Part Ⅲ Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)

Section A

Directions : In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices.  Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.

Questions 26 to 35 are based on the following passage.

   
   Small communities, with their distinctive character--where life is stable and intensely human—are disappearing. Some have   26   from the face of the earth, others are dying slowly, but all have  27   changes as they have come into contact with an   28   machine civilization. The merging of diverse peoples into a common mass has produced tension among members of the minorities and the majority alike.

    The Old Order Amish, who arrived on American shores in colonial times, have   29   in the modem world in distinctive, small communities. They have resisted the homogenization  30   more successfully than others. In planting and harvest time one can see their bearded men working the fields with horses and their women hanging out the laundry in neat rows to dry. Many American people have seen Amish families, with the men wearing broad-brimmed black hats and the women in long dresses, in railway or bus  31    Although the Amish have lived with  32   America for over two and a half centuries, they have moderated its influence on their personal lives, their families, communities, and their values.

    The Amish are often   33   by other Americans to be relics of the past who live a simple, inflexible life dedicated to inconvenient out-dated customs. They are seen as abandoning both modem  34   and the American dream of success and progress. But most people have no quarrel with the Amish for doing things the old-fashioned way. Their conscientious objection was tolerated in wartime, for after all, they are good farmers who   35   the virtues of work and thrift.

A. accessing

B. conveniences

C. destined

D. expanding

E. industrialized

F. perceived

G. practice

H. process

I. progress

J. respective

K. survived

L. terminals

M. undergone

N. universal

O. vanished