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剑桥雅思阅读7(test1)真题解析

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这次小编给大家整理了剑桥雅思阅读7(test1)真题解析,本文共6篇,供大家阅读参考。

剑桥雅思阅读7(test1)真题解析

篇1:剑桥雅思阅读7(test1)真题解析

剑桥雅思阅读7原文(test1)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Let’s Go Bats

A Bats have a problem: how to find their way around in the dark. They hunt at night, and cannot use light to help them find prey and avoid obstacles. You might say that this is a problem of their own making, one that they could avoid simply by changing their habits and hunting by day. But the daytime economy is already heavily exploited by other creatures such as birds. Given that there is a living to be made at night, and given that alternative daytime trades are thoroughly occupied, natural selection has favoured bats that make a go of the night-hunting trade. It is probable that the nocturnal trades go way back in the ancestry of all mammals. In the time when the dinosaurs dominated the daytime economy, our mammalian ancestors probably only managed to survive at all because they found ways of scraping a living at night. Only after the mysterious mass extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago were our ancestors able to emerge into the daylight in any substantial numbers.

B Bats have an engineering problem: how to find their way and find their prey in the absence of light. Bats are not the only creatures to face this difficulty today. Obviously the night-flying insects that they prey on must find their way about somehow. Deep-sea fish and whales have little or no light by day or by night. Fish and dolphins that live in extremely muddy water cannot see because, although there is light, it is obstructed and scattered by the dirt in the water. Plenty of other modern animals make their living in conditions where seeing is difficult or impossible.

C Given the questions of how to manoeuvre in the dark, what solutions might an engineer consider? The first one that might occur to him is to manufacture light, to use a lantern or a searchlight. Fireflies and some fish (usually with the help of bacteria) have the power to manufacture their own light, but the process seems to consume a large amount of energy. Fireflies use their light for attracting mates. This doesn’t require a prohibitive amount of energy: a male’s tiny pinprick of light can be seen by a female from some distance on a dark night, since her eyes are exposed directly to the light source itself. However, using light to find one’s own way around requires vastly more energy, since the eyes have to detect the tiny fraction of the light that bounces off each part of the scene. The light source must therefore be immensely brighter if it is to be used as a headlight to illuminate the path, than if it is to be used as a signal to others. In any event, whether or not the reason is the energy expense, it seems to be the case that, with the possible exception of some weird deep-sea fish, no animal apart from man uses manufactured light to find its way about.

D What else might the engineer think of? Well, blind humans sometimes seem to have an uncanny sense of obstacles in their path. It has been given the name ‘facial vision’, because blind people have reported that it feels a bit like the sense of touch, on the face. One report tells of a totally blind boy who could ride his tricycle at good speed round the block near his home, using facial vision. Experiments showed that, in fact, facial vision is nothing to do with touch or the front of the face, although the sensation may be referred to the front of the face, like the referred pain in a phantom limb. The sensation of facial vision, it turns out, really goes in through the ears. Blind people, without even being aware of the fact, are actually using echoes of their own footsteps and of other sounds, to sense the presence of obstacles. Before this was discovered, engineers had already built instruments to exploit the principle, for example to measure the depth of the sea under a ship. After this technique had been invented, it was only a matter of time before weapons designers adapted it for the detection of submarines. Both sides in the Second World War relied heavily on these devices, under such codenames as Asdic (British) and Sonar (American), as well as Radar (American) or RDF (British), which uses radio echoes rather than sound echoes.

E The Sonar and Radar pioneers didn’t know it then, but all the world now knows that bats, or rather natural selection working on bats, had perfected the system tens of millions of years earlier, and their ‘radar’ achieves feats of detection and navigation that would strike an engineer dumb with admiration. It is technically incorrect to talk about bat ‘radar’, since they do not use radio waves. It is sonar. But the underlying mathematical theories of radar and sonar are very similar, and much of our scientific understanding of the details of what bats are doing has come from applying radar theory to them. The American zoologist Donald Griffin, who was largely responsible for the discovery of sonar in bats, coined the term ‘echolocation’ to cover both sonar and radar, whether used by animals or by human instruments.

Questions 1-5

Reading Passage 1 has five paragraphs, A-E.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

1 examples of wildlife other than bats which do not rely on vision to navigate by

2 how early mammals avoided dying out

3 why bats hunt in the dark

4 how a particular discovery has helped our understanding of bats

5 early military uses of echolocation

Questions 6-9

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.

Facial Vision

Blind people report that so-called ‘facial vision’ is comparable to the sensation of touch on the face. In fact, the sensation is more similar to the way in which pain from a 6……………arm or leg might be felt. The ability actually comes from perceiving 7……………through the ears. However, even before this was understood, the principle had been applied in the design of instruments which calculated the 8………………of the seabed. This was followed by a wartime application in devices for finding 9…………………………

Questions 10-13

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

10 Long before the invention of radar, …………… had resulted in a sophisticated radar-like system in bats.

11 Radar is an inaccurate term when referring to bats because………… are not used in their navigation system.

12 Radar and sonar are based on similar ………… .

13 The word ‘echolocation’ was first used by someone working as a ……… .

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 on the following pages.

Questions 14-20

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-H.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A and C-H from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Scientists’ call for a revision of policy

ii An explanation for reduced water use

iii How a global challenge was met

iv Irrigation systems fall into disuse

v Environmental effects

vi The financial cost of recent technological improvements

vii The relevance to health

viii Addressing the concern over increasing populations

ix A surprising downward trend in demand for water

x The need to raise standards

xi A description of ancient water supplies

14 Paragraph A

Example Answer

Paragraph B iii

15 Paragraph C

16 Paragraph D

17 paragraph E

18 paragraph F

19 paragraph G

20 paragraph H

MAKING EVERYDROP COUNT

A The history of human civilisation is entwined with the history of the ways we have learned to manipulate water resources. As towns gradually expanded, water was brought from increasingly remote sources, leading to sophisticated engineering efforts such as dams and aqueducts. At the height of the Roman Empire, nine major systems, with an innovative layout of pipes and well-built sewers, supplied the occupants of Rome with as much water per person as is provided in many parts of the industrial world today.

B During the industrial revolution and population explosion of the 19th and 20th centuries, the demand for water rose dramatically. Unprecedented construction of tens of thousands of monumental engineering projects designed to control floods, protect clean water supplies, and provide water for irrigation and hydropower brought great benefits to hundreds of millions of people. Food production has kept pace with soaring populations mainly because of the expansion of artificial irrigation systems that make possible the growth of 40 % of the world’s food. Nearly one fifth of all the electricity generated worldwide is produced by turbines spun by the power of falling water.

C Yet there is a dark side to this picture: despite our progress, half of the world’s population still suffers, with water services inferior to those available to the ancient Greeks and Romans. As the United Nations report on access to water reiterated in November , more than one billion people lack access to clean drinking water; some two and a half billion do not have adequate sanitation services. Preventable water-related diseases kill an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 children every day, and the latest evidence suggests that we are falling behind in efforts to solve these problems.

D The consequences of our water policies extend beyond jeopardising human health. Tens of millions of people have been forced to move from their homes — often with little warning or compensation — to make way for the reservoirs behind dams. More than 20 % of all freshwater fish species are now threatened or endangered because dams and water withdrawals have destroyed the free-flowing river ecosystems where they thrive. Certain irrigation practices degrade soil quality and reduce agricultural productivity. Groundwater aquifers_are being pumped down faster than they are naturally replenished in parts of India, China, the USA and elsewhere. And disputes over shared water resources have led to violence and continue to raise local, national and even international tensions.

_underground stores of water

E At the outset of the new millennium, however, the way resource planners think about water is beginning to change. The focus is slowly shifting back to the provision of basic human and environmental needs as top priority — ensuring ‘some for all,’ instead of ‘more for some’. Some water experts are now demanding that existing infrastructure be used in smarter ways rather than building new facilities, which is increasingly considered the option of last, not first, resort. This shift in philosophy has not been universally accepted, and it comes with strong opposition from some established water organisations. Nevertheless, it may be the only way to address successfully the pressing problems of providing everyone with clean water to drink, adequate water to grow food and a life free from preventable water-related illness.

F Fortunately — and unexpectedly — the demand for water is not rising as rapidly as some predicted. As a result, the pressure to build new water infrastructures has diminished over the past two decades. Although population, industrial output and economic productivity have continued to soar in developed nations, the rate at which people withdraw water from aquifers, rivers and lakes has slowed. And in a few parts of the world, demand has actually fallen.

G What explains this remarkable turn of events? Two factors: people have figured out how to use water more efficiently, and communities are rethinking their priorities for water use. Throughout the first three-quarters of the 20th century, the quantity of freshwater consumed per person doubled on average; in the USA, water withdrawals increased tenfold while the population quadrupled. But since 1980, the amount of water consumed per person has actually decreased, thanks to a range of new technologies that help to conserve water in homes and industry. In 1965, for instance, Japan used approximately 13 million gallons_of water to produce $1 million of commercial output; by 1989 this had dropped to 3.5 million gallons (even accounting for inflation) — almost a quadrupling of water productivity. In the USA, water withdrawals have fallen by more than 20 % from their peak in 1980.

H On the other hand, dams, aqueducts and other kinds of infrastructure will still have to be built, particularly in developing countries where basic human needs have not been met. But such projects must be built to higher specifications and with more accountability to local people and their environment than in the past. And even in regions where new projects seem warranted, we must find ways to meet demands with fewer resources, respecting ecological criteria and to a smaller budget.

Questions 21-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

21 Water use per person is higher in the industrial world than it was in Ancient Rome.

22 Feeding increasing populations is possible due primarily to improved irrigation systems.

23 Modern water systems imitate those of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

24 Industrial growth is increasing the overall demand for water.

25 Modern technologies have led to a reduction in domestic water consumption.

26 In the future, governments should maintain ownership of water infrastructures.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

EDUCATING PSYCHE

Educating Psyche by Bernie Neville is a book which looks at radical new approaches to learning, describing the effects of emotion, imagination and the unconscious on learning. One theory discussed in the book is that proposed by George Lozanov, which focuses on the power of suggestion.

Lozanov’s instructional technique is based on the evidence that the connections made in the brain through unconscious processing (which he calls non-specific mental reactivity) are more durable than those made through conscious processing. Besides the laboratory evidence for this, we know from our experience that we often remember what we have perceived peripherally, long after we have forgotten what we set out to learn. If we think of a book we studied months or years ago, we will find it easier to recall peripheral details — the colour, the binding, the typeface, the table at the library where we sat while studying it — than the content on which we were concentrating. If we think of a lecture we listened to with great concentration, we will recall the lecturer’s appearance and mannerisms, our place in the auditorium, the failure of the air-conditioning, much more easily than the ideas we went to learn. Even if these peripheral details are a bit elusive, they come back readily in hypnosis or when we relive the event imaginatively, as in psychodrama. The details of the content of the lecture, on the other hand, seem to have gone forever.

This phenomenon can be partly attributed to the common counterproductive approach to study (making extreme efforts to memorise, tensing muscles, inducing fatigue), but it also simply reflects the way the brain functions. Lozanov therefore made indirect instruction (suggestion) central to his teaching system. In suggestopedia, as he called his method, consciousness is shifted away from the curriculum to focus on something peripheral. The curriculum then becomes peripheral and is dealt with by the reserve capacity of the brain.

The suggestopedic approach to foreign language learning provides a good illustration. In its most recent variant (1980), it consists of the reading of vocabulary and text while the class is listening to music. The first session is in two parts. In the first part, the music is classical (Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms) and the teacher reads the text slowly and solemnly, with attention to the dynamics of the music. The students follow the text in their books. This is followed by several minutes of silence. In the second part, they listen to baroque music (Bach, Corelli, Handel) while the teacher reads the text in a normal speaking voice. During this time they have their books closed. During the whole of this session, their attention is passive; they listen to the music but make no attempt to learn the material.

Beforehand, the students have been carefully prepared for the language learning experience. Through meeting with the staff and satisfied students they develop the expectation that learning will be easy and pleasant and that they will successfully learn several hundred words of the foreign language during the class. In a preliminary talk, the teacher introduces them to the material to be covered, but does not ‘teach’ it. Likewise, the students are instructed not to try to learn it during this introduction.

Some hours after the two-part session, there is a follow-up class at which the students are stimulated to recall the material presented. Once again the approach is indirect. The students do not focus their attention on trying to remember the vocabulary, but focus on using the language to communicate (e.g. through games or improvised dramatisations). Such methods are not unusual in language teaching. What is distinctive in the suggestopedic method is that they are devoted entirely to assisting recall. The ‘learning’ of the material is assumed to be automatic and effortless, accomplished while listening to music. The teacher’s task is to assist the students to apply what they have learned paraconsciously, and in doing so to make it easily accessible to consciousness. Another difference from conventional teaching is the evidence that students can regularly learn 1000 new words of a foreign language during a suggestopedic session, as well as grammar and idiom.

Lozanov experimented with teaching by direct suggestion during sleep, hypnosis and trance states, but found such procedures unnecessary. Hypnosis, yoga, Silva mind-control, religious ceremonies and faith healing are all associated with successful suggestion, but none of their techniques seem to be essential to it. Such rituals may be seen as placebos. Lozanov acknowledges that the ritual surrounding suggestion in his own system is also a placebo, but maintains that without such a placebo people are unable or afraid to tap the reserve capacity of their brains. Like any placebo, it must be dispensed with authority to be effective. Just as a doctor calls on the full power of autocratic suggestion by insisting that the patient take precisely this white capsule precisely three times a day before meals, Lozanov is categoric in insisting that the suggestopedic session be conducted exactly in the manner designated, by trained and accredited suggestopedic teachers.

While suggestopedia has gained some notoriety through success in the teaching of modern languages, few teachers are able to emulate the spectacular results of Lozanov and his associates. We can, perhaps, attribute mediocre results to an inadequate placebo effect. The students have not developed the appropriate mind set. They are often not motivated to learn through this method. They do not have enough ‘faith’. They do not see it as ‘real teaching’, especially as it does not seem to involve the ‘work’ they have learned to believe is essential to learning.

Questions 27-30

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 The book Educating Psyche is mainly concerned with

A the power of suggestion in learning.

B a particular technique for learning based on emotions.

C the effects of emotion on the imagination and the unconscious.

D ways of learning which are not traditional.

28 Lozanov’s theory claims that, when we try to remember things,

A unimportant details are the easiest to recall

B concentrating hard produces the best results.

C the most significant facts are most easily recalled.

D peripheral vision is not important.

29 In this passage, the author uses the examples of a book and a lecture to illustrate that

A both of these are important for developing concentration.

B his theory about methods of learning is valid.

C reading is a better technique for learning than listening.

D we can remember things more easily under hypnosis.

30 Lozanov claims that teachers should train students to

A memorise details of the curriculum.

B develop their own sets of indirect instructions.

C think about something other than the curriculum content.

D avoid overloading the capacity of the brain.

Questions 31-36

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 37

In boxes 31-36 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

31 In the example of suggestopedic teaching in the fourth paragraph, the only variable that changes is the music.

32 Prior to the suggestopedia class, students are made aware that the language experience will be demanding.

33 In the follow-up class, the teaching activities are similar to those used in conventional classes.

34 As an indirect benefit, students notice improvements in their memory.

35 Teachers say they prefer suggestopedia to traditional approaches to language teaching.

36 Students in a suggestopedia class retain more new vocabulary than those in ordinary classes.

Questions 37-40

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-K, below.

Write the correct letter, A-K, in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

Suggestopedia uses a less direct method of suggestion than other techniques such as hypnosis. However, Lozanov admits that a certain amount of 37..............is necessary in order to convince students, even if this is just a 38.............. . Furthermore, if the method is to succeed, teachers must follow a set procedure. Although Lozanov’s method has become quite 39.............., the results of most other teachers using this method have been 40.............. .

A spectacular B teaching C lesson

D authoritarian E unpopular F ritual

G unspectacular H placebo I involved

J appropriate K well known

剑桥雅思阅读7原文参考译文(test1)

TEST 1 PASSAGE 1参考译文:

走近蝙蝠

A在黑暗中如何找到方向是蝙蝠面临的一大问题。它们在夜间捕食,而且无法利用光搜寻猎物或躲避障碍物。也许你会说它们天生就是这样的,只要改变生活习性在白天出来捕食就可以了。但事实上白天的猎物已经被鸟类开发殆尽。鉴于有些生物要在夜间谋生,并且白天的猎物资源都已经被占用,自然选择最终使蝙蝠们在夜间捕猎行当里大显身手。夜间狩猎群体的出现可能要追溯到哺乳动物的先祖。在恐龙统治地球白昼的时代,我们的哺乳动物祖先只能想方设法在夜间求得一线生机。直到六千五百万年前,恐龙神秘地大规模灭绝之后,我们的祖先才敢成群结队地在大白天出没。

B蝙蝠面临这一个“工程”方面的问题:那就是在没有光线的情况下如何辨识方向并寻找猎物。蝙蝠不是当今世界上唯一面临此问题的物种。显而易见,蝙蝠所捕食的夜间昆虫肯定能以某种方式在黑暗中找到方向。深海鱼类、鲸等物种无论是白天还是黑夜都几乎见不到任何光线。生活在浑浊水域中的负和海豚也看不见,因为即使有光线,也被水中的淤泥阻挡分散开了。现代的许多物种都生活在很难见到光线或者完全黑暗的环境中。

C关于如何在黑暗中巧妙移动这个问题,工程师们会给出怎样的答案呢?第一个能想到的办法可能就是要制造光线了,比如用灯笼或者探照灯。萤火虫和某些鱼类可以自己制造光亮(通常是在细菌的帮助下),但这一过程要耗费很多能能量。萤火虫用光线吸引配偶,而这一过程并不需要很多能量。暗夜中,雌性萤火虫远远地就可以看见雄性萤火虫微小的光芒,因为雌性的眼睛就直接暴露在光源内。然而利用自身的光线寻找方向却要耗费更多能量,因为此时生物的眼睛需要探测到通过物体反射回来的微弱光芒。如果要作为灯光来照亮道路的话,就要求光源比作为信号灯时明亮许多,无论是不是能设消耗的缘故,事实是,除了一些深海大怪鱼之外,绝没有其他任何一种生物像人类这样自己制造光源来找寻方向。

D工程师们还能想到什么呢?比如盲人,他们好像对路上的障碍有着不可思议的直觉。人们把这叫做“面感视觉”,因为据盲人说感觉到有障碍物的时候就像脸部被触摸一样。一则报道称一位完全失明的男孩能凭借面感视觉绕着附近街区快速骑三轮车实验表明面感视觉实际上与“感”和“面”没有任何关系,尽管这种感觉可能被认为源自面部正前方,正如幻肢中的牵涉性痛感一样。事实上,面感视觉是通过耳朵传输的。尽管盲人并没有意识到这一点,但实际生活中他们的确在运用自己的步伐以及其他声苦的回声来感觉路上障碍物的存在这个事实没有被发观之前,其实工程师们已经利用这条原理制造了很多设备,比如用回声来测量船底海洋的深度。在这项技术发明之后,武器制造者很快就将其改良来侦测潜水艇。二战期间,交战双方都充分运用了这些设备,代号分别是英国的Asdic和美国的Sonar以及美国的Radar或是英国的 RDF,后两者使用了雷达回声技术而非声波回声技术。

E 当时的雷达声呐技术先驱们毫不知情,但现在所有人都明白了正是蝙蝠,或者说是自然选择在蝙蝠身上鬼斧神工,早在几百万年前就已经使这种技术达到完美境界,而蝙蝠的“雷达”在探测及导航方面取得的完美成果足以让人类工程师佩服到哑口无言。从技术角度讲,说蝙蝠有雷达功能是不准确的,因为它们并没有运用无线电波,而只是运用了声呐系统。但实际上雷达和声呐的基本原理是非常相似的,而且大多数关于蝙蝠行为细节的科学理解都是利用雷达理论完成的。美国动物学家Donald Griffin教授第一个发现蝙蝠利用声呐技术,由此,他创造出了一个新的词汇:回声定位。这个词涵盖了动物和人类所利用的雷达及声呐系统。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 2 参考译文:

节约每滴水

A人类的文明史总是与学习利用水资源的历史交织在一起的。随着城镇规模的不断扩大,水被从遥远的源头引流到城镇,这促成了水坝和水渠等复杂工程的修建。在罗马帝国鼎盛时期,人们修建了9条主要水利系统,其疏水管道和污水管道均以革新的方式铺设,为城区居民提供用水。当时罗马城内居民人均用水量和现今工业社会很多地区的人均用水量相当。

B 在19世纪和20世纪工业革命及人口扩张时期,水的需求量集聚增长。此时,出现了史无前例的大型水利工程:这些数以万计的水利工程旨在防洪,保证清洁水资源的供应,提供足够的水用于农田灌溉和水力发电,这造福了上千万人。食品供应能跟上人口剧增主要是由于人工灌溉系统的增长使得世界粮食产量提高了40%。世界上五分之一的电都是通过水力推动涡轮机而产生的。

C 当然我们也要看到事情不足的一面:虽然我们取得了进步,但世界上仍有一半的人口享受的供水服务还比不上古希腊和古罗马时期。正如联合国9月在关于饮用水权利的报告中指出的那样:全世界仍然有超过10亿的人口无法获得干净的饮用水,25亿人缺乏充足的卫生设施。每天有1~2万名儿童死于与水相关的各种可预防疾病,而最新证据表明我们解决上述问题的力度还远远不够。

D我们水资源政策的后果远非仅仅危及人类健康那么简单,为了修建大坝和水库,上千万人在未被告知或补偿的情况下被迫背井离乡。超过20%的淡水鱼类现在濒临威胁或是濒临灭绝,原因是修建水库及水资源开采破坏了它们繁衍生息的天然河流生态系统。有些灌溉系统破坏了土壤的质量,从而导致农业产量下降。在印度、中闰、美国的某些地区以及世界其他地方,地表水含水层正在快速下降,下降的速度已经超出了它们自我更新和补充的能力。而关于水资源如何合理分配的争议也在不断导致暴力事件的出现,从而加剧了地区、国家乃至国际间的紧张局势。

E然而,新千年伊始,资源规划者关于水资源的思路开始有了改变。焦点慢慢转回到了保证基本水资源供应和满足环保需要这两大当务之急上,将过去“少部分人先用起来”的水资源政策变成了现在的“人人有水用”政策。一些水力专家强调现有的水力设施应该更好地被利用起来,而不是再建新项目——新建水力项目应该被作为最后一根救命稻草而不是第一要务。这种观念上的转变并没有被普遍接受,相反却遭到了很多水利建设部门的强烈反对。然而,也许这正是能够成功解决燃眉之急的唯一出路,确保每个人都有纯净水可喝,有充足的水源用于农业种植,以使人们面授各种与水相关病症的困扰。

