The grammatical words which play so large a part in Englishgrammar are for the most part sharply and obviously different 1.___from the lexical words. A rough and ready difference which mayseem the most obvious is that grammatical words have“ lessmeaning”, but in fact some grammarians have called them 2.___“empty” words as opposed in the “full” words of vocabulary. 3.___But this is a rather misled way of expressing the distinction. 4.___Although a word like the is not the name of something as man is,it is very far away from being meaningless; there is a sharp 5.___difference in meaning between “man is vile and” “the man isvile”, yet the is the single vehicle of this difference in meaning. 6.___Moreover, grammatical words differ considerably amongthemselves as the amount of meaning they have, even in the 7.___lexical sense. Another name for the grammatical words has been“little words”. But size is by no mean a good criterion for 8.___distinguishing the grammatical words of English, when weconsider that we have lexical words as go, man, say, car. Apart 9.___from this, however, there is a good deal of truth in what somepeople say: we certainly do create a great number of obscurity 10.___when we omit them. This is illustrated not only in the poetry ofRobert Browning but in the prose of telegrams and newspaper headlines.2001改错During the early years of this century, wheat was seen as thevery lifeblood of Western Canada. People on city streets watchedthe yields and the price of wheat in almost as much feeling as if 1.___they were growers. The marketing of wheat became an increasing 2.___favorite topic of conversation.War set the stage for the most dramatic events in marketingthe western crop. For years, farmers mistrusted speculative grainselling as carried on through the Winnipeg Grain Exchange.Wheat prices were generally low in the autumn, so farmers could 3.___not wait for markets to improve. It had happened too often thatthey sold their wheat soon shortly after harvest when farm debts 4.___were coming due, just to see prices rising and speculators getting rich. 5.___On various occasions, producer groups, asked firmer control, 6.___but the government had no wish to become involving, at 7.___least not until wartime when wheat prices threatened to runwild.Anxious to check inflation and rising life costs, the federal 8.___government appointed a board of grain supervisors to deal withdeliveries from the crops of 1917 and 1918. Grain Exchangetrading was suspended, and farmers sold at prices fixed by theboard. To handle with the crop of 1919, the government 9.___appointed the first Canadian Wheat Board, with total authority to 10.___buy, sell, and set prices.2002改错There are great impediments to the general use of a standard in pronunciation comparable to that existing in spelling (orthography). One is the fact that pronunciation is learnt‘naturally’ and unconsciously, and orthography islearnt 1.___deliberately and consciously. Large numbers of us, in fact, remain throughout our lives quite unconscious with what our 2.___ speech sounds like when we speak out, and it often comes as a 3.___shock when we firstly hear a recording of ourselves. It is not a 4.___voice we recognize at once, whereas our own handwriting is something which we almost always know. We begin the 5.___‘natural’ learning of pronunciation long before we start learning to read or write, and in our early years we went on unconsciously 6.___ imitating and practicing the pronunciation of those around us for many more hours per every day than we ever have to spend 7.___ learning even our difficult English spelling. This is‘natural’, 8.___therefore, that our speech-sounds should be those of our immediate circle; after all, as we have seen, speech operates as a means of holding a community and giving a sense of 9.___'belonging'. We learn quite early to recognize a‘stranger’,someone who speaks with an accent of a different community-perhaps only a few miles far. 10.___Demographic indicators show that Americans in the postwar period were more eager than ever to establish families. They quickly brought down the age at marriage for both men and women and brought the birth rate to a twentieth century height after more than a hundred (1)__ years of a steady decline, producing the “baby boom.” These young (2)__ adults established a trend of early marriage and relatively large families that Went for more than two decades and caused a major (3)__ but temporary reversal of long-term demographic patterns. From the 1940S through the early 1960s, Americans married at a high rate (4)__ and at a younger age than their Europe counterparts. (5)__ Less noted but equally more significant, the men and women on who (6)__ formed families between 1940 and 1960 nevertheless reduced the (7)__ divorce rate after a postwar peak; their marriages remained intact to a greater extent than did that of couples who married in earlier as well (8)__ as later decades. Since the United States maintained its dubious (9)__ distinction of having the highest divorce rate in the world, the temporary decline in divorce did not occur in the same extent in (10)__ Europe. Contrary to fears of the experts, the role of breadwinner and homemaker was not abandoned.2004改错One of the most important non-legislative functions of the U.S Congressis the power to investigate. This power is usually delegated to committees - either standing committees, special committees set for a specific (1)____purpose, or joint committees consisted of members of both houses. (2)____ Investigations are held to gather information on the need forfuture legislation, to test the effectiveness of laws already passed,to inquire into the qualifications and performance of members andofficials of the other branches, and in rare occasions, to lay the (3)____ groundwork for impeachment proceedings. Frequently, committeesrely outside experts to assist in conducting investigative hearings (4)____and to make out detailed studies of issues. (5)____There are important corollaries to the investigative power. Oneis the power to publicize investigations and its results. Most (6)____committee hearings are open to public and are reported (7)____widely in the mass media. Congressional investigationsnevertheless represent one important tool available to lawmakers (8)____to inform the citizenry and to arouse public interests in national issues.