单选题 .  SECTION A  MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS
    In this section there are three passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer.
    PASSAGE ONE
    (1) Tell me if this sounds familiar: you just turned off the light, your head is on the pillow, your eyes are closed, and yet, instead of drifting off to dreamland, you find yourself thinking about something that happened earlier in the day. Surprisingly, this process of reactivating your memories occurs even when you aren't aware of it, and not only is it normal, it might actually improve your memory.
    (2) As a second-language researcher, I am especially interested in harnessing this phenomenon to help people learn new languages. I recently became excited about its potential while attending a symposium at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society's annual meeting in New York City, where researchers discussed what they had learned about reactivation of memory.
    (3) One avenue of work comes from Columbia University in New York, where the neuroscientist Daphna Shohamy uses fMRI brain scans to measure oxygen metabolism and by association, neural activity. She's found that when one of two related items is rewarded, the second item becomes wrapped up in the positive memory, too. To give a real-world example, say that you bought a pair of brand Y shoes. If someone then compliments you on the shoes, you are more likely to buy brand Y again, even if the compliment had nothing to do with brand Y. Continuing with our analogy, Shohamy's lab finds that the amount of activity generated by the compliment (as measured through fMRI) is positively correlated with how likely you are to buy brand Y again. In other words, the memory center of your brain, the hippocampus, has paired not only the brand and the shoes but also the information associated with both, such as the compliment. All of that is reactivated when you go to buy your next pair of shoes, even if you aren't aware of it.
    (4) Participants in Shohamy's study were not consciously aware of the effect that such pairings had on their decision—even though they were thoroughly awake. But memory reactivation also occurs during sleep, when we are truly unconscious. At Northwestern University in Illinois, Ken Paller and colleagues have found that slow-wave sleep—more commonly known as deep sleep—can cause memory reactivation because of its periods of heightened neural synchrony, when lots of neurons activate together.
    (5) Of particular interest for language-learning, Paller's lab has found that memory reactivation during slow-wave sleep can be manipulated to improve specific memories. For example, they found that if you pair a sound with a picture while awake, and then play the sound during slow-wave sleep, this improves later recall of that picture—although the effect depends on how well you had learned the pairing the first time. Paller's lab has found that the effect holds regardless of the type of information cued: everything from playing a melody to unlearning stereotype associations all benefit from reactivation during sleep.
    (6) The most obvious application for learning a foreign language would be in retaining new vocabulary. Many people already learn foreign-language vocabulary by pairing it with a translation in their native language. This type of pairing is very similar to what Paller's lab has already done, and so it is likely that extending this to second-language learning would be successful.
    (7) Even more interesting is the possibility that memory reactivation may be instrumental for effective language immersion. I specify effective language immersion because research shows that immersion is hardly a panacea for curing your language-learning ills. Study-abroad experiences are more effective than domestic learning only when learners take advantage of the extra opportunities to use the second language. These opportunities include participating in daily experiences, such as taking the bus or grocery shopping, as well as local cultural experiences—all of it offering a multitude of cues and contexts that are impossible to impart in a typical classroom setting.
    (8) But getting this benefit simply by spending time in foreign company can be difficult. Popular tourist destinations such as Florence, where I studied, are used to English-speaking visitors, and the well-meaning people there will often return your attempts to speak Italian with English. One of the ways I got around this was through volunteering at local schools. Even though I was there to help the kindergarteners and first-graders with their English, I taught it to them using Italian. Another way to help yourself practice is by simply staying outside the center of town. Visiting shops that don't typically cater to tourists will significantly increase your chances of meeting people who are appreciative of your budding language skills, rather than cynical. That type of positive reinforcement is invaluable: each positive experience I had made me want to keep practising.
    (9) Moving beyond the obvious idea that more practice is better, it is likely that practice is most effective when combined with sufficient deep sleep. Paller's work, extended to language-immersion students, could allow us to stack the deck in terms of which items are reactivated and consequently retained. Of course, understanding the degree to which memory reactivation during sleep can boost language-learning would require testing—for instance, correlating gains in second-language proficiency with the amount of slow-wave sleep during immersion. Such a study would be the first step towards developing strategies to help us maximize our language-learning efficiency.