F 出人意料的是,人们对水的需求量所幸并没有像某些人预测的那样剧增。因此过去中,建设新水利项目的压力也随之渐渐消退。尽管在发达国家,人口仍然急剧膨胀,工业和经济依然高速发展,但人们开采地下水和地表水的速度却减缓了下来。在全球某些地区,人们对水资源的需求量甚至下降了。

G 这个显著的转变究竟该如何解决呢?我想大致有两个因素:其一,人们已经懂得如何更有效的利用水资源,社会各界也在重新思考各自用水的优先权。在20实际的前75年间,人均用水量增加了一倍。在美国,人口增长了4倍,而用水量竟然翻了10倍。但自从1980年以来,人均用水量下降了,这主要得益于一系列新技术在家庭及工业节水方面的作用。例如,字1965年,日本要用1300万加仑的水才能产出100万美元的商业价值,而截至到1989年,就算算上了通货膨胀,只用350万加仑的水就足以产出相同的商业价值了,这几乎相当于原来产出的4倍。在美国,水资源的使用已经从80年代的顶峰时期下降了20%。

H 另一方面,水库、引水渠以及其他水利设施还是需要休假的,特别是在发展中国家基本水资源仍不能保证供应的地区。但与过去相比,这些水利设施的建设一定要更加规范化,要对当地的人名做出更加细致的说明,同时还需要考虑环保的要求。即使既定地区水利工程建设似乎已得到保证,我们也要想办法用较少的资源满足较多需求,保护当地生态,并做到少花钱、多办事。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 3 参考译文:

暗示教学法

Bernie Neville的《暗示教学法》一书,主要着眼于激进的新式学习方法,讲述了情感、想象力以及潜意识在学习过程中所起的作用。书中讨论到了由Geaorge Lozanov提出的一个理论,那就是暗示的力量。

Lozanov的教学技巧主要基于这样的证据:在无意识状态下(他称此为非特异性心理反应)大脑所作出的各种联系要比在有意识状态下作出的持续更长时间。除了实验室证据可以证明这一点之外,我们自身的经历也表明我们通常会记住自己所观察到的周边信息,而忘记最开始的学习目的。回想一下几个月前或是几年前学过的课本,会发现我们能够轻易地回想起一些无关紧要的细节,比如书的颜色、装订、字体或是我们当时在图书馆阅读此书时做过的桌子,而不是回想起当时我们集中精力所看的课本的内容。再试着回想一下我们曾经认真聆听过的讲座,较之应该听到的演讲主题而言,我们会更容易回想起演讲者的容貌和举止风度,我们在报告厅的位置甚至是当时坏掉的空调。及时这些周边细节是比较容易忘掉的,但在催眠状态下,或是当我们像演心理剧那样在想象中重温当时的情景时,这些周边信息就能很快的被回想起来。而另一方面,演讲内容的细节信息早就被抛到九霄云外去了。

这种现象的产生有一部分归因于常见的起反作用效果的学习方法(拼尽全力去记忆,令肌肉紧张,最终导致疲惫)。但同时它也恰恰反映出大脑运转的方式。据此Lozanov建立了他教育系统的核心:间接教学法,也叫暗示法。在他称之为暗示教学法(suggestopedia)的方法中,学生的注意力被从本该集中精力学习的课程上转移到了外部信息上。这样课程本身就成了外部信息,由此就可以被大脑的储备功能来处理。

外语学习中的暗示教学法是这一理论的绝佳例证。这种方法最新的改良版本(1980年)是学生边听音乐边朗读单词和课文。第一节课被分成了两部分:第一部分中,教师会伴随着古典音乐(莫扎特,贝多芬,勃拉姆斯)的旋律以缓慢且庄严的语调朗读课文。学生则跟着看课文。接着是数分钟的静默。下一部分中,学生们要听的是巴洛克音乐(巴赫. 柯瑞里,亨德尔),此时教师用正常的语音语速朗读,而学生将书本合上。整节课上学生的注意力都是被动的,他们只是听音乐而并不学习课本内容。

事先,学生们已经为这种语言学习体验做足了准备。通过与老师以及对体验效果感到满意的学生的交流,他们形成了一种期待,那就是接下来的学习将是简单轻松的,他们在一节课的时间里就可以成功记忆几百个外语词汇。在上课之前的讲话中,教师会向学生们简单介绍要讲的内容,但不是去“讲授”内容。同样,学生也会被告知在这个介绍的过程中,不要试图记住所介绍内容。

两段式课程结束几小时后,会有一个跟进课程鼓励学生们回忆刚才课上所学的内容。教学方法同样是间接的。学生还是不必集中精力去记忆这些词汇,而是尝试将这些词汇用于交流(比如通过游戏或是即兴演出)。这些方式在语言教学中十分常见。但间接暗示法的特殊之处就在于它完全致力于帮助回忆,对内容的学习是自动的,不费吹灰之力的,听着小曲儿就搞定了。教师的主要任务就是辅助学生将他们在模糊意识状态下所学的东西进行用,因而是的学到的东西在有意识状态下也可以轻易获得。与传统教学模式的另外一点不同就是在间接暗示方法下,学生通常课以轻易地记住1000个生词以及语法点和成语。

Lozanov试验过在睡眠状态下、催眠状态下或精神恍惚之际给出的也接暗示的教学法,结果发现这些过程都是没有必要的。催眠术、瑜珈、西瓦心灵术、宗教议式以及精神疗法都与成功的暗示相关,但看上去好像没有哪一种技巧是在使用暗示法时必不可少的。这些仪式可能被视作安慰剂。Lozanov认为他的体系中围绕暗示所进行的仪式实际上也是安慰剂。但同时也指出如果没有这种安慰剂,人们就不能甚至惧怕使用他们大脑的储备容量。正如任何一种安慰剂一样,它也要获得权威部门的认可才能有效果。正如医生充分利用权威暗示的力量,坚持要求病人必须每天三次、餐前服用某种白色胶囊一样,Lozanov也坚决要求暗示教学法一定要按照事先指定好的方式进行,并且要由培训过的合格教师来执行。

尽管凭借现代语言教学中的成功案例,暗示教学法有了一定程度的名气,但几乎没有一个教师能够取得像Lozanov和他的同僚那样显著的成就。也许我们可以将这些平庸的成果归咎为安慰剂效果不足。学生还没有形成适当的思维体系,在运用这种方法学习的时候他们没有充分被激发,他们没有足够的“信念”。

他们认为这不是真正的教学,尤其是因为这种教学方法并没有涉及他们学会相信的学习之根本——那就是“学”。

剑桥雅思阅读7原文解析(test1)

Passage1

Question 1

答案:B

关键词:wildlife other than bats. . . do not rely on vision. . .

定位原文:B段第2句: “Bats are not the only creatures to face this difficulty today”.

解题思路: 题目问哪一段举出了除了蝙蝠之外不需要视觉导航的物种的例子,B段中说了被捕猎的昆虫、深海鱼类、鲸鱼、海豚等物种在鲜有光线或者完全黑暗的环境下是如何生活的,比较容易定位。

Question 2

答案:A

关键词: early mammals avoid dying out

定位原文: A段倒数第2句: “In the time when the dinosaurs …”

解题思路: ancestors 等同于early mammals, survive 等同于avoid dying out。

Question 3

答案:A

关键词: why … hunt in the dark

定位原文: A段第5句: “Given that there is a living...”

解题思路: 联系上下文,对应句说了物竞天择使蝙蝠晚上捕食,后面说了这个可能追溯到过去,那时恐龙白天捕食,使哺乳动物不得不晚上捕食

Question 4

答案:E

关键词:a particular discovery

定位原文: E段倒数第2句话 “… and much of our scientific understanding of the details...”

解题思路: 理解定位句意义:大多数关于蝙蝠行为细节的科学理解都是利用雷达理论完成的

Question 5

答案:D

关键词: early military echolocation

定位原文: D段倒数第2句和最后1句: “After this technique had been invented....” “Both sides in the Second World War ...”

解题思路: 第二次世界大战可以对应early一词。

Question 6

答案:phantom

关键词: facial vision / pain / arm or leg

定位原文: D段第5句 “… like the referred pain in a phantom limb”

解题思路: 通过填空题的小标题“Facial Vision”,首先可以把此题迅速定位到文章的D段,紧接着可以在D段的第5句寻找到定位关键词referred pain。

Question 7

答案:echoes/obstacles

关键词:perceiving / ears

定位原文: D段第6句、第7句 “The sensation of facial vision… the presence of obstacles”.

解题思路: 此题需要将两句话放在一起理解:而感视觉是通过耳朵传输的,尽管盲人并没有意识到这一点,但现实生活中他们的确在运用自己的步伐以及其他声音的回声来感觉路上障碍物的存在。perceive一词在雅思学术类阅读考试当中多次出现,是“感知;感觉;察觉”的意思,相当于原文中的sense。综上分析得出答案echoes或obstacles。

Question 8

答案:depth

关键词: before / instruments / calculated / seabed

定位原文: D段倒数第3句: “… for example to measure the depth of the sea under a ship”

解题思路: 按照解题顺序,找到介词before,接着找到instruments,并很快找到题目中关键词 calculated的同义同measure,然后就以顺利找到正确答案depth。

Question 9

答案:submarines

关键词:wartime / finding

定位原文: D段倒数第2句:“After this technique had been invented…”

解题思路: 看到weapons designers 可以联想到wartime, detection是探测的意思,与题目中的finding同义,由此可知答案是submarines. 这里特別提醒考生,如果不变复数是不得分的。

Question 10

答案: natural selection

关键词:radar/ resulted in/ radar-like / bats

定位原文: E段第1句: “… or rather natural selection…”

解题思路: 题目:早在雷达发明之前,是什么在蝙蝠身上进化出了复杂的类雷达系统呢? Sophisticated一词指“稍密的;复杂的”。根据题意, 考生需要寻找一个蝙蝠拥有精确定位本领的原因。原因连接词在这用并没有出现,但perfect一词却可以告诉我们是自然选择使然,所以正确答案是 natural selection。

Question 11

答案:radio waves/echoes

关键词: not used

定位原文: E段第2句: “It is technically incorrect to…”

解题思路: 题目说蝙蝠也使用雷达实际上是不正确的,因为在导航的时候它们根本没有使用____。not used是关键词,题目中以被动语态的形式出现,文章中则变成主动语态,但因为核心动词use 没有改变,所以此题很简单,正确答案是radio waves。

Question 12

答案:mathematical theories

关键词:radar / sonar/ similar

定位原文: E段第4句: “But the underlying mathematical theories…”

解题思路: 题目:雷达和声呐是基于相似的____。先在E段后部找到radar和sonar两个关键词,接着找到similar,空里要填的名词应该就不远了。此处语序有所变动,但是仍然很容易找到答案mathematical theories,因为题干中要求最多用两个词填空,因此前面的underlying就不能填了。

Question 13

答案:zoologist

关键词: echolocation/ first / someone

定位原文: E段最后1句: “The American zoologist…”

解题思路: 第一次使用声呐一词的人的职业是____。只要知道coin词有“发明;创造;杜撰”的意思,就能轻易联想到first used。而根据文章,这个词是由一个叫Donald Griffin的zoologist发明的,由此得出答案。

Test 1 Passage 2

Question 14

答案:xi

关键词:ancient

定位原文: A段最后1句出现了the Roman Empire

解题思路: 本段第1句定下了段落的主要内容为古代对水资源的管理,接下来讲了城镇的发展带来大坝和引水渠的发展,最后讲述了罗马帝国鼎盛时期的水利系统。因此本段的主题是古代的供水系统。

Question 15

答案: vii

关键词:health

定位原文: C段倒数第2句出现 sanitation, 最后一句“preventable water-related diseases kill…”

解题思路: C段最后1句说到:每天大约1-2万名儿童死于与水相关的各种可预防性疾病,新证据表明我们解决上述问题的力度还远远不够。虽然不能够在首句就感觉到这一段是在谈健康与水供给之间的关系,但是看了下面的文字,就可感觉到作者在谈健康,特别是sanitation一词出现后,基本可以确定答案是vii 。

Question 16

答案: v

关键词:effect

定位原文: D段从第2句开始的整个段落

解题思路: D段是一个描述性段落。第1句话就说“我们水资源政策的后果远非仅仅危及人类健康那么简单”,承上启下,显然这一段不是讲健康了,但同时我们也更加确认C段是在讲健康方面的问题,那么个人健康讲完了,要不要讲一下地球的健康呢?于是考生在这一段找到了freshwater fish… threatened… endangered… degrade… soil quality… reduce… agricultural productivity… 等等与环境相关的同语,所以不必读到最后,考生应该已经能够看出这道题目的答案是v。

Question 17

答案:i

关键词:revision, policy

定位原文: E段第1句

解题思路: E段首句说: “At the outset of the new millennium,however,the way resource planners think about water is beginning to change”. 这句话当中的changed正好可以与revision相对应。在第三句考生还可以找到Some water experts are now demanding…,这就对上了答案中的scientists call for。在下面考生还可以找到this shift in philosophy,这一点又可以对应policy. 纵观全段,shift, shifting等表示变化的词不断出现,所以最合适的答案就是i。

Question 18

答案: ix

关键词:surprisingly downward

定位原文: F段第1句

解题思路: F段首句说:Fortunately — and unexpectedly — the demand for water is not rising as rapidly as some predicted. F段末句提到:And in a few parts of the world, demand has actually fallen. 合起来看,正好可以与heading当中的“令人惊奇的下降趋势”相对照,很好选择的一题。

Question 19

答案: ii

关键词:explanation, reduced

定位原文: G段第1句

解题思路: “What explains this remarkable turn of events?” 此句中的turn of events指的就是F段中提到的水需求量下降一事,所以答案应该选择ii。如果考生把F段和G段连起来看的话,会发现选项的逻辑连贯性。

ix: a surprising downward trend in demand for water

ii: an explanation for reduced water use

Question 20

答案: x

关键词:raise, standard

定位原文: H段第2句: “But such projects must be…”

解题思路: H段第2句的higher specifications等于选项中的raise standards,也比较容易理解答案是x。

Question 21

答案:NO

关键词:Ancient Rome

定位原文: A段最后1句:“At the height of the Roman Empire…” 在罗马帝国鼎盛时期,人们修建了9 条主要水利系统,其疏水管道和污水管道均以革新的方式铺设,为城区居民提供用水。当时罗马城内居民人均用水量和现今工业社会很多地区的人均用水量相当。

解题思路:关键词是as much…as,这个词组与题干中的higher than相抵触,两者明显不符。所以答案为NO。

Question 22

答案: YES

关键词: irrigation system 或者按照顺序原则定位在B段

定位原文: B段倒数第2句: “Food production has kept pace with …” 食品供应能跟得上人口猛增主要是由于人工灌溉系统的增长使得世界粮食产量提高了40%

解题思路: 题中的feeding increasing population在文中对应Food production has kept pace with soaring populations, 题中的due primarily to变成文中的mainly because of, 而题中的 improved irrigation system则成了文中的expansion of artificial irrigation systems。

Question 23

答案:NOT GIVEN

关键词:ancient Greeks and Romans

定位原文: 在C段第1句 “…with water services inferior to those available to the ancient Greeks and Romans” 世界上有一半的人口享受的供水服务还比不上古希腊和古罗马时期

解题思路: 题干中的古希腊、古罗马终于出现了,但是周围根本没有任何语句表明现代人模仿了他们的水利系统,从上面这句话也完全无法推出这个结论,可见题目是无中生有,属于完全没有提及型的 NOT GIVEN。

Question 24

答案:NO

关键词: industrial growth

定位原文: F段第3句、第4句: “ Although population, industrial output… has actually fallen”. 尽管在发达国家,人口仍然急剧膨胀,工业和经济依然高速发展,但人们开采地下水和地表水的速度却减缓了下来。在全球某些地区,人们对水资源的需求量甚至下降了。

解题思路: 题目中称工业增长使水需求量整体上升,而文中却说速度放缓,甚至需求量下降,两者显然是抵触的,所以答案是NO。

Question 25

答案:YES

关键词:modem technologies, domestic或者跟随24题顺序找到G段

定位原文: G段第4句 “But since 1980…” 但自从 1980年以来,人均用水量确实是下降了,这主要得益于一系列新技术在家庭及工业节水方面的作用。

解题思路: 文中的decreased对应题目中的reduction, 都指需水量的下降。这是一道很容易辨別的YES。

Question 26

答案:NOT GIVEN

关键词: government, water infrastructures

定位原文: H段位于第1句的infrastructure

解题思路: 原文只是说未来还会建各种设施,但没有提到国家是否应该拥有水利设施

Test 1 Passage 3

Question 27

答案:D

关键词:Educating Psyche

定位原文: 第1段首句:“Educating Psyche by Bemie Neville is …”

解题思路: 作者开篇就揭示了本书的主要内容,是关于激进的新型教学法的。题干中的 mainly concern 等同于文中的look at; radical new两个形容词等同于D选项中的not traditional,因此可以判定正确答案是D。个别同学会被C困扰,因为貌似emotion, imagination, unconscious 这样的词在文中第一段也出现了,仔细辨别the effects of emotion, imagination and the unconscious on learning这句话,就会发现它说的是情感,想象力和潜意识对学习的影响,而不是C答案中情感对想象力及潜意识的影响,这是典型的混淆项。

Question 28

答案: A

关键词:Lozanov’s theory

定位原文: 第2段第2句 “Besides the laboratory evidence for this…”

解题思路: 这句之后作者马上举出两个例子:读书和听演讲,我们没有记住书的内容,也没记住演讲的主题,却能够较易回忆起书的颜色、装订、字体以及演讲者的容貌举止,甚至是礼堂里坏掉的空调,这些小细节与主题相比微不足道。作者所举的例子形象地说明了题干中所说的“当我们努力要记起什么的时候,我们记住的往往是些无关紧要的细节”,所以正确答案是A

Question 29

答案: B

关键词:book/lecture

定位原文: 第2段

解题思路: 考生可以将C排除,因为文章并未涉及这个选项的内容。D选项所提到的催眠在第2段根本未被提及,也可以直接排除。A和B两项中,A与文中所述内容不符,文中是用两个例子来说明白我们记忆的时候,记住的往往是无关紧要的细节,而不是用来说明书和演讲对于促进注意力集中的重要性。因此B是正确答案,文中所举的两个例子相当于论据,用来证明他关于教学方法的理论是对充分根据的。

Question 30

答案:C

关键词:Lozanov

定位原文: 第3段倒数第2句 “In suggestopedia, as he called his method…”

解题思路: 选项C中 something other than the curriculum content刚好可以和上句中的shifted away from the curriculum to focus on something peripheral相对应。即使考生根本不认识peripheral一词,也可以从shift away这个词组猜测出来重点被从curriculum上转移到别的东西上去了,然后可以推出正确答案是C

Question 31

答案:FALSE

关键词: in the fourth paragraph

定位原文: 第4段第4句到第7句 “…the teacher reads the text slowly and solemnly… in the second part … while the teacher reads the text in a normal speaking voice.”

解题思路: 文中提到教学的两个阶段:音乐从第一阶段的古典音乐到了第二阶段的巴洛克式音乐,老师也从第一阶段的“用缓慢且庄严的语调朗读课文”变成了第二阶段的“用正常声调朗读课文”,这就证明改变的不仅仅是音乐,还有老师的朗读方法

Question 32

答案:FALSE

关键词:prior to

定位原文: 文章第5段第2句: “through meeting with the staff…” 通过与老师以及对这种语言学习方式感到满意的学生的交流,他们形成了一种期待:那就是接下来的学习将是简单轻松的

解题思路: 原文中的easy and pleasant与题目中的demanding互相矛盾,由此可知答案应为FALSE

Question 33

答案:TRUE

关键词:follow-up

定位原文: 第6段第4句:“Such methods are not unusual in language teaching”

解题思路: 这些方式在语言教学中十分寻常。言外之意,暗示教学法跟进课程中所用的教学方法比如games或者improvised dramatisation,在普通教学中也被用到,推测一下,即为跟进课程使用了与传统课堂相似的教学方法。

Question 34

答案:NOT GIVEN

关键词:improvements in their memory

定位原文: 第6段最后1句 “Another difference from conventional teaching is …” 与传统教学模式不同的是,在间接暗示方法下,学生通常可以轻易记住1000个生词以及语法点和成语。

解题思路: 作者仅仅是说采用暗示方法的学生记往了1000个单词,这高于传统教学方法的成果。但是并没有说记住1000个单词,就代表他们的记忆能力有了所谓的提高,从文中给出的证据,我们是无法推知这个结论的。因此答案是NOT GIVEN

Question 35

答案:NOT GIVEN

关键词:teachers

定位原文: 第6段最后1句 “Another difference from conventional teaching is …”

解题思路: 文中提到了suggestopedia及conventional teaching,但主要讲了两者的区别与联系,并未标明教师对两者的偏好,因此答案为NOT GIVEN.

Question 36

答案:TRUE

关键词: new vocabulary

定位原文: 第6段最后1句 “Another difference from conventional teaching is …” (与传统教学模式的另外一点不同就是在间接暗示方法下,学生通常可以轻易记住1000个生词以及语法点和成语。)

解题思路: conventional teaching等同于题目中的ordinary class, difference 一词就暗示了暗示教学法比传统教学方法的进步,而后面强调学生在暗示方法下可以记住多达1000个新词,显然比在传统教学方法下记忆的更多。因此答案是TRUE.

Question 37

答案: F

关键词:hypnosis/ however/a certain amount/convince

定位原文: 第7段第4句: “Lozanov acknowledges that …”

解题思路: 与其他如催眠那样的方法相比,暗示教学法使用了一种不那么直接的暗示方法。然而,Lonazov承认为了说服学生,一定量的37还是必要的,尽管37只是一种38。

从Lozanov acknowledges向后寻找,很快找到a这个冠词,后而就是38空要填的词H placebo,返回头寻找曾经出现在词库里的名词,考生就得到了F ritual

Question 38

答案:H

关键词:hypnosis/ however/a certain amount/convince

定位原文: 第7段第4句: “Lozanov acknowledges that …”

解题思路: 从Lozanov acknowledges向后寻找,很快找到a这个冠词,后而就是38空要填的词H placebo

Question 39

答案: K

关键词:follow a set procedure/ although/most other teacher

定位原文: 最后1段第1句: “While suggestopedia has gained…”

解题思路: 题目中的句子翻译为:再者,如果暗示教学法要取得成功,教师就必须遵循一套教学流程。尽管Lozanov的方法已经变得很 39 ,然而大多数其他教师的使用结果都是40

文章中说暗示教学法gained some notoriety. notoriety是此题关键,本来此词是臭名昭著的意思,但在这里贬义褒用,取著名之意。那么K well known 显然就比spectacular更合适了,故39 题应该选K。

Question 40

答案: G

关键词: follow a set procedure/ although/most other teacher

定位原文: 最后1段第1句: “While suggestopedia has gained…”

解题思路: 根据文章,L的方法是spectacular的。那么教师的结果应该与之相反,因此40空应该填G unspectacular。

剑桥雅思阅读7(test1)真题解析

篇2:剑桥雅思阅读真题

Otter

A

Otters have long, thin bodies and short legs – ideal for pushing through dense undergrowth or hunting in tunnels. An adult male may be up to 4 feet long and 30lbs. Females are smaller typically. The Eurasian otter’s nose is about the smallest among the otter species and has a characteristic shape described as a shallow ‘W’. An otter’s tail (or rudder, or stern) is stout at the base and tapers towards the tip where it flattens. This forms part of the propulsion unit when swimming fast underwater. Otter fur consists of two types of hair: stout guard hairs which form a waterproof outer covering, and under-fur which is dense and fine, equivalent to an otter’s thermal underwear. The fur must be kept in good condition by grooming. Seawater reduces the waterproofing and insulating qualities of otter fur when saltwater in the fur. This is why freshwater pools are important to otters living on the coast. After swimming, they wash the salts off in pools and the squirm on the ground to rub dry against vegetation.

