SAT Section One : Critical Reading 認定 SAT-Critical-Reading 試験問題:

1. (1) An incredible hot-air balloon exhibition happened on September 5, 1862.
(2) It was given by Glaisher and Coxwell, two Englishmen.
(3) There was no compressed oxygen for them to breathe in those days.
(4) They got so high that they couldn't use their limbs.
(5) Coxwell had to open the descending valve with his teeth.
(6) Before Glaisher passed out, he recorded an elevation of twenty- nine thousand feet.
(7) Many believe they got eight thousand feet higher before they began to descend, making their ascent
the highest in the nineteenth century.
(8) Now the largest balloon to go up in the nineteenth century was "The Giant."
(9) The balloon held 215,000 cubic feet of air and was 74 feet wide.
(10) It could carry four and a half tons of cargo.
(11) Its flight began in Paris, in 1853, with fifteen passengers.
(12) All of whom returned safely.
(13) The successful trip received a great deal of national and international press because many thought
the hot- air balloon would become a form of common transportation.
Which of the following is the best revision for sentence 8? Now the largest balloon to go up in the
nineteenth century was "The Giant."

A) Move "in the nineteenth century" to the beginning of the sentence and delete "Now"
B) Add a comma after "Now."
C) Delete "now."
D) Replace "to go up" with "exhibition."
E) Begin the sentence with "Moreover,"

2. Richard III was without any doubt whatsoever the most evil man to have worn the crown of England.
Attached to his name are so many crimes, and crimes so heinous and unnatural, that it is scarcely
credible that such a monster could exist. He not only committed murder on a number of occasions, but
many of those he murdered he had either sworn to protect or should have been expected to defend with
his last ounce of strength if he had anything approaching human feelings. First on the list of crimes was
the death of his sovereign, Henry VI. Granted that Henry had been deposed by Richard's brother, and
hence could not easily claim Richard's loyalty
The author calls Richard a "monster" because

A) Richard supported Henry VI agains this own brother
B) Richard did not allow honor or family feeling to hold him back
C) Richard murdered people
D) all early English kings were ruthless
E) Richard was overly ambitious

