1 . New Journalism, American literary movement in the 1960s and 70s, pushed the boundaries of traditional journalism and nonfiction writing. The genre combined journalistic research with the techniques of fiction writing in the reporting of stories about real-life events.
As in traditional investigative reporting, writers in the genre immersed (沉浸) themselves in their subjects, at times spending months in the field gathering facts through research, interviews, and observation. Their finished works were very different, however, from the feature stories typically published in newspapers and magazines of the time. Instead of employing traditional journalistic story structures and an institutional voice, they constructed well-developed characters, sustained dialogue, vivid scenes, and strong plotlines marked with dramatic tension.
Some observers praised the New Journalists for writing well-crafted, complex, and convincing stories that revitalized readers' interest in journalism and the topics covered, as well as inspiring other writers to join the profession.
| A．Others firmly opposed the use of those techniques, arguing that any departure from facts, however minor, discredited a story and moved it away from journalism into the realm of fiction. |
| B．They also wrote in voices that were distinctly their own. |
| C．The New Journalists argued that objectivity does not guarantee truth and that so-called “objective” stories can be more misleading than stories told from a clearly presented personal point of view. |
| D．The New Journalists expanded the definition of journalism and of legitimate (正统的) journalistic reporting and writing techniques. |
| E．The New Journalists’ ideas continue to be explored and refined by new generations of reporters and editors. |
| F．Others, however, worried that the New Journalism was replacing objectivity of with a dangerous subjectivity that threatened to undermine the credibility of all journalism. |
2 . Albert Einstein’s 1915 masterpiece “The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity” is the first and still the best introduction to the subject, and I recommend it as such to students. But it probably wouldn’t be publishable in a scientific journal today.
Why not? After all, it would pass with flying colours the tests of correctness and significance. And while popular belief holds that the paper was incomprehensible to its first readers, in fact many papers in theoretical physics are much more difficult.
As the physicist Richard Feynman wrote, “There was a time when the newspapers said that only 12 men understood the theory of relativity. I do believe there might have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than 12.”
No, the problem is its style. It starts with a leisurely philosophical discussion of space and time and then continues with an exposition of known mathematics. Those two sections, which would be considered extraneous today, take up half the paper. Worse, there are zero citations of previous scientists’ work, nor are there any graphics. Those features might make a paper not even get past the first editors.
A similar process of professionalization has transformed other parts of the scientific landscape. Requests for research time at major observatories or national laboratories are more rigidly structured. And anything involving work with human subjects, or putting instruments in space, involves piles of paperwork.
We see it also in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the Nobel Prize of high school science competitions. In the early decades of its 78-year history, the winning projects were usually the sort of clever but naive, amateurish efforts one might expect of talented beginners working on their own. Today, polished work coming out of internships(实习) at established laboratories is the norm.
These professionalizing tendencies are a natural consequence of the explosive growth of modern science. Standardization and system make it easier to manage the rapid flow of papers, applications and people. But there are serious downsides. A lot of unproductive effort goes into jumping through bureaucratic hoops(繁文缛节), and outsiders face entry barriers at every turn.
Of course, Einstein would have found his way to meeting modern standards and publishing his results. Its scientific core wouldn’t have changed, but the paper might not be the same taste to read.
1. According to Richard Feynman, Einstein’s 1915 paper ________.| A．was a classic in theoretical physics |
| B．turned out to be comprehensible |
| C．needed further improvement |
| D．attracted few professionals |
| A．Unrealistic. | B．Irrelevant. |
| C．Unattractive. | D．Imprecise. |
| A．The application of research findings. |
| B．The principle of scientific research. |
| C．The selection of young talents. |
| D．The evaluation of laboratories. |
| A．What makes Einstein great? |
| B．Will science be professionalized? |
| C．Could Einstein get published today? |
| D．How will modern science make advances? |
3 . One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible insect. He lay on his armor-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.