B

The scent is used for hunting on land, for communication and for detecting danger. Otterine sense of smell is likely to be similar in sensitivity to dogs. Otters have small eyes and are probably short-sighted on land. But they do have the ability to modify the shape of the lens in the eye to make it more spherical, and hence overcome the refraction of water. In clear water and good light, otters can hunt fish by sight. The otter’s eyes and nostrils are placed high on its head so that it can see and breathe even when the rest of the body is submerged. Underwater, the cotter holds its legs against the body, except for steering, and the hind end of the body is flexed in a series of vertical undulations. River otters have webbing which extends for much of the length of each digit, though not to the very end. Giant otters and sea otters have even more prominent webs, while the Asian short-clawed otter has no webbing – they hunt for shrimps in ditches and paddy fields so they don’t need the swimming speed. Otter’s ears are tiny for streamlining, but they still have very sensitive hearing and are protected by valves which close them against water pressure.

C

A number of constraints and preferences limit suitable habitats of otters. Water is a must and the rivers must be large enough to support a healthy population of fish. Being such shy and wary creatures, they will prefer territories where man’s activities do not impinge greatly. Of course, there must also be no other otter already in residence – this has only become significant again recently as populations start to recover. Coastal otters have a much more abundant food supply and range for males and females may be just a few kilometres of coastline. Because male range overlaps with two or three females – not bad! Otters will eat anything that they can get hold of – there are records of sparrows and snakes and slugs being gobbled. Apart from fish, the most common prey are crayfish, crabs and water birds. Small mammals are occasionally taken, most commonly rabbits but sometimes even moles.

D

Eurasian otters will breed any time where food is readily available. In places where the condition is more severe, Sweden for example where the lakes are frozen for much of winter, cubs are born in spring. This ensures that they are well grown before severe weather returns. In the Shetlands, cubs are born in summer when fish is more abundant. Though otters can breed every year, some do not. Again, this depends on food availability. Other factors such as food range and quality of the female may have an effect. Gestation for Eurasian otter is 63 days, with the exception of Lutra canadensis whose embryos may undergo delayed implantation. Otters normally give birth in more secure dens to avoid disturbances. Nests are lined with bedding to keep the cub’s warm mummy is away feeding.

E

Otters normally give birth in more secure dens to avoid disturbances. Nests are lined with bedding (reeds, waterside plants, grass) to keep the cub’s warm while is away feeding. Litter Size varies between 1 and 5. For some unknown reason, coastal otters tend to produce smaller litters. At five weeks they open their eyes – a tiny cub of 700g. At seven weeks they’re weaned onto solid food. At ten weeks they leave the nest, blinking into daylight for the first time. After three months they finally meet the water and learn to swim. After eight months they are hunting, though the mother still provides a lot of food herself. Finally, after nine months she can chase them all away with a clear conscience, and relax – until the next fella shows up.

F

The plight of the British otter was recognised in the early 60s, but it wasn’t until the late 70s that the chief cause was discovered. Pesticides, such as dieldrin and aldrin, were first used in1955 in agriculture and other industries – these chemicals are very persistent and had already been recognised as the cause of huge declines in the population of peregrine falcons, sparrow hawks and other predators. The pesticides entered the river systems and the food chain – micro-organisms, fish and finally otters, with every step increasing the concentration of the chemicals. From 1962 the chemicals were phased out, but while some species recovered quickly, otter numbers did not – and continued to fall into the 80s. This was probably due mainly to habitat destruction and road deaths. Acting on populations fragmented by the sudden decimation in the 50s and 60s, the loss of just a handful of otters in one area can make an entire population unviable and spell the end.

G

Otter numbers are recovering all around Britain – populations are growing again in the few areas where they had remained and have expanded from those areas into the rest of the country. This is almost entirely due to legislation, conservation efforts, slowing down and reversing the destruction of suitable otter habitat and reintroductions from captive breeding programs. Releasing captive-bred otters is seen by many as a last resort. The argument runs that where there is no suitable habitat for them they will not survive after release and where there is suitable habitat, natural populations should be able to expand into the area. However, reintroducing animals into a fragmented and fragile population may add just enough impetus for it to stabilise and expand, rather than die out. This is what the Otter Trust accomplished in Norfolk, where the otter population may have been as low as twenty animals at the beginning of the 1980s. The Otter Trust has now finished its captive breeding program entirely, great news because it means it is no longer needed.

Questions 1-9

The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-GWhich paragraph contains the following information?Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 1-9 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

1 A description of how otters regulate vision underwater

2 The fit-for-purpose characteristics of otter’s body shape

3 A reference to an underdeveloped sense

4 An explanation of why agriculture failed in otter conservation efforts

5 A description of some of the otter’s social characteristics

6 A description of how baby otters grow

7 The conflicting opinions on how to preserve

8 A reference to the legislative act

9 An explanation of how otters compensate for heat loss

Questions 10-13

Answer the questions below.Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBERfrom the passage for each answer

10 What affects the outer fur of otters?

11 What skill is not necessary for Asian short-clawed otters?

12 Which type of otters has the shortest range?

13 Which type of animals do otters hunt occasionally?

篇3:剑桥雅思阅读9(test1)原文答案解析

剑桥雅思阅读9原文(test1)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

William Henry Perkin

The man who invented synthetic dyes

William Henry Perkin was born on March 12, 1838, in London, England. As a boy, Perkin’s curiosity prompted early interests in the arts, sciences, photography, and engineering. But it was a chance stumbling upon a run-down, yet functional, laboratory in his late grandfather’s home that solidified the young man’s enthusiasm for chemistry.

As a student at the City of London School, Perkin became immersed in the study of chemistry. His talent and devotion to the subject were perceived by his teacher, Thomas Hall, who encouraged him to attend a series of lectures given by the eminent scientist Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution. Those speeches fired the young chemist’s enthusiasm further, and he later went on to attend the Royal College of Chemistry, which he succeeded in entering in 1853, at the age of 15.

At the time of Perkin’s enrolment, the Royal College of Chemistry was headed by the noted German chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann. Perkin’s scientific gifts soon caught Hofmann’s attention and, within two years, he became Hofmann’s youngest assistant. Not long after that, Perkin made the scientific breakthrough that would bring him both fame and fortune.

At the time, quinine was the only viable medical treatment for malaria. The drug is derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America, and by 1856 demand for the drug was surpassing the available supply. Thus, when Hofmann made some passing comments about the desirability of a synthetic substitute for quinine, it was unsurprising that his star pupil was moved to take up the challenge.

During his vacation in 1856, Perkin spent his time in the laboratory on the top floor of his family’s house. He was attempting to manufacture quinine from aniline, an inexpensive and readily available coal tar waste product. Despite his best efforts, however, he did not end up with quinine. Instead, he produced a mysterious dark sludge. Luckily, Perkin’s scientific training and nature prompted him to investigate the substance further. Incorporating potassium dichromate and alcohol into the aniline at various stages of the experimental process, he finally produced a deep purple solution. And, proving the truth of the famous scientist Louis Pasteur’s words ‘chance favours only the prepared mind’, Perkin saw the potential of his unexpected find.

Historically, textile dyes were made from such natural sources as plants and animal excretions. Some of these, such as the glandular mucus of snails, were difficult to obtain and outrageously expensive. Indeed, the purple colour extracted from a snail was once so costly in society at the time only the rich could afford it. Further, natural dyes tended to be muddy in hue and fade quickly. It was against this backdrop that Perkin’s discovery was made.

Perkin quickly grasped that his purple solution could be used to colour fabric, thus making it the world’s first synthetic dye. Realising the importance of this breakthrough, he lost no time in patenting it. But perhaps the most fascinating of all Perkin’s reactions to his find was his nearly instant recognition that the new dye had commercial possibilities.

Perkin originally named his dye Tyrian Purple, but it later became commonly known as mauve (from the French for the plant used to make the colour violet). He asked advice of Scottish dye works owner Robert Pullar, who assured him that manufacturing the dye would be well worth it if the colour remained fast (i.e. would not fade) and the cost was relatively low. So, over the fierce objections of his mentor Hofmann, he left college to give birth to the modern chemical industry.

With the help of his father and brother, Perkin set up a factory not far from London. Utilising the cheap and plentiful coal tar that was an almost unlimited byproduct of London’s gas street lighting, the dye works began producing the world’s first synthetically dyed material in 1857. The company received a commercial boost from the Empress Eugenie of France, when she decided the new colour flattered her. Very soon, mauve was the necessary shade for all the fashionable ladies in that country. Not to be outdone, England’s Queen Victoria also appeared in public wearing a mauve gown, thus making it all the rage in England as well. The dye was bold and fast, and the public clamoured for more. Perkin went back to the drawing board.

Although Perkin’s fame was achieved and fortune assured by his first discovery, the chemist continued his research. Among other dyes he developed and introduced were aniline red (1859) and aniline black (1863) and, in the late 1860s, Perkin’s green. It is important to note that Perkin’s synthetic dye discoveries had outcomes far beyond the merely decorative. The dyes also became vital to medical research in many ways. For instance, they were used to stain previously invisible microbes and bacteria, allowing researchers to identify such bacilli as tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax. Artificial dyes continue to play a crucial role today. And, in what would have been particularly pleasing to Perkin, their current use is in the search for a vaccine against malaria.

Questions 1-7

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1 Michael Faraday was the first person to recognise Perkin’s ability as a student of chemistry.

2 Michael Faraday suggested Perkin should enrol in the Royal College of Chemistry.

3 Perkin employed August Wilhelm Hofmann as his assistant.

4 Perkin was still young when he made the discovery that made him rich and famous.

5 The trees from which quinine is derived grow only in South America.

6 Perkin hoped to manufacture a drug from a coal tar waste product.

7 Perkin was inspired by the discoveries of the famous scientist Louis Pasteur.

Questions 8-13

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

8 Before Perkin’s discovery, with what group in society was the colour purple associated?

9 What potential did Perkin immediately understand that his new dye had?

10 What was the name finally used to refer to the first colour Perkin invented?

11 What was the name of the person Perkin consulted before setting up his own dye works?

12 In what country did Perkin’s newly invented colour first become fashionable?

13 According to the passage, which disease is now being targeted by researchers using synthetic dyes?

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 on the following pages.

Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has five paragraphs, A-E.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-E from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-vii, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Seeking the transmission of radio signals from planets

ii Appropriate responses to signals from other civilisations

iii Vast distances to Earth’s closest neighbours

iv Assumptions underlying the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence

v Reasons for the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence

vi Knowledge of extra-terrestrial life forms

vii Likelihood of life on other planets

Example Answer

Paragraph A v

14 Paragraph B

15 Paragraph C

16 Paragraph D

17 Paragraph E

IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?

The Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence

The question of whether we are alone in the Universe has haunted humanity for centuries, but we may now stand poised on the brink of the answer to that question, as we search for radio signals from other intelligent civilisations. This search, often known by the acronym SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence), is a difficult one. Although groups around the world have been searching intermittently for three decades, it is only now that we have reached the level of technology where we can make a determined attempt to search all nearby stars for any sign of life.

A

The primary reason for the search is basic curiosity hethe same curiosity about the natural world that drives all pure science. We want to know whether we are alone in the Universe. We want to know whether life evolves naturally if given the right conditions, or whether there is something very special about the Earth to have fostered the variety of life forms that, we see around us on the planet. The simple detection of a radio signal will be sufficient to answer this most basic of all questions. In this sense, SETI is another cog in the machinery of pure science which is continually pushing out the horizon of our knowledge. However, there are other reasons for being interested in whether life exists elsewhere. For example, we have had civilisation on Earth for perhaps only a few thousand years, and the threats of nuclear war and pollution over the last few decades have told us that our survival may be tenuous. Will we last another two thousand years or will we wipe ourselves out? Since the lifetime of a planet like ours is several billion years, we can expect that, if other civilisations do survive in our galaxy, their ages will range from zero to several billion years. Thus any other civilisation that we hear from is likely to be far older, on average, than ourselves. The mere existence of such a civilisation will tell us that long-term survival is possible, and gives us some cause for optimism. It is even possible that the older civilisation may pass on the benefits of their experience in dealing with threats to survival such as nuclear war and global pollution, and other threats that we haven’t yet discovered.

B

In discussing whether we are alone, most SETI scientists adopt two ground rules. First, UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) are generally ignored since most scientists don’t consider the evidence for them to be strong enough to bear serious consideration (although it is also important to keep an open mind in case any really convincing evidence emerges in the future). Second, we make a very conservative assumption that we are looking for a life form that is pretty well like us, since if it differs radically from us we may well not recognise it as a life form, quite apart from whether we are able to communicate with it. In other words, the life form we are looking for may well have two green heads and seven fingers, but it will nevertheless resemble us in that it should communicate with its fellows, be interested in the Universe, live on a planet orbiting a star like our Sun, and perhaps most restrictively, have a chemistry, like us, based on carbon and water.

C

Even when we make these assumptions, our understanding of other life forms is still severely limited. We do not even know, for example, how many stars have planets, and we certainly do not know how likely it is that life will arise naturally, given the right conditions. However, when we look at the 100 billion stars in our galaxy (the Milky Way), and 100 billion galaxies in the observable Universe, it seems inconceivable that at least one of these planets does not have a life form on it; in fact, the best educated guess we can make, using the little that we do know about the conditions for carbon-based life, leads us to estimate that perhaps one in 100,000 stars might have a life-bearing planet orbiting it. That means that our nearest neighbours are perhaps 100 light years away, which is almost next door in astronomical terms.

D

An alien civilistation could choose many different ways of sending information across the galaxy, but many of these either require too much energy, or else are severely attenuated while traversing the vast distances across the galaxy. It turns out that, for a given amount of transmitted power, radio waves in the frequency range 1000 to 3000 MHz travel the greatest distance, and so all searches to date have concentrated on looking for radio waves in this frequency range. So far there have been a number of searches by various groups around the world, including Australian searches using the radio telescope at Parkes, New South Wales. Until now there have not been any detections from the few hundred stars which have been searched. The scale of the searches has been increased dramatically since 1992, when the US Congress voted NASA $10 million per year for ten years to conduct, a thorough search for extra-terrestrial life. Much of the money in this project is being spent on developing the special hardware needed to search many frequencies at once. The project has two parts. One part is a targeted search using the world’s largest radio telescopes, the American-operated telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico and the French telescope in Nancy in France. This part of the project is searching the nearest 1000 likely stars with high sensitivity for signals in the frequency rang 1000 to 3000 MHz. The other part of the project is an undirected search which is monitoring all of space with a lower sensitivity, using the smaller antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

E

There is considerable debate over how we should react if we detect a signal from an alien civilisation. Everybody agrees that we should not reply immediately. Quite apart from the impracticality of sending a reply over such large distances at short notice, it raises a host of ethical questions that would have to be addressed by the global community before any reply could be sent. Would the human race face the culture shock if faced with a superior and much older civilisation? Luckily, there is no urgency about this. The stars being searched are hundreds of light years away, so it takes hundreds of years for their signal to reach us, and a further few hundred years for our reply to reach them. It’s not important, then, if there’s a delay of a few years, or decades, while the human race debates the question of whether to reply, and perhaps carefully drafts a reply.

Questions 18-20

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 18-20 on your answer sheet.

18 What is the life expectancy of Earth?

19 What kind of signals from other intelligent civilisations are SETI scientists searching for?

20 How many stars are the world’s most powerful radio telescopes searching?

Questions 21-26

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

21 Alien civilisations may be able to help the human race to overcome serious problems.

22 SETI scientists are trying to find a life form that resembles humans in many ways.

23 The Americans and Australians have co-operated on joint research projects.

24 So far SETI scientists have picked up radio signals from several stars.

25 The NASA project attracted criticism from some members of Congress.

26 If a signal from outer space is received, it will be important to respond promptly.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

The history of the tortoise

If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea. At various points in evolutionary history, enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto the land, sometimes even to the most parched deserts, taking their own private seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids. In addition to the reptiles, birds, mammals and insects which we see all around us, other groups that have succeeded out of water include scorpions, snails, crustaceans such as woodlice and land crabs, millipedes and centipedes, spiders and various worms. And we mustn’t forget the plants, without whose prior invasion of the land none of the other migrations could have happened.

Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thorough going land animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and returned to the water again. Seals have only gone part way back. They show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their close cousins the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the full marine habits of their remote ancestors. They don’t even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air. However, they are, in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still lay their eggs on beaches.

There is evidence that all modern turtles are descended from a terrestrial ancestor which lived before most of the dinosaurs. There are two key fossils called Proganochelys quenstedti and Plaeochersis talampayensis dating from early dinosaur times, which appear to be close to the ancestry of all modern turtles and tortoises. You might wonder how we can tell whether fossil animals lived on land or in water, especially if only fragments are found. Sometimes it’s obvious. Ichthyosaurs were reptilian contemporaries of the dinosaurs, with fins and streamlined bodies. The fossils look like dolphins and they surely lived like dolphins, in the water. With turtles it is a little less obvious. One way to tell is by measuring the bones of their forelimbs.

Walter Joyce and Jacques Gauthier, at Yale University, obtained three measurements in these particular bones of 71 species of living turtles and tortoises. They used a kind of triangular graph paper to plot the three measurements against one another. All the land tortoise species formed a tight cluster of points in the upper part of the triangle; all the water turtles cluster in the lower part of the triangular graph. There was no overlap, except when they added some species that spend time both in water and on land. Sure enough, these amphibious species show up on the triangular graph approximately half way between the ‘wet cluster’ of sea turtles and the ‘dry cluster’ of land tortoises. The next step was to determine where the fossils fell. The bones of P. quenstedti and P. talampayensis leave us in no doubt. Their points on the graph are right in the thick of the dry cluster. Both these fossils were dry-land tortoises. They come from the era before our turtles returned to the water.

You might think, therefore, that modern land tortoises have probably stayed on land ever since those early terrestrial times, as most mammals did after a few of them went back to the sea. But apparently not. If you draw out the family three of all modern turtles and tortoises, nearly all the branches are aquatic. Today’s land tortoises constitute a single branch, deeply nested among branches consisting of aquatic turtles. This suggests that modern land tortoises have not stayed on land continuously since the time of P. quenstedti and P. talampayensis. Rather, their ancestors were among those who went back to the water, and they then reemerged back onto the land in (relatively) more recent times.

Tortoises therefore represent a remarkable double return. In common with all mammals, reptiles and birds, their remote ancestors were marine fish and before that various more or less worm-like creatures stretching back, still in the sea, to the primeval bacteria. Later ancestors lived on land and stayed there for a very large number of generations. Later ancestors still evolved back into the water and became sea turtles. And finally they returned yet again to the land as tortoises, some of which now live in the driest of deserts.

Questions 27-30

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 What had to transfer from sea to land before any animals could migrate?

28 Which TWO processes are mentioned as those in which animals had to make big changes as they moved onto lands?

29 Which physical feature, possessed by their ancestors, do whales lack?

30 which animals might ichthyosaurs have resembled?

Questions 31-33

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

31 Turtles were among the first group of animals to migrate back to the sea.

32 It is always difficult to determine where an animal lived when its fossilised remains are incomplete.

33 The habitat of ichthyosaurs can be determined by the appearance of their fossilised remains.

Questions 34-39

Complete the flow-chart below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet.

Method of determining where the ancestors of turtles and tortoises come from

Step 1

71 species of living turtles and tortoises were examined and a total of 34 ……………………. were taken from the bones of their forelimbs.

Step 2

The data was recorded on a 35 ……………….. (necessary for comparing the information).

Outcome: Land tortoises were represented by a dense 36 …………………………… of points towards the top.

Sea turtles were grouped together in the bottom part.

Step 3

The same data was collected from some living 37 ………………. species and added to the other results.

Outcome: The points for these species turned out to be positioned about 38 ……………… up the triangle between the land tortoises and the sea turtles.

Step 4

Bones of P. quenstedti and P. talampayensis were examined in a similar way and the results added.

Outcome: The position of the points indicated that both these ancient creatures were 39…………..

Question 40

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

According to the writer, the most significant thing about tortoises is that

A they are able to adapt to life in extremely dry environments.

B their original life form was a kind of primeval bacteria.

C they have so much in common with sea turtles.

D they have made the transition from sea to land more than once.

