Passage 21

The end of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century were marked by the development of an international Art Nouveau style, characterized by sinuous lines, floral and vegetable motifs, and soft evanescent coloration. The Art Nouveau style was an eclectic one, bringing together elements of Japanese art, motifs of ancient cultures, and natural forms. The glass objects of this style were elegant in outline, although often deliberately distorted, with pale or iridescent surfaces. A favored device of the style was to imitate the iridescent surface seen on ancient glass that had been buried. Much of the Art Nouveau glass produced during the years of its greatest popularity had been generically termed “art glass.” Art glass was intended for decorative purposes and relied for its effect on carefully chosen color combinations and innovative techniques.

France produced a number of outstanding exponents of the Art Nouveau style; among the most celebrated was Emile Galle (1846-1904). In the United States, Louis Comfort Tiffany (1843-1933) was the most noted exponent of this style, producing a great variety of glass forms and surfaces, which were widely copied in their time and are highly prized today. Tiffany was a brilliant designer, successfully combining ancient Egyptian, Japanese, and Persian motifs.

The Art Nouveau style was a major force in the decorative arts from 1895 until 1915, although its influence continued throughout the mid-1920’s. It was eventually to be overtaken by a new school of thought known as Functionalism that had been present since the turn of the century. At first restricted to a small avant-garde group of architects and designers, Functionalism emerged as the dominant influence upon designers after the First World War. The basic tenet of the movement-that function should determine from-was not a new concept. Soon a distinct aesthetic code evolved: from should be simple, surfaces plain, and any ornament should be based on geometric relationships. This new design concept, coupled with the sharp postwar reactions to the styles and conventions of the preceding decades, created an entirely new public taste which caused Art Nouveau types of glass to fall out of favor. The new taste demanded dramatic effects of contrast,

stark outline and complex textural surfaces.

1. What does paragraph 1 mainly discuss?

2. What is the main purpose of paragraph 2?

3. The word “prized” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to …………… .

4. It can be inferred from the passage that one reason Functionalism became popular was that it ……… .

5. Paragraph 3 supports which of the following statements about Functionalism?

Passage 22

The most profound mystery confronting physics at the end of the twentieth century is neatly captured in a Charles Addams cartoon that appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1940. The setting is a winter landscape. An eerie light casts long shadows upon the pristine snow. In the foreground a crouching skier speeds down a hillside leaving twin tracks that trail up the slope behind him, diverge to pass on opposite sides of an enormous pine tree, then rejoin to continue on in normal, parallel fashion. Another skier looks on in amazement.

The power of the cartoon derives from the contrast between what our eyes can plainly see and what our brains know to be impossible. If, instead of a skier, Addams had depicted something altogether different – an avalanche, say, or better yet, a mountain stream – no one would give the scene a second thought. There is nothing strange about a current of water flowing around a tree and reconstituting itself on the other side. But for a solid object to pass through an impenetrable barrier is impossible.

It is impossible in our macroscopic, everyday world, but in the realm of atoms, where quantum mechanics reigns, the rules are different. It is normal for an atomic particle to occupy two places at once, to tunnel through a barrier, or to circumvent an obstacle on both sides at once. For this reason, the Addams cartoon has an immediate appeal to physicists. It tends to be shown to lighten the mood at the beginning of difficult technical lectures about quantum interference and at the end of summary talks on modern developments in atomic physics, as a visual aid to ease the audience’s transition back to the real world. The picture has even been reprinted in a scholarly journal with a paper about the experimental investigation of wave-particle duality. Scientific audiences respond instantly to the uncanny precision with which Addams has unintentionally captured the dilemma of quantum theory: If atoms obey strange rules and we are made of atoms, why don’t we follow the same rules?

1.What is the mystery referred to in the passage?

2. The word “diverge” in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to …………… .

3. What function does the skier on the right in the cartoon serve?

5. Which of the following can be inferred from the reaction of physicists to the Addams cartoon?

6. The word “precision” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ………….. .

7. Why does the author discuss the Charles Addams cartoon?

8. Which of the following can be inferred about the mystery discussed in the passage?

Passage 23

Each of the social and humanistic branches of learning apart from sociology seems to have its own distinctive subject matter. Political science, for example, deals with the ways in which society allocates the right to use legitimate power. Sociology, however, has not yet had a special or distinctive subject matter clearly associated with it. The subject matter should be something concrete, specific, and easily identified, something that is not claimed as the central object of study of some other established discipline.

