Question

My husband and son took a New York-to-Milwaukee flight that was supposed to leave Friday at 11:29 am. The flight boarded after 4 pm and didn’t leave the gate until 4:40, and half an hour later the pilot announced it would be another hour until takeoff. At that point a Jewish family, worried about violating the Sabbath （安息日）, asked to get off. Going back to the gate cost the plane its place in line for takeoff, and the flight was eventually cancelled. Was the airline right to grant that request?
M. W, Norwalk, CONN.
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Situations like that can bring out the worst in people. But despite the increasing resentment（怨恨） of a plane full of people, the pilot tried to do the right thing. He went out of his way to satisfy one family’s urgent need. He should not have done so.
Passengers bought tickets in the belief that the airline’s primary goal was to get them to their destination as close to the schedule as possible. Once they got on the plane and the doors are locked, it’s not correct to announce that the rules have changed and that a personal (as opposed to medical) emergency —no matter how urgent — might take precedence（優(yōu)先）.
That would be just as true if turning back to the gate had merely cost a few minutes rather than doomed the flight entirely, since on a plane, even a slight delay can spread outward, from the people in the cabin to those meeting them to the passengers waiting to board the plane for the next leg of its journey and so on. It would also be true if the personal emergency were not religious — if someone suddenly realized she’d made a professional mistake that might cost her millions, and she had to race back to the office to fix it.
If a religious practice does nothing to harm others, then airlines should make a reasonable effort to accommodate it. Though that family has every right to observe the Sabbath, it has no right to enlist an airplane full of captive bystanders to help them do so. By boarding a flight on a Friday afternoon, the family knowingly risked running into trouble. The risk was theirs alone to bear.
小題1:M. W. wrote the letter to ask whether ______.

A．Any religious passenger has the right to ask the pilot to take off

B．The airline has the right to cancel the flight without any reason

C．A flight should meet any passenger’s need despite others’ benefit

D．A plane which has left the gate should give up taking off

小題2:What do we know from the reply letter?

A．The pilot did the right thing in spite of the fierce resentment.

B．The plane should turn back if anyone aboard is seriously ill.

C．Anybody who has boarded has no chance to get off the plane.

D．Any flight shouldn’t change its schedule no matter what has happened.

小題3:What does the underlined part in Paragraph 4 mean?

A．Turning back to the gate usually takes a plane quite a long time.

B．Nobody should take precedence to require the plane to turn back to the gate.

C．Even if it had taken a few minutes it was not right to turn back to the gate.

D．It was OK if turning back to the gate hadn’t caused the flight to be cancelled.

小題4:The author of the reply letter thinks that _________.

A．It’s right for the plane to turn back to the gate to save a passenger’s treasure

B．The Jewish family should give up observing the Sabbath after boarding

C．The biggest problem of turning back is to bring trouble to the pilot

D．The Jewish family had better avoid boarding on Friday afternoon

Answer 1

小題1:C
小題2:B
小題3:C
小題4:D

試題分析：本文兩封信，在一封信中提出了一個(gè)問題，因?yàn)槟骋粋�(gè)家庭的私事，而耽誤大家的航班，并且取消了航班這種做法正確嗎？在第二封信中明確給出了答案，即使有人生病了飛機(jī)也不該返回，the Jewish family一家最好避免在周五下午出行。
小題1:細(xì)節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)But despite the increasing resentment（怨恨） of a plane full of people, the pilot tried to do the right thing. He went out of his way to satisfy one family’s urgent need. He should not have done so.不應(yīng)只為滿足私欲而不顧其他的人了，故選C。
小題2:細(xì)節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)That would be just as true if turning back to the gate had merely cost a few minutes rather than doomed the flight entirely,，如果有人生病了飛機(jī)應(yīng)該返回，故選B。
小題3:細(xì)節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)即使只需幾分鐘的時(shí)間再返回門口那里也是不對的，故選C。
小題4:細(xì)節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)By boarding a flight on a Friday afternoon, the family knowingly risked running into trouble. The risk was theirs alone to bear.故選D。
點(diǎn)評：細(xì)節(jié)題為閱讀考題的重頭戲，所占比例很高，相對而言較簡單，因?yàn)檫@類題雖然要求理解準(zhǔn)確，但基本上限于字面意義的理解，范圍也限于局部，因此是我們可望得高分的部分。細(xì)節(jié)題絕大部分體現(xiàn)“中心思想是解”這一原理。本文都是細(xì)節(jié)理解題，在文中比較容易找到答案。