阅读理解
Every country tends to accept its own way of life as being the normal one and to praise or criticize
others, as they are similar to or different from it.And unfortunately, our picture of the people and the way
of life of other countries is often a distorted (扭曲的) one.
Here is a great argument in favor of foreign travel and learning foreign languages.It is only by traveling
in a country and getting to know its inhabitants and their language that one can find out what a country and
its people are really like.And how different the knowledge one gains this way frequently turns out to be
from the secondhand information gathered from other sources! How often we find that the foreigners
whom we thought to be such different people from ourselves are not very different at all!
Differences between peoples do, of course, exist and, one hopes, will always continue to do so.The
world will be a dull place indeed when all the different nationalities behave exactly alike, and some people might say that we are rapidly approaching this state of affairs.With the much greater rapidity (快速) and
ease of travel, there might seem to be some truth in this at least as far as Europe is concerned.However
this may be, at least the greater ease of travel today has revealed (展示) to more people than ever before
that the Englishman or Frenchman or German is not:some different kind of animal from themselves.
1. Every country criticizes ways of life in other countries because they are________.
A. distorted
B. normal
C. similar to each other
D. different from its own
2. One who travels in a foreign country and learns its language will________.
A. find out why its people are different
B. argue in favor of this country and the language
C. know the country and its people better
D. like its inhabitants and their language
3. The knowledge one gains by traveling in a foreign country is often________.
A. from secondhand information
B. gathered from other sources rather than its inhabitants
C. gained from the arguments about the country
D. different from what one had before the travel
4. In this passage, the author wants to say________.
A. differences between peoples will gradually disappear because of the ease of travel
B. differences between peoples do exist even though different nationalities behave exactly alike
C. differences between peoples will continue to exist and the world will be a dull place
D. differences between peoples will not exist as one hopes
