解放军文职招聘考试短篇阅读理解8

 When I lived in Spain, some Spanish friends of mine decided to visit England by car. Before they left, they asked me for advice about how to find accommodation (住所). I suggested that they should stay at ‘bed and breakfast’ houses, because this kind of accommodation gives a foreign visitor a good chance to speak English with the family. My friends listened to my advice, but they came back with some funny stories.

    “We didn’t stay at bed and breakfast houses,” they said, “because we found that most families were away on holiday.”
    I thought this was strange. Finally I understood what had happened. My friends spoke little English, and they thought ‘VACANCIES’ meant ‘holidays’, because the Spanish word for ‘holidays” is ‘vacaciones’. So they did not go to house where the sign outside said ‘VACANCLES’, which in English means there are free rooms. Then my friends went to house where the sign said ‘NO VACANCLES’, because they thought this meant the people who owned the house were not away on holiday. But they found that these houses were all full. As a result, they stayed at hotels!
    We laughed about this and about mistakes my friends made in reading other signs. In Spanish, the word ‘DIVERSION’ means fun. In English, it means that workmen are repairing the road, and that you must take a different road. When my friends saw the word ‘DIVERSION’ on a road sign, they thought they were going to have fun. Instead, the road ended in a large hold.
    English people have problems too when they learn foreign languages. Once in Paris. when someone offered me some more. coffee, I said ‘Thank you’ in French. I meant that I would like some more, However , to my surprise the coffee pot was taken away! Later I found out that ‘Thank you’ in French means ‘Mo, thank you.’
1. My Spanish friends wanted advice about ______.
   A. learning English                     B. finding places to stay in England
   C. driving their car on English roads        D. going to England by car
2. I suggested that they stay at bed and breakfast houses because ______.
   A. they would be able to practise their English
   B. it would be much cheaper than staying in hotels
   C. it would be convenient for them to have dinner
   D. there would be no problem about finding accommodation there
3. “NO VACANCIES” in English means ______.
   A. no free rooms          B. free rooms      C. not away on holiday    D. holidays
4. If you see a road sign that says ‘Diversion’, you will ______.
   A. fall into a hole
   B. have a lot of fun and enjoy yourself
   C. find that the road is blocked by crowds of people
   D. have to take a different road
5. When someone offered me more coffee and I said ‘Thank you’ in French, I ______.
   A didn’t really want any more coffee       B. wanted them to take the coffee pot away
   C. really wanted some more coffee         D. wanted to express my politeness
6. I was surprised when the coffee pot was taken away because I ______.
   A. hadn’t finished drinking my coffee        B. was expecting another cup of coffee
   C. meant that I didn’t want any more         D. was never misunderstood

23、（1分）
    A beautiful and very successful actress was the star of a new musical show. Her home was in the country, but she didn’t want to have to go back there every night, so she rented (租用) an expensive flat in the centre of the city, bought some beautiful furniture (家具) and hired a man to paint the rooms in new colours.
    It was very difficult to get tickets for her show because everybody wanted to see it, so she decided to give the painter two of the best seats. She hoped that this would make him work better and more willingly for her. He took the tickets without saying anything, and she heard no more about them until the end of the month, when she got the painter’s bill. At the bottom of it were the words “Four hours watching Miss Hall sing and dance,£3,” with this note： “After 5 p.m. I get fifteen shillings an hour instead of ten shillings.”
1. In the article, “Miss Hall” was the name of ______.
   A. a place where people sang and danced             B. an unmarried woman
   C. a hall                                       D. a street
2. The woman’s flat was situated ______.
   A. near the city                       B. near her home
   C. in the middle of the city              D. by the side of the country road
3. The actress gave the painter two tickets, hoping he would______.
   A. be pleased                      B. ask less money for his work
   C. charge more money for his work     D. say a good word for her musical show
4. After the painter got the tickets from the actress, he ______.
   A. sold them for £3                 B. went to watch the musical show
   C. paid £3 for them                 D. was very thankful to her
5. In the story , ______ made a mistake.
   A. both the actress and the painter       B. neither the actress nor the painter
   C. the painter                       D. the actress