No matter how long your life is, you will, at best, be able to read only a few books of all that have been written, and the few you do read should include the best. It is to be expected that the selections will change over time. Yet there is a surprising uniformity （一致） in the lists which represent the best choices of any period.

    What are the signs by which we may recognize a great book? The four I will mention may not be all there are, but they are the ones I’ve found most useful in explaining my choices over the years.

    Great books are probably the most widely read. They are not best sellers for a year or two. They are enduring best sellers. Gone with the Wind has had relatively few readers compared to the plays of Shakespeare or Don Quixote. It would be reasonable to estimate that Homer Iliad has been read by at least 25,000,000 people in the last 3000 years.

    Great books are popular, not pedantic. They are not written by specialists about specialties for specialists. Whether they are philosophy or science, or history or poetry, they treat of human, not academic problems. They are written for men, not professors. To read a textbook for advanced students, you have to read an elementary textbook first. But the great books can be considered elementary in the sense that they treat the elements of any subject matter. They are not related to one another as a series of textbooks, graded in difficulty or in the technicality of the problems with which they deal.

Great books are always contemporary, the most readable and instructive.

Great books deal with the persistently unsolved problems of human life. There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Great minds acknowledge mysteries honestly. Wisdom is fortified （加強(qiáng)）, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations.

1．Which is NOT the criterion in the following when evaluating a great book?

       A．Although not a best seller, it must be the most widely read.

       B．A great book can be read without any effort.

       C．Great books are never out of date.

       D．Great books will not disappoint you if you try to read them well.

2．According to the author, Gone With the Wind is ______.

       A．a(chǎn) best seller        

       B．disgusted by readers who like Shakespeare

       C．read more often than Don Quixote

       D．a(chǎn) great book

3．After reading the passage, we can infer that ______.

   A．different periods have different lists of best books because there are many books for

      people to choose from

   B．if you don’t read an elementary textbook, you may have difficulty in understanding an

      advanced one

   C．Homer Iliad must be a best seller when it came out

   D．great books often deal with unsolved problems of human life for the writers have

      confidence in settling them

4．The best title for this passage is ______.

       A．Great Books in Your Life                      B．Great Books in Your Specialty

C．How to Find a Great Book?          D．What Is a Great Book?

閱讀理解

　　How many words one uses can not be measured exactly. However, Professor Seashore concluded that first-graders entered the school with at least 24 000 words and add 5 000 each year so that they leave high school with at least 80 000． These figures are for recognition vocabulary, the words we understand when we read or hear them, which are more than our active vocabulary, the words we use in speaking and writing.

　　Using the words you recognize in reading will help get them into your active vocabulary. In your reading, pay attention to these words, especially when the subject is one that you might well write or talk about. Underline or make a list of words that you feel a need for and look up the ones you are not sure of in a dictionary. And then before very long find a way to use some of them. Once you know how they are pronounced and what they mean, you can safely use them.

1．How many words does one use?

[　　]

A．Nobody can answer the question.

B．No one knows for sure but Prof. Seashore.

C．Not everyone can tell the exact number.

D．People cannot give an exact answer, not even Prof. Seashore.

2．Prof. Seashore concluded that it takes a first-grader ________ years to increase his vocabulary from 24 000 to 80 000．

[　　]

3．According to Prof. Seashore, ________

[　　]

A．one has at least 80 000 recognition words.

B．recognition words can become active ones.

C．one's recognition vocabulary consists of active words and non-active words.

D．one's active words grow with his recognition ones.

4．One way suggested by the writer to increase our active vocabulary is that we should ________

[　　]

A．look up a dictionary for new words and keep them in our note.

B．read and recognize the words we will need and add them into our list of active vocabulary.

C．keep well in touch with more recognition words and keep using them after grasping their pronunciation and meaning.

D．read more, write more and use more.

5．According to the passage, an important step leading to the correct use of vocabulary is ________.

[　　]

A．extending the list of the active words

B．often looking up a dictionary for necessary words

C．knowing your subject well

D．grasping the correct pronunciation and meaning of the words to be used

D
One of the main challenges facing many countries is how to maintain their identity in the face of globalization and the growing multi-language trend. “One of the main reasons for economic failure in many African countries is the fact that, with a few important exceptions, mother-tongue education is not practiced in any of the independent African states.” said Neville Alexander, Director of the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa at the University of Cape Town.
In response to the spread of English and the increased multi-language trends arising from immigration, many countries have introduced language laws in the laws in the last decade. In some, the use of languages other than the national language is banned in public spaces such as advertising posters. One of the first such legal provisions was the 1994 “Toubon law” in France, but the idea has been copied in many countries since then. Such efforts to govern language use are often dismissed as futile by language experts, who are well aware of the difficulty in controlling fashions in speech and know from research that language switching among bilinguals is a natural process.
It is especially difficult for native speakers of English to understand the desire to maintain the “purity” of a language by law. Since the time of Shakespeare, English has continually absorbed foreign words into its own language. English is one of the most mixed and rapidly changing languages in the world, but there has not been a barrier to acquiring prestige and power. Another reason for the failure of many native English speakers to understand the role of state regulation is that it has never been the Anglo-Saxon way of doing things. English has never had a state-controlled authority for the language, similar, for example, to the Academic Francaise in France.
The need to protect national languages is, for most western Europeans, a recent phenomenon—especially the need to ensure that English does not unnecessarily take over too many fields. Public communication, education and new modes of communication promoted by technology, may be key fields to defend.
【小題1】Neville Alexander believes that         .