(9)____Congressional committees also have the power to compeltestimony from unwilling witnesses, and to cite for contemptof Congress witnesses who refuse to testify and for perjurythese who give false testimony. (10)____2005年A number of colleges and universities have announced steeptuition increases for next year much steeper than the current,very low, rate of inflation. They say the increases are needed becauseof a loss in value of university endowments heavily investing in common 1 stock. I am skeptical. A business firm chooses the price that maximizesits net revenues, irrespective fluctuations in income; and increasingly the 2 outlook of universities in the United States is indistinguishable from those of 3 business firms. The rise in tuitions may reflect the fact economic uncertainty 4 increases the demand for education. The biggest cost of beingin the school is foregoing income from a job (this is primarily a factor in 5graduate and professional-school tuition); the poor one's job prospects, 6 the more sense it makes to reallocate time from the job market to education,in order to make oneself more marketable.The ways which universities make themselves attractive to students 7 include soft majors, student evaluations of teachers, giving studentsa governance role, and eliminate required courses. 8 Sky-high tuitions have caused universities to regard their students as customers. Just as business firms sometimes collude to shorten the 9 rigors of competition, universities collude to minimize the cost to them of the athletes whom they recruit in order to stimulate alumni donations, so the best athletes now often bypass higher education in order to obtain salaries earlierfrom professional teams. And until they were stopped by the antitrust authorities, the Ivy League schools colluded to limit competition for the best students, by agreeing not to award scholarships on the basis of merit rather than purelyof need-just like business firms agreeing not to give discounts on their best 10 customer.2006年We use language primarily as a means of communication withother human beings. Each of us shares with the community in which welive a store of words and meanings as well as agreeing conventions as 1to the way in which words should be arranged to convey a particular 2 message: the English speaker has in his disposal vocabulary and a 3 set of grammatical rules which enables him to communicate his 4 thoughts and feelings, in a variety of styles, to the other English 5 speakers. His vocabulary, in particular, both that which he uses activelyand that which he recognizes, increases in size as he growsold as a result of education and experience. 6 But, whether the language store is relatively small or large, the systemremains no more, than a psychological reality for tike inpidual, unlesshe has a means of expressing it in terms able to be seen by another 7 member of his linguistic community; he bas to give tile system aconcrete transmission form. We take it for granted rice’ two most 8 common forms of transmission-by means of sounds produced by ourvocal organs (speech) or by visual signs (writing). And these are 9 among most striking of human achievements. 102007年From what has been said, it must be clear that no one canmake very positive statements about how language originated.There is no material in any language today and in the earliest 1 __ _ records of ancient languages show us language in a new and 2 _ emerging state. It is often said, of course, that the language 3 _ ______ originated in cries of anger, fear, pain and pleasure, and the 4 _ necessary evidence is entirely lacking: there are no remote tribes, no ancient records, providing evidence ofa language with a large proportion of such cries 5 _ than we find in English. It is true that the absence of such evidence does not disprove the theory, but in 6_other grounds too the theory is not very attractive. People of all races and languages make rather similarnoises in return to pain or pleasure. The fact that 7such noises are similar on the lips of Frenchmenand Malaysians whose languages are utterly different,serves to emphasize on the fundamental difference 8between these noises and language proper. We maysay that the cries of pain or chortles of amusementare largely reflex actions, instinctive to large extent, 9whereas language proper does not consist of signsbut of these that have to be learnt and that are 10wholly conventional.2008年The desire to use language as a sign of national identity is avery natural one, and in result language has played a prominent ____1____part in national moves. Men have often felt the need to cultivate ____2____a given language to show that they are distinctive from another ____3____race whose hegemony they resent. At the time the United States ____4____split off from Britain, for example, there were proposals thatindependence should be linguistically accepted by the use of a ____5____different language from those of Britain. There was even one ____6____proposal that Americans should adopt Hebrew. Others favouredthe adoption of Greek, though, as one man put it, things wouldcertainly be simpler for Americans if they stuck on to English ____7____and made the British learn Greek. At the end, as everyone ____8____knows, the two countries adopted the practical and satisfactorysolution of carrying with the same language as before. ____9____Since nearly two hundred years now, they have shown the world ____10____that political independence and national identity can be completewithout sacrificing the enormous mutual advantages of a commonlanguage.2009专八改错原题Proofreading & Error Correction:The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passesfrom one school child to the next and illustrates the further difference (1)___________ between shcool lore and nursery lore. In nursery lore a verse, learntin early childhood, is not usually passed on again when the little listener (2)___________ has grown up, and has children of their own, or even grandchildren. (3)____________ The period between learning a nursery rhyme and transmittingIt may be something from twenty to seventy years. With the playground (4)_____________ lore, therefore, a rhyme may be excitedly passed on within the very hour (5)___________it is learnt; and in the general, it passes between children of the (6)________________ same age, or nearly so, since it is uncommon for the difference in agebetween playmates to be more than five years. If therefore, a playgroundrhyme can be shown to have been currently for a hundred years, or (7)__________even just for fifty, it follows that it has been retransmitting overand over; very possibly it has passed along a chain of two or three (8)___________ hundred young hearers and tellers, and the wonder is that it remains live (9)_______________ after so much handling, to let alone that it bears resemblance to the (10)____________ 2010年专八真题改错原文So far as we can tell, all human languages are equallycomplete and perfect as instruments of communication: that is,every language appears to be well equipped as any other to say 1________________ the things their speakers want to say. 2________________There may or may not be appropriate to talk about primitive 3________________peoples or cultures, but that is another matter. Certainly, not allgroups of people are equally competent in nuclear physics orpsychology or the cultivation of rice . Whereas this is not the 4_____________fault of their language. The Eskimos , it is said, can speak aboutsnow with further more precision and subtlety than we can in 5______________English, but this is not because the Eskimo language (one of thosesometimes miscalled 'primitive') is inherently more precise andsubtle than English. This example does not come to light a defect 6______________ in English, a show of unexpected 'primitiveness'. The position issimply and obviously that the Eskimos and the English live in similar 7____________ environments. The English language will be just as rich in terms 8____________for different kinds of snow, presumably, if the environments in whichEnglishwas habitually used made such distinction as important. 9_____________Similarly, we have no reason to doubt that the Eskimo languagecould be as precise and subtle on the subject of motor manufactureor cricket if these topics formed the part of the Eskimos' life. 10____________2011年专八真题改错部分From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knewthat when I grew I should be a writer. Between the ages of about 1__________seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did sowith the conscience that I was outraging my true nature and that 2___________soon or later I should have to settle down and write books. 3___________I was the child of three, but there was a gap of five years 4__________on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. Forthis and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developeddisagreeing mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my 5_____________ schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories andholding conversations with imaginative persons, and I think from 6_________the very start my literal ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of 7________being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with wordsand a power of facing in unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created 8________a sort of private world which I could get my own back for my failure 9________in everyday life. Therefore, the volume of serious — i.e. seriously 10________intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood andboyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my firstpoem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation.2012年专八真题改错部分The central problem of translating has always been whether to translate literally or freely.Theargument has been going since at least the first (1) ______century B.C. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, many writersfavoured certain kind of “free” translation: the spirit, not the letter; the (2) _______sense not the word; the message rather the form; the matter not (3) _______ the manner.This is the often revolutionary slogan of writers who (4) _______wanted the truth to be read and understood. Then in the turn of 19th (5) _______ century,when the study of cultural anthropology suggested thatthe linguistic barriers were insuperable and that the language (6) _______was entirely the product of culture, the view translation was impossible (7) _______ gained some currency,and with it that, if was attempted at all, it must be as (8) _______ literal as possible.This view culminated the statement of the (9) _______extreme “literalists” Walter Benjamin and Vladimir Nobokov.The argument was theoretical: the purpose of the translation, thenature of the readership, the type of the text, was not discussed. Toooften, writer, translator and reader were implicitly identified witheach other. Now, the context has changed, and the basic problem remains. (10) _____2013年Psycho-linguistics is the name given to the study of the psychological processesinvolved in language. Psycholinguistics study understanding,production and remembering language, and hence are concerned with (1) _____listening, reading, speaking, writing, and memory for language.One reason why we take the language for granted is that it usually (2) ______happens so effortlessly, and most of time, so accurately. (3) ______Indeed, when you listen to someone to speaking, or looking at this page, (4) ______you normally cannot help but understand it. It is only in exceptionalcircumstances we might become aware of the complexity (5) ______involved: if we are searching for a word but cannot remember it;if a relative or colleague has had a stroke which has influenced (6) ______their language; if we observe a child acquire language; if (7) ______we try to learn a second language ourselves as an adult; orif we are visually impaired or hearing-impaired or if we meetanyone else who is. As we shall see, all these examples (8) ______of what might be called “language in exceptional circumstances”reveal a great deal about the processes evolved in speaking, (9) ______listening, writing and reading. But given that language processeswere normally so automatic, we also need to carry out careful (10) ______experiments to get at what is happening.2005 答案解析：1. investing应改为invested。