为了提高广大学生的英语水平，提高英语专业学生的专四通过率，特提供以下英语阅读，供大家练习参考：
When I was growing up, the whole world was Jewish. The heroes were Jewish and the villains were Jewish. The landlord, the doctor, the grocer, your best friend, the village idiot, and the neighborhood bully: all Jewish. We were working class and immigrants as well, but that just came with territory. Essentially we were Jews on the streets of New York. We learned to be kind, cruel, smart and feeling in a mixture of language and gesture that was part street slang, part grade school English, part kitchen Yiddish.?
One Sunday evening when I was eight years old my parents and I were riding in the back seat of my rich uncle’s car. We had been out for a ride and now we were back in the Bronx, headed for home. Suddenly, another car sideswiped us. My mother and aunt shrieked. My uncle swore softly. My father, in whose lap I was sitting, said out the window at the speeding car, “That’s all right. Nothing but a few Jews in here.” In an instant I knew everything. I knew there was a world beyond our streets, and in that world my father was humiliated man, without power or standing.?
When I was sixteen,a girl in the next building had her nose straightened; we all went together to see Selma Shapiro lying in state, wrapped in bandages from which would emerge a person fit for life beyond the block. Three buildings away
a boy went downtown for a job, and on his application he wrote “Arnold Brown” instead of “Arnold Braunowiitz”. The news swept through the neighborhood like a wild fire. A nose job? A name change? What was happening here? It was awful; it was wonderful. It was frightening; it was delicious. Whatever it was, it wasn’t standstill. Things felt lively and active. Self?confidence was on the rise, passivity on the wane. We were going to experience challenges. That’s what it meant to be in the new world. For the first time we could imagine ourselves out there.
But who exactly do I mean when I say we? I mean Arnie, not Selma. I mean my brother, not me. I mean the boys, not the girls. My mother stood behind me, pushing me forward. “The girl goes to college, too,” she said. And I did. But my going to college would not mean the same thing as my mother’s going to college, and we all knew it. For my brother, college meant going from the Bronx to Manhattan. But for me? From the time I was fourteen I yearned to get out of the Bronx, but get out into what? I did not actually imagine myself a working person alone in Manhattan and nobody else did either. What I did imagine was that I would marry, and that the man I married would get me downtown. He would brave the perils of class and race, and somehow I’d be there alongside him.?
24. In the passage, we can find the author was ?______?.?
A. quite satisfied with her life?
B. a poor Jewish girl?
C. born in a middle class family?
D. a resident in a rich area in New York ?
25. Selma Shapiro had her nose straightened because she wanted ?______?.?
A. to look her best?
B. to find a new job in the neighborhood?
C. to live a new life in other places?
D. to marry very soon ?
26. Arnold Brown changed his name because ?______?.?
A. there was racial discrimination in employment?
B. Brown was just the same as Braunowiitz?
C. it was easy to write?
D. Brown sounds better ?
27. From the passage we can infer that ?______?.?
A. the Jews were satisfied with their life in the Bronx?
B. the Jewish immigrants could not be rich?
C. all the immigrants were very poor?
D. the young Jews didn’t accept the stern reality
24. B) 根据文章第一段和最后一段可以很明显判断出“I”是一位贫穷的犹太小女孩。?
25. C) 根据第三段第一句中“..., wrapped in bandages from which would emerge a person fit for life beyond the block.”可知这个女孩做鼻子美容是为了使人们认不出她是犹太人，以适应犹太街区外边的生活，也就是说她要在外面的世界过新的生活。?
26. A) 由于在美国招工时有种族歧视现象，因此这个男孩把犹太人的姓名改成普通的姓名。
27. D) 年轻犹太人对现实不满，更名、美容、嫁富人成了改变现状的手段，作者对种族歧视、性别歧视、贫富歧视深有感触，文中到处可以见到。