Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 36 to 42
I first noticed it in a restaurant. The place was oddly quiet, and at one table a group sat with their heads bowed, their eyes hooded and their hands in their laps. I then realised that every one, whatever their age group, was gazing at a handheld phone or tablet. People strolled in the street outside likewise, with arms at right angles, necks bent and heads in awkward postures. Mothers with babies were doing it. Students in groups were doing it. The scene resembled something from an old science fiction film. There was no conversation.
Every visit to California convinces me that the digital revolution is over, by which I mean it is won. Everyone is connected. The New York Times last week declared the death of conversation. While mobile phones may at last be falling victim to considerate behaviour, this is largely because even talk is considered too intimate a contact. No such bar applies to emailing, texting, messaging, posting and tweeting. It is ubiquitous, the ultimate connectivity, the brain wired full-time to infinity.
The MIT professor and psychologist Sherry Turkle claims that her students are close to mastering the art of maintaining eye contact with a person while texting someone else. It is like an organist playing different tunes with hands and feet. To Turkle, these people are ‘alone together … a tribe of one’. Anyone with 3,000 Facebook friends has none.
The audience in many theatres now sit, row on row, with lit machines in their laps, looking to the stage occasionally but mostly scrolling and tapping away. The same happens at meetings and lectures, in coffee bars and on jogging tracks. Psychologists have identified this as ‘fear of conversation’, and have come up hmmm with the term ‘conversational avoidance devices’ for headphones. In consequence, there is now a booming demand for online ‘conversation’ with robots and artificial voices. Mobiles come loaded with customised ‘boyfriends’ or ‘girlfriends’. People sign up with computerised dating advisors, even claim to fall in love with their on-board GPS guides.
The ‘post-digital’ phenomenon, the craving for live experience, is showing a remarkable vigour. The US is a place of ever greater congregation and migration, to parks, beaches and restaurants, to concerts, rock festivals, ball games. Common interest groups, springing up across the country, desperately seek escape from the digital dictatorship, using Facebook and Twitter not as destinations but as route maps to meet up with real people
Somewhere in this cultural mix I am convinced the desire for friendship will preserve the qualities essential for a civilised life, qualities of politeness, listening and courtesy. Those obsessed with fashionable connectivity and personal avoidance are not escaping reality. They may be unaware of it but deep down they, too, still want someone to talk to.
(Adapted from Compact Advanced by Peter May)
Question 36. Which best serves as the title for the passage?
A. How electronic gadgets adversely affect our academic life? B. Online conversation: A growing industry
C. How to avoid communicating with others in a modern society? D. The death of conversation?
Question 37. The word “it” in paragraph 1 refers to _______
A. talking to people on their phones B. strolling in the street
C. looking at the phone or tablet D. bending their neck awkwardly
Question 38. The word “ubiquitous” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to _______.
A. intrusive B. commonplace C. obvious D. inevitable
Question 39. According to Sherry Turkle, certain people nowadays are _______.
A. determined to return to a more traditional form of social structure.
B. electronically connected but isolated from genuine human interaction.
C. incapable of forming true friendships except through social media.
D. more skillful at communicating with others via music than in words.
Question 40. The word “vigour” in paragraph 5 mostly means _______.
A. hatred B. imagination C. satisfaction D. enthusiasm
Question 41. According to the passage, which of the following is true?
A. The main reason for the decreasing use of mobile phones is the fact that people are increasingly reluctant to speak to one another.
B. Students always pay little attention to the lectures because they are enticed by modern technology
C. Many theatres found themselves in a bad situation as their customers didn’t look to the stage anymore
D. Some people in the US decided to migrate to other countries to find their real friends
Question 42. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
A. Nobody can escape the negative effects of the digital revolution.
B. Some traditional human values are eventually bound to disappear.
C. Everybody needs human contact whether they realise it or not.
D. Only those who remain polite and courteous will have friends.
