阅读理解。
To master a language one must be able to speak and understand the spoken language as well as to read
and write. Lenin and his wife Krupskaya translated a long English book into Russian. But when they went
to England in 1902, English people couldn't understand a word they said and they couldn't understand what
was said to them. These days more and more foreigners are coming to China and more Chinese are going
out to foreign countries to work or study. So the spoken language is becoming more and more important.
Speaking, of course, can't go without listening. If you want to pronounce a word correctly, first you
must hear it correctly. Thy sounds of the Chinese and English languages are not exactly the same. If you
don't listen carefully, you'll find it difficult or even impossible to understand the native speakers.
Well, what about writing? Like speaking, it's to exchange ideas. People generally use shorter words and
shorter sentences in their writing. The important thing is to make your idea clear in your head and then to
write it in clear lively language.
Chinese students read far too slowly. If you read fast, you understand better. If you read too slowly,
by the time you have reached the end of a page you have forgotten what the beginning is about. When you
meet with new words, don't look them up in the dictionary. Guess the meaning from the context. You may
not guess quite correctly the first time, but as new words come up again and again in different contexts,
their meaning will become clearer and clearer. If you look up every word, you'll never finish a book.
Students of a foreign language need a particular knowledge, the knowledge of the life, history and
geography of the people whose language they are studying. They should study these subjects in the foreign
language, not only in translation. In this way one can kill two birds with one stone: learn a foreign language
and get some knowledge of the foreign country at the same time.
1. In his first point the writer told us ______. [ ]
A. how to speak English
B. how to read and write
C. why spoken English is important
D. why English people couldn't understand Lenin
2. In his last point the writer advised us ______. [ ]
A. to kill two birds with one stone
B. to learn two languages at a time
C. to study all the subjects in a foreign language
D. to get some knowledge of the foreign country whose language you are studying
3. In the fourth paragraph the writer gave some advice on ______. [ ]
A. how to read faster
B. how to guess the meaning from the context
C. how to look up new words in the dictionary
D. how to grasp the general meaning of a passage
4. "To kill two birds with one stone" means ______. [ ]
A. to get some particular knowledge
B. to get more than what one pays
C. the stone is too big
D. the birds are blind enough
