For centuries,the only form of written correspondence (通信)was the letters, letters were,

For centuries,the only form of written correspondence (通信)was the letters, letters were, and are, sent by some form of postal service, the history of which goes back a long way .Indeed, the Egyptians began sending letters from about 2000 BC,as did the Chinese a thousand years later.
Of course, modern postal service now are much more developed and faster, depending as they do on cars and planes for delivery. Yet they are still too slow for some people to send urgent documents (紧急文件)and letters.
The invention of the fax (传真) machine increased the speed of delivering documents even more. When you send a fax，you are sending a copy of a piece of correspondence to someone by telephone service. It was not until the early 1980s that such a service was developed enough for businesses to be able to fax documents to each other.
The fax service is still very much in use when copies of documents require to be sent ,but, as a way of fast correspondence, it has been largely taken the place of by email ,Email is used to describe messages sent form one computer user to another.
There are advantages and disadvantages with emails. If you send some one an email , then he will receive it extremely quickly .Normal postal services are rather slow as far as speed of delivery is concerned.
However, if you write something by email, which you might later regret ,and send it immediately, there is no chance for second thoughts. At least, if you are posting a letter you have to address and seal(封)the envelope and take it to the post box.There is plenty of time to change your mind .The message is think before you email!
41.We can learn from the text that .
A.email is less popular than the fax service
B.the postal service has over the years become faster
C. the postal service has over the years become slower
D. the fax service has a history as long as the postal service does
42.It can be inferred from the text that .
A. the fax service had been fully developed by the 1980s
B. letters have been used in China for about 1,000 years
C. the fax machine was invented after the 1980s
D. letters have been used in Egypt for about 2,000 years
43.In the last paragraph, the writer mentions think before you email to show that .
A. you may regret if you don’t your envelope B. you may regret before you send something by email
C. you’d better not send your email in a hurry D. you need plenty of time to send an email
44.The text mainly deal with .
A. the progress in correspondence B. the advantage of fax machines
C .the advantage of emails D. the invention of fax machinesB 42．A 43．C 44．A

(答案→)B 42．A 43．C 44．A 解析：41．解析：这是一道细节推断题。根据第二段第一句“modern postal services now are much developed and faster”可知选B。42．解析：这是一道推断题。根据“It was not until the early 1980s that such a service has developed enough …”可以推断20世纪80年代初fax已经比较发达可以满足商用了，所以选A.43．解析：这是一道细节题。由于email方便高速，可供考虑的时间很短，如果发现问题就来不及了，所以作者建议发送前多想想，选C.44．解析：这是一道主旨题。本文讲述了通讯的发展和由此带来的变化，着重于不同通讯方式的比较和发展过程，而不是单单针对某种方式来讲述。A 选项最贴近这一点。

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