2. 外语
  3. (1)All through my boyhood and youth, I was known as an idler; and yet I was always busy on my own private end, which was to lear

(1)All through my boyhood and youth, I was known as an idler; and yet I was always busy on my own private end, which was to lear

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问题     (1)All through my boyhood and youth, I was known as an idler; and yet I was always busy on my own private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a note-book would be in my hand, to note down the features of the scene or write some poor lines of verse. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was for no further use; it was written consciously for practice. It is not so much that I wished to be an author(though I wished that too)as that I had vowed that I would learn to write. That was a proficiency that tempted me; and I practiced to acquire it. Description was the principal field of my exercise; for to any one witii senses there is always something worth describing, and town and country are but one continuous subject. But I worked in other ways also; I often accompanied my walks with dramatic dialogues, in which I played many parts; and often exercised myself in writing down conversations from memory.
    (2)This was all excellent, no doubt. And yet this was not the most efficient part of my training. Good as it was, it only taught me the choice of the essential note and the right word. And regarded as training, it had one grave defect; for it set me no standard of achievement. So mat there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly more effort, in my secret hours at home. Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a tiling was said or an effect rendered witii propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape mat quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts I got some practice in the rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the coordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Defoe, to Hawthorne.
    (3)That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; whether I have profited or not, that is the way. It was so, if we could trace it out, tiiat all men have learned. Perhaps I hear some one cry out: but this is not the way to be original! It is not; nor is there any way but to be born so. Nor yet, if you are born original, is tiiere anything in this training that shall clip the wings of your originality. Burns is the very type of a most original force in letters; he was of all men the most imitative. Shakespeare himself proceeds directly from a school. It is only from a school that we can expect to have good writers; it is almost invariably from a school that great writers issue. Nor is tiiere anything here that should astonish the considerate. Before he can tell what cadences he truly prefers, the student should have tried all that are possible; before he can choose a fitting key of words, he should long have practiced the literary scales; and it is only after years of such exercises that he can sit down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrases simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do and(within the narrow limit of a man’s ability)able to do it.
    (4)And it is the great point of these imitations that there still shines beyond the student’s reach his inimitable model. Let him try as he please, he is still sure of failure; and it is a very old and a very true saying that failure is the only highroad to success. I must have had some disposition to learn; for I clearsightedly condemned my own performances. I liked doing them indeed; but when they were done, I could see they were rubbish. In consequence, I very rarely showed them even to my friends; and such friends as I chose to be my confidants I must have chosen well, for they had the friendliness to be quite plain with me, "Padding," said one. Another wrote: "I cannot understand why you do lyrics so badly." No more could I! Thrice I put myself in the way of a more authoritative rebuff, by sending a paper to a magazine. These were returned; and I was not surprised nor even pained. If they had not been looked at, as(like all amateurs)I suspected was the case, there was no good in repeating the experiment; if they had been looked at—well, then I had not yet learned to write, and I must keep on learning and living. Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune which is the occasion of this paper, and by which I was able to see my literature in print, and to measure experimentally how far I stood from the favour of the public.
In his early years of writing practice, the author mainly focused on the ability of_____.
选项 A、note-taking
B、critical thinking
C、description
D、communication
答案C
解析 第1段倒数第2句中的principal对应题干中的mainly，由此句可知，作者早期习作主要是练习描写，故选C。A有一定的迷惑性，第1段作者提及他有一个本子记录所见，但他练习的不是note-taking的能力，而是描述能力；第1段末句提到他边走边跟自己对话，但目的是为了练习写作，而不是与人交流的能力，所以D不对；B无原文依据。
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