Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to designate thing or process which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in nomenclature.Such special dialects, or jargons, are necessary in technical discussion of any kind.Being universally understood by the divorce of particular science or art, they have the precision of mathematical formula.Besides, they save time, for it is much more economical to name a process than to describe it.Thousands of this terms are popularly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a whole, they are rather on the outskirts of English language than actually within its borders.
Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies.In trades and handicrafts, and other vocations, like farming and fishery, they have occupied great number of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary, is very old.It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very fiber of our language.Hence, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound; and more generally understood, than most other technicalities.The special dialects of law, medicine, divinity, and philosophy have also, in their old strata, become pretty familiar to cultivated persons, and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary.Yet every vocation still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech.And the proportion has been much increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic arts.Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned with indifference when they have served their turn.Most of the new coinages are confined to special discussions, and seldom get into general literature or conversation.Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close guild.The lawyer, the physician, the man of science, the divine, associates freely with his fellow-creatures, and does not meet them in a merely professional way.Furthermore, what is called popular science makes everybody acquainted with modern views and recent discovers.Any important experiment, thought made in remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported in the newspapers, and everybody is soon talking about it—as in the case of the Roentgen rays and wireless telegraphy.Thus our common speech is always taking up new technical terms and making them commonplace.
1.This passage is primarily concerned with _______.
[A] a new language
[B] technical terminology
[C] various occupations and professions
[D] scientific undertakings
2.Special words used in technical discussion_________.
[A] may become part of common speech
[B] should be confined to scientific fields
[C] should resemble mathematical formulae
[D] are considered artificial speech
3.It is true that____________.
[A] the average man of uses in his own vocabulary what was once technical language not meant for him
[B] various professions and occupations often interchange their dialects and jargons
[C] there is always a clear-cut non-technical word that may be substituted for the technical word
[D] an educated person would be expected to know most technical terms
4.In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of technical terms in nomenclature of __________.
[A] farming
[B] government
[C] botany
[D] fishing
5.The author‘s main purpose in the passage is to _________.
[A] describe a phenomenon
[B] argue a belief
[C] propose a solution
[D] stimulate action
Passage Three
During the second half of the nineteenth century, in the United States both the stimulus to produce landscape art and the subject of landscape altered appreciably as the pressure of events surrounding the Civil War witnessed the emergence of a new national consciousness.It was a time when certain fundamental religious beliefs were assaulted by new scientific theory and when new critical writing, particularly those of John Ruskin, exercised an important influence on art.The landscape painting from the Ganz collection provides an opportunity to examine the shifts in taste and the pluralities of style that characterized American Landscape painting, especially in the latter part of the century.
In the early years of the nineteenth century American Landscape was closely associated with the republican ideals of the new nation and took on significance in the popular imagination as a form of national propaganda.Landscape painting was conceived of as a vehicle for the presentation of the new republic‘s unique historical and moral position in world history.This position was supported by Thomas Cole, the dean of the Hudson river School, and was based on a religious interpretation of wilderness themes.While the American concern for the founding of a school of historical landscape was most assertive in the first half of the century and was confirmed in such grandly ambitious paintings as Café’s famous instructive moral one
portraying the COURSE OF EMPIRE, the interest in crating a national art based on American nature continued to influence the formal evolution of landscape painting.
6.with what topic is the passage primarily concerned?
[A] The normal position of the United States.
[B] John Ruskin's influence on nineteenth century art.
[C] A religious interpretation of wilderness themes.
[D] The evolution of landscape painting in the United States
7.What phenomenon does the author mention as occurring at the time of the Civil War?
[A] The revival of fundamental religious beliefs.
[B] An increased interest in national geography.
[C] A period of depression on the arts and sciences.
[D] The emergence of new national consciousness.
8.According to the author, why is the Ganz collection significant？
[A] It reflects changes in American Landscape painting.
[B] It includes many critical writing of the era.
[C] It appeals to the popular imagination of republicans.
[D] It documents the painting of the Hudson River School.
9.According to the author, landscape painting early in the nineteenth century was used to _________.
[A] finance a school of historical landscape painting
[B] further the ambitions of young politicians
[C] represent and reaffirm a new nation
[D] realistically portray the physical beauty
10.what does the word assaulted mean?
[A] Attacked
[B] Praised
[C] Scolded
[D] Satirized
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