高级英语写作练习题
I． Reading and summary Sequencing:
The following sentencese go together to form a paragraph ,but they are in the wrong order.Read the sentences carefully and put them in the right order.
A．
1. Yet,despite all this ,no one seems to live there 2. It is a large house set amid spacious grounds
3. Standing there one can see a glance that everything is kept in perfect order
4. or so it seems
5. on the outskirts of my village there is a house that is a bit of a mystery
6. But no one I spoken to so far knows
7. The lawn is kept cut and the paint work maintained 8. perhaps the neighbours could shed light on the matter 9. Between their visits the house lies completely empty
10. These are surrounded by a high wall and the only vantage point from which one can get a glimpse of what lies beyong is from the tall wrought iron gates
11. Apart from the gardener and the housekeeper one sees no one.They come early in the morning two or three times a week,and go away in the late afternoon
B．
1．Unfortunately present position offters me little opportunity to further develop my understanding of English literature
2.I wonder if you would be so kind as to let me know details of any scholarships for which I might be eligible to apply
3.currently I am working as an English teacher at a middle school,having graduated from Chengdu University with a BA in English Literature in 1994
4.I feel keenly the need for further training in this field and am greatly attracted by the courses offered by your university and the reputation it enjoys
5.In addition to my teaching duties I have been special responsibility for curriculum development and course management
C.
1 Secure in its island home, the dodo had lost the power of flight since there were no enemies to fly from.
2. The goats ate the undergrowth which provided the dodo with cover; dogs and cats hunted and harried the old birds; while pigs grunted their way round the island, eating the eggs and young, and the rats followed behind to finish the feast.
3. Man discovered the dodo’s paradise in about 1507, and with him came his enemies: dogs, cats, pigs, rats and goats.
4.The dodo, the ponderous waddling pigeon, inhabited the island of Mauritius.
5. The dodo surveyed these new arrivals with an air of innocent interest. 6. By 1681, the fat, ungainly and harmless pigeon was extinct. 7.Then the slaughter began. II.Supply the missing paragraph
The following passage is incomplete with the concluding paragraph missing.Study the passage carefully and write the missing paragraph of about 100 words.Make sure that the tone and vocabulary you.use are in unity with the passage provided.
Manners Are Important
As one looks about,it becomes very easy to conclude that good manners seem to be a thing of the past.More and more people seem to be discourteous to one another,more indicative of a “survival of the fittest” attitude than of living in a civilized society.Although much of what was considered good manners at the turn of the last century may no longer be appropriate,common courtesy and acceptable behavior are still necessary to make life pleasant,especially as our cities become more and more crowded.Although common courtesy is the underlying framework,good manners are manifested in two distinct aresa,business and social relationships.
The world of business has become increasingly impersonal over the years.The fast developement of computers has removed the personal touch from many business dealings.It is not uncommon,when phoning a company,to get a recorded message telling us which number to press.When we finally do get a live person on the other end,he often seems uncaring.Good business sense,though,would dictate the importance of getting back to the personal touch.The speaker should identify himself by name to the caller and make every effort to be courteous and helpful.Above all,he should take great pains to assure the call is not disconnected.In addition,he should make certain that the caller is connected to his party and not kept waiting long while listening to canned music.Good manners will assure happy,loyal customers.
Good manners are,perhaps,most frequently associated with socialrelationships.
Unfortunately,here again they seem to be in decline.Giving up one's seat on a crowded bus to an elderly person,a pregnant woman,or an obviously tired per
son seems to be a thing of the past.People also seem to have forgotten how to behave as an audience.It is not uncommon to see people putting their feet up on the seats in front of them or talking loudly during a movie or play.Even restaurants are not immune from the lack of good manners.Young parents do not seem to care that their children are roaming throughout the restaurant or are crying and disturbing the other guests.These examples touch only the surface of the rapid decline of good manners.
Ⅲ.Write an outline(20 points)
Read the following passage carefully and compose a “sentence outline” for it.
A.
The Changing Workweek
In the early 1900s in the U.S.A., workers in large industries worked long days and long weeks. It was not uncommon for workers in the meat-packing companies of Chicago, for example, to work twelve to fourteen hours, for six or seven days a week. As unions started exerting their influence, however, the working conditions of American workers began improving, and the workweek was gradually shortened. Today, workers have workweek opinions that were unheard of earlier in the last century.
The five day workweek has become commonplace in American industries. However, he four-day workweek is becoming even more popular. Mary workers prefer four tea-hour days. This gives them longer working days, but it also gives them three-day weekends, an unheard-of luxury even twenty years ago. Management isn’t complaining since the same amount of work gets accomplished, and in some cases a plant can be totally shut down on the fifth day, saving the company thousands of dollars in utilities.
Another change in the workweek is the variable hours option. While American workers have traditionally worked either day or night shifts, some companies are allowing workers to set their own hours within the workweek. Flexible schedules are becoming more common in metropolitan areas with commuter-time traffic problems and in industries that are open around the clock. The advantage to the workers is that they can plan their hours around the days of their families. For example, a husband who takes each afternoon off could babysit the children while his wife works. The variable hours schedule also motivates workers because the company is letting them control their own time.