剑桥雅思阅读9原文参考译文(test1)

PASSAGE 1参考译文:

William Henry Perkin 合成染料的发明者

Wiliam Henry Perkin于1838年3月12日出生于英国伦敦。还是个小男孩儿的时候,Perkin的好奇心就早早激发了他对艺术、科学、摄影与工程的兴趣。但是一次偶然的机会,他发现已故祖父家有一个破旧但功能齐全的实验室,正是这个发现使得这位年轻人确定了他对化学的热情。

当Perkin就读于伦敦城市学院时,他开始沉浸于对化学的研究。他的老师Thomas Hall发现了他在化学方面的天赋与热忱,鼓励其参加皇家学院著名科学家Michael Faraday的一系列讲座。Faraday的讲座进一步激发了这位年轻化学家的热情,于是后来,在1853年,15岁的Perkin成功进入皇家化学学院学习。

在Perkin入学时,皇家化学学院的院长正是著名的德国化学家August Wilhelm Hofmann。Perkin的科学天赋很快引起了Hofmann的注意,不到两年他就成了Hofmann最年轻的助理。不久之后,Perkin就取得了一项能为他带来名誉和财富的科学突破。

当时,奎宁是唯一可以治疗疟疾的药物。这种药物是从原产自南美洲的金鸡纳树的树皮中提炼出来的,而在1856年奎宁经常供不应求。因此,当Hofmann随口提到想用合成药物来替代奎宁时,自然而然,他的得意门生Perkin马上承担起了这项重任。

1856年,Perkin整个假期都待在他家顶楼的实验室里。他试图利用苯胺这种廉价又易得的煤焦油废料来制造奎宁。虽然他尽了最大努力,他最终并没有制造出奎宁;但却制造出了一种神秘的黑色沉淀物。幸运的是,长期的科学训练与自身的天性使他对该沉淀物进行了深入的研究。在实验过程中的不同阶段,他把重铬酸钾和酒精加入苯胺中,最终他得到了一种深紫色的溶液。正如著名科学家Louis Pasteur所说,“机会总是垂青有准备的人”,Perkin意识到了他的意外发明拥有巨大的潜力。

历来,纺织染料都是由诸如植物与动物排泄物等的天然原料制成的,其中一些原料,比如蜗牛黏液, 很难获得,而且价格极其昂贵。事实上,从蜗牛身上提取出来的紫色染料曾经一度非常贵,在当时的社会条件下,只有富人才能买得起。此外,天然染料的颜色偏浑浊而且很快就会褪色。Perkin的发明正是在这种大背景下诞生的。

Perkin很快想到这种紫色溶液可以用到织物的染色中,由此使其成为世界上第一种合成染料。意识到这项突破的重要性后,Perkin立即为其申请专利。但是在Perkin对自己发明的各种反应中,最有趣的也许是他几乎本能地想到这种新染料具有商业潜力。

起初Perkin把他发明的染料命名为泰尔紫(Tyrian Purple),但是后来人们通常称其为木槿紫(mauve,法语中制造蓝紫色染料的植物的名字)。Perkin向苏格兰染料坊的老板Robert Pullar寻求建议,Pullar向他保证,如果这种颜色不会褪色,那么加工这种染料将大有“钱途”,而且成本相对低廉。因此,尽管他的导师Hofmann极力反对,Perkin还是离开了皇家学院,去为现代化学工业的诞生而奋斗了。

在父亲与兄弟的帮助下,Perkin在离伦敦不远的地方建立了一家工厂。1857年,他的染料坊开始生产世界上第一种合成染料,所用原料是廉价而充足的煤焦油,这种煤焦油是伦敦煤气路灯所产生的几乎无穷无尽的副产品。当法国皇后Eugenie看好这种新颜色后,Perkin的染料坊迎来了它的商业繁荣期。不久,木槿紫 就成了法国所有时尚女郎的必备品。英国女王Victoria也不甘示弱,身着木槿紫礼服出现在公共场合,这使得木槿紫在英国也风靡一时。这种染料颜色醒目、不易褪色,人们的需求越来越多,因此Perkin开始绘制新的蓝图。

虽然第一项发现使Perkin收获了名誉和财富,但是这位化学家仍然继续他的研究工作。他合成并给人们带来了众多其他颜色的染料,包括1859年合成的苯胺红、1863年合成的苯胺黑,以及19世纪60年代末期的帕金绿。值得注意的是,Perkin的合成染料的发明不仅为装饰领域作出了贡献,而且在医学研究的诸多方面也起到了至关重要的作用。比如合成染料预先被用于给肉眼看不见的微生物与细菌上色,这就使研究者能够辨别诸如肺结核、霍乱和炭疽之类的病菌。如今,人工合成染料还在继续发挥着至关重要的作用。而且,最应该让Perkin感到欣慰的是,合成染料目前正在被用于研究治疗疟疾的疫苗。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 2 参考译文:

外星有生命存在吗?

——搜寻外星文明计划

人类是否是宇宙中唯一存在的生命这个问题已经困扰我们几百年了,然而随着搜索来自其他智慧文明的无线电信号,现在我们或许离这个问题的答案已经不远了。这项也被称为SETI (search for extra?terrestrial intelligence, 搜寻外星文明)的计划进行起来非常困难。虽然世界各地的团体已经断断续续地搜寻了三十多年,然而直到现在,我们所达到的技术水平才允许我们下定决心去尝试搜寻附近所有附近星球上的任何生命迹象。

A 人类之所以搜索无线电信号,主要是出于一种基本的好奇心,正是这种对大自然的好奇心推动了所有纯科学的发展。我们想知道人类是否是宇宙中唯一存在的生命。我们想知道在适宜的条件下,生命是否会自然形成。我们还想知道地球上是否存在某种特殊的物质,孕育了那些我们司空见惯的各种形式的生命体。只需监测一下无线电信号,这些最根本的问题就能够得到充分解答。从这种意义上来说,SETI 是纯科学系统发展的又一个重要推动力,而纯科学正不断拓宽着人类的知识范围。然而,人类之所以对其他地方是否存在生命这件事感兴趣,还有其他原因。比如,我们地球上的文明历史只有寥寥数千年,而过去几十年的核战争与污染的威胁告诉人类,我们的生命也许很脆弱。我们还能再延续两千年吗?还是将自我灭绝呢?既然像地球这样的星球拥有数十亿年的寿命,我们可以猜想,如果银河系中确实还有其他文明存在,那么它们的历史可能从零到数十亿年不等。因此,如果我们收到其他文明的信号,那它们的平均历史很有可能比人类历史长得多。只要这种文明存在,就说明生命是有可能长期存活的,同时也会带给我们一个保持乐观的理由。这些更古老的文明甚至有可能将其在应对生存威胁过程中积累下来的有益经验传授给我们,例如如何应对核战争与全球污染带来的威胁,以及如何应对其他我们尚未发现的潜在威胁。

B 在探讨我们是否是宇宙中唯一存在的生命时,大多数SETI的科学家遵循两个基本原则。第一,UFOs (不明飞行物) 通常不在考虑范围内,因为大多数科学家认为UFO的存在缺乏确凿的证据,不做慎重考虑(尽管保持开放的思想也很重要,同时以防将来会出现令人信服的(关于UFO的)证据)。第二,我们保守地假定我们正在搜寻的生命形式和人类非常相似,如果完全不同,那么我们可能不会把它看作是一种生命形式,更不用说能否与它进行交流了。换句话说,我们正在搜寻的生命形式也许会有两个绿色的脑袋和七根手指,但是它们和人类一样,能与同伴进行交流、对宇宙充满兴趣、生活在一个围绕恒星公转的星球上,就像地球绕着太阳转一样。也许更严格地说,它们和我们一样,由基本的化学物质碳和水构成。

C 即使做出了这些假设,我们对其他生命形式的了解还是非常有限。比如,我们甚至不知道多少颗恒星有行星围绕,当然,我们也不知道在适宜的条件下,生命自然形成的可能性有多大。然而,当我们观测银河系中的1000亿颗恒星和可见宇宙中的1000亿个星系的时候,很难相信这些恒星中没有一个有生命存在。事实上,凭借我们仅有的一点对碳基生命的了解,我们所能做出的最有根据的推测是,或许每十万个恒星中的一个会有孕育着生命的行星围绕着它运转。这意味着我们最近的邻居离我们也许只有100 光年,从天文学角度来讲,这几乎就相当于和隔壁邻居的距离了。

D 外星文明可以选择多种不同的方式在银河系中发送信息,但是许多方式要么需要消耗过多的能量,要么在银河系中长距离传播时严重衰减。事实证明,在发射功率一定的情况下,频率在1000到3000兆赫 之间的无线电波传播的距离最远,所以到目前为止,我们主要在搜寻这个频率范围的无线电波。迄今为止,世界各地已经有许多不同的团体进行了多次搜寻,包括澳大利亚在新南威尔士的帕克斯用无线电天文望远镜进行的搜寻。直到现在,在已经搜寻过的几百个恒星中还没有任何发现。1992年,美国国会计划在以后的十年里每年为美国国家航空航天局投资1000万美元,用于对外星生命进行彻底搜寻。从那时起,搜寻的规模便开始大幅增加。项目中的很多资金用于开发可以同时搜索多个频率的特殊硬件 上。该项目分为两个部分,一部分是利用世界上最大的无线电天文望远镜进行有针对性的搜寻,分别通过位于波多黎各阿雷西沃港的、由美国操作的望远镜和位于法国南锡的、由法国操作的望远镜来完成。 这部分项目在距离最近的有可能接收到信号的1000颗活跃恒星中,对1000到3000兆赫的频率进行搜索。该项目的另一部分是利用美国国家航空航天局深空网的小天线进行不定向搜寻,监控所有不太活跃的宇宙空间。

E 如果我们真的发现了来自外星文明的信号,我们应该如何回应呢?这是一个备受争议的问题。所有人都认为我们不应该立即作出回应。且不说要马上向如此遥远的地方发出回应是多么不切实际,这还会引发一系列的民族问题,这些问题在回应被发出去之前必须由国际社会联合解决。如果面对一种更优越、更古老的文明,人类会不会面临着文化冲击呢?幸运的是,我们不需要立即作出回应,因为被搜寻的恒星离我们有数百光年之远,它们的信号到达我们这里需要数百年的时间,而我们作出的回应到达这些恒星又需要花上数百年。就这一点而言,当人类在争论是否要作出回应时,或者在精心起草回应内容的时候,再耽误个几年甚至几十年也没关系。

TEST 1 PASSAGE 3 参考译文:

乌龟的进化史

如果追溯到远古时代,那时一切生物都生活在水里。在进化史的不同时期,各个动物种群中都有一些胆大的开始向陆地迁徙,有的甚至跑到了非常干旱的沙漠里,这些生物的血液与细胞液里还储存着曾经所生活海域里的海水。除了我们周围随处可见的爬行动物、鸟类、哺乳动物和昆虫以外,其他成功登陆的生物还包括蝎子、蜗牛和潮虫、陆蟹、千足虫、蜈蚣等甲壳类动物,还有蜘蛛及各种虫子。当然还有植物,如杲没有它们率先登陆,其他任何生物都不可能在陆地上生存。

从水里转移到陆地上使这些生物在方方面面都发生了巨大变化,包括呼吸和繁殖方式。然而,一大批动物彻底在陆地上安家后,却忽然回心转意,放弃了来之不易的陆上新生活,又重新回到了水中。海豹只恢复了部分水中生活的特征,向我们展示了演变过程中半成品的模样,而成品则是如鲸鱼和儒艮这样纯粹的海洋生物。鲸鱼(包括我们称作海豚的小鲸鱼)和儒艮,与它们的同类动物海牛一样不再是陆地动物,而是完全恢复了与老祖先一样的海洋生活习惯,它们甚至都不上岸繁殖。它们虽然仍呼吸空气,却没有进化出类似于鳃这样的早期海洋生物的器官。海龟在很早以前就回到了水中,和其他返回水中的脊椎动物一 样,它们也需要呼吸空气,但是却没有像鲸鱼和儒艮那样完全返回水中,这体现在一个方面——海龟仍然在海滩上产卵。

有证据表明,所有现代海龟的祖先都曾经生活在陆地上,比大多数恐龙在陆地上出现的时间还要早。 有两种可以追溯到恐龙时代早期的重要化石,分别是Proganochelys quenstedti (原颚龟化石)和 Potoeocfeersis tatompayewsis(古老的陆地龟化石),它们与所有现代海龟和乌龟的祖先最为接近。你可能会问,我们是如何通过动物化石来判断它们是生活在水中还是陆地上的,尤其当我们只找到一些化石碎片的时候。有时候这个问题的答案很明显。鱼龙是与恐龙同时代的爬行动物,它有鱼鳍和流线型的身体。鱼龙化石看起来像海豚,它们确实和海豚一样曾经在水中生活。海龟在这一点上则没有这么明显。判断动物水生还是陆生的方法之一就是对它们前肢的骨骼进行检测。

耶鲁大学的Watter Joyce和Jacques Gauthier从三个方面对71种活的海龟和乌龟的特有骨骼进行了检测。他们用一种三角坐标纸分别标记了这三个方面的检测结果。所有陆栖乌龟的数据在三角坐标的上半部分形成了一簇密集的点,而所有水栖海龟的数据集中于下半部分。两部分数据没有重叠,除非在其中增加一些水陆两栖乌龟的检测结果。当然,这些数据出现在接近三角坐标中间的位置,位于水栖海龟与陆栖乌龟的坐标点之间。下一步就是确定具体的位置。毫无疑问,P. quenstedti与P. totompayewsis的坐标点正好位于陆栖乌龟的坐标点最密集的地方。这两种化石都是陆栖乌龟化石,而且都生存在海龟返回水里之前的时代。

也许你会认为,现代的陆栖乌龟可能自从早期有陆地生物以来就一直生活在陆地上,就像除了少数哺乳动物返回水中以外,大多数哺乳动物还在陆地上生活一样。但事实显然不是这样的。如果你画出所有现代海龟与乌龟的家谱图,会发现几乎所有的龟类分支都属于水栖动物。而现代的陆栖乌龟单独形成一个分支,穿插在水栖海龟的分支中。这说明自P. quenstedti与P. talampayensis的时代以来,现代的陆栖乌龟并没有一直在陆地上生活。更确切地说,它们的祖先曾经返回水中,只是在(相对)较近的年代又回到了陆地上。

因此很明显,乌龟曾往返于水中和陆地上生存。与所有的哺乳动物、爬行动物和鸟类一样,乌龟的老祖先是海洋中的鱼类。再向前追溯,它们也是海洋中类似蠕虫生物的原始细菌。后来,乌龟的祖先来到陆地 上并持续生活了相当长的年代,但后来又回到了水中,成为了水栖海龟。直到最后,它们再一次回到陆地上,成为陆龟,其中有一些甚至生活在干旱的沙漠中。

剑桥雅思阅读9原文解析(test1)

Passage1

Question 1

答案: FALSE

关键词: Michael Faraday the first person

定位原文: 第2段第2句“His talent and devotion…” 他的老师Thomas Hall发现了他在化学方面的天赋与热忱,鼓励其参加皇家学院著名科学家Michael Faraday的一系列讲座。

解题思路: 从这句话很容易看出,Thomas Hall是文中提到的第一个发现Perkin化学天赋的人,尽管文中没有用到the first person这样的确切说法,但是看完第二段就不难发现,这点的确是对的。因此,题中的说法与文中的事实相反。

Question 2

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: Michael Faraday, Royal College of Chemistry,suggested

定位原文: 第2段第3句“Those speeches fired…” Faraday的讲座进一步激发了这位年轻化学家的热情,在1853年,15岁的Perkin成功进入皇家化学学院学习。

解题思路: 这句话仅仅告诉我们,Perkin是在听了Faraday的讲座后,对化学的激情更加澎湃,进而考上了皇家化学学院,而并没有提到Faraday与Perkin进行直接接触或沟通,所以题目是对文章中出现的人和事的过分解读。

Question 3

答案: FALSE

关键词: employed, assistant,August Wilhelm Hofmann

定位原文: 第3段第1、2句“At the time of Perkin’s enrolment, the…” 在Perkin入学时,皇家化学学院的院长正是著名的德国化学家August Wilhelm Hofmann。Perkin的科学天赋很快引起了Hofmann的注意,不到两年他就成了Hofmann最年轻的助理。

解题思路:从这两句话中可以清晰地看出Perkin和Hofmann之间的关系,前者是后者最年轻的助理, 题目的说法和文中的陈述是直接抵触的。

Question 4

答案: TRUE

关键词: rich and famous,still young

对应原文: 第3段最后一句“Not long after that, Perkin made…” 在这之后不久,Perkin就取得一项能为他带来名誉和财富的科学突破。

解题思路: 这里的“不久之后”,指的是Perkin成为Hofmann最年轻的助手之后,而成为助手是Perkin入学两年后的事情,第二段最后专门提到Perkin入学时只有15岁,所以可以推测出Perkin作出这项发现时也就十八九岁。经过这样的推断可知,题目的说法完全可以成立。

Question 5

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: only,quinine, South America

定位原文: 第4段第1句“At the time,quinine…” 当时,奎宁是唯一可以治疗症疾的药物。这种药物是从原产自南美洲的金鸡纳树的树皮中提炼出来的……

解题思路: 如果误把第一句中的only和第二句话结合,就很容易得出和题目一样的错误结论。 其实出题人的意图是说,当时只有奎宁可以治疗疟疾;而奎宁是从金鸡纳树的树皮里提炼出来的,金鸡纳树原产自南美洲。注意,这里出题人并没有说金鸡纳树只有南美洲才有。文中的说法不足以让考生得出如题目“出产奎宁的树木只能生长在南美洲”那样的结论。

Question 6

答案: TRUE

关键词: a coal tar waste product,hoped to manufacture

定位原文: 第5段第2句 “He was attempting to … ”他试图利用苯胺这种廉价又易得的煤焦油废料来制造奎宁。

解题思路:这句话很清晰地表明,Perkin的确希望用煤焦油废料产品苯胺来制造一种药物——奎宁。 此题难度很低,连动词manufacture都没有进行任何替换。

Question 7

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: Louis Pasteur,was inspired by

定位原文: 第5段最后一句“And, proving the truth of…” 正如著名科学家 Louis Pasteur所说,“机会总是垂青有准备的人”,Perkin意识到了他的意外发明拥有巨大的潜力。

解题思路: 出题人在这里引用Louis Pasteur的名言来证明Perkin的成功绝非偶然,是他不断发现、不断试验的结果,但并没有提到Perkin是受Louis Pasteur的发明激发才有了自己的发明。本题和第2题在出题方式上有异曲同工之妙,都是让Perkin和名人扯上了关系,而实际上这种关系文中并没有提到。

Question 8

答案: the rich

关键词: the colour purple

定位原文: 第6段第3句“Indeed, the purple colour…”

解题思路: The rich正好可以对应题目中what group in society,并且没有超过只能填两个字的字数限制,故答案应为the rich。

Question 9

答案: commercial possibilities

关键词: new dye

定位原文: 第7段最后一句 “But perhaps the most fascinating…”

解题思路: 寻找题干中的关键字new dye, 绕过沿途synthetic dye的陷阱,很快就能找到定位句,锁定答案是new dye 的宾语commercial possibilities。

Question 10

答案: mauve

关键词: name, finally, first colour

定位原文: 第8段第1句“Perkin originally named his dye…”

解题思路: 在此题中,考生需要注意题干中的关键副词finally, 此题指的是 Perkin的颜色最终被叫做什么,而不是起初被叫做什么。题干中的be referred to as是雅思阅读中经常出现的用法,等同于be known as / be named as / be defined as, 意为 “被称为…”答案是mauve。

Question 11

答案: Robert Pullar

关键词: the name of the person, consulted, before setting up

定位原文: 第8段的第2句“He asked advice of Scottish dye works owner Robert Pullar,...”

解题思路: 本段提到Perkin在建立工厂之前,曾经征询苏格兰染料坊的老板Robert Pullar的意见,在得到Robert Pullar的建议之后,才开始建立自己的工厂。这里不要将Robert Pullar和Hofmann混淆,因为本段后半部分也提到了Perkin的恩师Hofmann。Hofmann是强烈反对Perkin这么做的。故本题答案是Robert Pullar。

Question 12

答案: France

关键词: what country, first

定位原文: 第9段第2、3句“Utilising the cheap and plentiful coal…”

解题思路: 此句话明确指出在Perkin的工厂首度造出了第一支人工合成材料后, 法国皇后Eugenie十分喜爱这种新颜色,于是Perkin的染料坊进入了它的商业繁荣期。故答案是France。

Question 13

答案: malaria

关键词: disease, now, synthetic dyes

定位原文: 第10段最后一句“And, in what would have been…”

解题思路: 寻找关键词 synthetic dye时,可能会被microbes, bacteria, tuberculosis, cholera, anthrax所迷惑。但是要注意的是都没有出现时间状语now。再继续向下寻找,就会发现 today, current等字眼,这说明这里才是真正的考点所在。仔细读这个句子不难发现,malaria(疟疾)才是正确答案。

Test 1 Passage 2

Question 14

答案: iv

关键词: assumptions, underlying

定位原文: B段第1句“In discussing whether we are alone, most…”

解题思路: 这句明确表明SETI科学家在搜寻外星人时遵循两个基本原则。Ground相当于题目中的 underlying, rules相当于题目中的 assumptions,接下来的文字叙述两个原则分别是什么。考生从首句可以很明确地判断出正确答案是iv。个别考生可能会看到second后面句子中的assumption— 词,进而看到a life form,就认为答案是vi,这种选择显然是以偏概全的,是不正确的。段意必须能够涵盖一整段内容,而不是某个部分或者某句话的内容。

因此本题答案是iv。

Question 15

答案: vii

关键词: likelihood of, lives, other planets

定位原文: C段第3句的后半句“… ; in fact, the best educated guess…”

解题思路: 这一段是无法仅仅从首句就判断答案的,需要读举例的内容,甚至读完整段,出题人不断用guess, estimate, perhaps, might这样的词来印证题干中的 likelihood一词。

Question 16

答案: i

关键词: radio signals, from

定位原文: D段第1、2句“An alien… It turns out…”

解题思路: 本段是文中首次正式提出搜寻外星生命的方法,radio waves一词不断被重复。Looking for相当于题目中的 seeking,radio waves 相当于 radio signals,所有剩余headings中只有i和ii谈到了 radio signals,从逻辑上推测不可能是ii,因为只有先搜寻外星信号,才可能谈到作回应的事情。故此题答案是i。

Question 17

答案: ii

关键词: appropriate responses

定位原文: E段第1句“There is considerate debate over…”

解题思路: 本段首句明确提出如果收到了外星文明信号, 人类应该如何回应的问题。React相当于题目中的responses。而how暗指appropriate。故答案是ii。

Question 18

答案: several billion years

关键词: life expectancy, Earth

定位原文: A段第9句“Since the lifetime of…”

解题思路: Earth这个词出现在A段的第九行。顺着这个词再向下找到lifetime, 显然这个词对应题目中的life expectancy(寿命)一词,读完本句发现答案应该是several billion years 。

Question 19

答案: radio waves

关键词: What kind of signals from other intelligent civilisations

定位原文: D段第1句“An alien civilisation could choose…”

解题思路: 本题定位与上一题相隔较远。但是如果已经先完成了 List of Headings题目,就不难发现只有D段是在具体讲外星文明会选择哪种输送信息的方式。题目中问的是SETI科学家在搜寻从外星文明发来的哪一种信号,也就表明答案是个具体的信号形式,考生也就不难猜测答案是radio waves。注意,此处问的是信号的形式,而不是电波频率,因此填1000或者3000 MHz是不正确的。

Question 20

答案: 1000

关键词: How many, most powerful radio telescopes

定位原文:D段倒数第4句“The project has two parts. One part is…”

解题思路:通过阅读题目,发现要寻找的是恒星的数量。只要定位数字 就能迅速找到本题的位置。于是,考生找到1000这个数字,并且能迅速排除下方的1000到3000MHz。从1000这个数字向上看,考生可以看到 world’s largest radio telescopes与题目中的 most powerful radio telescopes 是同义表达。

