新GRE长篇阅读题精选
1. The author of the passage would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements about the letters from Nettie to Celie?
A. They mark an unintended shift to geographically and culturally removed surroundings
B. They may represent a conscious attempt to undermine certain novelistic conventions
C. They are more closely connected to the main action of the novel than is at first apparent
D. They owe more to the tradition of the slave narrative than do Celie’s letters to God
E. They illustrate the traditional concretizing details of the epistolary novel form
2. In the second paragraph, the author of the passage is primarily concerned with
A. examining the ways in which The Color Purple echoes its acknowledged predecessor, Their Eyes Were Watching God
B. providing an example of a critic who has adequately addressed the structural features of The Color Purple
C. suggesting that literary models other than the nineteenth-century realistic novel may inform our understanding of The Color Purple
D. demonstrating the ineffectiveness of a particularly scholarly attempt to suggest an alternative way of evaluating The Color Purple
E. disputing the perceived notion that The Color Purple departs from conventions of the realistic novel form
3. According to the passage, an evaluative paradigm that confronts the startling structural features of The Color Purple would accomplish which of the following?
A. It would adequately explain why many reviewers of this novel have discerned its connections to the realistic novel tradition
B. It would show the ways in which this novel differs from its reputed Anglo-European nineteenth-century models
C. It would explicate the overarching role of voice in this novel
D. It would address the ways in which this novel echoes the central themes of Hurston’s Their Eyes Are Watching God
E. It would reveals ways in which these structural features serve to parody novelistic conventions
4. The author of the passage suggests that Gates is most like the reviewers mentioned in the first paragraph in which of the following ways?
A. He points out discrepancies between The Color Purple and other traditional epistolary novels
B. He sees the concern with finding a voice as central to both The Color Purple and Their Eyes Are Watching God
C. He assumes that The Color Purple is intended to be a novel primarily in the tradition of Anglo-American nineteenth-century realism
D. He does not address many of the unsettling structural features of The Color Purple
E. He recognizes the departure of The Color Purple from traditional Anglo-European realistic novel conventions.
答案：B C B E
Passage 6
Although, recent years have seen substantial reductions in noxious pollutants from individual motor vehicles, the number of such vehicles has been steadily increasing, consequently, more than 100 cities in the United States still have levels of carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and ozone (generated by photochemical reactions with hydrocarbons from vehicle exhaust) that exceed legally established limits. There is a growing realization that the only effective way to achieve further reductions in vehicle emissions—short of a massive shift away from the private automobile—is to replace conventional diesel fuel and gasoline with cleaner-burning fuels such as compressed natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, ethanol, or methanol.
All of these alternatives are carbon-based fuels whose molecules are smaller and simpler than those of gasoline. These molecules burn more cleanly than gasoline, in part because they have fewer, if any, carbon-carbon bonds, and the hydrocarbons they do emit are less likely to generate ozone. The combustion of larger molecules, which have multiple carbon-carbon bonds, involves a more complex series of reactions. These reactions increase the probability of incomplete combustion and are more likely to release uncombusted and photochemically active hydrocarbon compounds into the atmosphere. On the other hand, alternative fuels do have drawbacks. Compressed natural gas would require that vehicles have a set of heavy fuel tanks—a serious liability in terms of performance and fuel efficiency—and liquefied petroleum gas faces fundamental limits on supply.
Ethanol and methanol, on the other hand, have important advantages over other carbon-based alternative fuels: they have a higher energy content per volume and would require minimal changes in the existing network for distributing motor fuel. Ethanol is commonly used as a gasoline supplement, but it is currently about twice as expensive as methanol, the low cost of which is one of its attractive features. Methanol’s most attractive feature, however, is that it can reduce by about 90 percent the vehicle emissions that form ozone, the most serious urban air pollutant.