Question

I am beginning to wonder whether my grandmother isn’t right when she complains, as she frequently does, that children nowadays aren’t as well-behaved as they used to be. Whenever she gets the opportunity, she recounts in detail how she used to be told to respect the elders and betters. She was taught to speak only when she was spoken to, and when she went out on her own, she was reminded to say 'please' and 'thank you'. Children in her day, she continues, were expected to be seen and not heard, but these days you are lucky if you ever hear parents telling their children to mind their p’s and q’s.

If you give her the chance, she then takes out of her drawer the old photograph album which she keeps there, and which she never tires of displaying. Of course when you look at pictures of her parents, you feel sure that, with a father as stern-looking as that, you too would have been "seen and not heard". He had a lot of neatly cut hair, long side-whiskers and a big moustache. In the photographs, he is always clutching (抓住) his coat with one hand, while in the other he holds a thin walking stick. Beside him sits his wife, with their children around her: Granny and her elder brothers. It always occurs to me that perhaps those long, stiff, black clothes were so clumsy to a little girl, that she hadn’t enough breath left to be talkative, let alone mischievous (淘气的). It must have been a dull and lonely life too, for she stayed mainly at home during her childhood, while her brothers were sent away to school from an early age. Despite their long black shorts and their serious expressions in the photographs, I always suspect that their lives were considerably more enjoyable than hers. One can imagine them telling each other to shut up or mind their own business, as soon as their parents were out of sight.

Going to see Granny on Sundays used to be a terrible experience. We would always be warned in advance to be on our best behavior, since my mother made a great effort to show how well brought up we were, in spite of our old, comfortable clothes, our incomprehensible (to Granny) slang, and our noisy games in the garden. We had to change into what Granny described as our "Sundays best" for lunch, when we would sit uncomfortably, kicking each other under the table. We were continually being ordered to sit up straight, to take our elbows off the table, to wait till everybody had been served, not to wolf down our food, nor to talk with our mouths full. At length we would be told to ask to be excused from the table and ordered to find quiet occupations for the rest of the day. We were always very bad-tempered by the evening, and would complain angrily all the way home.

Yet though we hated the Sunday visit, we never questioned the rules of good manners themselves. I remember being greatly shocked as a child to hear one of my friends telling her father to shut up. I knew I could never have spoken like that to my father and it would never have occurred to me to do so.

However, my childhood was much freer than Granny’s. I went to school with my brother and I played football with him and his friends. We all spoke a common language, and we got up to the same mischief. I would have died if I had had to stay indoors, wear a tight dress, and sew.

But I do sometimes look wistfully (惆怅地) at an old sampler which hangs in the hall, which was embroidered (刺绣) by an even more distant relative—my great-great-aunt, of whom, regrettably, no photograph remains. It was done as an example of her progress in learning. The alphabet is carefully sewn in large colored childish letters from A to Z, and below it a small verse reads:

Mary Saunders is my name,

And with my needle I worked the same,

That by it you may plainly see

What care my parents have for me.

It must have taken that little five-year-old months and months of laborious sewing, but, in a circle in a bottom corner of the sampler, there is a line: "Be Ever Happy".

1.The writer’s grandmother will complain that ______.

A. children used to be mischievous

B. children behave worse than they did in the past

C. children are often reminded of what to do

D. children are very badly behaved

2.Visiting Granny on Sundays was a terrible experience because ______.

A. the writer was not so well raised as she was required to pretend

B. Granny continually warned the writer to be on her best behavior

C. Granny was always describing the writer’s "Sunday best"

D. the writer was always blamed for not behaving well

3.From Paragraph 4, we can infer that the writer ______.

A. seldom spoke to her father in the way her friend did

B. was never questioned about the rules of good manners

C. never doubted the value of the strict rules at that time

D. was worried that her friend’s father would be shocked

4.The writer looked wistfully at the sampler, because______.

A. it was embroidered by a relative.

B. she wished she could sew herself.

C. it called to mind the values of good old days.

D. she had no photographs of Mary Saunders.

5.By sewing "Be Ever Happy" in the sampler, Mary Saunders ______.

A. suggested she was unhappy then

B. indicated happiness was hard to gain

C. expected we would find happiness in sewing

D. hoped happiness would be everlasting

Answer

1.B

2.A

3.C

4.C

5.D

【解析】

试题解析：本文记叙了作者和奶奶小时候不一样的童年，过去每周对奶奶的探望都是可怕的，因为在奶奶面前要时刻拘谨，不能任性玩耍。而对奶奶那个时代的严格的家教，作者却也不怀疑它的价值，反而那时辛苦的时光是最快乐的，也是值得一辈子来怀念的。

1.】B 推理判断题。文章第一句：“I am beginning to wonder whether my grandmother isn’t right when she complains, as she frequently does, that children nowadays aren’t as well-behaved as they used to be.”我开始怀疑我的奶奶是不是错的，当她频繁的抱怨现在的孩子没有过去乖的时候。据此可以猜测，奶奶会抱怨我们表现的比过去的孩子差。故选B。

2.】A 细节理解题。第三段：“We would always be warned in advance to be on our best behavior”我们经常被提前警告要表现得最好，后文也提到每次去奶奶家，我们的行为就很拘谨，可以看出作者本性并没有像奶奶期待的那样听话。故选A。

3.】C 细节理解题。第四段提到：“Yet though we hated the Sunday visit, we never questioned the rules of good manners themselves.”尽管我们讨厌星期天的拜访，我们从来没有质疑过他们懂礼貌的规矩，可知作者并没有怀疑这样做的价值。故选C。

4.】C 推理判断题。最后一段中：“It must have taken that little five-year-old months and months of laborious sewing, but, in a circle in a bottom corner of the sampler, there is a line: "Be Ever Happy".那个刺绣一定花了一个五岁的小孩数月的辛勤的缝纫，然而在取样器底部的圆圈中，写着一行字 “永远开心”，所以它让人回忆起美好的旧时光的价值。故选C。

5.】D 推理判断题。在缝纫那行字的时候，是辛苦并快乐的童年，而缝纫的人希望把这种快乐铭刻下来，希望快乐永驻。故选D。

考点：考查记叙文阅读。