Sample Two

　　Sample Two

　　Directions:

　　The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 15, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list AG to fill in each numbered box. The first and the last paragraphs have been placed for you in Boxes. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)

　　[A] Chinese culture and Western cultures are polarized in many aspects. Communication might appear easy where they share commonalities, but unfortunately there are many cultural gaps. Bridging them is always a difficult problem, sometimes even an impossibility.

　　[B] On the contrary, traditional Chinese are apt to refer to oneself with expressions like “your underling (zai xia, 在下)”, “my humble self (bi ren, 鄙人)”, “the poortalented (bu cai, 不才)”, “the base one (jian ren, 贱人)”, “your servant (nu bi, 奴婢)”; and even emperors would refer to themselves as “the one who lacks morality (gua ren, 寡人)” or “the solitary (gu, 孤)”, showing a mentality of selfrestraint, selfdiscipline, and respect for others.

　　[C] I have had the unhappy experience at customs offices where without hesitation foreigners often “kindly helped” me to change my name order. For this, I would always argue and fight with them until the name order was changed back. Nowadays, many Chinese make it a matter of course to accept Western customs in their way of selfintroduction. But foreigners do not necessarily acknowledge the contrary Chinese customs. Many potential culture clashes are actually rooted in such misreadings and prejudices.

　　[D] Also, the orders of listing names and addresses for Chinese and Westerners are actually opposite, which may be taken to reveal that Chinese tend to respect wholeness and collectiveness, and their thinking pattern is more often from big to small, and from macro to micro. Meanwhile, Westerners tend to respect subdivided parts and individuals, more often moving from small to big, and from micro to macro. When Chinese present their names, they put surnames before their own given names, thus showing respect to their ancestors. Westerners act in a contrary way, showing selfrespect.

　　[E] A language epitomizes the cognitive pattern of a worldview. Any new language one has learned is as good as a new way one views the world. Important values are usually embedded within languages, which to some extent affect our fortunes at every moment. The extent that one can break out of language obstacles is a measure of one’s capacity to break away from bondages of one’s own fortune.

　　[F] Before we have a clear idea of the above problem, it might be misleading or extremist to discuss such topics as whether we should maintain the traditional Chinese ethical and political systems as the core of Chinese culture while making use of Western science and technology as the practical means to strengthen China \[zhong ti xi yong, 中体西用\] or whether we should mainly adopt Western ethical and political systems to improve Chinese culture \[xi ti zhong yong, 西体中用\].

　　[G] The great disparities between Chinese and Western cultures can be identified even in some everyday linguistic usages, Chinese or Western. For example, in English, the only pronoun that is capitalized is “I”. Capitalization is an emphasis. No doubt, a capitalized “I” stresses egocentrism or individualism as a value, with its implications of selfdependence, selfstrengthening, selfinterestedness and selfimportance.