接下来的几天给大家整理了历届gre考试阅读真题及解析，下面这篇是1996年4月北美gre考试阅读真题SECTION B部分。复习gre考试阅读的时候，gre考生应该以往年的真题为复习材料，从真题中总结阅读规律和特点才是制胜法宝。

　　Mary Barton, particularly in its early chapters, is a moving response to the suffering of the industrial worker in the England of the 1840’s. What is most impressive about the book is the intense and painstaking fort made by the author, Elizabeth Gaskell, to convey the experience of everyday life in working-class homes. Her method is partly documentary in nature: the novel includes such features as a carully annotated reproduction of dialect, the exact details of food prices in an account of a tea party (tea party: n.茶话会), an itemized description of the furniture of the Bartons’ living room, and a transcription (a recording (as on magnetic tape) made especially for use in radio broadcasting) (again annotated) of the ballad “The Oldham Weaver.” The interest of this record is considerable, even though the method has a slightly distancing fect.

　　As a member of the middle class, Gaskell could hardly help approaching working-class life as an outside observer and a reporter, and the reader of the novel is always conscious of this fact. But there is genuine imaginative re-creation in her accounts of the walk in Green Heys Fields, of tea at the Bartons’ house, and of John Barton and his friend’s discovery of the starving family in the cellar in the chapter “Poverty and Death.” Indeed, for a similarly convincing re-creation of such families’ emotions and responses (which are more crucial than the material details on which the mere reporter is apt to concentrate), the English novel had to wait 60 years for the early writing of D. H. Lawrence. If Gaskell never quite conveys the sense of full participation that would completely authenticate this aspect of Mary Barton, she still brings to these scenes an intuitive recognition of feelings that has its own sufficient conviction.

　　The chapter “Old Alice’s History” brilliantly dramatizes the situation of that early generation of workers brought from the villages and the countryside to the urban industrial centers. The account of Job Legh, the weaver and naturalist who is devoted to the study of biology, vividly embodies one kind of response to an urban industrial environment: an affinity for living things that hardens, by its very contrast with its environment, into a kind of crankiness. The early chapters—about factory workers walking out in spring into Green Heys Fields; about Alice Wilson, remembering in her cellar the twig-gathering for brooms in the native village that she will never again see; about Job Legh, intent on his impaled insects—capture the characteristic responses of a generation to the new and crushing experience of industrialism. The other early chapters eloquently portray the development of the instinctive cooperation with each other that was already becoming an important tradition among workers.

　　17. Which of the following best describes the author’s attitude toward Gaskell’s use of the method of documentary record in Mary Barton?

　　(A) Uncritical enthusiasm

　　(B) Unresolved ambivalence

　　(C) Qualified approval

　　(D) Resigned acceptance

　　(E) Mild irritation

　　18. According to the passage, Mary Barton and the early novels of D. H. Lawrence share which of the following?

　　(A) Depiction of the feelings of working-class families

　　(B) Documentary objectivity about working-class circumstances

　　(C) Richly detailed description of working-class adjustment to urban life

　　(D) Imaginatively structured plots about working-class characters

　　(E) Experimental prose style based on working-class dialect

　　19. Which of the following is most closely analogous to Job Legh in Mary Barton, as that character is described in the passage?

　　(A) An entomologist who collected butterflies as a child

　　(B) A small-town attorney whose hobby is nature photography

　　(C) A young man who leaves his family’s dairy farm to start his own business

　　(D) A city dweller who raises exotic plants on the roof of his apartment building

　　(E) A union organizer who works in a textile mill under dangerous conditions

　　20. It can be inferred from examples given in the last paragraph of the passage that which of the following was part of “the new and crushing experience of industrialism” (lines 46-47) for many members of the English working class in the nineteenth century?

　　(A) Extortionate food prices

　　(B) Geographical displacement

　　(C) Hazardous working conditions

　　(D) Alienation from fellow workers

　　(E) Dissolution of family ties

　　21. It can be inferred that the author of the passage believes that Mary Barton might have been an even better novel if Gaskell had

　　(A) concentrated on the emotions of a single character

　　(B) made no attempt to re-create experiences of which she had no firsthand knowledge

　　(C) made no attempt to reproduce working-class dialects

　　(D) grown up in an industrial city

　　(E) managed to transcend her position as an outsider

　　22. Which of the following phrases could best be substituted for the phrase “this aspect of Mary Barton” in line 29 without changing the meaning of the passage as a whole?

　　(A) the material details in an urban working-class environment

　　(B) the influence of Mary Barton on lawrence’s early work

　　(C) the place of Mary Barton in the development of the English novel

　　(D) the extent of the poverty and physical suffering among England’s industrial workers in the 1840’s

　　(E) the portrayal of the particular feelings and responses of working-class characters

　　23. The author of the passage describes Mary Barton as each of the following EXCEPT:

　　(A) insightful

　　(B) meticulous

　　(C) vivid

　　(D) poignant (being to the point: APT)

　　(E) lyrical

　　As of (As of: 到...时为止;从...时起) the late 1980’s, neither theorists nor large-scale computer climate models could accurately predict whether cloud systems would help or hurt a warming globe. Some studies suggested that a four percent increase in stratocumulus (stratocumulus: n.[气]层积云) clouds over the ocean could compensate for a doubling in atmospheric carbon dioxide, preventing a potentially disastrous planetwide temperature increase. On the other hand, an increase in cirrus (cirrus: n. 〈气〉卷云) clouds could increase global warming.

　　That clouds represented the weakest element in climate models was illustrated by a study of fourteen such models. Comparing climate forecasts for a world with double the current amount of carbon dioxide, researchers found that the models agreed quite well if clouds were not included. But when clouds were incorporated, a wide range of forecasts was produced. With such discrepancies plaguing the models, scientists could not easily predict how quickly the world’s climate would change, nor could they tell which regions would face dustier droughts or deadlier monsoons.

　　24. The author of the passage is primarily concerned with

　　(A) confirming a theory

　　(B) supporting a statement

　　(C) presenting new information

　　(D) predicting future discoveries

　　(E) reconciling discrepant findings

　　25. It can be inferred that one reason the fourteen models described in the passage failed to agree was that

　　(A) they failed to incorporate the most up-to-date information about the fect of clouds on climate

　　(B) they were based on faulty information about factors other than clouds that affect climate

　　(C) they were based on different assumptions about the overall fects of clouds on climate

　　(D) their originators disagreed about the kinds of forecasts the models should provide

　　(E) their originators disagreed about the factors other than clouds that should be included in the models

　　26. It can be inferred that the primary purpose of the models included in the study discussed in the second paragraph of the passage was to

　　(A) predict future changes in the world’s climate

　　(B) predict the fects of cloud systems on the world’s climate

　　(C) find a way to prevent a disastrous planetwide temperature increase

　　(D) assess the percentage of the Earth’s surface covered by cloud systems

　　(E) estimate by how much the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere will increase

　　27. The information in the passage suggests that scientists would have to answer which of the following questions in order to predict the fect of clouds on the warming of the globe?

　　(A) What kinds of cloud systems will form over the Earth?

　　(B) How can cloud systems be encouraged to form over the ocean?

　　(C) What are the causes of the projected planetwide temperature increase?

　　(D) What proportion of cloud systems are currently composed of cirrus of clouds?

　　(E) What proportion of the clouds in the atmosphere form over land masses?

答案：17-27：CADBEEEBCAA

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