专八模拟改错

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Ancient man attempted to change the weather by using magic. While experience taught him this was impossible, __1__

he tried to forecast weather conditions. Even earlier in __2__

1000 B.C. there were weather seers in Babylon----and priests clever enough to denounce as frauds those predicted __3__

the weather a year in the advance. Some forecasters used __4__

methods that seemed to take no connection with the actual __5__

factors controlled the weather. Chickens and other animals __6__

were sacrificed and their intestines poked to find signs indicating rain and drought. Somewhat more scientific were __7__

predictions based on vegetation:"Onion's skin very thin ,mild weather coming in. Onion's skin thick and tough, coming weather is cold and rough."

Insects and animals were also __8__

favorite weather clues: "Before the glowworm lights his __9__

lamp , then the air is always damp ." "If spiders their cobwebs forsake , the weather will for certain break." "If frogs remained in pools , the weather will be fine . If they were seen on rocks, __10__

rain and cold were due." It's difficult to say whether this rhyme should be taken seriously : " Hark , I hear the asses bray . Me thinks we'll have some rain today ."

专八模拟改错(2)

It is difficult to think of a nation as an abstract collection of people living on a patch of territory. It is easier to think of as a person. This is why we sometimes call Great Britain __1__

"Britannia" and the United States "Columbia", and think of it as stately women.

We also use masculine symbols in our __2__

personification of nations. In 1712 John Arbuthont, a Scot, wrote a political satire in that the characters were supposed __3__

to be typical members of different nationalities. The Englishman was John Bull. This name, which was sufficient flattering to be __4__

adopted generally, combined the most common English first name with a last name indicated strength. John Bull is usually __5__

pictured as a partly businessman with a Union Jack on his hatband.

After the American War of Independence began in 1783, the United __6__ States was knownfor "Brother Jonathan". Jonathan was a biblical __7__ name associated with simple people from rural areas, and it seemed fitting since the United States is rural and unsophiscated, and since __8__

American considered their type of simplicity a virtue compared to __9__

the wickedness of European cities. It is possible, however, that the name was originated with President George Washington, who would __10__

often say, when faced with a hard problem, "Let us consult Brother Jonathan", referring to his secrectary, Johnathan Trumbull.

专八模拟改错(3)

About half of the infant and maternal deaths in developing countries could be avoided if women had used family planning methods to prevent high risk ____1

pregnancies, according to a report publishing recently by the Johns Hopking University. ____2

The report indicates that 5.6 million infant deaths and 2,000,000 maternal Deaths could be prevented this year if women chose to have theirs children

____3

within the safest years with adequate intervals among births and limited their ____4

families to moderate size.

This amounts to about half of the 9.8 million infant and 370.000 maternal deaths in developing countries, excluded China, estimated for this year by

____5

the United Nation’s Children’s Fund and the US Centers for Disease Control respectably. China was excluded because very few births occur in the high risk categories. ____6

The report says that evidences from around the world shows the risk of ____7 maternal or infant ill and death is the highest in four specific types of ____8 pregnancy; pregnancies before the mother is 18 year old; those after the ____9 mother is 35 years old; pregnancies after four births; and those lesser than two years apart.____10

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"Home, sweet home" is a phrase that express an essential attitude in the United States. Whether the reality of life in the family house is sweet or no sweet, the cherished ideal of home _____1

has great importance for many people.

This ideal is a vital part of the American dream. This dream, dramatized in the history of nineteenth century European settlers of American West, was to find a piece of place, build a house _____2

for one's family, and started a farm. These small households were _____3 portraits of independence: the entire family- mother, father, children,even grandparents-live in a small house and working together to ___4

support each other. Anyone understood the life-and-death importance _____5 of family cooperation and hard work. Although most people in the United States no longer live on farms, but the ideal of home ownership _____6

is just as strong in the twentieth century as it was in the nineteenth.

