國立清華大學 112 年 《英文》

Addressing the needs of health-care workers in the forefront of COVID-19 management is a high ____.

Violins, cameras, school desks, computer mice, can openers — these are just a few items that demonstrate how routinely ____ left-handers are in this world.

However, there is a sense that these changes will last. This ____ is drawn from the belief that President Samia has now fully consolidated her grip on the ruling party.

If you want to ____ the possibility of a cockroach infestation, clean your kitchen regularly.

Johnny cursed and ____ against the injustices of the system.

A continuation of chronic lateness may lead us to ____ your employment.

His ____ for detail leads him to examine the report multiple times for possible inconsistencies.

Dutch photographer Martijn van Oers had been ____ with the art of photography since he was a young boy. In particular, he felt drawn to old photographs.

Although some hip hop audiences have historically been more accepting of rappers of all backgrounds, in the more commercial, mainstream world, racial authenticity is still an ____ part of audience expectations.

To revive the housing sector, a raft of reforms in housing mortgage finance were implemented, ____ in the creation of a secondary mortgage market through the founding in 1938 of the Federal National Mortgage Association. These institutional reforms were later to play a vital role in financing the suburbanization of the United States after World War II.

Perhaps most notable were her efforts to bring about an end to violence in the Balkans, and she was crucial in push Clinton to intervene in Kosovo in 1999 to prevent a genocide against ethnic Muslims by former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. She was haunted by the earlier failure of the Clinton administration to end the genocide in Bosnia.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed with the need for humanitarian corridors to deliver aid and help civilians exit besieged Ukrainian cities, in the first apparent sign of progress in talks between the warring sides. The tentative agreement, reached in Belarus, came as Russian forces continued to surround and attack Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and the second-biggest city of Kharkiv.

The proclivity humans have towards plants is certainly not unique to the millennial generation: Houseplants is a concept that is believed to have originated in ancient Greece and Rome as early as 500 BC. After all, the first imagined paradise was the Garden of Eden.

In 1913, Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma City to Ida Millsap and Lewis Ellison, the latter of whom sadly died when Ellison was just three. In 1936, despite not having completed his music studies at Tuskegee University in Alabama and fully intended to return, Ellison headed for New York City to find work.

Watching television is part of the everyday life of the viewers. It is not, as is sometimes suggested, a separate activity undertaken in perfect quiet in comfortable surrounding.

When food is imported from countries with particular policies opposed by people in your country, you will be lobbied not to buy goods such as wine or apples from those countries, as did the case with the boycott of South African produce during the apartheid era.

Paradoxically, the more successful and long-lived Ukraine’s resistance is, the more the danger to NATO.

Was there to be a serious accident at one of Switzerland’s nuclear reactors, many of the radiation victims would be residents of other countries.

【題組共用題幹】

Putin embraces Lev Gumilev’s theory of passionarnost: every people has a distinct “bio-cosmic” life force. He believes Russia, a young people with “infinite genetic code,” has not yet reached its highest point. Putin also consults Ivan Ilyin’s Our Tasks, which depicts Western “imperialist neighbours” as seeking to dismember, control, dismantle, and ultimately make Russia disappear. This vision explains Putin’s punishment of Georgia in 2008, annexation of Crimea in 2014, prevention of Ukraine’s joining NATO by starting the Donbas conflict, and desire for confrontation with and victory over the West.

Based on the passage, it is most likely Putin would agree with which of the following statements about Gumilev’s theory on passionarnost?

【題組共用題幹】

Putin embraces Lev Gumilev’s theory of passionarnost: every people has a distinct “bio-cosmic” life force. He believes Russia, a young people with “infinite genetic code,” has not yet reached its highest point. Putin also consults Ivan Ilyin’s Our Tasks, which depicts Western “imperialist neighbours” as seeking to dismember, control, dismantle, and ultimately make Russia disappear. This vision explains Putin’s punishment of Georgia in 2008, annexation of Crimea in 2014, prevention of Ukraine’s joining NATO by starting the Donbas conflict, and desire for confrontation with and victory over the West.

What does “the dismemberment of Russia” mean?

【題組共用題幹】

Putin embraces Lev Gumilev’s theory of passionarnost: every people has a distinct “bio-cosmic” life force. He believes Russia, a young people with “infinite genetic code,” has not yet reached its highest point. Putin also consults Ivan Ilyin’s Our Tasks, which depicts Western “imperialist neighbours” as seeking to dismember, control, dismantle, and ultimately make Russia disappear. This vision explains Putin’s punishment of Georgia in 2008, annexation of Crimea in 2014, prevention of Ukraine’s joining NATO by starting the Donbas conflict, and desire for confrontation with and victory over the West.

Based on the passage, which of the following statements best describes Ivan Ilyin’s Our Tasks?

【題組共用題幹】

Putin embraces Lev Gumilev’s theory of passionarnost: every people has a distinct “bio-cosmic” life force. He believes Russia, a young people with “infinite genetic code,” has not yet reached its highest point. Putin also consults Ivan Ilyin’s Our Tasks, which depicts Western “imperialist neighbours” as seeking to dismember, control, dismantle, and ultimately make Russia disappear. This vision explains Putin’s punishment of Georgia in 2008, annexation of Crimea in 2014, prevention of Ukraine’s joining NATO by starting the Donbas conflict, and desire for confrontation with and victory over the West.

According to Ilyin, what would an imperialist neighbor attempt to do with Russia?

【題組共用題幹】

Putin embraces Lev Gumilev’s theory of passionarnost: every people has a distinct “bio-cosmic” life force. He believes Russia, a young people with “infinite genetic code,” has not yet reached its highest point. Putin also consults Ivan Ilyin’s Our Tasks, which depicts Western “imperialist neighbours” as seeking to dismember, control, dismantle, and ultimately make Russia disappear. This vision explains Putin’s punishment of Georgia in 2008, annexation of Crimea in 2014, prevention of Ukraine’s joining NATO by starting the Donbas conflict, and desire for confrontation with and victory over the West.

For Ilyin, the West can be hypocritical. What can be an example of this?

【題組共用題幹】

Putin embraces Lev Gumilev’s theory of passionarnost: every people has a distinct “bio-cosmic” life force. He believes Russia, a young people with “infinite genetic code,” has not yet reached its highest point. Putin also consults Ivan Ilyin’s Our Tasks, which depicts Western “imperialist neighbours” as seeking to dismember, control, dismantle, and ultimately make Russia disappear. This vision explains Putin’s punishment of Georgia in 2008, annexation of Crimea in 2014, prevention of Ukraine’s joining NATO by starting the Donbas conflict, and desire for confrontation with and victory over the West.

According to the author, why did Putin punish Georgia?

【題組共用題幹】

China's post-Cold War leaders, having compulsively studied the Soviet example, sought to avoid repeating it by transforming Marxism into consumer capitalism without at the same time allowing democracy. They thereby flipped what they saw as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's greatest error: permitting democracy without ensuring prosperity. This latest "rectification of names" - the ancient Chinese procedure of conforming names to shifting realities - seemed until recently to have succeeded. The Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's post-Mao pro-market reforms solidified support for the regime and made China a model for much of the rest of the world. Xi, on taking power, was widely expected to continue along that path.

