SAT Section One : Critical Reading 認定 SAT-Critical-Reading 試験問題:

1. The neighborhood group's rendering of the proposed office complex ______ the ______ of the project: as
they appeared on the drawing, the proposed office buildings appeared to dwarf the rest of the downtown
area.

A) trivialized . . enormity
B) underscored . . vastness
C) revealed . . immensity
D) accentuated . . beauty
E) minimized . . grandiosity

2. Like Truman, who was never considered a major national figure until Roosevelt's death made him
president, Ford attained national prominence only after ______ thrust him into the presidency.

A) personal ambition
B) public demand
C) political intrigue
D) popular acclaim
E) outside circumstances

3. Mathew ascended three flights of stairs--passed half-way down a long arched gallery--and knocked at
another old-fashioned oak door. This time the signal was answered. A low, clear, sweet voice, inside the
room, inquired who was waiting without? In a few hasty words Mathew told his errand. Before he had
done speaking the door was quietly and quickly opened, and Sarah Leeson confronted him on the
threshold, with her candle in her hand.
Not tall, not handsome, not in her first youth--shy and irresolute in manner--simple in dress to the utmost
limits of plainness--the lady's-maid, in spite of all these disadvantages, was a woman whom it was
impossible to look at without a feeling of curiosity, if not of interest. Few men, at first sight of her, could
have resisted the desire to find out who she was; few would have been satisfied with receiving for answer,
She is Mrs. Treverton's maid; few would have refrained from the attempt to extract some secret
information for themselves from her face and manner; and none, not even the most patient and practiced
of observers, could have succeeded in discovering more than that she must have passed through the
ordeal of some great suffering at some former period of her life. Much in her manner, and more in her face,
said plainly and sadly: I am the wreck of something that you might once have liked to see; a wreck that
can never be repaired--that must drift on through life unnoticed, unguided, unpitied--drift till the fatal shore
is touched, and the waves of Time have swallowed up these broken relics of me forever.
This was the story that was told in Sarah Leeson's face--this, and no more. No two men interpreting that
story for themselves, would probably have agreed on the nature of the suffering which this woman had
undergone. It was hard to say, at the outset, whether the past pain that had set its ineffaceable mark on
her had been pain of the body or pain of the mind. But whatever the nature of the affliction she had
suffered, the traces it had left were deeply and strikingly visible in every part of her face.
Her cheeks had lost their roundness and their natural color; her lips, singularly flexible in movement and
delicate in form, had faded to an unhealthy paleness; her eyes, large and black and overshadowed by
unusually thick lashes, had contracted an anxious startled look, which never left them and which piteously
expressed the painful acuteness of her sensibility, the inherent timidity of her disposition. So far, the
marks which sorrow or sickness had set on her were the marks common to most victims of mental or
physical suffering. The one extraordinary personal deterioration which she had undergone consisted in
the unnatural change that had passed over the color of her hair.
It was as thick and soft, it grew as gracefully, as the hair of a young girl; but it was as gray as the hair of an
old woman. It seemed to contradict, in the most startling manner, every personal assertion of youth that
still existed in her face. With all its haggardness and paleness, no one could have looked at it and
supposed for a moment that it was the face of an elderly woman. Wan as they might be, there was not a
wrinkle in her cheeks. Her eyes, viewed apart from their prevailing expression of uneasiness and timidity,
still preserved that bright, clear moisture which is never seen in the eyes of the old. The skin about her
temples was as delicately smooth as the skin of a child. These and other physical signs which never
mislead, showed that she was still, as to years, in the very prime of her life.
Sickly and sorrow-stricken as she was, she looked, from the eyes downward, a woman who had barely
reached thirty years of age. From the eyes upward, the effect of her abundant gray hair, seen in
connection with her face, was not simply incongruous--it was absolutely startling; so startling as to make it
no paradox to say that she would have looked most natural, most like herself if her hair had been dyed. In
her case, Art would have seemed to be the truth, because Nature looked like falsehood.
What shock had stricken her hair, in the very maturity of its luxuriance, with the hue of an unnatural old
age? Was it a serious illness, or a dreadful grief that had turned her gray in the prime of her womanhood?
That question had often been agitated among her fellow-servants, who were all struck by the peculiarities
of her personal appearance, and rendered a little suspicious of her, as well, by an inveterate habit that
she had of talking to herself. Inquire as they might, however, their curiosity was always baffled. Nothing
more could be discovered than that Sarah Leeson was, in the common phrase, touchy on the subject of
her gray hair and her habit of talking to herself, and that Sarah Leeson's mistress had long since forbidden
every one, from her husband downward, to ruffle her maid's tranquility by inquisitive questions. In context,
the word "inveterate" in the last paragraph most closely means

A) positively unacceptable.
B) a particularly bad.
C) occurring over a prolonged period.
D) something only present in vertebrates.
E) rude.

4. 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.
The author's purpose for the second paragraph is:

A) to show just how intrusive the experiments were, much to the chagrin of all inhabitants
B) to show how ingenious Rob was
C) to fully develop the latitude father gave and the control he had.
D) to represent just how far Rob's experiments went
E) to evidence that Rob lacked for no supplies.

5. The supervisor was absolutely ______ on the issue of wearing a tie and coat in the office; I mean, she
was absolutely ______.

A) malleable. . .fixated
B) mawkish. . .impassioned
C) obdurate. . .implacable
D) passionate. . .vehement
E) persistent. . .moved

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