2000-2015专八改错真题及答案.doc

2000 年-2015 年专八短文改错试题
2015年3月21日专业八级考试改错
When I was in my early teens, I was taken to a spectacular show
on ice by the mother of a friend. Looked round a the luxury of the 1. ______
rink, my friend’s mother remarked on the “plush” seats we had been
given. I did not know what she meant, and being proud of my 2. ______
vocabulary, I tried to infer its meaning from the context. “Plush”
was clearly intended as a complimentary, a positive evaluation; that 3. ______
much I could tell it from the tone of voice and the context. So I 4. ______
started to use the word. Yes, I replied, they certainly are plush, and
so are the ice rink and the costumes of the skaters, aren’t they? My
friend’s mother was very polite to correct me, but I could tell from her 5. ______
expression that I had not got the word quite right.
Often we can indeed infer from the context what a word roughly
means, and that is in fact the way which we usually acquire both 6. ______
new words and new meanings for familiar words, specially in our 7. ______
own first language. But sometimes we need to ask, as I should have
asked for Plush, and this is particularly true in the 8. ______
aspect of a foreign language. If you are continually surrounded by 9. ______
speakers of the language you are learning, you can ask them directly,
but often this opportunity does not exist for the learner of English.
So dictionaries have been developed to mend the gap. 10. ______

2014改错
There is widespread consensus among scholars that second language acquisition (SLA) emerged as a distinct field of research from the late 1950s to early 1960s.
　　There is a high level of agreement that the following questions (1) ______
　　have possessed the most attention of researchers in this area: (2) ______
　　l Is it possible to acquire an additional language in the
　　same sense one acquires a first language? (3) ______
　　l What is the explanation for the fact adults have (4) ______
　　more difficulty in acquiring additional languages than children have?
　　l What motivates people to acquire additional language?
　　l What is the role of the language teaching in the (5) ______
　　acquisition of additional languages?
　　l What social-cultural factors, if any, are relevant in studying the
　　learning of additional languages?
　　From a check of the literature of the field it is clear that all (6) ______
　　the approaches adopted to study the phenomena of SLA so far have
　　one thing in common: The perspective adopted to view the acquiring
　　of an additional language is that of an individual attempts to do (7) ______
　　so. Whether one labels it “learning” or “acquiring” an additional
　　language, it is an individual accomplishment or what is under (8) ______
　　focus is the cognitive, psychological, and institutional status of an
　　individual. That is, the spotlight is on what mental capabilities are
　　involving, what psychological factors play a role in the learning (9) ______
　　or acquisition, and whether the target language is learnt in the
　　classroom or acquired through social touch with native speakers. (10) ______

2013 专八短文改错试题．
Psycho-linguistics is the name given to the study of the psychological processes
involved in language. Psycholinguistics study understanding,
production and remembering language, and hence are concerned with (1) _____
listening, reading, speaking, writing, and memory for language.
One reason why we take the language for granted is that it usually (2) ______
happens so effortlessly, and most of time, so accurately. (3) ______
Indeed, when you listen to someone to speaking, or looking at this page, (4) ______
you normally cannot help but understand it. It is only in exceptional
circumstances we might become aware of the complexity (5) ______
involved: if we are searching for a word but cannot remember it;
if a relative or colleague has had a stroke which has influenced (6) ______
their language; if we observe a child acquire language; if (7) ______
we try to learn a second language ourselves as an adult; or
if we are visually impaired or hearing-impaired or if we meet
anyone else who is. As we shall see, all these examples (8) ______
of what might be called “language in exceptional circumstances”
reveal a great deal about the processes evolved in speaking, (9) ______
listening, writing and reading. But given that language processes
were normally so automatic, we also need to carry out careful (10) ______
experiments to get at what is happening.

2012年
The central problem of translating has always been whether to translate literally or freely. The argument has been going since at least the first (1) ______
century B.C. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, many writers
favoured certain kind of “free” translation: the spirit, not the letter; the (2) _______
sense not the word; the message rather the form; the matter not (3) _______
the manner. This is the often revolutionary slogan of writers who (4) _______
wanted the truth to be read and understood. Then in the turn of 19th (5) _______
century, when the study of cultural anthropology suggested that
the linguistic barriers were insuperable and that the language (6) _______
was entirely the product of culture, the view translation was impossible (7) _______
gained some currency, and with it that, if was attempted at all, it must be as (8) _______
literal as possible. This view culminated the statement of the (9) _______
extreme “literalists” Walter Benjamin and Vladimir Nobokov.
The argument was theoretical: the purpose of the translation, the
nature of the readership, the type of the text, was not discussed. Too
often, writer, translator and reader were implicitly identified with
each other. Now, the context has changed, and the basic problem remains. (10) _____

2011年专八真题改错部分
　From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew
 that when I grew I should be a writer. Between the ages of about          1__________
seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so
 with the conscience that I was outraging my true nature and that          2___________
soon or later I should have to settle down and write books.                 3___________
  I was the child of three, but there was a gap of five years        4__________
on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For
this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed
disagreeing mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my     5_____________
schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and
 holding conversations with imaginative persons, and I think from    6_________
 the very start my literal ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of   7________
being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words
and a power of facing in unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created    8________
a sort of private world which I could get my own back for my failure   9________
 in everyday life. Therefore, the volume of serious — i.e. seriously     10________
intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and
boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first
 poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation.