Question 21

答案: YES

关键词: Alien civilisations / the human race

定位原文: A段最后一句“It is even possible that…” 这些更古老的文明甚至有可能将其在应对生存威胁过程中积累下来的有益经验传授给我们,例如如何应对核战争与全球污染带来的威胁,以及如何应对其他我们尚未发现的潜在威胁。

解题思路: 根据题干关键字alien civilisation以及List of Headings题目留下的线索,最终会发现A段的最后一句话能够对应本题。 be able to help能够对应文中的it is even possible, serious problems对应文中的threats。本题基本上属于同义词替换型的YES题目。

Question 22

答案: YES

关键词: SETI,resembles

定位原文: B段第3句“Second, we make a very conservative assumption…” 第二,我们保守地假定我们正在搜寻的生命形式和人类非常相似。

解题思路: 本句的定位可以根据顺序原则推测,We在这里指的就是SETI的科学家们,resemble humans指的是is pretty well like us。只要能顺利定位,就能够通过同义词转换解答。

Question 23

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: The Americans and Australians,Co-operated

定位原文: D段第3句“...,including Australian searches using…”

解题思路: 文章的D段虽然先提到了澳大利亚的搜寻工作,接着又提到了美国航空航天局负责的美国太空望远镜的搜索工作,但是并没有明确指出在这方面澳大利亚人和美国人有没有cooperate,合作这个概念完全是出题人的杜撰,遇到这种情况,应该选择NOT GIVEN。

Question 24

答案: NO

关键词: SETI scientists,have picked up

定位原文: D段第4句“Until now there have …” 直到现在,在已经搜寻过的几百个恒星中还没有任何发现。

解题思路:此题定位处位于上一题定位词Australian的后方,比较好找。文中明确指出迄今为止,科学家们还一无所获,而不是题目中所说的已经发现了信号。文中的have not been和题目中的have picked up相矛盾, 连时态都没有改变,是一道简单的同义词冲突型的NO。

Question 25

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: NASA, Congress, criticism

定位原文:D段第5句“The scale of the search…” 1992年,美国国会计划在以后的十年里每年为美国国家航空航天局投资1,000万美元,用于对外星生命进行彻底的搜寻。从那时起,搜寻的规模便开始大幅增加。

解题思路:文中仅仅说国会通过议案给NASA拨款来对外星人进行彻底的搜寻,并未涉及这个项目有没有遭到某些议员批评一说。因此本题属于完全未提及型NOT GIVEN。

Question 26

答案: NO

关键词: respond promptly

定位原文:E段第1、2句“There is considerable debate over…” 如果我们真的发现了来自外星文明的信号,我们应该如何回应呢?这是一个备受争议的问题。所有人都认为我们不应该立即作出回应。

解题思路:文中这句话明确指出了对待外星人信号的态度,那就是不能立即回应,这与题目中提出的马上作出回应完全相反。Immediately相当于promptly。

Test 1 Passage 3

Question 27

答案: plants

关键词: before any animals could migrate

定位原文:第1段最后一句话“And we musn’t…”

解题思路: 这句话指出,如果没有植物率先登陆,其他任何生物向陆地的迁徙都不可能完成。这吻合题目中的before any animals could migrate。故答案应该是plants。

Question 28:

答案: breathing and reproduction (in either order)

关键词: TWO processes, make big changes, moved onto land

定位原文:第2段第1句话“Moving from…”

解题思路: 题目问的是:动物要想迁徙到陆地上,必须在哪两个方面作出巨大的改变?此题定位可以根据顺序原则锁定在第二段,而第二段第一句话就提到Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction.这句话中的redesign对应题目中的changes。 故答案应该是breathing和reproduction。(并列答案,顺序无关紧要)

Question 29:

答案: gills

关键词: physical feature, whales, lack

定位原文:第2段第5句“Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and…”

解题思路:先根据题目关键字定位到whale, 然后通读whale所在的句子,在这段叙述中,作者最后指出虽然鲸鱼仍呼吸空气,却没有进化出类似于鳃这样的早期海洋生物的器官。所以考生可以得出结论,鲸鱼缺乏的其实就是gills。故答案应该是gills。

Question 30:

答案: dolphins

关键词: ichthyosaurs, Resemble

定位原文:第3段倒数第4、3句“Ichthyosaurs were reptilian…”

解题思路: 定位句中的contemporaries是理解重点,指的是“同时代的人,同时代的事物”,这里说明鱼龙年代久远,和恐龙是同时代的动物,但是并不说明鱼龙和恐龙相像(其实也不大可能嘛)。而后半句的look like,就完全呼应题目中 的resemble, 这才是真正答案所在。

故答案应该是dolphins。

Question 31:

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词: Turtles,the first group

定位原文:第2段倒数第2句“Turtles went back to the sea…” 海龟在很早以前就回到了水中,和其他返回水中的脊椎动物一样,它们也需要呼吸空气。

解题思路:文中在第二段的后半部分第一次提到了乌龟,这就是本题的定位点。寻找turtle一词后,文中这句话说很久以前,乌龟就重新返回海洋,但是并没有说明是不是第一批回海洋这个概念。实际上,整篇文章中都没有讨论到关于the first的问题,所以此题属于完全未提及型NOT GIVEN题。

Question 32:

答案: FALSE

关键词: fossilised remains, incomplete, always difficult

定位原文: 第3段第3句“You might…” 你可能会问,我们是如何通过动物化石来判断它们是生活在水中还是陆地上的,尤其当我们只找到一些化石碎片的时候。

解题思路: 在第三段中寻找fossilised一词,很快找到对应词fossil。接着读到fragments,可以对应题目中的incomplete, on land or in water对应题目中的where an animal lived。但题目中的叙述过于绝对,It is always difficult与文中Sometimes it’s obvious明显相抵触。

Question 33:

答案: TRUE

关键词: ichthyosaurs, can be determined by, appearance

定位原文:第3段倒数第4、3句“Ichthyosaurs were reptilian…” 鱼龙是与恐龙同时代的爬行动物,它有鱼鳍和流线型的身体。鱼龙化石看起来像海豚,它们确实和海豚一样曾经在水中生活。

解题思路:通过ichthyosaurs一词很好确定。文中提到鱼龙的化石看上去像海豚,因此鱼龙肯定生活在海里。这等于举个例子向我们说明只要从鱼龙化石的外表就能够判定它的栖息地,与题目的意思完全吻合。

Question 34:

答案: three measurements

关键词: 71, a total of

定位原文:第4段第1句“...obtained three measurements in these particular…”

解题思路:利用数字71,很快就可以将此题定位。但是要注意在该句中并没有提到题目中的forelimbs。该词出现于上一段的最后一句,在此句中则以these particular bones来指代,要多加注意。如果能够顺利突破这个小障碍,很快就能发现正确答案。正确答案为three measurements。

Question 35:

答案: (triangular) graph

关键词: data, a

定位原文:第4段第2句“They used a kind of triangular graph…”

解题思路:顺着上一题的对应点找下来,可以顺利找到a kind of,这个词组可以等同于题目中的不定冠词a。因此可以初步判定a kind of后面的triangular graph paper可能就是要填写的答案。题目要求NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS,而triangular graph paper有三个词, 只好牺牲最无关紧要的paper。

Question 36:

答案: cluster

关键词: Land tortoises, a dense, points

定位原文:第4段第3句“All the land tortoise species…”

解题思路:题目中需要填的词位于短语a dense of points 中,只要定位到陆龟这个词,再顺着向下读到a tight cluster of points即可。这个词组的结构和题目中的词组一模一样,只是将dense和tight做了替换。正确答案为cluster。

Question 37:

答案: amphibious

关键词: Sea turtles, living, added to

定位原文:第4段第4句“There was no overlap, except when they…”

解题思路: 此题的定位可以根据上一题最后一句话中的sea turtles定位到第四段water turtle后面这句话。从题目可以得知从某种物种搜集的数据被添加到了结果中去。Add一词是解题的关键。读完这句话,很容易发现被添加的物种是既可以在陆上生活,也可以在水中生存的两栖物种。

Question 38:

答案: half way

关键词: up the triangle between

定位原文: 第4段第5句“Sure enough, these amphibious…”

解题思路: 此题十分简单,找到两栖物种之后寻找between,between前面的half way, 就是本题所要的答案。

Question 39:

答案: dry-land tortoises

关键词: P. quenstedti, P. talampayensis, The position of the points, both

定位原文: 第4段倒数第2句“Both these fossils were dry-land tortoises.”

解题思路: 用两个专有名词可以顺利找到第四段结尾处。然后利用题目中的The position of the points锁定在Their points on the graph are right in the thick of the dry cluster.答案就是之后的那句。正确答案为dry-land tortoises 。

Question 40:

答案: D

关键词: the most significant thing, tortoises

定位原文:参见解题思路解析

解题思路: 题目:作者认为关于乌龟最重要的一件事情是:A.它们能够适应极其干燥的环境。B.它们生命的最初形态是某种原始细菌。C.它们与海龟十分相似。D.它们不止一次从海洋迁徙到陆地。最后一段首句就表明Tortoises therefore represent a remarkable double return, 含义为“因此很明显,乌龟曾往返于水中和陆地上生存。”选项A中所说的干燥环境,选项B中所说的原始细菌,以及选项C中提到的海龟,在最后一段中悉数登场,但是没有一个是题目论述的核心。题目的真正意图就是想告诉考生乌龟finally retuned yet again to the land as tortoises。故答案应该选D。

剑桥雅思阅读9(test1)原文答案解析

篇4:(test2)剑桥雅思阅读7真题解读

剑桥雅思阅读7原文(test2)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Why pagodas don’t fall down

In a land swept by typhoons and shaken by earthquakes, how have Japan’s tallest and seemingly flimsiest old buildings — 500 or so wooden pagodas — remained standing for centuries? Records show that only two have collapsed during the past 1400 years. Those that have disappeared were destroyed by fire as a result of lightning or civil war. The disastrous Hanshin earthquake in 1995 killed 6,400 people, toppled elevated highways, flattened office blocks and devastated the port area of Kobe. Yet it left the magnificent five-storey pagoda at the Toji temple in nearby Kyoto unscathed, though it levelled a number of buildings in the neighbourhood.

Japanese scholars have been mystified for ages about why these tall, slender buildings are so stable. It was only thirty years ago that the building industry felt confident enough to erect office blocks of steel and reinforced concrete that had more than a dozen floors. With its special shock absorbers to dampen the effect of sudden sideways movements from an earthquake, the thirty-six-storey Kasumigaseki building in central Tokyo — Japan’s first skyscraper — was considered a masterpiece of modern engineering when it was built in 1968.

Yet in 826, with only pegs and wedges to keep his wooden structure upright, the master builder Kobodaishi had no hesitation in sending his majestic Toji pagoda soaring fifty-five metres into the sky — nearly half as high as the Kasumigaseki skyscraper built some eleven centuries later. Clearly, Japanese carpenters of the day knew a few tricks about allowing a building to sway and settle itself rather than fight nature’s forces. But what sort of tricks?

The multi-storey pagoda came to Japan from China in the sixth century. As in China, they were first introduced with Buddhism and were attached to important temples. The Chinese built their pagodas in brick or stone, with inner staircases, and used them in later centuries mainly as watchtowers. When the pagoda reached Japan, however, its architecture was freely adapted to local conditions — they were built less high, typically five rather than nine storeys, made mainly of wood and the staircase was dispensed with because the Japanese pagoda did not have any practical use but became more of an art object. Because of the typhoons that batter Japan in the summer, Japanese builders learned to extend the eaves of buildings further beyond the walls. This prevents rainwater gushing down the walls. Pagodas in China and Korea have nothing like the overhang that is found on pagodas in Japan.

The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to overhang the sides of the structure by fifty per cent or more of the building’s overall width. For the same reason, the builders of Japanese pagodas seem to have further increased their weight by choosing to cover these extended eaves not with the porcelain tiles of many Chinese pagodas but with much heavier earthenware tiles.

But this does not totally explain the great resilience of Japanese pagodas. Is the answer that, like a tall pine tree, the Japanese pagoda — with its massive trunk-like central pillar known as shinbashira — simply flexes and sways during a typhoon or earthquake? For centuries, many thought so. But the answer is not so simple because the startling thing is that the shinbashira actually carries no load at all. In fact, in some pagoda designs, it does not even rest on the ground, but is suspended from the top of the pagoda — hanging loosely down through the middle of the building. The weight of the building is supported entirely by twelve outer and four inner columns.

And what is the role of the shinbashira, the central pillar? The best way to understand the shinbashira’s role is to watch a video made by Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr Ishida, known to his students as ‘Professor Pagoda’ because of his passion to understand the pagoda, has built a series of models and tested them on a ‘shake-table’ in his laboratory. In short, the shinbashira was acting like an enormous stationary pendulum. The ancient craftsmen, apparently without the assistance of very advanced mathematics, seemed to grasp the principles that were, more than a thousand years later, applied in the construction of Japan’s first skyscraper. What those early craftsmen had found by trial and error was that under pressure a pagoda’s loose stack of floors could be made to slither to and fro independent of one another. Viewed from the side, the pagoda seemed to be doing a snake dance — with each consecutive floor moving in the opposite direction to its neighbours above and below. The shinbashira, running up through a hole in the centre of the building, constrained individual stories from moving too far because, after moving a certain distance, they banged into it, transmitting energy away along the column.

Another strange feature of the Japanese pagoda is that, because the building tapers, with each successive floor plan being smaller than the one below, none of the vertical pillars that carry the weight of the building is connected to its corresponding pillar above. In other words, a five-storey pagoda contains not even one pillar that travels right up through the building to carry the structural loads from the top to the bottom. More surprising is the fact that the individual stories of a Japanese pagoda, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, are not actually connected to each other. They are simply stacked one on top of another like a pile of hats. Interestingly, such a design would not be permitted under current Japanese building regulations.

And the extra-wide eaves? Think of them as a tightrope walker’s balancing pole. The bigger the mass at each end of the pole, the easier it is for the tightrope walker to maintain his or her balance. The same holds true for a pagoda. ‘With the eaves extending out on all sides like balancing poles,’ says Mr Ishida, ‘the building responds to even the most powerful jolt of an earthquake with a graceful swaying, never an abrupt shaking.’ Here again, Japanese master builders of a thousand years ago anticipated concepts of modern structural engineering.

Questions 1-4

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1 Only two Japanese pagodas have collapsed in 1400 years.

2 The Hanshin earthquake of 1995 destroyed the pagoda at the Toji temple.

3 The other buildings near the Toji pagoda had been built in the last 30 years.

4 The builders of pagodas knew how to absorb some of the power produced by severe weather conditions.

Questions 5-10

Classify the following as typical of

A both Chinese and Japanese pagodas

B only Chinese pagodas

C only Japanese pagodas

Write the correct letter. A, B or C, in boxes 5-10 on your answer sheet.

5 easy interior access to top

6 tiles on eaves

7 use as observation post

8 size of eaves up to half the width of the building

9 original religious purpose

10 floors fitting loosely over each other

Questions 11-13

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

11 In a Japanese pagoda, the shinbashira

A bears the full weight of the building.

B bends under pressure like a tree.

C connects the floors with the foundations.

D stops the floors moving too far.

12 Shuzo Ishida performs experiments in order to

A improve skyscraper design.

B be able to build new pagodas.

C learn about the dynamics of pagodas.

D understand ancient mathematics.

13 The storeys of a Japanese pagoda are

A linked only by wood.

B fastened only to the central pillar.

C fitted loosely on top of each other.

D joined by special weights.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

The True Cost of Food

A For more than forty years the cost of food has been rising. It has now reached a point where a growing number of people believe that it is far too high, and that bringing it down will be one of the great challenges of the twenty first century. That cost, however, is not in immediate cash. In the West at least, most food is now far cheaper to buy in relative terms than it was in 1960. The cost is in the collateral damage of the very methods of food production that have made the food cheaper: in the pollution of water, the enervation of soil, the destruction of wildlife, the harm to animal welfare and the threat to human health caused by modern industrial agriculture.

B First mechanisation, then mass use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, then monocultures, then battery rearing of livestock, and now genetic engineering — the onward march of intensive farming has seemed unstoppable in the last half-century, as the yields of produce have soared. But the damage it has caused has been colossal. In Britain, for example, many of our best-loved farmland birds, such as the skylark, the grey partridge, the lapwing and the corn bunting, have vanished from huge stretches of countryside, as have even more wild flowers and insects. This is a direct result of the way we have produced our food in the last four decades. Thousands of miles of hedgerows, thousands of ponds, have disappeared from the landscape. The faecal filth of salmon farming has driven wild salmon from many of the sea Iochs and rivers of Scotland. Natural soil fertility is dropping in many areas because of continuous industrial fertiliser and pesticide use, while the growth of algae is increasing in lakes because of the fertiliser run-off.

C Put it all together and it looks like a battlefield, but consumers rarely make the connection at the dinner table. That is mainly because the costs of all this damage are what economists refer to as externalities: they are outside the main transaction, which is for example producing and selling a field of wheat, and are borne directly by neither producers nor consumers. To many, the costs may not even appear to be financial at all, but merely aesthetic — a terrible shame, but nothing to do with money. And anyway they, as consumers of food, certainly aren’t paying for it, are they?

D But the costs to society can actually be quantified and, when added up, can amount to staggering sums. A remarkable exercise in doing this has been carried out by one of the world’s leading thinkers on the future of agriculture, Professor Jules Pretty, Director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex. Professor Pretty and his colleagues calculated the externalities of British agriculture for one particular year. They added up the costs of repairing the damage it caused, and came up with a total figure of £2,343m. This is equivalent to £208 for every hectare of arable land and permanent pasture, almost as much again as the total government and EU spend on British farming in that year. And according to Professor Pretty, it was a conservative estimate.

E The costs included: £120m for removal of pesticides; £16m for removal of nitrates; £55m for removal of phosphates and soil; £23m for the removal of the bug cryptosporidium from drinking water by water companies; £125m for damage to wildlife habitats, hedgerows and dry stone walls; £1,113m from emissions of gases likely to contribute to climate change; £106m from soil erosion and organic carbon losses; £169m from food poisoning; and £607m from cattle disease. Professor Pretty draws a simple but memorable conclusion from all this: our food bills are actually threefold. We are paying for our supposedly cheaper food in three separate ways: once over the counter, secondly through our taxes, which provide the enormous subsidies propping up modern intensive farming, and thirdly to clean up the mess that modern farming leaves behind.

F So can the true cost of food be brought down? Breaking away from industrial agriculture as the solution to hunger may be very hard for some countries, but in Britain, where the immediate need to supply food is less urgent, and the costs and the damage of intensive farming have been clearly seen, it may be more feasible. The government needs to create sustainable, competitive and diverse farming and food sectors, which will contribute to a thriving and sustainable rural economy, and advance environmental, economic, health, and animal welfare goals.

G But if industrial agriculture is to be replaced, what is a viable alternative? Professor Pretty feels that organic farming would be too big a jump in thinking and in practices for many farmers. Furthermore, the price premium would put the produce out of reach of many poorer consumers. He is recommending the immediate introduction of a ‘Greener Food Standard’, which would push the market towards more sustainable environmental practices than the current norm, while not requiring the full commitment to organic production. Such a standard would comprise agreed practices for different kinds of farming, covering agrochemical use, soil health, land management, water and energy use, food safety and animal health. It could go a long way, he says, to shifting consumers as well as farmers towards a more sustainable system of agriculture.

Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 a cost involved in purifying domestic water

15 the stages in the development of the farming industry

16 the term used to describe hidden costs

17 one effect of chemicals on water sources

Questions 18-21

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

18 Several species of wildlife in the British countryside are declining.

19 The taste of food has deteriorated in recent years.

20 The financial costs of environmental damage are widely recognized.

21 One of the costs calculated by Professor Pretty was illness caused by food.

Questions 22-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.

Professor Pretty concludes that our 22………are higher than most people realise, because we make three different types of payment. He feels it is realistic to suggest that Britain should reduce its reliance on 23………… .

Although most farmers would be unable to adapt to 24…………, Professor Pretty wants the government to initiate change by establishing what he refers to as a 25…………… . He feels this would help to change the attitudes of both 26…………and………. .

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 on the following pages.

Questions 27-30

Reading Passage 3 has six sections, A-F.

Choose the correct heading for sections B, C, E and F from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i MIRTP as a future model

ii Identifying the main transport problems

iii Preference for motorised vehicles

iv Government authorities’ instructions

v Initial improvements in mobility and transport modes

vi Request for improved transport in Makete

vii Transport improvements in the northern part of the district

viii Improvements in the rail network

ix Effects of initial MIRTP measures

x Co-operation of district officials

xi Role of wheelbarrows and donkeys

Example Answer

Section A vi

27 Section B

28 Section C

Example Answer

Section D ix

29 Section E

30 Section F

Makete Integrated Rural Transport Project

Section A

The disappointing results of many conventional road transport projects in Africa led some experts to rethink the strategy by which rural transport problems were to be tackled at the beginning of the 1980s. A request for help in improving the availability of transport within the remote Makete District of south-western Tanzania presented the opportunity to try a new approach.

The concept of ‘integrated rural transport’ was adopted in the task of examining the transport needs of the rural households in the district. The objective was to reduce the time and effort needed to obtain access to essential goods and services through an improved rural transport system. The underlying assumption was that the time saved would be used instead for activities that would improve the social and economic development of the communities. The Makete Integrated Rural Transport Project (MIRTP) started in 1985 with financial support from the Swiss Development Corporation and was co-ordinated with the help of theTanzanian government.

Section B

When the project began, Makete District was virtually totally isolated during the rainy season. The regional road was in such bad shape that access to the main towns was impossible for about three months of the year. Road traffic was extremely rare within the district, and alternative means of transport were restricted to donkeys in the north of the district. People relied primarily on the paths, which were slippery and dangerous during the rains.

Before solutions could be proposed, the problems had to be understood. Little was known about the transport demands of the rural households, so Phase I, between December 1985 and December 1987, focused on research. The socio-economic survey of more than 400 households in the district indicated that a household in Makete spent, on average, seven hours a day on transporting themselves and their goods, a figure which seemed extreme but which has also been obtained in surveys in other rural areas in Africa. Interesting facts regarding transport were found: 95% was on foot; 80% was within the locality; and 70% was related to the collection of water and firewood and travelling to grinding mills.

Section C

Having determined the main transport needs, possible solutions were identified which might reduce the time and burden. During Phase II, from January to February 1991, a number of approaches were implemented in an effort to improve mobility and access to transport.

An improvement of the road network was considered necessary to ensure the import and export of goods to the district. These improvements were carried out using methods that were heavily dependent on labour. In addition to the improvement of roads, these methods provided training in the operation of a mechanical workshop and bus and truck services. However, the difference from the conventional approach was that this time consideration was given to local transport needs outside the road network.