"What's happened to me?" he thought. It wasn't a dream. His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table—Samsa was a travelling salesman—and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur scarf who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff (暖手筒) that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.
Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the window, which made him feel quite sad. "How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense," he thought, but that was something he was unable to do because he was used to sleeping on his right, and in his present state couldn't get into that position. However hard he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled back to where he was. He must have tried it a hundred times, shut his eyes so that he wouldn't have to look at the floundering legs, and only stopped when he began to feel a mild, dull pain there that he had never felt before.
He thought, "What a heavy career it is that I've chosen! Travelling day in and day out. Doing business like this takes much more effort than doing your own business at home, and on top of that there's the curse of travelling, worries about making train connections, bad and irregular food, contact with different people all the time so that you can never get to know anyone or become friendly with them." He felt a slight itch up on his belly; pushed himself slowly up on his back towards the headboard so that he could lift his head better; found where the itch was, and saw that it was covered with lots of little white spots which he didn't know what to make of; and when he tried to feel the place with one of his legs he drew it quickly back because as soon as he touched it he was overcome by a cold tremble.
He slid back into his former position. "Getting up early all the time," he thought, "it makes you stupid. You've got to get enough sleep. Other travelling salesmen live a life of luxury. For instance, whenever I go back to the guest house during the morning to copy out the contract, these gentlemen are always still sitting there eating their breakfasts. I ought to just try that with my boss; I'd get kicked out on the spot. But who knows, maybe that would be the best thing for me. If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your inferiors from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing. Well, there's still some hope; once I've got the money together to pay off my parents' debt to him—another five or six years I suppose—that's definitely what I'll do. That's when I'll make the big change. First of all though, I've got to get up, my train leaves at five."
1. According to the passage, Gregor initially believes his transformation is a ?| A．curse | B．disease | C．nightmare | D．fraud |
| A．struggling | B．painful | C．pitiful | D．trembling |
| A．remind the reader that Gregor has already turned into an insect |
| B．stress the disconnection between Gregors' thoughts and his actual situation |
| C．present important details about what Gregor's new body looks like |
| D．show that Gregor's thoughts are focused on the changes to his body |
| A．provide a solution to the conflict Gregor faces |
| B．foretell the conflict between Gregor and his boss |
| C．illustrate Gregor's flexibility and ability to move on |
| D．emphasize Gregor's extreme sense of duty |
4 . Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the most popular of the Post-Impressionist painters. He is famed for the great vitality of his works which are characterized by expressive and emotive use of brilliant color and energetic application of impastoed (厚原料的) paint.
Below are some famous pictures painted by Vincent and the poetic lyrics(歌词) to Don McLean’s hit song Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) in the famous cartoon film 《Loving Vincent》 .
| Vincent Starry, starry night, Paint your palette(画板) blue and grey, Look out on a summer’s day, With eyes that know the darkness in my soul. Shadows on the hills, Sketch the trees and the daffodils, Catch the breeze and the winter chill, In colors on the snowy linen land. Now I understand What you tried to say to me How you suffered for your sanity(精神正常) How you tied to set them free. They would not listen They did not know how Perhaps they'll listen now. Starry, starry night. Flaming flowers that brightly blaze, Swirling clouds in violet haze(阴霾,疑惑), Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue. Colors changing hue, morning. field of amber(黄色的) grain, Weathered faces lined in pain, Are soothed(抚慰) beneath the artist’s loving hand. For they could not love you, But still your love was true. And when no hope was left in sight On that starry, starry night, You took your life, as lovers often do. But I could have told you, Vincent, This world was never meant for one As beautiful as you. Now I think I know what you tried to say to me, How you suffered for your sanity, How you tried to set them free. They would not listen, They're not listening sill Perhaps they never will… |
the sunflowers |
Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear | |
the Yellow House | |
Starry Night | |
Head of a Peasant Woman | |
The Potato Eaters |
1. What attitude does the writer of the song have towards Van Gogh?
| A．Prejudiced and changeable. | B．Admiring and understanding. |
| C．Doubtful but respectful. | D．Positive but contradictory. |
| A．good at drawing on starry nights | B．murdered by one of his lovers |
| C．a person full of love and beauty | D．popular with people when be was alive |
| A．The sunflowers, the Potato Eaters |
| B．Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Head of a Peasant Woman |
| C．the Potato Eaters, the Yellow House |
| D．Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Wheat Field with Crows |
5 . For the second time in two years, an American has won one of the most respected global awards in literature. At a ceremony in London on Tuesday night, George Saunders accepted the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo, his first novel.