2010年专八真题改错部分
So far as we can tell, all human languages are equally
complete and perfect as instruments of communication: that is,
every language appears to be well equipped as any other to say          1________________
the things their speakers want to say.                                                    2________________
There may or may not be appropriate to talk about primitive                3________________
 peoples or cultures, but that is another matter. Certainly, not all
groups of people are equally competent in nuclear physics or
psychology or the cultivation of rice . Whereas this is not the             4_____________
 fault of their language. The Eskimos , it is said, can speak about
 snow with further more precision and subtlety than we can in            5______________
 English, but this is not because the Eskimo language (one of those
sometimes miscalled 'primitive') is inherently more precise and
subtle than English. This example does not come to light a defect       6______________
in English, a show of unexpected 'primitiveness'. The position is
 simply and obviously that the Eskimos and the English live in similar  7____________
environments. The English language will be just as rich in terms         8____________
for different kinds of snow, presumably, if the environments in which
 Englishwas habitually used made such distinction as important.           9_____________
  Similarly, we have no reason to doubt that the Eskimo language
could be as precise and subtle on the subject of motor manufacture
or cricket if these topics formed the part of the Eskimos' life.             10____________

2009
The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passes
from one school child to the next and illustrates the further difference           (1)___________
between school lore and nursery lore. In nursery lore a verse,          
learnt in early childhood, is not usually passed on again when the               (2)___________
 little listener  has grown up, and has children of their own, or even          (3)____________
grandchildren.  The period between learning a nursery rhyme and
 transmitting it may be something from twenty to seventy years. With       (4)_____________
the playground lore, therefore, a rhyme may be excitedly passed            (5)___________
 on within the very hour it is learnt; and in the general, it passes             (6)_____________
 between children of the same age, or nearly so, since it is uncommon
for the difference in age between playmates to be more than five
years. If ,therefore, a playground rhyme can be shown to have been
 currently for a hundred years, or even just for fifty, it follows that it         (7)__________
has been retransmitted over and over; very possibly it has passed          (8)___________
along a chain of two or three hundred young hearers and tellers, and
 the wonder is that it remains live after so much handling,                         (9)____________
to let alone that it bears resemblance to the                                            (10)____________

2008年专八真题  短文改错 
The desire to use language as a sign of national identity is a
very natural one, and in result language has played a prominent         ____1____
part in national moves. Men have often felt the need to cultivate         ____2____
a given language to show that they are distinctive from another          ____3____
race whose hegemony they resent. At the time the United States        ____4____
split off from Britain, for example, there were proposals that
independence should be linguistically accepted by the use of a           ____5____
different language from those of Britain. There was even one           ____6____
proposal that Americans should adopt Hebrew. Others favoured
the adoption of Greek, though, as one man put it, things would
certainly be simpler for Americans if they stuck on to English         ____7____
and made the British learn Greek. At the end, as everyone             ____8____
knows, the two countries adopted the practical and satisfactory
solution of carrying with the same language as before.                   ____9____
Since nearly two hundred years now, they have shown the world     ____10____
that political independence and national identity can be complete
without sacrificing the enormous mutual advantages of a common
language.

2007专八真题 短文改错
From what has been said, it must be clear that no one can
make very positive statements about how language originated.
There is no material in any language today and in the earliest         1__________
records of ancient languages show us language in a new and          2__________
emerging state. It is often said, of course, that the language           3_________
originated in cries of anger, fear, pain and pleasure, and the           4__________
necessary evidence is entirely lacking: there are no remote　　
tribes, no ancient records, providing evidence of
a language with a large proportion of such cries　　　　　　      5__________
than we find in English. It is true that the absence　　　　
of such evidence does not disprove the theory, but in　　           6__________
other grounds too the theory is not very attractive.
　　People of all races and languages make rather similar
noises in return to pain or pleasure. The fact that　　             7___________
such noises are similar on the lips of Frenchmen
and Malaysians whose languages are utterly different,
serves to emphasize on the fundamental difference　　　　       8___________
between these noises and language proper. We may
say that the cries of pain or chortles of amusement
are largely reflex actions, instinctive to large extent,               9____________
whereas language proper does not consist of signs
but of these that have to be learnt and that are                  10___________
wholly conventional.

2006专八短文改错
　　We use language primarily as a means of communication with
　　other human beings. Each of us shares with the community in which we
　　live a store of words and meanings as well as agreeing conventions as        1_______
　　to the way in which words should be arranged to convey a particular         2_______
　　message: the English speaker has in his disposal vocabulary and a         3_______
　　set of grammatical rules which enables him to communicate his              4_______
　　thoughts and feelings, in a variety of styles, to the other English              5_______
　　speakers. His vocabulary, in particular, both that which he uses active-
　　ly and that which he recognises, increases in size as he grows
　　old as a result of education and experience.                                    6_________
　　But, whether the language store is relatively small or large, the system
　　remains no more than a psychological reality for the individual, unless
　　he has a means of expressing it in terms able to be seen by another         7_________
　　member of his linguistic community; he bas to give the system a
　　concrete transmission form. We take it for granted the two most          8____________
　　commo