III. Cloze Test (20 Points)
Directions: Fill in each of the blanks in the following passages with one suitable word.  

Passage 1
It is on a Saturday afternoon on the Great Wall of China or on a Sunday morning in Beijing's Forbidden City that you see the most striking effect of the communist regime's "one-child" policy.
Here, among the    1    of local tourists surging from one viewpoint to the next, you notice little knots of adults standing in admiring, attentive semi-circles   2   a single child. Typically, there will be six of them   the parents and both sets of grandparents and the complacent  3    of their attention will look every inch the "little emperor" he (or she) is proclaimed to be.
But such indulgence    4    problems for Shen Yurong, principal of Guangmin, a showpiece kindergarten in central Beijing. "The one-child policy leads to individualism," she explains. "Because the children have no brothers or sisters, we have to teach them how to 5     and co-operate with others. They have to learn from the start to bond into a community, 6      they become aggressive or shy."
For a lesson in community bonding, you just have to watch Guangmin's 360 pupils, 7   two to six, performing their twice-daily exercise routine. Divided into classes, each   8   by three adults, the entire school assembles in the playground to the broadcast blare of jolly music.
Then, still with almost military precision, they march on the spot, do stretching exercises and run through a repertoire of kung fu movements. Finally, each class plays a few supervised games—   9   balls into baskets, running relay races and then it is back to the classroom, where they slid down quietly to carry out their allotted  10

Passage 2
English literature has extracted and emphasized one very splendid thing; you never hear of it in patriotic speeches or in books about race or nationality, but it is the great contribution of the English temperament 1     the best life of the world. So far as it can be defined, it may be called the humane use of caricature. It consists in calling a man ugly as a compliment. If we wish to appreciate   2  we must remember the part   3   by satire and epigram in the largest part of human literature. Almost everywhere laughter has been used as a lash; if we were told about a man's wig or wooden leg, it was   4  by an enemy. Men reminded a man maliciously of his bodily weakness, especially if it was   5   with his worldly power.
  6  , for instance, the case of two of the greatest riders and conquerors among the children of men. Julius Caesar was bald, and he could not   7  it all with his laurels. It' was always morally as well as physically his unprotected spot. His enemies could say: "You have   __8__Gaul, but you are bald. You have faced Pompey in arms and Cicero in argument, but   9   all that you are bald. "And he felt it himself, I think, for he was a vain man; the head of Caesar was like the   10   of Achilles.

IV. Reading Comprehension (20 Points)
Directions: Give a brief answer to each of the questions listed at the end of the following passage.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists —I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.
Dismissing, then, those pretty feminine phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility and sweet docility of manners, suppose to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex, and that secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone.
This is a rough sketch of my plan, and should I express my conviction with the energetic emotions that I feel whenever I think of the subject, the dictates of experience and reflection will be felt by some of my readers. Animated by this important object, I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style; I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for, wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall be employed about things, not word! And, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversation.
These pretty superlatives, dropping glibly from the tongue, vitiate the taste, and create a kind of sickly delicacy that turns away from simple unadorned truth; and a deluge of false sentiments and overstretched feelings, stifling the natural emotions of the heart, render the domestic pleasures insipid, that ought to sweeten the exercise of those severe duties, which educate a rational and immortal being for a nobler field of action.
The education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly, yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavor by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments: meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves—the only way women can rise in the world—by marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry they act as such children may be expected to act—they dress, they paint, and nickname God’s creatures. Surely these weak beings are only fit for a seraglio!—Can they be expected to govern a family with judgment, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world?
If then it can be fairly deduced from the present conduct of the sex, from the prevalent fondness for pleasure which takes place of ambition and those nobler passions that open and enlarge the soul: that the instruction which women have received has only tended, with the constitution of civil society, to render them insignificant objects of desire—mere propagators of fools! —If it can be proved that in aiming to accomplish them, without cultivating their understandings, they are taken out of their sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when their short-lived bloom of beauty is over. I presume that rational men will excuse me for endeavoring to persuade them to become more masculine and respectable.
Indeed the word masculine is only a bugbear: there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude, for their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength, must render them, in some degree, dependent on men in the various relations of life; but why should it be increased by prejudices that give a sex to virtue, and confound simple truths with sensual reveries?
Women are, in fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when I assert, that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantile airs that undermine esteem ever whilst they excite desire. Let men become more chaste and modest, and if women do not grow wiser in the same ratio, it will be clear that they have weaker understandings. It seems scarcely necessary to say, that I now speak of the sex in general. Many individuals have more sense than their male relatives; and, as nothing preponderates where there is a constant struggle for an equilibrium, without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.

Questions:
1. Why does the author urge women to reject their conventional image of weakness?
2. How does the author relate diction and style to the cause of women's rights?
3. With what details does the author convey her view on marriage?
4. According to the author, how does the education on of women both reflect and foster the concept of their frivolity and weakness?