人文知识160

General Knowledge for Third-year Students (I)

1.In Britain, where does the Changing of the Guard take place?

a)Buckingham Palace. b ) Downing Street.

c) Victoria and Albert Museum. d )The Tower of London.

2.What is a double-decker?

a) A bus. b) A chocolate bar.

c) A taxi. d) A two-storey building.

3.Of all the symbols, ________, which are considered to represent

fertility and new life, are those most frequently associated with Easter.

a)the pumpkin and the turkey b)the lamb and the beef

c)the spring peas and the potatoes d)the egg and the rabbit

4.The first landing by Europeans in Australia was in 1606, but what

is their nationality?

a) Dutch. b) French. c) Spanish. d) British.

5.Middle English was used by the poet _______.

a) Hardy b) Chaucer c) Shakespeare d) Milton

6.“A Tale of Two Cities” was written by ______.

a) William Shakespeare b) Goeffrey Chaucer

c) Charles Dickens d) Thomas Jefferson

7.Emily Dickinson wrote many short poems on various aspects of

life. Which of the following is NOT a usual subject of her poetic expression?

a) Religion and immortality. b) Life and Death.

c) Love and marriage. d) War and peace.

8.What three components, generally, make up a system of a typical

language?

a)Phonology, syntax, semantics. b)Semiosis, syntax, frames.

c)Frames, semantics, utterances. d) Sign, sign, signs.

9.Of the following word-formation processes, _______ is the most

productive.

a) clipping b) blending c) initialism d) derivation

10.“The pen is mightier than the sword.” is an example of ______.

a) metonymy b) transferred epithet

c) oxymoron d) metaphor

11.What is the affectionate name given to the clock tower of the

Houses of Parliament, Westminster?

a) Big Ben. b) Big Ken. c) Big Bill. d) Big Bob.

12.Which of these sports did not originate in UK?

a) Cricket. b) Snooker. c) Football (Soccer). d) Golf.

13.Which town has been nicknamed …Tinseltown? by the Americans?

a) New Orleans. b) Reno. c) Hollywood. d) Las Vegas.

14.What is the other official language in Canada besides English and

what is Canada?s capital?

a) French. Ottawa. b) Spanish, Ottawa.

c) Spanish, Toronto. d) French, Toronto.

15.Which English poet wrote of Adam and Eve?s expulsion from the

Garden of Eden in Paradise Lost?

a) John Donne. b) John Milton.

c) Sir Philip Sidney. d) Edmund Spenser.

16._______ died of tuberculosis at the age of 26, but not before

leaving an impressive body of poems, including “To Autumn” and “Ode on Melancholy”.

a) John Keats b) Lord Byron

c) Samuel Taylor Coleridge d) Percy Bysshe Shelley

17.Walt Whitman was a pioneering figure of American poetry. His

innovation first of all lies in his use of ______, poetry without a fixed beat or regular rhyme scheme.

a) Blank verse b) Heroic couplet

c) Free verse d) Iambic pentameter

18.Of the following words, ______ is an initialism.

a) VOA b) NATO c) BASIC d) UNESCO

19.Which of the following words is NOT formed through clipping?

a) Dorm. b) Motel. c) Gent. d) Zoo.

20.A regional variety of a language that has variations in

pronunciation, vocabulary or meaning is called _______.

a) accent b) slang c) dialect d) narrative

21.The Channel Tunnel, linking the UK to the rest of Europe, runs

between England and ______.

a) France b) Germany c) Belgium d) Netherlands

22.What?s the name of the day set apart in USA for planting trees?

a) Earth Day. b) Ann Arbor Day. c) Arbor Day. d) Green Day.

23.What was the name of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to New

England in 1620?

a) Golden Hinde. b) Sunflower.

c) Mayflower. d) Titanic.

24.What are the official colours of Australia?

a) Red, White and Blue. b) Green and Gold.

c) Green and Brown. d) Green and Red.