1. A third change in the workweek over the past twenty years is the use of overtime. While most workers do not have to work beyond a forty-hour week, many companies will pay them time and a half to do so. Although this is more expensive for the company, it is still cheaper than having to hire additional workers and providing benefits. On traditional nonworking days such as holidays, workers are often paid double-time or more to work. Overtime pay allows companies to meet their production needs without exploiting the workers. It allows workers to make extra money at a higher rate than they normally work for. Although ove
rtime work often represents a return to longer working days and weeks, it is done on a voluntary basis and is usually negotiated willingly by the workers.
2. What does the future hold for American workers? As modern technology turns more and more wok to machines, the typical workweek may continue to shrink. Some companies have already gone to the thirty-five-hour week, and in the 21st century, the thirty-five-hour week may be standard. Within twenty years, the great advantage to shorter workweeks is that workers have more time off to themselves. However, given the financial demands upon American families in the future, it may also become common for workers to hold down two full-time jobs at one time. Given the American work ethic, most workers will probably fill their free time with more work instead of more leisure.
3. B.
The Effects of Television on Children's Social Relations
TV presents the child with a distorted definition of reality.The child in the affluent suburb or the small mid-western town exists within his own limited reality.His experience with social problems or people of different races,religions,or nationalities is probably somewhat limited.As television exposes him to a diversity of people and ideas,it surely expands the boundaries of his reality.It is precisely because he now relies heavily on TV to define other realities for him that we must examine carefully what those images are.If they are inaccurate or distorted,then television's reality is potentially harmful.
TV distorts reality by selecting certain kinds of images and omitting others and by portraying people in a stereotyped way.It portrays some categories of people with beauty,power and importance and renders others weak,helpless or invisible.So serious is the relative invisibility of some groups on TV that Dr.George Gerbner of the Annenberg School of Communications contends,“If you're not on TV,you don't exist.”
The TV camera selects certain images to be examples,sometimes functioning like a magnifying glass held up to the worst in civilization instead of the best.When TV producers focus on violent ugliness,they lift it out and hold it up for all to see,making it impressively larger than life.A fist fight that occurs outside my window and is witnessed by only five people may be videotaped,broadcast and “witnessed” vicariously by millions of people ,thus multiplying the example set by the fist fighters.In the United States,most people have not witnessed murder,yet because of television most children have seen hundreds of thousands of violent deaths and therefore believe that the world is more violent than it actually is.
TV says,in effect:This is the way the world works.There are the rules.The images presented on TV tend to be exaggerated or glorified,and so believed and accepted as models to be copied.After TV heavily promoted Evel Knievel's attempt to “fly” his motorcycle over the Snake River,many children imitated his stunts with their bicycles on homemade ramps.And many landed in hospitals.
TV affects human relationships as well as behavior by influencing our feelings about ourselves and our expectations for ourselves and others.Too frequently stereotypes provide us with instant difinitions.The stereotype assigns to an individual characteristics associated with a group that may or may not be accurate.We tend to note a single feature of a person and fill in the details from a storehouse of stereotypes.
Via TV's stereotypes we see men as strong and active,women pretty and at home.All to frequently,minorities are cast in exaggerated portrayals and stereotyped roles,more as white male producers perceive them than the way minority persons perceive themselves.
Exposure to stereotyped presentations can easily influence viewers' behavior toward unfamiliar people.TV images,in fact,teach values and behaviors,especially to children who have little firsthand knowledge of the real world.To the extent that children are exposed to certain characters' portrayals and behaviors on TV,they may acquire or learn those behaviors and roles and eventually accept them as models for their own attitudes and actions.
Perhaps most serious are the effects of information distortions on the child's self-image.At some level we begin to judge our own meaning,dignity and worth in comparison with the TV characters who portray people like us.We should be fully aware that there inaccurate or distorted portrayal may be harmful to children's growth.
C．Chou Enlai
Chou En-lai arrived [at the guest house for state visitors] at 4:30. His gaunt, experience face was dominated by piercing eyes, conveying a mixture of intensity and repose, of wariness and calm self-confidence. He wore an immaculately tailored gray Mao tunic, at once simple and elegant. He moved gracefully and with dignity, filling a room not by his physical dominance (as did Mao or de Gaulle) but by his air of controlled tension, steely discipline, and self-control, as if he were a coiled spring. He conveyed an easy casualness, which, however, did not deceive the careful observer. The quick smile, the comprehending expression that made clear he understood English even without translation, the palpable alertness, were clearly the features of a man who had had burned into him
by a searing half-century the vital importance of self-possession. I greeted him at the door of the guest house and ostentatiously stuck out my hand. Chou gave me a quick smile and took it. It was the first step in putting the legacy of the past behind us.