    (10) Shohamy's finding that memory reactivation can influence our decisions, especially when the memories are tinged with positive or negative emotions, could have an impact, too. One of the most important decisions you make in an immersion context is how much to engage with native speakers. If you imagine that your motivation or persistence is based on past experiences, then you can see the beginnings of a potential positive spiral: motivated learners have positive language experiences, which are more likely to be reactivated due to the positive associations, consequently improving their language skills and allowing them to have more experiences, starting the cycle again.
    (11) Even if you aren't currently learning another language, there is plenty to take away from this research. Memory reactivation appears to improve our recall and guide our decisions. We might be able to manipulate this process to our benefit by sleeping more so that we increase our slow-wave sleep—and simultaneously selectively stimulating memories during that slow-wave sleep, whether for second-language vocabulary or guitar melodies. So the next time you have the option of sleeping in on a Saturday morning, take it. You now have a reason not to set that alarm.
    PASSAGE TWO
    (1) A basic source of ambiguity about who is an American Indian stems from the popular stereotypes of American Indians that attribute to them physical characteristics such as well-defined cheekbones, reddish-brown complexions, straight black hair, almond-shaped eyes, and very little male facial hair. It is true that many American Indians have one or more of these characteristics. It is also true that some American Indians have none of these features, and in any event characteristics such as straight black hair and high cheekbones are not found exclusively in the American Indian population. Obviously, physical appearance is a wholly inappropriate criterion for deciding who is and is not an American Indian or Alaska Native.
    (2) Physical tests designed to measure pre-Columbian genetic traits also are not reliable guides for identifying members of the American Indian population. Over the centuries the pure genotype of the aboriginal pre-Columbian population succumbed to repeated exposures to infectious diseases and from sexual relations with non-Indians. The extent of genetic change cannot be measured precisely, but for modern American Indians "pure" genetic ancestry dating back to the fifteenth century is an unlikely prospect. A "pure" genotype of American Indian ancestry would involve a large and complex lineage spanning 15 to 20 generations in which not a single individual was non-Indian. Such lineages are not impossible, but in view of four centuries of contact with Africans and Europeans they are most likely rare.
    (3) Thus, the boundaries of the American Indian population are best defined in social terms. Delineating the social boundaries is complicated by ideas about American Indians that shift from one context to another. For example, the federal government has a large stake in defining who is an Indian or an Alaska Native, but different agencies with different missions employ a variety of different definitions. In studying federal policies, the American Indian Policy Review Commission (AIPRC) uncovered so many different definitions for the American Indian population that it declined to propose a single statement that might be widely acceptable.
    (4) Explicit and consistently applied definitions are vital for social scientific research. An absence of well-understood definitions results in chaotically organized statistical data that are virtually meaningless and useless for making important policy decisions. Commenting on the problems posed by numerous definitions of American Indians, AIPRC warned that "if simply defining who is an Indian presents problems, compiling other vital statistics about Indians and Indian affairs presents almost insurmountable problems."
    (5) Demographers typically classify the Indian population as either a racial or an ethnic group, or sometimes both. The criteria for defining who is an Indian are derived from theoretical concepts about race and ethnicity which are seldom stated explicitly. These concepts are closely related, and it is not always easy to distinguish racial definitions from ethnic definitions. The strategy of classifying American Indians as a race and as an ethnicity is somewhat unusual because many different ethnic groups are frequently subsumed within a single race; for example, the "white" race includes Germans, Poles, Sicilians, and many other different ethnic groups. By the same token, most ethnic groups do not include members with significantly different racial backgrounds. Furthermore, definitions based on different concepts of race and ethnicity produce remarkably different results in demographic research. In particular, differences in racial and ethnic definitions in the 1980 census generate surprisingly different statistics about the Indian population.
    (6) Using racial characteristics to define the boundaries of the Native American population presupposes that the concept of race is itself well known and clearly defined. On the contrary, few concepts are as misunderstood as race. In their influential textbook on race relations, Simpson and Yinger divide racial definitions into three types, which they label mystical, biological, and administrative. All three types of definitions have been applied to American Indians.
    (7) Mystical definitions of race are easily the most pernicious and far removed from reality. They typically assert that modem racial groups are descended from mysterious ancient populations. Drawing on overly romanticized, if not altogether fictional, images of the past, this type of definition has been invoked to support beliefs about racial superiority. The Nazis invented the mythology of the Aryan race to press their claims of superiority; southern racists in the United States used similar ideas to oppose civil rights for blacks.
