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Directions: You are expected to study this section in class. Don’t preview.
Word Pretest
For each italicized word or expression, choose the best meaning below.
1. The houses appeared as a blur in the mist.
A. a beautiful picture B. a distinctive shape
C. an indistinct shape D. a dark shadow
2. A little girl was sitting sobbing in the comer.
A. laughing B. talking
C. weeping D. smiling
3. With an intense will to recover, the patient follows the doctor's orders quite willingly.
A. a weak B. an inclined
C. a strong D. an intending
4. Mary's friend sent her a card to offer his condolences over the death of her mother.
A. expressions of happiness B. expressions of ignorance
C. expressions of sympathy D. expressions of worry
5. Some words are very hard to define because they have many different meanings-.
A. describe B. translate
C. write D. remember
6. They went to the shooting lodge in Scotland for the weekend.
A. a hut B. a villa
C. a palace D. a mansion
7. This poem conveys the poet's deep love of his wife.
A. expresses B. takes
C. hides D. means
8. He is very quick-tempered. He can rarely restrain his anger in front of others.
A. remove B. show
C. control D. reveal
Text A
You Will Have a Good Life
Alone now much of the time, the widow reads a lot. She used to underline favorite passages to share with her husband. Now, the quotations are stored in a notebook. These lines from Elizabeth Jolley's Cabin Fever, for example: "I experience again the deep-felt wish to be part of a married couple, to sit by the fire in winter with the man who is my husband. So intense is this wish that if I write the word husband on a piece of paper, my eyes fill with tears."
Why are these lines so painful?
We can start with a worn wedding album. In the first picture, the bride and groom are facing, with uncertain smiles, a church filled with relatives and friends. The bride did not wear glasses that day, so everything was a blur of candlelight and faces.
They walked to the back of the church and stood at the door as their guests went past. From colleagues and old schoolmates came cheerful expressions of good will clothed in friendly jokes. Some relatives, however, were not pleased. One sat in a car, sobbing. Another stood surrounded by sympathizers offering condolences. Both these5 women -- mothers of the bride and groom -- would have insisted they wanted only the best for their children. But "the best" they defined as staying home to help support the family.
The last person to approach the couple was a short, elderly woman who smiled as she congratulated them -- not by name but as "wife" and "husband."
"I'm Aunt Esther Gubbins," she said. "I'm here to tell you that you are going to live a good life and be happy. You will work hard and love each other."
Then quickly, for such a short, fat elderly person, she was gone.
Soon they were off, in a borrowed car. With money lent by the groom's brother, they could afford a few days at a state-park lodge. Sitting before a great oak fire, they reviewed the events of the day, remembering the good wishes of their friends, the worries of their mothers and the strange message conveyed by Aunt Esther Gubbins.
"Is she your mother's sister or your father's?" asked the wife.
"Isn't she your aunt?" the husband replied. "I never saw her before."
They wondered. Had she come to the wrong church or at the wrong time, mistaking them for another couple? Or was she just an old woman who liked weddings and looked for announcements in church bulletins?
With the passage of time and the birth of grandchildren, their mothers accepted the marriage. One made piles of clothes for the children; the other knitted bonnets, sweaters and scarves.
The couple's life together was very ordinary. Strangely, neither ever asked "Whose job is this?" or asserted "That is not my responsibility!" Both acted to fill the needs as time and opportunity allowed.
Arriving from work, he might stand at the door and announce, "Wife, I am home!" And she, restraining the desire to complain about housework, would call from some comer of the house, "Husband, I am glad?
Once in a while, usually around their anniversary, they would bring up the old curiosity regarding Aunt Esther Gubbins. He would insist that the elderly woman had been present at their wedding only accidentally. But she knew that Aunt Esther was on some heavenly mission. At such times, even their children took sides: the realists against the fantasists.
Now, ALONE, the wife asks herself what she would save from the old house if it were to catch fire. Her mother's ring? Pictures of her husband? The $47 hidden in the sugar bowl?
No, it would be the worn, yellowing envelope she has kept for so long. A woman who spends a lot of time looking for things, she knows exactly where it can be found: under a pile of napkins.
The husband had fallen asleep in his chair one evening while reading a spy novel. She wrote a note on the back of the envelop and left it on his book: "Husband, I have gone next door to help Mrs. Norton with her sick children."
The next morning she saw that he had written below her message:. "Wife, I missed you. You thought I was asleep, but I was just resting my eyes and thinking about that woman who talked to us in church a long time ago. It has always seemed to me that she was the wrong shape for a heavenly messenger. Anyway, it's time to stop wondering whether she came from heaven or a nearby town. What matters is this: whoever she was, Aunt Esther Gubbins was right."
Total words: 771
Total reading time: __ minutes seconds
The text is based on "You Will Have A Good Life" from Reader's Digest, September, 1993.
◆Reading Skill . Recognizing the Pattern of Details
Read the following passage carefully, and identify the organizational pattern(s) with the help of the signal words or phrases.
They walked to the back of the church and stood at the door as their guests went past. From colleagues and old schoolmates came cheerful expressions of good will clothed in friendly jokes. Some relatives, however, were not pleased. One sat in a car, sobbing. Another stood surrounded by sympathizers offering condolences.