The book is an impressive and experimental ghost story set in 1862. It explores the death of Willie Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln’s 11-year-old son, who died of fever during the second year of the Civil War. Saunders, a Tibetan Buddhist, imagines Willie’s experiences in the “bardo,” a Buddhist state between the worlds of the living and the dead where Willie communicates with other dead souls, and where he watches his father visit his entombed body.
Writing in The Guardian earlier this year, Saunders described the process of creating the novel: “There is something wonderful in watching a figure appear from the stone, feeling the presence of something within you ... and also beyond you — something consistent, willful, kind and generous, that seems to have a plan, which seems to be: to lead you to your own higher ground.”
Saunders was the bookmakers’ favorite to win the award, but the victory by an American writer immediately after Paul Beatty claimed the prize for his novel The Sellout is controversial. Before 2014, the Man Booker was qualified only to writers from the Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland. The decision to allow American writers to enter has disappointed authors including A.S. Byatt and Julian Barnes, who argue that the award’s main purpose was giving exposure to writers who were little-known in the broader American literary market. “The Americans have got enough prizes of their own,” Barnes told the Radio Times last year. Ron Charles, the book critic for The Washington Post, has also argued against the inclusion of Americans. “For any serious reader of fiction in this country,” Charles wrote in September, “the Americanization of the Booker Prize is a lost opportunity to learn about great books that haven’t already been publicly announced.”
Baroness Young, The Telegraph reported, stated that the judging panel was concerned only with the worth of the books on the shortlist (入围名单), which also included Mohsin Hamid’s refugee parable Exit West, Paul Auster’s complex epic 4321, Emily Fridlund’s coming-of-age tale The History of Wolves, and Fiona Mozley’s rural fable Elmet. “We’re only concerned with the book and what that book is telling us,” Young said. “Nationality is just not an issue.”
For Saunders, the prize is an extraordinary recognition of his first attempt into full-length novels. The 58-year-old writer was previously best-known for his short stories, which have won him four National Magazine Awards for fiction and a MacArthur Fellowship. He came to writing relatively late in life after studying geophysical engineering and working as a technical writer until 1996. The idea for Lincoln in the Bardo came to him, he wrote in The Guardian, during a visit to Washington, D.C., when his wife told him the story of a grief-stricken President Lincoln visiting Willie’s tomb to hold his son’s body. Saunders has often noted that the experience of writing for him feels like a way to transform pain and division into something positive. The author Zadie Smith, speaking with Saunders for Interview, noted that “what sets him apart is his willingness not only to go into the heart of darkness but to suggest possible routes out.”
1. Ron Charles’ words intended to tell us that ________.| A．Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo was not serious |
| B．the Man Booker shouldn’t include works written by American |
| C．the Man Booker lost the opportunity to learn about great works from America |
| D．the judging panel was concerned only with the worth of books |
| A．Mohsin Hamid. | B．Paul Beatty. |
| C．Julian Barnes. | D．Emily Fridlund. |
| A．the prize was awarded based more on content than on nationality |
| B．people should pay more attention to the nationality of the writers |
| C．the Telegraph supports Baroness Young’s opinion on the books on the shortlist |
| D．4321, The History of Wolves and Elmet were of the same significance as Exit West |
| A．The experience of travelling in Washington D.C. |
| B．To lead himself to his own higher ground. |
| C．To go into the hearts of darkness and to suggest possible routes out. |
| D．His wife’s description of Lincoln holding his son’s body. |
6 . These young men were a different kind of prisoner from those we had seen before. They were brave, hostile and aggressive they would not take orders, and shouted “Amandla！” at every opportunity. Their instinct was to confront rather than cooperate. The authorities① did not know how to handle them, and they turned the island upside down. During the Rivonia Trial, I remarked to a security policeman that if the government did not reform itself, the freedom fighters who would take our place② would some day make the authorities miss us. That day had indeed come on Robben Island.
