03年英语专业八级考试真题(语法部分)

PART II PROOFREADING & ERROR CORRECTION (15 MIN)

The passage contains TEN errors. Each indicated line contains a maximum of ONE error. In each case, only ONE word is involved You should proof, read the passage and correct it in the following way: For a wrong word, underline the wrong word and write the correct one in the blank pro-vided at the end of the line. For a missing word, mark the position of the missing word with a "^" sign and write the word you believe to be missing in the blank provided at the end of the line. For an unnecessary word, cross the unnecessary word with a slash "/" and put the word in the blank provided at the end of the line.

EXAMPLE When ^ art museum wants a new exhibit, it never buys things in finished form and hangs them on the wall. When a natural history museum wants an exhibition, it must often build it.

Demographic indicators show that Americans in the postwar period were more eager than ever to establish families. They quickly brought down the age at marriage for both men and women and brought the birth rate to a twentieth century height after more than a hundred (1)__ years of a steady decline, producing the “baby boom.”

These young (2)__ adults established a trend of early marriage and relatively large families that Went for more than two decades and caused a major (3)__ but temporary reversal of long-term demographic patterns.

From the 1940S through the early 1960s, Americans married at a high rate (4)__ and at a younger age than their Europe counterparts.(5)__ Less noted but equally more significant, the men and women on who (6)__ formed families between 1940 and 1960 nevertheless reduced the (7)__ divorce rate after a postwar peak; their marriages remained intact to a greater extent than did that of couples who married in earlier as well (8)__ as later decades.

Since the United States maintained its dubious (9)__ distinction of having the highest divorce rate in the world, the temporary decline in divorce did not occur in the same extent in (10)__ Europe. Contrary to fears of the experts, the role of breadwinner and homemaker was not abandoned.