复合题

You probably know more about writing than you realize, but you may not know how to use that knowledge to accomplish the full range of writing you need to do. You may have been discouraged by assignments that seemed silly and pointless. If so, you probably wondered, “Why?” and when you finished, “So what?” what you sensed was that real writing is done for a real purpose: Someone has a motive for writing—a motive stronger than simply wanting to complete an assignment. There are, as you will see, many motives for writing. Whatever the specific motive may be, however, writers write because they understand that writing is a way to satisfy a purpose that is important to them.

This book takes the position that successful writing begins with having a motive for writing and understanding how that motive can be fulfilled. The ten chapters that follow this introduction discuss a number of these motives and show how various writers have realized them: to interpret information, to evaluate something, to move others, to persuade others, to amuse others and to experiment with form. The final chapter emphasizes writing to understand reading, but the entire book assumes that reading is intimately connected to writing. Recognizing, through reading, the motives of other writers can help you discover your own sense of what you hope to accomplish when you write and so understand the principles likely to help you succeed.

And act of writing involves five elements that together form what is called the rhetorical situation: author, audience, purpose, topic and occasion.

As writers pursue different motives, they emphasize certain elements of the rhetorical situation over others. Recording a memory and exploring experience focus mainly on satisfying the needs of the writer. Moving, persuading and amusing others focus mainly on eliciting an appropriate response from the audience. Although reporting and interpreting information, evaluating something, and writing about reading certainly satisfy the writer’s needs and require the writer to think about the reader’s needs, they all focus to varying degrees on the subject matter or topic. Whatever your emphasis, though, you can seldom lose sight of any of these elements of the rhetorical situation for long.

单选题 This passage is probably from _____.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】由第二段第一句可知, 这是一本书的介绍。 因此选C。
单选题 An assignment of writing which is pointless and silly may be _____.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】文章第一段第二句提到“You may have been discouraged by assignments that seemed silly and pointless.”。 因为愚蠢且无意义的写作任务, 你可能会沮丧。 因此选B。
单选题 Which of the following statement is true?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】根据文章第二段第一句“successful writing begins with having a motive for writing and understanding how that motive can be fulfilled.”可知, 成功的写作始于有写作目的, 并且知道这种写作目的怎样去实现。 也就是说写作目的是重要的。 因此选D。
单选题 The rhetorical situation in writing refers to the elements of _____.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】由文章第三段第一句可知, 写作活动包括五个要素。 因此选B。
单选题 What does the word “though” mean in the last sentence of the last paragraph?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】文章最后一段最后一句提到“Whatever your emphasis, though, you can seldom lose sight of any of these elements of the rhetorical situation for long.”。 然而, 不管你强调的要素是什么, 你很少会很长时间忽略这些修辞情境中的任何一种。 因此“though”的意思应该是“然而”。 因此选A。