SECTION II READING (40 points)
Part A Reading Comprehension (15 items, 2 points for each item)
Directions: In this part of the test, you will read three passages. For each passage there are five questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you’ve just read. Blacken the letter corresponding to your answer on the ANSWER SHEET.
TEXT A
Being left-handed, I feel an immediate, if slight, fellowship with any stranger whom I identify as left-handed. We are in a minority of about one tenth of the world’s population. Though I cannot claim to have been much inconvenienced by my left-handedness, let alone persecuted for it, there are countries where children who show a preference for using their left hand are cajoled or forced by adults into using their right.
The author of the book ‘Left-handedness? It’s a right mystery’, who is himself left-handed, decided to explore the biological and social meaning of left-handedness. Why does Man have a dominant hand at all? Is left-handedness inherited, or is it environmental? Why is left-handedness everywhere regarded as – well, sinister (evil in appearance)?
Readers should not be disappointed by the author’s weak attempts to be funny: he writes much better when he is simply relaying the scientific issues without his own explanation. In addition to the opinions of scientists, he seeks those of practitioners of fringe(边缘) activities such as palmistry(手相术) and graphology, and takes part in a left-handed golf game in Japan. These leave him none the wiser.
Even the scientists who study the question have not found the answer to why Man should show such marked right-sided dominance. Moreover, it is not yet certain whether Man is the only creature to do so. One hypothesis is that left-handers differ genetically from right-handers. They have a slight tendency to certain mental illnesses and more of them suffer from physical or mental disability. But larger numbers of them are highly intelligent or especially gifted, so mankind |
