WOULD YOU MIND ______, PLEASE

53. …..

quarter of the city and it is twenty minutes away on foot. On the way back,

however, it is all up hill and I must to admit it can be exhausting, especially on

SECTION THREE: READING COMPREHENSIONPart 1. Read the following passage, and then choose the correct answers (A, B, C or D). Because writing has become so important in our culture, we sometimes think of as more real thanspeech. A little thought, however, will show why speech is primary and writing secondary to language.Human beings have been writing (as far as we can tell from surviving evidence) for at least 5000 years; butthey have been talking for much longer, doubtless ever since there have been human beings.When writing did develop, it was derived from and represented speech, albeit imperfectly. Eventoday, there are spoken languages that have no written form. Furthermore, we all learn to talk well beforewe learn to write; any human child who is not severely handicapped physically or mentally learns to talk: anormal human being cannot be prevented from doing so. On the other hand, it takes a special effort to learnto write; in the past many intelligent and useful members of society did not acquire the skill, and even todaymay who speak languages with writing systems never learn to read or write, while some who learn therudiments of those skills so only imperfectly.To affirm the primacy of speech over writing is not, however, to disparage the latter. One advantagewriting has over speech is that it is more permanent and makes possible the records that any civilizationmust have. Thus, if speaking makes us human, writing makes us civilized.