Question

Olaf Stapleton wrote a book called First and last Men, in which he looked millions of years ahead．He told of different men and of strange civilizations (文明), broken up by long ‘dark ages’ in between. In his view, what is called the present time is no more than a moment in human history and we are just the First Men. In 2 000 million years from now there will be the Eighteenth or Last Men.

    However, most of our ideas about the future are really very short-sighted．Perhaps we can see some possibilities for the next fifty years. But the next hundred? The next thousand? The next million? That’s much more difficult.

    When men and women lived by hunting 50 000 years ago, how could they even begin to picture modern life? Yet to men of 50 000 years from now, we may seem as primitive(原始的) in our ideas as the Stone-Age hunters do to us. Perhaps they will spend their days making new spundels, or struggling with their ballalators through the tribe. These words, which I have just made up, have to stand for things and ideas that we simply can’t think of.

    So why bother even to try imagining life far in the future? Here are two reasons. First, unless we remember how short our own lives are compared with the whole human history, we are likely to think our own interests are much more important than they really are. If we make the earth a poor place to live on because we are careless or greedy (贪婪) or quarrelsome,  our grand-children will not bother to think of excuses for us.

    Second, by trying to escape from present interests and imagine life far in the future, we may arrive at quite fresh ideas that we can use ourselves. For example, if we imagine that in the future men may give up farming, we can think of trying it now.  So set your imagination free when you think about the future.

1. A particular mention made of Stapleton’s book in the opening paragraph ________.

A．serves as a description of human history

B．serves as an introduction to the discussion

C．shows a disagreement of views

D．shows the popularity of the book

2. Spundels and ballalators are used in the text to refer to ______.

A．tools used in farming

B．ideas about modern life

C．unknown things in the future

D．hunting skills in the Stone Age

 

Answer 1

答案：1B2C
解析：

1本段的开头就引述了一本名为First and Last Man的书，并且介绍书的大概内容。接续的阅读告诉我们，本段显然不是书评或新书介绍。要想探查作者引述此事的意图，就需要把握全文的总意图。作者实际上使用了写文章的一种常见的手法：把一件事当作“引子”，以便引起议论，或引起讨论，或提出见解，等等。 2本题的特殊之点是：斜体“文字”是作者自己制造的“文字”。这是以往的NMET试卷从来没有出现过的测试形式。本文所讨论的内容具有极大的特殊性，它所研究的对象和题目实际上超出了人们的已知经验，预测多少亿年以后的事情，如果那时仍有文字的话，恐怕我们这些当代人类是无法用我们自己的经验来加以想象的，此点恰恰是本文的主要意思。而本题题干中呈现的Spundels and ballalators则是作者基于本文的基本思路为了更为直观地阐述他的思想而随机造出的文字符号。但是，考生根据上下文是可以推断出这些文字符号的语义方向的。做到这一点需要考生具有如下能力：     ①了解作者的论辩关键点；     ②分清作者在本文中坚持的基本观点和作者引述他人的观点；     ③分清观点的陈述和事实的陈述；     ④分清一般的事实和特定的例证；     ⑤确认猜测点；     ⑥确认猜测点与语境之间的关系；     ⑦猜出陌生词语的大概意思或意思方向。