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  3. One of the odd stories to come out of the French-speaking province of Quebec last year was the announcement that intensive Engli

One of the odd stories to come out of the French-speaking province of Quebec last year was the announcement that intensive Engli

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问题     One of the odd stories to come out of the French-speaking province of Quebec last year was the announcement that intensive English courses would be offered to students in state schools. Odd, because in the past half-century, much of the Quebecois identity has been built on resisting English. Authorities throw the book at people for doing things that would be normal elsewhere in Canada. Last autumn, the Montreal newspaper La Presse revealed that two real estate executives had made presentations in English to a Montreal-based pension fund, violating the province’s language laws, which give workers the right to a French-speaking environment.
    Now, school authorities in Quebec City are questioning whether the time is ripe for introducing those English classes after all. Their hesitation has left French-speaking parents angry. On one hand, those parents want their children to cherish their own community and its language. On the other hand, English is the international language of business, and their children will have a hard time climbing the social ladder without it.
    Not all cultures have the same historical anguish over English that Quebecois do. But almost all are being dragged inevitably towards giving English a bigger role in their societies. So now we can all talk, we peoples of the world. The universalisation of English has happy consequences. But like the building of the Tower of Babel, it has negative ones, too. English as a lingua franca offers unfair advantages to the half-billion people who speak English as a native language. We sometimes assume that English is a world standard only for superficial interactions—hotel personnel saying "How was your stay?" or business consultants importing words like "benchmarking" into their own languages. But French and German professors, for instance, often grumble that it is hard to build a career when academic journals are all in English.
    Meanwhile, there can be a diversity-stifling effect to "diversity". When universities teach classes in global English, they can adorn their student bodies with exotic people from around the world—the most talented ones, the flower of their respective cultures. But the net effect can be to turn these varied young people into extremely unvaried adults. Language shapes mentalities—how deeply is harder to say. But the spread of English may be limiting our ability to think in different ways.
    The writer Robert McCrum wrote in his recent book Globish that there are 4bn people who understand English, if we’re generous about what we mean by English. One can only rub one’s eyes. The population of the planet reached that level in 1974, just seven years before Fran ois Mitterrand came to power in France. His culture minister, Jack Lang, waged a fight against the linguistic imperialism of English. A later government would specify that 40 per cent of popular songs on the radio had to be in French. That law gave rise to a lot of laughter in Washington and London. It doesn’t seem quite so crazy as it did back then.
The phrase "throw the book at"(Line 4, Para. 1)is closest in meaning to______.
选项 A、forgive
B、reward
C、punish
D、blame
答案C
解析 该短语所在句上文首先介绍一奇闻“加拿大魁北克省公立学校为学生开设英语强化课程”，随后指出奇闻之奇的原因“因为魁北克省近半个世纪以来都强烈抵抗英语”，紧接着是考查短语所在句。由考查短语所在句可知，throw the book at描述的是魁北克省对当地人民做其他地区被视为正常事情的行为态度，该短语所在句下文介绍一事例“蒙特利尔两名地产高管因使用英语汇报工作而违背法语工作环境权利法案”。由此可见，段中中间两句旨在说明奇闻之奇的原因，末句例子实为中间两句观点服务，因此可推知，魁北克省抵制英语，对当地人民使用英语这一其他地区认为司空见惯的事情的态度是惩罚，[C]选项符合文意。
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