I.?Multiple choice:

1.?All Shakespeare’s works are in?________.??????.

A. Old English ??????B. Middle English ?????C. Modern English ???D. Latin

2.Samuel?Johnson’s?dictionary?was?influential?in?establishing?a?standard?form?of____.??

A. grammar????????????B.?handwriting????????????C.?spelling????????????D.?pronunciation?

3. The introduction of Christianity to Britain added the first element of_______words to English.

A. Danish and Finnish ????????B. Dutch and German

C. French and Italian ????????????D. Latin and Greek

4. The evolution of Middle English was reinforced by the________influence.

A. Norman ?????B. Dutch??????C. German ??????D. Danish

5. English belongs to the _______group of the Indo-European family of languages.

A. Celtic ??B. Germanic ??C. Roman ??D. Norman

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II.?Read the following statements and decide whether they are true (T) or false (F).

1.?Modern English originated from Anglo-Frisian?languages?brought to?Britain?in the mid 5th to 7th centuries?by?Anglo-Saxon migrants.?

2.?Celtic languages remained in most of?Scotland, England and?Wales.?

3.?The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is the?epic?poem?Beowulf.

4.?Geoffrey Chaucer?is the most famous write?with his best-known work---The Canterbury Tales---?representing the characteristics of Middle English.

5.?English evolved into what is now described as Early Modern English from the late 16th?century.

6.?Although French remained the official language of England into the 14th?century,??the Black Death led to an increase of the language of the working class---English.

7.?The word “English”?means the “language of the Angle-Saxons”.

8.All Shakespeare’s work and the King James’?Bible?is considered to be in?middle English.

9. When the BBC was founded in 1927, the English spoken over the radio came to be recognized as?standard English or “BBC English”.

10. Middle English is the blend of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Greek and Old Norse.

III. Short Answer Questions:

1. What are the four?evolutionary periods in the history of English language?

2.??What are the ?historic events which influenced the shaping and decline of Middle English?

答案 1 ：1）?Old English period from 600 to 1100;?

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?2）Middle? English period from 1100 to 1500;

? ? ? ? ? ? ?? 3）?Early Modern English period from 1500 to 1700;

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?4）Present-Day English period from 1700 since today.

答案 2：?

1）Norman Conquest of England in 1066 which made French the official language;

?2） King John and his Norman nobles' withdrawl in 1204 , leading?the reappearance of English ;

3）Black death in the 14th Century? which ended the using of French as official language;

4）The colonization after the discovery of America in 1492 making English a global spread.