But he hasn't. Instead, Xi is cutting off access to the outside world, defying international legal norms, and encouraging "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy, none of which seems calculated to win or retain allies. At home, he is enforcing orthodoxy, whitewashing history, and oppressing minorities in ways defunct Russian and Chinese emperors might have applauded. Most significant, he has sought to secure these reversals by abolishing his own term limits.

Hence our second unknown: Why is Xi undoing the reforms, while abandoning the diplomatic subtlety, that allowed China's rise in the first place? Perhaps he fears the risks of his own retirement, even though these mount with each rival he imprisons or purges. Perhaps he has realized that innovation requires but may also inspire spontaneity within his country. Perhaps he worries that increasingly hostile international rivals won't allow him unlimited time to achieve his aims. Perhaps he sees the prevailing concept of world order itself as at odds with a mandate from Heaven, Marx, or Mao.

Or it could be that Xi envisions a world order with authoritarianism at its core and with China at its center. Technology, he may expect, will make human consciousness as transparent as satellites made the earth's surface during the Cold War. China, he may assume, will never alienate its foreign friends. Expectations within China, he may suppose, will never find reasons not to rise. And Xi, as he ages, will gain in the wisdom, energy, and attentiveness to detail that only he, as supreme leader, can trust himself to provide.

But if Xi really believes all of this, then he's already losing sight of the gaps between promises and performance that have long been Catch-22s for authoritarian regimes. For if, like Gorbachev's predecessors did, you ignore such fissures, they'll only worsen. But if, like Gorbachev himself, you acknowledge them, you'll undermine the claim to infallibility on which legitimacy in an autocracy must rest. That is why graceful exits by authoritarians have been so rare.

What did China’s post-Cold War leaders learn from the Soviet political history?

【題組共用題幹】

China's post-Cold War leaders, having compulsively studied the Soviet example, sought to avoid repeating it by transforming Marxism into consumer capitalism without at the same time allowing democracy. They thereby flipped what they saw as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's greatest error: permitting democracy without ensuring prosperity. This latest "rectification of names" - the ancient Chinese procedure of conforming names to shifting realities - seemed until recently to have succeeded. The Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's post-Mao pro-market reforms solidified support for the regime and made China a model for much of the rest of the world. Xi, on taking power, was widely expected to continue along that path.

But he hasn't. Instead, Xi is cutting off access to the outside world, defying international legal norms, and encouraging "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy, none of which seems calculated to win or retain allies. At home, he is enforcing orthodoxy, whitewashing history, and oppressing minorities in ways defunct Russian and Chinese emperors might have applauded. Most significant, he has sought to secure these reversals by abolishing his own term limits.

Hence our second unknown: Why is Xi undoing the reforms, while abandoning the diplomatic subtlety, that allowed China's rise in the first place? Perhaps he fears the risks of his own retirement, even though these mount with each rival he imprisons or purges. Perhaps he has realized that innovation requires but may also inspire spontaneity within his country. Perhaps he worries that increasingly hostile international rivals won't allow him unlimited time to achieve his aims. Perhaps he sees the prevailing concept of world order itself as at odds with a mandate from Heaven, Marx, or Mao.

Or it could be that Xi envisions a world order with authoritarianism at its core and with China at its center. Technology, he may expect, will make human consciousness as transparent as satellites made the earth's surface during the Cold War. China, he may assume, will never alienate its foreign friends. Expectations within China, he may suppose, will never find reasons not to rise. And Xi, as he ages, will gain in the wisdom, energy, and attentiveness to detail that only he, as supreme leader, can trust himself to provide.

But if Xi really believes all of this, then he's already losing sight of the gaps between promises and performance that have long been Catch-22s for authoritarian regimes. For if, like Gorbachev's predecessors did, you ignore such fissures, they'll only worsen. But if, like Gorbachev himself, you acknowledge them, you'll undermine the claim to infallibility on which legitimacy in an autocracy must rest. That is why graceful exits by authoritarians have been so rare.

What would be an example of practicing the ancient Chinese procedure of "Rectification of names" in the context of this article?

【題組共用題幹】

China's post-Cold War leaders, having compulsively studied the Soviet example, sought to avoid repeating it by transforming Marxism into consumer capitalism without at the same time allowing democracy. They thereby flipped what they saw as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's greatest error: permitting democracy without ensuring prosperity. This latest "rectification of names" - the ancient Chinese procedure of conforming names to shifting realities - seemed until recently to have succeeded. The Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's post-Mao pro-market reforms solidified support for the regime and made China a model for much of the rest of the world. Xi, on taking power, was widely expected to continue along that path.

But he hasn't. Instead, Xi is cutting off access to the outside world, defying international legal norms, and encouraging "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy, none of which seems calculated to win or retain allies. At home, he is enforcing orthodoxy, whitewashing history, and oppressing minorities in ways defunct Russian and Chinese emperors might have applauded. Most significant, he has sought to secure these reversals by abolishing his own term limits.

Hence our second unknown: Why is Xi undoing the reforms, while abandoning the diplomatic subtlety, that allowed China's rise in the first place? Perhaps he fears the risks of his own retirement, even though these mount with each rival he imprisons or purges. Perhaps he has realized that innovation requires but may also inspire spontaneity within his country. Perhaps he worries that increasingly hostile international rivals won't allow him unlimited time to achieve his aims. Perhaps he sees the prevailing concept of world order itself as at odds with a mandate from Heaven, Marx, or Mao.

Or it could be that Xi envisions a world order with authoritarianism at its core and with China at its center. Technology, he may expect, will make human consciousness as transparent as satellites made the earth's surface during the Cold War. China, he may assume, will never alienate its foreign friends. Expectations within China, he may suppose, will never find reasons not to rise. And Xi, as he ages, will gain in the wisdom, energy, and attentiveness to detail that only he, as supreme leader, can trust himself to provide.

But if Xi really believes all of this, then he's already losing sight of the gaps between promises and performance that have long been Catch-22s for authoritarian regimes. For if, like Gorbachev's predecessors did, you ignore such fissures, they'll only worsen. But if, like Gorbachev himself, you acknowledge them, you'll undermine the claim to infallibility on which legitimacy in an autocracy must rest. That is why graceful exits by authoritarians have been so rare.

What did Xi do that defied expectations?

【題組共用題幹】

China's post-Cold War leaders, having compulsively studied the Soviet example, sought to avoid repeating it by transforming Marxism into consumer capitalism without at the same time allowing democracy. They thereby flipped what they saw as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's greatest error: permitting democracy without ensuring prosperity. This latest "rectification of names" - the ancient Chinese procedure of conforming names to shifting realities - seemed until recently to have succeeded. The Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's post-Mao pro-market reforms solidified support for the regime and made China a model for much of the rest of the world. Xi, on taking power, was widely expected to continue along that path.

