首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
考研
For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had tra
For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had tra
admin
2015-01-15
55
问题
For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had traveled widely as a journalist, I had never managed to pick up more than a smattering of phrases in any tongue other than French, and even my French, was laborious for want of lengthy practice. The prospect of tackling one of the notoriously difficult languages at the age of forty, and trying to speak it well, both deterred and excited me. It was perhaps expecting a little too much of a curiously unreceptive part of myself, yet the possibility that I might gain access to a completely alien culture and tradition by this means was enormously pleasing.
I enrolled as a pupil in a small school in the center of the city. It was run by Mr. Beheit, of dapper appearance and explosive temperament, who assured me that after three months of his special treatment I would speak Arabic fluently. Whereupon he drew from his desk a postcard which an old pupil had sent him from somewhere in the Middle East, expressing great gratitude and reporting the astonishment of local Arabs that he could converse with them like a native. It was written in English. Mr. Beheit himself spent most of his time coaching businessmen in French, and through the thin, partitioned walls of his school one could hear him bellowing in exasperation at some confused entrepreneur: "Non, M Jones. Jane suis pas francais. Pas, Pas, Pas! "(No Mr. Jones, I’m NOT French, I’m not, not, NOT!). I was gratified that my own tutor, whose name was Ahmed, was infinitely softer and less public in approach.
For a couple of hours every morning we would face each other across a small table, while we discussed in meticulous detail the colour scheme of the tiny cubicle, the events in the street below and, once a week, the hair-raising progress of a window cleaner across the wall of the building opposite. In between, bearing in mind the particular interest I had in acquiring Arabic, I would inquire the way to some imaginary oasis, anxiously demand fodder and water for my camels, wonder politely whether the sheikh was prepared to grant me audience now. It was all hard going. I frequently despaired of ever becoming anything like a fluent speaker, though Ahmed assured me that my pronunciation was above average for a westerner. This, I suspected, was partly flattery, for there are a couple of Arabic sounds which I cannot grasp for ages. There were, moreover, vast distinctions of meaning conveyed by subtle sound shifts rarely employed in English. And for me the problem was increased by the need to assimilate a vocabulary, that would vary from place to place across five essentially Arabic-speaking countries that practiced vernaculars of their own: so that the word for "people", for instance, might be nais, sah’ab or sooken.
Each day I was mentally exhausted by the strain of a morning in school, followed by an afternoon struggling at home with a tape recorder. Yet there was relief in the most elementary forms of understanding and progress. When merely got the drift of a torrent which Ahmed had just released, I was childishly elated. When I managed to roll a complete sentence off my tongue without apparently thinking what I was saying, and it came out right, I beamed like an idiot. And the enjoyment of reading and writing the flowing Arabic script was something that did not leave me once I had mastered it. By the end of June, no one could have described me as anything like a fluent speaker of Arabic. I was approximately in the position of a fifteen-year old who, equipped with a modicum of schoolroom French, nervously awaits his first trip to Paris. But this was something I could reprove upon in my own time. I bade farewell to Mr. Beheit, still struggling to drive the French negative into the still confused mind of Mr. Jones.
It can be inferred from the passage that Ahmed was______.
选项
A、a fast speaker
B、a boring speaker
C、a laconic speaker
D、an interesting speaker
答案
B
解析
本题的依据句是第三段中的“we discussed in meticulous detail the colourscheme of the tiny cubicle,the events in the street below and,once a week,the hair-rai—sing progress of a window cleaner across the wall of the building opposite”。从中可知,Ahmed和作者的谈话内容是非常无趣的,这也可以从下一句,作者一边谈话一边想很多别的东西反映出来。因此B项为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/0ehi777K
0
在职申硕(同等学力)英语
相关试题推荐
Withthepossibleexceptionofequalrights,perhapsthemostcontroversialissueacrosstheUnitedStatestodayisthedeathpe
Withthepossibleexceptionofequalrights,perhapsthemostcontroversialissueacrosstheUnitedStatestodayisthedeathpe
Hemisledmanagementbygivingittheideathattheolderandmoreexperiencedmenwerenotan______butaliability.
Arrivinganywherewiththesepossessions,hemightjustaseasilyputupforamonthorayearasforasingleday.
IntheUSA,85%ofthepopulationovertheageof21approveofthedeathpenalty.Inthemanystateswhichstillhavethedeath
In(businessasawhole),thereisacontroversy(asto)whether(arebusinesses)reallyencouragingtheprospectsofgreater(e
Anotherkindofdistinctionthatcanbemadeamongworksofartiswhethertheywereintendedasobjectstobelookedatortob
Man:I’mgoingtoasktheneighborstoturnthemusicdown.Ican’thearmyselfthink.Woman:Doyoureallythinkitmakesanyd
BenMickle,MattEdwards,andKshipraBhawalkarlookedasthoughtheyhadjustemergedfromaminorautowreck.ThemembersofD
Scientistsassumethatunrestrainedpopulationgrowthanddwindlingresourcesmayforcehumanstolooktotheseaforfood.
随机试题
A.卵圆孔B.破裂孔C.棘孔D.颈静脉孔E.茎乳孔面神经通过
公有制经济和非公有制经济都是社会主义初级阶段基本经济制度的组成部分,这意味着()。
幽门螺杆菌引起的胃炎,炎症弥漫性分布,但以胃体为重。
45岁女性患者,3小时前车祸头部受伤,伤后立即昏迷,做CT后入院,入院检查中度昏迷,右瞳散大,光反射消失,左上下肢肌张力增高,病理征(+),左顶枕有直径4.0cm头皮下血肿,CT示右额颞部高密度新月影。诊断是
下列所述的法律原则不屈于公理性原则的是哪一选项?()
某矿业工程施工进度计划网络图如下图所示:施工中发生了以下事件:事件1:A工作因设计变更停工10d;事件2:B工作因施工质量问题返工,延长工期7d;事件3:E工作因建设单位供料延期,推迟3d施工。在施工进展
关于箱涵顶进的说法,正确的是()
在四川的国家级自然保护区中,保护对象为高寒沼泽湿地生态系统和黑颈鹤的是()。
所谓心理奴隶,实际上是形容一些职场人被某种死板认知或理念束缚后困顿不安的生存方式。他们背负着各式各样的精神负担,然后将自己陷入条条框框中举步维艰又茫然无措。根据上述定义,下列不属于心理奴隶的是:
Whatisthespeaker’smaintopic?
最新回复
(
0
)