最新预测：英语六级新题型试卷（六）

Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage:

It is a favorable thing to look back at some of the reforms which have long been an accepted part of our life, and to examine the opposition, usually bitter and very strange, sometimes dishonest but all too often honest, which had to be countered by the restless advocates of “grandmotherly" legislation. The reforms treated in this book are not the well-known measures—like the abolishment of slavery, the reform of Parliament, the vote of women—which are recorded in the standard history books. Here are some of the less familiar struggles which, with one or two exceptions, social historians have tended to dismiss briefly. Yet these old controversies give no less revealing an insight into the minds of our grandfathers than do the major issues of the last century. The pulse of a generation can be taken just as effectively by considering its attitudes to the marrying of deceased wives' sisters, to the fetching of father's beer or even to the sweeping of chimneys. What some of the reforms dealt with were carried out within living memory; none is older than the nineteenth century. They have been selected for the variety of their background and for the fertility (state of being fertile) and stimulus of the opposition leveled against them.

Misguided and complete unreasonable though some of this opposition now appears, it is doubtful whether it will seem any more peculiar, one hundred years hence, than some of the reasons we produce today for continual hardship and injustice. Our ancestors thought it absurd that wives should wish to keep their own earnings; our descendants may be astonished at our system which forces a man to maintain a woman, sometimes for life, after a hopeless marriage has been disrupted. It is likely that our descendants will derive as much heartless fun from consideration of our divorce laws, and the reasons we use to defend them, as from the arguments we put forward to excuse the disfigurement of the countryside. They may also think that the indifference of the nineteenth century to death and suffering in the mills was fully matched by that of the twentieth century to death and suffering on the highways.

31. What is the main idea of the passage?

A. We can benefit from a careful reflection on the past reform which have become a natural component of our life.

B. Some of the opposition to reforms in the past has been very unreasonable.

C. Social historians tend to dismiss reforms o a small scale as insignificant.

D. Some of the social reforms in the past did not survive the living memory because of their insignificance.

32. If this passage is taken from the foreword to a book, which of the following will most probably be discussed extensively in the book?

A. The abolishment of slavery in the United States in the 19th century

B. The reform of Parliament in Britain in the 17th century

C. The first national constitution against polygamy (一夫多妻制)

D. The approval of marriage between a woman and her deceased husband's brother

33. What does the author say about opposition to reforms in the past?

A. It was mostly well-intentioned and meant for the public good.

B. It was mostly dishonest and aimed only at personal gains.

C. It was mostly accepted by the authorities.

D. It was mostly unreasonable and misguided.

34. How does the author suggest that our descendants will probably treat our current legal system and social customs?

A. They will carry on with our current legal system and social customs with due respect.

B. They may consider them unreasonable in most of the cases and discard them totally.

C. They may wonder at some of the rules that we take for granted today.

D. They may thing our current legal system and social customs are better than those in the 19th century.

35. What does the word “absurd" in the fourth line of the last paragraph mean?

A. intolerable B. ridiculous C. unbelievable D. unreasonable

Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage: