問題詳情
IV. Reading Comprehension (each 2%, total 30%) At school, there were several incidents of name-calling and stone-throwing,which our teachers claimed would stop if my sisters and I joined in with the other kidsand quit congregating together at recess and jabbering away in Spanish. Those werethe days before bilingual education or multicultural studies, when kids like us werethrown in the deep end of the public school pool and left to fend for ourselves. Noteveryone came up for air. Mommy managed to get us scholarships to her old boarding school where GoodManners and Tolerance and English Skills were required. We were also all required tostudy a foreign language, but my teacher talked me into taking French. In fact, theyfelt my studying Spanish was equivalent to my taking a “gut course.” Spanish was mynative tongue, after all, a language I already had in the bag and would always be ableto speak whenever I wanted. Meanwhile, with Saturday drills and daily writingassignments, our English skills soon met school requirements. By the time my sistersand I came home for vacations, we were rolling our eyes in exasperation at ourold-world Mommy and Papi, using expressions like far out, and what a riot! And outtasight, and believe you me as if we had been born to them. As rebellious adolescents, we soon figured out that conducting our filial businessin English gave us an edge over our strict, Spanish-speaking parents. We could spincircles around my mother’s absolutamente no by pointing out flaws in her arguments,in English. My father was a pushover for pithy quotes from Shakespeare, and arecitation of “The quality of mercy is not strained” could usually get me what I wanted.Usually, there are areas we couldn’t touch with a Shakespearean ten-foot pole: the areaof boys and permission to go places where there might be boys, American boys, withtheir mouths full of bubblegum and their minds full of the devil. Our growing distance from Spanish was a way in which we were settingourselves free from that old world where, as girls, we didn’t have much say about what we could do with our lives. In English, we didn’t have to use the formal usted thatimmediately put us in our place with our elders. We were responsible for ourselves andthat made us feel grown-up. We couldn’t just skirt culpability by using the reflexive,the bag of cookies did not finish itself, nor did the money disappear itself fromMommy’s purse. We had no one to bail us out of American trouble once we went ourown way in English. No family connections, no to whose name might open doors forus. If the world was suddenly less friendly, it was also more exciting. We found out wecould do things we had never done before. We could go places in English we nevercould in Spanish, if we put our minds to it. And we put our combined four minds to it.
【題組】36. The author was persuaded to take French classes by her _____.
(A) mother
(B) sisters
(C) teacher
(D) father
參考答案
答案：C
難度：非常簡單1
統計：A(0),B(0),C(1),D(0),E(0)