最新的PSAT Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test - Reading - PSAT-Reading免費考試真題

Given ______ politicians can generally raise campaign financing easier than challengers, Lt. Governor
James should have the advantage.

The following two passages deal with the political movements working for the woman's vote in America.
Passage 1
The first organized assertion of woman's rights in the United States was made at the Seneca Falls
convention in 1848. The convention, though, had little immediate impact because of the national issues
that would soon embroil the country. The contentious debates involving slavery and state's rights that
preceded the Civil War soon took center stage in national debates.
Thus woman's rights issues would have to wait until the war and its antecedent problems had been
addressed before they would be addressed. In 1869, two organizations were formed that would play
important roles in securing the woman's right to vote. The first was the American Woman's Suffrage
Association (AWSA). Leaving federal and constitutional issues aside, the AWSA focused their attention
on state-level politics. They also restricted their ambitions to securing the woman's vote and downplayed
discussion of women's full equality. Taking a different track, the National Woman's Suffrage Association
(NWSA), led by Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, believed that the only way to assure the
long-term security of the woman's vote was to ground it in the constitution. The NWSA challenged the
exclusion of woman from the Fifteenth Amendment, the amendment that extended the vote to
African-American men. Furthermore, the NWSA linked the fight for suffrage with other inequalities faced
by woman, such as marriage laws, which greatly disadvantaged women.
By the late 1880s the differences that separated the two organizations had receded in importance as the
women's movement had become a substantial and broad-based political force in the country. In 1890, the
two organizations joined forces under the title of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association
(NAWSA). The NAWSA would go on to play a vital role in the further fight to achieve the woman's vote.
Passage 2
In 1920, when Tennessee became the thirty-eighth state to approve the constitutional amendment
securing the woman's right to vote, woman's suffrage became enshrined in the constitution. But woman's
suffrage did not happen in one fell swoop. The success of the woman's suffrage movement was the story
of a number of partial victories that led to the explicit endorsement of the woman's right to vote in the
constitution.
As early as the 1870s and 1880s, women had begun to win the right to vote in local affairs such as
municipal elections, school board elections, or prohibition measures. These "partial suffrages"
demonstrated that women could in fact responsibly and reasonably participate in a representative
democracy (at least as voters). Once such successes were achieved and maintained over a period of
time, restricting the full voting rights of woman became more and more suspect. If women were helping
decide who was on the local school board, why should they not also have a voice in deciding who was
president of the country? Such questions became more difficult for non-suffragists to answer, and thus the
logic of restricting the woman's vote began to crumble
Which of the following questions is NOT addressed in either passage?

Also the Emperor became more and more excited with curiosity, and with great suspense one awaited the
hour, when according to mask-law, each masked guest must make himself known. This moment came,
but although all other unmasked; the secret knight still refused to allow his features to be seen, till at last
the Queen driven by curiosity, and vexed at the obstinate refusal; commanded him to open his Vizier. He
opened it, and none of the high ladies and knights knew him. But from the crowded spectators, two
officials advanced, who recognized the black dancer, and horror and terror spread in the saloon, as they
said who the supposed knight was. It was the executioner of Bergen. But glowing with rage, the King
commanded to seize the criminal and lead him to death, who had ventured to dance, with the queen; so
disgraced the Empress, and insulted the crown. The culpable threw himself at the Emperor, and said:
"Indeed I have heavily sinned against all noble guests assembled here, but most heavily against you my
sovereign and my queen. The Queen is insulted by my haughtiness equal to treason, but no punishment
even blood, will not be able to wash out the disgrace, which you have suffered by me. Therefore oh King!
allow me to propose a remedy, to efface the shame, and to render it as if not done. Draw your sword and
knight me, then I will throw down my gauntlet, to everyone who dares to speak disrespectfully of my king."
All of the following would qualify to support the secret knight being labeled a "criminal" 1st paragraph
EXCEPT:

The bright coloration of American coot chicks is an anomaly: although colorful plumage is usually __ to
newborn birds because it may attract predators, among this species it appears to be __ , because parents
are more likely to notice and care for brightly-colored offspring.