25._______ is the first important governess novel in the English

literary history.

a) Jane Eyre b) Emma

c) Wuthering Heights d) Middlemarch

26._______ was a pre-Romantic writer and is best known for his

Scottish songs.

a) Sir Walter Scott b) Robert Burns

c) Samuel Taylor Coleridge d) William Blake

27.Mark Twain did NOT write _______.

a)The Prince and the Pauper b)The Old Curiosity Shop

c)Pudd?nhead Wilson d) Tom Sawyer

28.Which of the following is NOT a dialect of English?

a) Slang. b) Buffalo. c) American. d) Southern.

29.Some words in the basic word stock are said to be stable because

they ______.

a)are complex words b) are technical words

c) refer to the commonest things in life

d)denote the most important concepts

30.What is defined as “the study of sentence structure”?

a) Syntax. b) Phonology. c) Morphology. d) Semantics.

31.What colour is the British classified business telephone directory?

a) Yellow. b) White. c) Blue. d) Pink.

32.What does IMF stand for?

a)International Monetary Foundation.

b)International Monetary Fund.

c)Internal Money Foundation.

d)Internal Monetary Fund.

33.What do Americans celebrate on 4th July?

a) Thanksgiving Day. b) The Revolution.

c) The Discovery of America. d) Independence Day.

34.What is Canada?s national animal?

a) Beaver. b) Moose. c) Bear. d) Husky.

35.Which play by Shakespeare is not a tragedy?

a) Titus Andronicus. b) Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

c) Coriolanus. d) Timon of Athens.

36.What is the book Lord of the Flies about?

a) A road trip around the USA.

b) A swarm of killer flies.

c)Schoolboys on a desert island.

d)An expert pilot.

37.Nathaniel Hawthorne did NOT write _______.

a) The Scarlet Letter b) Twice Told Tales

c) The Blithedale Romance d) Vanity Fair

38.Morphology is _______.

a)how a word?s meaning evolves over time

b)the way a language builds words by putting small, meaningful

units together

c)how a word?s sp elling evolves over time

d)in what order words are put in a sentence

39.Which of the following words can be described as containing an

affricate?

a) Pill. b) Huffle. c) Hammer. d) Budged.

40.The word ______ is usually NOT used by British people.

a) “tube”b) “pub”c) “railroad”d) “taxi”

41. In the United Kingdom, ministers are appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of ______.

a) the Speaker b) the Lord Chancellor

c) the Duke of Edinburgh d) the Prime Minister

42.Who was the first person to walk on the moon?

a) John Glenn. b) Clint Eastwood.

c) Neil Armstrong. d) Yuri Gagarin.

43.How many states are there in the US?

a) 49. b) 50. c) 51. d) 52.

44.What is the title of Canada?s national anthem?

a) True Patriot Love. b) God Save the Queen.

c) Canada My Country. d) O Canada.

45.Who wrote “Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise”?

a) Browning. b) Marx. c) Shakespeare. d) Kipling.

46._______ is the author of “To a Skylark”.

a) Mary Lamb b) John Keats

c) Percy Bysshe Shelley d) Lord Byron

47.Henry Da vid Thoreau?s work, ________, has always been

regarded as a masterpiece of New England Transcendentalism.

a) Walden b) The pioneers

c) Nature d) Song of Myself

48.What is etymology?

a)The history of a word.

b)The various ways in which a word can be pronounced.

c)The study of unwritten languages.

d)The study of dead languages.

49.________ are bound morphemes because they cannot be used as

separate words.

a) Roots. b) Stems. c) Affixes. d) Compounds.

50.What is the dominant accent in the United States?

a) Midwest. b) General American.

c) Southern. d) Canadian.

51.The vegetable, leek, is the emblem for which part of the UK?

a) Wales. b) Northern Ireland.

c) Scotland. d) England.

52.John Lennon is a member of the band of ______ in the 1960s.

a) The Beatles b) The Police

c) The Rolling Stones d) The Eagles

53.What is the title of the United States of America?s national

anthem?

a) America the Beautiful. b) We Are The Champions.

c) God Bless America. d) The Star Spangled Banner.

54.How many territories are there in Canada?

a) 4. b) 2. c) 3. d) 1.

55.In Gulliver?s Travels, Jonathan Swift describes the island of the

Houyhnhnms as the world?s most perfect society. What kind of animals are the Houyhnhnms?

a) Monkeys. b) Fish. c) Dogs. d) Horses.

