Ⅰ.Multiple Choice Select from the four choices of each item the one that best answers the question or completes the statement. Mark your choice by blacking the corresponding letter A, B, C or D on the answer sheet. Ⅱ.Reading Comprehension Read the quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.1. "Because I was happy upon the heath,/And smil'd among the winter's snow;/They cloth'd me in the clothes of death,/And taught me to sing the notes of woe." (From Blake's Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Experience)
Questions: A. What does "heath" indicate?
B. What does "the clothes of death" mean?
C. What idea does the poem reveal?
A. Uncultivated land covered with shrubs.
B. Clothes in dark color.
C. The poem reveals the true nature of religion which helps bring misery to the poor children.
2. "Will no one tell me what she sings?/Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow/For old, unhappy, far-off things,/And battles long ago;/Or is it some more humble lay,/Familiar matter of today?/Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,/That has been, and may be again?" (From William Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper")
Questions: A. What does the phrase "plaintive numbers" mean?
B. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem?
C. What do you think Wordsworth intends to suggest in the poem?
A. The mournful verses (referring to her song).
B. It is an iambic verse. Most of the lines in the poem are octosyllabics. The rhyme-scheme for each stanza is ababccdd.
C. Wordsworth intends to suggest the timeless mystery of sorrowful humanity and its radiant beauty.
3. "I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence:/Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made the difference."
Questions: A. Who is the writer of the poem? What's the title of the poem?
B. What additional meaning do the two roads have?
C. What dilemma is the speaker facing?
A. Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken".
B. Life is here compared to a journey. The two roads stand for the choice one has to make at a critical moment in his life.
C. Since where the road leads to is uncertain, one has to wait to see the result of the choice until one's life is coming to an end. Then it will be too late. The speaker acknowledges the limits of life, yet he indulges himself in the notion that we could be really different from what we have become, because life is unpredictable.
4. "They rose when she entered—a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head.
Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand."
Questions: A. Who is the writer of the story? What is the title of the story?
B. What's the meaning of the underlined sentences?
C. What can you infer from the passage about the protagonist?
A. William Faulkner; A Rose for Emily.
B. Because of her small frame, a little extra weight, which made women of larger frame look fat, made her look excessively fat.
C. The protagonist, Emily Grierson, was an eccentric spinster who refuses to accept the passage of time, or the inevitable change and loss that accompanies it. Emily is endowed with the images of protector of the tradition, and its convict, beneficiary and revolter.
Ⅲ.Questions and Answers Give a brief answer to each of the following questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.1. William Shakespeare is one of the most remarkable playwrights the world has ever known. What are his four greatest tragedies? What are the characteristics of the four tragedies in common?
(1) Shakespeare's greatest tragedies are: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.
(2)They have some characteristics in common.
①Each portrays some noble hero, who faces the injustice of human life and is caught in a difficult situation and whose fate is closely connected with the fate of the whole nation.
②Each hero has his weakness of nature: Hamlet, the melancholic scholar-prince, faces the dilemma between action and mind; Othello's inner weakness is made use of by the outside evil force; the old king Lear who is unwilling to totally give up his power makes himself suffer from treachery and infidelity; and Macbeth's lust for power stirs up his ambition and leads him to incessant crimes.
2. What do you think T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land presents and reflects?
The poem not only presents a panorama of physical disorder and spiritual desolation in the modern Western world, but also reflects the prevalent mood of disillusionment and despair of a whole post-war generation.
3. Please summarize Emily Dickinson's poetry features.
(1)Her poems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines.
(2)In her poetry there is a particular stress pattern, in which dashes are used as a musical device to create cadence and capital letters as a means of emphasis.
(3)The form of her poetry is more or less like that of the hymns in community churches, familiar, communal, and sometimes, irregular.
(4)Her poems are usually short, rarely more than twenty lines, and many of them are centered on a single image or symbol and focused on one subject matter.
(5)Her poems tend to be very personal and meditative.
(6) Her poetry is remarkable for its variety, subtlety and richness.
4. What is Walt Whitman's poetic style?
(1)His poetic style is marked by the use of the poetic "I'.
(2)He adopted "free verse", poetry, without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.
(3)The image in his poems are unconventional.
(4)He uses oral English.
(5)His vocabulary is amazing.
(6)Parallelism and phonetic recurrence are used at the beginning of the lines.
Ⅳ.Topic Discussion Write no less than 150 words on each of the following topics in English in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.1. Discuss Charles Dickens' features in character portraying.
Character-portrayal is the most distinguishing feature of his works. Among a vast range of various characters, marked out by some peculiarity in physical traits, speech or manner, are both types and individuals. His best-depicted characters are those innocent, virtuous, persecuted, helpless child characters such as Oliver Twist, Little Nell, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit. Dickens writes best when he writes from the child's point of view. And he is also famous for the depiction of those horrible and grotesque characters like Fagin, Bill Sikes, and Quilp, and those broadly humorous or comical ones like Mr. Micawber, Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp. However, these characters are impressive not only because they are true to life, but also because they are often larger than life. They are, in a way, the embodiments of human beings, with some particular features exaggerated and highlighted, exposed to the degree of extremity.
2. Discuss Melville's symbolism in Moby-Dick.
Melville is a master of allegory and symbolism. Instead of putting the battle between Ahab and the big whale into simple statements, he used symbols, that is, objects or persons who represent something else.
(1)Different people on board the ship are representations of different ideas and different social and ethnic groups;
(2)The Pequod is the microcosm of human society and the voyage becomes a search for truth;
(3)The white whale, Moby Dick, symbolizes nature for Melville, for it is complex, unfathomable, malignant, and beautiful as well. ①To Ahab, the whale is either an evil creature itself or the agent of an evil force that controls the universe, or perhaps both. ②To Ishmale, the whale is an astonishing force, an immense power, which defies rational explanation due to a sense of mystery it carries. It is beautiful, but malignant at the same time. It also represents the tremendous organic vitality of the universe, for it has a life force that surges onward irresistibly, impervious to the desires or wills of men. ③As to the reader, the whale can be viewed as a symbol of the physical limits that life imposes upon man. It may also he regarded as a symbol of nature, or an instrument of God's vengeance upon evil man. In general, the multiplicity and ambivalence of the symbolic meaning of the whale is such that it becomes a source of intense speculation, an object or profound curiosity for the reader.