PART Ⅱ PROOFREADING & ERROR CORRECTION [15 min.]
Proofread the given passage on ANSWER SHEET TWO as instructed.
PART Ⅲ READING COMPREHENSION [40 min.]
SECTION A READING COMPREHENSION[30 min.]
In this section there are six reading passages followed by a total of fifteen multiple-choice questions.Read the passages and then mark your answers on your coloured ANSWER SHEET.
TEXT A
A Questionable Conclusion
In the two decades between 1910 and 1930,over ten percent of the Black population of the United States left the South,where the preponderance of the Black population had been located,and migrated to northern states,with the largest number moving,it is claimed,between 1916 and 1918.It has been frequently assumed,but not proved,that the majority of the migrants in what has come to be called the Great Migration came from rural areas and were motivated by two concurrent factors:the collapse of the cotton industry following the boll weevil infestation,which began in 1898,and increased demand in the North for labor following the cessation of European immigration caused by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.This assumption has led to the conclusion that the migrants’ subsequent lack of economic mobility in the North is tied to rural background,a background that implies unfamiliarity with urban living and a lack of industrial skills.
But the question of who actually left the South has never been rigorously investigated.Although numerous investigations document an exodus from rural southern areas to southern cities prior to the Great Migration,no one has considered whether the same migrants then moved on to northern cities.In 1910 over 600,000 Black workers,or ten percent of the Black work force,reported themselves to be engaged in “manufacturing and mechanical pursuits,”the federal census category roughly encompassing the entire industrial sector.The Great Migration could easily have been made up entirely of this group and their families.It is perhaps surprising to argue that an employed population could be enticed to move,but an explanation lies in the labor conditions then prevalent in the South.
About thirty-five percent of the urban Black population in the South was engaged in skilled trades.Some were from the old artisan class of slavery blacksmiths,masons,carpenters which had had a monopoly on certain trades,but they were gradually being pushed out by competition,mechanization,and obsolescene.The remaining sixty-five percent,more recently urbanized,worked in newly developed industries—tobacco,lumber,coal and iron manufacture,and railroads.Wages in the South,however,were low,and Black workers were aware,through labor recruiters and the Black press,that they could earn more even as unskilled workers in the North than they could as artisans in the South.After the boll weevil infestation,urban Black workers faced competition from the continuing influx of both Black and White rural workers,who were driven to undercut the wages formerly paid for industrial jobs.Thus,a move north would be seen as advantageous to a group that was already urbanized and steadily employed,and the easy conclusion tying their subsequent economic problems in the North to their rural background comes into question.
16.The primary purpose of the passage is to .
A.challenge a widely accepted explanation
B.introduce a recently discovered source of information
C.argue that a discarded theory deserves new attention
D.support an alternative to an accepted methodology
17.The author cites each of the following as possible influences in a Black worker’s decision to migrate north in the Great Migration EXCEPT
TEXT B
Life Stories
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.
18.The author writes the passage to____ .
A.correct a misconception B.question an explanation
C.clarify an ambiguity D.critique a methodology
19.According to this passage,which of the following can affect the accuracy of ethnologists’ transcriptions of life stories?
A.The length of time the researchers spent in the culture under study.
B.The verifiability of the information provided by the research informants.
C.The number of life stories collected by the researchers.
D.The informants’ social standing within the culture.