Section Ⅲ Reading Comprehension

　　(40 minutes)

　　Part A

　　Directions:

　　Read the following three texts. Answer the questions on each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET by drawing a thick line across the corresponding letter in the brackets¹.

　　Text I

　　The automobile² has many advantages. Above all, it offers people freedom to go wherever and whenever they want to go. The basic purpose of a motor vehicle is to get from point A to point B as cheaply, quickly, and safely as possible. However, to most people, cars are also personal fantasy machines that serve as symbols of power, success, speed, excitement, and adventure.

　　In addition, much of the world's economy is built on producing motor vehicles and supplying roads, services, and repairs for those vehicles. Half of the world's paychecks are auto³ related. In the United States, one of every six dollars spent and one of every six non-farm jobs are connected to the automobile or related industries, such as oil, steel, rubber, plastics, automobile services, and highway construction.

　　In spite⁴ of their advantages, motor vehicles have many harmful effects on human lives and on air, water, land, and wildlife resources. The automobile may be the most destructive⁵ machine ever invented. Though we tend to deny it, riding in cars is one of the most dangerous things we do in our daily lives.

　　Since 1885, when Karl Benz built the first automobile, almost 18 million people have been killed by motor vehicles. Every year, cars and trucks worldwide kill an average of 250,000 people－as many as were killed in the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki－and injure or permanently⁶ disable⁷ ten million more. Half of the world's people will be involved in an auto accident at some time during their lives.

　　Since the automobile was introduced, almost three million Americans have been killed on the highways－about twice the number of Americans killed on the battlefield in all U.S. wars. In addition to the tragic⁸ loss of life, these accidents cost American society about $60 billion annually⁹ in lost income and in insurance, administrative¹⁰, and legal expenses.

　　Streets that used to be for people are now for cars. Pedestrians¹¹ and people riding bicycles in the streets are subjected to noise, pollution, stress, and danger.

　　Motor vehicles are the largest source of air pollution, producing a haze¹² of smog over the world's cities. In the United States, they produce at least 50% of the country's air pollution.

　　46. Cars represent people's _________.

　　[A] occupation [ B] identity

　　[C] life style [D] fame

　　47. According to the passage, the average number of people killed annually in traffic accidents around the world is __________.

　　[A] 18 million [B] 250,000

　　[ C ] half of the world's population [ D] 60 million

　　48. A serious environmental problem resulting from automobiles¹³ is _________.

　　[ A ] tragic loss of life [ B ] traffic jams

　　[ C ] air pollution [ D ] mental stress

　　49. It can be inferred from this passage that automobiles _________.

　　[ A ] are an important part of the world's economy

　　[ B ] are becoming less dangerous

　　[ C ] will produce less air pollution in the future

　　[ D ] are killing¹⁴ more people in recent years than in the past

　　50. The title that suits the passage best is _________.

　　[ A ] Automobile and Economy

　　[B] Automobile and the Environment

　　[ C ] The Problems with the Automobile

　　[D] Advantages and Disadvantages of the Automobile

　　Text 2

　　I don't know how I became a writer, but I think it was because of a certain force in me that had to write and that finally burst through and found a channel. My people were of the working class of people. My father, a stone-cutter, was a man with a great respect and veneration¹⁵ for literature. He had a tremendous memory, and he loved poetry, and the poetry that he loved best was naturally of the rhetorical kind that such a man would like. Nevertheless it was good poetry, Hamlet's Soliloquy, Macbeth , Mark Antony's "Funeral Oration¹⁶" , Grey's "Elegy¹⁷" , and all the rest of it. I heard it all as a child; I memorized and learned it all.

　　He sent me to college to the state university.

　　The desire to write, which had been strong during all my days in high school, grew stronger still. I was editor of the college paper, the college magazine , etc. , and in my last year or two I was a member of a course in playwriting which had just been established there. I wrote several little one-act plays, still thinking I would become a lawyer or a newspaper man, never daring to believe I could seriously become a writer. Then I went to Harvard, wrote some more plays there, became obsessed¹⁸ with the idea that I had to be a playwright¹⁹, left Harvard, had my plays rejected, and finally in the autumn of 1926, how, why, or in what manner I have never exactly been able to determine. But probably because the force in me that had to write at length sought out its channel, I began to write my first book in London, I was living all alone at that time. I had two rooms－a bedroom and a sitting room－in a litter square in Chelsea in which all the houses had that familiar, smoked brick and cream-yellow-plaster look.

　　51. We may conclude, in regard to the author's development as a writer, that his father _________.

　　[ A ] made an important contribution

　　[ B ] insisted that he choose writing as a career

　　[ C ] opposed his becoming a writer

　　[ D] insisted that he read Hamlet in order to learn how to be a writer

　　52. The author believes that he became a writer mostly because of _________.

　　[A] his special talent [B] his father's teaching and encouragement

　　[C] his study at Harvard [D] a hidden urge within him

　　53. The author _________,

　　[A] began to think of becoming a writer at Harvard

　　[ B ] had always been successful in his writing career

　　[ C ] went to Harvard to learn to write plays

　　[ D ] worked as a newspaper man before becoming a writer

　　54. The author really started on his way to become a writer _________.

　　[A] when he was in high school [B] when he was studying at Harvard

　　[ C ] when he lived in London [ D ] after he entered college

　　55. A conclusion we cannot safely draw (based upon this passage) about the author's life in

　　1926 is that _________.

　　[A] he was unmarried

　　[B] he was miserable about having his plays rejected

　　[C] he lived in a house like all the other houses around him

　　[D] he started his first novel

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