|
|
发表于 2016-7-28 16:46:47
|
显示全部楼层
Section 2 Answering questions (20’)
Directions: Read the following passages and then answer IN COMPLETE SENTENCES the questions which follow each passage. Use only information from the passage you have just read and write your answer in the corresponding space in your answer sheet.
Questions 1～3
What do we mean by leisure, and why should we assume that it represents a problem to be solved by the arts? The great ages of art were not conspicuous for their leisure-at least, art was not an activity associated with leisure. It was a craft like any other, concerned with the making of necessary things. Leisure, in the present meaning of the word, did not exist. Leisure, before the Industrial Revolution meant no more than “time” or “opportunity”; “If your leisure serv’d, I would speak with you”, says one of Shakespeare’s characters. Phrases which we still use, such as “at your leisure”, preserve this original meaning.
But when we speak of leisure nowadays, we are not thinking of securing time or opportunity to do something; time is heavy on our hands, and the problem is how to fill it. Leisure no longer signifies a space with some difficulty secured against the pressure of events: rather it is a pervasive emptiness for which we must invent occupations-Leisure is a vacuum, a desperate state of vacancy–a vacancy of mind and body. It has been commandeered by the sociologists and the psychologists: it is a problem.
Our diurnal existence is divided into two phases, as distinct as day and night. We call them work and play. We work so many hours a day, and, when we have allowed the necessary minimum for such activities as eating and shopping, the rest we spend in various activities which are known as recreations, an elegant word which disguises the fact that we usually do not even play in our hours of leisure, but spend them in various forms of passive entertainment or entertainment–not football but watching football matches; not acting, but theatre-going; not walking, but riding in a motor coach.
We need to make, therefore, a hard-and-fast distinction not only between work and play but, equally, between active play and passive entertainment. It is, I suppose, the decline of active play—of amateur sport—and the enormous growth of purely receptive entertainment which has given rise to a sociological interest in the problem. If the greater part of the popu1ation, instead of indulging in sport, spend their hours of leisure ‘viewing’ television programmes, there will inevitably be a decline in health and physique. And, in addition, there will be a psychological problem, for we have yet to trace the mental and moral consequences of a prolonged diet of sentimental or sensational spectacles on the screen. There is, if we are optimistic, the possibility that the diet is too thin and unnourishing to have much permanent effect on anybody. Nine films out of ten seem to leave absolutely no impression on the mind or imagination of those who see them: few people can give a coherent account of the film they saw the week before last, and at longer intervals they must rely on the management to see that they do not sit through the same film twice.
We have to live art if we would be affected by art. We have to paint rather than look at paintings, to play instruments rather than go to concerts, to dance and sing and act ourselves, engaging all our senses in the ritual and discipline of the arts. Then something may begin to happen to us: to work upon our bodies and our souls.
It is only when entertainment is active, participated in, practiced, that it can properly be called play, and as such it is a natural use of leisure. In that sense play stands in contrast to work, and is usually regarded as an activity that alternates with work. It is there that the most fundamental error enters conception of daily life.
Work itself is not a single concept. We say quite generally that we work in order to make a living: to earn, that is to say, sufficient tokens which we can exchange for food and shelter and all the other needs of our existence. But some of us work physically, tilling the land, minding the machines, digging the coal; others work mentally, keeping accounts, inventing machines, teaching and preaching, managing and governing. There does not seem to be any factor common to all these diverse occupations, except that they consume our time, and leave us little leisure.
We may next observe that one man’s profession or work is often another man’s recreation or play. The merchant at the week-end becomes a hunter (he has not yet taken to mining); the clerk becomes a gardener; the machine-tender becomes a breeder of bull—terriers. There is, of course, a sound instinct behind such transformations. The body and mind are unconsciously seeking compensation–muscular coordination, mental integration. But in many cases a dissociation is set up and the individual leads a double life–one half Jekyll, the other half Hyde. There is a profound moral behind that story of Stevenson’s for the compensation which a disintegrated personality may seek will often be of an anti-social nature. The Nazi party, for example, in its early days was largely recruited from the bored–not much from the unemployed as from the street-corner society of listless hooligans
Scientific studies have been made of street-corner society, out of which crime, gangsterdom, and fascism inevitably develop. It is a society with leisure–that is to say, spare time–and without compensatory occupation. It does not need a Satan to find mischief for such idle hands to do. They will spontaneously itch to do something: muscles have a life of their own unless they are trained to purposeful actions. Actions, or rather activities, are the obvious reflex to leisure; they consume it, and leave the problem solved.
But work is also activity, and if we reach the conclusion that all our time must be filled with one activity or another, the distinction between work and play becomes rather meaningless, and what we mean by play is merely a change of occupation. We pass from one form of activity to another; one we call work, and for that we receive pay; the other we call play, and for that we receive no pay–on the contrary, we probably pay a subscription.
1. The author points out two kinds of danger that may arise from the misuse of leisure. One of them is the result of purely passive entertainment; the other results when work and play are not properly coordinated What are the two dangers? Which of them is particularly harmful to society?
2. The author says that most films are not good enough to leave a permanent impression on our minds. Is this, in his opinion, a good thing or a bad thing? In what way?
3. What, in the author’s opinion, is the real difference between work and play? Or is there no difference at all between them? .