    (8) Biological definitions commonly view race as representative of a homogeneous gene pool within a relatively closed population. Scientists use a variety of genetic indicators such as blood type, earwax texture, and other anatomical characteristics to distinguish racial groups. The number of biological races identified by physical scientists varies considerably. The most well-known classification divides the human species into four basic varieties: australoid, caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid. However, within these major categories, Goldsbys further identifies 26 distinct varieties, or races, of human beings.
    (9) Administrative definitions of race are promulgated by bureaucratic and political institutions and are designed to serve their particular administrative needs and political agenda. Bureaucratic institutions rarely divulge the reasoning behind their definitions of race, and there is a large amount of variation in these definitions. The 1980 census identifies 13 racial groups, including separate categories for Asian nationalities such as Vietnamese and Japanese and a residual category for "other". In contrast, many universities, for affirmative action policies, classify their students and employees into five categories of American Indian, Asian, black, Hispanic, white, and other.
    PASSAGE THREE
    (1) I think I have been more than most men conscious of my age. My youth slipped past me unnoticed and I was always burdened with the sense that I was growing old. Because for my years I had seen much of the world and travelled a good deal, because I was somewhat widely read and my mind was occupied with matters beyond my years, I seemed always older than my contemporaries. But it was not till the outbreak of the war in 1914 that I had an inkling that I was no longer a young man. I found then to my consternation that a man of forty was old. I consoled myself by reflecting that this was only for military purposes, but not so very long afterwards I had an experience which put the matter beyond doubt. I had been lunching with a woman whom I had known a long time and her niece, a girl of seventeen. After luncheon we took a taxi to go somewhere or other. The woman got in and then her niece. But the niece sat down on the strapontin leaving the empty seat at the back beside her aunt for me to sit on. It was the civility of youth (as opposed to the rights of sex) to a gentleman no longer young. I realized that she looked upon me with the respect due to age.
    (2) It is not a very pleasant thing to recognize that for the young you are no longer an equal. You belong to a different generation. For them your race is run. They can look up to you; they can admire you; but you are apart from them, and in the long run they will always find the companionship of persons of their own age more grateful than yours.
    (3) But middle age has its compensations. Youth is bound hand and foot with the shackles of public opinion. Middle age enjoys freedom. I remember that when I left school I said to myself: "Henceforward I can get up when I like and go to bed when I like." That of course was an exaggeration, and I soon found that the trammeled life of the civilized man only permits of a modified independence. Whenever you have an aim you must sacrifice something of freedom to achieve it. But by the time you have reached middle age you have discovered how much freedom it is worthwhile to sacrifice in order to achieve any aim that you have in view. When I was a boy I was tortured by shyness, and middle age has to a great extent brought me a relief from this. I was never of great physical strength and long walks used to tire me, but I went through them because I was ashamed to confess my weakness. I have now no such feeling and I save myself much discomfort. I always hated cold water, but for many years I took cold baths and bathed in cold seas because I wanted to be like everybody else. I used to dive from heights that made me nervous. I was mortified because I played games worse than other people. When I did not know a thing I was ashamed to confess my ignorance. It was not till quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say: "I don't know." I find with middle age that no one expects me to walk five and twenty miles, or to play a scratch game of golf, or to dive from a height of thirty feet. This is all to the good and makes life pleasant: but I should no longer care if they did. That is what makes youth unhappy, the vehement anxiety to be like other people, and that is what makes middle age tolerable, the reconciliation with oneself.
    (4) Yesterday I was seventy years old. As one enters upon each succeeding decade it is natural, though perhaps irrational, to look upon it as a significant event. When I was thirty my brother said to me: "Now you are a boy no longer, you are a man and you must be a man." When I was forty I said to myself: "That is the end of youth." On my fiftieth birthday I said: "It's no good fooling myself, this is middle age and I may just as well accept it." At sixty I said: "Now it's time to put my affairs in order, for this is the threshold of old age and I must settle my accounts." I decided to withdraw from the theatre and I wrote The Summing Up, in which I tried to review for my own comfort what I had learnt of life and literature, what I had done and what satisfaction it had brought me. But of all anniversaries I think the seventieth is the most momentous. One has reached the three score years and ten which one is accustomed to accept as the allotted span of man, and one can but look upon such years as remain to one as uncertain contingencies stolen while old Time with his scythe has his head turned the other way. At seventy one is no longer on the threshold of old age. One is just an old man.