56.In which c entury were Geoffrey Chaucer?s Canterbury Tales

written?

a) Fourteenth. b) fifteenth. c) Sixteenth. d) Seventeenth.

57.With Howells, James, and Mark Twain active on the literary scene,

_______ became the major trend in American literature in the seventies and eighties of the 19th century.

a) sentimentalism b) romanticism

c) realism d) naturalism

58.To which of these language groups does English belong?

a) Romance. b) Germanic. c) Slavonic. d) Baltic.

59.“Present” and “absent” form a pair of _______.

a) conversives b) gradable antonyms

c) complementary antonyms d) marked antonyms

60.The morpheme is the smallest syntactical unit. How many

morphemes does the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” have?

a) 1. b) 5. c) 7. d) 6.

61.What is the name of the famous stadium in the north of London?

a) Wembley. b) Westminster. c) Wimbledon. d) Webster.

62.What would you do with a “toad-in-the-hole”?

a) Let it out. b) Sing it. c) Eat it. d) Play it.

63.Martin Luther King Jr., a young black clergyman, became a

national leader of the _______ Movement.

a) Boycott b) Civil Rights c) Segregation d) Integration

64.The majority of French-speaking Canadians live in _______.

a) New Brunswick b) Ontario

c) Quebec d) Nova Scotia

65.Sir Thomas More coined the word “Utopia”. What does the word

mean in Greek?

a) Nowhere land. b) God?s blessings.

c) Kingdom in the sky. d) Free from all sorrow.

66.Where did Aldous Huxley get the title for Brave New World,

which presents a chilling vision of a supposedly ideal society?

a)The Bible?s Book of Psalms.

b)Shakespeare?s “The Tempest”.

c)Homer?s “Odyssey”.

d)Christopher Columbus? journals.

67.The Hemingway Code heroes are best remembered for their

________.

a) indestructible spirit b) pessimistic view of life

c) war experiences d) masculinity

68.Which of the following does affect the register that we speak in?

a) Conversational partner. b) Context.

c) Social status. d) Gender.

69.What is the smallest segment of sound that comprises the basic

building blocks of a language?

a) Morphemes. b) Teramemes.

c) Metamemes. d) Phonemes.

70.The ambiguity in “Pass the port” is caused by _______.

a) lexical items b) a grammatical structure

c) homonymy d) polysemy

71.Which of these is the patron saint of Wales?

a) St. Patrick. b) St. David. c) St. Andrew. d) St. George.

72.Where is the official residence of the British prime Minister?

a) Constitution Hill. b) Downing Street.

c) Whitehall Place. d) The Strand.

73.Which American president freed the slaves?

a) Thomas Jefferson. b) George Washington.

c) Abraham Lincoln. d) Bill Clinton.

74.Who said: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are

created equal”?

a) Bill Clinton. b) George Washington.

c) Richard Nixon. d) Thomas Jefferson.

75.Who was the author of the fam ous storybook Alice?s Adventures in

Wonderland?

a) Rudyard Kipling. b) John Keats

c) Lewis Carroll. d) H.G. Wells.

76.Sonnets from the ______ is regarded as Elizabeth Barrett

Browing?s best work.

a) Spanish b) Portuguese

c) French d) Italian

77.Chinese poetry and philosophy have exerted great influence over

_______.

a) Ezra Pound b) Ralph Waldo Emerson

c) Robert Frost d) Emily Dickinson

78.The dictionary of a language can be called ________.

a) pragmatics b) semantics c) lexicon d) grammar

79.Which of the following is NOT associated with “Parentese” (how

an adult talks to a child)?

a) Yes or no questions. b) High pitch.

c) Long sentences. d) Exaggerated intonation.

80.The group of words _______ make up a semantic field.

a)“father, teacher, son, brother”

b)“red, white, rose, milk”

c)“sorrow, grief, anguish, regret”

d)“socks, slippers, shoes, glass”

81.Which famous writer was born in Stratford-upon-Avon?

a) Geoffrey Chaucer. b) Agatha Christie.

c) William Shakespeare. d) Thomas Hardy.