Questions 4～5
History tells us that in ancient Babylon, the cradle of our civilization, the people tried to build a tower that would reach to heaven. But the tower became the tower of Babel, according to the Old Testament, when the people were suddenly caused to speak different languages. In modern New York City, a new tower, that of the United Nations Building, thrusts its shining mass skyward. But the realization of the UN’s aspirations—and with it the hopes of the peoples of the world—is threatened by our contemporary Babel: about three thousand different languages are spoken throughout the world today, without counting the various dialects that confound communication between peoples of the same land.
In China, for example, hundreds of different dialects are spoken; people of some villages have trouble passing the time of day with the inhabitants of the next town. In the new African state of Ghana, five million people speak fifty different dialects. In India more than one hundred languages are spoken, of which only fourteen are recognized as official. To add to the confusion, as the old established empires are broken up and new states are formed, new official tongues spring up at an increasing rate.
In a world made smaller by jet travel, man is still isolated from many of his neighbors by the Babel barrier of multiplying languages. Communication is blocked daily in scores of ways. Travelers find it difficult to know the peoples of other nations. Scientists are often unable to read and benefit from the work being carried on by men of science in other countries. The aims of international trade, of world accord, of meetings between nations, are blocked at every turn; the work of scholars, technologists, and humanists is handicapped. Even in the shining new tower of the United Nations in New York, speeches and discussions have to be translated and printed in the five official UN languages—English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese. Confusion, delay, suspicion, and hard feelings are the products of the diplomatic Babel.
The chances for world unity are lessened if in the literal sense of the phrase, we do not speak the same language. We stand in dire need of a common tongue a language that would cross national barriers, one simple enough to be universally learned by travelers, businessmen, government representatives, scholars, and even by children in school.
Of course, this isn’t a new idea. Just as everyone is against sin, so everyone is for a common language that would further communication between nations. What with one thing and another—our natural state of drift as human beings, our rivalries, resentments, and jealousies as nations—we have up until now failed to take any action. I propose that we stop just talking about it, as Mark Twain said of the weather, and do something about it. We must make the concerted, massive effort it takes to reach agreement on the adoption of a single, common auxiliary tongue.
Let’s take a quick look at the realities of the problem. One of the main barriers to the adoption of the common language is the fact that there is Babel even among the possible languages we can choose. A number of different simplified languages vie for the spot of the language, and their respective advocates defend and attack with the fervor of political campaigners. Basic English, for example, with its vocabulary of only 850 words with which virtually anything can be expressed, has many advocates. But the Soviet Union and many nations of Asia and South America object to it. Why English? They ask. Why not Basic Russian, Basic Spanish, even Basic Latin?
In addition to the “basics” of languages now in use, there is another type—the so-called “constructed languages,” of which some six hundred have made their appearance since the end of the nineteenth century, most of them almost immediate failures. The two best-known survivors among them are, of course, Esperanto and Interlingua.
Esperanto was published in 1887 by a Russian-Polish physician names Zamenhof, who had worked on it for ten years. He gave it to the world not under his own name but under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto, meaning “Doctor Hopeful.” Esperanto is based on regularity and ease of grammar, with a vocabulary from Roman-Germanic roots. By the end of the century Esperanto had taken hold in western Europe.
Interlingua made its appearance much later—in 1951. A group of linguists from many nations took nearly thirty years to perfect it. Essentially, Interlingua is Latin stripped of its difficulties. Its introducer, Dr. Alexander Gode, refers to it as “a kind of twentieth century kitchen Latin.” Indeed, Interlingua can be read by most college-trained people almost at sight.
I do not by any means consider myself an authority on the relative merits of the various proposed common languages, but Dr. Mario Pei, of Columbia University in New York City, has written a fine book on the subject called One Language for the World. In this book Dr. Pei says he believes that it makes little difference which language or what kind of language becomes the international language, as long as agreement can be reached among the people of the world on any one.
For my own part, it seems to me that the main requirement of an international language is that it be easily learned. Thus it should have the simplest possible spelling and grammar and pronunciation, and the smallest possible vocabulary. An adult should be able to master such a language within three months if he gives several hours a day to the study of it.
What can be done concretely to achieve the goal of a working common language? I believe that the UNESCO arm of the United Nations should call a meeting of leading linguists from each of its member nations. (This would include most of the major populated areas of the world.) As Dr. Pei recommends, the purpose of the conference would be to select an already existing language agreeable to a preponderance of the nations represented. Such an agreement won’t come without determined effort: it may take more than one conference to reach agreement; it may take many more. The important thing is that some positive action be taken.
Such a conference should be called without further delay; we are sorely in need of this first step. Only with an international language in use, with the proceedings of the UN published in it, with children in schools all over the world learning it as their second language, can we close the gap between the “one world” so recently established in terms of travel time and the one world we hope for in terms of human understanding and co-operations.
Because I believe strongly that without the closing of this gap international accord is only a vain hope, I’ve taken it upon myself to try to implement this proposal. Since it is most unlikely that either UNESCO or the nations involved have funds to finance the linguists’ conference, I think that one of the great philanthropic foundations, such as the Ford, Carnegie, or Rockefeller Foundation, should undertake to make it possible.
I have already approached one of these foundations for such a grant–and been turned down. I shall approach the others in turn, and if I am turned down by all, I shall look for other ways to make this conference possible.
It is the responsibility of all Americans to do whatever they can in their own communities to make this goal of one language for one world a reality for our children.
4. What is “Babel”? And what does “Babel” refer to respectively in the following few phrases: “the tower of Babel” (para.1), “our contemporary Babel” (para.1), “Babel barrier”(para.3), “diplomatic Babel” (para.3) “there is Babel” (para.6)?
5. According to the author, what are the things that really matter for the success of an international language? Do you agree? |
|
