2026秋博 20

Read the following passage and choose one answer according to your understanding:

       Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde have all been credited with the bon mot “England and America are two countries separated by a common language. How true this is quickly becomes apparent when Americans ask for gasoline, a drugstore, the toilet, a truck, a napkin or a diaper. They are answered by, “Oh, you mean petrol, chemist, loo, lorry, serviette, and nappy.” Be particularly careful if your landlady asks you if you take “tarts”; she is not running a brothel but offering you a jam or meat pie! Don’t be upset if a Britisher offers to “knock you up”; he is only offering to wake you up in the morning, presumably for tea; but watch out if someone suggests a “quick shag.” On the other hand, stopping at a “layby” is usually quite safe. Finally, do not ask for English muffins; no one has ever heard of them.”

As Philip Zimbardo writes, “the good things in life usually take a commitment to success, to delaying gratification, to putting work before play, and to understanding the importance and vitality of the social contract—not expecting more than what is being put in.” To what extent are you in agreement with the statement. 

1. Read the following paragraph and determine it’s method of development:
2.     Sometimes disinheritance was provoked by rather more trivial considerations. The second Lord Townshend, after years of being annoyed by his son’s effeminacy, abruptly struck the hapless fellow from the will when he wandered into the room one day wearing pink ribbons on his shoes. Also much spoken of was the case of the sixth Duke of Somerset, known as ‘the Proud Duke’, who required his daughters always to stand in his presence and reportedly disinherited one of them when he awoke from a nap and caught the ungrateful wretch sitting.

Daniel J. Leviton writes in his book Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era that “The most important component of the best critical thinking that is lacking in our society today is humility. It is a simple yet profound notion: If we realize we don’t know everything, we can learn. If we think we know everything, learning is impossible. Somehow, our educational system and our reliance on the Internet has led to a generation of kids who do not know what they don’t know.” To what extent are you in agreement with his statement?

“Great literature should be composed of the voices of life itself, from what I had heard in childhood, from what can be heard now in the street, at home, in a café, on a bus,” according to the Russian author Svetlana Alexievich. To what extent are you in agreement with the statement?