2016年12月英语六级阅读理解100篇：旅游新解
Does Travel Broaden The Mind?One often hears it said that travel broadens the mind: if you stay in your
own country the whole time , your ideas remain narrow; whereas if you travel
abroad you see new customs, eat new foods, do new things, and come back home
with a broader mind.
But does this always — or even usually — happen? An acquaintance of mine
who lives in England and had never been outside it until last summer, decided to
go over to France for a trip. When he returned, I asked him how he liked
it.“Terrible, ”was his answer.“ I couldn’t get a nice cup of tea anywhere .Thank goodness I’m back. ”I asked him whether he hadn’t had any good food while
he was there .“Oh, the dinners were all right, ”he said.“I found a little place
where they made quite good fish and chips. Not as good as ours, mind you, but
they were passable. But the breakfasts were terrible: no bacon or kippers. I had
fried eggs and chips, but it was quite a business getting them to make them.
They expected me to eat rolls. And when I asked for marmalade , they brought
strawberry jam. And do you know, they insisted that it was marmalade? The
trouble is they don’t know English. ”
I thought it useless to explain that we borrowed the word‘marmalade ’from
French, and that it means, in that language, any kind of jam. So I said,“But
didn’t you eat any of the famous French food?”“What? Me?”he said.“Of course not!
Give me good old English food every time! None of these fancy bits for me!
”Obviously travel had not broadened his mind.
This does not, of course, happen only to Englishmen in France: all
nationalities, in all foreign countries, can be found judging what they see,
hear, taste and smell according to their own habits and customs. People who are
better educated and who have read a lot about foreign countries tend to be more
adaptable and tolerant, but this is because their minds have already been
broadened before they start travelling. In fact, it is easier to be broad-minded
about foreign habits and customs, if one’s acquaintance with these things is
limited to books and films. The American smiles tolerantly over the absence of
central heating in most English homes when he is himself comfortably seated in
his armchair in his centrally heated house in Chicago; the English man reads
about the sanitary arrangements in a certain tropical country, and the
inhabitants of the latter read about London fogs, and each side manages to be
detached and broad-minded. But actual physical contact with things one is
unaccustomed to is much more difficult to bear philosophically.
Perhaps the ideal would be if travel could succeed in making people
tolerant of the habits and customs of others without abandoning their own. The
criterion for judging a foreigner could be: Does he try to be polite and
considerate to others? Instead of: Is he like me?
阅读自测
Ⅰ. True o r Fa lse :
1. It is often said that if you travel abroad to see many new things, your
mind will be broadened.
2. The Englishman had a happy life when he travelled to France .
3. The word‘marmalade’is originally a French word, which means any kind of
jam.
4. In the view of the author, people often judge things according to their
own habits and customs.
5. The author thinks that people who are better educated and read a lot are
easily to be tolerant.
6. Tea , bacon, kippers, chips are all typical English food.
参考答案
Ⅰ. 1. T 2. F 3 . T 4 . T 5 . T 6 . T
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