Opposition parties, the media and the Public immediately voiced their support for the Princess. To make matters worse for the government, it soon emerged that the Princess’s trip had been approved by the Foreign Office, and that she was in fact very well-informed about both the situation in Angola and the British government’s policy regarding landmines. The result was a severe embarrassment for the government.

　　To try and limit the damage, the Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, claimed that the Princess’s views on landmines were not very different from government policy, and that it was “working towards” a worldwide ban. The Defense Secretary, Michael Portillo, claimed the matter was “a misinterpretation or misunderstanding.”

　　For the Princess, the trip to this war-torn country was an excellent opportunity to use her popularity to show the world how much destruction and suffering landmines can cause. She said that the experience had also given her the Chance to get closer to people and their problems.

　　1. Princess Diana paid a visit to Angola in 1997 ________.

　　A) to voice her support for a total ban of landmines

　　B) to clarify the British government’s stand on landmines

　　C) to investigate the sufferings of landmine victims there

　　D) to establish her image as a friend of landmine victims

　　2. What did Diana mean when she said “... putting a face to those figures brought the reality home to me” (Line 5, Para. 1)?

　　A) She just couldn’t bear to meet the landmine victims face to face.

　　B) The actual situation in Angola made her feel like going back home.

　　C) Meeting the landmine victims in person made her believe the statistics.

　　D) Seeing the pain of the victims made her realize the seriousness of the situation.

　　3. Some members of the British government criticized Diana because ________.

　　A) she was ill-informed of the government’s policy

　　B) they were actually opposed to banning landmines

　　C) she had not consulted the government before the visit

　　D) they believed that she had misinterpreted the situation in Angola

　　4. How did Diana respond to the criticisms?

　　A) She paid no attention to them.

　　B) She made more appearances on TV.

　　C) She met the 13-year-old girl as planned.

　　D) She rose to argue with her opponents.

　　5. What did Princess Diana think of her visit to Angola?

　　A) It had caused embarrassment to the British government.

　　B) It had brought her closer to the ordinary people.

　　C) It had greatly promoted her popularity.

　　D) It had affected her relations with the British government.

　　1. A 2. D 3. B 4.A 5. B

　　Sign has become a scientific hot button. Only in the past 20 years have specialists in language study realized that signed languages are unique—a speech of the hand. They offer a new way to probe how the brain generates and understands language, and throw new light on an old scientific controversy: whether language, complete with grammar, is something that we are born With, or whether it is a learned behavior. The current interest in sign language has roots in the pioneering work of one rebel teacher at Gallaudet University in Washington, D. C., the world’s only liberal arts university for deaf people.

　　When Bill Stokoe went to Gallaudet to teach English, the school enrolled him in a course in signing. But Stokoe noticed something odd: among themselves, students signed differently from his classroom teacher.

　　Stokoe had been taught a sort of gestural code, each movement of the hands representing a word in English. At the time, American Sign Language (ASL) was thought to be no more than a form of pidgin English (混雜英語). But Stokoe believed the “hand talk” his students used looked richer. He wondered: Might deaf people actually: have a genuine language? And could that language be unlike any other on Earth? It was 1955, when even deaf people dismissed their signing as “substandard”. Stokoe’s idea was academic heresy (異端邪說).

　　It is 37 years later. Stokoe—now devoting his time to writing and editing books and journals and to producing video materials on ASL and the deaf culture—is having lunch at a cafe near the Gallaudet campus and explaining how he started a revolution. For decades educators fought his idea that signed languages are natural languages like English, French and Japanese. They assumed language must be based on speech, the modulation (調(diào)節(jié)) of sound. But sign language is based on the movement of hands, the modulation of space. “What I said,” Stokoe explains, “is that language is not mouth stuff—it’s brain stuff.”

　　1. The study of sign language is thought to be ________.

　　A) a new way to look at the learning of language

　　B) a challenge to traditional, views on the nature of language

　　C) an approach: to simplifying the grammatical structure of a language

　　D) an attempt to clarify misunderstanding about the origin of language

　　2. The, present growing interest in sign language was stimulated by ________.

　　A) a famous scholar in the study of the human brain

　　B) a leading specialist in the study of liberal arts

　　C) an English teacher in a university for the deaf

　　D) some senior experts in American Sign Language

　　3. According to Stokoe, sign language is ________.

　　A) a Substandard language

　　B) a genuine language

　　C) an artificial language

　　D) an international language

　　4. Most educators objected to Stokoe’s idea because they thought ________.

　　A) sign language was not extensively used even by deaf people

　　B) sign language was too artificial to be widely accepted

　　C) a language should be easy to use and understand

　　D) a language could only exist in the form of speech sounds

　　5. Stokoe’s argument is based on his belief that ________.

　　A) sign language is as efficient as any other language

　　B) sign language is derived from natural language

　　C) language is a system of meaningful codes

　　D) language is a product of the brain

　　1. B 2. C 3. B 4.D 5. D