But he hasn't. Instead, Xi is cutting off access to the outside world, defying international legal norms, and encouraging "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy, none of which seems calculated to win or retain allies. At home, he is enforcing orthodoxy, whitewashing history, and oppressing minorities in ways defunct Russian and Chinese emperors might have applauded. Most significant, he has sought to secure these reversals by abolishing his own term limits.

Hence our second unknown: Why is Xi undoing the reforms, while abandoning the diplomatic subtlety, that allowed China's rise in the first place? Perhaps he fears the risks of his own retirement, even though these mount with each rival he imprisons or purges. Perhaps he has realized that innovation requires but may also inspire spontaneity within his country. Perhaps he worries that increasingly hostile international rivals won't allow him unlimited time to achieve his aims. Perhaps he sees the prevailing concept of world order itself as at odds with a mandate from Heaven, Marx, or Mao.

Or it could be that Xi envisions a world order with authoritarianism at its core and with China at its center. Technology, he may expect, will make human consciousness as transparent as satellites made the earth's surface during the Cold War. China, he may assume, will never alienate its foreign friends. Expectations within China, he may suppose, will never find reasons not to rise. And Xi, as he ages, will gain in the wisdom, energy, and attentiveness to detail that only he, as supreme leader, can trust himself to provide.

But if Xi really believes all of this, then he's already losing sight of the gaps between promises and performance that have long been Catch-22s for authoritarian regimes. For if, like Gorbachev's predecessors did, you ignore such fissures, they'll only worsen. But if, like Gorbachev himself, you acknowledge them, you'll undermine the claim to infallibility on which legitimacy in an autocracy must rest. That is why graceful exits by authoritarians have been so rare.

Based on the passage, which of the following statements does NOT agree with the author’s observation of the Xi administration?

【題組共用題幹】

China's post-Cold War leaders, having compulsively studied the Soviet example, sought to avoid repeating it by transforming Marxism into consumer capitalism without at the same time allowing democracy. They thereby flipped what they saw as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's greatest error: permitting democracy without ensuring prosperity. This latest "rectification of names" - the ancient Chinese procedure of conforming names to shifting realities - seemed until recently to have succeeded. The Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's post-Mao pro-market reforms solidified support for the regime and made China a model for much of the rest of the world. Xi, on taking power, was widely expected to continue along that path.

But he hasn't. Instead, Xi is cutting off access to the outside world, defying international legal norms, and encouraging "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy, none of which seems calculated to win or retain allies. At home, he is enforcing orthodoxy, whitewashing history, and oppressing minorities in ways defunct Russian and Chinese emperors might have applauded. Most significant, he has sought to secure these reversals by abolishing his own term limits.

Hence our second unknown: Why is Xi undoing the reforms, while abandoning the diplomatic subtlety, that allowed China's rise in the first place? Perhaps he fears the risks of his own retirement, even though these mount with each rival he imprisons or purges. Perhaps he has realized that innovation requires but may also inspire spontaneity within his country. Perhaps he worries that increasingly hostile international rivals won't allow him unlimited time to achieve his aims. Perhaps he sees the prevailing concept of world order itself as at odds with a mandate from Heaven, Marx, or Mao.

Or it could be that Xi envisions a world order with authoritarianism at its core and with China at its center. Technology, he may expect, will make human consciousness as transparent as satellites made the earth's surface during the Cold War. China, he may assume, will never alienate its foreign friends. Expectations within China, he may suppose, will never find reasons not to rise. And Xi, as he ages, will gain in the wisdom, energy, and attentiveness to detail that only he, as supreme leader, can trust himself to provide.

But if Xi really believes all of this, then he's already losing sight of the gaps between promises and performance that have long been Catch-22s for authoritarian regimes. For if, like Gorbachev's predecessors did, you ignore such fissures, they'll only worsen. But if, like Gorbachev himself, you acknowledge them, you'll undermine the claim to infallibility on which legitimacy in an autocracy must rest. That is why graceful exits by authoritarians have been so rare.

What does “Catch-22s” in the last paragraph mean?

【題組共用題幹】

China's post-Cold War leaders, having compulsively studied the Soviet example, sought to avoid repeating it by transforming Marxism into consumer capitalism without at the same time allowing democracy. They thereby flipped what they saw as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's greatest error: permitting democracy without ensuring prosperity. This latest "rectification of names" - the ancient Chinese procedure of conforming names to shifting realities - seemed until recently to have succeeded. The Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's post-Mao pro-market reforms solidified support for the regime and made China a model for much of the rest of the world. Xi, on taking power, was widely expected to continue along that path.

But he hasn't. Instead, Xi is cutting off access to the outside world, defying international legal norms, and encouraging "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy, none of which seems calculated to win or retain allies. At home, he is enforcing orthodoxy, whitewashing history, and oppressing minorities in ways defunct Russian and Chinese emperors might have applauded. Most significant, he has sought to secure these reversals by abolishing his own term limits.

Hence our second unknown: Why is Xi undoing the reforms, while abandoning the diplomatic subtlety, that allowed China's rise in the first place? Perhaps he fears the risks of his own retirement, even though these mount with each rival he imprisons or purges. Perhaps he has realized that innovation requires but may also inspire spontaneity within his country. Perhaps he worries that increasingly hostile international rivals won't allow him unlimited time to achieve his aims. Perhaps he sees the prevailing concept of world order itself as at odds with a mandate from Heaven, Marx, or Mao.

Or it could be that Xi envisions a world order with authoritarianism at its core and with China at its center. Technology, he may expect, will make human consciousness as transparent as satellites made the earth's surface during the Cold War. China, he may assume, will never alienate its foreign friends. Expectations within China, he may suppose, will never find reasons not to rise. And Xi, as he ages, will gain in the wisdom, energy, and attentiveness to detail that only he, as supreme leader, can trust himself to provide.

But if Xi really believes all of this, then he's already losing sight of the gaps between promises and performance that have long been Catch-22s for authoritarian regimes. For if, like Gorbachev's predecessors did, you ignore such fissures, they'll only worsen. But if, like Gorbachev himself, you acknowledge them, you'll undermine the claim to infallibility on which legitimacy in an autocracy must rest. That is why graceful exits by authoritarians have been so rare.

According to the author, which of the following is likely to be what Xi expects to achieve by undoing Deng Xiaoping’s reforms?

【題組共用題幹】

We live in a superficial, media-driven culture that often seems uncomfortable with true depths of feeling. Indeed, it seems as if our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away. We want to divide it into recognizable stages so that grief can be labeled, tamed, and put behind us. But poets have always celebrated grief as one of the deepest human emotions. To grieve is to lament, to let sorrow inhabit one’s very being.

Robert Frost liked to distinguish between grievances (complaints) and griefs (sorrows). He even suggested that grievances, which are propagandistic, should be restricted to prose, “leaving poetry free to go its way in tears.” Implicit in poetry is the notion that we are deepened by heartbreaks, that we are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish—to let others vanish—without leaving a verbal record. Poetry is a stubborn art. The poet is one who will not be reconciled, who is determined to leave trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into the faithful nuances of art.

