A linguist, an expert on languages, is always listening, never off duty. I invited a group of friends round to my house, telling them that I was going to record their speech.
I said I was interested in their regional accents （地方口音），and that it would take only a few minutes. Thus, one evening, three people came to my house and were shown into my front room. In front of each chair there was a microphone（话筒）at head height, connected to a recorder in the middle of the floor. They sat down, rather nervously, and I explained that all I wanted was for them to count from one to twenty. Then we could relax and have a drink.
I turned on the recorder and each in turn counted from one to twenty in their best accents.
When it was over, I turned the recorder off and brought round the drinks. The rest of the evening was spent in total relaxation. I joined them in talking and joking freely, leaving them only for a telephone call which lasted some time.
Or at least that is how it would appear, for, of course, the microphones were not connected to the recorder in the middle of the room at all but to another one in the bedroom. My friends, having seen the recorder before them turned off, paid no more attention to the microphones a few inches from their mouths, thus giving excellent sound quality. It meant that I was able to get as natural a piece of talk as it would be possible to find.
I should add, perhaps, that I did tell my friends what had happened to them, after the recording was over, and asked them whether it should be destroyed. None of them wanted to, but for some years after that, it always seemed that when it came to buying drinks, it was I who paid for them. Linguistic research can be a very expensive business.
1．The writer asked his friends to count from one to twenty because he______.
A．wanted to record how they pronounced numbers in their regional accents
B．had to check if his recorder was working
C．wanted them to think that was all he wanted to record
D．wanted to discover who had the best pronunciation
2．The writer left the room in the middle of the evening because ______.
A．he had to make a phone call
B．the phone rang in the bedroom
C．he wanted the others to have a talk without him
D．he didn’t like talking with them
3．The recording which the writer was able to make was ______.
A．natural B．controlled
C．unclear D．expensive
4．The writer recorded their talk ______.
A．on the recorder in the middle of the floor
B．through hidden microphones
C．on a recorder in another room
D．in the front room
答案与解析：
1．C 本题为推理判断题。只有在了解了全文的语篇层次后才能得出结论。本文所谈的是一个语言专家希望用录音的方式获取不同的朋友的最自然的方言，为了避免因他们的紧张而导致的不真实性，这位专家便略施小计，使他的朋友们在不知不觉中讲出了各自地道的方言。由此可判断这位专家之所以只要他们数1，2，3，……只是为了打消其顾虑，认为这是他们惟一被要求做的事，从而为后面工作的顺利进行作铺垫。
2．C 本题为推理判断题。专家离开房间的目的也是为了让朋友们确信他们没有被录音，这样他们便可以在一种自然状态下说话。
3．A 明白了专家的意图和做法后，就不难推测出最后的效果，即得到了他所想得到的结果。
4．C 本题为细节理解题。从文章中所提供的信息“…of course, the microphones were not connected to the recorder in the middle of the room at all but to another in the bedroom.”可知。
