Part III Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)
Section A
Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.
Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.
To understand why we should be concerned about how young people read, it helps to know something about the way the ability to read evolved. Unlike the ability to understand and produce spoken language, the ability to read must be painstakingly 36__________ by each individual. The “reading circuits” we construct in the brain can be 37__________ or they can be robust, depending on how often and how 38__________ we use them. Thers are enjoying the experience the most, the pace of their reading 39__________ slows. The combination of fast, fluent decoding of words and slow, unhurried progress on the page gives deep readers time to enrich their reading with reflection and analysis. It gives them time to establish an 40__________ relationship with the author, the two of them 41__________ in a long and warm conversation like people falling in love.
This is not reading as many young people know it. Their reading
difference between what literary critic Frank Kermode calls “carnal (肉体的) reading” and “spiritual reading.” If we allow our offspring to believe carnal reading is all there is — if we don’t open the door to spiritual reading, through an early 42__________ on discipline and practice — we will have 43__________ them of an enjoyable experience
they would not otherwise encounter. Observing young people’s 44__________ to digital devices, some progressive educators talk about “meeting kids where they are,” molding instruction around their onscreen habits. This is mistaken. We need, 45 , to show them someplace they’ve never been, a place only deep reading can take them.
A
B) actually
C) attachment
D) cheated
E) engaged
F) feeble
G) illicit
H) insistence
J) notwithstan
K) petition
L) rather
M) scarcely
N) swayed
O) vigorously