I was initiated into the poetry of grief—of raw, heroic, aboriginal grief—on a windy autumnal morning in late October 1968. I was eighteen years old. I knew I had found what I was unknowingly seeking on the day my freshman humanities teacher—a petite woman with an immense vocabulary, the only person I’d ever met who spoke in perfectly formed sentences—stood up in class and started talking about Achilles’s desperate response to the death of his friend Patroclus. I felt something obscure open inside me, I recognized some unknown, some unassuaged rage of feeling, a frenzied internal sobbing, a delirium of grief. I looked out the window and saw the mad leaves swirling and falling everywhere. I was transported.

Here is the passage in Richmond Lattimore’s translation. It is from Book 18 of The Iliad. Nestor’s son Antilochus has just given Achilles the message that his closest friend, his trusted ally and brother-in-arms, had been killed wearing Achilles’s own armor. Now enemies were fighting over Patroclus’s naked body:

He spoke, and the black cloud of sorrow closed on Achilles. In both hands he caught up the grimy dust, and poured it over his head and face, and fouled his handsome countenance, and the black ashes were scattered over his immortal tunic. And he himself, mightily in his might, in the dust lay at length, and took and tore at his hair with his hands, and defiled it.

My teacher must have gone on to talk about Achilles’s feelings of guilt and shame, his deep sense of responsibility over his friend’s death. This is a pivotal incident in The Iliad because it triggers Achilles’s reentry into battle and therefore assures the destruction of Troy. It’s the only way to account for his uncharacteristically savage revenge on Hector. But I couldn’t follow closely what she was saying because some part of my mind was stuck on the primal image of Achilles smearing his face with dirt and tearing out his hair. I recognized the image from somewhere…

Which of the following is true according to the author of this passage?

【題組共用題幹】

We live in a superficial, media-driven culture that often seems uncomfortable with true depths of feeling. Indeed, it seems as if our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away. We want to divide it into recognizable stages so that grief can be labeled, tamed, and put behind us. But poets have always celebrated grief as one of the deepest human emotions. To grieve is to lament, to let sorrow inhabit one’s very being.

Robert Frost liked to distinguish between grievances (complaints) and griefs (sorrows). He even suggested that grievances, which are propagandistic, should be restricted to prose, “leaving poetry free to go its way in tears.” Implicit in poetry is the notion that we are deepened by heartbreaks, that we are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish—to let others vanish—without leaving a verbal record. Poetry is a stubborn art. The poet is one who will not be reconciled, who is determined to leave trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into the faithful nuances of art.

I was initiated into the poetry of grief—of raw, heroic, aboriginal grief—on a windy autumnal morning in late October 1968. I was eighteen years old. I knew I had found what I was unknowingly seeking on the day my freshman humanities teacher—a petite woman with an immense vocabulary, the only person I’d ever met who spoke in perfectly formed sentences—stood up in class and started talking about Achilles’s desperate response to the death of his friend Patroclus. I felt something obscure open inside me, I recognized some unknown, some unassuaged rage of feeling, a frenzied internal sobbing, a delirium of grief. I looked out the window and saw the mad leaves swirling and falling everywhere. I was transported.

Here is the passage in Richmond Lattimore’s translation. It is from Book 18 of The Iliad. Nestor’s son Antilochus has just given Achilles the message that his closest friend, his trusted ally and brother-in-arms, had been killed wearing Achilles’s own armor. Now enemies were fighting over Patroclus’s naked body:

He spoke, and the black cloud of sorrow closed on Achilles. In both hands he caught up the grimy dust, and poured it over his head and face, and fouled his handsome countenance, and the black ashes were scattered over his immortal tunic. And he himself, mightily in his might, in the dust lay at length, and took and tore at his hair with his hands, and defiled it.

My teacher must have gone on to talk about Achilles’s feelings of guilt and shame, his deep sense of responsibility over his friend’s death. This is a pivotal incident in The Iliad because it triggers Achilles’s reentry into battle and therefore assures the destruction of Troy. It’s the only way to account for his uncharacteristically savage revenge on Hector. But I couldn’t follow closely what she was saying because some part of my mind was stuck on the primal image of Achilles smearing his face with dirt and tearing out his hair. I recognized the image from somewhere…

Which in the following is most likely the reason why the author declares that poetry is a stubborn art in the passage?

【題組共用題幹】

We live in a superficial, media-driven culture that often seems uncomfortable with true depths of feeling. Indeed, it seems as if our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away. We want to divide it into recognizable stages so that grief can be labeled, tamed, and put behind us. But poets have always celebrated grief as one of the deepest human emotions. To grieve is to lament, to let sorrow inhabit one’s very being.

Robert Frost liked to distinguish between grievances (complaints) and griefs (sorrows). He even suggested that grievances, which are propagandistic, should be restricted to prose, “leaving poetry free to go its way in tears.” Implicit in poetry is the notion that we are deepened by heartbreaks, that we are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish—to let others vanish—without leaving a verbal record. Poetry is a stubborn art. The poet is one who will not be reconciled, who is determined to leave trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into the faithful nuances of art.

I was initiated into the poetry of grief—of raw, heroic, aboriginal grief—on a windy autumnal morning in late October 1968. I was eighteen years old. I knew I had found what I was unknowingly seeking on the day my freshman humanities teacher—a petite woman with an immense vocabulary, the only person I’d ever met who spoke in perfectly formed sentences—stood up in class and started talking about Achilles’s desperate response to the death of his friend Patroclus. I felt something obscure open inside me, I recognized some unknown, some unassuaged rage of feeling, a frenzied internal sobbing, a delirium of grief. I looked out the window and saw the mad leaves swirling and falling everywhere. I was transported.

Here is the passage in Richmond Lattimore’s translation. It is from Book 18 of The Iliad. Nestor’s son Antilochus has just given Achilles the message that his closest friend, his trusted ally and brother-in-arms, had been killed wearing Achilles’s own armor. Now enemies were fighting over Patroclus’s naked body:

He spoke, and the black cloud of sorrow closed on Achilles. In both hands he caught up the grimy dust, and poured it over his head and face, and fouled his handsome countenance, and the black ashes were scattered over his immortal tunic. And he himself, mightily in his might, in the dust lay at length, and took and tore at his hair with his hands, and defiled it.

My teacher must have gone on to talk about Achilles’s feelings of guilt and shame, his deep sense of responsibility over his friend’s death. This is a pivotal incident in The Iliad because it triggers Achilles’s reentry into battle and therefore assures the destruction of Troy. It’s the only way to account for his uncharacteristically savage revenge on Hector. But I couldn’t follow closely what she was saying because some part of my mind was stuck on the primal image of Achilles smearing his face with dirt and tearing out his hair. I recognized the image from somewhere…

Based upon the passage, which of the following statements does NOT agree with the author’s opinion of a media-driven culture?

