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Passage One

    In the late 1920s my mother ran away from home to marry my father. Marriage, if not running away, was expected of seventeen-year-old girls. By the time she was twenty, she had two children and was pregnant with a third. Five children later, I was born. And this is how I came to know my mother: she seemed a large, soft, loving-eyed woman who was rarely impatient in our home. Her quick, violent temper was on view only a few times a year, when she battled with the white landlord who had the misfortune to suggest to her that her children did not need to go to school.

    She made all the clothes we wore, even my brothers' overalls. She made all the towels and sheets we used. She spent the summers canning vegetables and fruits. She spent the winter evenings making quilts enough to cover all our beds.

    During the "working" day, she labored beside － not behind － my father in the fields. Her day began before sunup, and did not end until late at night. There was never a moment for her to sit down, undisturbed, to unravel her own private thoughts; never a time free from interruption － by work or the noisy inquiries of her many children. And yet, it is to my mother － and all our mothers who were not famous － that I went in search of the secret of what has fed that muzzled and often mutilated, but vibrant, creative spirit that the black woman has inherited, and that pops out in wild and unlikely places to this day.

    (263 words)

   1. According to the passage, the mother married ________.( D )

(a) as she was expected to

(b) as she was forced to

(c) against her own will

(d) according to her own will

2. The mother appeared to the narrator to be all of the following except ________.( D )

(a) soft

(b) loving

(c) patient

(d) violent

3. The white landlord angered the narrator's mother by ________.( D )

(a) driving her children out of school

(b) telling her not to let her children go to school

(c) fighting with her

(d) being rich

4. It seems to the narrator that it would be really good if ________.( D )

(a) the mother worked from sunup till night

(b) the mother worked side by side with her husband

(c) the mother made all things that the family needed

(d) the mother could have some time to think undisturbed

5. The goal of the narrator's research was to ________.( B )

(a) praise all the working black mothers

(b) find reasons for the black woman's creativeness

(c) show how black women's talent has been stifled

(d) recall her own mother's good qualities                           TOP 

Passage Two

    In India, almost all marriages are arranged. Even among the educated middle classes in modern, urban India, marriage is as much a concern of the families as it is of the individuals. So customary is the practice of arranged marriage that there is a special name for a marriage which is not arranged: It is called a "love match."

    On my first field trip to India, I met many young men and women whose parents were in the process of "getting them married." In many cases, the bride and groom would not meet each other before the marriage. At most they might meet for a brief conversation, and this meeting would take place only after their parents had decided that the match was suitable. Parents do not compel their children to marry a person who either marriage partner finds objectionable. But only after one match is refused will another be sought.

    As a young American woman in Indian for the first time, I found this custom of arranged marriage oppressive. How could any intelligent young person agree to such a marriage without great reluctance? It was contrary to everything I believed about the importance of romantic love as the only basis of a happy marriage. It also classed with my strongly held notions that the choice of such an intimate and permanent relationship could be made only by the individuals involved. Had anyone tried to arrange my marriage, I would have been defiant and rebellious!

    At the first opportunity, I began, with more curiosity than tact, to question the young people I met on how they felt about this practice. Sita, one of my young informants, was a college graduate with a degree in political science. She had been waiting for over a year while her parents were arranging a match for her. I found it difficult to accept the docile manner in which this well-educated young woman awaited the outcome of a process that would result in her spending the rest of her life with a man she hardly knew, a virtual stranger, picked out by her parents.

    (349 words)

   6. According to the narrator, most marriages in India ________.( D )

(a) are love matches

(b) concern individuals only

(c) are a matter of the families concerned

(d) are arranged

7. While arranging a marriage, the parents usually ________.( B )

(a) let the bride and groom know each other well before they marry

(b) decide whether the marriage is suitable

(c) force their children to marry against their will

(d) look for many matches for one of their children at the same time

8. The narrator found the arranged marriages to be ________.( D ) 

(a) defiant

(b) practical

(c) romantic

(d) unbearable

9. The word "docile" in paragraph four means ________.( D )

(a) rebellious

(b) painful

(c) educated

(d) timid

10. A good title for the passage is: ________.( C )

(a) A Love Match and an Arranged Match

(b) My Experience in India

(c) Arranging a Marriage in India

(d) Why Marriages Are Arranged in India                              TOP

Passage Three

    If I wanted to be by myself, I would retreat to a river birch by the stream that fed our pond. It forked at ground level, and I'd wedge my back up against one trunk and my feet against the other. Then I would look at the sky or read or pretend.

    That summer I hadn't had much time for my tree. One evening as my father and I walked past it, he said, "I remember you scrunching into that tree when you were a little kid."

    "I don't," I said sullenly.

    He looked at me sharply. "What's got into you?" he said.

    Amazingly, I heard myself say, "What the hell do you care?" Then I ran off to the barn. Sitting in the tack room, I tried not to cry.

    My father opened the door and sat opposite me. Finally I met his gaze.

    "It's not a good idea to doctor your own family," he said. "But I guess I need to do that for you right now." He leaned forward. "Let's see. You feel strange in your own body, like it doesn't work the same way it always had. You think no one else is like you. And you think I’m too hard on you around here. You even wonder how you got into a family as dull as ours."

    I was astonished that he knew my most treacherous night thoughts.

    "The thing is, your body is changing," he continued. "And that changes your entire self. You've got a lot more male hormones in your blood. And, Son, there's not a man in this world who could handle what that does to you when you're fourteen."

    I didn't know what to say. I knew I didn't like whatever was happening to me. For months I'd felt out of touch with everything. I was irritable and restless and sad for no reason. And because I couldn't talk about it, I began to feel really isolated.

    "One of the things that'll help you," my dad said after a while, "is work. Hard work."

    (344 words)

11. The boy went to a stream and looked into a tree because ________.( C )

(a) he enjoyed nature very much

(b) he only pretended to be interested

(c) he wanted to be alone and do some thinking

(d) he had enough time

12. At the beginning of the passage the boy felt ________ towards his father.( D )

(a) affectionate

(b) understanding

(c) hopeful

(d) hopeless

13. The boy felt that ________.( C )

(a) he was appreciated by his family

(b) life was dull and there was no change whatever

(c) he was regretting being a member of the family

(d) his father often ignored him

14. According to the father, the problem with his son was that ________.( C )

(a) he had become selfish

(b) he didn't know that others cared for him

(c) he was fourteen and had a lot more male hormones

(d) he began to feel isolated

15. The father's suggestion to his son was that he ________.( D )

(a) change habits

(b) avoid isolation

(c) be restless

(d) do hard work                                                    TOP