour of a country he last resided in more than 40 years ago. Fellow BBC journalist Welsh speaker Huw Edwards responded to that criticism: “We are all products of upbringing — this take is 1970s Cardiff.” Edwards was even ruder about an attack on Welsh by Jonathan Meades in The Critic. “So long as it’s a hobby language it is as harmless as a Sunday painter,” wrote Meades. “But in pockets of Snowdonia and mid-Wales it is a tool not only of communication but of identity and exclusivity, thus of self-harm.” To which Edwards responded: “Meades is a brilliant writer and I have enjoyed his work over many years. I can only assume he’s crazy. Nothing else can explain this rubbish.”

Bowen’s argument is that because bilingualism (双语) has become essential for many jobs in Welsh government and media, the English-speaking majority has been disadvantaged. Meades is more concerned with a project to create a million Welsh speakers (a third of the population) by 2050. At present, only a fifth of the population speaks Welsh regularly. Such views are, however, either outdated or exaggerated (夸张的).

Largely rural Welsh-speaking Wales was discovering new confidence, thanks to the start of the Welsh-language channel S4C in 1982 and the growth of Welsh-medium education. But Welsh-speaking Wales is not responsible for the difficulties of English-speaking Wales, and the two have to find a way to coexist. The survival of Welsh is a miracle, and every Welsh person, whether or not they speak it, should celebrate that fact.

1. Why was Bowen recently shocked?

A．He had a narrow escape in Wales.

B．He was refused entry into his fatherland.

C．He was assigned to do a series about Wales.

D．He was criticized for his Radio program about Wales.

2. What was Edwards’ attitude toward Meades’ comments?

A．Disapproving.

B．Supportive.

C．Tolerant.

D．Uncaring.

3. What put the English-speaking majority at a disadvantage?

A．They could not speak two languages.

B．They held outdated ideas about language.

C．A third of the Welsh could speak the native language.

D．The government attached less importance to English.

4. What does the author say about the survival of Welsh?

A．It establishes Welsh dominance.

B．It is unexpected and welcome.

C．It occurs at the cost of English-speaking Wales.

D．It owes to the efforts of Welsh-speaking Wales.

4 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

About 200,000 students in the US are learning Chinese, starting “Mandarin Fever”.

“Chinese grammar is not difficult     1     (learn) and its word order is very similar     2     English. But the writing system and tones are the     3     (hard) part of the language”, said Adam Murray, an American who went regularly to Chinese lessons     4     only Mandarin was spoken. Kracke, whose Chinese name is Li Xiaoyu, learned from a Chinese teacher how to play guzheng, a Chinese stringed musical instrument,     5     (hope) that she could get to know more about the Chinese culture. Nicholas Goldring, a graduate of a university in Texas,     6     (make) it his life goal to master Chinese since he was a child.

During 2023 Chinese New Year, an event     7     (mean) to help foreigners understand and have     8     good grasp of Chinese language and culture attracted many foreign     9     (participate).

In today’s world, many issues cannot be avoided around China. This is     10     Mandarin is widely learned all over the world.

8 . You’ll probably be familiar with the North American spelling of the word “airplane”. However, if you’ve ever been on an international flight leaving the United States and going to another English-speaking country like the United Kingdom, you’ve probably noticed that there are a few differences between the American and British spellings of words with the same meaning.     1     . The American English spelling is “airplane” while the British English spelling is “aeroplane”. So, why does this happen?

Let’s look at the root of the phenomenon.     2     . “British English has a general tendency to favour spellings and words that remind people of French, but American English, when it has deviated (背离) from what British English does, often changes into the direction of seeming less French,” says Lynne Murphy, author of The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between British & American English.

    3     . “Aeroplane” is no exception. “We’re comfortable with ‘aero’ in scientific terms, but as planes became more common things to talk about, the ‘aero’ seemed too fancy,” explains Murphy. “In Scientific American in 1906, there was already a claim that     4    . Ten years later, ‘airplane’ was adopted by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics as their term. It was considered in the United Kingdom, but that suggestion didn’t go anywhere.”

There’s a good reason why words that mean the same thing are spelled differently, and why that will continue to happen. “    5     , and people are generally proud of it, so they continue to spell differently,” says Murphy.

A．Every country has different culture

B．Your spelling tells people where you’re from

C．The word “airplane” happens to be an example

D．Airplane is a much better word than aeroplane

E．American English and British English have similar historical origins

F．There’s a lot of history that goes beyond words and dives deep into politics, government, and science

G．A lot of words in the English language are borrowed from other languages, like Latin, Greek, and French

9 . I have a drawer full of letters to Santa. Each year my children would write up their Christmas wish lists. They were polite requests for the latest game or toy. As the children got older, they would give Santa some hints(提示)on where to buy their presents.     1    

Those letters taught my children a valuable lesson about writing: It has a purpose. Sometimes our purpose is to achieve something;other times it may be to entertain, inform, or persuade.     2     And when writing doesn’t seem to have any purpose or get any kind of meaningful response, then it can be hard to get excited about doing it.

Christmas is a great time of year for children to communicate with others through writing. When children write for real audiences and real purposes, they can learn to choose their words accordingly.     3     You write “Dear Santa” because you don’t know him personally and you want to show him respect.

    4     Texting, online messaging, live chats while playing video games all mean that they are constantly producing written messages. However, because they are usually writing to family and friends, they use informal language most of the time.

There is nothing wrong with this kind of writing. It suits the audience and the purpose and gets the job done.     5     This type of writing won’t be rewarded by the school examiner, nor by a future employer or a potential client. The very best communicators are those who know how to adjust their language to match their audience.

A．It isn’t that these young people can’t write.

B．But it is always purposeful-or at least it should be.

C．The age of pen-and-paper letter writing may have passed.

D．As a result, each year they received something they wanted.

E．You write “Hi Nanna and Pop” because you are close to them.

F．As technology develops, young people are writing more than they ever have.

G．But if this is the only kind of writing young people do, it will cause problems.