【題組共用題幹】

We live in a superficial, media-driven culture that often seems uncomfortable with true depths of feeling. Indeed, it seems as if our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away. We want to divide it into recognizable stages so that grief can be labeled, tamed, and put behind us. But poets have always celebrated grief as one of the deepest human emotions. To grieve is to lament, to let sorrow inhabit one’s very being.

Robert Frost liked to distinguish between grievances (complaints) and griefs (sorrows). He even suggested that grievances, which are propagandistic, should be restricted to prose, “leaving poetry free to go its way in tears.” Implicit in poetry is the notion that we are deepened by heartbreaks, that we are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish—to let others vanish—without leaving a verbal record. Poetry is a stubborn art. The poet is one who will not be reconciled, who is determined to leave trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into the faithful nuances of art.

I was initiated into the poetry of grief—of raw, heroic, aboriginal grief—on a windy autumnal morning in late October 1968. I was eighteen years old. I knew I had found what I was unknowingly seeking on the day my freshman humanities teacher—a petite woman with an immense vocabulary, the only person I’d ever met who spoke in perfectly formed sentences—stood up in class and started talking about Achilles’s desperate response to the death of his friend Patroclus. I felt something obscure open inside me, I recognized some unknown, some unassuaged rage of feeling, a frenzied internal sobbing, a delirium of grief. I looked out the window and saw the mad leaves swirling and falling everywhere. I was transported.

Here is the passage in Richmond Lattimore’s translation. It is from Book 18 of The Iliad. Nestor’s son Antilochus has just given Achilles the message that his closest friend, his trusted ally and brother-in-arms, had been killed wearing Achilles’s own armor. Now enemies were fighting over Patroclus’s naked body:

He spoke, and the black cloud of sorrow closed on Achilles. In both hands he caught up the grimy dust, and poured it over his head and face, and fouled his handsome countenance, and the black ashes were scattered over his immortal tunic. And he himself, mightily in his might, in the dust lay at length, and took and tore at his hair with his hands, and defiled it.

My teacher must have gone on to talk about Achilles’s feelings of guilt and shame, his deep sense of responsibility over his friend’s death. This is a pivotal incident in The Iliad because it triggers Achilles’s reentry into battle and therefore assures the destruction of Troy. It’s the only way to account for his uncharacteristically savage revenge on Hector. But I couldn’t follow closely what she was saying because some part of my mind was stuck on the primal image of Achilles smearing his face with dirt and tearing out his hair. I recognized the image from somewhere…

Which of the following is the most likely reason why the author, in the third paragraph, relates his experience of studying poetry on a windy autumnal morning in late October, 1968?

【題組共用題幹】

We live in a superficial, media-driven culture that often seems uncomfortable with true depths of feeling. Indeed, it seems as if our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away. We want to divide it into recognizable stages so that grief can be labeled, tamed, and put behind us. But poets have always celebrated grief as one of the deepest human emotions. To grieve is to lament, to let sorrow inhabit one’s very being.

Robert Frost liked to distinguish between grievances (complaints) and griefs (sorrows). He even suggested that grievances, which are propagandistic, should be restricted to prose, “leaving poetry free to go its way in tears.” Implicit in poetry is the notion that we are deepened by heartbreaks, that we are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish—to let others vanish—without leaving a verbal record. Poetry is a stubborn art. The poet is one who will not be reconciled, who is determined to leave trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into the faithful nuances of art.

I was initiated into the poetry of grief—of raw, heroic, aboriginal grief—on a windy autumnal morning in late October 1968. I was eighteen years old. I knew I had found what I was unknowingly seeking on the day my freshman humanities teacher—a petite woman with an immense vocabulary, the only person I’d ever met who spoke in perfectly formed sentences—stood up in class and started talking about Achilles’s desperate response to the death of his friend Patroclus. I felt something obscure open inside me, I recognized some unknown, some unassuaged rage of feeling, a frenzied internal sobbing, a delirium of grief. I looked out the window and saw the mad leaves swirling and falling everywhere. I was transported.

Here is the passage in Richmond Lattimore’s translation. It is from Book 18 of The Iliad. Nestor’s son Antilochus has just given Achilles the message that his closest friend, his trusted ally and brother-in-arms, had been killed wearing Achilles’s own armor. Now enemies were fighting over Patroclus’s naked body:

He spoke, and the black cloud of sorrow closed on Achilles. In both hands he caught up the grimy dust, and poured it over his head and face, and fouled his handsome countenance, and the black ashes were scattered over his immortal tunic. And he himself, mightily in his might, in the dust lay at length, and took and tore at his hair with his hands, and defiled it.

My teacher must have gone on to talk about Achilles’s feelings of guilt and shame, his deep sense of responsibility over his friend’s death. This is a pivotal incident in The Iliad because it triggers Achilles’s reentry into battle and therefore assures the destruction of Troy. It’s the only way to account for his uncharacteristically savage revenge on Hector. But I couldn’t follow closely what she was saying because some part of my mind was stuck on the primal image of Achilles smearing his face with dirt and tearing out his hair. I recognized the image from somewhere…

In the quote from Book 18 of The Iliad,

【題組共用題幹】

We live in a superficial, media-driven culture that often seems uncomfortable with true depths of feeling. Indeed, it seems as if our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away. We want to divide it into recognizable stages so that grief can be labeled, tamed, and put behind us. But poets have always celebrated grief as one of the deepest human emotions. To grieve is to lament, to let sorrow inhabit one’s very being.

Robert Frost liked to distinguish between grievances (complaints) and griefs (sorrows). He even suggested that grievances, which are propagandistic, should be restricted to prose, “leaving poetry free to go its way in tears.” Implicit in poetry is the notion that we are deepened by heartbreaks, that we are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish—to let others vanish—without leaving a verbal record. Poetry is a stubborn art. The poet is one who will not be reconciled, who is determined to leave trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into the faithful nuances of art.

I was initiated into the poetry of grief—of raw, heroic, aboriginal grief—on a windy autumnal morning in late October 1968. I was eighteen years old. I knew I had found what I was unknowingly seeking on the day my freshman humanities teacher—a petite woman with an immense vocabulary, the only person I’d ever met who spoke in perfectly formed sentences—stood up in class and started talking about Achilles’s desperate response to the death of his friend Patroclus. I felt something obscure open inside me, I recognized some unknown, some unassuaged rage of feeling, a frenzied internal sobbing, a delirium of grief. I looked out the window and saw the mad leaves swirling and falling everywhere. I was transported.

Here is the passage in Richmond Lattimore’s translation. It is from Book 18 of The Iliad. Nestor’s son Antilochus has just given Achilles the message that his closest friend, his trusted ally and brother-in-arms, had been killed wearing Achilles’s own armor. Now enemies were fighting over Patroclus’s naked body:

He spoke, and the black cloud of sorrow closed on Achilles. In both hands he caught up the grimy dust, and poured it over his head and face, and fouled his handsome countenance, and the black ashes were scattered over his immortal tunic. And he himself, mightily in his might, in the dust lay at length, and took and tore at his hair with his hands, and defiled it.