    (5) On the continent of Europe they have an amiable custom when a man who has achieved some distinction reaches that age. His friends, his colleagues, his disciples (if he has any)join together to write a volume of essays in his honor. In England we give our eminent men no such flattering mark of our esteem. At the utmost we give a dinner, and we don't do that unless he is very eminent indeed...
    (6) My own birthday passed without ceremony. I worked as usual in the morning and in the afternoon went for a walk in the solitary woods behind my house...
    (7) I went back to my house, made myself a cup of tea and read till dinner time. After dinner I read again, played two or three games of patience, listened to the news on the radio and took a detective story to bed with me. I finished it and went to sleep. Except for a few words to my colored maids I had not spoken to a soul all day.
    (8) So I passed my seventieth birthday and so I would have wished to pass it. I mused.
    (9) Two or three years ago I was walking with Liza and she spoke, I don't know why, of the horror with which the thought of old age filled her.
    (10) "Don't forget," I told her, "that when you're old you won't have the desire to do various things that make life pleasant to you now. Old age has its compensations."
    (11) "What?" she asked.
    (12) "Well, you need hardly ever do anything you don't want to. You can enjoy music, art and literature, differently from when you were young, but in that different way as keenly. You can get a good deal of fun out of observing the course of events in which you are no longer intimately concerned. If your pleasures are not so vivid your pains also have lost their sting."
    (13) I could see that all this seemed cold comfort, and even as I spoke I realized that it afforded a somewhat grey prospect. When later I came to think it over, it occurred to me that the greatest compensation of old age is its freedom of spirit. I suppose that is accompanied by a certain indifference to many of the things that men in their prime think important. Another compensation is that it liberates you from envy, hatred and malice. I do not believe that I envy anyone. I have made the most I could of such gifts as nature provided me with; I do not envy the success of others. I am quite willing to vacate the little niche I have occupied so long and let another step into it. I no longer mind what people think of me. They can take me or leave me. I am mildly pleased when they appear to like me and undisturbed if I know they don't. I have long known that there is something in me that antagonizes certain persons; I think it very natural, no one can like everyone; and their ill will interests rather than discomposes me. I am only curious to know what it is in me that is antipathetic to them. Nor do I mind what they think of me as a writer. On the whole I have done what I set out to do, and the rest does not concern me. I have never much cared for the notoriety which surrounds the successful writer and which many of us are simple enough to mistake for fame, and I have often wished that I had written under a pseudonym so that I might have passed through the world unnoticed. I did indeed write my first novel under one, and only put my own name to it because my publisher warned me that the book might be violently attacked and I did not wish to hide myself under a made-up name. I suppose few authors can help cherishing a secret hope that they will not be entirely forgotten the moment they die, and I have occasionally amused myself by weighing the chances I have of survival for a brief period...
    (14) I have been asked on occasion whether I would like to live my life over again. On the whole it has been a pretty good life, perhaps better than most people's, but I should see no point in repeating it. It would be as idle as to read again a detective story that you have read before. But supposing there were such a thing as reincarnation, belief in which is explicitly held by three quarters of the human race, and one could choose whether or not one would enter upon a new life on earth, I have in the past sometimes thought that I should be willing to try the experiment on the chance that  I  might  enjoy  experiences  which  circumstances  and  my  own idiosyncrasies, spiritual and corporeal, have prevented me from enjoying, and learn the many things that I have not had the time or the occasion to learn. But now I should refuse. I have had enough. I neither believe in immortality nor desire it. I should like to die quickly and painlessly, and I am content to be assured that with my last breathe my soul, with its aspirations and its weaknesses, will dissolve into nothingness. I have taken to heart what Epicurus wrote to Menoeceus: "Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a fight understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living."1.  In the real-life example of buying a pair of brand Y shoes, what is the best explanation to the fact that "you" are more inclined to buy brand Y again?(PASSAGE ONE)