82.In which year was the independence from England declared?

a) 1679. b) 1876. c) 1776. d) 1779.

83.Which of these U.S.A. states has been frequently called “the

armpit of the Nation”?

a) New Jersey. b) Washington.

c) Maine. d) Montana.

84.Which of the follo wing is Canada?s national symbol?

a) Sunflower. b) Maple leaf. c) Golden wattle. d) Rose.

85.How many lines does a sonnet have?

a) 10. b) 12. c) 14. d) They vary.

86.________ is considered to be the best-known English dramatist

since Shakespeare, and his representative works are plays inspired by social criticism.

a) Richard Sheridan b) Oliver Goldsmith

c) Oscar Wilde d) Bernard Shaw

87._______ is the title of the 1818 novel by Mary Wollstonecraft

Shelley.

a) Spiderman b) Dracula c) Frankenstein d) The Mummy

88.The four major modes of semantic changes are _______.

a)Extension, narrowing, elevation and degradation

b)Extension, generalization, elevation and degradation

c)Extension, narrowing, specialization and degradation

d)Extension, elevation, amelioration and degradation

89._______ deals with the distinctive sounds that are combined to

make words.

a) Lexicon b) Morphology c) Phonology d) Semantics

90.“Vacuum-clean” resulting from “vacuum-cleaner” is an example of

______.

a) clipping b) reduplication c) compounding d) back-formation

91.The Hundred Years? War in the history was between England and

_______.

a) France b) Norway c) Denmark d) Germany

92.Which of the following countries was once called a big empire “on

which the sun never sets”?

a) America. b) Norway. c) Spain. d) Britain.

93.A Parliament in Britain has a maximum duration of ________

years.

a) 2 b) 3 c) 4 d) 5

94.Which of the following is NOT a tragedy by Shakespeare?

a) Romeo and Juliet. b) Hamlet.

c) King Lear. d) The Taming of the Shrew.

95.Who is generally regarded as the greatest writer in the English

language?

a) Shakespeare. b) Hemingway.

c) Chaucer. d) Mark Twain.

96.Which of the following is a chronicle play by Shakespeare?

a)Julius Caesar.

b)The twelfth Night.

c) A Midsummer Nigh t?s Dream.

d)As You Like it.

97.______ is a branch of linguistics concerned with the sounds of

speech, the way the sounds of particular languages change over time and the way the sounds of one language relate to those of another.

a) Phonology b) Morphology c) Syntax d) Semantics

98.______ is the branch of linguistics which studies meaning in

language.

a) Phonology b) Morphology c) Syntax d) Semantics

99.“Alive” and “dead” are _______ antonyms.

a) relational b) gradable

c) symmetric d) complementary

100._______ is the study of the production, transmission, and reception of speech sounds.

a) Phonology b) Morphology c) Syntax d) Phonetics 101.Which university is the oldest one in Britain?

a) Oxford. b) Cambridge. c) Edinburgh. d) Glasgow. 102.The Reuters is a famous news agency in _______.

a) France b) Germany c) America d) Britain

103.The most typically English of sports is ________.

a) soccer b) cricket c) horse racing d) golf

104.“The Red badge of Courage” was written by _______.

a) Jack London b) Stephen Crane

c) Hamilin Garland d) S. Anderson

105.Fitzgerald?s first novel was ________.

a)The Beautiful and Damned

b)This Side of Paradise

c)The Great Gatsby

d)Tender Is Night

106.The theme of The Waste Land is _______.

a) love b) spiritual quest for salvation

c) death d) nature

107.Wallace Stevens was a successful ________.

a) poet b) essayist c) novelist d) critic

108.Chinese is a(n) ________.

a) isolating language b) agglutinative

c) fusional d) incorporating

109.______ validity refers to the extent to which the best adequately covers the syllabus area to be tested.

a) content b) Construct

c) Emprical d) Face

110.Sentence (a) “He married a blonde heiress.” _______ sentence (b) “He married a blonde.”

a) presupposes b) implicates c) entails d) negates

111.The singing group the Beatles was formed in _________.

a) the early 1960s b) the early 1970s

c) the late 1960s d) the late 1970s

112.The most popular sport in England is _______.

