阅读理解。
Reading poems is not exactly an everyday activity for most people. In fact, many people never read
a poem once they get out of high school.
It is worth reminding ourselves that this has not always been the case in America. In the nineteenth
century, a usual American activity was to sit around the fireside in the evening and read poems aloud.
It is true that there was no television at the time, nor movie theaters, nor World Wide Web, to provide
diversion. However, poems were a source of pleasure, of self-education, of connection to other people
or to the world beyond one's own community. Reading them was a social act as well as an individual
one, and perhaps even more social than individual. Writing poems to share with friends and relations
was, like reading poems by the fireside, another way in which poetry has a place in everyday life.
How did things change? Why are most Americans no longer comfortable with poetry, and why do
most people today think that a poem has nothing to tell them and that they can do well without poems?
There are, I believe, three factors: poets, teachers, and we ourselves. Of these, the least important is
the third: the world surrounding the poem has betrayed us more than we have betrayed the poem. Early
in the twentieth century, poetry in English headed into directions unfavorable to the reading of poetry.
Readers decided that poems were not for the fireside or the easy chair. at night, and that they belonged
where other difficult-to-read things belonged.
Poets failed the reader, so did teachers. They want their students to know something about the skills
of a poem, they want their students to see that poems mean something. Yet what usually occurs when
teachers push these concerns on their high school students is that young people decide poems are
unpleasant crossword puzzles.
1. Reading poems is thought to be a social act in the nineteenth century because _____.
A. it built a link among people
B. it helped unite a community
C. it was a source of self-education
D. it was a source of pleasure
2. The underlined word "diversion" most probably means _____.
A. concentration
B. change
C. amusements
D. stories
3. According to the passage, what is the main cause of the great gap between readers and poetry?
A. Students are becoming less interested in poetry.
B. Students are poorly educated in high school.
C. TV and the Internet are more attractive than poetry.
D. Poems have become difficult to understand.
4. In the last paragraph, the writer question _____.
A. the difficulty in studying poems
B. the way poems are taught in school
C. students' wrong ideas about poetry
D. the techniques used in writing poem
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