5大一英语试题.docVIP

Test Five Reading Comprehension Passage?1 ?? ??Humans are social animals. They live in groups all over the world. As these groups of people live apart from other groups, over the years and centuries they develop their own habits and ideas, which form unique cultures. One important aspect of every culture is how its people deal with time.??? ??Time is not very important in nonindustrial societies. The Nuer people of East Africa, for example, do not even have a word time that corresponds to the abstract thing we call time. The daily lives of the people of such nonindustrial societies tend to be patterned around their physical needs and natural events rather than around a time schedule based on the clock. They cook and eat when they are hungry and sleep when the sun goes down. They plant crops during the growing seasons and harvest them when the crops are ripe. They measure time not by a clock or calendar, but by saying that an event takes place before or after some other event. Frequently such a society measures days in terms of sleeps or longer periods in terms of moons. Some cultures, such as the Eskimos of Greenland, measure seasons according to the migration of certain animals.??? ??Some preliterate cultures have developed interesting ways of telling time. For instance, when several Australian aborigines want to plan an event for a future time, one of them places a stone on a cliff or in a tree. Each day the angle of the sun changes slightly. In a few days, the rays of the sun strike the stone in a certain way. When this happens, the people see that the agreed-upon time has arrived and the event can take place.??? ??In contrast, accurate measurement of time is very important in modern, industrialized societies. This is because industrialized societies require the cooperative efforts of many people in order to function. For a factory to work efficiently, for example, all of the workers must work at the same time. Therefo