问两个PP阅读题

110. Thomas Edison compared the phonograph to the sewing machine in terms of its

    variety of uses  

    cost of manufacture  

    future impact on business  

    method of production

我选的A

114. The word freezing in the passage is closest in meaning to

      controlling  

       halting  

       dramatizing  

       encouraging

我选的A

123.The word contexts in the passage is closest in meaning to

     settings  

      choices  

      behaviors  

      objects  

我选的D

如果可以请帮我分析一下选的原因和选错的原因.

感谢!

三个问题分别是三篇文章的

Thomas Edison, an inventor of the late

1800's, always said that the phonograph was his

only real discovery, the only invention he stumbled

upon rather than deliberately set out to find.  Having

invented it, he then had to find a use for it.  Musical

entertainment was one of the first uses he predicted

for the phonograph, although it was by no means the

only one.  The inventor claimed that it would change

education, politics, and business communication, in

addition to providing entertainment.  Edison also

thought it could be adapted for phonographic books for

people with visual impairments, for the teaching

of public speaking, and for talking clocks.

    It was thought that the phonograph could be

used to save telephone messages, and the ability to

record speech opened up several commercial uses.  

Chief among these was its employment as a dictating

machine for people in business.  A talking machine

could be used to replace the tedious exchange of

letters with the recorded message of the speaker

on a phonograph cylinder.  The inventor hoped that

the cylinder could be sent through the mail with the

ease of a letter.  The advantage was that the recipient

got an exact record of the sender's message as

it was dictated, substituting a sound recording for

correspondence.  The paperless business office

was anticipated well before the advent of personal

computers and modems.

    Edison hoped that the phonograph would transform

office work.  The electric light, telephone,

and typewriter were slowly changing the way business

was conducted in the United States, facilitating the task

of managing the larger business organization of the

late nineteenth century.  When used as a dictating

machine, the phonograph promised to further ease

the burden of business administration by mechanizing

correspondence.  The device that had begun as a

complement to the telephone was now seen as an

adjunct to the typewriter.

    At the same time that Edison was imagining the

phonograph as the ultimate business tool, he also

made a prophetic statement about its future.  “This

machine,” he wrote in 1878, shortly after the clamor

surrounding the invention had died down, “can only be

built on the American principle of interchangeability of

parts, like a sewing machine.”  Edison had grasped

the idea of mass production using standardized parts.

   Television's contribution to family life in the

United States has been an equivocal one.  For while

it has, indeed, kept the members of the family from

dispersing, it has not served to bring them together.  

By dominating the time families spend together, it

destroys the special quality that distinguishes one

family from another, a quality that depends to a great

extent on what a family does, what special rituals,

games, recurrent jokes, familiar songs, and shared

activities it accumulates.

    “Like the sorcerer of old,” writes Urie

Bronfenbrenner, “the television set casts its magic

spell, freezing speech and action, turning the living

into silent statues so long as the enchantment lasts.  

The primary danger of the television screen lies not

so much in the behavior it produces---although there

is danger there---as in the behavior it prevents:  the

talks, games, the family festivities, and arguments

through which much of the child's learning takes place

and through which character is formed.  Turning on the

television set can turn off the process that transforms

children into people.”

    Of course, families today still do special things

together at times:  go camping in the summer, go

to the zoo on a nice Sunday, take various trips and

expeditions.  But the ordinary daily life together is

diminished---that sitting around at the dinner table,

that spontaneous taking up of an activity, those little

games invented by children on the spur of the moment

when there is nothing else to do, the scribbling,

the chatting, the quarreling, all the things that form the

fabric of a family, that define a childhood.  Instead,

the children have their regular schedule of television

programs and bedtime, and the parents have their

peaceful dinner together.  But surely the needs of

adults are being better met than the needs of children,

who are effectively shunted away and rendered

untroublesome.  

    If the family does not accumulate its backlog of

shared experiences, shared everyday experiences

that occur and recur and change and develop,

then it is not likely to survive as anything other

    Capuchin monkeys have been observed

using tools in a broad variety of contexts, but their

use of tools had been limited to the application of a

single type of tool to solve a specific problem.  In

a recent study, however, researchers observed

caged capuchins using a tool set, which is defined

as different types of objects used sequentially to

achieve a goal.  Nine capuchins were divided into

two groups.  The capuchins were presented with

an apparatus designed to accommodate the use

of pounding tools to crack walnuts and the use of

probing tools to loosen and extract their nutmeat.

    The apparatus in the study was a plastic

container with an opening two centimeters wide

on top.  At the onset of each trial, a walnut was

placed atop a pedestal inside the container so that it

protruded slightly through the opening.  Two stones

and four sticks were provided on the cage floor.  

Thirty trials were conducted with each group of

capuchins over a two-week period.  A trial began

when a capuchin approached the container and ended

when the animal no longer showed interest in the task.

An observer noted each “bout,” or each time that a

capuchin placed a stone or stick in contact with a

walnut, and whether the bout involved pounding,

probing, or another type of action.  A bout began when

a capuchin placed an object in contact with a walnut

and ended when the animal discarded the implement.  

The observer also noted the instant a walnut was first

cracked within each trial.  

    Three of the capuchins used stones to crack

the walnuts and sticks to loosen and extract their

nutmeat.  They cracked the walnuts by repeatedly

pounding them with stones, loosened the nutmeat by

inserting sticks into small shell cracks, and extracted

the nutmeat by inserting sticks into the shell openings

and removing it.  The six capuchins that did not use

tools obtained some food by retrieving nutmeat

dropped by the other capuchins or left in the

apparatus.  The three capuchins that used stones

and sticks to exploit walnuts did so in 59 of the

60 trials.  The results of the study provide further

evidence of the extensive tool-using capabilities

110。答案是否为D “the idea of mass production using standardized parts”

114，是否为B，这里是没有语言和行动。应该是停止了语言和行动而不仅仅是控制。这是从上下文感到的。不知字典怎么解释？

答案是 d  b  a