Passage 1

Reading is thought to be a kind of conversation between the reader and the text. The reader puts questions, as it were, to the text and gets answers. In the light of these he puts further questions, and so on. For most of the time this “conversation” goes on below the level of consciousness. At time, however, we become aware of it. This is usually we are running into difficulties, when mismatch is occurring between expectations and meaning. When successful matching is being experienced, our questioning of the text continues at the unconscious level.

Different people converse with the text differently. Some stay very close to the words on the page; others take off imaginatively from the words, interpreting, criticizing, analyzing and examining. The former represents a kind of comprehension, which is written in the text. The latter represents higher levels of comprehension. The balance between these is important, especially for advanced readers.

There is another conversation which from our point of view is equally important, and that is to do not with what is read but with how it is read. We call this a “process” conversation as opposed to a “content” conversation. It is concerned not with meaning but with the strategies we employ in reading. If we are advanced readers our ability to hold a content conversation with a text is usually pretty well developed. Not so our ability to hold a process conversation. It is precisely this kind of conversation that is of importance when we are seeking to develop our reading to meet the new demands being placed upon us by studying at a higher level.

31. Reading as a kind of conversation between the reader and the text becomes conscious only when _______________________.

A) the reader’s expectations agree with what is said in the text.

B) the reader has trouble understanding what the author says.

C) the reader asks questions and gets answers.

D) the reader understands a text very well.

32. At a lower level of comprehension, readers tend to ________________________.

A) read a text slowly

B) read without thinking hard

C) interpret a text in their own way

D) concentrate on the meaning of words only.

33. A “process” conversation has to do with ________________________.

A) the application of reading strategies

B) matching our expectations with the meaning of a text

C) the development of our ability to check the details

D) determining the main idea of a text.

34. According to the passage, it is of great importance for readers at a higher level to maintain a balance between __________________________.

A) conscious and unconscious levels of comprehension

B) the readers’ expectations and the meaning of a text

C) lower and higher level of comprehension

D) interpreting and criticizing a text

35. If we want to develop our reading ability at an advanced level, we should ___________.

A) learn to use different approaches in reading different text

B) make our reading process more conscious

C) pay more attention to the content of a text

D) take a critical attitude towards the author’s ideas

Passage 2

Only three strategies are available for controlling cancer, prevention, screening and treatment. Lung cancer causes more deaths than any other type of cancer. A major cause of the disease is reliably known; there is no good evidence that screening is of much help; and treatment fails in about 90 percent of all cases. At present, therefore, the main strategy must be prevention. If, however, we consider not what research may one day offer but what today’s knowledge could already deliver that is not being delivered, then the most practicable and cost-effective opportunities for avoiding premature death from cancer, especially lung cancer, probably involve neither screening nor improved treatment, but prevention.

This conclusion does not depend on the unrealistic assumption that we can eliminate tobacco. It merely assumes that we can reduce cigarette sales appreciably by raising prices or by expanding the type of education that already appears to have had a positive effect on cigarette consumption by white-collar workers, and that we can substantially reduce the amount of tar delivered per cigarette. The practicability of preventing cancer by such measures applies not only in those countries, such as the U.S., where, because cigarette smoking has been common for decades, 25 to 30 percent of all cancer deaths now involve lung cancer, but also in those where it has become widespread only recently, China, for example, where lung cancer as yet accounts for only 5-10 percent of all cancer deaths. Countries where cigarette smoking is only now becoming widespread can expect enormous increases in lung cancer during the 1990s or early in the next century; unless prompt effective action is taken against the habit --- indeed, such increases are already plainly evident in parts of China.

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