a) soccer b) cricket c) rugby d) golf

113._______ is the base where America originated.

a) the Midwest b) the South c) the Great Plains d) New England 114.Napoleon sold the ______ Territory to the United States for only 15 million dollars.

a) Colorado b) Louisiana c) New Mexico d) Texas 115.________ introduced the technique of the stream of consciousness in his writing.

a) Shakespeare b) James Joyce

c) Thomas Hardy d) William Faulkner

116.Adgar Allan Poe was a _______.

a) novelist and critic b) poet and critic

c) novelist and poet d) playwright and novelist

117.________ was called “inventor of detective stories”.

a) Washington Irving b) Fennimore Cooper

c) Adgar Allan Poe d) Nathaniel Hawthorne

118._______ are of the complementary type of antonyms.

a) Sell-buy b) Long-short

c) Good-bad d) Single-married

119.Which is created by cutting the initial part of a word?

a) Van. b) Prof. c) Bike. d) Telly.

120.The word “holiday” originally meant holy day, but now the word signifies any day on which we do not have to work. This is an example of ________.

a) meaning shift b) widening of meaning

c) narrowing of meaning d) loss of meaning

121._______ was the president of the United States during the Great Depression.

a) Thomas Jefferson b) John F. Kennedy

c) Franklin Roosevelt d) Truman

122.______ was involved in the Watergate Scandal.

a) Nixon b) Roosevelt c) Truman d) Ford 123.The Presidency Election is held every _______ years in America.

a) 2 b) 3 c) 4 d) 6

124.The Master?s colleges and universities in America offer _______ degrees.

a) BA b) Master?s c) BA and Master?s d) doctoral 125.“Scarlet Letter” is one of the greatest American novels. It is written by _______.

a) Nathaniel Hawthorne b) Wallace Steven

c) Francis d) Willa Cather

126.________ was the first to explore fully the possibility of free verse in American history of literature.

a) Ralph Waldo b) Stephen Crane

c) Walt Whitman d) Robert Frost

127.Mark Twain was well-known as a _______.

a) critic b) humorist c) poet d) playwright

128.Which is NOT a blending word?

a) baby-sit. b) transistor. c) motel. d) smog.

129.The thematic role which deliberately performs the action described by the verb is _______.

a) instrument b) source c) agent d) theme

130.Which of the following languages does NOT belong to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family?

a) Italian. b) English. c) German. d) Dutch.

131.Which of the following American higher education institution does NOT offer BA degree?

a)Junior Colleges. b)Research universities.

c)Doctoral universities. d)Master?s colleges and universities. 132.Yale and Harvard Universities are funded by the following EXCEPT ________.

a)the tuition fees paid by the students

b)the donations by corporations and religious organizations

c)individuals? donations

d)the governments at all levels

133.The unique contribution to architecture by Americans was the ________ in the late 19th century.

a) skyscraper b) expressway c) bridges d) tall towers 134.Theodore Dreiser was the representative of the _______.

a) transcendentalists b) modernists

c) naturalists d) existentialists

135.“The Waste Land” was written by ________.

a) Thomas Stearns Eliot b) Walt Whitman

c) Emily Dickinson d) Robert Frost

136.Which of the following American writers did NOT win a Nobel Prize for Literature?

a) Ernest Hemingway. b) T. S. Eliot.

c) John Steinbeck. d) Richard Wright.

137.The word “_______” does NOT have the semantic property of “cause”.

a) darken b) kill c) uglify d) touch

138.______ is/are NOT included in Pragmatics.

a) Speech acts b) Presuppositions c) Dexis d) Pronunciation 139.________ is defined as the study of language in use and linguistic communication.

a) Pragmatics b) Sociolinguistics

c) Neuroliguistics d) Contextual linguistics

140._______ carry semantic content.

a) Grammatical words b) Form words

c) Lexical words d) Functions

141.Elvis Presley was the representative of _______ in American history.

a) country music b) disco c) jazz d) rock?n?roll

142.Thanksgiving Day is on the _______ Thursday in November.

a) 1st b) 2nd c) 3rd d) 4th

143.The National Day of the American people is on ________.

a) June 4 b) July 4 c) June 14 d) July 14

144.“invisible Man” probes the existential status of a ______.

a) Jewish b) Negro c) White d) Hispanic

145.Which of the following is a woman writer?

a) Ralph Ellison. b) Saul Bellow.

c) James Baldwin. d) Willa Cather.

