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2014年6月英语四级真题及答案:选词填空
题目一:
本文选自2006年5月16日的经济学人
参考原文
A nation of nonreaders: A strange and costly disregard for books
MANY Brazilians cannot read. In 2000, a quarter of those aged 15 and older were functionally illiterate. Many simply do not want to. Only one literate adult in three reads books. The average Brazilian reads nonacademic books a year—less than half the figure in Europe and the United States. In a recent survey of reading habits, Brazilians came 27th out of 30 countries, spending hours a week with a book. Argentines, their neighbours, ranked 18th.
In rare accord, government, businesses and NGOs are all striving in different ways to change this. On March 13th the government launched a National Plan for Books and Reading. This seeks to boost reading, by founding libraries and financing publishers among other things. The Brazil Reader Institute, an NGO, brings books to people: it has installed lending libraries in two S漀 Paulo metro stations, and is planning one in a Carnival samba school. It is starting to be common to see characters in television soap operas shown reading. Cynics note that Globo, the biggest broadcaster, is also a big publisher of books, newspapers and magazines.
One discouragement to reading is that books are expensive. At S漀 Paulo's book fair this week, “O Código Da Vinci” was on sale for 32 reais—more than a tenth of the official minimum monthly wage. Most other books have small printruns, pushing up their price.
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But Brazilians' indifference to books has deeper roots. Centuries of slavery meant the country's leaders long neglected education. Primary schooling became universal only in the 1990s. Radio was ubiquitous by the 1930s; libraries and bookshops have still not caught up. “The electronic experience came before the written experience,” says Marino Lobello, of the Brazilian Chamber of Books, an industry body.
All this means