My teacher must have gone on to talk about Achilles’s feelings of guilt and shame, his deep sense of responsibility over his friend’s death. This is a pivotal incident in The Iliad because it triggers Achilles’s reentry into battle and therefore assures the destruction of Troy. It’s the only way to account for his uncharacteristically savage revenge on Hector. But I couldn’t follow closely what she was saying because some part of my mind was stuck on the primal image of Achilles smearing his face with dirt and tearing out his hair. I recognized the image from somewhere…

In the second paragraph, the author quotes Robert Frost in order to

【題組共用題幹】

Reading 4:

States have a long history. In the ancient world clearly defined political institutions exerted control over city-states. In The Peloponnesian Wars, for example, Thucydides describes the conflicts that took place between the ancient Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta. However, these types of ancient structures differ from the modern state. They were generally confined to the city and had no clearly defined territory, and lacked the highly institutionalized bureaucracies of the modern state. Indeed, the citizen-territory-state nexus of the modern state system, defined by both its internal authority vis-à-vis the population and its external authority, defined by states’ mutual recognition, is a creation of the seventeenth century and emerged within a European context.

Medieval Europe was characterized by feudalism, which in its most basic form can be understood as the granting of land in return for military service. The land-owning nobility would provide land and property rights to people in exchange for allegiance and security. In this context, different monarchs or aristocrats would control different areas of land and society. Within the Holy Roman Empire, religion played an important role in maintaining these structures. Each prince or nobleman would have the right to determine the religion of his own domain, defining its own religious denomination, and often basing its alliances with other territories mainly upon commonality of this denomination.

Over time, the rise of powerful monarchies with central bureaucracies gave a number of countries the characteristics of the modern state. The monarchies of England, France, the Netherlands, and Spain, for example, grew powerful enough to raise armies and to exercise internal authority through the nobility that they controlled. In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg allowed the monarchies in different areas to define themselves as Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist. This laid the groundwork for the subsequent Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which is commonly regarded as heralding the birth of the modern sovereign state. The Peace of Westphalia initiated a new order in Europe based on the concept of national sovereignty. For the first time, it created clearly defined internal political boundaries within Europe and brought about the mutual recognition of different monarchies’ right to define their own religious and political choices within their territory, superseding the feudal society of the Middle Ages.

Gradually, the idea of the nation-state evolved. In a European context, centralized states began to develop the bureaucratic mechanisms for identifying their populations, raising taxation, raising armies through conscription, and holding the monopoly of violence on their territories. Ideologically, nationalism began to emerge as a means to legitimate the modern nation-state. The emergence of inventions such as the flag and the printing press raised awareness of the nation-state, enabling people to develop a sense of shared identity and allegiance. With the rise of nationalism, new states were created through the process of unification that took place in states such as Germany and Italy.

Here are three statements concerning the Ancient Greek city-states:

I. There were precise delineations of the areas of land controlled by the city-states.

II. Compared to the modern state system, the city-states possessed highly institutionalized bureaucracies.

III. The record of the conflicts between Athens and Sparta in The Peloponnesian Wars indicated that the city-states were controlled by well-established political institutions.

Based on the passage we read,

【題組共用題幹】

Reading 4:

States have a long history. In the ancient world clearly defined political institutions exerted control over city-states. In The Peloponnesian Wars, for example, Thucydides describes the conflicts that took place between the ancient Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta. However, these types of ancient structures differ from the modern state. They were generally confined to the city and had no clearly defined territory, and lacked the highly institutionalized bureaucracies of the modern state. Indeed, the citizen-territory-state nexus of the modern state system, defined by both its internal authority vis-à-vis the population and its external authority, defined by states’ mutual recognition, is a creation of the seventeenth century and emerged within a European context.

Medieval Europe was characterized by feudalism, which in its most basic form can be understood as the granting of land in return for military service. The land-owning nobility would provide land and property rights to people in exchange for allegiance and security. In this context, different monarchs or aristocrats would control different areas of land and society. Within the Holy Roman Empire, religion played an important role in maintaining these structures. Each prince or nobleman would have the right to determine the religion of his own domain, defining its own religious denomination, and often basing its alliances with other territories mainly upon commonality of this denomination.

Over time, the rise of powerful monarchies with central bureaucracies gave a number of countries the characteristics of the modern state. The monarchies of England, France, the Netherlands, and Spain, for example, grew powerful enough to raise armies and to exercise internal authority through the nobility that they controlled. In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg allowed the monarchies in different areas to define themselves as Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist. This laid the groundwork for the subsequent Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which is commonly regarded as heralding the birth of the modern sovereign state. The Peace of Westphalia initiated a new order in Europe based on the concept of national sovereignty. For the first time, it created clearly defined internal political boundaries within Europe and brought about the mutual recognition of different monarchies’ right to define their own religious and political choices within their territory, superseding the feudal society of the Middle Ages.

Gradually, the idea of the nation-state evolved. In a European context, centralized states began to develop the bureaucratic mechanisms for identifying their populations, raising taxation, raising armies through conscription, and holding the monopoly of violence on their territories. Ideologically, nationalism began to emerge as a means to legitimate the modern nation-state. The emergence of inventions such as the flag and the printing press raised awareness of the nation-state, enabling people to develop a sense of shared identity and allegiance. With the rise of nationalism, new states were created through the process of unification that took place in states such as Germany and Italy.

Which of the following titles could best indicate the content of this passage?

【題組共用題幹】

populations, raising taxation, raising armies through conscription, and holding the monopoly of violence on their territories. Ideologically, nationalism began to emerge as a means to legitimate the modern nation-state. The emergence of inventions such as the flag and the printing press raised awareness of the nation-state, enabling people to develop a sense of shared identity and allegiance. With the rise of nationalism, new states were created through the process of unification that took place in states such as Germany and Italy.

Which of the following is INCORRECT based on the information given in the passage?

【題組共用題幹】

populations, raising taxation, raising armies through conscription, and holding the monopoly of violence on their territories. Ideologically, nationalism began to emerge as a means to legitimate the modern nation-state. The emergence of inventions such as the flag and the printing press raised awareness of the nation-state, enabling people to develop a sense of shared identity and allegiance. With the rise of nationalism, new states were created through the process of unification that took place in states such as Germany and Italy.

In which century was the modern state system inaugurated?

【題組共用題幹】

populations, raising taxation, raising armies through conscription, and holding the monopoly of violence on their territories. Ideologically, nationalism began to emerge as a means to legitimate the modern nation-state. The emergence of inventions such as the flag and the printing press raised awareness of the nation-state, enabling people to develop a sense of shared identity and allegiance. With the rise of nationalism, new states were created through the process of unification that took place in states such as Germany and Italy.

Which of the following has NOTHING to do with nationalism?

