2. 职称英语
  3. Language is, and should be, a living thing, constantly enriched with new wor

Language is, and should be, a living thing, constantly enriched with new wor

游客2023-07-08  15
问题     Language is, and should be, a living thing, constantly enriched with new words and forms of expression. But there is a vital distinction between good developments, which add to the language, enabling us to say things we could not say before, and bad developments, which subtract from the language by rendering it less precise. A vivacious, colorful use of words is not to be confused with mere slovenliness. The kind of slovenliness in which some professionals deliberately indulge is perhaps akin to the cult(迷信)of the unfinished work, which has eroded most of the arts in our time. And the true answer to it is the same that art is enhanced, not hindered, by discipline. You cannot carve satisfactorily in butter.
    The corruption of written English has been accompanied by an even sharper decline in the standard of spoken English. We speak very much less well than was common among educated Englishmen a generation or two ago.
    The modern theatre has played a baneful(有害的)part in dimming our appreciation of language. Instead of the immensely articulate dialogue of, for example, Shaw(who was also very insistent on good pronunciation), audiences are now subjected to streams of barely literate trivia, often designed, only too well, to exhibit’lack of communication’, and larded(夹杂)with the obscenities(下流的话)and grammatical errors of the intellectually impoverished. Emily Post once advised her readers: "The theatre is the best possible place to hear correctly -enunciated speech. " Alas, no more. One young actress was recently reported to be taking lessons in how to speak badly, so that she should fit in better.
    But the BBC is the worst traitor. After years of very successfully helping to raise the general standard of spoken English, it suddenly went into reverse. As the head of the Pronunciation Unit coyly(含蓄地)put it, "In the 1960s the BBC opened the field to a much wider range of speakers." To hear a BBC disc jockey talking to the latest ape-like pop idol is a truly shocking experience of verbal squalor. And the prospect seems to be of even worse to come. School teachers are actively encouraged to ignore little Johnny’s incoherent grammar, atrocious spelling and haphazard punctuation, because worrying about such things might inhibit his creative genius. [br] The author says that the standard of the spoken English of BBC______.
选项 A、is the worst among all broadcasting networks
B、has raised English-speaking up to a new level
C、has taken a turn for the worse since the 1960s
D、is terrible because of a few popular disc jockeys
答案 C
解析 原文提到，BBC曾多年如一日地帮助提升英语的口语标准，并且卓有成效，但是随后它就突然倒行逆施了。自20世纪60年代起，BBC开始向更广泛的讲话者人群开放。听BBC音乐节目主持人与猿猴一般的最新流行偶像做访谈节目，绝对是一场震撼身心的言语悲剧。可见，BBC主持语言的水平从20世纪60年代起就急转直下，故选C。
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