单选题
Is new technology damaging our ability to communicate? Fingers flying, we can blog (写博客), e-mail, and enter chat rooms. But, as we type our millions of words, something is being lost. As our virtual skills increase, I wonder if our ability to communicate using speech is on the decline.
Young people send me dozens of e-mails from schools and universities. They often attach long lists of questions, to which they want detailed response. Time is short, so my reply is usually that they can phone me and I"ll do my best to answer.
They very rarely do, at least partly because their oral and telephone skills are less developed than their ability to type, text and e-mail. Yet to adapt to an old business saying, a meeting is worth five phone calls and a phone call is worth five e-mails.
Direct communication can quickly lead to bonding and trust. People are more likely to reveal what they are thinking when they actually speak to another person. Most are wary of committing themselves in writing.
The great tragedy, of course, is that the phone was invented before the computer. If it had been the other way around, Internet forums would now be filled with the news: "Have you heard (type, type, type)? There is this amazing new device (type, type). Now you can talk directly with people (type, type, type). Without all this typing." Marketing would do the rest and colleges would be rushing to develop new courses in telephone skills.
But, as it is, we are stuck with the supremacy of the typed word and it is getting in the way of our ability to look people in the eye and talk. We should reconsider the technology in which the speed of our fingers is more important than the quality of our voices.
单选题
According to the author, young people today don"t ______.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】[解析] 第一段最后一句“...I wander if our ability to communicate using speech is on the decline.”。
主旨概括题。文章第一段最后一句是主旨句，表明了随着虚拟社交能力的增强，作者怀疑人们的语言交际能力在衰退。在第二段作者又通过自己的实例说明了现在年轻人不喜欢用语言交流，而喜欢发邮件。故选A。
单选题
According to Paragraph 3, compared with meetings, e-mails are ______.
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[解析] 第三段最后一句“a meeting is worth five phone calls and a phone call is worth five e-mails.”。
细节判断题。根据第三段最后一句，可知见一次面的效果相当于五次电话，而打一次电话的效果相当于五封邮件，即可判断发邮件带来的效果是最不显著的，效率最低，故选C。
单选题
In Paragraph 4, "wary of" can be replaced by "______".
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】[解析] 第四段第二、三句“People are...in writing.”。
语义词义题。be wary of意为“谨慎的，小心翼翼的”，而且根据前句“人们面对面说话时更容易透露他们在想什么”，可推断后面一句是说人们通过文字表达与面对面说话的不同，所以此处的意思应该与be more likely to的意思相反，故选D。
单选题
The author believes-that if the phone had been invented after the computer, people would ______.