146.“Long Day?s Journey Into Night” was written by _______.

a) Sherwood Anderson b) William Faulkner

c) Eugene O?Neil d) Bernard Shaw

147.Which of the following was NOT written by Ernest Hemingway?

a)The Sun Also Rises. b)For Whom the Bell Tolls.

c)Tender is the Night. d)A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. 148.Which of the following words are minimal pairs?

a) beg, bag. b) my, fly. c) cat, slight. d) it, intelligent. 149.“Man” and “men” are _______ allomorphs.

a) replacive b) suppletive c) zero d) positional

150.________ includes the study of linguistic variation, linguistic change, and sociocultural factors that influence language use.

a) Pragmatics b) Sociolinguistics

c) Neurolinguistics d) Contextual linguistics

151.The longest city in Canada is ________.

a) Toronto b) Montreal c) Vancouver d) Quebec City 152.English is the language most commonly spoken throughout Canada EXCEPT _______.

a) Toronto b) Montreal c) Vancouver d) Quebec

153.Today in Canada, services in almost all modern institutions work in _______.

a) English b) English and French

c) English and Spanish d) English and Dutch

154.Fitzgerald usually dealt with the double theme of _______.

a) hatred and love b) hatred and war

c) love and money d) money and death

155.The Sound and the Fury was written by _______.

a) Sinclair Lewis b) Theodore Dreiser

c) F. Scott d) William Faulkner

156.Main Street is a masterpiece of _______.

a) transcendentalism b) naturalism c) modernism d) provincialism 157.“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a ______ poem.

a) dramatic b) meditative c) satirical d) philosophical 158._____ deals with the analysis and creation of words, idioms, and collocations.

a) Morphology b) Lexicon

c) Morphophonology d) Morphophonemics

159.Which of the following is NOT a fricative?

a) /f/. b) /v/. c) /s/. d) /tr/.

160.An artificial language used for trade between speakers of different languages is called a ________.

a) pidgin b) lingua franca c) creole s) slang

Key Answers

Test 1

1.a

2.a

3.d

4.a

5.b

6.c

7.d

8.a

9.d 10.a

Test 2

1.a

2.b

3.c

4.a

5.b

6.a

7.c

8.a

9.b 10.c

Test 3

1.a

2.c

3.c

4.b

5.a

6.b

7.b

8.a

9.c 10.a

Test 4

1.a

2.b

3.d

4.a

5.b

6.c

7.d

8.b

9.d 10.c

Test 5

1.d

2.c

3.b

4.d

5.c

6.c

7.a

8.a

9.c 10.b

Test 6

1.a

2.a

3.d

4.c

5.d

6.a

7.c

8.b

9.c 10.d

Test 7

1.a

2.c

3.b

4.c

5.a

6.b

7.a

8.d

9.d 10.d

Test 8

1.b

2.b

3.c

4.d

5.c

6.b

7.a

8.c

9.c 10.c

Test 9

1.c

2.c

3.a

4.b

5.c

6.d

7.c

8.a

9.c 10.d

Test 10

1.a

2.d

3.d

4.d

5.a

6.a

7.a

8.d

9.d 10.d

Test 11

1.a

2.d

3.b

4.b

5.b

6.b

7.a

8.a

9.a 10.c

Test 12

1.a

2.a

3.d

4.b

5.b

6.a

7.c

8.d

9.a 10.b

Test 13

1.c

2.a

3.c

4.c

5.a

6.c

7.a

8.a

9.c 10.a

Test 14

1.a

2.d

3.a

4.b

5.a

6.d

7.d

8.d

9.a 10.c

Test 15

1.d

2.d

3.b

4.b

5.d

6.c

7.c

8.a

9.a 10.b

Test 16

1.a

2.d

3.b

4.c

5.d

6.b

7.b

8.b

9.d 10.a