中国科学院大学考博英语试题样题

　　Passage 3

　　A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in identically the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as sacred texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual circumstances of the time and the individual child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

　　A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or arousing his sadistic impulse. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often guilty of cruelty than those who had not. Aggressive, destructive, sadistic impulses every child has and, on the whole, their symbolic verbal discharge seem to be rather a safety valve than an incitement to overt action. As to fears, there are, I think, well-authenticated cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.

　　There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc., do not exist; and that, instead of indulging his fantasies in fairy tales, the child should be taught how to adapt to reality by studying history and mechanics. I find such people, I must confess, so unsympathetic and peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of madmen attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a broomstick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their enchanted girl-friend.

　　No fairy story ever claimed to be a description of the external world and no sane child has ever believed that it was.

　　46. According to the author, the best way to retell a story to a child is to ______________.

　　A. tell it in a creative way

　　B. take from it what the child likes

　　C. add to it whatever at hand

　　D. read it out of the story book.

　　47. In the second paragraph, which statement best expresses the author’s attitude towards fairy stories?

　　A. He sees in them the worst of human nature.

　　B. He dislikes everything about them.

　　C. He regards them as more of a benefit than harms.

　　D. He is expectant of the experimental results.

　　48. According to the author, fairy stories are most likely to ____________.

　　A. make children aggressive the whole life

　　B. incite destructiveness in children

　　C. function as a safety valve for children

　　D. add children’s enjoyment of cruelty to others

　　49. If the child has heard some horror story for more than once, according to the author, he would probably be ______________.

　　A. scared to death

　　B. taking it and even enjoying it

　　C. suffering more the pain of fear

　　D. dangerously terrified

　　50. The author’s mention of broomsticks and telephones is meant to emphasize that ___________.

　　A. old fairy stories keep updating themselves to cater for modern needs

　　B. fairy stories have claimed many lives of victims

　　C. fairy stories have thrown our world into chaos

　　D. fairy stories are after all fairy stories

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