SAT阅读真题

In this passage adapted from a novel, a Canadian woman recalls her childhood during the 1960s. Originally from China, the family traveled to Irvine, Ontario, Canada, where the parents opened a restaurant, the Dragon Cafe.

As a young child I never really thought about my parents' lives in Irvine, how small their world must have seemed, never extending beyond the Dragon Cafe. Every day my parents did the same jobs in the restaurant. I watched the same customers come for meals, for morning coffee, for afternoon soft drinks and French fries. For my parents one day was like the next. They settled into an uneasy and distant relationship with each other. Their love, their tenderness, they gave to me.

1. In the opening paragraph, the narrator emphasizes primarily which of the following about her parents?

(A) Their work ethic

(B) Their evolving relationship

(D) Their resourcefulness

(E) Their dependability

2. The sentence ("But... changing") serves primarily to

(A) lament a situation

(B) introduce a contrast

(D) emphasize a desire

(E) reiterate a point

But my life was changing. I became taller and bigger, my second teeth grew in white and straight. At school I began to learn about my adopted country. I spoke English like a native, without a trace of an accent. I played, thought, and dreamed in the language of our Irvine neighbors. A few years later and I would no longer remember a time when I didn't speak their words and read their books. But my father and Uncle Yat still spoke the same halting English. My mother spoke only a few words. I began to translate conversations they had with the customers, switching between English and Chinese. Whenever I stepped outside the restaurant it seemed I was entering a world unknown to my family: school, church, friends' houses, the town beyond Main Street. I found it hard to imagine a year without winter any more, a home other than Irvine.

3. The primary purpose of the second paragraph is to

(A) provide insight into the motivations of the narrator's parents and uncle

(B) recapture the pleasure the narrator experienced in learning a new language

(D) describe the complex interrelationships in the narrator's family

(E) reveal the narrator's preference for a cold climate over a warm one

For my mother, though, home would always be China. In Irvine she lived among strangers, unable to speak their language. Whenever she talked about happy times, they were during her childhood in that distant land. A wistful smile would soften her face as she told me about sleeping and playing with her sister in the attic above her parents' bedroom. She once showed me a piece of jade-green silk cloth that was frayed and worn around the edge. In the center was a white lotus floating in varying shades of blue water, the embroidery so fine that when I held it at arm's length the petals looked real. I had been helping her store away my summer clothes in the brown leather suitcase from Hong Kong when I noticed a piece of shiny material in the corner and asked her what it was. She look it out and spread it on her lap. "My mother embroidered this herself. I was going to have it made into a cushion, but then my life changed and over here there seems to be no place for lovely things. It's all I have that reminds me of her," she said. "Maybe, Su-Jen, one day you will do something with it." I admired the cloth some more, then she carefully folded it and stored it back in her suitcase.

4. The sentence ("For ... China") serves to

(A) introduce a key idea developed later in the passage

(B) initiate a brief digression from the story line

(D) point to a situation analogous to one experienced by the narrator

(E) foreshadow an unexpected incident

There was so little left from her old life. She said it was so long ago that sometimes it felt as if it had never happened. But she described her life with such clarity and vividness that I knew all those memories lived on inside her. There was so little in this new country that gave her pleasure. The good things she found were related in some way to China: an aria from a Chinese opera, a letter from a relative back home or from Aunt Hai-Lan in Toronto, written in Chinese, a familiar-looking script that I couldn't read and that had nothing to do with my life in Canada.

There were times when I felt guilty about my own happiness in Irvine. We had come to Canada because of me, but I was the only one who had found a home.

5. ('There was ... inside her"), the mother's memories of China are portrayed as

(A) distant yet enduring

(B) occasional yet overwhelming

(D) joyous and hopeful

(E) wistful and indistinct

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