In these young men we saw the angry revolutionary spirit of the times. I had had some warning. On a visit with Winnie a few months before, she had managed to tell me through our coded conversation that there was a rising class of discontented youths③ who were violent and Africanist in beliefs. She said they were changing the nature of the struggle and that I should be aware of them.
The new prisoners were shocked by what they considered the inhuman conditions of the island, and said that they could not understand how we could live in such a way. We told them that they should have seen the island in 1964. But they were almost as sceptical of us as they were of the authorities. They chose to ignore our calls for discipline and thought our advice weak and unassertive (不果断).
It was obvious that they regarded us, the Rivonia Trialists④, as moderates⑤. After so many years of being branded a radical revolutionary, to be seen as a moderate was a novel and not altogether pleasant feeling. I knew that I could react in one of two ways: I could scold them for their disrespect or I could listen to what they were saying. I chose the latter.
Then some of these men, such as Strini Moodley of the South African Students Organization and Saths Cooper of the Black People’s Convention, came into our section,
Shortly after their arrival on the island, the commanding officer came and asked me as a favour to address the young men. He wanted me to tell them to behave themselves, to recognize the fact that they were in prison and to accept the discipline of prison life. I told him that I was not prepared to do that. Under the circumstances, they would have regarded me as a follower of the authorities.
(---adapted from “Long walk to freedom: The autobiography of Nelson Mandela”)
1. We may infer from the passage all of the following EXCEPT that ___________.| A．an angry massive revolution was probably on its way |
| B．these young men were willing to cooperate in face of difficulties |
| C．many were concerned about the influence these young men could make |
| D．the author’s activities were strictly monitored |
| A．I tried to calm them down and talked them into behaving. |
| B．I reported to the officers about their dissatisfaction. |
| C．I asked them to tell us about their movement and beliefs. |
| D．I just turned a deaf ear to the young men. |
| A．①② | B．②③ | C．③④ | D．⑤① |
7 . In creating A.J. Fikry’s ordinary-yet-extraordinary life, the author Gabielle Zevin has thrown every clichés(老生常谈) into the mix. The hero, A.J. Fikry, lost his beloved wife Nic in a road accident. The sales of his bookstore have been decreasing. The enthusiastic new sales representative Amelia won’t stop annoying him with new books. His rare and very valuable first edition has gone missing. But the unexpected arrival of Maya left in his care brings about a series of events with love and hope to his life.
There are few real surprises in the plot and attentive readers will be able to tell where the story is headed. But that is not the point; the clichés and the predictable plot take nothing away from Zevin’s work The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry because it’s how she tells the story that first charms the readers, then holds their attention, making them read the whole book in a single sitting and finally give the book a long hug when they are finished. This book is a love letter to the joys of reading.
Each chapter begins with the title of a short story or a book and a note from A.J. Fikry describing what he likes about it, essentially introducing each character by what they read. The characters are so realistic that it’s hard not to fall in love with all of them: Maya, “the fantastic book-worm,” Amelia, “the giantess” with questionable taste in fashion, Lambiase, the adorable police chief, and A.J. Fikry, the reluctant hero who hates electronic reading devices that will “send centuries of a lively culture into what will surely be a rapid decline.”