【題組共用題幹】

populations, raising taxation, raising armies through conscription, and holding the monopoly of violence on their territories. Ideologically, nationalism began to emerge as a means to legitimate the modern nation-state. The emergence of inventions such as the flag and the printing press raised awareness of the nation-state, enabling people to develop a sense of shared identity and allegiance. With the rise of nationalism, new states were created through the process of unification that took place in states such as Germany and Italy.

In the last paragraph, the author writes, “In a European context, centralized states began to develop the bureaucratic mechanisms for identifying their populations, raising taxation, raising armies through conscription, and holding the monopoly of violence on their territories.” Here, “holding the monopoly of violence on their territories” means the centralized states

【題組共用題幹】

Reading 5

Many of us can still remember when the news used to be a pleasant distraction from everyday life, the desk-bound office procrastinator’s preferred form of escapism. It is remarkable how rapidly things have changed. More and more, the news is not a source of escapism, but the thing one yearns to escape. This feeling represents a new and acute phase of a long-term historical shift: we used to live in a world in which information was scarce, but now information is essentially limitless, and what is scarce is the supply of attention.

As advances in technology made it easier to distribute news—and more news providers began to compete for readers—a subtle inversion began: the reader’s attention, not information, became the truly valuable commodity. In an attentional arms race, every news provider—and ultimately, every news story—competes against all others to worm its way into consumers’ minds. Beginning in the 19th century, entrepreneurs such as Benjamin Day, the founding publisher of the New York Sun, hit upon a revolutionary business model: sell a paper for less than it cost to produce, pack it with lurid stories, then make your money selling space to advertisers, who were effectively buying access to readers’ attention. This naturally encouraged exaggeration and fabrication. And as news comes to dominate public consciousness, extreme, lurid and even false stories come to dominate the news. After all, the commercial imperatives don’t even necessarily require a story to be true, so long as it is maximally compelling: fake news is not an aberration from, but rather the logical conclusion to, a media economy “optimised for engagement.”

It’s worth stepping back to notice how strange it is, considering the underlying purpose of news, to spend this much of our time thinking about it. If our interest in news has evolutionary origins, that’s because there are obvious survival advantages in staying aware of local and immediate threats to one’s own life and tribe. One major achievement of civilisation is that we’ve expanded our capacity for caring to include news that doesn’t affect us personally, but where we might be able to make a difference, whether by voting or volunteering or donating. But the modern attention economy exploits both these urges, not to help us stay abreast of threats, or improve the lives of others, but to generate profits for the attention merchants. So it pummels us ceaselessly with incidents, regardless of whether it truly matters, and with human suffering, regardless of whether it’s in our power to relieve it. The belief that we’re morally obliged to stay plugged in—that this level of time commitment and emotional investment is the only way to stay informed about the state of the world—begins to look more and more like an alibi for our addiction to our devices.

According to the author, which of the following is true?

【題組共用題幹】

Reading 5

Many of us can still remember when the news used to be a pleasant distraction from everyday life, the desk-bound office procrastinator’s preferred form of escapism. It is remarkable how rapidly things have changed. More and more, the news is not a source of escapism, but the thing one yearns to escape. This feeling represents a new and acute phase of a long-term historical shift: we used to live in a world in which information was scarce, but now information is essentially limitless, and what is scarce is the supply of attention.

As advances in technology made it easier to distribute news—and more news providers began to compete for readers—a subtle inversion began: the reader’s attention, not information, became the truly valuable commodity. In an attentional arms race, every news provider—and ultimately, every news story—competes against all others to worm its way into consumers’ minds. Beginning in the 19th century, entrepreneurs such as Benjamin Day, the founding publisher of the New York Sun, hit upon a revolutionary business model: sell a paper for less than it cost to produce, pack it with lurid stories, then make your money selling space to advertisers, who were effectively buying access to readers’ attention. This naturally encouraged exaggeration and fabrication. And as news comes to dominate public consciousness, extreme, lurid and even false stories come to dominate the news. After all, the commercial imperatives don’t even necessarily require a story to be true, so long as it is maximally compelling: fake news is not an aberration from, but rather the logical conclusion to, a media economy “optimised for engagement.”

It’s worth stepping back to notice how strange it is, considering the underlying purpose of news, to spend this much of our time thinking about it. If our interest in news has evolutionary origins, that’s because there are obvious survival advantages in staying aware of local and immediate threats to one’s own life and tribe. One major achievement of civilisation is that we’ve expanded our capacity for caring to include news that doesn’t affect us personally, but where we might be able to make a difference, whether by voting or volunteering or donating. But the modern attention economy exploits both these urges, not to help us stay abreast of threats, or improve the lives of others, but to generate profits for the attention merchants. So it pummels us ceaselessly with incidents, regardless of whether it truly matters, and with human suffering, regardless of whether it’s in our power to relieve it. The belief that we’re morally obliged to stay plugged in—that this level of time commitment and emotional investment is the only way to stay informed about the state of the world—begins to look more and more like an alibi for our addiction to our devices.

Which of the following is closest in meaning to the phrase “to worm its way into” in the second paragraph?

【題組共用題幹】

Reading 5

Many of us can still remember when the news used to be a pleasant distraction from everyday life, the desk-bound office procrastinator’s preferred form of escapism. It is remarkable how rapidly things have changed. More and more, the news is not a source of escapism, but the thing one yearns to escape. This feeling represents a new and acute phase of a long-term historical shift: we used to live in a world in which information was scarce, but now information is essentially limitless, and what is scarce is the supply of attention.

As advances in technology made it easier to distribute news—and more news providers began to compete for readers—a subtle inversion began: the reader’s attention, not information, became the truly valuable commodity. In an attentional arms race, every news provider—and ultimately, every news story—competes against all others to worm its way into consumers’ minds. Beginning in the 19th century, entrepreneurs such as Benjamin Day, the founding publisher of the New York Sun, hit upon a revolutionary business model: sell a paper for less than it cost to produce, pack it with lurid stories, then make your money selling space to advertisers, who were effectively buying access to readers’ attention. This naturally encouraged exaggeration and fabrication. And as news comes to dominate public consciousness, extreme, lurid and even false stories come to dominate the news. After all, the commercial imperatives don’t even necessarily require a story to be true, so long as it is maximally compelling: fake news is not an aberration from, but rather the logical conclusion to, a media economy “optimised for engagement.”

It’s worth stepping back to notice how strange it is, considering the underlying purpose of news, to spend this much of our time thinking about it. If our interest in news has evolutionary origins, that’s because there are obvious survival advantages in staying aware of local and immediate threats to one’s own life and tribe. One major achievement of civilisation is that we’ve expanded our capacity for caring to include news that doesn’t affect us personally, but where we might be able to make a difference, whether by voting or volunteering or donating. But the modern attention economy exploits both these urges, not to help us stay abreast of threats, or improve the lives of others, but to generate profits for the attention merchants. So it pummels us ceaselessly with incidents, regardless of whether it truly matters, and with human suffering, regardless of whether it’s in our power to relieve it. The belief that we’re morally obliged to stay plugged in—that this level of time commitment and emotional investment is the only way to stay informed about the state of the world—begins to look more and more like an alibi for our addiction to our devices.

