单选题

Telling Tales about People

One of the most common types of nonfiction, and one that many people enjoy reading, is stories about people"s lives. These stories fall into three general categories: autobiography, memoir, and biography.
An autobiography is the story of a person"s life written by himself or herself. Often it begins with the person"s earliest recollections and ends in the present. Autobiography writers may not be entirely objective in the way they present themselves. However, they offer the reader a good look at the way they are and what makes them that way. People as diverse as Benjamin Franklin and Helen Keller have written autobiographies. Other writers, such as James Joyce, have written thinly fictionalized accounts of their lives. These are not autobiographies, hut they are very close to it.
Memoirs, strictly speaking, are autobiographical accounts that focus as much on the events of the times as on the life of the author. Memoir writers typically use these events as backdrops for their lives. They describe them in detail and discuss their importance. Recently, though, the term memoir seems to be becoming interchangeable with autobiography. A memoir nowadays may or may not deal with the outside world.
Biographies are factual accounts of someone else"s life. In many senses, these may be the hardest of the three types to write. Autobiography writers know the events they write about because they lived them. But biography writers have to gather information from as many different sources as possible. Then they have to decide which facts to include. Their goal is to present a balanced picture of a person, not one that is overly positive or too critical A fair well-presented biography may take years to research and write.

单选题 This passage is mostly about ______.

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】文中第一段就概括出了本文的主要内容，其中讲到最普遍的非小说类文学作品(nonfiction)类型之一就是一些来描述人们生活的故事，这些故事大致分为三类：自传(autobiography)、回忆录(memoir。)和传记(biography)。文章之后的内容就介绍了这三种类型故事的特点，所以本题的正确答案是A。

单选题 Helen Keller wrote ______.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】根据关键词Helen Keller定位到第二段倒数第三句，该句提到“People as diverse as Benjamin Franklin and Helen Keller-have written autobiographies.”，意思是：就像本明杰·富兰克林和海伦·凯勒一样，各种各样的人们已经写了自传。所以本题的正确答案是B。

单选题 Autobiography writers are not always objective because they ______.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】第二段第三句讲到自传作者也许不太客观，随后提到了原因“they offer the reader a good look at the way they are and what makes them that way.”(他们给读者提供了一个途径来了解自己比较好的行事风格……)，由此可见他们想展现自己好的一面，所以本题的正确答案是C。

单选题 The writer introduces each category in the passage by ______.

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】本文的作者在介绍这三种类型的非小说文学作品时是以“An autobiography is…”、“Memoirs，strictly speaking，are…”、“Biographies are…”开始的，这是典型的下定义的方式，也即是通过给每个类型进行定义来介绍的。所以本题的正确答案是A。