Most goods were transported along the paths that provide short-cuts up and down the hillsides, but the paths were a real safety risk and made the journey on foot even more arduous. It made sense to improve the paths by building steps, handrails and footbridges.

It was uncommon to find means of transport that were more efficient than walking but less technologically advanced than motor vehicles. The use of bicycles was constrained by their high cost and the lack of available spare parts. Oxen were not used at all but donkeys were used by a few households in the northern part of the district. MIRTP focused on what would be most appropriate for the inhabitants of Makete in terms of what was available, how much they could afford and what they were willing to accept. After careful consideration, the project chose the promotion of donkeys — a donkey costs less than a bicycle — and the introduction of a locally manufacturable wheelbarrow.

Section D

At the end of Phase II, it was clear that the selected approaches to Makete’s transport problems had had different degrees of success. Phase III, from March 1991 to March 1993, focused on the refinement and institutionalisation of these activities.

The road improvements and accompanying maintenance system had helped make the district centre accessible throughout the year. Essential goods from outside the district had become more readily available at the market, and prices did not fluctuate as much as they had done before.

Paths and secondary roads were improved only at the request of communities who were willing to participate in construction and maintenance. However, the improved paths impressed the inhabitants, and requests for assistance greatly increased soon after only a few improvements had been completed.

The efforts to improve the efficiency of the existing transport services were not very successful because most of the motorised vehicles in the district broke down and there were no resources to repair them. Even the introduction of low-cost means of transport was difficult because of the general poverty of the district. The locally manufactured wheelbarrows were still too expensive for all but a few of the households. Modifications to the original design by local carpenters cut production time and costs. Other local carpenters have been trained in the new design so that they can respond to requests. Nevertheless, a locally produced wooden wheelbarrow which costs around 5000 Tanzanian shillings (less than US$20) in Makete, and is about one quarter the cost of a metal wheelbarrow, is still too expensive for most people.

Donkeys, which were imported to the district, have become more common and contribute, in particular, to the transportation of crops and goods to market. Those who have bought donkeys are mainly from richer households but, with an increased supply through local breeding, donkeys should become more affordable. Meanwhile, local initiatives are promoting the renting out of the existing donkeys.

It should be noted, however, that a donkey, which at 20,000Tanzanian shillings costs less than a bicycle, is still an investment equal to an average household’s income over half a year. This clearly illustrates the need for supplementary measures if one wants to assist the rural poor.

Section E

It would have been easy to criticise the MIRTP for using in the early phases a ‘top-down’ approach, in which decisions were made by experts and officials before being handed down to communities, but it was necessary to start the process from the level of the governmental authorities of the district. It would have been difficult to respond to the requests of villagers and other rural inhabitants without the support and understanding of district authorities.

Section F

Today, nobody in the district argues about the importance of improved paths and inexpensive means of transport. But this is the result of dedicated work over a long period, particularly from the officers in charge of community development. They played an essential role in raising awareness and interest among the rural communities.

The concept of integrated rural transport is now well established in Tanzania, where a major program of rural transport is just about to start. The experiences from Makete will help in this initiative, and Makete District will act as a reference for future work.

Questions 31-35

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 31-35 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

31 MIRTP was divided into five phases.

32 Prior to the start of MIRTP the Makete district was almost inaccessible during the rainy season.

33 Phase I of MIRTP consisted of a survey of household expenditure on transport.

34 The survey concluded that one-fifty or 20% of the household transport requirement as outside the local area.

35 MIRTP hoped to improve the movement of goods from Makete district to the country’s capital.

Questions 36-39

Complete each sentence with the correct ending. A-J, below.

Write the correct letter, A-J, in boxes 36-39 on your answer sheet.

36 Construction of footbridges, steps and handrails

37 Frequent breakdown of buses and trucks in Makete

38 The improvement of secondary roads and paths

39 The isolation of Makete for part of the year

A provided the people of Makete with experience in running bus and truck services.

B was especially successful in the northern part of the district.

C differed from earlier phases in that the community became less actively involved.

D improved paths used for transport up and down hillsides.

E was no longer a problem once the roads had been improved.

F cost less than locally made wheelbarrows.

G was done only at the request of local people who were willing to lend a hand.

H was at first considered by MIRTP to be affordable for the people of the district.

I hindered attempts to make the existing transport services more efficient.

J was thought to be the most important objective of Phase III.

Question 40

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

Which of the following phrases best describes the main aim of Reading Passage 3?

A to suggest that projects such as MIRTP are needed in other countries

B to describe how MIRTP was implemented and how successful it was

C to examine how MIRTP promoted the use of donkeys

D to warn that projects such as MIRTP are likely to have serious problems

剑桥雅思阅读7原文参考译文(test2)

TEST 2 PASSAGE 2 参考译文:

食品的真正代价

A 40多年来食品价格一直呈上涨趋势。现在已经涨到了越来越多的人都认为太高的程度,很多人认为21 世纪面临的巨大挑战之一就是降低食品价格。然而,这代价不并非立即付现的。毕竟,相对于1960年而言,至少在西方国家,现在大多数食品按相对价值计算反而是便宜多了,这代价恰恰是使食品变便宜的生产方式本身所造成的间接伤害。这伤害包括现代工业化农业所造成的水资源污染,土壤贫瘠,野生动植物破坏,对动物权益的损害以及对人类健康的威胁。

B现代农业的发展首先是机械化生产,接着就是化肥和杀虫剂的大量使用,然后是单一种植,再后来就是笼养家禽家畜,直到现在的基因工程,在过去的半个世纪里,随着产量的激增,密集型农业前进的步伐似乎已经锐不可当,但其也造成巨大的破坏。例如,在英国,许多深受人们喜爱的农田鸟类,比如云雀,灰山鹑、麦鸡和黍鹀,还有更多的野花和昆虫,都已经从乡村大片的土地上消失了。这就是过去40年里我们的农业生产方式所造成的直接后果。无数的灌木丛、大片的池塘已经从我们的土地上消失了。养殖大马哈鱼的排泄物将野生大马哈鱼逐出了苏格兰的海湾和河流。由于长期使用化肥和杀虫剂,很多地区的自然土壤肥力正在下降,而湖里的藻类却因为化肥废料而不断疯长。

C上面所述种.种使我们的土地看上去就像满目疮痍的战场,但消费者在餐桌上的时候却很少联想到这些。这主要因为这些代价是经济学家们所说的“外部经济效应”,它们不在如生产或出售一块地里的小麦那样的主要交易过程之中,而且它们也不是由生产者和消费者直接来承担的。对很多人来说,这代价甚至根本不属于经济范畴,仅仅与审美相关,很遗憾和金钱没有任何关系。而且不管怎样,作为食品消费者,他们当然不必为这代价自掏腰包,不是吗?

D但这代价对社会的影响却是可以量化的,累积能高到吓人的地步。一项引人注目的将代价量化的活动已经完成。埃塞克斯大学社会与环境研究中心的主任Jules Pretty教授负责了该活动,他是位关注农业未来的领军思想家。Pretty教授和他的同事计算了某一年中英国农业外部经济效应的价值。他们综合了修复损坏所需的费用,得出的总数造二十三亿四千三百万英镑,具体到每公顷耕地和永久性牧场则为二百零八英镑,几乎和当年英国政府及欧盟在英国农业上的投人相当,据Pretty教授说这还是保守估计。

E这些费用包括:一亿两千万英镑用于消除杀虫剂;一千六百万英镑用于消除硝酸盐;五千五百万英镑用于消除土壤中的磷酸盐;两千三百万英镑用于自来水公司清除引用水中所含有的隐孢子虫病菌;一亿两千五百万英镑用来修复野生动物柄息地、灌木以及石墙所受到的损坏;十一亿一千三百万英镑用来治理可能会导致气候变化的尾气;一亿零六百万英镑用在治理土壤腐蚀和有机碳流失上;一亿六千九百万英镑用于食品中毒;六亿零七百万英镑用于治疗牲畜疾病。由此Pretty教授得出了一个简单但却惊人的结论:实际上我们的食品花销翻了三倍。我们正用三种不同的方式为认为便宜了的食物买单:一是在柜台付款,二通过纳税,税收提供了强大的经济支柱,三是收拾现代农业生产留下的烂摊子。

F那么食品的真正花销能降下来吗?对于一些国家来说,通过摆脱工业化农业解决饥饿问题也许相当困难,但在英国,对粮食的需求相对缓和,并且大家都清楚看到了密集型农业所耗费的成本和带来的破坏为现代密集型企业,放弃现代化农业更为可行。政府有必要设立可持续性、有竞争力和多样化的农业及粮食生产部门,这一定会为农村经济的繁荣和可持续发展做出贡献,并加快实现环境、经济、健康以及动物福利方面的目标。

G但如果工业化农业将被取代,可行的替代办法又是什么呢?Pretty教授感觉对于许多农民来说,有机农业在思想上和实践上都是一个很大的跨越。并且,有机产品的高价格使得许多比较贫困的消费者无力购买。他推荐尽快引入“绿色食品标准”,这会促使市场朝着比现行标准更环保的方向发展,而又不必全部投入有机农业生产。 “绿色食品标准”将涵盖不同农业经贸上的共认做法,包括农用化学品的使用、土壤质量、土地经营管理模式、水资源及能源利用、食品安全以及动物健康等。Pretty教授认为,这一标准将对消费者和农场主从传统的农业转向可持续发展农业大有裨益。

TEST 2 PASSAGE 3 参考译文:

马科特乡村一体化交通项目

Section A

八十年代初,非洲许多常规道路运输项目令人失望的结果使得一些专家开始重新思考解决乡村交通问题的策略,恰逢坦桑尼亚西南部偏远的马科特地区要求帮助改善当地的交通状况,为试验新策略提供了机会。

在对当地农村家庭出行需求的调查中,一体化的农村交通运输理念被采纳了进来。这个理念的目标就是通过改善农村交通体系,使当地人能减少获取基本物资和服务所费的时间和精力。该理念的基本假设就是能把节省下来的时间用来开展能够促进当地社会和经济发展的活动。马科特乡村一体化交通项目开始于1985年,由瑞士开发公司出资资助,坦桑尼亚政府负责协调工作。

Section B

项目刚开始的时候,雨季的马科特几乎完全与世隔绝。当地路况十分糟糕,通往主要城镇的道路一年中有三个月的时间都是无法通行的,地区内道路交通少得出奇,北部地区可选择的交通工具只有驴。居民主要靠步行,一下雨这些小路就泥泞不堪,十分危险。

在提出解决办法之前,先要了解问题所在。施工方对当地人的出行需求了解甚微,因此在工程的第一阶段(从1985年12月到1987年12月),他们集中精力进行调研。据对马科特地区400多个家庭进行的社会经济调查显示,平均每家每天要花上7个小时用于出行和运输物资这组数据看起来很极端,但从非洲其他乡村得到的数据也是一样的。调查人员还发现了一些与交通相关的很有趣的事情:当地95%的居民出门基本靠走,80%的居民活动范围只限于本地,70%的人出行是为了挑水砍柴和去磨坊。

Section C

确定了主要的交通需求,施工方制订了可行性解决方案,这将节省时间,减轻负担。在第二阶段(1991年1、2月间),为提高交通的灵活性和便利性,实施了许多方案。

改进地区的路网是保证货物进出口业务的必要条件,而这些改进措施严重依赖劳动力。除了改善路况,还提供机械车间方面的培训以及公共汽车和卡车服务。然而,与常规方法不同的是,这次除了公路网外,还考虑到了本地交通需求。

大多数物资是通过小路运输的,这些小路为上下山提供了捷径,但却需要冒着很大的生命危险,要是步行就更艰难了。所以,通过修建台阶、扶手和人行桥等来改善路况是有意义的。

要找到比步行更有效率、比机动车技术含低的交通方式可不是件容易的事。由于价格昂贵又缺少可用的零配件,自行车的使用受到了限制。当地人根本就不把牛当成交通工具,但在北部地区有些居民把驴当成运输工具。马科特乡村一体化交通项目致力于找到最适合当地居民的交通工具,这种工具必须是现有的、居民们买得起又愿意接受的东西。经过仔细考虑,项目最终决定推广驴(在当地,驴子比自行车便宜)和一种当地生产的独轮车。

Section D

第二阶段结束的时候,显而易见,这些为马科特地区量身打造的解决办法都取得了不同程度的成功。第三阶段从1991年3月到1993年3月,致力于改进这些解决方法并使之制度化。

道路状况的改善以及配套的道路养护制度已经使得人们全年都可到达地区中心,也更容易在市场上买到来自外地的基本物资,价格也不像以前那样起伏不定。

只有愿意参与道路建设与养护的社区提出要求时,施工方才会去帮助他们改善小路和二级公路。然而,当地居民对改善后的路况很满意。因此,刚完成几项改进,就有更多人提出了协助请求。

由于当地大多数机动车发生故障时没有条件修理,所以提升现有交通服务效率的努力并不是很成功。由于当地人普遍没什么钱,甚至连推广低价交通工具也成了难题,除了少数家庭外,本地制造的独轮车对多数家庭来讲还是过于昂贵。当地木匠对初始设计的独轮车加以更改,降低了生产时间和成本。当地的另外一些木匠也接受新设计的培训,以满足人们的需求。然而,尽管当地生产的木质独轮车只要5000坦桑尼亚先令(不到20美元),仅相当于金属独轮车价钱的四分之一,但对于大多数当地居民来说还是太贵了。

引进的驴子反倒变得越来越受欢迎,在将农作物和物资运往市场方面大显身手。买驴的主要是当地稍微富裕一些的家庭,不过通过本地繁殖,驴的供应会有所增加,价钱也会更便宜。与此同时,当地正推广现有驴子的出租业务。

然而需要注意的是,一头驴要花费20,000坦桑尼亚先令,虽然比自行车便宜,但这笔投资仍相当于一个当地家庭半年多的收人。这很清楚地表明,要帮助贫困的乡村地区,还需要其他的辅助措施。

Section E

由于项目初期采用了自上而下的办法,即没有传达给当地社区,专家和政府官员就作出了决定,因此,要批评马科特乡村一体化交通项目简直易如反掌,但是从当地政府层开始这一项目是很必要的。要是没有当地政府的支持和理解,当地村民和其他农村住户的需求就很难得到满足。

Section F

现在,当地没有人再争论改善道路状况及推广廉价交通工具的重要性了。这是长期倾力工作的结果,尤其是负责当地社区发展的政府官员的努力。他们在提高内地居民意识、调动他们积极性的过程中发挥了重要作用。

如今,一体化乡村交通这一理念在坦桑尼亚已经深入人心,另一个重于的乡村交通项目也即将在此开展。从马科特项目中所获得的经验将大有帮助,马科特地区也会为将来的项目提供很好的参考范例。

剑桥雅思阅读7原文解析(test2)

Test 2 Passage 1

Question 1

答案:YES

关键词:1400 years

定位原文: 第1段第2句:“Records show that only two have collapsed during the last 1400 years.” 有记录显示,在过去14间,只有两座倒塌了。

解题思路: 使用1400 years定位到第一段第二句,该句明确表明1400年间只有两座日本宝塔倒塌

Question 2

答案:NO

关键词:1995, Toji temple

定位原文: 第1段最后1句: “Yet it led the magnificent five-storey pagoda ...” 尽管大地震将京部附近东寺周围的大量建筑夷为平地,可寺里宏伟的五层宝塔却完好无损。

解题思路: 本题的考点在于要将原文中的leave...unscathed同题干中的destroy对立起来。unscathed指“没有负伤的,未受损伤的”,这样就与题干中的destroy(毁坏)相抵触。

Question 3

答案: NOT GIVEN

关键词:30 years

定位原文: 第2段第2句: “It was only thirty years ago that…” 仅仅在 30 年前,建筑界的从业者们才有足够信心建造髙于十二层的钢筋混凝土办公大楼。

解题思路: 这句话与此题的唯一联系就是这个thirty years,抛开这一点,两者简直是牛头不对马嘴。即使读完全段,也未见题干中所表达的意思,而且the other buildings near the Toji pagoda的勉强对等成分也出现在第一段a number of buildings in the neighbourhood。一道题目的主要成分零散在文中数段,这就是典型的形散神必散型的NOT GIVEN。

Question 4

答案: YES

关键词: builders, weather

定位原文: 第3段倒数第2句:“Clearly, Japanese carpenters of the day knew ...” 显而易见,当时的日本木匠懂得一些窍门让建筑物可以顺风摇摆,不与自然力量对抗,而是顺应自然,从而稳稳矗立。

解题思路: 题干中的absorb本指“吸收”,所谓吸收极端天气的能量,其实就是为了避免极端天气如地震等的破坏。文中提到 allow a building to sway and settle itself rather than fight nature's force, nature's force 其实就是题干中的the power produced by severe weather conditions, absorb对应rather than fight,不抵抗自然之力,而是顺其自然,通过摇摆而稳稳站立住了。

Question 5

答案: B

关键词:interior access to top

定位原文: 第4段第3、4句:“The Chinese built their pagodas.... When the pagoda reached Japan...the staircase was dispensed with...” 中国人用砖石造塔,内设楼梯……当宝塔到达日本,日本人加以改进,楼梯被弃用了……

解题思路: 很明显,只有中国的塔有楼梯,也就能方便地到达顶层;日本宝塔没有楼梯,谈何容易到达顶层呢? staircase楼梯,引申一下,就是中国宝塔的特点就是人们很容易就能登上塔顶。所以答案为B。

Question 6

答案: A

关键词:tiles on eaves

定位原文: 用 tile 一词定位到第5段第2句:“For the same reason, the builders of Japanese ...” 出于同样的原因,日本宝塔的建造者们通过采用较重的陶瓦来覆盖这些延伸的屋檐从而大大增加自身的重量,而不像许多中国宝塔那样采用瓷瓦。

解题思路: 这句话表明不管是日本塔还是中国塔,屋檐上当然都盖着瓦,只是所用的瓦材质不同而已。所以答案是A。

Question 7

答案:B

关键词: observation post

定位原文: 第4段第3、4句:“The Chinese...used them in later centuries mainly as watchtowers. When the pagoda reached Japan, ...the staircase was dispensed...” 中国人……后来这些宝塔就主要用作守望塔。然而当这些宝塔传入日本时,……日本宝塔没有什么实用性,更多是当作艺术品,所以没有楼梯。

解题思路: 中国人将塔用作守望塔,watchtower就等同于observation post,而日本人仅仅将塔作为艺术品来看待,并无实际用途,当然不会当守望塔用。答案当然是B

Question 8

答案:C

关键词:eave,half the width of the building

定位原文:第5段第1句: “The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to…”

解题思路: 联系上一段最后一句:Pagodas in China and Korea have nothing like the overhang that is found on pagodas in Japan. 两句综合在一起,表明只有日本宝塔有悬空的屋檐,而且日本寺庙建筑的屋檐悬于建筑物的侧面之外部分的宽度可以达到建筑物总宽的一半或更多。因此屋檐宽度超过建筑物宽度一半的当然只有日本宝塔了。

Question 9

答案:A

关键词: religious

定位原文: 第4段第2句:“As in China, they were first introduced with Buddhism…” 像在中国一样,它们最初是随着佛教而被引进的……

解题思路: Buddhism佛教,对应题干的 religious as in China中的as表示“正如”,证明日本塔和中国塔都有宗教功能。所以答案是A。

Question 10

答案: C

关键词: floors, loosely over each other

定位原文: 第8段倒数第3句 “More surprising is fact that …” 更令人惊讶的是日本宝塔的每一个单独楼层间实际上都不相连,这一点不同于其他任何地方的同类建筑。它们就像一摞帽子一样只是被一层一层地叠加起来。

解题思路: unlike their counterparts再次强调这是日本塔所特有的,stack对应fitting,帽子的比喻表明楼层之间是松散地建造在一起的,所以答案为C。

Question 11

答案: D

关键词:shinbashira

定位原文: 第7段最后1句:The shinbashira, ...constrained individual storeys from moving too far...

解题思路: 第6段第4句:...the shinbashira actually carries no load at all. 这句话直接否定了答案A。第5句:In fact, ...it does not even rest on the ground...(甚至不碰触地面),既然不碰触地面,也就无法连接楼层和地基了。答案C不可能。like a tall pine tree出现在第6段第2句,但是很快被作者用but the answer is not so simple给否定掉了,再说B 答案又是对这一句话的添油加醋,所以也不可能是答案。这样,即使只用排除法,也可以确定答案是D。

Question 12

答案: C

关键词:Shuzo Ishida

定位原文: 第7段第3句: “…his passion to understand the pagoda,has built a series of...”

解题思路: 根据文章对shinbashira描述,知道人们一直认为其承担了宝塔的重量,也就是C所指的力学,教授做实验也是为了验证这一说法,这就对应了选项C。

Question 13

答案:C

关键词:storey

定位原文: 第8段第3、4句: “More surprising is fact that the individual storeys…” 更令人惊讶的是日本宝塔的每一个单独楼层间实际上都不相连,这一点不同于其他任何地方的同类建筑。它们就像一摞帽子一样只是被一层一层地叠加起来。

解题思路: 题目:日本宝塔的各个楼层是

A仅用木头连接的。 C松松地彼此堆叠在一起。

B仅仅固定在中柱上。 D由特殊的重物相连。

答案为C。

Test 2 Passage 2

Question 14

答案:E

关键词:cost/ purifying domestic water

定位原文: E段第1句: “£23m for the removal of the bug…”

解题思路: 解这道题的窍门是首先在题干上发现cost一词,可以推测出这一段一定会大谈金钱。这样只要到文中寻找钱的符号集中出现的段落就可以了,很容易就找到了E段,接着找到对应语句,选出答案。

Question 15

答案:B

关键词:stages/farming industry

定位原文: B段第一句: “First mechanisation...”

解题思路: 此题解题窍门是要了解题干中的stages在文中的体现。这个信息表明该段会讲工业化农业的发展阶段。复数表明不止一个阶段,既然是发展那么就会有时间标志词出现。当考生扫读完A段到达B段的时候,就会发现first一词,接着会发现then,第二个then,第三个then,最后找到now。尽管stage一词并没有出现,但是mechanisation, mass use of chemical fertilisers, monocultures, battery rearing of livestock和genetic engineering都是农业发展的具体体现,考生不难看出这个题对应的是B段。

Question 16

答案:C

关键词:term/hidden costs

定位原文: C段第2句、第3句: “externalities... outside the main transaction... To many, the costs may not even...”

