学生啦：课时作业（十一）Unit4 SectionⅡGrammar and usage Integratedskills【阅读理解AReading poems is not exactly an everyday activity for most people.In fact,many peoplenever read a poem once they get out of high school.It is worth reminding ourselves that this has not always been the case in America.In thenineteenth century,a usual American activity was to sit around the fireside in the evening and readpoems aloud.It is true that there was no television at the time,nor movie theaters,nor World WideWeb,to provide diversion.However,poems were a source of pleasure,of self-education,ofconnection to other people or to the world beyond one's own community.Reading them was asocial act as well as an individual one and perhaps even more social than individual.Writingpoems to share with friends and relations was like reading poems by the fireside,another way inwhich poetry has a place in everyday life.How did things change?Why are most Americans no longer comfortable with poetry,andwhy do most people today think that a poem has nothing to tell them and that they can do wellwithout poems？There are,I believe,three factors:poets,teachers and we ourselves.Of these the leastimportant is the third:the world surrounding the poem has betrayed us more than we havebetrayed the poem.Early in the twentieth century,poetry in English headed into directionsunfavorable to the reading of poetry.Readers decided that poems were not for the fireside or theeasy chair at night and that they belonged where other difficult-to-read things belonged.Poets failed the reader,so did teachers.They want their students to know something about theskills of a poem.They want their students to see that poems mean something.Yet what usuallyoccurs when teachers push these concerns on their high school students is that young peopledecide poems are unpleasant crossword puzzles.1.Reading poems is thought to be a social act in the nineteenth century becauseA.it built a link among peopleB.it helped unite a communityC.it was a source of self-educationD.it was a source of pleasure2.The underlined word "diversion"most probably meansA.concentrationB.changeC.amusementsD.stories3.According to the passage,what is the main cause of the great gap between readers andpoetry?A.Students are becoming less interested in poetry.B.Students are poorly educated in high school.