Questions 16-20 are based on the following passage:

    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 (»ìÔÓÓ¢Óï ). 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 (Òì¶Ëа˵ ).

    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 caf6 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 (µ÷½Ú) 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."¡¡

16. The study of sign language is thought to be        .
an approach to simplifying the grammatical structure of a language
an attempt to clarify misunderstanding about the origin of language
a challenge to traditional views on the nature of language
a new way to took at the learning of language

17. The present growing interest in sign language was stimulated by     .
a leading specialist in the study Of liberal arts
an English teacher in a university for the deaf
Some senior experts in American Sign Language
a famous Scholar in the study of the human brain

18. According to Stokoe, sign language is        .
an international language 
a substandard language
an artificial language
a genuine language

19. Most educators objected to Stokoe's idea because they thought      .
a language should be easy to use and understand
sign language was too artificial to be widely accepted
a language could only exist in the form of speech sounds
sign language was not extensively used even by deaf people

20. Stokoe's argument is based on his belief that        .
language is a product of the brain
language is a system of meaningful codes
sign language is derived from natural language
sign language is as efficient as any other language
Questions 21-25 are based on the following passage:

    Every year 100 million holiday-makers are drawn to the Mediterranean. With one third of the world's tourist trade, it is the most popular of all the holiday destinations; it is also the most polluted. It has only 1 per cent of the world's sea surface, but carries more than half the oil and tar floating on the waters. Thousands of factories pour their poison into the Mediterranean, and almost every city, town and village on the coast sends its sewage, untreated, into the sea.
The result is that the Mediterranean, which nurtured so many civilizations, is gravely ill¡ªthe first of the seas to fall victim to the abilities and attitudes that evolved around it. And the pollution does not merely keep back life of the sea¡ªit threatens the people who inhabit and visit its shores.

    The mournful form of disease is caused by sewage. Eighty-five per cent of the waste from the Mediterranean's 120 coastal cities is pushed out in to the waters where their people and visitors bathe and fish. What is more, most cities just drop it in straight off the beach; rare indeed are the places like Cannes and Tel Aviv which pipe it even half a mile offshore.

    Not surprisingly, vast areas of the shallows are awash with bacteria and it doesn't take long for these to reach people. Professor William Brumfitt of the Royal Free Hospital once calculated that anyone who goes for a swim in the Mediterranean has a one in seven chance of getting some sort of disease. Other scientists say this is an overestimate; but almost all of them agree that bathers are at risk.

    Industry adds its own poisons. Factories cluster round the coastline, and even the most modern rarely has proper waste treatment plant. They do as much damage to the sea as sewage. But the good news is that the countries of the Mediterranean have been coming together to work out how to save their common sea.

21. The causes of the Mediterranean's pollution is ____.
the oil and tar floating on the water
many factories put their poison into the sea
untreated sewage from the factories and coastal cities
there are some sorts of diseases in the sea

22. Which of following consequence of a polluted sea is not true according to the passage?
Bring up so many civilizations.
Various diseases in the sea.
It threatens the inhabitants and travelers.
One in seven chance of getting some sort of disease swimming in the sea.

23. The word ¡°sewage¡± refers to ____.
poison
waste
liquid material
solid material

24. Why does industry do much damage to the sea?
Because most factories have proper waste treatment plants.
Because many factories have not proper waste treatment plants even the most modern one.
Because just the modern factory has a waste treatment plant.
Because neither ordinary factories nor most modern ones have proper wasteª²treatment plants.

25. What is the passage mainly about?
Save the world.
How the people live in the Mediterranean sea.
How the industry dangers the sea.
Beware the dirty sea.

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