星火：2008年12月英語六級快速閱讀預測試卷

　　Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)

　　Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1.

　　For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.

　　Guide Dogs

　　For most dog owners, the expression "work like a dog" doesn't make much sense. But some dogs happily perform very demanding jobs for much of their life, putting in a full day's work just like the rest of us. Guide dogs, one of the most familiar sorts of working dog, provide an invaluable service to humans. Every day, they help their masters get from place to place more safely.

　　What Guide Dogs Do

　　Guide dogs help blind or visually impaired people get around in the world. In most countries, they are allowed to anyplace where the public is allowed, so they can help their handlers be in any place they might want to go to. To do this, a guide dog must know how to:

　　Keep on a direct route, ignoring distractions such as smells, other animals and people

　　Maintain a steady pace, to the left and just ahead of the handler

　　Stop at all curbs until told to proceed

　　Turn left and right, move forward and stop on command

　　Recognize and avoid obstacles that the handler won't be able to fit through (narrow passages and low overheads)

　　Stop at the bottom and top of stairs until told to proceed

　　Bring the handler to elevator buttons

　　Lie quietly when the handler is sitting down

　　Help the handler to board and move around buses, subways and other forms of public Vehicles

　　Obey a number of verbal commands

　　Additionally, a guide dog must know to disobey any command that would put the handler in danger. This ability, called selective disobedience, is perhaps the most amazing thing about guide dogs that they can balance obedience with their own assessment of the situation.

　　This capacity is extremely important at crosswalks, where the handler and dog must work very closely together to navigate the situation safely. Dogs cannot distinguish the color of traffic lights, so the handler must make the decision of when it is safe to proceed across the road. The handler listens to the flow of traffic to figure out when the light has changed and then gives the command "forward". If there is no danger, the dog proceeds across the road in a straight line. If there are cars approaching, the dog waits until the danger is gone and then follows the forward command.

　　On the Job and After Hours

　　Guide dogs enjoy their work immensely, and they get a lot of satisfaction from a job well done, but there is no room for typical dog fun during the work day. Games, treats and praise cannot distract the dog from helping its handler navigate the course. Even when the handler doesn't need assistance, a guide dog on the job is trained to ignore distractions and keep still. This is because a guide dog must be able to come to the handler's workplace or be in public places without creating a disturbance.

　　When you see a guide dog on the job, it is extremely important that you recognize that it is at work. Petting or talking to the dog breaks its concentration, which impairs the handler's ability to get around in his or her surroundings. People are very impressed with guide dogs and so we have a natural inclination to praise them, but the best thing you can do to help a guide dog is to leave it alone so that it can pay attention to its surroundings and maintain its focus on its handler. Guiding is very complicated, and it requires a dog's undivided attention.

　　When a guide dog gets home at the end of the day, however, it will play and soak up praise just like an ordinary pet. Guide dogs make the distinction between work and play based on their lead harness: When the harness is on, they must stay completely focused; when it comes off, it's play time. Guide dogs work very hard every day, but they lead extremely happy lives, full of lots of attention and stimulation. Dogs only end up working as guide dogs if they absolutely love the work. In fact, many handlers report that their dogs leap enthusiastically into the harness every morning!

　　Training

　　People often raise Golden Retrievers(獵犬),German shepherds or Labradors(拉布拉多獵狗) as candidates of guide dogs. Once a dog is grown up, socialized and well trained, it goes to the guide dog school for evaluation.

　　In some schools, if a dog is suited for training but not quite ready, it may go back to the puppy(幼犬) raiser for a month or so to mature. If a dog is simply not suited for training, the school will work to place the dog in another line of work, such as tracking, or find it a permanent home, usually offering it to the puppy raiser first. At Guiding Eyes for the Blind, only the top 50 percent of the puppies will stay with the school. So the school places a little over 400 puppies with raisers each year, needing only 200 dogs for the training program. Of that 200,a small percentage will become breeding stock, for Guiding Eyes or another school, and the rest will be considered for the training program.