解题思路: C段提到:the costs of all this damage are what economists refer to as externalities,由此可分析出这个术语便指的是externalities (外部经济效应),作者紧接着在后面解释了这些代价被称为外部经济效应的原因,即它们不在主要交易过程之中,如生产或是出售一块地里的小麦,同时它们也不是由生产者和消费者直接来承担的。hidden一词在文中没有出现,但是从上面的文字中不难看出来,那些代价或损不是人们所能直接看到的,是隐蔽的。所以答案是C段。

Question 17

答案:B

关键词:effect/chemicals water sources

定位原文: B段最后一句“...the growth of algae is increasing in lakes…”

解题思路: 在B段第二句会发现but the damage it has caused,了解到文章开始讲工业化农业的影响了,damage与effect含义等同,接着找下去,在B段倒数第一行找到: the growth of algae is increasing in lakes because of the fertiliser run-off. fertiliser run-off指的是化肥的渗出(化肥当中所含的各种化学元素,在流入河川之后,会造成水中藻类的大量增生),lakes对应水源,故答案是B段。

Question 18

答案:YES

关键词:British countryside

定位原文: B 段第三句:“In Britain, for example…” 例如,在英国,许多深受人们喜爱的农田鸟类,比如云雀、灰山鹑、麦鸡和黍鹀,还有更多的野花和昆虫,都已经从乡村大片的土地上消失了。

解题思路: 先利用Britain将此题定位到文章B段,接着找到上面这句话,考生可以了解有一些鸟类、野花和昆虫都已经消失了,不同的几个物种都在面临着消失的尴尬境地。由此可以推知,英国乡下野生物种的数量的确是在下降。vanish虽然不能够和declining直接等同,但是两者所表达的本意都是相同的,都是指物种的减少,故此题答案应该选YES。

Question 19

答案:NOT GIVEN

关键词:taste/food

定位原文: B段后半段

解题思路: 没有发现哪句话提到食物味道变糟糕,甚至连food一词都没有看到,因此已经可以判断这是个完全没有被提及的NOT GIVEN题。

Question 20

答案: NO

关键词:financial costs

定位原文: C段首句:“Put it all together and it looks like…”

解题思路: 由以上C段中的内容可知,虽然我们的土地已经被工业化农业破坏得像个战场般满目疮痍,但消费者在吃饭的时候却很少能联想到这些,更别说将这些破坏用金钱来衡量了。由此可推知,人们还没有广泛地认识到环境破坏所带来的经济代价。文中的rarely和To many...not...与题干中的widely相互矛盾。由此可知答案是NO。

Question 21

答案: YES

关键词:Professor Pretty, illness

定位原文: E段相对应数字处:“ ...£169m from food poisoning;...”

解题思路: food poisoning指食物中毒,在用Professor Pretty的名字定位到E段之后,考生会发现这一段在列举农业的隐形开销,只要找到illness caused by food的对应成分food poisoning就可以了。Pretty教授的确计算了因食物引起的疾病就医的花销。

Question 22

答案:food bills/costs

关键词:Professor/Pretty/concludes/higher

定位原文: E段倒数第2句: “Professor Pretty draws a simple but...”

解题思路: 根据空前的our确定空中要填名词,后面的形容词是higher。higher可以对应文中的threefold(三倍);because we make three different types of payment 也可以和threefold相对应。注意不要填成单数。

Question 23

答案:(modern) intensive farming

关键词:Britain/reduce its reliance on

定位原文: F 段第2句: “Breaking away from industrial agriculture …”

解题思路: 空前有介词on,证明空中要填名词。原文中作者说对于一些国家来说,摆脱工业化农业生产方式的同时也解决饥饿问题是件很困难的事情,但在英国,对粮食的需求并非如此紧迫,并且现代化的密集型农业所耗费的成本和造成的损失清晰可见,放弃现代化农业是可行的。言外之意就是说英国现在太依赖intensive farming了,而要放弃intensive farming是可行的。所以空中应该填写:intensive farming。

Question 24

答案: organic farming

关键词:farmers/Pretty/government/change/a

定位原文: G 段第2、3、4句: “Professor Pretty feels that... Furthermore…He is recommending …”

解题思路: 原文中的 organic farming would be too big a jump in thinking and in practices for many farmers意为“对于许多农民来说,有机农业在思想上和实践上都是一个很大的跨越”,言外之意就是说许多农民都很难适应有机农业,在意思上与24空所在的半句相对应,所以24空应该填organic farming。

Question 25

答案:Greener Food Standard

关键词:farmers/Pretty/government/change/a

定位原文: G 段第2、3、4句: “Professor Pretty feels that... Furthermore…He is recommending …”

解题思路: 25空只需要向下寻找,找到教授的名字,再找到不定冠词a,很快就能找到正确答案Greener Food Standard,即他希望政府能马上制定“绿色食品标准”

Question 26

答案:farmers, consumers

关键词: both...and...

定位原文: G段最后1句: “It could go a long way...”

解题思路: 教授觉得上述计划会帮助改变26...和...的态度。分析题目的结构可知,这里要填并列关系的两个名词。文中句子里的shift可以与题目中的change相对应,文中as well as连接的便是两个并列成分,符合题目的结构,由此可知答案是farmers和consumers。也可以颠倒顺序填写。

Test 2 Passage 3

Question 27

答案: ii

关键词:main transport problems

定位原文: Section B第2小段第1句: “ Before solutions could be proposed…”

解题思路: 此篇文章每个Section由多个段落组成,因此要读过每个小段才能最终确认整个Section的大意。Section B的第一小段基本就在描述马科特地区糟糕的交通状况,纯属描述,考生应该快速略过,直奔第二小段。这一小段首句就提到:Before solutions could be proposed, the problems had to be understood. 这里problems第一次原词重现,正好与选项ii中的problems对应。再稍微向下看看,就能找到项目的第一阶段主要集中于调研,并且做了一个涉及400 多家当地住户的调査,后面就是该调査得出的数据。综合这两小段,显然,本部分讲的就是确定该地区的问题,也就是选项ii。

Question 28

答案: v

关键词:initial improvements

定位原文: Section C 第1小段最后1句: “...a number of approaches were implemented in …”

第2小段第1句:“An improvement of the road network...”

第3小段最后1句:“It made sense to improve the paths by...”

第4小段最后1句: “After careful consideration…”

解题思路: 第一小段主要讲项目第二阶段的目标;第二小段提到改善路网,提供培训;第三小段提到给当地人常走的小路修台阶、扶手和人行桥;第四小段提到使用独轮车和驴这两种交通工具。总结四段内容,不难发现,后三小段是交通改善的具体体现,也就不难得出答案为选项v。有的考生可能会被viii或xi迷惑,但是与v相比,这两个选项都太具体了,只是其中的一个方面,不够全面。作为整个Section的大意,应该是高度概括全面的。

Question 29

答案:x

关键词:district officials

定位原文: Section E最后1句: “...without the support and understanding of…”

解题思路: Section E本身只有两句话,而且都集中在政府的作用上。段末提出要是没有当地政府的支持和理解,就很难满足当地村民们的需求,充分肯定了当地官员的作用,而所有的headings中只有x项在讲述district officials(地区官员),所以它就是正确答案。有的考生可能会被iv所迷惑,因为它谈到了政府官方的建议,貌似可以和E段的第一句相对应,虽然本段出现了 government authorities,但重点是解释为什么在项目初期采取了政府下令民间执行的方式,而并未涉及到政府官员的instructions(建议),故排除。

Question 30

答案:i

关键词: future model

定位原文: Section F第2段最后1句:“...and Makete District will act as a …”

解题思路: 对解题原则熟悉的考生,在符到选项i的future时,已经可以把它大胆地归给文章的最后一段了,因为带有future一词的选项的任务往往就是给文章收尾。但是如果考生觉得这样猜测风险太大,那么就可以通读到Section F的最后一句,找到future model的对应词reference,再在 reference后看到future work,也可以选出正确选项i。

Question 31

答案:NO

关键词: five

定位原文: 全文结构

解题思路: 从Section E开始赞美当地官员、Section F开始歌颂这个项目的重要性和对将来的影响,就应该能够推测出来整个项目只有三个阶段了。答案当然是NO。

Question 32

答案:YES

关键词:prior to the start, rainy season

定位原文: Section B第1小段第1句: “When the project began…”

解题思路: 原句中的 began 对应题干中的 start, virtually totally isolated 对应 almost inaccessible。inaccessible指“无法达到的,不可进入的”,正好对应isolated(与世隔绝的),此题基本做到了词语的一一对应。

Question 33

答案:NO

关键词:Phase I

定位原文: Section B的第2小段第3句: “The socio-economic survey…”

解题思路: 从这句话可以看出,调查主要是关于当地家庭花在出行上的时间,并不是题目中所说的交通开销。有的考生会说,那文章中也没有明确说调查不是关于开销的呀。在雅思阅读文章中,每当提到事物的原因、做某事的目的、或者调查研究的目的时,一般这个原因和目的都是唯一的。也就是说,如果文中说这样做的目的是A,题中说这么做的目的是B, —般就选择NO。

Question 34

答案: YES

关键词:one-fifth or 20%

定位原文: 首先由题目中的one-fifth或者20%定位到Section B第二小段的80%

“80% was within the locality”.

解题思路: locality指“地区,区域”。该句说80%的家庭出行仅限于本地,推理一下,那么剩下的20%出行是在本地之外了。做一个简单的数学运算,就能得知答案为YES。

Question 35

答案:NOT GIVEN

关键词:capital

定位原文: 按顺序原则定位到 Section C

解题思路: Section C 第1小段最后1句: “...a number of approaches were…” 在这句话中,并没有提到首都。向下寻找,直到Section C的最后,capital一词也没有出现,这时已经完全可以肯定,这是一道无中生有、完全没有提及型的NOT GIVEN。

Question 36

答案:D

关键词:footbridges, steps, handrails

定位原文: Section C 第3小段:“Most goods were transported… It made sense to…” 大多数物资是通过小路运输的,这些小路为上下山提供了捷径,但却需要冒着很大的生命危险,要是步行就更艰难了。所以,就有必要通过修建台阶、扶手和人行桥等来改善路况。

解题思路: 找到这两句话之后,开始在选项栏中寻找对应句尾,特别要注意特殊词之间的联系,很快就能看到选项D: improved paths used for transport up and down hillsides. (改善用于上下山的小路)正好和文中原句对应。因此D就是正确答案

Question 37

答案:I

关键词:breakdown, buses and trucks breakdown, buses and trucks

定位原文: Section D第4小段第1句:“The efforts to improve…” 由于当地大多数机动车发生故障时没有条件修理,所以提升现有交通服务效率的努力并不是很成功。

解题思路: 题目中的buses and trucks 对应文中的 motorised vehicles,breakdown很容易和动词词组broke down相对应。作者在这里再次进行了一次因果关系转变。I选项中的hinder(阻碍)一词是解题的关键,efficient对应文中的efficiency,该选项是原文前半句话的另一表达。答案是I。

Question 38

答案:G

关键词:secondary roads and paths

定位原文: Section D第3小段第1句: “Paths and secondary roads were …” 只有愿意参与道路建设与养护的社区提出要求时,施工方才会去帮助他们改善小路和二级公路。

解题思路: 利用定位词:很快就能定位到Section D第3小段第1句,再利用at the request of和 willing定位到选项G: was done only at the request of local people who were willing to lend a hand, willing to lend a hand 等同于文中的 willing to participate in construction and maintenance,都指意在公路的建设和养护中出力。答案是G。

Question 39

答案:E

关键词: isolation, part of the year

定位原文: Section D的第2小段第1句:“The road improvements and…”

解题思路: 理解这句话时,可以结合原文Section B一开始就提到的马科特地区在雨季就几乎与世隔绝这个事实来理解。那么该句可理解为以往到了雨季就几乎隔离的地区现在已经全年都可到达,言下之意隔离不再是个问题了,对应选项,只有E表达了这个意思。另外,原文这句话的意思并不能和题完全对应,所以,考生可以使用排除法,先去掉刚才三道题目已经选过的选项,然后把剩下的选项逐一对应到题干后面去,看看哪一句在语法和语义上都能够说得通。考生很快会发现,只有一个答案可选,那就是E选项。

Question 40

答案:B

关键词:main aim

定位原文: 全文结构

解题思路: 首先剔除D:三个正面,一个负面,负面选项先出局,大体浏览一下文章也能看出文中并未涉及这个内容;C项过于具体,驴的使用只是计划的一部分,不够全面;然后在剩下的A、B中比较:A属于拔高型,文章只在最后提到马科特的成功可以作为以后的范例,并未直接说明其他国家需要,而且这也不是文章的主要内容;最终只有选项B概括了全文,答案为B。

篇5:剑桥雅思阅读10真题解析(test2)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 on the following pages.

Questions 1-7

Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number,i-ix,in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet

List of Headings

i The search for the reasons for an increase in population

ii Industrialisation and the fear of unemployment

iii The development of cities in Japan

iv The time and place of the Industrial Revolution

v The cases of Holland, France and China

vi Changes in drinking habits in Britain

vii Two keys to Britain’s industrial revolution

viii Conditions required for industrialisation

ix Comparisons with Japan lead to the answer

1 Paragraph A

2 Paragraph B

3 Paragraph C

4 Paragraph D

5 Paragraph E

6 Paragraph F

7 Paragraph G

Tea and the Industrial Revolution

A Cambridge professor says that a change in drinking babits was the reason for the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Anjana Abuja reports

A Alan Macfarlane, professor of anthropological science at King’s College, Cambridge, has, like other historians, spent decades wrestling with the enigma of the Industrial Revolution. Why did this particular Big Bang — the world-changing birth of industry — happen in Britain? And why did it strike at the end of the 18th century?

B Macfarlane compares the puzzle to a combination lock. ‘There are about 20 different factors and all of them need to be present before the revolution can happen,’ he says. For industry to take off, there needs to be the technology and power to drive factories, large urban populations to provide cheap labour, easy transport to move goods around, an affluent middle-class willing to buy mass-produced objects, a market-driven economy and a political system that allows this to happen. While this was the case for England, other nations, such as Japan, the Netherlands and France also met some of these criteria but were not industrialising. ‘All these factors must have been necessary but not sufficient to cause the revolution,’ says Macfarlane. ‘After all, Holland had everything except coal while China also had many of these factors. Most historians are convinced there are one or two missing factors that you need to open the lock.’

C The missing factors, he proposes, are to be found in almost even kitchen curpboard. Tea and beer, two of the nation’s favourite drinks, fuelled the revolution. The antiseptic properties of tannin, the active ingredient in tea, and of hops in beer — plus the fact that both are made with boiled water — allowed urban communities to flourish at close quarters without succumbing to water-borne diseases such as dysentery. The theory sounds eccentric but once he starts to explain the detective work that went into his deduction, the scepticism gives way to wary admiration. Macfarlane’s case has been strengthened by support from notable quarters — Roy Porter, the distinguished medical historian, recently wrote a favourable appraisal of his research.

D Macfarlane had wondered for a long time how the Industrial Revolution came about. Historians had alighted on one interesting factor around the mid-18th century that required explanation. Between about 1650 and 1740,the population in Britain was static. But then there was a burst in population growth. Macfarlane says: ‘The infant mortality rate halved in the space of 20 years, and this happened in both rural areas and cities, and across all classes. People suggested four possible causes. Was there a sudden change in the viruses and bacteria around? Unlikely. Was there a revolution in medical science? But this was a century before Lister’s revolution_ Was there a change in environmental conditions? There were improvements in agriculture that wiped out malaria, but these were small gains. Sanitation did not become widespread until the 19th century. The only option left is food. But the height and weight statistics show a decline. So the food must have got worse. Efforts to explain this sudden reduction in child deaths appeared to draw a blank.’

E This population burst seemed to happen at just the right time to provide labour for the Industrial Revolution. ‘When you start moving towards an industrial revolution, it is economically efficient to have people living close together,’ says Macfarlane. ‘But then you get disease, particularly from human waste.’ Some digging around in historical records revealed that there was a change in the incidence of water-borne disease at that time, especially dysentery. Macfarlane deduced that whatever the British were drinking must have been important in regulating disease. He says, ‘We drank beer. For a long time, the English were protected by the strong antibacterial agent in hops, which were added to help preserve the beer. But in the late 17th century a tax was introduced on malt, the basic ingredient of beer. The poor turned to water and gin and in the 1720s the mortality rate began to rise again. Then it suddenly dropped again. What caused this?’

F Macfarlane looked to Japan, which was also developing large cities about the same time, and also had no sanitation. Water-borne diseases had a much looser grip on the Japanese population than those in Britain. Could it be the prevalence of tea in their culture? Macfarlane then noted that the history of tea in Britain provided an extraordinary coincidence of dates. Tea was relatively expensive until Britain started a direct clipper trade with China in the early 18th century. By the 1740s, about the time that infant mortality was dipping, the drink was common. Macfarlane guessed that the fact that water had to be boiled, together with the stomach-purifying properties of tea meant that the breast milk provided by mothers was healthier than it had ever been. No other European nation sipped tea like the British, which, by Macfarlane’s logic, pushed these other countries out of contention for the revolution.

G But, if tea is a factor in the combination lock, why didn’t Japan forge ahead in a tea-soaked industrial revolution of its own? Macfarlane notes that even though 17th-century Japan had large cities, high literacy rates, even a futures market, it had turned its back on the essence of any work-based revolution by giving up labour-saving devices such as animals, afraid that they would put people out of work. So, the nation that we now think of as one of the most technologically advanced entered the 19th century having ‘abandoned the wheel’.

_oseph Lister was the first doctor to use antiseptic techniques during surgical operations to prevent infections.

Questions 8-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

8 China’s transport system was not suitable for industry in the 18th century.

9 Tea and beer both helped to prevent dysentery in Britain.

10 Roy Porter disagrees with Professor Macfarlane’s findings.

11 After 1740,there was a reduction in population in Britain.

12 People in Britain used to make beer at home.

13 The tax on malt indirectly caused a rise in the death rate.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Gifted children and learning

A Internationally, ‘giftedness’ is most frequently determined by a score on a general intelligence test, known as an IQ test, which is above a chosen cutoff point, usually at around the top 2-5%. Children’s educational environment contributes to the IQ score and the way intelligence is used. For example, a very close positive relationship was found when children’s IQ scores were compared with their home educational provision (Freeman, ). The higher the children’s IQ scores, especially over IQ 130, the better the quality of their educational backup, measured in terms of reported verbal interactions with parents, number of books and activities in their home etc. Because IQ tests are decidedly influenced by what the child has learned, they are to some extent measures of current achievement based on age-norms; that is, how well the children have learned to manipulate their knowledge and know-how within the terms of the test. The vocabulary aspect, for example, is dependent on having heard those words. But IQ tests can neither identify the processes of learning and thinking nor predict creativity.

B Excellence does not emerge without appropriate help. To reach an exceptionally high standard in any area very able children need the means to learn, which includes material to work with and focused challenging tuition — and the encouragement to follow their dream. There appears to be a qualitative difference in the way the intellectually highly able think, compared with more average-ability or older pupils, for whom external regulation by the teacher often compensates for lack of internal regulation. To be at their most effective in their self-regulation, all children can be helped to identify their own ways of learning — metacognition — which will include strategies of planning, monitoring, evaluation, and choice of what to learn. Emotional awareness is also part of metacognition, so children should be helped to be aware of their feelings around the area to be learned, feelings of curiosity or confidence, for example.

C High achievers have been found to use self-regulatory learning strategies more often and more effectively than lower achievers, and are better able to transfer these strategies to deal with unfamiliar tasks. This happens to such a high degree in some children that they appear to be demonstrating talent in particular areas. Overviewing research on the thinking process of highly able children, (Shore and Kanevsky, 1993) put the instructor’s problem succinctly: ‘If they [the gifted] merely think more quickly, then we need only teach more quickly. If they merely make fewer errors, then we can shorten the practice’. But of course, this is not entirely the case; adjustments have to be made in methods of learning and teaching, to take account of the many ways individuals think.

D Yet in order to learn by themselves, the gifted do need some support from their teachers. Conversely, teachers who have a tendency to ‘overdirect’ can diminish their gifted pupils’ learning autonomy. Although ‘spoon-feeding’ can produce extremely high examination results, these are not always followed by equally impressive life successes. Too much dependence on the teachers risks loss of autonomy and motivation to discover. However, when teachers help pupils to reflect on their own learning and thinking activities, they increase their pupils’ self-regulation. For a young child, it may be just the simple question ‘What have you learned today?’ which helps them to recognise what they are doing. Given that a fundamental goal of education is to transfer the control of learning from teachers to pupils, improving pupils’ learning to learn techniques should be a major outcome of the school experience, especially for the highly competent. There are quite a number of new methods which can help, such as child-initiated learning, ability-peer tutoring, etc. Such practices have been found to be particularly useful for bright children from deprived areas.

E But scientific progress is not all theoretical, knowledge is a so vital to outstanding performance: individuals who know a great deal about a specific domain will achieve at a higher level than those who do not (Elshout, 1995). Research with creative scientists by Simonton (1988) brought him to the conclusion that above a certain high level, characteristics such as independence seemed to contribute more to reaching the highest levels of expertise than intellectual skills, due to the great demands of effort and time needed for learning and practice. Creativity in all forms can be seen as expertise mixed with a high level of motivation (Weisberg, 1993).

F To sum up, learning is affected by emotions of both the individual and significant others. Positive emotions facilitate the creative aspects of learning and negative emotions inhibit it. Fear, for example, can limit the development of curiosity, which is a strong force in scientific advance, because it motivates problem-solving behaviour. In Boekaerts’ (1991) review of emotion the learning of very high IQ and highly achieving children, she found emotional forces in harness. They were not only curious, but often had a strong desire to control their environment, improve their learning efficiency and increase their own learning resources.

Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 a reference to the influence of the domestic background on the gifted child

15 reference to what can be lost if learners are given too much guidance

16 a reference to the damaging effects of anxiety

17 examples of classroom techniques which favour socially-disadvantaged children

Questions 18-22

Look at the following statements (Questions 18-22) and the list of people below.

Match each statement with the correct person or people, A-E.

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.

18 Less time can be spent on exercises with gifted pupils who produce accurate work.

19 Self-reliance is a valuable tool that helps gifted students reach their goals.

20 Gifted children know how to channel their feelings to assist their learning.

21 The very gifted child benefits from appropriate support from close relatives.

22 Really successful students have learnt a considerable amount about their subject.

List of People

A Freeman

B Shore and Kanevsky

C Elshout

D Simonton

E Boekaerts

Questions 23-26

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet

23 One study found a strong connection between children’s IQ and the availability of and

at home.

24 Children of average ability seem to need more direction from teachers because they do not have

25 Metacognition involves children understanding their own learning strategies, as well as developing

26 Teachers who rely on what is known as often produce sets of impressive grades in class tests.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Museums of fine art and their public

The fact that people go to the Louvre museum in Paris to see the original painting Mona Lisa when they can see a reproduction anywhere leads us to question some assumptions about the role of museums of fine art in today’s world

One of the most famous works of art in the world is Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Nearly everyone who goes to see the original will already be familiar with it from reproductions, but they accept that fine art is more rewardingly viewed in its original form.

