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  3. Eva Ullmann took her master’s degree in 2002 on the part that humour has to play in psychotherapy, and became hooked on the subj

Eva Ullmann took her master’s degree in 2002 on the part that humour has to play in psychotherapy, and became hooked on the subj

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问题    Eva Ullmann took her master’s degree in 2002 on the part that humour has to play in psychotherapy, and became hooked on the subject. In 2005 she founded the German Institute for Humour in Leipzig. It is dedicated to "the combination of seriousness and humour". She offers lectures, seminars and personal coaching to managers, from small firms to such corporate giants as Deutsche Bank and Telekom. Her latest project is to help train medical students and doctors.
   There is nothing peculiarly German about humour training. It was John Morreall, an American, who showed that humour is a market segment in the ever-expanding American genre of self-help. In the past two decades, humour has gone global. An International Humour Congress was held in Amsterdam in 2000. And yet Germans know that the rest of the world considers them to be at a particular disadvantage.
   The issue is not comedy, of which Germany has plenty. The late Vicco von Buelow, alias Lori-ot, delighted the elite with his mockery of German seriousness and stiffness. Rhenish, Swabian and other regional flavours thrive—Gerhard Polt, a bad-tempered Bavarian, now 72, is a Shakespeare among them. There is lowbrow talent too, including Otto Waalkes, a Frisian buffoon. Most of this, however, is as foreigners always suspected: more embarrassing than funny.
   Germans can often be observed laughing, loudly. And they try hard. "They cannot produce good humour, but they can consume it," says James Parsons, an English man teaching business English in Leipzig. He once rented a theatre and got students, including Mrs Ullmann, to act out Monty Python skits, which they did with enthusiasm. The trouble, he says, is that whereas the English wait deadpan for the penny to drop, Germans invariably explain their punchline.
   At a deeper level, the problem has nothing to do with jokes. What is missing is the series of irony, overstatement and understatement in workaday conversations. Immigrants in Germany share soul-crushing stories of attempting a non-literal turn of phrase, to evoke a horrified expression in their German friends and a detailed explanation of the literal meaning, followed by a retreat into awkward politeness.
   Irony is not on the curriculum in Mrs Ullmann’s classes. Instead she focuses mostly on the basics of humorous spontaneity and surprise. Demand is strong, she says. It is a typical German answer to a shortcoming: work harder at it.
It can be learned from Paragraph 2 that Germans are considered______.
选项 A、unsmiling and hostile
B、humorous but impolite
C、smileless and humorless
D、polite but uncommunicative
答案C
解析 推理题。根据Germans are considered几个词定位到第二段最后一句：And yet Germans know that the rest of the world considers them to be at a particular disadvantage．其中，the rest of the world considers them=Germans are considered：故德国人被认为是at a particular disadvantage“极其不具备优势”。再结合整段讨论的关于幽默的话题，我们可以推断出这里的“不具备优势”指的是“不幽默”。选项[A]unsmiling and hostile“严肃且富有敌意”；unsmiling“严肃的”与幽默接近，但是hostile“敌对的”属于无中生有。选项[B]humorous but impolite“幽默但不礼貌”；humorous与原文表述完全相反，impolite无中生有。选项[C]smileless and humorless“严肃且缺乏幽默感”：该项前后两个词都在强调“不幽默”，故该项可选。选项[D]polite but uncommunicative“礼貌但难以沟通”；该项两个词文章均未提及，都属于无中生有。故本题答案为[C]。
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