In conclusion, it seized first the corpse of the daughter, and thrust it up the chimney, as it was found; then
that of the old lady, which it immediately hurled through the window headlong. As the ape approached the
casement with its mutilated burden, the sailor shrank aghast to the rod, and, rather gliding than
clambering down it, hurried at once home--dreading the consequences of the butchery, and gladly
abandoning, in his terror, all solicitude about the fate of the Ourang-Outang. The words heard by the party
upon the staircase were the Frenchman's exclamations of horror and affright, commingled with the
fiendish jabberings of the brute.
I have scarcely anything to add. The Ourang-Outang must have escaped from the chamber, by the rod,
just before the break of the door. It must have closed the window as it passed through it. It was
subsequently caught by the owner himself, who obtained for it a very large sum at the Jardin des Plantes.
Le Don was instantly released, upon our narration of the circumstances (with some comments from Dupin)
at the bureau of the Prefect of Police. This functionary, however well disposed to my friend, could not
altogether conceal his chagrin at the turn which affairs had taken, and was fain to indulge in a sarcasm or
two, about the propriety of every person minding his own business.
Which selection best rephrases "I have scarcely anything to add" starting of 2nd paragraph?

Big earthquakes are naturally occurring events well outside the powers of humans to create or stop. An
earthquake is caused by a sudden slip on a fault. Stresses in the earth's outer layer push the side of the
fault together. The friction across the surface of the fault holds the rocks together so they do not slip
immediately when pushed sideways. Eventually enough stress builds up and the rocks slip suddenly,
releasing energy in waves that travel through the rock to cause the shaking that we feel during an
earthquake. Earthquakes typically originate several tens of miles below the surface of the earth. It takes
many years--decades to centuries--to build up enough stress to make a large earthquake, and the fault
may be tens to hundreds of miles long. The scale and force necessary to produce earthquakes are well
beyond our daily lives. Likewise, people cannot prevent earthquakes from happening or stop them once
they've started--giant nuclear explosions at shallow depths, like those in some movies, won't actually stop
an earthquake.
The two most important variables affecting earthquake damage are the intensity of ground shaking cased
by the quake and the quality of the engineering of structures in the region. The level of shaking, in turn, is
controlled by the proximity of the earthquake source to the affected region and the types of rocks that
seismic waves pass through en route (particularly those at or near the ground surface). Generally, the
bigger and closer the earthquake, the stronger the shaking. But there have been large earthquakes with
very little damage either because they caused little shaking or because the buildings were built to
withstand that shaking. In other cases, moderate earthquakes have caused significant damage either
because the shaking was locally amplified or more likely because the structures were poorly engineered.
The word fault means?

For the last hour I have been watching President Lincoln and General McClellan as they sat together in
earnest conversation on the deck of a steamer closer to us. I am thankful, I am happy, that the President
has come--has sprung across the dreadful intervening Washington, and come to see and hear and judge
for his own wise and noble self. While we were at dinner someone said, "Why, there's the President!" and
he proved to be just arriving on the Ariel, at the end of the wharf. I stationed myself at once to watch for
the coming of McClellan. The President stood on deck with a glass, with which, after a time, he inspected
our boat, waving his handkerchief to us. My eyes and soul were in the direction of the general
headquarters, over which the great balloon was slowly descending.
What does the author mean by "the dreadful intervening Washington"?