However, if Mona Lisa was a famous novel, few people would bother to go to a museum to read the writer’s actual manuscript rather than a printed reproduction. This might be explained by the fact that the novel has evolved precisely because of technological developments that made it possible to print out huge numbers of texts, whereas oil paintings have always been produced as unique objects. In addition, it could be argued that the practice of interpreting or ‘reading’ each medium follows different conventions. With novels, the reader attends mainly to the meaning of words rather than the way they are printed on the page, whereas the ‘reader’ of a painting must attend just as closely to the material form of marks and shapes in the picture as to any ideas they may signify.

Yet it has always been possible to make very accurate facsimiles of pretty well any fine art work. The seven surviving versions of Mona Lisa bear witness to the fact that in the 16th century, artists seemed perfectly content to assign the reproduction of their creations to their workshop apprentices as regular ‘bread and butter’ work. And today the task of reproducing pictures is incomparably more simple and reliable, with reprographic techniques that allow the production of high-quality prints made exactly to the original scale, with faithful colour values, and even with duplication of the surface relief of the painting.

But despite an implicit recognition that the spread of good reproductions can be culturally valuable, museums continue to promote the special status of original work.

Unfortunately, this seems to place severe limitations on the kind of experience offered to visitors.

One limitation is related to the way the museum presents its exhibits. As repositories of unique historical objects, art museums are often called ‘treasure houses’. We are reminded of this even before we view a collection by the presence of security guards, attendants, ropes and display cases to keep us away from the exhibits. In many cases, the architectural style of the building further reinforces that notion. In addition, a major collection like that of London’s National Gallery is housed in numerous rooms, each with dozens of works, any one of which is likely to be worth more than all the average visitor possesses. In a society that judges the personal status of the individual so much by their material worth, it is therefore difficult not to be impressed by one’s own relative ‘worthlessness’ in such an environment.

Furthermore, consideration of the ‘value’ of the original work in its treasure house setting impresses upon the viewer that, since these works were originally produced, they have been assigned a huge monetary value by some person or institution more powerful than themselves. Evidently, nothing the viewer thinks about the work is going to alter that value, and so today’s viewer is deterred from trying to extend that spontaneous, immediate, self-reliant kind of reading which would originally have met the work.

The visitor may then be struck by the strangeness of seeing such diverse paintings, drawings and sculptures brought together in an environment for which they were not originally created. This ‘displacement effect’ is further heightened by the sheer volume of exhibits. In the case of a major collection, there are probably more works on display than we could realistically view in weeks or even months.

This is particularly distressing because time seems to be a vital factor in the appreciation of all art forms. A fundamental difference between paintings and other art forms is that there is no prescribed time over which a painting is viewed. By contrast, the audience encounters an opera or a play over a specific time, which is the duration of the performance. Similarly, novels and poems are read in a prescribed temporal sequence, whereas a picture has no clear place at which to start viewing, or at which to finish. Thus art works themselves encourage us to view them superficially, without appreciating the richness of detail and labour that is involved.

Consequently, the dominant critical approach becomes that of the art historian, a specialised academic approach devoted to ‘discovering the meaning’ of art within the cultural context of its time. This is in perfect harmony with the museum’s function, since the approach is dedicated to seeking out and conserving ‘authentic’, ‘original’ readings of the exhibits. Again, this seems to put paid to that spontaneous, participatory criticism which can be found in abundance in criticism of classic works of literature, but is absent from most art history.

The displays of art museums serve as a warning of what critical practices can emerge when spontaneous criticism is suppressed. The museum public, like any other audience, experience art more rewardingly when given the confidence to express their views. If appropriate works of fine art could be rendered permanently accessible to the public by means of high-fidelity reproductions, as literature and music already are, the public may feel somewhat less in awe of them. Unfortunately, that may be too much to ask from those who seek to maintain and control the art establishment.

Questions 27-31

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-L, below.

Write the correct letter, A-L, in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

The value attached to original works of art

People go to art museums because they accept the value of seeing an original work of art. But they do not go to museums to read original manuscripts of novels, perhaps because the availability of novels has depended on 27 for so long, and also because with novels, the 28 are the most important thing.

However, in historical times artists such as Leonardo were happy to instruct 29 to produce copies of their work and these days new methods of reproduction allow excellent replication of surface relief features as well as colour and 30

It is regrettable that museums still promote the superiority of original works of art, since this may not be in the interests of the 31

A institution B mass production C mechanical processes

D public E paints F artist

G size H underlying ideas I basic technology

J readers K picture frames L assistants

Questions 32-35

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 32-35 on your answer sheet

32 The writer mentions London’s National Gallery to illustrate

A the undesirable cost to a nation of maintaining a huge collection of art.

B the conflict that may arise in society between financial and artistic values.

C the negative effect a museum can have on visitors’ opinions of themselves.

D the need to put individual well-being above large-scale artistic schemes.

33 The writer says that today, viewers may be unwilling to criticise a work because

A they lack the knowledge needed to support an opinion.

B they fear it may have financial implications.

C they have no real concept of the work’s value.

D they feel their personal reaction is of no significance.

34 According to the writer, the ‘displacement effect’ on the visitor is caused by

A the variety of works on display and the way they are arranged.

B the impossibility of viewing particular works of art over a long period.

C the similar nature of the paintings and the lack of great works.

D the inappropriate nature of the individual works selected for exhibition.

35 The writer says that unlike other forms of art, a painting does not

A involve direct contact with an audience.

B require a specific location for a performance.

C need the involvement of other professionals.

D have a specific beginning or end.

Questions 36-42

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

36 Art history should focus on discovering the meaning of art using a range of media.

37 The approach of art historians conflicts with that of art museums.

38 People should be encouraged to give their opinions openly on works of art.

39 Reproductions of fine art should only be sold to the public if they are of high quality.

40 In the future, those with power are likely to encourage more people to enjoy art.

篇6:剑桥雅思阅读11原文真题解析

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Raising the Mary Rose

How a sixteenth-century warship was recovered from the seabed

On 19 July 1545, English and French fleets were engaged in a sea battle off the coast of southern England in the area of water called the Solent, between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. Among the English vessels was a warship by the name of Mary Rose. Built in Portsmouth some 35 years earlier, she had had a long and successful fighting career, and was a favourite of King Henry VIII. Accounts of what happened to the ship vary: while witnesses agree that she was not hit by the French, some maintain that she was outdated, overladen and sailing too low in the water, others that she was mishandled by undisciplined crew. What is undisputed, however, is that the Mary Rose sank into the Solent that day, taking at least 500 men with her. After the battle, attempts were made to recover the ship, but these failed.

The Mary Rose came to rest on the seabed, lying on her starboard (right) side at an angle of approximately 60 degrees. The hull (the body of the ship) acted as a trap for the sand and mud carried by Solent currents. As a result, the starboard side filled rapidly, leaving the exposed port (left) side to be eroded by marine organisms and mechanical degradation. Because of the way the ship sank, nearly all of the starboard half survived intact. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the entire site became covered with a layer of hard grey clay, which minimised further erosion.

Then, on 16 June 1836, some fishermen in the Solent found that their equipment was caught on an underwater obstruction, which turned out to be the Mary Rose. Diver John Deane happened to be exploring another sunken ship nearby, and the fishermen approached him, asking him to free their gear. Deane dived down, and found the equipment caught on a timber protruding slightly from the seabed. Exploring further, he uncovered several other timbers and a bronze gun. Deane continued diving on the site intermittently until 1840, recovering several more guns, two bows, various timbers, part of a pump and various other small finds.

The Mary Rose then faded into obscurity for another hundred years. But in 1965, military historian and amateur diver Alexander McKee, in conjunction with the British Sub-Aqua Club, initiated a project called ‘Solent Ships’. While on paper this was a plan to examine a number of known wrecks in the Solent, what McKee really hoped for was to find the Mary Rose. Ordinary search techniques proved unsatisfactory, so McKee entered into collaboration with Harold E. Edgerton, professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1967, Edgerton’s side-scan sonar systems revealed a large, unusually shaped object, which McKee believed was the Mary Rose.

Further excavations revealed stray pieces of timber and an iron gun. But the climax to the operation came when, on 5 May 1971, part of the ship’s frame was uncovered. McKee and his team now knew for certain that they had found the wreck, but were as yet unaware that it also housed a treasure trove of beautifully preserved artefacts. Interest in the project grew, and in 1979, The Mary Rose Trust was formed, with Prince Charles as its President and Dr Margaret Rule its Archaeological Director. The decision whether or not to salvage the wreck was not an easy one, although an excavation in 1978 had shown that it might be possible to raise the hull. While the original aim was to raise the hull if at all feasible, the operation was not given the go-ahead until January 1982, when all the necessary information was available.

An important factor in trying to salvage the Mary Rose was that the remaining hull was an open shell. This led to an important decision being taken: namely to carry out the lifting operation in three very distinct stages. The hull was attached to a lifting frame via a network of bolts and lifting wires. The problem of the hull being sucked back downwards into the mud was overcome by using 12 hydraulic jacks. These raised it a few centimetres over a period of several days, as the lifting frame rose slowly up its four legs. It was only when the hull was hanging freely from the lifting frame, clear of the seabed and the suction effect of the surrounding mud, that the salvage operation progressed to the second stage. In this stage, the lifting frame was fixed to a hook attached to a crane, and the hull was lifted completely clear of the seabed and transferred underwater into the lifting cradle. This required precise positioning to locate the legs into the ‘stabbing guides’ of the lifting cradle. The lifting cradle was designed to fit the hull using archaeological survey drawings, and was fitted with air bags to provide additional cushioning for the hull’s delicate timber framework. The third and final stage was to lift the entire structure into the air, by which time the hull was also supported from below. Finally, on 11 October 1982, millions of people around the world held their breath as the timber skeleton of the Mary Rose was lifted clear of the water, ready to be returned home to Portsmouth.

Questions 1-4

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1 There is some doubt about what caused the Mary Rose to sink.

2 The Mary Rose was the only ship to sink in the battle of 19 July 1545.

3 Most of one side of the Mary Rose lay undamaged under the sea.

4 Alexander McKee knew that the wreck would contain many valuable historical objects.

Questions 5-8

Look at the following statements (Questions 5-8) and the list of dates below.

Match each statement with the correct date, A-G.

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.

5 A search for the Mary Rose was launched.

6 One person’s exploration of the Mary Rose site stopped.

7 It was agreed that the hull of the Mary Rose should be raised.

8 The site of the Mary Rose was found by chance.

List of Dates

A 1836 E 1971

B 1840 F 1979

C 1965 G 1982

D 1967

Questions 9-13

Label the diagram below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

Raising the hull of the Mary Rose: Stages one and two

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 on the following pages.

Questions 14-20

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Evidence of innovative environment management practices

ii An undisputed answer to a question about the moai

iii The future of the moai statues

iv A theory which supports a local belief

v The future of Easter Island

vi Two opposing views about the Rapanui people

vii Destruction outside the inhabitants’ control

viii How the statues made a situation worse

ix Diminishing food resources

14 Paragraph A

15 Paragraph B

16 Paragraph C

17 Paragraph D

18 Paragraph E

19 Paragraph F

20 Paragraph G

What destroyed the civilisation of Easter Island?

A Easter Island, or Rapu Nui as it is known locally, is home to several hundred ancient human statues ?— the moai. After this remote Pacific island was settled by the Polynesians, it remained isolated for centuries. All the energy and resources that went into the moai — some of which are ten metres tall and weigh over 7,000 kilos — came from the island itself. Yet when Dutch explorers landed in 1722, they met a Stone Age culture. The moai were carved with stone tools, then transported for many kilometres, without the use of animals or wheels, to massive stone platforms. The identity of the moai builders was in doubt until well into the twentieth century. Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer, thought the statues had been created by pre-lnca peoples from Peru. Bestselling Swiss author Erich von Daniken believed they were built by stranded extraterrestrials. Modern science — linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence — has definitively proved the moai builders were Polynesians, but not how they moved their creations. Local folklore maintains that the statues walked, while researchers have tended to assume the ancestors dragged the statues somehow, using ropes and logs.

B When the Europeans arrived, Rapa Nui was grassland, with only a few scrawny trees. In the 1970s and 1980s, though, researchers found pollen preserved in lake sediments, which proved the island had been covered in lush palm forests for thousands of years. Only after the Polynesians arrived did those forests disappear. US scientist Jared Diamond believes that the Rapanui people — descendants of Polynesian settlers — wrecked their own environment. They had unfortunately settled on an extremely fragile island — dry, cool, and too remote to be properly fertilised by windblown volcanic ash. When the islanders cleared the forests for firewood and farming, the forests didn’t grow back. As trees became scarce and they could no longer construct wooden canoes for fishing, they ate birds. Soil erosion decreased their crop yields. Before Europeans arrived, the Rapanui had descended into civil war and cannibalism, he maintains. The collapse of their isolated civilisation, Diamond writes, is a ‘worst-case scenario for what may lie ahead of us in our own future’.

C The moai, he thinks, accelerated the self-destruction. Diamond interprets them as power displays by rival chieftains who, trapped on a remote little island, lacked other ways of asserting their dominance. They competed by building ever bigger figures. Diamond thinks they laid the moai on wooden sledges, hauled over log rails, but that required both a lot of wood and a lot of people. To feed the people, even more land had to be cleared. When the wood was gone and civil war began, the islanders began toppling the moai. By the nineteenth century none were standing.

D Archaeologists Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii and Carl Lipo of California State University agree that Easter Island lost its lush forests and that it was an ‘ecological catastrophe’ — but they believe the islanders themselves weren’t to blame. And the moai certainly weren’t. Archaeological excavations indicate that the Rapanui went to heroic efforts to protect the resources of their wind-lashed, infertile fields. They built thousands of circular stone windbreaks and gardened inside them, and used broken volcanic rocks to keep the soil moist. In short, Hunt and Lipo argue, the prehistoric Rapanui were pioneers of sustainable farming.

E Hunt and Lipo contend that moai-building was an activity that helped keep the peace between islanders. They also believe that moving the moai required few people and no wood, because they were walked upright. On that issue, Hunt and Lipo say, archaeological evidence backs up Rapanui folklore. Recent experiments indicate that as few as 18 people could, with three strong ropes and a bit of practice, easily manoeuvre a 1,000 kg moai replica a few hundred metres. The figures’ fat bellies tilted them forward, and a D-shaped base allowed handlers to roll and rock them side to side.

F Moreover, Hunt and Lipo are convinced that the settlers were not wholly responsible for the loss of the island’s trees. Archaeological finds of nuts from the extinct Easter Island palm show tiny grooves, made by the teeth of Polynesian rats. The rats arrived along with the settlers, and in just a few years, Hunt and Lipo calculate, they would have overrun the island. They would have prevented the reseeding of the slow-growing palm trees and thereby doomed Rapa Nui’s forest, even without the settlers’ campaign of deforestation. No doubt the rats ate birds’ eggs too. Hunt and Lipo also see no evidence that Rapanui civilisation collapsed when the palm forest did. They think its population grew rapidly and then remained more or less stable until the arrival of the Europeans, who introduced deadly diseases to which islanders had no immunity. Then in the nineteenth century slave traders decimated the population, which shrivelled to 111 people by 1877.

G Hunt and Lipo’s vision, therefore, is one of an island populated by peaceful and ingenious moai builders and careful stewards of the land, rather than by reckless destroyers ruining their own environment and society. ‘Rather than a case of abject failure, Rapu Nui is an unlikely story of success’, they claim. Whichever is the case, there are surely some valuable lessons which the world at large can learn from the story of Rapa Nui.

Questions 21-24

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 21-24 on your answer sheet.

Jared Diamond’s View

Diamond believes that the Polynesian settlers on Rapa Nui destroyed its forests, cutting down its trees for fuel and clearing land for 21 __________. Twentieth-century discoveries of pollen prove that Rapu Nui had once been covered in palm forests, which had turned into grassland by the time the Europeans arrived on the island. When the islanders were no longer able to build the 22 __________ they needed to go fishing, they began using the island’s 23 __________ as a food source, according to Diamond. Diamond also claims that the moai were built to show the power of the island’s chieftains, and that the methods of transporting the statues needed not only a great number of people, but also a great deal of 24 __________.

Questions 25 and 26

Choose TWO letters, A-E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet.

On what points do Hunt and Lipo disagree with Diamond?

A the period when the moai were created

B how the moai were transported

C the impact of the moai on Rapanui society

D how the moai were carved

E the origins of the people who made the moai

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Neuroaesthetics

An emerging discipline called neuroaesthetics is seeking to bring scientific objectivity to the study of art, and has already given us a better understanding of many masterpieces. The blurred imagery of Impressionist paintings seems to stimulate the brain’s amygdala, for instance. Since the amygdala plays a crucial role in our feelings, that finding might explain why many people find these pieces so moving.

Could the same approach also shed light on abstract twentieth-century pieces, from Mondrian’s geometrical blocks of colour, to Pollock’s seemingly haphazard arrangements of splashed paint on canvas? Sceptics believe that people claim to like such works simply because they are famous. We certainly do have an inclination to follow the crowd. When asked to make simple perceptual decisions such as matching a shape to its rotated image, for example, people often choose a definitively wrong answer if they see others doing the same. It is easy to imagine that this mentality would have even more impact on a fuzzy concept like art appreciation, where there is no right or wrong answer.

Angelina Hawley-Dolan, of Boston College, Massachusetts, responded to this debate by asking volunteers to view pairs of paintings — either the creations of famous abstract artists or the doodles of infants, chimps and elephants. They then had to judge which they preferred. A third of the paintings were given no captions, while many were labelled incorrectly — volunteers might think they were viewing a chimp’s messy brushstrokes when they were actually seeing an acclaimed masterpiece. In each set of trials, volunteers generally preferred the work of renowned artists, even when they believed it was by an animal or a child. It seems that the viewer can sense the artist’s vision in paintings, even if they can’t explain why.

Robert Pepperell, an artist based at Cardiff University, creates ambiguous works that are neither entirely abstract nor clearly representational. In one study, Pepperell and his collaborators asked volunteers to decide how ‘powerful’ they considered an artwork to be, and whether they saw anything familiar in the piece. The longer they took to answer these questions, the more highly they rated the piece under scrutiny, and the greater their neural activity. It would seem that the brain sees these images as puzzles, and the harder it is to decipher the meaning, the more rewarding is the moment of recognition.

And what about artists such as Mondrian, whose paintings consist exclusively of horizontal and vertical lines encasing blocks of colour? Mondrian’s works are deceptively simple, but eye-tracking studies confirm that they are meticulously composed, and that simply rotating a piece radically changes the way we view it. With the originals, volunteers’ eyes tended to stay longer on certain places in the image, but with the altered versions they would flit across a piece more rapidly. As a result, the volunteers considered the altered versions less pleasurable when they later rated the work.

In a similar study, Oshin Vartanian of Toronto University asked volunteers to compare original paintings with ones which he had altered by moving objects around within the frame. He found that almost everyone preferred the original, whether it was a Van Gogh still life or an abstract by Miro. Vartanian also found that changing the composition of the paintings reduced activation in those brain areas linked with meaning and interpretation.

In another experiment, Alex Forsythe of the University of Liverpool analysed the visual intricacy of different pieces of art, and her results suggest that many artists use a key level of detail to please the brain. Too little and the work is boring, but too much results in a kind of ‘perceptual overload’; according to Forsythe. What’s more, appealing pieces both abstract and representational, show signs of ‘fractals’ — repeated motifs recurring in different scales. Fractals are common throughout nature, for example in the shapes of mountain peaks or the branches of trees. It is possible that our visual system, which evolved in the great outdoors, finds it easier to process such patterns.

It is also intriguing that the brain appears to process movement when we see a handwritten letter, as if we are replaying the writer’s moment of creation. This has led some to wonder whether Pollock’s works feel so dynamic because the brain reconstructs the energetic actions the artist used as he painted. This may be down to our brain’s ‘mirror neurons’, which are known to mimic others’ actions. The hypothesis will need to be thoroughly tested, however. It might even be the case that we could use neuroaesthetic studies to understand the longevity of some pieces of artwork. While the fashions of the time might shape what is currently popular, works that are best adapted to our visual system may be the most likely to linger once the trends of previous generations have been forgotten.

It’s still early days for the field of neuroaesthetics — and these studies are probably only a taste of what is to come. It would, however, be foolish to reduce art appreciation to a set of scientific laws. We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the style of a particular artist, their place in history and the artistic environment of their time. Abstract art offers both a challenge and the freedom to play with different interpretations. In some ways, it’s not so different to science, where we are constantly looking for systems and decoding meaning so that we can view and appreciate the world in a new way.

Questions 27-30

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27 In the second paragraph, the writer refers to a shape-matching test in order to illustrate

A the subjective nature of art appreciation.

B the reliance of modern art on abstract forms.

C our tendency to be influenced by the opinions of others.

D a common problem encountered when processing visual data.

28 Angelina Hawley-Dolan’s findings indicate that people

A mostly favour works of art which they know well.

B hold fixed ideas about what makes a good work of art.

C are often misled by their initial expectations of a work of art.

D have the ability to perceive the intention behind works of art.

29 Results of studies involving Robert Pepperell’s pieces suggest that people

A can appreciate a painting without fully understanding it.

B find it satisfying to work out what a painting represents.

C vary widely in the time they spend looking at paintings.

D generally prefer representational art to abstract art.

30 What do the experiments described in the fifth paragraph suggest about the paintings of Mondrian?

A They are more carefully put together than they appear.

B They can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

C They challenge our assumptions about shape and colour.

D They are easier to appreciate than many other abstract works.

Questions 31-33

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-H, below.

Write the correct letters, A-H, in boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet.

Art and the Brain

The discipline of neuroaesthetics aims to bring scientific objectivity to the study of art. Neurological studies of the brain, for example, demonstrate the impact which Impressionist paintings have on our 31 __________. Alex Forsythe of the University of Liverpool believes many artists give their works the precise degree of 32 __________ which most appeals to the viewer’s brain. She also observes that pleasing works of art often contain certain repeated 33 __________ which occur frequently in the natural world.

A interpretation B complexity C emotions

D movements E skill F layout

G concern H images

Questions 34-39

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

34 Forsythe’s findings contradicted previous beliefs on the function of ‘fractals’ in art.

35 Certain ideas regarding the link between ‘mirror neurons’ and art appreciation require further verification.

36 People’s taste in paintings depends entirely on the current artistic trends of the period.

37 Scientists should seek to define the precise rules which govern people’s reactions to works of art.

38 Art appreciation should always involve taking into consideration the cultural context in which an artist worked.

39 It is easier to find meaning in the field of science than in that of art.

Question 40

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

40 What would be the most appropriate subtitle for the article?

A Some scientific insights into how the brain responds to abstract art

B Recent studies focusing on the neural activity of abstract artists

C A comparison of the neurological bases of abstract and representational art

D How brain research has altered public opinion about abstract art

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