3. Mathew ascended three flights of stairs--passed half-way down a long arched gallery--and knocked at
another old-fashioned oak door. This time the signal was answered. A low, clear, sweet voice, inside the
room, inquired who was waiting without? In a few hasty words Mathew told his errand. Before he had
done speaking the door was quietly and quickly opened, and Sarah Leeson confronted him on the
threshold, with her candle in her hand.
Not tall, not handsome, not in her first youth--shy and irresolute in manner--simple in dress to the utmost
limits of plainness--the lady's-maid, in spite of all these disadvantages, was a woman whom it was
impossible to look at without a feeling of curiosity, if not of interest. Few men, at first sight of her, could
have resisted the desire to find out who she was; few would have been satisfied with receiving for answer,
She is Mrs. Treverton's maid; few would have refrained from the attempt to extract some secret
information for themselves from her face and manner; and none, not even the most patient and practiced
of observers, could have succeeded in discovering more than that she must have passed through the
ordeal of some great suffering at some former period of her life. Much in her manner, and more in her face,
said plainly and sadly: I am the wreck of something that you might once have liked to see; a wreck that
can never be repaired--that must drift on through life unnoticed, unguided, unpitied--drift till the fatal shore
is touched, and the waves of Time have swallowed up these broken relics of me forever.
This was the story that was told in Sarah Leeson's face--this, and no more. No two men interpreting that
story for themselves, would probably have agreed on the nature of the suffering which this woman had
undergone. It was hard to say, at the outset, whether the past pain that had set its ineffaceable mark on
her had been pain of the body or pain of the mind. But whatever the nature of the affliction she had
suffered, the traces it had left were deeply and strikingly visible in every part of her face.
Her cheeks had lost their roundness and their natural color; her lips, singularly flexible in movement and
delicate in form, had faded to an unhealthy paleness; her eyes, large and black and overshadowed by
unusually thick lashes, had contracted an anxious startled look, which never left them and which piteously
expressed the painful acuteness of her sensibility, the inherent timidity of her disposition. So far, the
marks which sorrow or sickness had set on her were the marks common to most victims of mental or
physical suffering. The one extraordinary personal deterioration which she had undergone consisted in
the unnatural change that had passed over the color of her hair.
It was as thick and soft, it grew as gracefully, as the hair of a young girl; but it was as gray as the hair of an
old woman. It seemed to contradict, in the most startling manner, every personal assertion of youth that
still existed in her face. With all its haggardness and paleness, no one could have looked at it and
supposed for a moment that it was the face of an elderly woman. Wan as they might be, there was not a
wrinkle in her cheeks. Her eyes, viewed apart from their prevailing expression of uneasiness and timidity,
still preserved that bright, clear moisture which is never seen in the eyes of the old. The skin about her
temples was as delicately smooth as the skin of a child. These and other physical signs which never
mislead, showed that she was still, as to years, in the very prime of her life.
Sickly and sorrow-stricken as she was, she looked, from the eyes downward, a woman who had barely
reached thirty years of age. From the eyes upward, the effect of her abundant gray hair, seen in
connection with her face, was not simply incongruous--it was absolutely startling; so startling as to make it
no paradox to say that she would have looked most natural, most like herself if her hair had been dyed. In
her case, Art would have seemed to be the truth, because Nature looked like falsehood.
What shock had stricken her hair, in the very maturity of its luxuriance, with the hue of an unnatural old
age? Was it a serious illness, or a dreadful grief that had turned her gray in the prime of her womanhood?
That question had often been agitated among her fellow-servants, who were all struck by the peculiarities
of her personal appearance, and rendered a little suspicious of her, as well, by an inveterate habit that
she had of talking to herself. Inquire as they might, however, their curiosity was always baffled. Nothing
more could be discovered than that Sarah Leeson was, in the common phrase, touchy on the subject of
her gray hair and her habit of talking to herself, and that Sarah Leeson's mistress had long since forbidden
every one, from her husband downward, to ruffle her maid's tranquility by inquisitive questions.
In context, the word "wan" in the passage most nearly means

A) round.
B) pink.
C) shapely.
D) pale.
E) pretty.

4. (1) An incredible hot-air balloon exhibition happened on September 5, 1862.
(2) It was given by Glaisher and Coxwell, two Englishmen.
(3) There was no compressed oxygen for them to breathe in those days.
(4) They got so high that they couldn't use their limbs.
(5) Coxwell had to open the descending valve with his teeth.
(6) Before Glaisher passed out, he recorded an elevation of twenty- nine thousand feet.
(7) Many believe they got eight thousand feet higher before they began to descend, making their ascent
the highest in the nineteenth century.
(8) Now the largest balloon to go up in the nineteenth century was "The Giant."
(9) The balloon held 215,000 cubic feet of air and was 74 feet wide.
(10) It could carry four and a half tons of cargo.
(11) Its flight began in Paris, in 1853, with fifteen passengers.
(12) All of whom returned safely.
(13) The successful trip received a great deal of national and international press because many thought
the hot- air balloon would become a form of common transportation.
Which of the following is the best way to combine sentences 9 and 10? The balloon held 215,000 cubic
feet of air and was 74 feet wide. It could handle four and a half tons of cargo.

A) The balloon held 215,000 cubic feet of air and was 74 feet wide; it could handle four and a half tons of
cargo.
B) The balloon held 215,000 cubic feet of air and was 74 feet wide, but it could carry four and a half tons of
cargo
C) The balloon held 215,000 cubic feet of air and was 74 feet wide, handling four and a half tons of cargo.
D) The balloon held 215,000 cubic feet of air and was 74 feet wide, and it could handle four and a half
tons of cargo.
E) The balloon held 215,000 cubic feet of air and was 74 feet wide, which could handle four and a half
tons of cargo.

5. His ______ behavior toward her caused a considerable riff in the organization, partially because of the
size of the company and partially because he was a married man with children.

A) periodic
B) mysterious
C) untoward
D) snide
E) obsequious

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