You are seeing a film in which two men are having a fight. They hit one another over the heads with chairs. And so it goes on until one of the men crashes through a window and falls thirty feet to the ground below. He is dead!
Of course he isn’t really dead. With any luck he isn’t even hurt. Why? Because the men who fall out of high windows or jump from fast moving trains, who crash cars or even catch fire, are professionals. They do this for a living. These men are called stuntmen. That is to say, they perform tricks.
They actually do most of the things you see on the screen. For example, they fall from a high building. However, they do not fall onto hard ground but onto empty cardboard boxes covered with a mattress. Again, when they hit one another with chairs, the chairs are made of soft wood and when they crash through windows, the glass is made of sugar!
But although their work depends on tricks of this sort, it also requires a high degree of skill and training. Often a stuntman’s success depends on careful timing. For example, when he is “ blown up” in a battle scene, he has to jump out of the way of the explosion just at the right moment.
Naturally stuntmen are well paid for their work, but they lead dangerous lives. They sometimes get seriously injured, and even killed. A Norwegian stuntman, for example, skied over the edge of a cliff a thousand feet high. His parachute (降落傘 ) failed to open and he was killed.
In spite of all the risks, this is no longer a profession for men only. Men no longer dress up as women to perform some dangerous actions. For nowadays there are stunt girls , too.
小題1:What can be inferred from the author’s example of the Norwegian stuntman?
| A．Sometimes an accident can happen to a stuntman. |
| B．The percentage of serious accidents is high. |
| C．Parachutes must be of good quality. |
| D．The cliff was too high. |
小題2:Stuntmen are those who __________________.
| A．often dress up as actors. |
| B．like to lead dangerous lives. |
| C．often perform seemingly dangerous actions. |
| D．often fight each other for their lives. |
小題3:When a stuntman falls from a high building, ______________
| A．he needs little protection. | B．he will be covered with a mattress. |
| C．his life is in danger. | D．his safety is generally all right. |
小題4:Which of the following is the main factor of a successful performance?
| A．Strength | B．Speed | C．Exactness | D．Carefulness |
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