阅读理解

Directions: Read the following passages and answer the questions. Choose the most appropriate answer for each question and circle the letter on the answer sheet. Remember to write the letter corresponding to the question number. 


At the end of the nineteenth century, a rising interest in Native American customs and an increasing desire to understand Native American culture prompted ethnologists to begin recording the life stories of Native American. Ethnologists had a distinct reason for wanting to hear the stories: they were after linguistic or anthropological data that would supplement their own field observations, and they believed that the personal stories, even of a single individual, could increase their understanding of the cultures that they had been observing from without. In addition, many ethnologists at the turn of the century believed that Native American manners and customs were rapidly disappearing, and that it was important to preserve for posterity as much information as could be adequately recorded before the cultures disappeared forever.

There were, however, arguments against this method as a way of acquiring accurate and complete information. Franz Boas, for example, described autobiographies as being “of limited value, and useful chiefly for the study of the perversion of truth by memory,” while Paul Radin contended that investigators rarely spent enough time with the tribes they were observing, and inevitably derived results too tinged by the investigator’s own emotional tone to be reliable.

Even more importantly, as these life stories moved from the traditional oral mode to recorded written form, much was inevitably lost. Editors often decided what elements were significant to the field research on a given tribe. Native Americans recognized that the essence of their lives could not be communicated in English and that events that they thought significant were often deemed unimportant by their interviewers. Indeed, the very act of telling their stories could force Native American narrators to distort their cultures, as taboos had to be broken to speak the names of dead relatives crucial to their family stories.

Despite all of this, autobiography remains a useful tool for ethnological research: such personal reminiscences and impressions, incomplete as they may be, are likely to throw more light on the working of the mind and emotions than any amount of speculation from an ethnologist or ethnological theorist from another culture. 

单选题 Which of the following best describes the organization of the passage?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】整篇文章都是围绕autobiography这种方法展开的。 文中第二段前半部分提到了通过自传来获取信息的这种方法受到了一些争议。 接下来最后一段首句提到了这种方法仍然有一些值得肯定的地方。 故选D。
单选题 Which of the following is most similar to the actions of nineteenth-century ethnologist in their editing of the life stories of Native Americans?
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】根据第二段结尾“investigators rarely spent enough time with the tribes they were observing, and inevitably derived results too tinged by the investigator’s own emotional tone to be reliable”, 可知研究者对于这些部落的生活并不了解， 得出的结论很多都是基于他们个人的主观情感。 故选C。
单选题 According to the passage, collecting life stories can be a usefulmethodology because ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】文中结尾段提到尽管这种方法是不完整的， 存在一些问题， 但仍旧可以为所研究的文化提供一些深层次的参考， 故选A。
单选题 The primary purpose of the passage as a whole is to ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】由整篇文章可知， 在前三段中， 作者使用大量笔墨描述autobiography这种方法的不足。 直至结尾， 才笔锋稍转， 指出了这种方法的一点值得肯定指出。 可以推断出， 本文的主要意图就是批评一种方法， 故选C。
单选题 It can be inferred from the passage that a characteristic of the ethnologicalresearch on Native Americans conducted during the nineteenth century wasthe use of which of the following?
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】文中第三段“Native Americans recognized that the essence of their lives could not be communicated in English and that events that they thought significant were often deemed unimportant by their interviewers.”由此可知， 这次研究使用的语言与提供消息者记录的语言不同， 故选B。