1995年01月英语四级试题（阅读.doc

洛基英语，中国在线英语教育领导品牌 Part II Reading Comprehension ( 35 minutes) Passage One Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage. People tend to be more impressed by evidence that seems to confirm some relationship. Thus many are convinced their dreams are prophetic (预言的) because a few have come true; they fail to notice the many that have not. Consider also the belief that the phone always rings when I’m in the shower. If it does ring while you are in the shower, the event will stand out and be remembered. If it doesn’t ring, that nonevent probably won’t even register （留下印象）. People want to see order, pattern and meaning in the world. Consider, for example, the common belief that things like personal misfortunes, plane crashes, and deaths happen in threes. Such beliefs stem from the tendency of people to allow the third event to define the time period. If three plane crashes occur in a month, then the period of time that counts as their happening together is one month; if three crashes occur in a year, the period of time is stretched. Flexible end points reinforce such beliefs. We also tend to believe what we want to believe. A majority of people think they are more intelligent, more fair-minded and more skilled behind the wheel of an automobile than the average person. Part of the reason we view ourselves so favorably is that we use criteria that work to our advantage. As economist Thomas Schelling explains, Everybody ranks himself high in qualities he values: careful drivers give weight to care, skilled drivers give weight to skill, and those who are polite give weight to courtesy, This way everyone ranks high on his own scale. Perhaps the most important mental habit we can learn is to be cautious (谨慎的) in drawing conclusions. The evidence of everyday life is sometimes misleading. 21. In the first paragraph the author states that ____ . (A) dreams cannot be said to be prophetic even though a few have come true. (B) dreams are prophetic because some of