The most cursory glance at the easily identified major institutions, social products, and social processes reveals that there are indeed such unassigned or unclaimed subjects. Politics and economics are spoken for, and so in large measure are literature, language, education, and business. But there remain the family, crime, social classes, ethnic and racial groups, the urban and the rural community. No one of these major components of society has become the distinctive object of study for a specialized branch of learning, which has the status of an independent discipline, such as politics or economics. Instead, each of these subjects has become a focus for research and theory-building within sociology. In this way sociology has, to a degree, become the great residual category of the social sciences. It has not one subject, but many. Indeed, some might argue that in this sense sociology has no distinctive subject matter. It is merely a collection of disciplines united mainly by the fact that they deal with institutions and social processes that have historically failed to become sufficiently specialized and important to win independent standing as intellectual disciplines.

If the long, continuing process of differentiation and specialization in scholarship were to go so far that all the subfields of sociology came to be established as separate disciplines, would sociology then cease to exist as a discipline in its own right? We can properly say “no” only if we can point to a distinctive subject matter that would remain for sociology. Happily, we can. We may propose several distinctive subject matters to which sociology could still lay claim. They are, in decreasing order of size and complexity: societies, institutions, social relationships, and families.

1. The author uses political science in paragraph 1 as an example of a discipline that …………

2. The word “allocates” in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ………… .

3. According to the passage, the subject matter on which sociologists need to concentrate should be all of the following EXCEPT …………

4. According to paragraph 2, which of the following is true about sociology?

5. The phrase “spoken for” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to ………… .

6. According to the passage, which of the following is the central object of study of an established academic discipline?

7.The word “status” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to ………… .

8.The word “It” in paragraph 2 refers to ………… .

9. It can be inferred from the passage that which of the following is true about the “institutions and social processes” mentioned in paragraph 2?

10. According to the passage, why is the study of sociology unlikely to disappear?

11. The phrase in “its own right” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ………… .

Passage 24

The canopy, the upper level of the trees in the rainforest, holds a plethora of climbing mammals of moderately large size, which may include monkeys, cats, civets, and porcupines. Smaller species, including such rodents as mice and small squirrels, are not as prevalent overall in high tropical canopies as they are in most habitats globally. Small mammals, being warm blooded, suffer hardship in the exposed and turbulent environment of the uppermost trees. Because a small body has more surface area per unit of weight than a large one of similar shape, it gains or loses heat more swiftly. Thus, in the trees, where shelter from heat and cold may be scarce and conditions may fluctuate, a small mammal may have trouble maintaining its body temperature.

Small size makes it easy to scramble among twigs and branches in the canopy for   insects, flowers, or fruit, but small mammals are surpassed, in the competition for food, by large ones that have their own tactics for browsing among food-rich twigs. The weight of a gibbon (a small ape) hanging below a branch arches the terminal leaves down so that fruit-bearing foliage drops toward the gibbon’s face. Walking or leaping species of a similar or even larger size access the outer twigs either by snapping off and retrieving the whole branch or by clutching stiff branches with the feet or tail and plucking food with their hands.

Small climbing animals may reach twigs readily, but it is harder for them than for large climbing animals to cross the wide gaps from on tree crown to the next that typify the high canopy. A macaque or gibbon can hurl itself farther than a mouse can: it can achieve a running start, and it can more effectively use a branch as a springboard, even bouncing on a climb several times before jumping. The forward movement of a small animal is seriously reduced by the air friction against the relatively large surface area of its body. Finally, for the many small mammals that supplement their insect diet with fruits or seeds an inability to span open gaps between tree crowns may be problematic, since trees that that yield these foods can be sparse.

1. The passage answers which of the following questions?

2. Which of the following animals is less common in the upper canopy than in other environments?

3. The word “they” in paragraph 1 refers to ……………… .

4. According to the passage, which of the following is true about the small mammals in the rain forest?

5. In discussing animal size, the author indicates that …………… .

6. The word “typify” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to …………… .