This passage discusses the work of Abe Kobo, a Japanese novelist of the twentieth century.
Abe Kobo is one of the great writers of postwar Japan. His literature is richer, less predictable, and
wider-ranging than that of his famed contemporaries, Mishima Yukio and Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo. It
is infused with the passion and strangeness of his experiences in Manchuria, which was a Japanese
colony on mainland China before World War II.
Abe spent his childhood and much of his youth in Manchuria, and, as a result, the orbit of his work would
be far less controlled by the oppressive gravitational pull of the themes of furusato (hometown) and the
emperor than his contemporaries'.
Abe, like most of the sons of Japanese families living in Manchuria, did return to Japan for schooling. He
entered medical school in Tokyo in 1944--just in time to forge himself a medical certificate claiming ill
health; this allowed him to avoid fighting in the war that Japan was already losing and return to Manchuria.
When Japan lost the war, however, it also lost its Manchurian colony. The Japanese living there were
attacked by the Soviet Army and various guerrilla bands. They suddenly found themselves refugees,
desperate for food. Many unfit men were abandoned in the Manchurian desert. At this apocalyptic time,
Abe lost his father to cholera.
He returned to mainland Japan once more, where the young were turning to Marxism as a rejection of the
militarism of the war. After a brief, unsuccessful stint at medical school, he became part of a Marxist group
of avant-garde artists. His work at this time was passionate and outspoken on political matters, adopting
black humor as its mode of critique.
During this time, Abe worked in the genres of theater, music, and photography. Eventually, he
mimeographed fifty copies of his first "published" literary work, entitled Anonymous Poems, in 1947. It
was a politically charged set of poems dedicated to the memory of his father and friends who had died in
Manchuria. Shortly thereafter, he published his first novel, For a Signpost at the End of a Road, which
imagined another life for his best friend who had died in the Manchurian desert. Abe was also active in the
Communist Party, organizing literary groups for workingmen.
Unfortunately, most of this radical early work is unknown outside Japan and underappreciated even in
Japan. In early 1962, Abe was dismissed from the Japanese Liberalist Party. Four months later, he
published the work that would blind us to his earlier oeuvre, Woman in the Dunes. It was director
Teshigahara Hiroshi's film adaptation of Woman in the Dunes that brought Abe's work to the international
stage. The movie's fame has wrongly led readers to view the novel as Abe's masterpiece. It would be
more accurate to say that the novel simply marked a turning point in his career, when Abe turned away
from the experimental and heavily political work of his earlier career. Fortunately, he did not then turn to
furusato and the emperor after all, but rather began a somewhat more realistic exploration of his
continuing obsession with homelessness and alienation. Not completely a stranger to his earlier
commitment to Marxism, Abe turned his attention, beginning in the sixties, to the effects on the individual
of Japan's rapidly urbanizing, growthdriven, increasingly corporate society.
Which of the following does the passage present as a fact?

But the Dust-Bin was going down then, and your father took but little, excepting from a liquid point of view.
Your mother's object in those visits was of a house-keeping character, and you was set on to whistle your
father out. Sometimes he came out, but generally not. Come or not come, however, all that part of his
existence which was unconnected with open Waitering was kept a close secret, and was acknowledged
by your mother to be a close secret, and you and your mother flitted about the court, close secrets both of
you, and would scarcely have confessed under torture that you know your father, or that your father had
any name than Dick (which wasn't his name, though he was never known by any other), or that he had
kith or kin or chick or child.
Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, combined with your father's having a damp compartment, to
himself, behind a leaky cistern, at the Dust Bin, a sort of a cellar compartment, with a sink in it, and a smell,
and a plate-rack, and a bottle-rack, and three windows that didn't match each other or anything else, and
no daylight, caused your young mind to feel convinced that you must grow up to be a Waiter too; but you
did feel convinced of it, and so did all your brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you felt convinced
that you was born to the Waitering.
At this stage of your career, what was your feelings one day when your father came home to your mother
in open broad daylight, of itself an act of Madness on the part of a Waiter, and took to his bed (leastwise,
your mother and family's bed), with the statement that his eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians being in
vain, your father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day and a night, when gleams of reason and old
business fitfully illuminated his being, "Two and two is five. And three is sixpence." Interred in the
parochial department of the neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the grave by as many Waiters
of long standing as could spare the morning time from their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved
form was attired in a white neckankecher [sic], and you was took on from motives of benevolence at The
George and Gridiron, theatrical and supper. Here, supporting nature on what you found in the
plates(which was as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly, immersed in mustard), and on what you
found in the glasses (which rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing,
till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to polishing every individual article in the coffee-room. Your
couch being sawdust; your counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a heavy heart
under the smart tie of your white neck ankecher (or correctly speaking lower down and more to the left),
you picked up the rudiments of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by calling
plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk on the back of the corner-box partition, until
such time as you used the inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood, and to be the Waiter
that you find yourself.
I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the calling so long the calling of myself and
family, and the public interest in which is but too often very limited. We are not generally understood. No,
we are not. Allowance enough is not made for us. For, say that we ever show a little drooping listlessness
of spirits, or what might be termed indifference or apathy. Put it to yourself what would your own state of
mind be, if you was one of an enormous family every member of which except you was always greedy,
and in a hurry. Put it to yourself that you was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in
the day and again at nine p.m., and that the repleter [sic] you was, the more voracious all your
fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself that it was your business, when your digestion was well on, to
take a personal interest and sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and fresh (say, for the sake of
argument, only a hundred), whose imaginations was given up to grease and fat and gravy and melted
butter, and abandoned to questioning you about cuts of this, and dishes of that, each of 'em going on as if
him and you and the bill of fare was alone in the world.
What is meant by "supporting nature" in the passage?

