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Neil Armstrong, the first man ever to set foot on the moon, is best remembered by his words “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for the mankind”. Once, in an interview with his son, he said it was difficult to watch a sci-fi movie with his dad, because Armstrong would keep complaining about how unrealistic their vision of space were.
In fact, even the Oscar-winning Gravity, described as “the most realistic space movie ever” by Forbes, is not 100 percent faithful to reality. Here is part of a former NASA astronaut – Garrett Reisman’s movie review.
On the whole, it’s a great movie. But the question that most people want me to answer is how realistic it was.
In general, sci-fi movies are usually far-fetched. So it’s amazing how many things Gravity gets right. The danger of space debris（残骸）is very real. There are currently more than 600,000 pieces of debris larger than 1 cm orbiting Earth and they pose a great risk to spacecrafts. However, in the movie, astronauts can see the debris coming and quickly seek shelter. In reality, debris can travel at 20 times the speed of sound, which means that if you can see it, it’s already too late to hide.
Another huge error was – there was absolutely no reason for the male astronaut Matt Kowalski to sacrifice himself!! He lets go of the hand of his female partner, Ryan Stone, and drifts away into space. In reality, Kowalski wouldn’t have flown away when Stone let go of his hand. Instead, he would have just stayed floating in that spot.
In the movie, Stone travels from the Hubble Telescope to the International Space Station and then to the Chinese Space Station Tiangong, where she finds an escape vehicle to take her back to Earth. But this is actually the biggest error in the movie. The Hubble, the International Space Station and a Chinese space station are not neighbors. Getting from one to the other requires so much energy that not even space shuttles had enough fuel to do it. In addition, space stations travel in different orbits, and they travel quickly. And it would be physically impossible to get from one to the other.
There are other, more minor details that are just unrealistic. For example, Stone doesn’t wear a cooling garment（降温服）under her spacesuit to protect herself from the heat in space.
. . . Yes, I could go on and on about all the things Gravity got wrong. But who cares? All of these inaccuracies were done to help advance the plot or to add drama to the films. This is entertainment, not a documentary.
28. The purpose of the first paragraph is to _______________.
A. introduce the famous American astronaut Neil Armstrong
B. show that sci-fi movies are often considered unrealistic by astronauts
C. introduce why Gravity is the most realistic space movie ever
D. tell people not to believe everything they see in sci-fi movies
29. The underlined word “far-fetched” can best be replaced by “_______________”.
A. unlikely to be true B. difficult to understand
C. easy to mislead people D. unpopular with astronauts
30. Which of the following situations would agree with the laws of physics in space according to the passage?
A. Astronauts collecting flying space debris
B. Astronauts wearing only T-shirts under their spacesuits
C. Astronauts staying afloat where they are after they part with a spaceship
D. Astronauts performing a space walk from the Hubble Telescope to the International Space Station
31. We can infer from the passage that ___________________.
A. Garrett Reisman doesn’t think highly of the movie Gravity
B. directors of sci-fi movies usually don’t care much about minor details
C. the shooting of space documentaries and sci-fi movies involve totally different skills
D. Garrett Reisman believes that sci-fi movies don’t need to be totally faithful to reality
D
In 1958, Jean Berko Gleason, an American psycholinguist, created an experiment called the Wug Test. It investigated how children learn to make plural forms of nouns in English like cats, dogs, and horses. The children were shown imaginary words in the singular and asked to change the word into their plural forms. There are three ways of pronouncing the “s” that comes after plural nouns in English; it can be pronounced like /z/, /s/, or /iz/. The most common sound is the /z/ sound like in dogs, then the /s/ sound like in cats, then the /iz/ sound like horses.
In the experiment, the child was presented with a picture of some kind of pretend creature. He or she was told that the creature was a “wug”. The experimenter said, “This is a wug.” Another card was pulled out with another wug, and the experimenter said, “Now there are two of them. These are two . . .?” Children who understood the proper use of plural form for nouns ending with a “g” would say, “They are two wugs,” with a /z/ sound. Very young children were often confused by this and said “Two wug.” Generally, children who were 4 years or older got the question right. The researchers also carried out several other experiments to create plural forms ending with the /s/ sound and with the /iz/ sound and found that children usually learned these rules later in their lives because they are not as common as the /z/ sound plurals.
The Wug Test also included questions that explored a child’s understanding of the proper use of verbs and the suing of the possessive, such as “This is Rob’s bike.” Possessives are parts of grammar that show ownership. Also, the children were prompted to use the “-er” suffix （后缀）of a noun to demonstrate a person’s job, such as someone who drives is a “driver”. Again, the children were given a nonsense word, this time “zib”. The researcher asked the child, “A man who ‘zibs’ is a . . .?” Some young children replied “zibber”, but many young children replied “zibman”.
The Wug Test demonstrated that even very young children have established grammatical systems that allow them to make plurals, possessive, and other forms of words that they have never heard before. This test was the first of its kind to prove that children learn their language akills naturally without needing to be taught grammar rules.
32. The author introduces Jean Berko Gleason as a psycholinguist in order to _________________.
A. explain why she used imaginary words for the experiment
B. show that she was interested in how the mind learns language
C. suggest that she studied the language of the mentally ill
D. state that she illustrated the pictures used in the experiment
33. The underlined word “pretend” is closest in meaning to _______________.
A. artificial B. domestic C. incorrect D. living
34. According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE about the Wug Test?
A. It was an experiment to show that children must be taught the rules of language
B. It investigated whether children could use English verbs to show ownership
C. It examined how children learned complex language rules ( like forming plurals )
D. It proved that children acquire /z/-sound possessives before /s/-sound ones
35. The passage probably comes from ___________________.
A. a book review B. an official documentary
C. a biography of Jean Berko Gleason D. a language learning journal
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