Unlike Mao, Chou had lived abroad; born of a middle-class family in 1898, he had been a brilliant student and had studied and worked in France and Germany in the 1920s. When I met him, he had been a leader of the Chinese Communist movement for nearly fifty years. He had been on the Long March. He had been the only Premier the People’s Republic had had—nearly twenty-two years—and for nine of those years he had also been Foreign Minister. Chou had negotiated with General Marshall in the 1940s. He was a figure out of history. He was equally at home in philosophy, reminiscence, historical analysis, tactical probes, and humorous repartee. His command of facts, in particular his knowledge of American events and, for that matter, of my own background, was stunning. There was little wasted motion either in his words or in his movements. Both reflected the inner tensions of a man concerned, as he stressed, with the endless daily problems of a people of 800 million and the effort to preserve ideological faith for the nest generation.
Chou could also display an extraordinary personal graciousness. When junior members of our party took ill, he would visit them. Despite the gap in our protocol rank he insisted that our meetings alternate between my residence and the great Hall of the People so that he would call on me as often as I called on him. After we had settled that we continue to use the Pakistani channel occasionally because “we have a saying in China that one shouldn’t break the bridge after crossing it.”
Chou En-lai, in short, was one of the two or three most impressive men I have ever met. Urbane, infinitely patient, extraordinarily intelligent, subtle, he moved through our discussion with an easy grace that penetrated to the essence of our new relationship as if there were no sensible alternative.
Ⅲ.Composition(60 points)
1.Teachers pay little attention to those school failures,assuming that academic failure means failure in everything.What do you think of this attitude?Write a short argumentative essay(about 300 words) explaining your view
2.writing a letter of application
You are Mary Lee,a Chinese student presently enrolled in the MA program at the City University of New York.With the end of the semester approaching,you want to find a job during the summer vacation.Write a letter applying for a position asa secretary ar an assistant tn the coming summer.Base your letter on the following notes.
4. purpose of job application:money and experiences
5. had some relevant working experience before coming to USA
6. able to type 40 wpm ,to take shorthand ,to do editing and proofreading 7. have a working permit from the immigrationg office 8. hope to attend an interview
Note:1.write a correctly laid out letter,which might include the letter head,complemetary close,signature,and sender’s printed name as well as jib title.Five points will be deducted for failing to follow the letter formal properly 2.you should write 120 words
3 Modern technology and industry have GREatly improved our lives, yet they have also brought about environmental problems such as air pollution, water pollution and noise pollution.
４．Write an expository essay (about 300 words) on what we must do ,as an individual, a family, or a whole nation, to protect our environment. VI. Write an essay according to one of the following topics (260-300 words) (40′).
1. The Benefits of Collecting； 2. On Reading
ＩV. Read the following paragraphs and cross out the irrelevant sentences. (5′)
It is obvious that television has both advantages and disadvantages. In the first place, television is not only a convenient source of pleasure, but also a quite cheap one. For a family of four, for example, it is more convenient as well as cheaper to sit comfortably at home, with so many interesting programmes available, than to go out for something else. There is no transport to arrange. They do not have to pay for expensive seats at the theatre, or the like, only to discover, perhaps, that the show is disappointing. All they have to do is to turn a knob, and they can see plays and shows of every kind, not to mention the latest current events. In addition, watching television is a popular leisure activity: a chance of experience to provide “escape” from the stress and strain of work; to learn more about what is happening in one’s environment; to provide an opportunity for understanding oneself by comparing other people’s life experiences as portrayed in the programmes. Some people, however, maintain that this is just where the danger lies. Those who watch television need do nothing. They are completely passive and have everything presented to them without any effort on their part.
【参考答案】
Ｉ．Ａ．课本２０１页。 Ｂ。练习第８页Ｃ。
ＩＩ。Supply the missing paragraph
Good manners in the modern times are essential for people to live comfortably and peacefully with each other in every aspect of their lives.As our cities are growing more and more crowded it is the good manners that will help people learn to self?regulate their behavior to make themselves suitable in the society,and,moreover,it is the good manners that will make the difference between a civilized society and a jungle.We must all be able to expect certain types of behavior of our fellow citizens,or the quality of life will rapidly deteriorate.?
ＩＩ。Write an outline(20 points) ａｎｓｅｒｓｖａｒｙ ＩＩＩ作文 Composition略。
ＩV. Read the following paragraphs and cross out the irrelevant sentences. It is obvious that television has both advantages and disadvantages. In the first place, television is not only a convenient source of pleasure, but also a quite cheap one. For a family of four, for example, it is more convenient as well as cheaper to sit comfortably at home, with so many interesting programmes available, than to go out for something else. There is no transport to arrange. They do not have to pay for expensive seats at the theatre, or the like, only to discover, perhaps, that the show is disappointing. All they have to do is to turn a knob, and they can see plays and shows of every kind, not to mention the latest current events. In addition, watching television is a popular leisure activity: a chance of experience to provide “escape” from the stress and strain of work; to learn more about what is happening in one’s environment; to provide an opportunity for understanding oneself by comparing other people’s life experiences as portrayed in the programmes. Some people, however, maintain that this is just where the danger lies. Those who watch television need do nothing. They are completely passive and have everything presented to them without any effort on their part.
Search for knowledge,rea
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