tailieunhanh - Preparetaiton course for the toefl ibt reading part 5

• Language Skills for each section of the test provide students with a thorough understand¬ ing of the language skills that are regularly tested on the iBT TOEFL test. Test-Taking Strategies for each section of the test provide students with clearly defined steps to maximize their performance on the test | READING EXERCISE Skills 3-4 Read the passage. paragraph Theodore Dreiser 1 Theodore Dreiser the American author best known for the novel Sister Carrie 1912 introduced a powerful style of writing that had a profound influence on the writers that followed him from Steinbeck to Fitzgerald and Hemingway. It was in Sister Carrie that Theodore Dreiser created a fictional account that laid bare the harsh reality of life in the big city and in which Dreiser established himself as the architect of a new genre. 2 Dreiser was born in 1871 into a large family whose fortunes had in the recent past taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Before Theodore s birth his father had built up a successful factory business only to lose it to a fire. The family was rather abruptly thrust into poverty and Theodore spent his youth moving from place to place in the Midwest as the family tried desperately to reestablish itself financially. He left home at the age of sixteen. After earning some money he spent a year at Indiana University but left school and returned to Chicago yearning for the glamour and excitement that it offered. At the age of twenty-two he began work as a reporter for a small newspaper in Chicago the Daily Globe and later worked on newspapers in Pittsburgh Cleveland Saint Louis and New York City. In his work as a reporter he was witness to the seamier side of life and was responsible for recording events that befell the less fortunate in the city the beggars the alcoholics the prostitutes and the working poor. 3 Dreiser first tried his hand at fiction by writing short stories rather than novels and the first four short stories that he wrote were published. Based on this he was encouraged to write a novel that would accurately depict the harsh life of the city and the novel Sister Carrie was the result of his effort. This novel chronicles the life of Carrie Meeber a smalltown girl who goes to Chicago in a quest for fame and fortune. As Carrie progresses from factory worker to