Pattern(s):
In a Protestant church wedding the bride is escorted to the altar by her father or the male relative who gives her away. The minister may deliver a short sermon on the holiness of marriage. The bride and groom exchange vows to "love, honor, and cherish" each other as long as they live. The groom places the ring on the bride's finger and says. "With this ring I thee wed." If it is a double ring ceremony, the bride gives the groom a ring. The ceremony ends when the minister pronounces the couple man and wife and says, "Those whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder." Words and procedures may vary with different ministers, but the general service is the same.
Pattern(s)
◆ Reading Comprehension
Circle the letter of the best choice.
1. The lines from Elizabeth Jolley's Cabin Fever are painful because .
A. her husband has died
B. her husband has divorced her
C her husband has read these lines to her
2. To the bride, everything was a blur because .
A. it was raining that day
B. she was short-sighted and didn't wear her glasses
C. it was getting dark
3. Who were not pleased at the wedding.'? .
A. the bride and groom
B. the fathers of the bride and groom
C. the mothers of the bride and groom
4. The married life the couple had lived was .
A. a passionate happy life
B. a quarreling unhappy life
C. a peaceful happy life
5. The husband believed that .
A. Aunt Esther Gubbins came from heaven
B. Aunt Esther Gubbins was at their wedding only accidentally
C. Aunt Esther Gubbins was wrong about their marriage
6. What was contained in that "worn, yellowing envelope"? .
A. A favorite quotation that the wife used to share with her husband.
B. A photo of the husband.
C. A note by the husband.
7. The husband said that Aunt Esther was "the wrong shape for a heavenly messenger" because .
A. she was old and not good-looking
B. he didn't believe that there was any heavenly messenger
C. he didn't think that a heavenly messenger could be present at a wedding
8. According to the husband, what matters to the couple is that .
A. Aunt Esther Gubbings was right.
B. Aunt Esther Gubbings was sent from heaven
C. Aunt Esther Gubbings came to the wrong church
Vocabulary Building
① Word Match
Match the following words with their definitions within each group of five words.
quotation not natural
artificial a passage taken from a book
anguish a belief based on association of ideas instead of reason or fact
anniversary very great pain and suffering, esp. of the mind
superstition a day which is an exact year or number of years after
something has happened
bouquet accompany
heed hide
escort small pieces of colored paper thrown on weddings
confetti a bunch of flowers
conceal give attention t
consent apart
asunder agreement
vow forms of behavior with a fixed pattern for a religious purpose
rites a solemn promise or declaration of intention
sermon a talk usually based on a sentence from the Bible and given as part of a church service
Use of English
Rewrite each of the sentences so that it still means the same, using the words on the left together with the correct form of the verb KEEP.
1 COMPANY Will you please stay with me for a while?
Will you please...
2. A STRAIGHT FACE I couldn't help smiling when he told me of his plan.
I couldn't...
3. IN THE DARK The staff aren't going to be told about the firm's plans for the future.
The staff...
4. AN OPEN MIND I won't prejudge the issue until we've discussed it.
5. AWAY FROM I won't go near her until she's feeling more optimistic.
6. YOUR HEAD Try not to panic even if you don't know what's going to happen.
Try to...
③Stems
Study the following stems and their meanings. List some more examples in the Space provided
|
Stems |
Meanings |
Examples |
1
2
3 |
aster/astr
brief/brev/bridg
fus(e) |
star
short
melt |
astronomy
briefly
confusion |
aster/astr 1. 2. 3. 4:
brief/brev/bridg 1. 2. 3. 4:
fus(e) 1. 2. 3. 4:
Read each of the following sentences, and write down the meaning of the italicized word in the space provide&
1. "Briefly speaking, I've made two major points in my speech today," the man said.
briefly:
2. Who was the first astronaut to land on the moon?
astronaut:
3. The book was abridged to a more readable length.
abridge:
4. In her richest work, she fuses comedy and tragedy.
fuse:
5. He is a professor of astronomy. He is explaining to the students why only Saturn has rings.
astronomy:
6. The instructions on that box are very confusing.
confuse:
7. "United States of America" is commonly abbreviated to USA.
abbreviate:
④Synonyms
On each line in Column II there is one word which is a synonym of the word in Column I. Circle the synonym.
I II
1. mischievous obedient naughty disciplined
2. heavenly earthly outstanding divine
3. shatter construct break organize
4. deliver give receive retain
5. capture seize lose miss
◆Cloze
Fill in each blank with a word given below. Change the form of the word if necessary.
wrong midnight dislike standard
convince homelife capital meantime
I married Tom for all the __ reasons. First, there was my family situation. I have a stepmother I and a strict father. Other girls had freedom, but I was allowed out once a week until , and everyday my bed was checked to see if it was properly made. My father is a businessman and we lived up to a fairly high I despised the materialism of our and wanted to go to university and eventually become a writer. But my stepmother me I would never be more than an office worker; so I co-operated beautifully, and had to repeat grade twelve.
In the , I started to go out with Tom. He was big and strong and protective and spelled escape in letters. We went steady through my two years in grade twelve and finally decided to get married -- secretly.
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