Why did the author mention Benjamin Day, the founding publisher of the New York Sun, in the second paragraph?

【題組共用題幹】

Reading 5

Many of us can still remember when the news used to be a pleasant distraction from everyday life, the desk-bound office procrastinator’s preferred form of escapism. It is remarkable how rapidly things have changed. More and more, the news is not a source of escapism, but the thing one yearns to escape. This feeling represents a new and acute phase of a long-term historical shift: we used to live in a world in which information was scarce, but now information is essentially limitless, and what is scarce is the supply of attention.

As advances in technology made it easier to distribute news—and more news providers began to compete for readers—a subtle inversion began: the reader’s attention, not information, became the truly valuable commodity. In an attentional arms race, every news provider—and ultimately, every news story—competes against all others to worm its way into consumers’ minds. Beginning in the 19th century, entrepreneurs such as Benjamin Day, the founding publisher of the New York Sun, hit upon a revolutionary business model: sell a paper for less than it cost to produce, pack it with lurid stories, then make your money selling space to advertisers, who were effectively buying access to readers’ attention. This naturally encouraged exaggeration and fabrication. And as news comes to dominate public consciousness, extreme, lurid and even false stories come to dominate the news. After all, the commercial imperatives don’t even necessarily require a story to be true, so long as it is maximally compelling: fake news is not an aberration from, but rather the logical conclusion to, a media economy “optimised for engagement.”

It’s worth stepping back to notice how strange it is, considering the underlying purpose of news, to spend this much of our time thinking about it. If our interest in news has evolutionary origins, that’s because there are obvious survival advantages in staying aware of local and immediate threats to one’s own life and tribe. One major achievement of civilisation is that we’ve expanded our capacity for caring to include news that doesn’t affect us personally, but where we might be able to make a difference, whether by voting or volunteering or donating. But the modern attention economy exploits both these urges, not to help us stay abreast of threats, or improve the lives of others, but to generate profits for the attention merchants. So it pummels us ceaselessly with incidents, regardless of whether it truly matters, and with human suffering, regardless of whether it’s in our power to relieve it. The belief that we’re morally obliged to stay plugged in—that this level of time commitment and emotional investment is the only way to stay informed about the state of the world—begins to look more and more like an alibi for our addiction to our devices.

What does “it” refer to in the sentence “So it pummels us ceaselessly with incidents” in the last paragraph?

【題組共用題幹】

Reading 5

Many of us can still remember when the news used to be a pleasant distraction from everyday life, the desk-bound office procrastinator’s preferred form of escapism. It is remarkable how rapidly things have changed. More and more, the news is not a source of escapism, but the thing one yearns to escape. This feeling represents a new and acute phase of a long-term historical shift: we used to live in a world in which information was scarce, but now information is essentially limitless, and what is scarce is the supply of attention.

As advances in technology made it easier to distribute news—and more news providers began to compete for readers—a subtle inversion began: the reader’s attention, not information, became the truly valuable commodity. In an attentional arms race, every news provider—and ultimately, every news story—competes against all others to worm its way into consumers’ minds. Beginning in the 19th century, entrepreneurs such as Benjamin Day, the founding publisher of the New York Sun, hit upon a revolutionary business model: sell a paper for less than it cost to produce, pack it with lurid stories, then make your money selling space to advertisers, who were effectively buying access to readers’ attention. This naturally encouraged exaggeration and fabrication. And as news comes to dominate public consciousness, extreme, lurid and even false stories come to dominate the news. After all, the commercial imperatives don’t even necessarily require a story to be true, so long as it is maximally compelling: fake news is not an aberration from, but rather the logical conclusion to, a media economy “optimised for engagement.”

It’s worth stepping back to notice how strange it is, considering the underlying purpose of news, to spend this much of our time thinking about it. If our interest in news has evolutionary origins, that’s because there are obvious survival advantages in staying aware of local and immediate threats to one’s own life and tribe. One major achievement of civilisation is that we’ve expanded our capacity for caring to include news that doesn’t affect us personally, but where we might be able to make a difference, whether by voting or volunteering or donating. But the modern attention economy exploits both these urges, not to help us stay abreast of threats, or improve the lives of others, but to generate profits for the attention merchants. So it pummels us ceaselessly with incidents, regardless of whether it truly matters, and with human suffering, regardless of whether it’s in our power to relieve it. The belief that we’re morally obliged to stay plugged in—that this level of time commitment and emotional investment is the only way to stay informed about the state of the world—begins to look more and more like an alibi for our addiction to our devices.

According to the author, which of the following best indicates “the underlying purpose of news,” in consideration of the evolutionary origins of our interest in news?

【題組共用題幹】

Reading 5

Many of us can still remember when the news used to be a pleasant distraction from everyday life, the desk-bound office procrastinator’s preferred form of escapism. It is remarkable how rapidly things have changed. More and more, the news is not a source of escapism, but the thing one yearns to escape. This feeling represents a new and acute phase of a long-term historical shift: we used to live in a world in which information was scarce, but now information is essentially limitless, and what is scarce is the supply of attention.

As advances in technology made it easier to distribute news—and more news providers began to compete for readers—a subtle inversion began: the reader’s attention, not information, became the truly valuable commodity. In an attentional arms race, every news provider—and ultimately, every news story—competes against all others to worm its way into consumers’ minds. Beginning in the 19th century, entrepreneurs such as Benjamin Day, the founding publisher of the New York Sun, hit upon a revolutionary business model: sell a paper for less than it cost to produce, pack it with lurid stories, then make your money selling space to advertisers, who were effectively buying access to readers’ attention. This naturally encouraged exaggeration and fabrication. And as news comes to dominate public consciousness, extreme, lurid and even false stories come to dominate the news. After all, the commercial imperatives don’t even necessarily require a story to be true, so long as it is maximally compelling: fake news is not an aberration from, but rather the logical conclusion to, a media economy “optimised for engagement.”

It’s worth stepping back to notice how strange it is, considering the underlying purpose of news, to spend this much of our time thinking about it. If our interest in news has evolutionary origins, that’s because there are obvious survival advantages in staying aware of local and immediate threats to one’s own life and tribe. One major achievement of civilisation is that we’ve expanded our capacity for caring to include news that doesn’t affect us personally, but where we might be able to make a difference, whether by voting or volunteering or donating. But the modern attention economy exploits both these urges, not to help us stay abreast of threats, or improve the lives of others, but to generate profits for the attention merchants. So it pummels us ceaselessly with incidents, regardless of whether it truly matters, and with human suffering, regardless of whether it’s in our power to relieve it. The belief that we’re morally obliged to stay plugged in—that this level of time commitment and emotional investment is the only way to stay informed about the state of the world—begins to look more and more like an alibi for our addiction to our devices.

Based on the passage, it is most likely the author would agree with which of the following statements?