为赛达考试考生整理了赛达阅读理解模拟练习题，供考生们参考，以下是详细内容。

赛达阅读练习题:

10 minutes - 8 questions

The passage is taken from 'The Rule of the Road', an essay written by a twentieth century essayist.

A stout old lady was walking with her basket down the middle of a

street in Petrograd to the great confusion of the traffic and with no

small peril to herself. It was pointed out to her that the

pavement was the place for pedestrians, but she replied: 'I'm going

5 to walk where I like. We've got liberty now.' It did not occur

to the dear old lady that if liberty entitled the pedestrian to

walk down the middle of the road, then the end of such liberty

would be universal chaos. Everybody would be getting in

everybody else's way and nobody would get anywhere.

10 Individual liberty would have become social anarchy.

There is a danger of the world getting liberty-drunk in

these days like the old lady with the basket, and it is just as well

to remind ourselves of what the rule of the road means. It means

that in order that the liberties of all may be preserved, the

15 liberties of everybody must be curtailed. When the policeman,

say, at Piccadilly Circus steps into the middle of the road and

puts out his hand, he is the symbol not of tyranny, but of liberty.

You may not think so. You may, being in a hurry, and seeing

your car pulled up by this insolence of office, feel that your

20 liberty has been outraged. How dare this fellow interfere with

your free use of the public highway? Then, if you are a

reasonable person, you will reflect that if he did not interfere with

you, he would interfere with no one, and the result would be that

Piccadilly Circus would be a maelstrom that you would never

25 cross at all. You have submitted to a curtailment of private liberty

in order that you may enjoy a social order which makes your

liberty a reality.

Liberty is not a personal affair only, but a social

contract. It is an accommodation of interests. In matters which do

30 not touch anybody else's liberty, of course, I may be as free as I

like. If I choose to go down the road in a dressing-gown who

shall say me nay? You have liberty to laugh at me, but I have

liberty to be indifferent to you. And if I have a fancy for dyeing

my hair, or waxing my moustache (which heaven forbid), or

35 wearing an overcoat and sandals, or going to bed late or getting

up early, I shall follow my fancy and ask no man's permission. I

shall not inquire of you whether I may eat mustard with my

mutton. And you will not ask me whether you may follow this

religion or that, whether you may prefer Ella Wheeler Wilcox to

40 Wordsworth, or champagne to shandy.

In all these and a thousand other details you and I please

ourselves and ask no one's leave. We have a whole kingdom in

which we rule alone, can do what we choose, be wise or

ridiculous, harsh or easy, conventional or odd. But directly we

45 step out of that kingdom, our personal liberty of action becomes

qualified by other people's liberty. I might like to practice on the

trombone from midnight till three in the morning. If I went on to

the top of Everest to do it, I could please myself, but if I do it in

my bedroom my family will object, and if I do it out in the streets

50 the neighbors will remind me that my liberty to blow the

trombone must not interfere with their liberty to sleep in quiet.

There are a lot of people in the world, and I have to

accommodate my liberty to their liberties.

We are all liable to forget this, and unfortunately we are much

55 more conscious of the imperfections of others in this respect than

of our own. A reasonable consideration for the rights or feelings

of others is the foundation of social conduct.

It is in the small matters of conduct, in the observance of

the rule of the road, that we pass judgment upon ourselves, and

60 declare that we are civilized or uncivilized. The great moments of

heroism and sacrifice are rare. It is the little habits of

commonplace intercourse that make up the great sum of life and

sweeten or make bitter the journey.

10 mins - 7 questions

The excerpt is taken from a novel. Mr. Harding, now an old man, has lost his position as the Warden of a hospital for old men. He has just come from an unsuccessful interview with Mr. Slope concerning his reappointment to the position.

Mr. Harding was not a happy man as he walked down

the palace pathway, and stepped out into the close. His

position and pleasant house were a second time

gone from him; but that he could endure. He had been

5 schooled and insulted by a man young enough to be

his son; but that he could put up with. He could even

draw from the very injuries which had been inflicted

on him some of that consolation which, we may

believe, martyrs always receive from the injustice of

10 their own sufferings. He had admitted to his daughter

that he wanted the comfort of his old home, and yet he

could have returned to his lodgings in the High Street,

if not with exultation, at least with satisfaction, had

that been all. But the venom of the chaplain's

15 harangue had worked into his blood, and sapped the

life of his sweet contentment.

'New men are carrying out new measures, and

are carting away the useless rubbish of past centuries!'

What cruel words these had been- and how often are

20 they now used with all the heartless cruelty of a

Slope! A man is sufficiently condemned if it can only

be shown that either in politics or religion he does not

belong to some new school established within the last

score of years. He may then regard himself as rubbish

25 and expect to be carted away. A man is nothing now

unless he has within him a full appreciation of the

new era; an era in which it would seem that neither

honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which

success is the only touchstone of merit. We must

30 laugh at everything that is established. Let the joke be

ever so bad, ever so untrue to the real principles of

joking; nevertheless we must laugh - or else beware

the cart. We must talk, think, and live up to the spirit

of the times, or else we are nought. New men and new

35 measures, long credit and few scruples, great success

or wonderful ruin, such are now the tastes of

Englishmen who know how to live! Alas, alas! Under

such circumstances Mr. Harding could not but feel

that he was an Englishman who did not know how to

40 live. This new doctrine of Mr. Slope and the rubbish

cart sadly disturbed his equanimity.

'The same thing is going on throughout the

whole country!' 'Work is now required from every

man who receives wages!' And had he been living all

45 his life receiving wages, and doing no work? Had he

in truth so lived as to be now in his old age justly

reckoned as rubbish fit only to be hidden away in

some huge dust-hole? The school of men to whom he

professes to belong, the Grantlys, the Gwynnes, are

50 afflicted with no such self-accusations as these which

troubled Mr. Harding. They, as a rule, are as satisfied

with the wisdom and propriety of their own conduct

as can be any Mr. Slope, or any Bishop with his own.

But, unfortunately for himself, Mr. Harding had little

55 of this self-reliance. When he heard himself

designated as rubbish by the Slopes of the world, he

had no other resource than to make inquiry within his

own bosom as to the truth of the designation. Alas,

alas! the evidence seemed generally to go against him.