When you are restive, you don't have much __ .

Twentieth-century Japan faced the question of how to __ the best of modern civilization without losing the
benefits of Japan's __ way of life.

This passage discusses the work of Abe Kobo, a Japanese novelist of the twentieth century.
Abe Kobo is one of the great writers of postwar Japan. His literature is richer, less predictable, and
wider-ranging than that of his famed contemporaries, Mishima Yukio and Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo. It
is infused with the passion and strangeness of his experiences in Manchuria, which was a Japanese
colony on mainland China before World War II.
Abe spent his childhood and much of his youth in Manchuria, and, as a result, the orbit of his work would
be far less controlled by the oppressive gravitational pull of the themes of furusato (hometown) and the
emperor than his contemporaries'.
Abe, like most of the sons of Japanese families living in Manchuria, did return to Japan for schooling. He
entered medical school in Tokyo in 1944--just in time to forge himself a medical certificate claiming ill
health; this allowed him to avoid fighting in the war that Japan was already losing and return to Manchuria.
When Japan lost the war, however, it also lost its Manchurian colony. The Japanese living there were
attacked by the Soviet Army and various guerrilla bands. They suddenly found themselves refugees,
desperate for food. Many unfit men were abandoned in the Manchurian desert. At this apocalyptic time,
Abe lost his father to cholera.
He returned to mainland Japan once more, where the young were turning to Marxism as a rejection of the
militarism of the war. After a brief, unsuccessful stint at medical school, he became part of a Marxist group
of avant-garde artists. His work at this time was passionate and outspoken on political matters, adopting
black humor as its mode of critique.
During this time, Abe worked in the genres of theater, music, and photography. Eventually, he
mimeographed fifty copies of his first "published" literary work, entitled Anonymous Poems, in 1947. It
was a politically charged set of poems dedicated to the memory of his father and friends who had died in
Manchuria. Shortly thereafter, he published his first novel, For a Signpost at the End of a Road, which
imagined another life for his best friend who had died in the Manchurian desert. Abe was also active in the
Communist Party, organizing literary groups for workingmen.
Unfortunately, most of this radical early work is unknown outside Japan and underappreciated even in
Japan. In early 1962, Abe was dismissed from the Japanese Liberalist Party. Four months later, he
published the work that would blind us to his earlier oeuvre, Woman in the Dunes. It was director
Teshigahara Hiroshi's film adaptation of Woman in the Dunes that brought Abe's work to the international
stage. The movie's fame has wrongly led readers to view the novel as Abe's masterpiece. It would be
more accurate to say that the novel simply marked a turning point in his career, when Abe turned away
from the experimental and heavily political work of his earlier career. Fortunately, he did not then turn to
furusato and the emperor after all, but rather began a somewhat more realistic exploration of his
continuing obsession with homelessness and alienation. Not completely a stranger to his earlier
commitment to Marxism, Abe turned his attention, beginning in the sixties, to the effects on the individual
of Japan's rapidly urbanizing, growthdriven, increasingly corporate society.
The word "avant-garde" in this passage could best be replaced by

The drill instructor at the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot was quick to correct the ______ recruit when he
was referred to as "dude."

When Rob became interested in electricity, his clear-headed father considered the boy's fancy to be
instructive as well as amusing; so he heartily encouraged his son, and Rob never lacked batteries, motors,
or supplies of any sort that his experiments might require.
He fitted up the little back room in the attic as his workshop, and from thence, a network of wires soon ran
throughout the house. Not only had every outside door its electric bell, but every window was fitted with a
burglar alarm; moreover, no one could cross the threshold of any interior room without registering the fact
in Rob's work-shop. The gas was lighted by an electric fob; a chime, connected with an erratic clock in the
boy's room, woke the servants at all hours of the night and caused the cook to give warning; a bell rang
whenever the postman dropped a letter into the box; there were bells, bells, bells everywhere, ringing at
the right time, the wrong time and all the time. And there were telephones in the different rooms, too,
through which Rob could call up the different members of the family just when they did not wish to be
disturbed. His mother and sisters soon came to vote the boy's scientific craze a nuisance; but his father
was delighted with these evidences of Rob's skill as an electrician and insisted that he be allowed perfect
freedom in carrying out his ideas.
Which is the best selection describing the social commentary inferred in the passage?