新东方网络课堂：历年中级口译真题6

Questions 6~10

There must be few questions on which responsible opinion is so utterly divided as on that of how much sleep we ought to have. There are some who think we can leave body to regulate these matters for itself.  “The answer is easy,” says Dr.. A. Burton. “With the right amount of sleep you should wake up fresh and alert five minutes before the alarm rings.” If he is right many people must be under sleeping, including myself. But we must remember that some people have a grater inertia than others. This is not meant rudely. They switch on slowly, and they are reluctant to switch off. They are alert at bedtime and sleepy when it is time to get up, and this many have nothing to do with how fatigued their bodies are, or how much sleep they must take to lose their fatigue.

Other people feel sure that the present trend is towards too little sleep. To quote one medical opinion, “Thousands of people drift through life suffering from the effects of too little sleep; the reason is not that can’t sleep. Like advancing colonists, we do seem to be grasping ever more of the land of sleep for our waking needs, pushing the boundary back and reaching, apparently, for a point in our evolution where we will sleep no more. This in itself, of course, need not be a bad thing. What could be disastrous, however, is that we should press to quickly towards this goal, sacrificing sleep only to gain more time in which to jeopardize our civilization by actions and decisions made weak by fatigue.”

Then, to complete the picture, there are those who believe that more people are persuaded to sleep too much. Dr H. Roberts, writing in Every Man in, asserts: “It may safely be stated that, just as the majority eat too much, so the majority sleep too much.” One can see the point of this also. It would be a pity to retard our development by holding back those people who are gifted enough to work and play well less than the average amount of sleep, if indeed it does them no harm. If one of the trends of evolutions is that more of the life span is to be spent in gainful waking activity, then surely these people are in the van of this advance.

6.The author seems to indicate that          .

(A) there are many controversial issues like the right amount of sleep

(B) among many issues the right amount of sleep is the least controversial

(C) the right amount of sleep is topic of much controversy among doctors

(D) people are now moving towards solving many controversial issues concerning sleep

7.According to the author, sleeping habits          .

(A) are related to the amount of sleep

(B) are inherited from the parents 

(C) vary from person to person

(D) would not change in one’s lifetime

8.The world “jeopardize” (paragraph 2) is closest in meaning to          .

(A) endeavor (B) endanger 

(C) endorse (D) endow

9. In the last paragraph the author points out that          .

(A) sleeping less is good for human health

(B) people ought to be persuaded to sleep less than before

(C) it is incorrect to say that people too little

(D) those who can sleep less should be encouraged

10. We learn from the passage that the author          .

(A) revises someone else’s opinion

(B) explains an opinion of his own

(C) favors one of the three opinions 

(D) comments on three different opinions