When U.S soldiers came home before World WarⅡ, for example, _____7

they dreamed of buying houses and starting families. But there was _____8 a tremendous boom in home building. The new houses, typically in the suburbs, were often small and more or less identical, but it satisfied _____9

a deep need. Many regarded the single-family house the basis of their way of life._____10

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We live in a society which there is a lot of talk about science, but I would say _____1

that there are not 5 percent of the people who are equipped with school, including college, to understand scientific reasoning. We are more ignorant of science as people _____2

with comparable education in Western Europe.There are a lot of kids who know

everything about computers—how to build

them, how to take them apart, and how to write programs for games. So if you ask _____3

them to explain about the principles of physics that have gone into creating the _____4

computer, you don’t have faintest idea. _____5

The failure to understand science leads to such things like the neglect of human _____6

creative power. It also takes rise to blurring of the distinction between science and _____7

technology. Lots of people don’t differ between the two. Science is the production of _____8

new knowledge that can be applied or not, and technology is the application of knowledge to the production of some products, machinery or the like. The two are really different, and people who have the faculty for one very seldom have a faculty for the others. _____9

Science in itself is harmless, more or less. But as soon as it can provide technology, it’s not necessarily harmful. No society has yet earned to forecast the consequences of new technology, which can be enormous._____10

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For the last fifteen or twenty years the fashion in criticism or appreciation of the arts have been to deny the existence of any valid criteria and to make the __1__ words “good” or “bad” irrelevant, immaterial, and inapplicable. There is no such thing, we are told, like a set of standards first acquired through experience and __2__

knowledge and late imposed on the subject under discussion. This has been a __3__

popular approach, for it relieves the critic of the responsibility of judgment and the public by the necessity of knowledge. It pleases those resentful of disciplines, it __4__

flatters the empty-minded by calling him open-minded, it comforts the __5__ confused. Under the banner of democracy and the kind of quality which our forefathers did no mean, it says, in effect, “Who are you to tell us what is good or bad?” This is same cry used so long and so effectively by the producers of mass __6__

media who insist that it is the public, not they, who decide what it wants to hear __7__

and to see, and that for a critic to say that this program is bad and that program is good is pure a reflection of personal taste. Nobody recently has expressed this __8__

philosophy most succinctly than Dr. Frank Stanton, the highly intelligent __9__ president of CBS television. At a hearing before the Federal Communications Commission, this phrase escaped from him under questioning: “One man’s mediocrity __10__

is another man’s good program”.

专八模拟改错(7)

We use language every day. We live in a world of words. Hardly any

moment passes with someone talking, writing or reading. Indeed, __1__ languages is most essential to mankind. Our lives increasingly depend

on fast and successful use of language. Strangely enough, we know __2__ more about things around us than on ourselves. For example, language __3__ is species specific, that is, it is language that differs human from __4__ animals. However, we do not know yet how exactly we inquire language __5__ and how it is possible for us to perceive through language; nor we __6__

understand precisely the combinations between language and thought, __7__ language and logic, or language and culture; still less, how and when language started. One reason for this inadequate knowledge of language

is that we, like language users, take too many things for granted. __8__ Language comes to every normal person so naturally that a few __9__

of us stop to question what language is, much less do we feel the

necessity to study it. Language is far more complex than most people

have probably imagined and the necessity to study it is far greater than some people may have assured. Linguistic is a branch of science which __10__ takes language as its object of investigation.

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Whenever you see an old film, even one made as little as ten years before, you can’t help being strucked by the__1__

appearance of the women taking part. Their hair styles and make-up look date; their skirts look either too long or too__2__

short; their general appearance is, in fact, slightly ludicrous.The men taking part, on other hand, are clearly recognizable.__3__

There is nothing about their appearance to suggest that they belong to an entire different age. This illusion is created __4__

by changing fashions. Over the years, the great minority of men __5__

have successfully resisted all attempts to make it change their __6__

style of dress. The same cannot be said for women. Each year, a fewer so-called top designers in Paris and London lay down__7__

on the law and women around the world run to obey. The __8__

decrees of the designers are unpredictable and dictatorial. Sometime they decide arbitrarily, that skirts will be short and __9__

waists will be height; hips are in and buttons are out. __10__.