The passage of time, race issues, and the bureaucratic argument of children’s services are all put aside in the telling of this story, not because there’s anything to hide or because reality is not allowed to interfere, but because the author chooses to focus on the important stuff. For example, it focuses on Lambiase who organizes a reading club for policemen at the book store. His original intention is to help promote business, but over the years he becomes a genuine book-lover, one who tends to always have simple advice for his cynical(愤世嫉俗的) friend, A.J. Fikry. “Bad timing,” Lambiase claims, “I’ve been a police officer for twenty years now and I’ll tell you pretty much every bad thing in life is a result of bad timing, and every good thing is the result of good timing.”
More than anything else, this novel is not only about the selling of them or the reading of them, but how books and stories become part of our lives, how we find ourselves within what we read and how we carry books with us. It is also about the power of unexpected happiness and always believing that something wonderful is just around the corner. The Late Bloomer is the book within a book which brings together A.J. Fikry and Amelia. It reminds them that life doesn’t follow a set script, things happen when they are meant to happen, and there is no such thing as “too late” for anything. Life is the big picture. Always look at the big picture. Enjoy it. Don’t get too concentrated on the details, because it will all be over before you know it. In the long run nobody, not even you, will remember the ordinary details because they are, in the end, quite irrelevant.
A.J. Fikry’s final words of wisdom to teen-aged Maya convey the same feelings in literary terms: “We are not quite novels. We are not quite short stories. In the end, we are collected works. We have read enough to know there are no collections where each story is perfect. Some of us hit. Some miss.”
1. The author’s attitude towards Zevin’s book is _________.| A．supportive | B．critical |
| C．objective | D．indifferent |
| A．Four. | B．Five. |
| C．Six. | D．Seven. |
| A．there is really nothing to hide | B．reality is not allowed to interfere |
| C．important stuff has been focused on | D．everything is a result of timing |
| A．The novel underlines happiness will always be around. |
| B．The novel mainly talks about the marketing of the book. |
| C．It is The Late Bloomer that brings A.J and Amelia together. |
| D．It is important to do things on the basis of overall situation. |
| A．our life is full of ups and downs | B．we should collect works all our life |
| C．our life is closely connected with books | D．we should read books all our life |
| A．the extraordinary life of A.J. Fikry | B．the moral lesson of no “too late” in life |
| C．a comment on The Later Bloomer | D．a review of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry |
8 . Edgar Alan Poe was and is an abnormal figure among the major American writers of his period. It seems to have been true of Poe that no one could look at him without seeing more than they would wish.
Poe published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket in 1838,his only novel. Its importance is suggested by the fact that his major work comes after it. The Narrative’s shortcomings are sometimes considered to be the fact that it was written for money, as it surely was, and as almost everything else Poe wrote was also. This is not exceptional among writers anywhere, though in the case of Poe it is often treated as if his having done so were disgraceful. Be that as it may, the Narrative makes its way to a peak as strange and powerful as anything to be found in his greatest tales.
The word that reoccurs most importantly in Poe's fictions is horror. His stories are often shaped to bring the narrator and the reader to a place where the use of the word is reasonable, where the word and the experience it arouses are explored or by implication defined. Perhaps it is because Poe's tales test the limits of mental health and good manners that he is both popular and criticized.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym has the grand scale of the nineteenth-century voyage of discovery, and a different and larger scale in the suggestions that appear as the voyage goes on. The Narrative is frequently compared with Moby-Dick, published thirteen years later, after Poe’s death. Poe uses whiteness as a highly ambiguous symbol, by no means to be interpreted as purity or holiness or by association with any other positive value. There is blackness, too, in The Narrative, specifically associated with the populations that live in the regions nearest the South Pole. The native people in Tasmania, the island south of Australia, were said by explorers and settlers to be black, and were in any case, with the word “black,” swept into the large category of those related to displacement, exploitation, and worse.
Something very like the occupation of Kentucky by white settlers lies behind the events that bring Pym to the far-sighted conclusion of his narrative. In the early years of the nineteenth century the British began what made the native people of Tasmania die out, who had tried to resist white invasion of their island. Such occupations were, of course, a major business of Europeans, or whites, almost everywhere in the world at the time Poe wrote. They, were boasted of as progress. It would have required unusual sensibility in Poe to have taken a different, very dark view of the phenomenon. But he was an unusual man. And the horror that fascinated him and gave such dreadful unity to his tales is often the unavoidable, conflict of the self by a perfect justice, the exposure of a guilty act in a form that makes its reveal a falling back of the mind against itself.
Young Pym is simply telling a story of a kind popular at the time, a voyage adventure lived out beyond the farthest reaches of exploration. The story is disturbed by its own deeper tendencies, the rising through this surface of the kind of recognition that must find expression in another form of literature. As his ship approaches the region of the South Pole, Pym notes the mildness of the climate, coolly listing the resources of the islands, which were assumed by such voyagers to be there for the taking.
If The Narrative were a conventional story, the immense roar and the towering flames might attract the notice of a passing sail—and there would be no need for a note explaining its lacking an ending. But the force of the narrative carries it beyond the fate of individuals, toward an engagement with a reality beyond any temporary human drama.
1. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Allan Poe was a famous America writer of his period. |
| B．People expect too much of the American writer—Alan Poe. |
| C．Unlike other writers, Allan Poe is a unique and unusual writer. |
| D．People think Poe is a popular novelist like other famous writers. |
| A．In the South Pacific. | B．In Australia. |
| C．At the South Pole. | D．In Kentucky. |
| A．Poverty is the main theme of the novel. |
| B．The novel is full of justice elements. |
| C．Blackness can possibly be felt in the novel. |
| D．Whiteness is the obvious symbol of the novel. |
| A．“One of these adventures was related by way of introduction to a longer narrative.” |
| B．“Gordon Pym’s father was a respectable trader at Nantucket, where Pym was born.” |
| C．“The wind, as I before said, blew freshly from the southwest. The night was very cold.” |
| D．“Pym at length hit upon the idea of working on the terrors and guilty conscience of the mate.” |
| A．The Narrative is an adventurous story written in a conventional way. |
| B．The Narrative is considered one of Alan Poe's famous novels. |
| C．Allan Poe was misunderstood to write The Narrative for money. |
| D．Readers might not understand why The Narrative ended so abruptly. |
9 . Arthur Miller (1915-2005) is universally recognized as one of the greatest dramatists of the 20th century. Miller’s father had moved to the USA from Austria Hungary, attracted like so many others by the “Great American Dream”. However, he experienced severe financial hardship when his family business was ruined in the Great Depression of the early l930s.
Miller’s most famous play, Death of a Salesman, is a powerful attack on the American system, with its aggressive way of doing business and its insistence on money and social status as symbol of worth. In Willy Loman, the hero of the play, we see a man who has got into trouble with this system. Willy is “burnt out” and in the cruel world of business there is no room for sympathy: if he can't do the work, then he is no good to his employer, the Wagner Company, and he must go. Willy is painfully aware of this, and at a loss as to what to do with his lack of success. He refuses to face the fact that he has failed and kills himself in the end.
When it was first staged in 1949, the play was greeted with enthusiastic reviews, and it won the Tony Award for Best Play, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was the first play to win all three of these major awards.
Miller died of heart failure at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, on the evening of February 10, 2005, the 56th anniversary of the first performance of Death of a Salesman on Broadway.
1. Why did Arthur Miller’s father move to the USA?| A．He suffered from severe hunger in his home country. |
| B．He was attracted by the “Great American Dream”. |
| C．He hoped to make his son a dramatist. |
| D．His family business failed. |
| A．exposes the cruelty of the American business world |
| B．discusses the ways to get promoted in a company |
| C．talks about the business career of Arthur Miller |
| D．focuses on the skills in doing business |
| A．He treats his employer badly. | B．He runs the Wagner Company. |
| C．He is a victim of the American system. | D．He is regarded as a hero by his colleagues. |
| A．achieved huge success | B．won the first Tony Award |
| C．was warmly welcomed by salesmen | D．was severely attacked by dramatists |
